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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern Painters Vol. III., 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: Modern Painters Vol. III.
+       Containing Part IV., of many things
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: February 19, 2012 [EBook #38923]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN PAINTERS VOL. III. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, RSPIII and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+                        Transcriber's Notes:
+
+
+  The original spelling and minor inconsistencies in the spelling and
+  formatting have been retained. Unusual and alternative spellings have
+  been retained as they appear on the original publication. Hyphenated
+  words have been standardized.
+
+  Contractions in the stylized Latin script on page 125 have been
+  expanded and included in curly brackets {} by the transcriber:
+  "jahes" has been shown as "jah{ann}es" and "scpsi" as "sc{ri}psi".
+
+  Minor typographical changes are listed at the bottom of this text.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+                          Library Edition
+
+                         THE COMPLETE WORKS
+                                 OF
+                             JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+                           MODERN PAINTERS
+
+             VOLUME II--OF TRUTH AND THEORETIC FACULTIES
+                      VOLUME III--OF MANY THINGS
+
+
+                    NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
+                    NEW YORK             CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+                           MODERN PAINTERS.
+
+                              VOL. III.,
+
+                              CONTAINING
+
+                               PART IV.,
+
+                           OF MANY THINGS.
+
+
+
+
+                          TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+                       PART IV. OF MANY THINGS.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+  CHAPTER  I.--Of the received Opinions touching the "Grand Style"     1
+     "    II.--Of Realization                                         16
+     "   III.--Of the Real Nature of Greatness of Style               23
+     "    IV.--Of the False Ideal:--First, Religious                  44
+     "     V.--Of the False Ideal:--Secondly, Profane                 61
+     "    VI.--Of the True Ideal:--First, Purist                      70
+     "   VII.--Of the True Ideal:--Secondly, Naturalist               77
+     "  VIII.--Of the True Ideal:--Thirdly, Grotesque                 92
+     "    IX.--Of Finish                                             108
+     "     X.--Of the Use of Pictures                                124
+     "    XI.--Of the Novelty of Landscape                           144
+     "   XII.--Of the Pathetic Fallacy                               152
+     "  XIII.--Of Classical Landscape                                168
+     "   XIV.--Of Medi�val Landscape:--First, the Fields             191
+     "    XV.--Of Medi�val Landscape:--Secondly, the Rocks           229
+     "   XVI.--Of Modern Landscape                                   248
+     "  XVII.--The Moral of Landscape                                280
+     " XVIII.--Of the Teachers of Turner                             308
+
+
+                              APPENDIX.
+
+
+    I.--Claude's Tree-drawing                                        333
+   II.--German Philosophy                                            336
+  III.--Plagiarism                                                   338
+
+
+
+
+                     LIST OF PLATES TO VOL. III.
+
+
+                                  Drawn by            Engraved by
+  Frontispiece. Lake, Land,     _The Author_        J. C. ARMYTAGE.
+    and Cloud.
+                                                                  Facing
+   Plate                                                            page
+
+   1. True and False Griffins    _The Author_       R. P. CUFF       106
+
+   2. Drawing of Tree-bark       _Various_          J. H. LE KEUX    114
+
+   3. Strength of old Pine       _The Author_       J. H. LE KEUX    116
+
+   4. Ramification according     _Claude_           J. H. LE KEUX    117
+      to Claude
+
+   5. Good and Bad               _Turner and        J. COUSEN        118
+      Tree-drawing               Constable_
+
+   6. Foreground Leafage         _The Author_       J. C. ARMYTAGE   121
+
+   7. Botany of the Thirteenth   _Missal-Painters_  HENRY SHAW       203
+      Century
+
+   8. The Growth of Leaves       _The Author_       R. P. CUFF       204
+
+   9. Botany of the Fourteenth   _Missal-Painters_  CUFF; H. SWAN    207
+      Century
+
+  10. Geology of the Middle      _Leonardo, etc._   R. P. CUFF       238
+      Ages
+
+  11. Latest Purism              _Raphael_          J. C. ARMYTAGE   313
+
+  12. The Shores of Wharfe       _J. W. M. Turner_  THE AUTHOR       314
+
+  13. First Mountain-Naturalism  _Masaccio_         J. H. LE KEUX    315
+
+  14. The Lombard Apennine       _The Author_       THOS. LUPTON     315
+
+  15. St. George of the Seaweed  _The Author_       THOS. LUPTON     315
+
+  16. Early Naturalism           _Titian_           J. C. ARMYTAGE   316
+
+  17. Advanced Naturalism        _Tintoret_         J. C. ARMYTAGE   316
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+As this preface is nearly all about myself, no one need take the trouble
+of reading it, unless he happens to be desirous of knowing-- what I, at
+least, am bound to state,--the circumstances which have caused the long
+delay of the work, as well as the alterations which will be noticed in
+its form.
+
+The first and second volumes were written to check, as far as I
+could, the attacks upon Turner which prevented the public from
+honoring his genius, at the time when his power was greatest. The
+check was partially given, but too late; Turner was seized by
+painful illness not long after the second volume appeared; his
+works, towards the close of the year 1845, showed a conclusive
+failure of power; and I saw that nothing remained for me to write,
+but his epitaph.
+
+The critics had done their proper and appointed work; they had
+embittered, more than those who did not know Turner intimately could
+have believed possible, the closing years of his life; and had
+blinded the world in general (as it appears ordained by Fate that
+the world always _shall_ be blinded) to the presence of a great
+spirit among them, till the hour of its departure. With them, and
+their successful work, I had nothing more to do; the account of gain
+and loss, of gifts and gratitude, between Turner and his countrymen,
+was for ever closed. _He_ could only be left to his quiet death at
+Chelsea,--the sun upon his face; _they_ to dispose a length of
+funeral through Ludgate, and bury, with threefold honor, his body in
+St. Paul's, his pictures at Charing Cross, and his purposes in
+Chancery. But with respect to the illustration and preservation of
+those of his works which remained unburied, I felt that much might
+yet be done, if I could at all succeed in proving that these works
+had some nobleness in them, and were worth preservation. I pursued
+my task, therefore, as I had at first proposed, with this only
+difference in method,--that instead of writing in continued haste,
+such as I had been forced into at first by the urgency of the
+occasion, I set myself to do the work as well as I could, and to
+collect materials for the complete examination of the canons of art
+received among us.
+
+I have now given ten years of my life to the single purpose of
+enabling myself to judge rightly of art, and spent them in labor as
+earnest and continuous as men usually undertake to gain position, or
+accumulate fortune. It is true, that the public still call me an
+"amateur;" nor have I ever been able to persuade them that it was
+possible to work steadily and hard with any other motive than that
+of gaining bread, or to give up a fixed number of hours every day to
+the furtherance of an object unconnected with personal interests. I
+have, however, given up so much of life to this object; earnestly
+desiring to ascertain, and be able to teach, the truth respecting
+art; and also knowing that this truth was, by time and labor,
+definitely ascertainable.
+
+It is an idea too frequently entertained, by persons who are not much
+interested in art, that there are no laws of right or wrong concerning
+it; and that the best art is that which pleases most widely. Hence the
+constant allegation of "dogmatism" against any one who states
+unhesitatingly either preference or principle, respecting pictures.
+There are, however, laws of truth and right in painting, just as fixed
+as those of harmony in music, or of affinity in chemistry. Those laws
+are perfectly ascertainable by labor, and ascertainable no other way.
+It is as ridiculous for any one to speak positively about painting who
+has not given a great part of his life to its study, as it would be for
+a person who had never studied chemistry to give a lecture on
+affinities of elements; but it is also as ridiculous for a person to
+speak hesitatingly about laws of painting who has conscientiously given
+his time to their ascertainment, as it would be for Mr. Faraday to
+announce in a dubious manner that iron had an affinity for oxygen, and
+to put the question to the vote of his audience whether it had or not.
+Of course there are many things, in all stages of knowledge, which
+cannot be dogmatically stated; and it will be found, by any candid
+reader, either of what I have before written, or of this book, that in
+many cases, I am _not_ dogmatic. The phrase, "I think so," or, "it
+seems so to me," will be met with continually; and I pray the reader to
+believe that I use such expression always in seriousness, never as
+matter of form.
+
+It may perhaps be thought that, considering the not very elaborate
+structure of the following volumes, they might have been finished
+sooner. But it will be found, on reflection, that the ranges of
+inquiry engaged in demanded, even for their slight investigation,
+time and pains which are quite unrepresented in the result. It often
+required a week or two's hard walking to determine some geological
+problem, now dismissed in an unnoticed sentence; and it constantly
+needed examination and thought, prolonged during many days in the
+picture gallery, to form opinions which the reader may suppose to be
+dictated by caprice, and will hear only to dispute.
+
+A more serious disadvantage, resulting from the necessary breadth of
+subject, was the chance of making mistakes in minor and accessory
+points. For the labor of a critic who sincerely desires to be just,
+extends into more fields than it is possible for any single hand to
+furrow straightly. He has to take _some_ note of many physical
+sciences; of optics, geometry, geology, botany, and anatomy; he must
+acquaint himself with the works of all great artists, and with the
+temper and history of the times in which they lived; he must be a fair
+metaphysician, and a careful observer of the phenomena of natural
+scenery. It is not possible to extend the range of work thus widely,
+without running the chance of occasionally making mistakes; and if I
+carefully guarded against that chance, I should be compelled both to
+shorten my powers of usefulness in many directions, and to lose much
+time over what work I undertook. All that I can secure, therefore, is
+rightness in main points and main tendencies; for it is perfectly
+possible to protect oneself against small errors, and yet to make
+great and final error in the sum of work: on the other hand, it is
+equally possible to fall into many small errors, and yet be right in
+tendency all the while, and entirely right in the end. In this
+respect, some men may be compared to careful travellers, who neither
+stumble at stones, nor slip in sloughs, but have, from the beginning
+of their journey to its close, chosen the wrong road; and others to
+those who, however slipping or stumbling at the wayside, have yet
+their eyes fixed on the true gate and goal (stumbling, perhaps, even
+the more because they have), and will not fail of reaching them. Such
+are assuredly the safer guides: he who follows them may avoid their
+slips, and be their companion in attainment.
+
+Although, therefore, it is not possible but that, in the discussion
+of so many subjects as are necessarily introduced in the following
+pages, here and there a chance should arise of minor mistake or
+misconception, the reader need not be disturbed by the detection of
+any such. He will find always that they do not affect the matter
+mainly in hand.
+
+I refer especially in these remarks to the chapters on Classical and
+Medi�val Landscape. It is certain, that in many respects, the views
+there stated must be inaccurate or incomplete; for how should it be
+otherwise when the subject is one whose proper discussion would
+require knowledge of the entire history of two great ages of the
+world? But I am well assured that the suggestions in those chapters
+are useful; and that even if, after farther study of the subject,
+the reader should find cause to differ with me in this or the other
+speciality, he will yet thank me for helping him to a certain length
+in the investigation, and confess, perhaps, that he could not at
+last have been right, if I had not first ventured to be wrong.
+
+And of one thing he may be certified, that any error I fall into will
+not be in an illogical deduction: I may mistake the meaning of a
+symbol, or the angle of a rock-cleavage, but not draw an inconsequent
+conclusion. I state this, because it has often been said that I am not
+logical, by persons who do not so much as know what logic means. Next
+to imagination, the power of perceiving logical relation is one of the
+rarest among men; certainly, of those with whom I have conversed, I
+have found always ten who had deep feeling, quick wit, or extended
+knowledge, for one who could set down a syllogism without a flaw; and
+for ten who could set down a syllogism, only one who could _entirely_
+understand that a square has four sides. Even as I am sending these
+sheets to press, a work is put into my hand, written to prove (I would,
+from the depth of my heart, it could prove) that there was no ground
+for what I said in the Stones of Venice respecting the logical
+probability of the continuity of evil. It seems learned, temperate,
+thoughtful, everything in feeling and aim that a book should be, and
+yet it begins with this sentence:
+
+    "The question cited in our preface, 'Why not infinite good out
+    of infinite evil?' must be taken to imply--for it else can
+    have no weight,--that in order to the production of infinite
+    good, the existence of infinite evil is indispensable."
+
+So, if I had said that there was no reason why honey should not be
+sucked out of a rock, and oil out of a flinty rock, the writer would
+have told me this sentence must be taken to imply--for it else could
+have no weight,--that in order to the production of honey, the
+existence of rocks is indispensable. No less intense and marvellous are
+the logical errors into which our best writers are continually falling,
+owing to the notion that laws of logic will help them better than
+common sense. Whereas any man who can reason at all, does it
+instinctively, and takes leaps over intermediate syllogisms by the
+score, yet never misses his footing at the end of the leap; but he who
+cannot instinctively argue, might as well, with the gout in both feet,
+try to follow a chamois hunter by the help of crutches, as to follow,
+by the help of syllogism, a person who has the right use of his reason.
+I should not, however, have thought it necessary to allude to this
+common charge against my writings, but that it happens to confirm some
+views I have long entertained, and which the reader will find glanced
+at in their proper place, respecting the necessity of a more
+_practically_ logical education for our youth. Of other various charges
+I need take no note, because they are always answered the one by the
+other. The complaint made against me to-day for being narrow and
+exclusive, is met to-morrow by indignation that I should admire schools
+whose characters cannot be reconciled; and the assertion of one critic,
+that I am always contradicting myself, is balanced by the vexation of
+another, at my ten years' obstinacies in error.
+
+I once intended the illustrations to these volumes to be more numerous
+and elaborate, but the art of photography now enables any reader to
+obtain as many memoranda of the facts of nature as he needs; and, in
+the course of my ten years' pause, I have formed plans for the
+representation of some of the works of Turner on their own scale; so
+that it would have been quite useless to spend time in reducing
+drawings to the size of this page, which were afterwards to be
+engraved of their own size.[1] I have therefore here only given
+illustrations enough to enable the reader, who has not access to the
+works of Turner, to understand the principles laid down in the text,
+and apply them to such art as may be within his reach. And I owe
+sincere thanks to the various engravers who have worked with me, for
+the zeal and care with which they have carried out the requirements in
+each case, and overcome difficulties of a nature often widely
+differing from those involved by their habitual practice. I would not
+make invidious distinction, where all have done well; but may perhaps
+be permitted to point, as examples of what I mean, to the 3rd and 6th
+Plates in this volume (the 6th being left unlettered in order not to
+injure the effect of its ground), in which Mr. Le Keux and Mr.
+Armytage have exactly facsimiled, in line engraving, drawings of mine
+made on a grey ground touched with white, and have given even the
+_loaded_ look of the body color. The power of thus imitating actual
+touches of color with pure lines will be, I believe, of great future
+importance in rendering Turner's work on a large scale. As for the
+merit or demerit of these or other drawings of my own, which I am
+obliged now for the sake of illustration often to engrave, I believe I
+could speak of it impartially, and should unreluctantly do so; but I
+leave, as most readers will think I ought, such judgment to them,
+merely begging them to remember that there are two general principles
+to be kept in mind in examining the drawings of any writer on art: the
+first, that they ought at least to show such ordinary skill in
+draughtsmanship, as to prove that the writer knows _what_ the good
+qualities of drawing _are_; the second, that they are never to be
+expected to equal, in either execution or conception, the work of
+accomplished artists,--for the simple reason, that in order to do
+_any_thing thoroughly well, the whole mind, and the whole available
+time, must be given to that single art. It is probable, for reasons
+which will be noted in the following pages, that the critical and
+executive faculties are in great part independent of each other; so
+that it is nearly as great an absurdity to require of any critic that
+he should equal in execution even the work which he condemns, as to
+require of the audience which hisses a piece of vocal music that they
+should instantly chant it in truer harmony themselves. But whether
+this be true or not (it is at least untrue to this extent, that a
+certain power of drawing is _indispensable_ to the critic of art), and
+supposing that the executive and critical powers always exist in some
+correspondent degree in the same person, still they cannot be
+cultivated to the same extent. The attention required for the
+development of a theory is necessarily withdrawn from the design of a
+drawing, and the time devoted to the realization of a form is lost to
+the solution of a problem. Choice _must_ at last be made between one
+and the other power, as the principal aim of life; and if the painter
+should find it necessary sometimes to explain one of his pictures in
+words, or the writer to illustrate his meaning with a drawing, the
+skill of the one need not be doubted because his logic is feeble, nor
+the sense of the other because his pencil is listless.
+
+As, however, it is sometimes alleged by the opponents of my
+principles, that I have never _done_ _any_thing, it is proper that the
+reader should know exactly the amount of work for which I am
+answerable in these illustrations. When an example is given from any
+of the works of Turner, it is either etched by myself from the
+original drawing, or engraved from a drawing of mine, translating
+Turner's work out of color into black and white, as for instance, the
+frontispiece to the fourth volume. When a plate is inscribed as
+"_after_" such and such a master, I have always myself made the
+drawing, in black and white, from the original picture; as, for
+instance, Plate 11, in this volume. If it has been made from a
+previously existing engraving, it is inscribed with the name of the
+first engraver at the left-hand lowest corner; as, for instance, Plate
+18, in Vol. IV. Outline etchings are either by my own hand on the
+steel, as Plate 12, here, and 20, 21, in Vol. IV.; or copies from my
+pen drawings, etched by Mr. Boys, with a fidelity for which I
+sincerely thank him; one, Plate 22, Vol. IV., is both drawn and etched
+by Mr. Boys from an old engraving. Most of the other illustrations are
+engraved from my own studies from nature. The colored Plate (7, in
+this volume) is from a drawing executed with great skill by my
+assistant, Mr. J. J. Laing, from MSS. in the British Museum; and the
+lithography of it has been kindly superintended by Mr. Henry Shaw,
+whose renderings of medi�val ornaments stand, as far as I know, quite
+unrivalled in modern art. The two woodcuts of medi�val design, Figs. 1
+and 3, are also from drawings by Mr. Laing, admirably cut by Miss
+Byfield. I use this word "admirably," not with reference to mere
+delicacy of execution, which can usually be had for money, but to the
+perfect fidelity of facsimile, which is in general _not_ to be had for
+money, and by which Miss Byfield has saved me all trouble with respect
+to the numerous woodcuts in the fourth volume; first, by her excellent
+renderings of various portions of Albert Durer's woodcuts; and,
+secondly, by reproducing, to their last dot or scratch, my own pen
+diagrams, drawn in general so roughly that few wood-engravers would
+have condescended to cut them with care, and yet always involving some
+points in which care was indispensable. One or two changes have been
+permitted in the arrangement of the book, which make the text in
+these volumes not altogether a symmetrical continuation of that in
+former ones. Thus, I thought it better to put the numbers of
+paragraphs always at the left-hand side of the page; and as the
+summaries, in small type, appeared to me for the most part cumbrous
+and useless, I have banished them, except where there were complicated
+divisions of subject which it seemed convenient to indicate at the
+margin. I am not sorry thus to carry out my own principle of the
+sacrifice of architectural or constructive symmetry to practical
+service. The plates are, in a somewhat unusual way, numbered
+consecutively through the two volumes, as I intend them to be also
+through the fifth. This plan saves much trouble in references.
+
+I have only to express, in conclusion, my regret that it has been
+impossible to finish the work within the limits first proposed.
+Having, of late, found my designs always requiring enlargement in
+process of execution, I will take care, in future, to set no limits
+whatsoever to any good intentions. In the present instance I trust
+the reader will pardon me, as the later efforts of our schools of
+art have necessarily introduced many new topics of discussion.
+
+And so I wish him heartily a happy New Year.
+
+Denmark Hill, Jan. 1856.
+
+  [1] I should be very grateful to the proprietors of pictures or
+      drawings by Turner, if they would send me lists of the works
+      in their possession; as I am desirous of forming a systematic
+      catalogue of all his works.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Lake, Land, and Cloud. (near Como.)]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           MODERN PAINTERS.
+
+                               PART IV.
+
+                           OF MANY THINGS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+OF THE RECEIVED OPINIONS TOUCHING THE "GRAND STYLE."
+
+
+� 1. In taking up the clue of an inquiry, now intermitted for nearly
+ten years, it may be well to do as a traveller would, who had to
+recommence an interrupted journey in a guideless country; and,
+ascending, as it were, some little hill beside our road, note how
+far we have already advanced, and what pleasantest ways we may
+choose for farther progress.
+
+I endeavored, in the beginning of the first volume, to divide the
+sources of pleasure open to us in Art into certain groups, which
+might conveniently be studied in succession. After some preliminary
+discussion, it was concluded (Part I. Chap. III. � 86), that these
+groups were, in the main, three; consisting, first, of the pleasures
+taken in perceiving simple resemblance to Nature (Ideas of Truth);
+secondly, of the pleasures taken in the beauty of the things chosen
+to be painted (Ideas of Beauty); and, lastly, of pleasures taken in
+the meanings and relations of these things (Ideas of Relation).
+
+The first volume, treating of the ideas of Truth, was chiefly occupied
+with an inquiry into the various success with which different artists
+had represented the facts of Nature,--an inquiry necessarily conducted
+very imperfectly, owing to the want of pictorial illustration.
+
+The second volume nearly opened the inquiry into the nature of ideas
+of Beauty and Relation, by analysing (as far as I was able to do so)
+the two faculties of the human mind which mainly seized such ideas;
+namely, the contemplative and imaginative faculties.
+
+It remains for us to examine the various success of artists, especially
+of the great landscape-painter whose works have been throughout our
+principal subject, in addressing these faculties of the human mind, and
+to consider who among them has conveyed the noblest ideas of beauty,
+and touched the deepest sources of thought.
+
+� 2. I do not intend, however, now to pursue the inquiry in a method
+so laboriously systematic; for the subject may, it seems to me, be
+more usefully treated by pursuing the different questions which rise
+out of it just as they occur to us, without too great scrupulousness
+in marking connections, or insisting on sequences. Much time is
+wasted by human beings, in general, on establishment of systems; and
+it often takes more labor to master the intricacies of an artificial
+connection, than to remember the separate facts which are so
+carefully connected. I suspect that system-makers, in general, are
+not of much more use, each in his own domain, than, in that of
+Pomona, the old women who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more
+convenient portableness of the same. To cultivate well, and choose
+well, your cherries, is of some importance; but if they can be had
+in their own wild way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, it is
+a better connection for them than any other; and, if they cannot,
+then, so that they be not bruised, it makes to a boy of a practical
+disposition, not much difference whether he gets them by handfuls,
+or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick. I purpose, therefore,
+henceforward to trouble myself little with sticks or twine, but to
+arrange my chapters with a view to convenient reference, rather than
+to any careful division of subjects, and to follow out, in any
+by-ways that may open, on right hand or left, whatever question it
+seems useful at any moment to settle.
+
+� 3. And, in the outset, I find myself met by one which I ought to
+have touched upon before--one of especial interest in the present
+state of the Arts. I have said that the art is greatest which
+includes the greatest ideas; but I have not endeavored to define the
+nature of this greatness in the ideas themselves. We speak of great
+truths, of great beauties, great thoughts. What is it which makes
+one truth greater than another, one thought greater than another?
+This question is, I repeat, of peculiar importance at the present
+time; for, during a period now of some hundred and fifty years, all
+writers on Art who have pretended to eminence, have insisted much on
+a supposed distinction between what they call the Great and the Low
+Schools; using the terms "High Art," "Great or Ideal Style," and
+other such, as descriptive of a certain noble manner of painting,
+which it was desirable that all students of Art should be early led
+to reverence and adopt; and characterising as "vulgar," or "low," or
+"realist," another manner of painting and conceiving, which it was
+equally necessary that all students should be taught to avoid.
+
+But lately this established teaching, never very intelligible, has
+been gravely called in question. The advocates and self-supposed
+practisers of "High Art" are beginning to be looked upon with doubt,
+and their peculiar phraseology to be treated with even a certain
+degree of ridicule. And other forms of Art are partly developed
+among us, which do not pretend to be high, but rather to be strong,
+healthy, and humble. This matter of "highness" in Art, therefore
+deserves our most careful consideration. Has it been, or is it, a
+true highness, a true princeliness, or only a show of it, consisting
+in courtly manners and robes of state? Is it rocky height or cloudy
+height, adamant or vapor, on which the sun of praise so long has
+risen and set? It will be well at once to consider this.
+
+� 4. And first, let us get, as quickly as may be, at the exact
+meaning with which the advocates of "High Art" use that somewhat
+obscure and figurative term.
+
+I do not know that the principles in question are anywhere more
+distinctly expressed than in two papers in the Idler, written by Sir
+Joshua Reynolds, of course under the immediate sanction of Johnson;
+and which may thus be considered as the utterance of the views then
+held upon the subject by the artists of chief skill, and critics of
+most sense, arranged in a form so brief and clear, as to admit of
+their being brought before the public for a morning's entertainment.
+I cannot, therefore, it seems to me, do better than quote these two
+letters, or at least the important parts of them, examining the exact
+meaning of each passage as it occurs. There are, in all, in the Idler
+three letters on painting, Nos. 76, 79, and 82; of these, the first is
+directed only against the impertinences of pretended connoisseurs, and
+is as notable for its faithfulness, as for its wit, in the description
+of the several modes of criticism in an artificial and ignorant state
+of society; it is only, therefore, in the two last papers that we find
+the expression of the doctrines which it is our business to examine.
+
+No. 79 (Saturday, Oct. 20th, 1759) begins, after a short preamble,
+with the following passage:--
+
+    "Amongst the painters, and the writers on painting, there is one
+    maxim universally admitted and continually inculcated. Imitate
+    nature is the invariable rule; but I know none who have
+    explained in what manner this rule is to be understood; the
+    sequence of which is, that every one takes it in the most
+    obvious sense, that objects are represented naturally when they
+    have such relief that they seem real. It may appear strange,
+    perhaps, to hear this sense of the rule disputed; but it must be
+    considered, that, if the excellency of a painter consisted only
+    in this kind of imitation, Painting must lose its rank, and be
+    no longer considered as a liberal art, and sister to Poetry,
+    this imitation being nearly mechanical, in which the slowest
+    intellect is always sure to succeed best; for the painter of
+    genius cannot stoop to drudgery, in which the understanding has
+    no part; and what pretence has the art to claim kindred with
+    poetry but by its power over the imagination? To this power the
+    painter of genius directs him; in this sense he studies nature,
+    and often arrives at his end, even by being unnatural in the
+    confined sense of the word."
+
+    "The grand style of painting requires this minute attention to be
+    carefully avoided, and must be kept as separate from it as the
+    style of poetry from that of history. (Poetical ornaments destroy
+    that air of truth and plainness which ought to characterise
+    history; but the very being of poetry consists in departing from
+    this plain narrative, and adopting every ornament that will warm
+    the imagination.[2]) To desire to see the excellencies of each
+    style united--to mingle the Dutch with the Italian school, is to
+    join contrarieties, which cannot subsist together, and which
+    destroy the efficacy of each other."
+
+� 5. We find, first, from this interesting passage, that the writer
+considers the Dutch and Italian masters as severally representative
+of the low and high schools; next, that he considers the Dutch
+painters as excelling in a mechanical imitation, "in which the
+slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best;" and, thirdly,
+that he considers the Italian painters as excelling in a style which
+corresponds to that of imaginative poetry in literature, and which
+has an exclusive right to be called the grand style.
+
+I wish that it were in my power entirely to concur with the writer,
+and to enforce this opinion thus distinctly stated. I have never
+been a zealous partisan of the Dutch School, and should rejoice in
+claiming Reynolds's authority for the assertion, that their manner
+was one "in which the slowest intellect was always sure to succeed
+best." But before his authority can be so claimed, we must observe
+exactly the meaning of the assertion itself, and separate it from
+the company of some others not perhaps so admissible. First, I say,
+we must observe Reynolds's exact meaning, for (though the assertion
+may at first appear singular) a man who uses accurate language is
+always more liable to misinterpretation than one who is careless in
+his expressions. We may assume that the latter means very nearly
+what we at first suppose him to mean, for words which have been
+uttered without thought may be received without examination. But
+when a writer or speaker may be fairly supposed to have considered
+his expressions carefully, and, after having revolved a number of
+terms in his mind, to have chosen the one which _exactly_ means the
+thing he intends to say, we may be assured that what costs him time
+to select, will require from us time to understand, and that we
+shall do him wrong, unless we pause to reflect how the word which he
+has actually employed differs from other words which it seems he
+_might_ have employed. It thus constantly happens that persons
+themselves unaccustomed to think clearly, or speak correctly,
+misunderstand a logical and careful writer, and are actually in more
+danger of being misled by language which is measured and precise,
+than by that which is loose and inaccurate.
+
+� 6. Now, in the instance before us, a person not accustomed to good
+writing might very rashly conclude, that when Reynolds spoke of the
+Dutch School as one "in which the slowest intellect was sure to succeed
+best," he meant to say that every successful Dutch painter was a fool.
+We have no right to take his assertion in that sense. He says, the
+_slowest_ intellect. We have no right to assume that he meant the
+_weakest_. For it is true, that in order to succeed in the Dutch style,
+a man has need of qualities of mind eminently deliberate and sustained.
+He must be possessed of patience rather than of power; and must feel no
+weariness in contemplating the expression of a single thought for
+several months together. As opposed to the changeful energies of the
+imagination, these mental characters may be properly spoken of as under
+the general term--slowness of intellect. But it by no means follows
+that they are necessarily those of weak or foolish men.
+
+We observe however, farther, that the imitation which Reynolds
+supposes to be characteristic of the Dutch School is that which
+gives to objects such relief that they seem real, and that he then
+speaks of this art of realistic imitation as corresponding to
+_history_ in literature.
+
+� 7. Reynolds, therefore, seems to class these dull works of the
+Dutch School under a general head, to which they are not commonly
+referred--that of _Historical_ painting; while he speaks of the
+works of the Italian School not as historical, but as _poetical_
+painting. His next sentence will farther manifest his meaning.
+
+    "The Italian attends only to the invariable, the great and
+    general ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal
+    nature; the Dutch, on the contrary, to literal truth and
+    minute exactness in the detail, as I may say, of nature
+    modified by accident. The attention to these petty
+    peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness so much
+    admired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a
+    beauty, is certainly of a lower order, which ought to give
+    place to a beauty of a superior kind, since one cannot be
+    obtained but by departing from the other.
+
+    "If my opinion was asked concerning the works of Michael
+    Angelo, whether they would receive any advantage from
+    possessing this mechanical merit, I should not scruple to say,
+    they would not only receive no advantage, but would lose, in a
+    great measure, the effect which they now have on every mind
+    susceptible of great and noble ideas. His works may be said to
+    be all genius and soul; and why should they be loaded with
+    heavy matter, which can only counteract his purpose by
+    retarding the progress of the imagination?"
+
+Examining carefully this and the preceding passage, we find the
+author's unmistakable meaning to be, that Dutch painting is _history_;
+attending to literal truth and "minute exactness in the details of
+nature modified by accident." That Italian painting is _poetry_,
+attending only to the invariable; and that works which attend only to
+the invariable are full of genius and soul; but that literal truth and
+exact detail are "heavy matter which retards the progress of the
+imagination."
+
+� 8. This being then indisputably what Reynolds means to tell us,
+let us think a little whether he is in all respects right. And
+first, as he compares his two kinds of painting to history and
+poetry, let us see how poetry and history themselves differ, in
+their use of _variable_ and _invariable_ details. I am writing at a
+window which commands a view of the head of the Lake of Geneva; and
+as I look up from my paper, to consider this point, I see, beyond
+it, a blue breadth of softly moving water, and the outline of the
+mountains above Chillon, bathed in morning mist. The first verses
+which naturally come into my mind are--
+
+      "A thousand feet in depth below
+      The massy waters meet and flow;
+      So far the fathom line was sent
+      From Chillon's snow-white battlement."
+
+Let us see in what manner this poetical statement is distinguished
+from a historical one.
+
+It is distinguished from a truly historical statement, first, in being
+simply false. The water under the castle of Chillon is not a thousand
+feet deep, nor anything like it.[3] Herein, certainly, these lines
+fulfil Reynolds's first requirement in poetry, "that it should be
+inattentive to literal truth and minute exactness in detail." In
+order, however, to make our comparison more closely in other points,
+let us assume that what is stated is indeed a fact, and that it was to
+be recorded, first historically, and then poetically.
+
+Historically stating it, then, we should say: "The lake was sounded
+from the walls of the castle of Chillon, and found to be a thousand
+feet deep."
+
+Now, if Reynolds be right in his idea of the difference between
+history and poetry, we shall find that Byron leaves out of this
+statement certain _un_necessary details, and retains only the
+invariable,--that is to say, the points which the Lake of Geneva and
+castle of Chillon have in common with all other lakes and castles.
+
+Let us hear, therefore.
+
+      "A thousand feet in depth below."
+
+"Below?" Here is, at all events, a word added (instead of anything
+being taken away); invariable, certainly in the case of lakes, but
+not absolutely necessary.
+
+      "The massy waters meet and flow."
+
+"Massy!" why massy? Because deep water is heavy. The word is a good
+word, but it is assuredly an added detail, and expresses a character,
+not which the Lake of Geneva has in common with all other lakes, but
+which it has in distinction from those which are narrow or shallow.
+
+� 9. "Meet and flow." Why meet and flow? Partly to make up a rhyme;
+partly to tell us that the waters are forceful as well as massy, and
+changeful as well as deep. Observe, a farther addition of details,
+and of details more or less peculiar to the spot, or, according to
+Reynolds's definition, of "heavy matter, retarding the progress of
+the imagination."
+
+      "So far the fathom line was sent."
+
+Why fathom line? All lines for sounding are not fathom lines. If the
+lake was ever sounded from Chillon, it was probably sounded in
+metres, not fathoms. This is an addition of another particular
+detail, in which the only compliance with Reynolds's requirement is,
+that there is some chance of its being an inaccurate one.
+
+      "From Chillon's snow-white battlement."
+
+Why snow-white? Because castle battlements are not usually
+snow-white. This is another added detail, and a detail quite
+peculiar to Chillon, and therefore exactly the most striking word in
+the whole passage.
+
+"Battlement!" why battlement? Because all walls have not
+battlements, and the addition of the term marks the castle to be not
+merely a prison, but a fortress.
+
+This is a curious result. Instead of finding, as we expected, the
+poetry distinguished from the history by the omission of details, we
+find it consist entirely in the _addition_ of details; and instead
+of being characterized by regard only of the invariable, we find its
+whole power to consist in the clear expression of what is singular
+and particular!
+
+� 10. The reader may pursue the investigation for himself in other
+instances. He will find in every case that a poetical is distinguished
+from a merely historical statement, not by being more vague, but more
+specific, and it might, therefore, at first appear that our author's
+comparison should be simply reversed, and that the Dutch School should
+be called poetical, and the Italian historical. But the term poetical
+does not appear very applicable to the generality of Dutch painting;
+and a little reflection will show us, that if the Italians represent
+only the invariable, they cannot be properly compared even to
+historians. For that which is incapable of change has no history, and
+records which state only the invariable need not be written, and could
+not be read.
+
+� 11. It is evident, therefore, that our author has entangled himself
+in some grave fallacy, by introducing this idea of invariableness as
+forming a distinction between poetical and historical art. What the
+fallacy is, we shall discover as we proceed; but as an invading army
+should not leave an untaken fortress in its rear, we must not go on
+with our inquiry into the views of Reynolds until we have settled
+satisfactorily the question already suggested to us, in what the
+essence of poetical treatment really consists. For though, as we have
+seen, it certainly involves the addition of specific details, it
+cannot be simply that addition which turns the history into poetry.
+For it is perfectly possible to add any number of details to a
+historical statement, and to make it more prosaic with every added
+word. As, for instance, "The lake was sounded out of a flat-bottomed
+boat, near the crab tree at the corner of the kitchen-garden, and was
+found to be a thousand feet nine inches deep, with a muddy bottom." It
+thus appears that it is not the multiplication of details which
+constitutes poetry; nor their subtraction which constitutes history;
+but that there must be something either in the nature of the details
+themselves, or the method of using them, which invests them with
+poetical power or historical propriety.
+
+� 12. It seems to me, and may seem to the reader, strange that we
+should need to ask the question, "What is poetry?" Here is a word we
+have been using all our lives, and, I suppose, with a very distinct
+idea attached to it; and when I am now called upon to give a
+definition of this idea, I find myself at a pause. What is more
+singular, I do not at present recollect hearing the question often
+asked, though surely it is a very natural one; and I never recollect
+hearing it answered, or even attempted to be answered. In general,
+people shelter themselves under metaphors, and while we hear poetry
+described as an utterance of the soul, an effusion of Divinity, or
+voice of nature, or in other terms equally elevated and obscure, we
+never attain anything like a definite explanation of the character
+which actually distinguishes it from prose.
+
+� 13. I come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion, that poetry
+is "the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble
+emotions." I mean, by the noble emotions, those four principal sacred
+passions--Love, Veneration, Admiration, and Joy (this latter
+especially, if unselfish); and their opposites--Hatred, Indignation (or
+Scorn), Horror, and Grief,--this last, when unselfish, becoming
+Compassion. These passions in their various combinations constitute
+what is called "poetical feeling," when they are felt on noble grounds,
+that is, on great and true grounds. Indignation, for instance, is a
+poetical feeling, if excited by serious injury; but it is not a
+poetical feeling if entertained on being cheated out of a small sum of
+money. It is very possible the manner of the cheat may have been such
+as to justify considerable indignation; but the feeling is nevertheless
+not poetical unless the grounds of it be large as well as just. In like
+manner, energetic admiration may be excited in certain minds by a
+display of fireworks, or a street of handsome shops; but the feeling is
+not poetical, because the grounds of it are false, and therefore
+ignoble. There is in reality nothing to deserve admiration either in
+the firing of packets of gunpowder, or in the display of the stocks of
+ware-houses. But admiration excited by the budding of a flower is a
+poetical feeling, because it is impossible that this manifestation of
+spiritual power and vital beauty can ever be enough admired.
+
+� 14. Farther, it is necessary to the existence of poetry that the
+grounds of these feelings should be _furnished by the imagination_.
+Poetical feeling, that is to say, mere noble emotion, is not poetry.
+It is happily inherent in all human nature deserving the name, and
+is found often to be purest in the least sophisticated. But the
+power of assembling, by the _help of the imagination_, such images
+as will excite these feelings, is the power of the poet or literally
+of the "Maker."[4]
+
+Now this power of exciting the emotions depends of course on the
+richness of the imagination, and on its choice of those images which,
+in combination, will be most effective, or, for the particular work to
+be done, most fit. And it is altogether impossible for a writer not
+endowed with invention to conceive what tools a true poet will make
+use of, or in what way he will apply them, or what unexpected results
+he will bring out by them; so that it is vain to say that the details
+of poetry ought to possess, or ever do possess, any _definite_
+character. Generally speaking, poetry runs into finer and more
+delicate details than prose; but the details are not poetical because
+they are more delicate, but because they are employed so as to bring
+out an affecting result. For instance, no one but a true poet would
+have thought of exciting our pity for a bereaved father by describing
+his way of locking the door of his house:
+
+      "Perhaps to himself, at that moment he said,
+      The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead;
+      But of this in my ears not a word did he speak,
+      And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek."
+
+In like manner, in painting, it is altogether impossible to say
+beforehand what details a great painter may make poetical by his use
+of them to excite noble emotions: and we shall, therefore, find
+presently that a painting is to be classed in the great or inferior
+schools, not according to the kind of details which it represents,
+but according to the uses for which it employs them.
+
+� 15. It is only farther to be noticed, that infinite confusion has
+been introduced into this subject by the careless and illogical
+custom of opposing painting to poetry, instead of regarding poetry
+as consisting in a noble use, whether of colors or words. Painting
+is properly to be opposed to _speaking_ or _writing_, but not to
+_poetry_. Both painting and speaking are methods of expression.
+Poetry is the employment of either for the noblest purposes.
+
+� 16. This question being thus far determined, we may proceed with
+our paper in the Idler.
+
+    "It is very difficult to determine the exact degree of
+    enthusiasm that the arts of painting and poetry may admit.
+    There may, perhaps, be too great indulgence as well as too
+    great a restraint of imagination; if the one produces
+    incoherent monsters, the other produces what is full as bad,
+    lifeless insipidity. An intimate knowledge of the passions,
+    and good sense, but not common sense, must at last determine
+    its limits. It has been thought, and I believe with reason,
+    that Michael Angelo sometimes transgressed those limits; and,
+    I think, I have seen figures of him of which it was very
+    difficult to determine whether they were in the highest degree
+    sublime or extremely ridiculous. Such faults may be said to be
+    the ebullitions of genius; but at least he had this merit,
+    that he never was insipid, and whatever passion his works may
+    excite, they will always escape contempt.
+
+    "What I have had under consideration is the sublimest style,
+    particularly that of Michael Angelo, the Homer of painting.
+    Other kinds may admit of this naturalness, which of the lowest
+    kind is the chief merit; but in painting, as in poetry, the
+    highest style has the least of common nature."
+
+From this passage we gather three important indications of the
+supposed nature of the Great Style. That it is the work of men in a
+state of enthusiasm. That it is like the writing of Homer; and that
+it has as little as possible of "common nature" in it.
+
+� 17. First, it is produced by men in a state of enthusiasm. That
+is, by men who feel _strongly_ and _nobly_; for we do not call a
+strong feeling of envy, jealousy, or ambition, enthusiasm. That is,
+therefore, by men who feel poetically. This much we may admit, I
+think, with perfect safety. Great art is produced by men who feel
+acutely and nobly; and it is in some sort an expression of this
+personal feeling. We can easily conceive that there may be a
+sufficiently marked distinction between such art, and that which is
+produced by men who do not feel at all, but who reproduce, though
+ever so accurately, yet coldly, like human mirrors, the scenes which
+pass before their eyes.
+
+� 18. Secondly, Great Art is like the writing of Homer, and this
+chiefly because it has little of "common nature" in it. We are not
+clearly informed what is meant by common nature in this passage. Homer
+seems to describe a great deal of what is common;--cookery, for
+instance, very carefully in all its processes. I suppose the passage
+in the Iliad which, on the whole, has excited most admiration, is that
+which describes a wife's sorrow at parting from her husband, and a
+child's fright at its father's helmet; and I hope, at least, the
+former feeling may be considered "common nature." But the true
+greatness of Homer's style is, doubtless, held by our author to
+consist in his imaginations of things not only uncommon but impossible
+(such as spirits in brazen armor, or monsters with heads of men and
+bodies of beasts), and in his occasional delineations of the human
+character and form in their utmost, or heroic, strength and beauty. We
+gather then on the whole, that a painter in the Great Style must be
+enthusiastic, or full of emotion, and must paint the human form in its
+utmost strength and beauty, and perhaps certain impossible forms
+besides, liable by persons not in an equally enthusiastic state of
+mind to be looked upon as in some degree absurd. This I presume to be
+Reynolds's meaning, and to be all that he intends us to gather from
+his comparison of the Great Style with the writings of Homer. But if
+that comparison be a just one in all respects, surely two other
+corollaries ought to be drawn from it, namely,--first, that these
+Heroic or Impossible images are to be mingled with others very
+unheroic and very possible; and, secondly, that in the representation
+of the Heroic or Impossible forms, the greatest care must be taken in
+_finishing the details_, so that a painter must not be satisfied with
+painting well the countenance and the body of his hero, but ought to
+spend the greatest part of his time (as Homer the greatest number of
+verses) in elaborating the sculptured pattern on his shield.
+
+� 19. Let us, however, proceed with our paper.
+
+    "One may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm to the
+    modern painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the
+    present age. The Italians seem to have been continually
+    declining in this respect, from the time of Michael Angelo to
+    that of Carlo Maratti, and from thence to the very bathos of
+    insipidity to which they are now sunk, so that there is no
+    need of remarking, that where I mentioned the Italian painters
+    in opposition to the Dutch, I mean not the moderns, but the
+    heads of the old Roman and Bolognian schools; nor did I mean
+    to include, in my idea of an Italian painter, the Venetian
+    school, _which may be said to be the Dutch part of the Italian
+    genius_. I have only to add a word of advice to the painters,
+    that, however excellent they may be in painting naturally,
+    they would not flatter themselves very much upon it; and to
+    the connoisseurs, that when they see a cat or a fiddle painted
+    so finely, that, as the phrase is, it looks as if you could
+    take it up, they would not for that reason immediately compare
+    the painter to Raffaelle and Michael Angelo."
+
+In this passage there are four points chiefly to be remarked. The
+first, that in the year 1759, the Italian painters were, in our
+author's opinion, sunk in the very bathos of insipidity. The second,
+that the Venetian painters, i.e. Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese,
+are, in our author's opinion, to be classed with the Dutch; that is
+to say, are painters in a style "in which the slowest intellect is
+always sure to succeed best." Thirdly, that painting naturally is
+not a difficult thing, nor one on which a painter should pride
+himself. And, finally, that connoisseurs, seeing a cat or a fiddle
+successfully painted, ought not therefore immediately to compare the
+painter to Raphael or Michael Angelo.
+
+Yet Raphael painted fiddles very carefully in the foreground of his
+St. Cecilia,--so carefully, that they quite look as if they might be
+taken up. So carefully, that I never yet looked at the picture
+without wishing that somebody _would_ take them up, and out of the
+way. And I am under a very strong persuasion that Raphael did not
+think painting "naturally" an easy thing. It will be well to examine
+into this point a little; and for the present, with the reader's
+permission, we will pass over the first two statements in this
+passage (touching the character of Italian art in 1759, and of
+Venetian art in general), and immediately examine some of the
+evidence existing as to the real dignity of "natural" painting--that
+is to say, of painting carried to the point at which it reaches a
+deceptive appearance of reality.
+
+  [2] I have put this sentence in a parenthesis, because it is
+      inconsistent with the rest of the statement, and with the
+      general teaching of the paper; since that which "attends only
+      to the invariable" cannot certainly adopt "every ornament that
+      will warm the imagination."
+
+  [3] "MM. Mallet et Pictet, se trouvant sur le lac aupr�s du
+      ch�teau de Chillon, le 6 Ao�t, 1774, plong�rent � la
+      profondeur de 312 pieds de un thermom�tre," &c.--SAUSSURE,
+      _Voyages dans les Alpes_, chap. ii. � 33. It appears from the
+      next paragraph, that the thermometer was "au fond du lac."
+
+  [4] Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the "Affliction of
+      Margaret:"
+
+          "I look for ghosts, but none will force
+            Their way to me. 'Tis falsely said
+          That ever there was intercourse
+            Between the living and the dead;
+          For, surely then, I should have sight
+          Of him I wait for, day and night,
+          With love and longing infinite."
+
+      This we call Poetry, because it is invented _or made_ by the
+      writer, entering into the mind of a supposed person. Next,
+      take an instance of the actual feeling truly experienced and
+      simply expressed by a real person.
+
+      "Nothing surprised me more than a woman of Argenti�re, whose
+      cottage I went into to ask for milk, as I came down from the
+      glacier of Argenti�re, in the month of March, 1764. An epidemic
+      dysentery had prevailed in the village, and, a few months
+      before, had taken away from her, her father, her husband, and
+      her brothers, so that she was left alone, with three children in
+      the cradle. Her face had something noble in it, and its
+      expression bore the seal of a calm and profound sorrow. After
+      having given me milk, she asked me whence I came, and what I
+      came there to do, so early in the year. When she knew that I was
+      of Geneva, she said to me, 'she could not believe that all
+      Protestants were lost souls; that there were many honest people
+      among us, and that God was too good and too great to condemn all
+      without distinction.' Then, after a moment of reflection, she
+      added, in shaking her head, 'But, that which is very strange, is
+      that of so many who have gone away, none have ever returned. I,'
+      she added, with an expression of grief, 'who have so mourned my
+      husband and my brothers, who have never ceased to think of them,
+      who every night conjure them with beseechings to tell me where
+      they are, and in what state they are! Ah, surely, if they lived
+      anywhere, they would not leave me thus! But, perhaps,' she
+      added, 'I am not worthy of this kindness, perhaps the pure and
+      innocent spirits of these children,' and she looked at the
+      cradle, 'may have their presence, and the joy which is denied to
+      _me_.'"--SAUSSURE, _Voyages dans les Alpes_, chap. xxiv.
+
+      This we do not call Poetry, merely because it is not invented,
+      but the true utterance of a real person.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OF REALIZATION.
+
+
+� 1. In the outset of this inquiry, the reader must thoroughly
+understand that we are not now considering _what_ is to be painted,
+but _how far_ it is to be painted. Not whether Raphael does right in
+representing angels playing upon violins, or whether Veronese does
+right in allowing cats and monkeys to join the company of kings: but
+whether, supposing the subjects rightly chosen, they ought on the
+canvas to look like real angels with real violins, and substantial
+cats looking at veritable kings; or only like imaginary angels with
+soundless violins, ideal cats, and unsubstantial kings.
+
+Now, from the first moment when painting began to be a subject of
+literary inquiry and general criticism, I cannot remember any
+writer, not professedly artistical, who has not, more or less, in
+one part of his book or another, countenanced the idea that the
+great end of art is to produce a deceptive resemblance of reality.
+It may be, indeed, that we shall find the writers, through many
+pages, explaining principles of ideal beauty, and professing great
+delight in the evidences of imagination. But whenever a picture is
+to be definitely described,--whenever the writer desires to convey
+to others some impression of an extraordinary excellence, all praise
+is wound up with some such statements as these: "It was so
+exquisitely painted that you expected the figures to move and speak;
+you approached the flowers to enjoy their smell, and stretched your
+hand towards the fruit which had fallen from the branches. You
+shrunk back lest the sword of the warrior should indeed descend, and
+turned away your head that you might not witness the agonies of the
+expiring martyr!"
+
+� 2. In a large number of instances, language such as this will be
+found to be merely a clumsy effort to convey to others a sense of the
+admiration, of which the writer does not understand the real cause in
+himself. A person is attracted to a picture by the beauty of its color,
+interested by the liveliness of its story, and touched by certain
+countenances or details which remind him of friends whom he loved, for
+scenes in which he delighted. He naturally supposes that what gives him
+so much pleasure must be a notable example of the painter's skill; but
+he is ashamed to confess, or perhaps does not know, that he is so much
+a child as to be fond of bright colors and amusing incidents; and he is
+quite unconscious of the associations which have so secret and
+inevitable a power over his heart. He casts about for the cause of his
+delight, and can discover no other than that he thought the picture
+like reality.
+
+� 3. In another, perhaps a still larger number of cases, such
+language will be found to be that of simple ignorance--the ignorance
+of persons whose position in life compels them to speak of art,
+without having any real enjoyment of it. It is inexcusably required
+from people of the world, that they should see merit in Claudes and
+Titians; and the only merit which many persons can either see or
+conceive in them is, that they must be "like nature."
+
+� 4. In other cases, the deceptive power of the art is really felt
+to be a source of interest and amusement. This is the case with a
+large number of the collectors of Dutch pictures. They enjoy seeing
+what is flat made to look round, exactly as a child enjoys a trick
+of legerdemain; they rejoice in flies which the spectator vainly
+attempts to brush away, and in dew which he endeavors to dry by
+putting the picture in the sun. They take it for the greatest
+compliment to their treasures that they should be mistaken for
+windows; and think the parting of Abraham and Hagar adequately
+represented, if Hagar seems to be really crying.
+
+It is against critics and connoisseurs of this latter stamp (of
+whom, in the year 1759, the juries of art were for the most part
+composed) that the essay of Reynolds, which we have been examining,
+was justly directed. But Reynolds had not sufficiently considered
+that neither the men of this class, nor of the two other classes
+above described, constitute the entire body of those who praise Art
+for its realization; and that the holding of this apparently
+shallow and vulgar opinion cannot, in all cases, be attributed to
+the want either of penetration, sincerity, or sense. The collectors
+of Gerard Dows and Hobbimas may be passed by with a smile; and the
+affectations of Walpole and simplicities of Vasari dismissed with
+contempt or with compassion. But very different men from these have
+held precisely the same language; and, one amongst the rest, whose
+authority is absolutely, and in all points, overwhelming.
+
+� 5. There was probably never a period in which the influence of art
+over the minds of men seemed to depend less on its merely _imitative_
+power, than the close of the thirteenth century. No painting or
+sculpture at that time reached more than a rude resemblance of reality.
+Its despised perspective, imperfect chiaroscuro, and unrestrained
+flights of fantastic imagination, separated the artist's work from
+nature by an interval which there was no attempt to disguise, and
+little to diminish. And yet, at this very period, the greatest poet of
+that, or perhaps of any other age, and the attached friend of its
+greatest painter, who must over and over again have held full and free
+conversation with him respecting the objects of his art, speaks in the
+following terms of painting, supposed to be carried to its highest
+perfection:--
+
+      "Qual di pennel fu maestro, e di stile
+        Che ritraesse l' ombre, e i tratti, ch' ivi
+        Mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile.
+      Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi:
+        Non vide me' di me, chi vide il vero,
+        Quant' io calcai, fin che chinato givi."
+                                 DANTE, _Purgatorio_, canto xii. 1. 64
+
+      'What master of the pencil, or the style,
+      Had traced the shades and lines that might have made
+      The subtlest workman wonder? _Dead, the dead,
+      The living seemed alive; with clearer view
+      His eye beheld not, who beheld the truth._
+      Than mine what I did tread on, while I went,
+      Low bending.'                            CAREY.
+
+Dante has here clearly no other idea of the highest art than that it
+should bring back, as in a mirror or vision, the aspect of things
+passed or absent. The scenes of which he speaks are, on the pavement,
+for ever represented by angelic power, so that the souls which traverse
+this circle of the rock may see them, as if the years of the world had
+been rolled back, and they again stood beside the actors in the moment
+of action. Nor do I think that Dante's authority is absolutely
+necessary to compel us to admit that such art as this _might_ indeed be
+the highest possible. Whatever delight we may have been in the habit of
+taking in pictures, if it were but truly offered to us, to remove at
+our will the canvas from the frame, and in lieu of it to behold, fixed
+for ever, the image of some of those mighty scenes which it has been
+our way to make mere themes for the artist's fancy; if, for instance,
+we could again behold the Magdalene receiving her pardon at Christ's
+feet, or the disciples sitting with Him at the table of Emmaus; and
+this not feebly nor fancifully, but as if some silver mirror, that had
+leaned against the wall of the chamber, had been miraculously commanded
+to retain for ever the colors that had flashed upon it for an
+instant,--would we not part with our picture--Titian's or Veronese's
+though it might be?
+
+� 6. Yes, the reader answers, in the instance of such scenes as
+these, but not if the scene represented were uninteresting. Not,
+indeed, if it were utterly vulgar or painful; but we are not yet
+certain that the art which represents what is vulgar or painful is
+itself of much value; and with respect to the art whose aim is
+beauty, even of an inferior order, it seems that Dante's idea of its
+perfection has still much evidence in its favor. For among persons
+of native good sense, and courage enough to speak their minds, we
+shall often find a considerable degree of doubt as to the use of
+art, in consequence of their habitual comparison of it with reality.
+"What is the use, to me, of the painted landscape?" they will ask:
+"I see more beautiful and perfect landscapes every day of my life in
+my forenoon walk." "What is the use, to me, of the painted effigy of
+hero or beauty? I can see a stamp of higher heroism, and light of
+purer beauty, on the faces around me, utterly inexpressible by the
+highest human skill." Now, it is evident that to persons of this
+temper the only valuable pictures would indeed be _mirrors_,
+reflecting permanently the images of the things in which they took
+delight, and of the faces that they loved. "Nay," but the reader
+interrupts, (if he is of the Idealist school) "I deny that more
+beautiful things are to be seen in nature than in art; on the
+contrary, everything in nature is faulty, and art represents nature
+as perfected." Be it so. Must, therefore, this perfected nature be
+imperfectly represented? Is it absolutely required of the painter,
+who has conceived perfection, that he should so paint it as to look
+only like a picture? Or is not Dante's view of the matter right even
+here, and would it not be well that the perfect conception of Pallas
+should be so given as to look like Pallas herself, rather than
+merely like the picture of Pallas?
+
+� 7. It is not easy for us to answer this question rightly, owing to
+the difficulty of imagining any art which should reach the perfection
+supposed. Our actual powers of imitation are so feeble that wherever
+deception is attempted, a subject of a comparatively low or confined
+order must be chosen. I do not enter at present into the inquiry how
+far the powers of imitation extend; but assuredly up to the present
+period they have been so limited that it is hardly possible for us to
+conceive a deceptive art embracing a high range of subject. But let
+the reader make the effort, and consider seriously what he would give
+at any moment to have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those
+which so often rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in
+its fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their
+changing; to bid the fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and the
+ripples be everlasting upon the lake; and then to bear away with him
+no darkened or feeble sun-stain (though even that is beautiful), but a
+counterfeit which should seem no counterfeit--the true and perfect
+image of life indeed. Or rather (for the full majesty of such a power
+is not thus sufficiently expressed) let him consider that it would be
+in effect nothing else than a capacity of transporting himself at any
+moment into any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by a
+disembodied spirit': and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not
+only the present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into
+the very bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to
+behold them in act as they lived, but--with greater privilege than
+ever was granted to the companions of those transient acts of
+life,--to see them fastened at our will in the gesture and expression
+of an instant, and stayed, on the eve of some great deed, in
+immortality of burning purpose. Conceive, so far as it is possible,
+such power as this, and then say whether the art which conferred it is
+to be spoken lightly of, or whether we should not rather reverence, as
+half divine, a gift which would go so far as to raise us into the
+rank, and invest us with the felicities, of angels?
+
+Yet such would imitative art be in its perfection. Not by any means
+an easy thing, as Reynolds supposes it. Far from being easy, it is
+so utterly beyond all human power that we have difficulty even in
+conceiving its nature or results--the best art we as yet possess
+comes so far short of it.
+
+� 8. But we must not rashly come to the conclusion that such art would,
+indeed, be the highest possible. There is much to be considered
+hereafter on the other side; the only conclusion we are as yet
+warranted in forming is, that Reynolds had no right to speak lightly or
+contemptuously of imitative art; that in fact, when he did so, he had
+not conceived its entire nature, but was thinking of some vulgar
+conditions of it, which were the only ones known to him, and that,
+therefore, his whole endeavor to explain the difference between great
+and mean art has been disappointed; that he has involved himself in a
+crowd of theories, whose issue he had not foreseen, and committed
+himself to conclusions which he never intended. There is an instinctive
+consciousness in his own mind of the difference between high and low
+art; but he is utterly incapable of explaining it, and every effort
+which he makes to do so involves him in unexpected fallacy and
+absurdity. It is _not_ true that Poetry does not concern herself with
+minute details. It is _not_ true that high art seeks only the
+Invariable. It is _not_ true that imitative art is an easy thing. It is
+_not_ true that the faithful rendering of nature is an employment in
+which "the slowest intellect is likely to succeed best." All these
+successive assertions are utterly false and untenable, while the plain
+truth, a truth lying at the very door, has all the while escaped
+him,--that which was incidentally stated in the preceding
+chapter,--namely, that the difference between great and mean art lies,
+not in definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, or
+choices of subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to which
+the effort of the painter is addressed. We cannot say that a painter is
+great because he paints boldly, or paints delicately; because he
+generalizes or particularizes; because he loves detail, or because he
+disdains it. He is great if, by any of these means, he has laid open
+noble truths, or aroused noble emotions. It does not matter whether he
+paint the petal of a rose, or the chasms of a precipice, so that Love
+and Admiration attend him as he labors, and wait for ever upon his
+work. It does not matter whether he toil for months upon a few inches
+of his canvas, or cover a palace front with color in a day, so only
+that it be with a solemn purpose that he has filled his heart with
+patience, or urged his hand to haste. And it does not matter whether he
+seek for his subjects among peasants or nobles, among the heroic or the
+simple, in courts or in fields, so only that he behold all things with
+a thirst for beauty, and a hatred of meanness and vice. There are,
+indeed, certain methods of representation which are usually adopted by
+the most active minds, and certain characters of subject usually
+delighted in by the noblest hearts; but it is quite possible, quite
+easy, to adopt the manner of painting without sharing the activity of
+mind, and to imitate the choice of subject without possessing the
+nobility of spirit; while, on the other hand, it is altogether
+impossible to foretell on what strange objects the strength of a great
+man will sometimes be concentrated, or by what strange means he will
+sometimes express himself. So that true criticism of art never can
+consist in the mere application of rules; it can be just only when it
+is founded on quick sympathy with the innumerable instincts and
+changeful efforts of human nature, chastened and guided by unchanging
+love of all things that God has created to be beautiful, and pronounced
+to be good.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+OF THE REAL NATURE OF GREATNESS OF STYLE.
+
+
+� 1. I doubt not that the reader was ill-satisfied with the conclusion
+arrived at in the last chapter. That "great art" is art which
+represents what is beautiful and good, may not seem a very profound
+discovery; and the main question may be thought to have been all the
+time lost sight of, namely, "What is beautiful, and what is good?" No;
+those are not the main, at least not the first questions; on the
+contrary, our subject becomes at once opened and simplified as soon as
+we have left those the _only_ questions. For observe, our present task,
+according to our old plan, is merely to investigate the relative
+degrees of the _beautiful_ in the art of different masters; and it is
+an encouragement to be convinced, first of all, that what is lovely
+will also be great, and what is pleasing, noble. Nor is the conclusion
+so much a matter of course as it at first appears, for, surprising as
+the statement may seem, all the confusion into which Reynolds has
+plunged both himself and his readers, in the essay we have been
+examining, results primarily from a doubt in his own mind _as to the
+existence of beauty at all_. In the next paper I alluded to, No. 82
+(which needs not, however, to be examined at so great length), he
+calmly attributes the whole influence of beauty to custom, saying, that
+"he has no doubt, if we were more used to deformity than to beauty,
+deformity would then lose the idea now annexed to it, and take that of
+beauty; as if the whole world shall agree that Yes and No should change
+their meanings. Yes would then deny, and No would affirm!"
+
+� 2. The world does, indeed, succeed--oftener than is, perhaps,
+altogether well for the world--in making Yes mean No, and No mean
+Yes.[5] But the world has never succeeded, nor ever will, in making
+itself delight in black clouds more than in blue sky, or love the dark
+earth better than the rose that grows from it. Happily for mankind,
+beauty and ugliness are as positive in their nature as physical pain
+and pleasure, as light and darkness, or as life and death; and, though
+they may be denied or misunderstood in many fantastic ways, the most
+subtle reasoner will at last find that color and sweetness are still
+attractive to him, and that no logic will enable him to think the
+rainbow sombre, or the violet scentless. But the theory that beauty was
+merely a result of custom was very common in Johnson's time. Goldsmith
+has, I think, expressed it with more force and wit than any other
+writer, in various passages of the Citizen of the World. And it was,
+indeed, a curious retribution of the folly of the world of art, which
+for some three centuries had given itself recklessly to the pursuit of
+beauty, that at last it should be led to deny the very existence of
+what it had so morbidly and passionately sought. It was as if a child
+should leave its home to pursue the rainbow, and then, breathless and
+hopeless, declare that it did not exist. Nor is the lesson less useful
+which may be gained in observing the adoption of such a theory by
+Reynolds himself. It shows how completely an artist may be unconscious
+of the principles of his own work, and how he may be led by instinct to
+_do_ all that is right, while he is misled by false logic to _say_ all
+that is wrong. For nearly every word that Reynolds wrote was contrary
+to his own practice; he seems to have been born to teach all error by
+his precept, and all excellence by his example; he enforced with his
+lips generalization and idealism, while with his pencil he was tracing
+the patterns of the dresses of the belles of his day; he exhorted his
+pupils to attend only to the invariable, while he himself was occupied
+in distinguishing every variation of womanly temper; and he denied the
+existence of the beautiful, at the same instant that he arrested it as
+it passed, and perpetuated it for ever.
+
+� 3. But we must not quit the subject here. However inconsistently or
+dimly expressed, there is, indeed, some truth in that commonly
+accepted distinction between high and low art. That a thing should be
+beautiful is not enough; there is, as we said in the outset, a higher
+and lower range of beauty, and some ground for separating into various
+and unequal ranks painters who have, nevertheless, each in his
+several way, represented something that was beautiful or good.
+
+Nor, if we would, can we get rid of this conviction. We have at all
+times some instinctive sense that the function of one painter is
+greater than that of another, even supposing each equally successful
+in his own way; and we feel that, if it were possible to conquer
+prejudice, and do away with the iniquities of personal feeling, and
+the insufficiencies of limited knowledge, we should all agree in this
+estimate, and be able to place each painter in his right rank,
+measuring them by a true scale of nobleness. We feel that the men in
+the higher classes of the scale would be, in the full sense of the
+word, Great--men whom one would give much to see the faces of but for
+an instant; and that those in the lower classes of the scale (though
+none were admitted but who had true merit of some kind) would be very
+small men, not greatly exciting either reverence or curiosity. And
+with this fixed instinct in our minds, we permit our teachers daily to
+exhort their pupils to the cultivation of "great art"--neither they
+nor we having any very clear notion as to what the greatness consists
+in: but sometimes inclining to think it must depend on the space of
+the canvas, and that art on a scale of 6 feet by 10 is something
+spiritually separated from that on a scale of 3 feet by 5;--sometimes
+holding it to consist in painting the nude body, rather than the body
+decently clothed;--sometimes being convinced that it is connected with
+the study of past history, and that the art is only great which
+represents what the painter never saw, and about which he knows
+nothing;-and sometimes being firmly persuaded that it consists in
+generally finding fault with, and endeavoring to mend, whatsoever the
+Divine Wisdom has made. All which various errors, having yet some
+motes and atoms of truth in the make of each of them, deserve some
+attentive analysis, for they come under that general law,--that "the
+corruption of the best is the worst." There are not _worse_ errors
+going than these four; and yet the truth they contain, and the
+instinct which urges many to preach them, are at the root of all
+healthy growth in art. We ruin one young painter after another by
+telling him to follow great art, without knowing, ourselves, what
+greatness is; and yet the feeling that it verily _is_ something, and
+that there are depths and breadths, shallows and narrows, in the
+matter, is all that we have to look to, if we would ever make our art
+serviceable to ourselves or others. To follow art for the sake of
+being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some
+means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest
+way of ending in total extinction. And yet it is only by honest
+reverence for art itself, and by great self-respect in the practice of
+it, that it can be rescued from dilettantism, raised to approved
+honorableness, and brought to the proper work it has to accomplish in
+the service of man.
+
+� 4. Let us therefore look into the facts of the thing, not with any
+metaphysical, or otherwise vain and troublesome effort at acuteness,
+but in a plain way; for the facts themselves are plain enough, and
+may be plainly stated, only the difficulty is that out of these
+facts, right and left, the different forms of misapprehension branch
+into grievous complexity, and branch so far and wide, that if once
+we try to follow them, they will lead us quite from our mark into
+other separate, though not less interesting discussions. The best
+way will be, therefore, I think, to sketch out at once in this
+chapter, the different characters which really constitute
+"greatness" of style, and to indicate the principal directions of
+the outbranching misapprehensions of them; then, in the succeeding
+chapters, to take up in succession those which need more talk about
+them, and follow out at leisure whatever inquiries they may suggest.
+
+� 5. I. CHOICE OF NOBLE SUBJECT.--Greatness of style consists, then:
+first, in the habitual choice of subjects of thought which involve wide
+interests and profound passions, as opposed to those which involve
+narrow interests and slight passions. The style is greater or less in
+exact proportion to the nobleness of the interests and passions
+involved in the subject. The habitual choice of sacred subjects, such
+as the Nativity, Transfiguration, Crucifixion (if the choice be
+sincere), implies that the painter has a natural disposition to dwell
+on the highest thoughts of which humanity is capable; it constitutes
+him so far forth a painter of the highest order, as, for instance,
+Leonardo, in his painting of the Last Supper: he who delights in
+representing the acts or meditations of great men, as, for instance,
+Raphael painting the School of Athens, is, so far forth, a painter of
+the second order: he who represents the passions and events of ordinary
+life, of the third. And in this ordinary life, he who represents deep
+thoughts and sorrows, as, for instance, Hunt, in his Claudio and
+Isabella, and such other works, is of the highest rank in his sphere;
+and he who represents the slight malignities and passions of the
+drawingroom, as, for instance, Leslie, of the second rank: he who
+represents the sports of boys or simplicities of clowns, as Webster or
+Teniers, of the third rank; and he who represents brutalities and vices
+(for delight in them, and not for rebuke of them), of no rank at all,
+or rather of a negative rank, holding a certain order in the abyss.
+
+� 6. The reader will, I hope, understand how much importance is to be
+attached to the sentence in the first parenthesis, "if the choice be
+sincere;" for choice of subject is, of course, only available as a
+criterion of the rank of the painter, when it is made from the heart.
+Indeed, in the lower orders of painting, the choice is always made
+from such heart as the painter has; for his selection of the brawls of
+peasants or sports of children can, of course, proceed only from the
+fact that he has more sympathy with such brawls or pastimes than with
+nobler subjects. But the choice of the higher kind of subjects is
+often insincere; and may, therefore, afford no real criterion of the
+painter's rank. The greater number of men who have lately painted
+religious or heroic subjects have done so in mere ambition, because
+they had been taught that it was a good thing to be a "high art"
+painter; and the fact is that, in nine cases out of ten, the so-called
+historical or "high-art" painter is a person infinitely inferior to
+the painter of flowers or still life. He is, in modern times, nearly
+always a man who has great vanity without pictorial capacity, and
+differs from the landscape or fruit painter merely in misunderstanding
+and over-estimating his own powers. He mistakes his vanity for
+inspiration, his ambition for greatness of soul, and takes pleasure in
+what he calls "the ideal," merely because he has neither humility nor
+capacity enough to comprehend the real.
+
+� 7. But also observe, it is not enough even that the choice be
+sincere. It must also be wise. It happens very often that a man of weak
+intellect, sincerely desiring to do what is good and useful, will
+devote himself to high art subjects because he thinks them the only
+ones on which time and toil can be usefully spent, or, sometimes,
+because they are really the only ones he has pleasure in contemplating.
+But not having intellect enough to enter into the minds of truly great
+men, or to imagine great events as they really happened, he cannot
+become a great painter; he degrades the subjects he intended to honor,
+and his work is more utterly thrown away, and his rank as an artist in
+reality lower, than if he had devoted himself to the imitation of the
+simplest objects of natural history. The works of Overbeck are a most
+notable instance of this form of error.
+
+� 8. It must also be remembered, that in nearly all the great periods
+of art the choice of subject has not been left to the painter. His
+employer,--abbot, baron, or monarch,--determined for him whether he
+should earn his bread by making cloisters bright with choirs of
+saints, painting coats of arms on leaves of romances, or decorating
+presence-chambers with complimentary mythology; and his own personal
+feelings are ascertainable only by watching, in the themes assigned to
+him, what are the points in which he seems to take most pleasure.
+Thus, in the prolonged ranges of varied subjects with which Benozzo
+Gozzoli decorated the cloisters of Pisa, it is easy to see that love
+of simple domestic incident, sweet landscape, and glittering ornament,
+prevails slightly over the solemn elements of religious feeling,
+which, nevertheless, the spirit of the age instilled into him in such
+measure as to form a very lovely and noble mind, though still one of
+the second order. In the work of Orcagna, an intense solemnity and
+energy in the sublimest groups of his figures, fading away as he
+touches inferior subjects, indicates that his home was among the
+archangels, and his rank among the first of the sons of men: while
+Correggio, in the sidelong grace, artificial smiles, and purple
+languors of his saints, indicates the inferior instinct which would
+have guided his choice in quite other directions, had it not been for
+the fashion of the age, and the need of the day.
+
+� 9. It will follow, of course, from the above considerations, that
+the choice which characterises the school of high art is seen as
+much in the treatment of a subject as in its selection, and that the
+expression of the thoughts of the persons represented will always
+be the first thing considered by the painter who worthily enters
+that highest school. For the artist who sincerely chooses the
+noblest subject will also choose chiefly to represent what makes
+that subject noble, namely, the various heroism or other noble
+emotions of the persons represented. If, instead of this, the artist
+seeks only to make his picture agreeable by the composition of its
+masses and colors, or by any other merely pictorial merit, as fine
+drawing of limbs, it is evident, not only that any other subject
+would have answered his purpose as well, but that he is unfit to
+approach the subject he has chosen, because he cannot enter into its
+deepest meaning, and therefore cannot in reality have chosen it for
+that meaning. Nevertheless, while the expression is always to be the
+first thing considered, all other merits must be added to the utmost
+of the painter's power: for until he can both color and draw
+beautifully he has no business to consider himself a painter at all,
+far less to attempt the noblest subjects of painting; and, when he
+has once possessed himself of these powers, he will naturally and
+fitly employ them to deepen and perfect the impression made by the
+sentiment of his subject.
+
+The perfect unison of expression, as the painter's main purpose,
+with the full and natural exertion of his pictorial power in the
+details of the work, is found only in the old Pre-Raphaelite
+periods, and in the modern Pre-Raphaelite school. In the works of
+Giotto, Angelico, Orcagna, John Bellini, and one or two more, these
+two conditions of high art are entirely fulfilled, so far as the
+knowledge of those days enabled them to be fulfilled; and in the
+modern Pre-Raphaelite school they are fulfilled nearly to the
+uttermost. Hunt's Light of the World is, I believe, the most perfect
+instance of expressional purpose with technical power, which the
+world has yet produced.
+
+� 10. Now in the Post Raphaelite period of ancient art, and in the
+spurious high art of modern times, two broad forms of error divide
+the schools; the one consisting in (A) the superseding of expression
+by technical excellence, and the other in (B) the superseding of
+technical excellence by expression.
+
+(A). Superseding expression by technical excellence.--This takes place
+most frankly, and therefore most innocently, in the work of the
+Venetians. They very nearly ignore expression altogether, directing
+their aim exclusively to the rendering of external truths of color and
+form. Paul Veronese will make the Magdalene wash the feet of Christ
+with a countenance as absolutely unmoved as that of any ordinary
+servant bringing a ewer to her master, and will introduce the supper
+at Emmaus as a background to the portraits of two children playing
+with a dog. Of the wrongness or rightness of such a proceeding we
+shall reason in another place; at present we have to note it merely as
+displacing the Venetian work from the highest or expressional rank of
+art. But the error is generally made in a more subtle and dangerous
+way. The artist deceives himself into the idea that he is doing all he
+can to elevate his subject by treating it under rules of art,
+introducing into it accurate science, and collecting for it the
+beauties of (so-called) ideal form; whereas he may, in reality, be all
+the while sacrificing his subject to his own vanity or pleasure, and
+losing truth, nobleness, and impressiveness for the sake of delightful
+lines or creditable pedantries.
+
+� 11. (B). Superseding technical excellence by expression.--This is
+usually done under the influence of another kind of vanity. The
+artist desires that men should think he has an elevated soul,
+affects to despise the ordinary excellence of art, contemplates with
+separated egotism the course of his own imaginations or sensations,
+and refuses to look at the real facts round about him, in order that
+he may adore at leisure the shadow of himself. He lives in an
+element of what he calls tender emotions and lofty aspirations;
+which are, in fact, nothing more than very ordinary weaknesses or
+instincts, contemplated through a mist of pride. A large range of
+modern German art comes under this head.
+
+A more interesting and respectable form of this error is fallen into by
+some truly earnest men, who, finding their powers not adequate to the
+attainment of great artistical excellence, but adequate to rendering,
+up to a certain point, the expression of the human countenance, devote
+themselves to that object alone, abandoning effort in other directions,
+and executing the accessaries of their pictures feebly or carelessly.
+With these are associated another group of philosophical painters, who
+suppose the artistical merits of other parts _adverse_ to the
+expression, as drawing the spectator's attention away from it, and who
+paint in grey color, and imperfect light and shade, by way of enforcing
+the purity of their conceptions. Both these classes of conscientious
+but narrow-minded artists labor under the same grievous mistake of
+imagining that wilful fallacy can ever be either pardonable or helpful.
+They forget that color, if used at all, must be either true or false,
+and that what _they_ call chastity, dignity, and reserve, is, to the
+eye of any person accustomed to nature, pure, bold, and impertinent
+falsehood. It does not, in the eyes of any soundly minded man, exalt
+the expression of a female face that the cheeks should be painted of
+the color of clay, nor does it in the least enhance his reverence for a
+saint to find the scenery around him deprived, by his presence, of
+sunshine. It is an important consolation, however, to reflect that no
+artist ever fell into any of these last three errors (under head B.)
+who had really the capacity of becoming a great painter. No man ever
+despised color who could produce it; and the error of these
+sentimentalists and philosophers is not so much in the choice of their
+manner of painting, as in supposing themselves capable of painting at
+all. Some of them might have made efficient sculptors, but the greater
+number had their mission in some other sphere than that of art, and
+would have found, in works of practical charity, better employment for
+their gentleness and sentimentalism, than in denying to human beauty
+its color, and to natural scenery its light; in depriving heaven of its
+blue, and earth of its bloom, valor of its glow, and modesty of its
+blush.
+
+� 12. II. LOVE OF BEAUTY.--The second characteristic of the great
+school of art is, that it introduces in the conception of its
+subject as much beauty as is possible, consistently with truth.[6]
+
+For instance, in any subject consisting of a number of figures, it
+will make as many of those figures beautiful as the faithful
+representation of humanity will admit. It will not deny the facts of
+ugliness or decrepitude, or relative inferiority and superiority of
+feature as necessarily manifested in a crowd, but it will, so far as
+it is in its power, seek for and dwell upon the fairest forms, and
+in all things insist on the beauty that is in them, not on the
+ugliness. In this respect, schools of art become higher in exact
+proportion to the degree in which they apprehend and love the
+beautiful. Thus, Angelico, intensely loving all spiritual beauty,
+will be of the highest rank; and Paul Veronese and Correggio,
+intensely loving physical and corporeal beauty, of the second rank;
+and Albert Durer, Rubens, and in general the Northern artists,
+apparently insensible to beauty, and caring only for truth, whether
+shapely or not, of the third rank; and Teniers and Salvator,
+Caravaggio, and other such worshippers of the depraved, of no rank,
+or, as we said before, of a certain order in the abyss.
+
+� 13. The corruption of the schools of high art, so far as this
+particular quality is concerned, consists in the sacrifice of truth
+to beauty. Great art dwells on all that is beautiful; but false art
+omits or changes all that is ugly. Great art accepts Nature as she
+is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is most perfect in
+her; false art saves itself the trouble of direction by removing or
+altering whatever it thinks objectionable. The evil results of which
+proceeding are twofold.
+
+[Sidenote: � 14. Evil first,--that we lose the true _force_ of beauty.]
+
+First. That beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases
+to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadow ceases
+to be enjoyed as light. A white canvas cannot produce an effect of
+sunshine; the painter must darken it in some places before he can
+make it look luminous in others; nor can an uninterrupted succession
+of beauty produce the true effect of beauty; it must be foiled by
+inferiority before its own power can be developed. Nature has for
+the most part mingled her inferior and nobler elements as she
+mingles sunshine with shade, giving due use and influence to both,
+and the painter who chooses to remove the shadow, perishes in the
+burning desert he has created. The truly high and beautiful art of
+Angelico is continually refreshed and strengthened by his frank
+portraiture of the most ordinary features of his brother monks, and
+of the recorded peculiarities of ungainly sanctity; but the modern
+German and Raphaelesque schools lose all honor and nobleness in
+barber-like admiration of handsome faces, and have, in fact, no real
+faith except in straight noses and curled hair. Paul Veronese
+opposes the dwarf to the soldier, and the negress to the queen;
+Shakspere places Caliban beside Miranda, and Autolycus beside
+Perdita; but the vulgar idealist withdraws his beauty to the safety
+of the saloon, and his innocence to the seclusion of the cloister;
+he pretends that he does this in delicacy of choice and purity of
+sentiment, while in truth he has neither courage to front the
+monster, nor wit enough to furnish the knave.
+
+[Sidenote: � 15. Evil second,--we lose the true _quantity_ of beauty.]
+
+It is only by the habit of representing faithfully all things, that
+we can truly learn what is beautiful and what is not. The ugliest
+objects contain some element of beauty; and in all, it is an element
+peculiar to themselves, which cannot be separated from their
+ugliness, but must either be enjoyed together with it, or not at
+all. The more a painter accepts nature as he finds it, the more
+unexpected beauty he discovers in what he at first despised; but
+once let him arrogate the right of rejection, and he will gradually
+contract his circle of enjoyment, until what he supposed to be
+nobleness of selection ends in narrowness of perception. Dwelling
+perpetually upon one class of ideas, his art becomes at once
+monstrous and morbid; until at last he cannot faithfully represent
+even what he chooses to retain; his discrimination contracts into
+darkness, and his fastidiousness fades into fatuity.
+
+High art, therefore, consists neither in altering, nor in improving
+nature; but in seeking throughout nature for "whatsoever things are
+lovely, and whatsoever things are pure;" in loving these, in
+displaying to the utmost of the painter's power such loveliness as
+is in them, and directing the thoughts of others to them by winning
+art, or gentle emphasis. Of the degree in which this can be done,
+and in which it may be permitted to gather together, without
+falsifying, the finest forms or thoughts, so as to create a sort of
+perfect vision, we shall have to speak hereafter: at present, it is
+enough to remember that art (_c�teris paribus_) is great in exact
+proportion to the love of beauty shown by the painter, provided that
+love of beauty forfeit no atom of truth.
+
+� 16. III. SINCERITY.--The next[7] characteristic of great art is that
+it includes the largest possible quantity of Truth in the most perfect
+possible harmony. If it were possible for art to give all the truths of
+nature, it ought to do it. But this is not possible. Choice must always
+be made of some facts which _can_ be represented, from among others
+which must be passed by in silence, or even, in some respects,
+misrepresented. The inferior artist chooses unimportant and scattered
+truths; the great artist chooses the most necessary first, and
+afterwards the most consistent with these, so as to obtain the greatest
+possible and most harmonious _sum_. For instance, Rembrandt always
+chooses to represent the exact force with which the light on the most
+illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. In
+order to obtain this, in most cases, not very important truth, he
+sacrifices the light and color of five sixths of his picture; and the
+expression of every character of objects which depends on tenderness of
+shape or tint. But he obtains his single truth, and what picturesque
+and forcible expression is dependent upon it, with magnificent skill
+and subtlety. Veronese, on the contrary, chooses to represent the great
+relations of visible things to each other, to the heaven above, and to
+the earth beneath them. He holds it more important to show how a figure
+stands relieved from delicate air, or marble wall; how as a red, or
+purple, or white figure, it separates itself, in clear discernibility,
+from things not red, nor purple, nor white; how infinite daylight
+shines round it; how innumerable veils of faint shadow invest it; how
+its blackness and darkness are, in the excess of their nature, just as
+limited and local as its intensity of light: all this, I say, he feels
+to be more important than showing merely the exact _measure_ of the
+spark of sunshine that gleams on a dagger-hilt, or glows on a jewel.
+All this, moreover, he feels to be harmonious,--capable of being joined
+in one great system of spacious truth. And with inevitable
+watchfulness, inestimable subtlety, he unites all this in tenderest
+balance, noting in each hair's-breadth of color, not merely what its
+rightness or wrongness is in itself, but what its relation is to every
+other on his canvas; restraining, for truth's sake, his exhaustless
+energy, reining back, for truth's sake, his fiery strength; veiling,
+before truth, the vanity of brightness; penetrating, for truth, the
+discouragement of gloom; ruling his restless invention with a rod of
+iron; pardoning no error, no thoughtlessness, no forgetfulness; and
+subduing all his powers, impulses, and imaginations, to the arbitrament
+of a merciless justice, and the obedience of an incorruptible verity.
+
+[Sidenote: � 17. Corollary 1st: great art is generally distinct.]
+
+I give this instance with respect to color and shade; but, in the whole
+field of art, the difference between the great and inferior artists is
+of the same kind, and may be determined at once by the question, which
+of them conveys the largest sum of truth? It follows from this
+principle, that in general all _great_ drawing is _distinct_ drawing;
+for truths which are rendered indistinctly might, for the most part, as
+well not be rendered at all. There are, indeed, certain facts of
+mystery, and facts of indistinctness, in all objects, which must have
+their proper place in the general harmony, and the reader will
+presently find me, when we come to that part of our investigation,
+telling him that all good drawing must in some sort be _in_distinct. We
+may, however, understand this apparent contradiction, by reflecting
+that the highest knowledge always involves a more advanced perception
+of the fields of the unknown; and, therefore, it may most truly be
+said, that to know anything well involves a profound sensation of
+ignorance, while yet it is equally true that good and noble knowledge
+is distinguished from vain and useless knowledge chiefly by its
+clearness and distinctness, and by the vigorous consciousness of what
+is known and what is not.
+
+So in art. The best drawing involves a wonderful perception and
+expression of indistinctness; and yet all noble drawing is separated
+from the ignoble by its distinctness, by its fine expression and
+firm assertion of _Something_; whereas the bad drawing, without
+either firmness or fineness, expresses and asserts _Nothing_. The
+first thing, therefore, to be looked for as a sign of noble art, is
+a clear consciousness of what is drawn and what is not; the bold
+statement, and frank confession--"_This_ I know," "_that_ I know
+not;" and, generally speaking, all haste, slurring, obscurity,
+indecision, are signs of low art, and all calmness, distinctness,
+luminousness, and positiveness, of high art.
+
+[Sidenote: � 18. Corollary 2d: Great art is generally large in masses
+and in scale.]
+
+It follows, secondly, from this principle, that as the great painter
+is always attending to the sum and harmony of his truths rather than
+to one or the other of any group, a quality of Grasp is visible in his
+work, like the power of a great reasoner over his subject, or a great
+poet over his conception, manifesting itself very often in missing out
+certain details or less truths (which, though good in themselves, he
+finds are in the way of others), and in a sweeping manner of getting
+the beginnings and ends of things shown at once, and the squares and
+depths rather than the surfaces: hence, on the whole, a habit of
+looking at large masses rather than small ones; and even a physical
+largeness of handling, and love of working, if possible, on a large
+scale; and various other qualities, more or less imperfectly expressed
+by such technical terms as breadth, massing, unity, boldness, &c., all
+of which are, indeed, great qualities when they mean breadth of truth,
+weight of truth, unity of truth, and courageous assertion of truth;
+but which have all their correlative errors and mockeries, almost
+universally mistaken for them,--the breadth which has no contents, the
+weight which has no value, the unity which plots deception, and the
+boldness which faces out fallacy.
+
+� 19. And it is to be noted especially respecting largeness of
+scale, that though for the most part it is characteristic of the
+more powerful masters, they having both more invention wherewith to
+fill space (as Ghirlandajo wished that he might paint all the walls
+of Florence), and, often, an impetuosity of mind which makes them
+like free play for hand and arm (besides that they usually desire to
+paint everything in the foreground of their picture of the natural
+size), yet, as this largeness of scale involves the placing of the
+picture at a considerable distance from the eye, and this distance
+involves the loss of many delicate details, and especially of the
+subtle lines of expression in features, it follows that the masters
+of refined detail and human expression are apt to prefer a small
+scale to work upon; so that the chief masterpieces of expression
+which the world possesses are small pictures by Angelico, in which
+the figures are rarely more than six or seven inches high; in the
+best works of Raphael and Leonardo the figures are almost always
+less than life, and the best works of Turner do not exceed the size
+of 18 inches by 12.
+
+[Sidenote: � 20. Corollary 3d: Great art is always delicate.]
+
+As its greatness depends on the sum of truth, and this sum of truth
+can always be increased by delicacy of handling, it follows that all
+great art must have this delicacy to the utmost possible degree.
+This rule is infallible and inflexible. All coarse work is the sign
+of low art. Only, it is to be remembered, that coarseness must be
+estimated by the distance from the eye; it being necessary to
+consult this distance, when great, by laying on touches which appear
+coarse when seen near; but which, so far from being coarse, are, in
+reality, more delicate in a master's work than the finest close
+handling, for they involve a calculation of result, and are laid on
+with a subtlety of sense precisely correspondent to that with which
+a good archer draws his bow; the spectator seeing in the action
+nothing but the strain of the strong arm, while there is, in
+reality, in the finger and eye, an ineffably delicate estimate of
+distance, and touch on the arrow plume. And, indeed, this delicacy
+is generally quite perceptible to those who know what the truth is,
+for strokes by Tintoret or Paul Veronese, which were done in an
+instant, and look to an ignorant spectator merely like a violent
+dash of loaded color, (and are, as such, imitated by blundering
+artists,) are, in fact, modulated by the brush and finger to that
+degree of delicacy that no single grain of the color could be taken
+from the touch without injury; and little golden particles of it,
+not the size of a gnat's head, have important share and function in
+the balances of light in a picture perhaps fifty feet long. Nearly
+_every_ other rule applicable to art has some exception but this.
+This has absolutely none. All great art is delicate art, and all
+coarse art is bad art. Nay, even to a certain extent, all _bold_ art
+is bad art; for boldness is not the proper word to apply to the
+courage and swiftness of a great master, based on knowledge, and
+coupled with fear and love. There is as much difference between the
+boldness of the true and the false masters, as there is between the
+courage of a pure woman and the shamelessness of a lost one.
+
+� 21. IV. INVENTION.--The last characteristic of great art is that
+it must be inventive, that is, be produced by the imagination. In
+this respect, it must precisely fulfil the definition already given
+of poetry; and not only present grounds for noble emotion, but
+furnish these grounds by _imaginative power_. Hence there is at once
+a great bar fixed between the two schools of Lower and Higher Art.
+The lower merely copies what is set before it, whether in portrait,
+landscape, or still-life; the higher either entirely imagines its
+subject, or arranges the materials presented to it, so as to
+manifest the imaginative power in all the three phases which have
+been already explained in the second volume.
+
+And this was the truth which was confusedly present in Reynolds's
+mind when he spoke, as above quoted, of the difference between
+Historical and Poetical Painting. _Every relation of the plain facts
+which the painter saw_ is proper _historical_ painting.[8] If those
+facts are unimportant (as that he saw a gambler quarrel with another
+gambler, or a sot enjoying himself with another sot), then the
+history is trivial; if the facts are important (as that he saw such
+and such a great man look thus, or act thus, at such a time), then
+the history is noble: in each case perfect truth of narrative being
+supposed, otherwise the whole thing is worthless, being neither
+history nor poetry, but plain falsehood. And farther, as greater or
+less elegance and precision are manifested in the relation or
+painting of the incidents, the merit of the work varies; so that,
+what with difference of subject, and what with difference of
+treatment, historical painting falls or rises in changeful eminence,
+from Dutch trivialities to a Velasquez portrait, just as historical
+talking or writing varies in eminence, from an old woman's
+story-telling up to Herodotus. Besides which, certain operations of
+the imagination come into play inevitably, here and there, so as to
+touch the history with some light of poetry, that is, with some
+light shot forth of the narrator's mind, or brought out by the way
+he has put the accidents together; and wherever the imagination has
+thus had anything to do with the matter at all (and it must be
+somewhat cold work where it has not), then, the confines of the
+lower and higher schools touching each other, the work is colored by
+both; but there is no reason why, therefore, we should in the least
+confuse the historical and poetical characters, any more than that
+we should confuse blue with crimson, because they may overlap each
+other, and produce purple.
+
+� 22. Now, historical or simply narrative art is very precious in its
+proper place and way, but it is never _great_ art until the poetical
+or imaginative power touches it; and in proportion to the stronger
+manifestation of this power, it becomes greater and greater, while the
+highest art is purely imaginative, all its materials being wrought
+into their form by invention; and it differs, therefore, from the
+simple historical painting, exactly as Wordsworth's stanza, above
+quoted, differs from Saussure's plain narrative of the parallel fact;
+and the imaginative painter differs from the historical painter in the
+manner that Wordsworth differs from Saussure.
+
+� 23. Farther, imaginative art always _includes_ historical art; so
+that, strictly speaking, according to the analogy above used, we meet
+with the pure blue, and with the crimson ruling the blue and changing
+it into kingly purple, but not with the pure crimson: for all
+imagination must deal with the knowledge it has before accumulated; it
+never produces anything but by combination or contemplation. Creation,
+in the full sense, is impossible to it. And the mode in which the
+historical faculties are included by it is often quite simple, and
+easily seen. Thus, in Hunt's great poetical picture of the Light of the
+World, the whole thought and arrangement of the picture being
+imaginative, the several details of it are wrought out with simple
+portraiture; the ivy, the jewels, the creeping plants, and the
+moonlight being calmly studied or remembered from the things
+themselves. But of all these special ways in which the invention works
+with plain facts, we shall have to treat farther afterwards.
+
+� 24. And now, finally, since this poetical power includes the
+historical, if we glance back to the other qualities required in great
+art, and put all together, we find that the sum of them is simply the
+sum of all the powers of man. For as (1) the choice of the high subject
+involves all conditions of right moral choice, and as (2) the love of
+beauty involves all conditions of right admiration, and as (3) the
+grasp of truth involves all strength of sense, evenness of judgment,
+and honesty of purpose, and as (4) the poetical power involves all
+swiftness of invention, and accuracy of historical memory, the sum of
+all these powers is the sum of the human soul. Hence we see why the
+word "Great" is used of this art. It is literally great. It compasses
+and calls forth the entire human spirit, whereas any other kind of art,
+being more or less small or narrow, compasses and calls forth only
+_part_ of the human spirit. Hence the idea of its magnitude is a
+literal and just one, the art being simply less or greater in
+proportion to the number of faculties it exercises and addresses.[9]
+And this is the ultimate meaning of the definition I gave of it long
+ago, as containing the "greatest number of the greatest ideas."
+
+� 25. Such, then, being the characters required in order to
+constitute high art, if the reader will think over them a little,
+and over the various ways in which they may be falsely assumed, he
+will easily perceive how spacious and dangerous a field of
+discussion they open to the ambitious critic, and of error to the
+ambitious artist; he will see how difficult it must be, either to
+distinguish what is truly great art from the mockeries of it, or to
+rank the real artists in any thing like a progressive system of
+greater and less. For it will have been observed that the various
+qualities which form greatness are partly inconsistent with each
+other (as some virtues are, docility and firmness for instance), and
+partly independent of each other; and the fact is, that artists
+differ not more by mere capacity, than by the component _elements_
+of their capacity, each possessing in very different proportions the
+several attributes of greatness; so that, classed by one kind of
+merit, as, for instance, purity of expression, Angelico will stand
+highest; classed by another, sincerity of manner, Veronese will
+stand highest; classed by another, love of beauty, Leonardo will
+stand highest; and so on; hence arise continual disputes and
+misunderstandings among those who think that high art must always be
+one and the same, and that great artists ought to unite all great
+attributes in an equal degree.
+
+� 26. In one of the exquisitely finished tales of Marmontel, a
+company of critics are received at dinner by the hero of the story,
+an old gentleman, somewhat vain of his _acquired_ taste, and his
+niece, by whose incorrigible _natural_ taste, he is seriously
+disturbed and tormented. During the entertainment, "On parcourut
+tous les genres de litt�rature, et pour donner plus d'essor a
+l'�rudition et � la critique, on mit sur le tapis cette question
+toute neuve, s�avoir, lequel m�ritoit le pr�ference de Corneille ou
+de Racine. L'on disoit m�me l�-dessus les plus belles choses du
+monde, lorsque la petite ni�ce, qui n'avoit pas dit un mot, s'avisa
+de demander na�vement lequel des deux fruits, de l'orange ou de la
+p�che, avoit le gout les plus exquis et m�ritoit le plus d'�loges.
+Son oncle rougit de sa simplicit�, et les convives baiss�rent tous
+les yeux sans daigner r�pondre � cette b�tise. Ma ni�ce, dit Fintac,
+a votre �ge, il faut s�avoir �couter, et se taire."
+
+I cannot close this chapter with shorter or better advice to the
+reader, than merely, whenever he hears discussions about the
+relative merits of great masters, to remember the young lady's
+question. It is, indeed, true that there _is_ a relative merit, that
+a peach is nobler than a hawthorn berry, and still more a hawthorn
+berry than a bead of the nightshade; but in each rank of fruits, as
+in each rank of masters, one is endowed with one virtue, and another
+with another; their glory is their dissimilarity, and they who
+propose to themselves in the training of an artist that he should
+unite the coloring of Tintoret, the finish of Albert Durer, and the
+tenderness of Correggio, are no wiser than a horticulturist would
+be, who made it the object of his labor to produce a fruit which
+should unite in itself the lusciousness of the grape, the crispness
+of the nut, and the fragrance of the pine.
+
+� 27. And from these considerations one most important practical
+corollary is to be deduced, with the good help of Mademoiselle's
+Agathe's simile, namely, that the greatness or smallness of a man is,
+in the most conclusive sense, determined for him at his birth, as
+strictly as it is determined for a fruit whether it is to be a currant
+or an apricot. Education, favorable circumstances, resolution, and
+industry can do much; in a certain sense they do _everything_; that is
+to say, they determine whether the poor apricot shall fall in the form
+of a green bead, blighted by an east wind, shall be trodden under foot,
+or whether it shall expand into tender pride, and sweet brightness of
+golden velvet. But apricot out of currant,--great man out of
+small,--did never yet art or effort make; and, in a general way, men
+have their excellence nearly fixed for them when they are born; a
+little cramped and frost-bitten on one side, a little sun-burnt and
+fortune-spotted on the other, they reach, between good and evil
+chances, such size and taste as generally belong to the men of their
+calibre, and the small in their serviceable bunches, the great in their
+golden isolation, have, these no cause for regret, nor those for
+disdain.
+
+� 28. Therefore it is, that every system of teaching is false which
+holds forth "great art" as in any wise to be taught to students, or
+even to be aimed at by them. Great art is precisely that which never
+was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the
+expression of the spirits of great men; so that the only wholesome
+teaching is that which simply endeavors to fix those characters of
+nobleness in the pupil's mind, of which it seems easily susceptible;
+and without holding out to him, as a possible or even probable
+result, that he should ever paint like Titian, or carve like Michael
+Angelo, enforces upon him the manifest possibility, and assured
+duty, of endeavoring to draw in a manner at least honest and
+intelligible; and cultivates in him those general charities of
+heart, sincerities of thought, and graces of habit which are likely
+to lead him, throughout life, to prefer openness to affectation,
+realities to shadows, and beauty to corruption.
+
+  [5] Del "n�," per l� danar, vi "s�" far ita.
+
+  [6] As here, for the first time, I am obliged to use the terms
+      Truth and Beauty in a kind of opposition, I must therefore
+      stop for a moment to state clearly the relation of these two
+      qualities of art; and to protest against the vulgar and
+      foolish habit of confusing truth and beauty with each other.
+      People with shallow powers of thought, desiring to flatter
+      themselves with the sensation of having attained profundity,
+      are continually doing the most serious mischief by introducing
+      confusion into plain matters, and then valuing themselves on
+      being confounded. Nothing is more common than to hear people
+      who desire to be thought philosophical, declare that "beauty
+      is truth," and "truth is beauty." I would most earnestly beg
+      every sensible person who hears such an assertion made, to nip
+      the germinating philosopher in his ambiguous bud; and beg him,
+      if he really believes his own assertion, never thenceforward
+      to use two words for the same thing. The fact is, truth and
+      beauty are entirely distinct, though often related, things.
+      One is a property of statements, the other of objects. The
+      statement that "two and two make four" is true, but it is
+      neither beautiful nor ugly, for it is invisible; a rose is
+      lovely, but it is neither true nor false, for it is silent.
+      That which shows nothing cannot be fair, and that which
+      asserts nothing cannot be false. Even the ordinary use of the
+      words false and true as applied to artificial and real things,
+      is inaccurate. An artificial rose is not a "false" rose, it is
+      not a rose at all. The falseness is in the person who states,
+      or induces the belief, that it is a rose.
+
+      Now, therefore, in things concerning art, the words true and
+      false are only to be rightly used while the picture is
+      considered as a statement of facts. The painter asserts that
+      this which he has painted is the form of a dog, a man, or a
+      tree. If it be _not_ the form of a dog, a man, or a tree, the
+      painter's statement is false; and therefore we justly speak of
+      a false line, or false color; not that any line or color can
+      in themselves be false, but they become so when they convey a
+      statement that they resemble something which they do _not_
+      resemble. But the beauty of the lines or colors is wholly
+      independent of any such statement. They may be beautiful
+      lines, though quite inaccurate, and ugly lines though quite
+      faithful. A picture may be frightfully ugly, which represents
+      with fidelity some base circumstance of daily life; and a
+      painted window may be exquisitely beautiful, which represents
+      men with eagles' faces, and dogs with blue heads and crimson
+      tails (though, by the way, this is not in the strict sense
+      _false_ art, as we shall see hereafter, inasmuch as it means
+      no assertion that men ever _had_ eagles' faces). If this were
+      not so, it would be impossible to sacrifice truth to beauty;
+      for to attain the one would always be to attain the other.
+      But, unfortunately, this sacrifice is exceedingly possible,
+      and it is chiefly this which characterizes the false schools
+      of high art, so far as high art consists in the pursuit of
+      beauty. For although truth and beauty are independent of each
+      other, it does not follow that we are at liberty to pursue
+      whichever we please. They are indeed separable, but it is
+      wrong to separate them; they are to be sought together in the
+      order of their worthiness; that is to say, truth first, and
+      beauty afterwards. High art differs from low art in possessing
+      an excess of beauty in addition to its truth, not in
+      possessing an excess of beauty inconsistent with truth.
+
+  [7] I name them in order of _in_creasing not decreasing
+      importance.
+
+  [8] Compare my Edinburgh Lectures, lecture iv. p. 218, et seq.
+      (2nd edition)
+
+  [9] Compare Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. iv. � 7, and � 21.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+OF THE FALSE IDEAL:--FIRST, RELIGIOUS.
+
+
+� 1. Having now gained some general notion of the meaning of "great
+art," we may, without risk of confusing ourselves, take up the
+questions suggested incidentally in the preceding chapter, and pursue
+them at leisure. Of these, two principal ones are closely connected
+with each other, to wit, that put in the 12th paragraph--How may beauty
+be sought in defiance of truth? and that in the 23rd paragraph--How
+does the imagination show itself in dealing with truth? These two,
+therefore, which are, besides, the most important of all, and, if well
+answered, will answer many others inclusively, we shall find it most
+convenient to deal with at once.
+
+� 2. The pursuit, by the imagination, of beautiful and strange
+thoughts or subjects, to the exclusion of painful or common ones, is
+called among us, in these modern days, the pursuit of "_the ideal_;"
+nor does any subject deserve more attentive examination than the
+manner in which this pursuit is entered upon by the modern mind. The
+reader must pardon me for making in the outset one or two statements
+which may appear to him somewhat wide of the matter, but which, (if
+he admits their truth,) he will, I think, presently perceive to
+reach to the root of it. Namely,
+
+That men's proper business in this world falls mainly into three
+divisions:
+
+First, to know themselves, and the existing state of the things they
+have to do with.
+
+Secondly, to be happy in themselves, and in the existing state of
+things.
+
+Thirdly, to mend themselves, and the existing state of things, as
+far as either are marred or mendable.
+
+These, I say, are the three plain divisions of proper human
+business on this earth. For these three, the following are usually
+substituted and adopted by human creatures:
+
+First, to be totally ignorant of themselves, and the existing state
+of things.
+
+Secondly, to be miserable in themselves, and in the existing state
+of things.
+
+Thirdly, to let themselves, and the existing state of things, alone
+(at least in the way of correction).
+
+� 3. The dispositions which induce us to manage, thus wisely, the
+affairs of this life seem to be:
+
+First, a fear of disagreeable facts, and conscious shrinking from
+clearness of light, which keep us from examining ourselves, and
+increase gradually into a species of instinctive terror at all truth,
+and love of glosses, veils, and decorative lies of every sort.
+
+Secondly, a general readiness to take delight in anything past, future,
+far off, or somewhere else, rather than in things now, near, and here;
+leading us gradually to place our pleasure principally in the exercise
+of the imagination, and to build all our satisfaction on things as they
+are _not_. Which power being one not accorded to the lower animals, and
+having indeed, when disciplined, a very noble use, we pride ourselves
+upon it, whether disciplined or not, and pass our lives complacently,
+in substantial discontent, and visionary satisfaction.
+
+� 4. Now _nearly_ all artistical and poetical seeking after the
+ideal is only one branch of this base habit--the abuse of the
+imagination, in allowing it to find its whole delight in the
+impossible and untrue; while the faithful pursuit of the ideal is an
+honest use of the imagination, giving full power and presence to the
+possible and true.
+
+It is the difference between these two uses of it which we have to
+examine.
+
+� 5. And, first, consider what are the legitimate uses of the
+imagination, that is to say, of the power of perceiving, or
+conceiving with the mind, things which cannot be perceived by the
+senses.
+
+Its first and noblest use is, to enable us to bring sensibly to our
+sight the things which are recorded as belonging to our future
+state, or as invisibly surrounding us in this. It is given us, that
+we may imagine the cloud of witnesses in heaven and earth, and see,
+as if they were now present, the souls of the righteous waiting for
+us; that we may conceive the great army of the inhabitants of
+heaven, and discover among them those whom we most desire to be with
+for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the ministry of angels
+beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the mountains that gird
+us round; but above all, to call up the scenes and facts in which we
+are commanded to believe, and be present, as if in the body, at
+every recorded event of the history of the Redeemer. Its second and
+ordinary use is to empower us to traverse the scenes of all other
+history, and force the facts to become again visible, so as to make
+upon us the same impression which they would have made if we had
+witnessed them; and in the minor necessities of life, to enable us,
+out of any present good, to gather the utmost measure of enjoyment
+by investing it with happy associations, and, in any present evil,
+to lighten it, by summoning back the images of other hours; and,
+also, to give to all mental truths some visible type in allegory,
+simile, or personification, which shall more deeply enforce them;
+and, finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it
+with such innocent play as shall be most in harmony with the
+suggestive voices of natural things, permitting it to possess living
+companionship instead of silent beauty, and create for itself
+fairies in the grass and naiads in the wave.
+
+� 6. These being the uses of imagination, its abuses are either in
+creating, for mere pleasure, false images, where it is its _duty_ to
+create true ones; or in turning what was intended for the mere
+refreshment of the heart into its daily food, and changing the innocent
+pastimes of an hour into the guilty occupation of a life.
+
+Let us examine the principal forms of this misuse, one by one.
+
+� 7. First, then, the imagination is chiefly warped and dishonored
+by being allowed to create false images, where it is its duty to
+create true ones. And this most dangerously in matters of religion.
+For a long time, when art was in its infancy, it remained unexposed
+to this danger, because it could not, with any power, realize or
+create _any_ thing. It consisted merely in simple outlines and
+pleasant colors; which were understood to be nothing more than
+signs of the thing thought of, a sort of pictorial letter for it, no
+more pretending to represent it than the written characters of its
+name. Such art excited the imagination, while it pleased the eye.
+But it _asserted_ nothing, for it could realize nothing. The reader
+glanced at it as a glittering symbol, and went on to form truer
+images for himself. This act of the mind may be still seen in daily
+operation in children, as they look at brightly colored pictures in
+their story-books. Such pictures neither deceive them nor satisfy
+them; they only set their own inventive powers to work in the
+directions required.
+
+� 8. But as soon as art obtained the power of realization, it
+obtained also that of _assertion_. As fast as the painter advanced
+in skill he gained also in credibility, and that which he perfectly
+represented was perfectly believed, or could be disbelieved only by
+an actual effort of the beholder to escape from the fascinating
+deception. What had been faintly declared, might be painlessly
+denied; but it was difficult to discredit things forcibly alleged;
+and representations, which had been innocent in discrepancy, became
+guilty in consistency.
+
+� 9. For instance, when in the thirteenth century, the nativity was
+habitually represented by such a symbol as that on the next page,
+fig. 1, there was not the smallest possibility that such a picture
+could disturb, in the mind of the reader of the New Testament, the
+simple meaning of the words "wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid
+him in a manger." That this manger was typified by a trefoiled arch[10]
+would no more prevent his distinct understanding of the narrative, than
+the grotesque heads introduced above it would interfere with his firm
+comprehension of the words "ox" or "ass;" while if there were anything
+in the action of the principal figures suggestive of real feeling, that
+suggestion he would accept, together with the general pleasantness of
+the lines and colors in the decorative letter; but without having his
+faith in the unrepresented and actual scene obscured for a moment. But
+it was far otherwise, when Francia or Perugino, with exquisite power of
+representing the human form, and high knowledge of the mysteries of
+art, devoted all their skill to the delineation of an impossible scene;
+and painted, for their subjects of the Nativity, a beautiful and
+queenly lady, her dress embroidered with gold, and with a crown of
+jewels upon her hair, kneeling, on a floor of inlaid and precious
+marble, before a crowned child, laid under a portico of Lombardic[11]
+architecture; with a sweet, verdurous, and vivid landscape in the
+distance, full of winding rivers, village spires, and baronial
+towers.[12] It is quite true that the frank absurdity of the thought
+prevented its being received as a deliberate contradiction of the
+truths of Scripture; but it is no less certain, that the continual
+presentment to the mind of this beautiful and fully realized imagery
+more and more chilled its power of apprehending the real truth; and
+that when pictures of this description met the eye in every corner of
+every chapel, it was physically impossible to dwell distinctly upon
+facts the direct reverse of those represented. The word "Virgin" or
+"Madonna," instead of calling up the vision of a simple Jewish girl,
+bearing the calamities of poverty, and the dishonors of inferior
+station, summoned instantly the idea of a graceful princess, crowned
+with gems, and surrounded by obsequious ministry of kings and saints.
+The fallacy which was presented to the imagination was indeed
+discredited, but also the fact which was _not_ presented to the
+imagination was forgotten; all true grounds of faith were gradually
+undermined, and the beholder was either enticed into mere luxury of
+fanciful enjoyment, believing nothing; or left, in his confusion of
+mind, the prey of vain tales and traditions; while in his best feelings
+he was unconsciously subject to the power of the fallacious picture,
+and with no sense of the real cause of his error, bowed himself, in
+prayer or adoration, to the lovely lady on her golden throne, when he
+would never have dreamed of doing so to the Jewish girl in her outcast
+poverty, or, in her simple household, to the carpenter's wife.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1.]
+
+� 10. But a shadow of increasing darkness fell upon the human mind as
+art proceeded to still more perfect realization. These fantasies of
+the earlier painters, though they darkened faith, never hardened
+_feeling_; on the contrary, the frankness of their unlikelihood
+proceeded mainly from the endeavor on the part of the painter to
+express, not the actual fact, but the enthusiastic state of his own
+feelings about the fact; he covers the Virgin's dress with gold, not
+with any idea of representing the Virgin as she ever was, or ever will
+be seen, but with a burning desire to show what his love and reverence
+would think fittest for her. He erects for the stable a Lombardic
+portico, not because he supposes the Lombardi to have built stables in
+Palestine in the days of Tiberius, but to show that the manger in
+which Christ was laid is, in his eyes, nobler than the greatest
+architecture in the world. He fills his landscape with church spires
+and silver streams, not because he supposes that either were in sight
+of Bethlehem, but to remind the beholder of the peaceful course and
+succeeding power of Christianity. And, regarded with due sympathy and
+clear understanding of these thoughts of the artist, such pictures
+remain most impressive and touching, even to this day. I shall refer
+to them in future, in general terms, as the pictures of the "Angelican
+Ideal"--Angelico being the central master of the school.
+
+� 11. It was far otherwise in the next step of the Realistic progress.
+The greater his powers became, the more the mind of the painter was
+absorbed in their attainment, and complacent in their display. The
+early arts of laying on bright colors smoothly, of burnishing golden
+ornaments, or tracing, leaf by leaf, the outlines of flowers, were not
+so difficult as that they should materially occupy the thoughts of the
+artist, or furnish foundation for his conceit; he learned these
+rudiments of his work without pain, and employed them without pride,
+his spirit being left free to express, so far as it was capable of
+them, the reaches of higher thought. But when accurate shade, and
+subtle color, and perfect anatomy, and complicated perspective, became
+necessary to the work, the artist's whole energy was employed in
+learning the laws of these, and his whole pleasure consisted in
+exhibiting them. His life was devoted, not to the objects of art, but
+to the cunning of it; and the sciences of composition and light and
+shade were pursued as if there were abstract good in them;--as if,
+like astronomy or mathematics, they were ends in themselves,
+irrespective of anything to be effected by them. And without
+perception, on the part of any one, of the abyss to which all were
+hastening, a fatal change of aim took place throughout the whole world
+of art. In early times _art was employed for the display of religious
+facts_; now, _religious facts were employed for the display of art_.
+The transition, though imperceptible, was consummate; it involved the
+entire destiny of painting. It was passing from the paths of life to
+the paths of death.
+
+� 12. And this change was all the more fatal, because at first veiled
+by an appearance of greater dignity and sincerity than were possessed
+by the older art. One of the earliest results of the new knowledge was
+the putting away the greater part of the _unlikelihoods_ and fineries
+of the ancient pictures, and an apparently closer following of nature
+and probability. All the fantasy which I have just been blaming as
+disturbant of the simplicity of faith, was first subdued,--then
+despised and cast aside. The appearances of nature were more closely
+followed in everything; and the crowned Queen-Virgin of Perugino sank
+into a simple Italian mother in Raphael's Madonna of the Chair.
+
+� 13. Was not this, then, a healthy change? No. It _would_ have been
+healthy if it had been effected with a pure motive, and the new
+truths would have been precious if they had been sought for truth's
+sake. But they were not sought for truth's sake, but for pride's;
+and truth which is sought for display may be just as harmful as
+truth which is spoken in malice. The glittering childishness of the
+old art was rejected, not because it was false, but because it was
+easy; and, still more, because the painter had no longer any
+religious passion to express. He could think of the Madonna now very
+calmly, with no desire to pour out the treasures of earth at her
+feet, or crown her brows with the golden shafts of heaven. He could
+think of her as an available subject for the display of transparent
+shadows, skilful tints, and scientific foreshortenings,--as a fair
+woman, forming, if well painted, a pleasant piece of furniture for
+the corner of a boudoir, and best imagined by combination of the
+beauties of the prettiest contadinas. He could think of her, in her
+last maternal agony, with academical discrimination; sketch in first
+her skeleton, invest her, in serene science, with the muscles of
+misery and the fibres of sorrow; then cast the grace of antique
+drapery over the nakedness of her desolation, and fulfil, with
+studious lustre of tears and delicately painted pallor, the perfect
+type of the "Mater Dolorosa."
+
+� 14. It was thus that Raphael thought of the Madonna.[13]
+
+Now observe, when the subject was thus scientifically completed, it
+became necessary, as we have just said, to the full display of all the
+power of the artist, that it should in many respects be more faithfully
+imagined than it had been hitherto, "Keeping," "Expression,"
+"Historical Unity," and such other requirements, were enforced on the
+painter, in the same tone, and with the same purpose, as the purity of
+his oil and the accuracy of his perspective. He was told that the
+figure of Christ should be "dignified," those of the Apostles
+"expressive," that of the Virgin "modest," and those of children
+"innocent." All this was perfectly true; and in obedience to such
+directions, the painter proceeded to manufacture certain arrangements
+of apostolic sublimity, virginal mildness, and infantine innocence,
+which, being free from the quaint imperfection and contradictoriness of
+the early art, were looked upon by the European public as true things,
+and trustworthy representations of the events of religious history. The
+pictures of Francia and Bellini had been received as pleasant visions.
+But the cartoons of Raphael were received as representations of
+historical fact.
+
+� 15. Now, neither they, nor any other work of the period, were
+representations either of historical or possible fact. They were, in
+the strictest sense of the word, "compositions"--cold arrangements
+of propriety and agreeableness, according to academical formulas;
+the painter never in any case making the slightest effort to
+conceive the thing as it must have happened, but only to gather
+together graceful lines and beautiful faces, in such compliance with
+commonplace ideas of the subject as might obtain for the whole an
+"epic unity," or some such other form of scholastic perfectness.
+
+� 16. Take a very important instance.
+
+I suppose there is no event in the whole life of Christ to which, in
+hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious thirst to knew the
+close facts of it, or with more earnest and passionate dwelling upon
+every syllable of its recorded narrative, than Christ's showing Himself
+to his disciples at the lake of Galilee. There is something
+preeminently open, natural, full fronting our disbelief in this
+manifestation. The others, recorded after the resurrection, were
+sudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in profound sorrow and wearied
+agitation of heart; not, it might seem, safe judges of what they saw.
+But the agitation was now over. They had gone back to their daily work,
+thinking still their business lay net-wards, unmeshed from the literal
+rope and drag. "Simon Peter saith unto them, 'I go a fishing,' They say
+unto him, 'We also go with thee,'" True words enough, and having far
+echo beyond those Galilean hills. That night they caught nothing; but
+when the morning came, in the clear light of it, behold a figure stood
+on the shore. They were not thinking of anything but their fruitless
+hauls. They had no guess who it was. It asked them simply if they had
+caught anything. They said no. And it tells them to cast yet again. And
+John shades his eyes from the morning sun with his hand, to look who it
+is; and though the glinting of the sea, too, dazzles him, he makes out
+who it is, at last; and poor Simon, not to be outrun this time,
+tightens, his fisher's coat about him, and dashes in, over the nets.
+One would have liked to see him swim those hundred yards, and stagger
+to his knees on the beach.
+
+Well, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow way as
+men in general do get, in this world, to its true shore, much
+impeded by that wonderful "dragging the net with fishes;" but they
+get there--seven of them in all;--first the Denier, and then the
+slowest believer, and then the quickest believer, and then the two
+throne-seekers, and two more, we know not who.
+
+They sit down on the shore face to face with Him, and eat their
+broiled fish as He bids. And then, to Peter, all dripping still,
+shivering, and amazed, staring at Christ in the sun, on the other
+side of the coal fire,--thinking a little, perhaps, of what happened
+by another coal fire, when it was colder, and having had no word
+once changed with him by his Master since that look of His,--to him,
+so amazed, comes the question, "Simon, lovest thou me?" Try to feel
+that a little, and think of it till it is true to you; and then,
+take up that infinite monstrosity and hypocrisy--Raphael's cartoon
+of the Charge to Peter. Note, first, the bold fallacy--the putting
+_all_ the Apostles there, a mere lie to serve the Papal heresy of
+the Petric supremacy, by putting them all in the background while
+Peter receives the charge, and making them all witnesses to it. Note
+the handsomely curled hair and neatly tied sandals of the men who
+had been out all night in the sea-mists and on the slimy decks. Note
+their convenient dresses for going a-fishing, with trains that lie a
+yard along the ground, and goodly fringes,--all made to match, an
+apostolic fishing costume.[14] Note how Peter especially (whose
+chief glory was in his wet coat _girt_ about him and naked limbs)
+is enveloped in folds and fringes, so as to kneel and hold his keys
+with grace. No fire of coals at all, nor lonely mountain shore, but
+a pleasant Italian landscape, full of villas and churches, and a
+flock of sheep to be pointed at; and the whole group of Apostles,
+not round Christ, as they would have been naturally, but straggling
+away in a line, that they may all be shown.
+
+The simple truth is, that the moment we look at the picture we feel
+our belief of the whole thing taken away. There is, visibly, no
+possibility of that group ever having existed, in any place, or on any
+occasion. It is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded concoction of
+fringes, muscular arms, and curly heads of Greek philosophers.
+
+� 17. Now, the evil consequences of the acceptance of this kind of
+religious idealism for true, were instant and manifold. So far as it
+was received and trusted in by thoughtful persons, it only served to
+chill all the conceptions of sacred history which they might otherwise
+have obtained. Whatever they could have fancied for themselves about
+the wild, strange, infinitely stern, infinitely tender, infinitely
+varied veracities of the life of Christ, was blotted out by the vapid
+fineries of Raphael; the rough Galilean pilot, the orderly custom
+receiver, and all the questioning wonder and fire of uneducated
+apostleship, were obscured under an antique mask of philosophical
+faces and long robes. The feeble, subtle, suffering, ceaseless energy
+and humiliation of St. Paul were confused with an idea of a meditative
+Hercules leaning on a sweeping sword;[15] and the mighty presences of
+Moses and Elias were softened by introductions of delicate grace,
+adopted from dancing nymphs and rising Auroras,[16]
+
+Now, no vigorously minded religious person could possibly receive
+pleasure or help from such art as this; and the necessary result was
+the instant rejection of it by the healthy religion of the world.
+Raphael ministered, with applause, to the impious luxury of the
+Vatican, but was trampled under foot at once by every believing and
+advancing Christian of his own and subsequent times; and
+thenceforward pure Christianity and "high art" took separate roads,
+and fared on, as best they might, independently of each other.
+
+� 18. But although Calvin, and Knox, and Luther, and their flocks,
+with all the hardest-headed and truest-hearted faithful left in
+Christendom, thus spurned away the spurious art, and all art with it,
+(not without harm to themselves, such as a man must needs sustain in
+cutting off a decayed limb[17]) certain conditions of weaker
+Christianity suffered the false system to retain influence over them;
+and to this day, the clear and tasteless poison of the art of Raphael
+infects with sleep of infidelity the hearts of millions of Christians.
+It is the first cause of all that pre-eminent _dulness_ which
+characterizes what Protestants call sacred art; a dulness not merely
+baneful in making religion distasteful to the young, but in sickening,
+as we have seen, all vital belief of religion in the old. A dim sense
+of impossibility attaches itself always to the graceful emptiness of
+the representation; we feel instinctively that the painted Christ and
+painted apostle are not beings that ever did or could exist; and this
+fatal sense of fair fabulousness, and well-composed impossibility,
+steals gradually from the picture into the history, until we find
+ourselves reading St. Mark or St. Luke with the same admiring, but
+uninterested, incredulity, with which we contemplate Raphael.
+
+� 19. On a certain class of minds, however, these Raphaelesque and
+other sacred paintings of high order, have had, of late years,
+another kind of influence, much resembling that which they had at
+first on the most pious Romanists. They are used to excite certain
+conditions of religious dream or reverie; being again, as in
+earliest times, regarded not as representations of fact, but as
+expressions of sentiment respecting the fact. In this way the best
+of them have unquestionably much purifying and enchanting power; and
+they are helpful opponents to sinful passion and weakness of every
+kind. A fit of unjust anger, petty malice, unreasonable vexation, or
+dark passion, cannot certainly, in a mind of ordinary sensibility,
+hold its own in the presence of a good engraving from any work of
+Angelico, Memling, or Perugino. But I nevertheless believe, that he
+who trusts much to such helps will find them fail him at his need;
+and that the dependence, in any great degree, on the presence or
+power of a picture, indicates a wonderfully feeble sense of the
+presence and power of God. I do not think that any man, who is
+thoroughly certain that Christ is in the room, will care what sort
+of pictures of Christ he has on its walls; and, in the plurality of
+cases, the delight taken in art of this kind is, in reality, nothing
+more than a form of graceful indulgence of those sensibilities which
+the habits of a disciplined life restrain in other directions. Such
+art is, in a word, the opera and drama of the monk. Sometimes it is
+worse than this, and the love of it is the mask under which a
+general thirst for morbid excitement will pass itself for religion.
+The young lady who rises in the middle of the day, jaded by her last
+night's ball, and utterly incapable of any simple or wholesome
+religious exercise, can still gaze into the dark eyes of the Madonna
+di San Sisto, or dream over the whiteness of an ivory crucifix, and
+returns to the course of her daily life in full persuasion that her
+morning's feverishness has atoned for her evening's folly. And all
+the while, the art which possesses these very doubtful advantages is
+acting for undoubtful detriment, in the various ways above examined,
+on the inmost fastnesses of faith; it is throwing subtle endearments
+round foolish traditions, confusing sweet fancies with sound
+doctrines, obscuring real events with unlikely semblances, and
+enforcing false assertions with pleasant circumstantiality, until,
+to the usual, and assuredly sufficient, difficulties standing in the
+way of belief, its votaries have added a habit of sentimentally
+changing what they know to be true, and of dearly loving what they
+confess to be false.
+
+� 20. Has there, then (the reader asks emphatically), been _no_ true
+religious ideal? Has religious art never been of any service to
+mankind? I fear, on the whole, not. Of true religious ideal,
+representing events historically recorded, with solemn effort at a
+sincere and unartificial conception, there exist, as yet, hardly any
+examples. Nearly all good religious pictures fall into one or other
+branch of the false ideal already examined, either into the Angelican
+(passionate ideal) or the Raphaelesque (philosophical ideal). But there
+is one true form of religious art, nevertheless, in the pictures of the
+passionate ideal which represent imaginary beings of another world.
+Since it is evidently right that we should try to imagine the glories
+of the next world, and as this imagination must be, in each separate
+mind, more or less different, and unconfined by any laws of material
+fact, the passionate ideal has not only full scope here, but it becomes
+our duty to urge its powers to its utmost, so that every condition of
+beautiful form and color may be employed to invest these scenes with
+greater delightfulness (the whole being, of course, received as an
+assertion of possibility, not of absolute fact). All the paradises
+imagined by the religious painters--the choirs of glorified saints,
+angels, and spiritual powers, when painted with full belief in this
+possibility of their existence, are true ideals; and so far from our
+having dwelt on these too much, I believe, rather, we have not trusted
+them enough, nor accepted them enough, as possible statements of most
+precious truth. Nothing but unmixed good can accrue to any mind from
+the contemplation of Orcagna's Last Judgment or his triumph of death,
+of Angelico's Last Judgment and Paradise, or any of the scenes laid in
+heaven by the other faithful religious masters; and the more they are
+considered, not as works of art, but as real visions of real things,
+more or less imperfectly set down, the more good will be got by
+dwelling upon them. The same is true of all representations of Christ
+as a living presence among us now, as in Hunt's Light of the World.
+
+� 21. For the rest, there is a reality of conception in some of the
+works of Benozzo Gozzoli, Ghirlandajo, and Giotto, which approaches
+to a true ideal, even of recorded facts. But the examination of the
+various degrees in which sacred art has reached its proper power is
+not to our present purpose; still less, to investigate the
+infinitely difficult question of its past operation on the Christian
+mind. I hope to prosecute my inquiry into this subject in another
+work; it being enough here to mark the forms of ideal error,
+without historically tracing their extent, and to state generally
+that my impression is, up to the present moment, that the best
+religious art has been _hitherto_ rather a fruit, and attendant
+sign, of sincere Christianity than a promoter of or help to it.
+More, I think, has always been done for God by few words than many
+pictures, and more by few acts than many words.
+
+� 22. I must not, however, quit the subject without insisting on the
+chief practical consequence of what we have observed, namely, that
+sacred art, so far from being exhausted, has yet to attain the
+development of its highest branches; and the task, or privilege, yet
+remains for mankind, to produce an art which shall be at once entirely
+skilful and entirely _sincere_. All the histories of the Bible are, in
+my judgment, yet waiting to be painted. Moses has never been painted;
+Elijah never; David never (except as a mere ruddy stripling); Deborah
+never; Gideon never; Isaiah never. What single example does the reader
+remember of painting which suggested so much as the faintest shadow of
+these people, or of their deeds? Strong men in armor, or aged men with
+flowing beards, he _may_ remember, who, when he looked at his Louvre
+or Uffizii catalogue, he found were intended to stand for David or for
+Moses. But does he suppose that, if these pictures had suggested to
+him the feeblest image of the presence of such men, he would have
+passed on, as he assuredly did, to the next picture,--representing,
+doubtless, Diana and Actaeon, or Cupid and the Graces, or a gambling
+quarrel in a pothouse,--with no sense of pain, or surprise? Let him
+meditate over the matter, and he will find ultimately that what I say
+is true, and that religious art, at once complete and sincere, never
+yet has existed.
+
+� 23. It will exist: nay, I believe the era of its birth has come,
+and that those bright Turnerian imageries, which the European public
+declared to be "dotage," and those calm Pre-Raphaelite studies
+which, in like manner, it pronounced "puerility," form the first
+foundation that has been ever laid for true sacred art. Of this we
+shall presently reason farther. But, be it as it may, if we would
+cherish the hope that sacred art may, indeed, arise for _us_, two
+separate cautions are to be addressed to the two opposed classes of
+religionists whose influence will chiefly retard that hope's
+accomplishment. The group calling themselves Evangelical ought no
+longer to render their religion an offence to men of the world by
+associating it only with the most vulgar forms of art. It is not
+necessary that they should admit either music or painting into
+religious service; but, if they admit either the one or the other,
+let it not be bad music nor bad painting: it is certainly in nowise
+more for Christ's honor that His praise should be sung discordantly,
+or His miracles painted discreditably, than that His word should be
+preached ungrammatically. Some Evangelicals, however, seem to take a
+morbid pride in the triple degradation.[18]
+
+� 24. The opposite class of men, whose natural instincts lead them to
+mingle the refinements of art with all the offices and practices of
+religion, are to be warned, on the contrary, how they mistake their
+enjoyments for their duties, or confound poetry with faith. I admit
+that it is impossible for one man to judge another in this matter, and
+that it can never be said with certainty how far what seems frivolity
+may be force, and what seems the indulgence of the heart may be,
+indeed, its dedication. I am ready to believe that Metastasio, expiring
+in a canzonet, may have died better than if his prayer had been in
+unmeasured syllables.[19] But, for the most part, it is assuredly much
+to be feared lest we mistake a surrender to the charms of art for one
+to the service of God; and, in the art which we permit, lest we
+substitute sentiment for sense, grace for utility. And for us all there
+is in this matter even a deeper danger than that of indulgence. There
+is the danger of Artistical Pharisaism. Of all the forms of pride and
+vanity, as there are none more subtle, so I believe there are none more
+sinful, than those which are manifested by the Pharisees of art. To be
+proud of birth, of place, of wit, of bodily beauty, is comparatively
+innocent, just because such pride is more natural, and more easily
+detected. But to be proud of our sanctities; to pour contempt upon our
+fellows, because, forsooth, we like to look at Madonnas in bowers of
+roses, better than at plain pictures of plain things; and to make this
+religious art of ours the expression of our own perpetual
+self-complacency,--congratulating ourselves, day by day, on our
+purities, proprieties, elevations, and inspirations, as above the reach
+of common mortals,--this I believe to be one of the wickedest and
+foolishest forms of human egotism; and, truly, I had rather, with
+great, thoughtless, humble Paul Veronese, make the Supper at Emmaus a
+background for two children playing with a dog (as, God knows, men do
+usually put it in the background to everything, if not out of sight
+altogether), than join that school of modern Germanism which wears its
+pieties for decoration as women wear their diamonds, and flaunts the
+dry fleeces of its phylacteries between its dust and the dew of heaven.
+
+  [10] The curious inequality of this little trefoil is not a
+       mistake; it is faithfully copied by the draughtsman from the
+       MS. Perhaps the actual date of the illumination may be a year
+       or two past the thirteenth century, i.e., 1300--1310: but it
+       is quite characteristic of the thirteenth century treatment in
+       the figures.
+
+  [11] Lombardic, i.e. in the style of Pietro and Tullio Lombardo,
+       in the fifteenth century (not _Lombard_).
+
+  [12] All this, it will be observed, is that seeking for beauty at
+       the cost of truth which we have generally noted in the last
+       chapter.
+
+  [13] This is one form of the sacrifice of expression to technical
+       merit, generally noted at the end of the 10th paragraph of the
+       last chapter.
+
+  [14] I suppose Raphael intended a reference to Numbers xv. 38; but
+       if he did, the _blue_ riband, or "vitta," as it is in the
+       Vulgate, should have been on the borders too.
+
+  [15] In the St. Cecilia of Bologna.
+
+  [16] In the Transfiguration. Do but try to believe that Moses and
+       Elias are really there talking with Christ. Moses in the
+       loveliest heart and midst of the land which once it had been
+       denied him to behold,--Elijah treading the earth again, from
+       which he had been swept to heaven in fire; both now with a
+       mightier message than ever they had given in life,--mightier,
+       in closing their own mission,--mightier, in speaking to
+       Christ "of His decease, which He should accomplish at
+       Jerusalem." They, men of like passions once with us,
+       appointed to speak to the Redeemer of His death.
+
+       And, then, look at Raphael's kicking gracefulnesses.
+
+  [17] Luther had no dislike of religious art on principle. Even the
+       stove in his chamber was wrought with sacred subjects. See
+       Mrs. Stowe's Sunny Memories.
+
+  [18] I do not know anything more humiliating to a man of common
+       sense, than to open what is called an "illustrated Bible" of
+       modern days. See, for instance, the plates in Brown's Bible
+       (octavo: Edinburgh, 1840), a standard evangelical edition.
+       Our habit of reducing the psalms to doggerel before we will
+       condescend to sing them, is a parallel abuse. It is
+       marvellous to think that human creatures with tongues and
+       souls should refuse to chant the verse: "Before Ephraim,
+       Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up thy strength, and come and
+       help us;" preferring this:--
+
+           "Behold, how Benjamin expects,
+             With Ephraim and Manasseh joined,
+           In their deliverance, the effects
+             Of thy resistless strength to find!"
+
+  [19] "En 1780, �g� de quatre-vingt-deux ans, au moment de recevoir
+       le viatique, il rassembla ses forces, et chanta, � son Cr�ateur:
+
+           'Eterno Genitor
+           Io t' offro il proprio figlio
+           Che in pegno del tuo amor
+           Si vuole a me donar.
+
+           A lui rivolgi il ciglio,
+           Mira chi t' offro; e poi,
+           Niega, Signor, se puoi,
+           Niega di perdonar.'"--
+                      --DE STENDHAL, _Via de Metastasio_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+OF THE FALSE IDEAL:--SECONDLY, PROFANE.
+
+
+� 1. Such having been the effects of the pursuit of ideal beauty on
+the religious mind of Europe, we might be tempted next to consider
+in what way the same movement affected the art which concerned
+itself with profane subject, and, through that art, the whole temper
+of modern civilization.
+
+I shall, however, merely glance at this question. It is a very
+painful and a very wide one. Its discussion cannot come properly
+within the limits, or even within the aim, of a work like this; it
+ought to be made the subject of a separate essay, and that essay
+should be written by some one who had passed less of his life than I
+have among the mountains, and more of it among men. But one or two
+points may be suggested for the reader to reflect upon at his
+leisure.
+
+� 2. I said just now that we might be tempted to consider how this
+pursuit of the ideal _affected_ profane art. Strictly speaking, it
+brought that art into existence. As long as men sought for truth
+first, and beauty secondarily, they cared chiefly, of course, for
+the _chief_ truth, and all art was instinctively religious. But as
+soon as they sought for beauty first, and truth secondarily, they
+were punished by losing sight of spiritual truth altogether, and the
+profane (properly so called) schools of art were instantly
+developed.
+
+The perfect human beauty, which, to a large part of the community,
+was by far the most interesting feature in the work of the rising
+school, might indeed be in some degree consistent with the agony of
+Madonnas, and the repentance of Magdalenes; but could not be
+exhibited in fulness, when the subjects, however irreverently
+treated, nevertheless demanded some decency in the artist, and some
+gravity in the spectator. The newly acquired powers of rounding
+limbs, and tinting lips, had too little scope in the sanctities
+even of the softest womanhood; and the newly acquired conceptions of
+the nobility of nakedness could in no wise be expressed beneath the
+robes of the prelate or the sackcloth of the recluse. But the source
+from which these ideas had been received afforded also full field
+for their expression; the heathen mythology, which had furnished the
+examples of these heights of art, might again become the subject of
+the inspirations it had kindled;--with the additional advantage that
+it could now be delighted in, without being believed; that its
+errors might be indulged, unrepressed by its awe; and those of its
+deities whose function was temptation might be worshipped, in scorn
+of those whose hands were charged with chastisement.
+
+So, at least, men dreamed in their foolishness,--to find, as the
+ages wore on, that the returning Apollo bore not only his lyre, but
+his arrows; and that at the instant of Cytherea's resurrection to
+the sunshine, Persephone had reascended her throne in the deep.
+
+� 3. Little thinking this, they gave themselves up fearlessly to the
+chase of the new delight, and exhausted themselves in the pursuit of
+an ideal now doubly false. Formerly, though they attempted to reach
+an unnatural beauty, it was yet in representing historical facts and
+real persons; _now_ they sought for the same unnatural beauty in
+representing tales which they knew to be fictitious, and personages
+who they knew had never existed. Such a state of things had never
+before been found in any nation. Every people till then had painted
+the acts of their kings, the triumphs of their armies, the beauty of
+their race, or the glory of their gods. They showed the things they
+had seen or done; the beings they truly loved or faithfully adored.
+But the ideal art of modern Europe was the shadow of a shadow; and
+with mechanism substituted for perception, and bodily beauty for
+spiritual life, it set itself to represent men it had never seen,
+customs it had never practised, and gods in whom it had never
+believed.
+
+� 4. Such art could of course have no help from the virtues, nor
+claim on the energies of men. It necessarily rooted itself in their
+vices and their idleness; and of their vices principally in two,
+pride and sensuality. To the pride, was attached eminently the art
+of architecture; to the sensuality, those of painting and sculpture.
+Of the fall of architecture, as resultant from the formalist pride
+of its patrons and designers, I have spoken elsewhere. The
+sensualist ideal, as seen in painting and sculpture, remains to be
+examined here. But one interesting circumstance is to be observed
+with respect to the manner of the separation of these arts. Pride,
+being wholly a vice, and in every phase inexcusable, wholly betrayed
+and destroyed the art which was founded on it. But passion, having
+some root and use in healthy nature, and only becoming guilty in
+excess, did not altogether destroy the art founded upon it. The
+architecture of Palladio is wholly virtueless and despicable. Not so
+the Venus of Titian, nor the Antiope of Correggio.
+
+� 5. We find, then, at the close of the sixteenth century, the arts
+of painting and sculpture wholly devoted to entertain the indolent
+and satiate the luxurious. To effect these noble ends, they took a
+thousand different forms; painting, however, of course being the
+most complying, aiming sometimes at mere amusement by deception in
+landscapes, or minute imitation of natural objects; sometimes giving
+more piquant excitement in battle-pieces full of slaughter, or
+revels deep in drunkenness; sometimes entering upon serious
+subjects, for the sake of grotesque fiends and picturesque infernos,
+or that it might introduce pretty children as cherubs, and handsome
+women as Magdalenes and Maries of Egypt, or portraits of patrons in
+the character of the more decorous saints: but more frequently, for
+direct flatteries of this kind, recurring to Pagan mythology, and
+painting frail ladies as goddesses or graces, and foolish kings in
+radiant apotheosis; while, for the earthly delight of the persons
+whom it honored as divine, it ransacked the records of luscious
+fable, and brought back, in fullest depth of dye and flame of fancy,
+the impurest dreams of the un-Christian ages.
+
+� 6. Meanwhile, the art of sculpture, less capable of ministering to
+mere amusement, was more or less reserved for the affectations of
+taste; and the study of the classical statues introduced various ideas
+on the subjects of "purity," "chastity," and "dignity," such as it was
+possible for people to entertain who were themselves impure, luxurious,
+and ridiculous. It is a matter of extreme difficulty to explain the
+exact character of this modern sculpturesque ideal; but its relation
+to the true ideal may be best understood by considering it as in exact
+parallelism with the relation of the word "taste" to the word "love."
+Wherever the word "taste" is used with respect to matters of art, it
+indicates either that the thing spoken of belongs to some inferior
+class of objects, or that the person speaking has a false conception of
+its nature. For, consider the exact sense in which a work of art is
+said to be "in good or bad taste." It does not mean that it is true, or
+false; that it is beautiful, or ugly; but that it does or does not
+comply either with the laws of choice, which are enforced by certain
+modes of life; or the habits of mind produced by a particular sort of
+education. It does not mean merely fashionable, that is, complying with
+a momentary caprice of the upper classes; but it means agreeing with
+the habitual sense which the most refined education, common to those
+upper classes at the period, gives to their whole mind. Now, therefore,
+so far as that education does indeed tend to make the senses delicate,
+and the perceptions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased
+with quiet instead of gaudy color, and with graceful instead of coarse
+form; and, by long acquaintance with the best things, to discern
+quickly what is fine from what is common;--so far, acquired taste is an
+honorable faculty, and it is true praise of anything to say it is "in
+good taste." But so far as this higher education has a tendency to
+narrow the sympathies and harden the heart, diminishing the interest of
+all beautiful things by familiarity, until even what is best can hardly
+please, and what is brightest hardly entertain;--so far as it fosters
+pride, and leads men to found the pleasure they take in anything, not
+on the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in which it indicates
+some greatness of their own (as people build marble porticos, and inlay
+marble floors, not so much because they like the colors of marble, or
+find it pleasant to the foot, as because such porches and floors are
+costly, and separated in all human eyes from plain entrances of stone
+and timber);--so far as it leads people to prefer gracefulness of
+dress, manner, and aspect, to value of substance and heart, liking a
+well said thing better than a true thing, and a well trained manner
+better than a sincere one, and a delicately formed face better than a
+good-natured one, and in all other ways and things setting custom and
+semblance above everlasting truth;--so far, finally, as it induces a
+sense of inherent distinction between class and class, and causes
+everything to be more or less despised which has no social rank, so
+that the affection, pleasure, or grief of a clown are looked upon as of
+no interest compared with the affection and grief of a well-bred
+man;--just so far, in all these several ways, the feeling induced by
+what is called a "liberal education" is utterly adverse to the
+understanding of noble art; and the name which is given to the
+feeling,--Taste, Go�t, Gusto,--in all languages, indicates the baseness
+of it, for it implies that art gives only a kind of pleasure analogous
+to that derived from eating by the palate.
+
+� 7. Modern education, not in art only, but in all other things
+referable to the same standard, has invariably given taste in this bad
+sense; it has given fastidiousness of choice without judgment,
+superciliousness of manner without dignity, refinement of habit without
+purity, grace of expression without sincerity, and desire of loveliness
+without love; and the modern "Ideal" of high art is a curious mingling
+of the gracefulness and reserve of the drawingroom with a certain
+measure of classical sensuality. Of this last element, and the singular
+artifices by which vice succeeds in combining it with what appears to
+be pure and severe, it would take us long to reason fully; I would
+rather leave the reader to follow out for himself the consideration of
+the influence, in this direction, of statues, bronzes, and paintings,
+as at present employed by the upper circles of London, and (especially)
+Paris; and this not so much in the works which are really fine, as in
+the multiplied coarse copies of them; taking the widest range, from
+Dannaeker's Ariadne down to the amorous shepherd and shepherdess in
+china on the drawingroom time-piece, rigidly questioning, in each case,
+how far the charm of the art does indeed depend on some appeal to the
+inferior passions. Let it be considered, for instance, exactly how far
+the value of a picture of a girl's head by Greuze would be lowered in
+the market, if the dress, which now leaves the bosom bare, were raised
+to the neck; and how far, in the commonest lithograph of some utterly
+popular subject,--for instance, the teaching of Uncle Tom by Eva,--the
+sentiment which is supposed to be excited by the exhibition of
+Christianity in youth is complicated with that which depends upon Eva's
+having a dainty foot and a well-made satin slipper;--and then, having
+completely determined for himself how far the element exists, consider
+farther, whether, when art is thus frequent (for frequent he will
+assuredly find it to be) in its appeal to the lower passions, it is
+likely to attain the highest order of merit, or be judged by the truest
+standards of judgment. For, of all the causes which have combined, in
+modern times, to lower the rank of art, I believe this to be one of the
+most fatal; while, reciprocally, it may be questioned how far society
+suffers, in its turn, from the influences possessed over it by the arts
+it has degraded. It seems to me a subject of the very deepest interest
+to determine what has been the effect upon the European nations of the
+great change by which art became again capable of ministering
+delicately to the lower passions, as it had in the worst days of Rome;
+how far, indeed, in all ages, the fall of nations may be attributed to
+art's arriving at this particular stage among them. I do not mean that,
+in any of its stages, it is incapable of being employed for evil, but
+that assuredly an Egyptian, Spartan, or Norman was unexposed to the
+kind of temptation which is continually offered by the delicate
+painting and sculpture of modern days; and, although the diseased
+imagination might complete the imperfect image of beauty from the
+colored image on the wall,[20] or the most revolting thoughts be
+suggested by the mocking barbarism of the Gothic sculpture, their hard
+outline and rude execution were free from all the subtle treachery
+which now fills the flushed canvas and the rounded marble.
+
+� 8. I cannot, however, pursue this inquiry here. For our present
+purpose it is enough to note that the feeling, in itself so debased,
+branches upwards into that of which, while no one has cause to be
+ashamed, no one, on the other hand, has cause to be proud, namely, the
+admiration of physical beauty in the human form, as distinguished from
+expression of character. Every one can easily appreciate the merit of
+regular features and well-formed limbs, but it requires some attention,
+sympathy, and sense, to detect the charm of passing expression, or
+life-disciplined character. The beauty of the Apollo Belvidere, or
+Venus de Medicis, is perfectly palpable to any shallow fine lady or
+fine gentleman, though they would have perceived none in the face of an
+old weather-beaten St. Peter, or a grey-haired "Grandmother Lois." The
+knowledge that long study is necessary to produce these regular types
+of the human form renders the facile admiration matter of eager
+self-complacency; the shallow spectator, delighted that he can really,
+and without hypocrisy, admire what required much thought to produce,
+supposes himself endowed with the highest critical faculties, and
+easily lets himself be carried into rhapsodies about the "ideal,"
+which, when all is said, if they be accurately examined, will be found
+literally to mean nothing more than that the figure has got handsome
+calves to its legs, and a straight nose.
+
+� 9. That they do mean, in reality, nothing more than this may be
+easily ascertained by watching the taste of the same persons in other
+things. The fashionable lady who will write five or six pages in her
+diary respecting the effect upon her mind of such and such an "ideal"
+in marble, will have her drawing room table covered with Books of
+Beauty, in which the engravings represent the human form in every
+possible aspect of distortion and affectation; and the connoisseur who,
+in the morning, pretends to the most exquisite taste in the antique,
+will be seen, in the evening, in his opera-stall, applauding the least
+graceful gestures of the least modest figurante.
+
+� 10. But even this vulgar pursuit of physical beauty (vulgar in the
+profoundest sense, for there is no vulgarity like the vulgarity of
+education) would be less contemptible if it really succeeded in its
+object; but, like all pursuits carried to inordinate length, it
+defeats itself. Physical beauty _is_ a noble thing when it is seen
+in perfectness; but the manner in which the moderns pursue their
+ideal prevents their ever really seeing what they are always
+seeking; for, requiring that all forms should be regular and
+faultless, they permit, or even compel, their painters and sculptors
+to work chiefly by rule, altering their models to fit their
+preconceived notions of what is right. When such artists look at a
+face, they do not give it the attention necessary to discern what
+beauty is already in its peculiar features; but only to see how
+best it may be altered into something for which they have themselves
+laid down the laws. Nature never unveils her beauty to such a gaze.
+She keeps whatever she has done best, close sealed, until it is
+regarded with reverence. To the painter who honors her, she will
+open a revelation in the face of a street mendicant; but in the work
+of the painter who alters her, she will make Portia become ignoble
+and Perdita graceless.
+
+� 11. Nor is the effect less for evil on the mind of the general
+observer. The lover of ideal beauty, with all his conceptions
+narrowed by rule, never looks carefully enough upon the features
+which do not come under his law (or any others), to discern the
+inner beauty in them. The strange intricacies about the lines of the
+lips, and marvellous shadows and watch-fires of the eye, and
+wavering traceries of the eyelash, and infinite modulations of the
+brow, wherein high humanity is embodied, are all invisible to him.
+He finds himself driven back at last, with all his idealism, to the
+lionne of the ball-room, whom youth and passion can as easily
+distinguish as his utmost critical science; whereas, the observer
+who has accustomed himself to take human faces as God made them,
+will often find as much beauty on a village green as in the proudest
+room of state, and as much in the free seats of a church aisle, as
+in all the sacred paintings of the Vatican or the Pitti.
+
+� 12. Then, farther, the habit of disdaining ordinary truth, and
+seeking to alter it so as to fit the fancy of the beholder,
+gradually infects the mind in all its other operation; so that it
+begins to propose to itself an ideal in history, an ideal in general
+narration, an ideal in portraiture and description, and in every
+thing else where truth may be painful or uninteresting; with the
+necessary result of more or less weakness, wickedness, and
+uselessness in all that is done or said, with the desire of
+concealing this painful truth. And, finally, even when truth is not
+intentionally concealed, the pursuer of idealism will pass his days
+in false and useless trains of thought, pluming himself, all the
+while, upon his superiority therein to the rest of mankind. A modern
+German, without either invention or sense, seeing a rapid in a
+river, will immediately devote the remainder of the day to the
+composition of dialogues between amorous water nymphs and unhappy
+mariners; while the man of true invention, power, and sense will,
+instead, set himself to consider whether the rocks in the river
+could have their points knocked off, or the boats upon it be made
+with stronger bottoms.
+
+� 13. Of this final baseness of the false ideal, its miserable waste of
+time, strength, and available intellect of man, by turning, as I have
+said above, innocence of pastime into seriousness of occupation, it is,
+of course, hardly possible to sketch out even so much as the leading
+manifestations. The vain and haughty projects of youth for future life;
+the giddy reveries of insatiable self exaltation; the discontented
+dreams of what might have been or should be, instead of the thankful
+understanding of what is; the casting about for sources of interest in
+senseless fiction, instead of the real human histories of the people
+round us; the prolongation from age to age of romantic historical
+deceptions instead of sifted truth; the pleasures taken in fanciful
+portraits of rural or romantic life in poetry and on the stage, without
+the smallest effort to rescue the living rural population of the world
+from its ignorance or misery; the excitement of the feelings by labored
+imagination of spirits, fairies, monsters, and demons, issuing in total
+blindness of heart and sight to the true presences of beneficent or
+destructive spiritual powers around us; in fine, the constant
+abandonment of all the straightforward paths of sense and duty, for
+fear of losing some of the enticement of ghostly joys, or trampling
+somewhat "sopra lor vanit�, che par persona;" all these various forms
+of false idealism have so entangled the modern mind, often called, I
+suppose ironically, practical, that truly I believe there never yet was
+idolatry of stock or staff so utterly unholy as this our idolatry of
+shadows; nor can I think that, of those who burnt incense under oaks,
+and poplars, and elms, because "the shadow thereof was good," it could
+in any wise be more justly or sternly declared than of us--"The wind
+hath bound them up in her wings, and they shall be ashamed because of
+their sacrifices."[21]
+
+  [20] Ezek. xxiii. 14.
+
+  [21] Hosea, chap. iv. 12, 13, and 19.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+OF THE TRUE IDEAL:--FIRST, PURIST.
+
+
+� 1. Having thus glanced at the principal modes in which the
+imagination works for evil, we must rapidly note also the principal
+directions in which its operation is admissible, even in changing or
+strangely combining what is brought within its sphere.
+
+For hitherto we have spoken as if every change wilfully wrought by
+the imagination was an error; apparently implying that its only
+proper work was to summon up the memories of past events, and the
+anticipations of future ones, under aspects which would bear the
+sternest tests of historical investigation, or abstract reasoning.
+And in general this is, indeed, its noblest work. Nevertheless, it
+has also permissible functions peculiarly its own, and certain
+rights of feigning, and adorning, and fancifully arranging,
+inalienable from its nature. Everything that is natural is, within
+certain limits, right; and we must take care not, in over-severity,
+to deprive ourselves of any refreshing or animating power ordained
+to be in us for our help.
+
+� 2. (A). It was noted in speaking above of the Angelican or
+passionate ideal, that there was a certain virtue in it dependent on
+the expression of its loving enthusiasm. (Chap. IV. � 10.)
+
+(B). In speaking of the pursuit of beauty as one of the
+characteristics of the highest art, it was also said that there were
+certain ways of showing this beauty by gathering together, without
+altering, the finest forms, and marking them by gentle emphasis.
+(Chap. III. � 15.)
+
+(C). And in speaking of the true uses of imagination it was said, that
+we might be allowed to create for ourselves, in innocent play, fairies
+and naiads, and other such fictitious creatures. (Chap. IV. � 5.)
+
+Now this loving enthusiasm, which seeks for a beauty fit to be the
+object of eternal love; this inventive skill, which kindly displays
+what exists around us in the world; and this playful energy of
+thought which delights in various conditions of the impossible, are
+three forms of idealism more or less connected with the three
+tendencies of the artistical mind which I had occasion to explain in
+the chapter on the Nature of Gothic, in the Stones of Venice. It was
+there pointed out, that, the things around us containing mixed good
+and evil, certain men chose the good and left the evil (thence
+properly called Purists); others received both good and evil
+together (thence properly called Naturalists); and others had a
+tendency to choose the evil and leave the good, whom, for
+convenience' sake, I termed Sensualists. I do not mean to say that
+painters of fairies and naiads must belong to this last and lowest
+class, or habitually choose the evil and leave the good; but there
+is, nevertheless, a strange connection between the reinless play of
+the imagination, and a sense of the presence of evil, which is
+usually more or less developed in those creations of the imagination
+to which we properly attach the word _Grotesque_.
+
+For this reason, we shall find it convenient to arrange what we have
+to note respecting true idealism under the three heads--
+
+  A. Purist Idealism.
+  B. Naturalist Idealism.
+  C. Grotesque Idealism.
+
+� 3. A. Purist Idealism.--It results from the unwillingness of men
+whose dispositions are more than ordinarily tender and holy, to
+contemplate the various forms of definite evil which necessarily
+occur in the daily aspects of the world around them. They shrink
+from them as from pollution, and endeavor to create for themselves
+an imaginary state, in which pain and imperfection either do not
+exist, or exist in some edgeless and enfeebled condition.
+
+As, however, pain and imperfection are, by eternal laws, bound up
+with existence, so far as it is visible to us, the endeavor to cast
+them away invariably indicates a comparative childishness of mind,
+and produces a childish form of art. In general, the effort is most
+successful when it is most na�ve, and when the ignorance of the
+draughtsman is in some frank proportion to his innocence. For
+instance, one of the modes of treatment, the most conducive to this
+ideal expression, is simply drawing everything without shadows, as
+if the sun were everywhere at once. This, in the present state of
+our knowledge, we could not do with grace, because we could not do
+it without fear or shame. But an artist of the thirteenth century
+did it with no disturbance of conscience,--knowing no better, or
+rather, in some sense, we might say, knowing no worse. It is,
+however, evident, at first thought, that all representations of
+nature without evil must either be ideals of a future world, or be
+false ideals, if they are understood to be representations of facts.
+They can only be classed among the branches of the true ideal, in so
+far as they are understood to be nothing more than expressions of
+the painter's personal affections or hopes.
+
+� 4. Let us take one or two instances in order clearly to explain
+our meaning.
+
+The life of Angelico was almost entirely spent in the endeavor to
+imagine the beings belonging to another world. By purity of life,
+habitual elevation of thought, and natural sweetness of disposition,
+he was enabled to express the sacred affections upon the human
+countenance as no one ever did before or since. In order to effect
+clearer distinction between heavenly beings and those of this world,
+he represents the former as clothed in draperies of the purest
+color, crowned with glories of burnished gold, and entirely
+shadowless. With exquisite choice of gesture, and disposition of
+folds of drapery, this mode of treatment gives perhaps the best idea
+of spiritual beings which the human mind is capable of forming. It
+is, therefore, a true ideal;[22] but the mode in which it is arrived
+at (being so far mechanical and contradictory of the appearances of
+nature) necessarily precludes those who practise it from being
+complete masters of their art. It is always childish, but beautiful
+in its childishness.
+
+� 5. The works of our own Stothard are examples of the operation of
+another mind, singular in gentleness and purity, upon mere worldly
+subject. It seems as if Stothard could not conceive wickedness,
+coarseness, or baseness; every one of his figures looks as if it had
+been copied from some creature who had never harbored an unkind
+thought, or permitted itself in an ignoble action. With this immense
+love of mental purity is joined, in Stothard, a love of mere
+physical smoothness and softness, so that he lived in a universe of
+soft grass and stainless fountains, tender trees, and stones at
+which no foot could stumble.
+
+All this is very beautiful, and may sometimes urge us to an endeavor
+to make the world itself more like the conception of the painter. At
+least, in the midst of its malice, misery, and baseness, it is often a
+relief to glance at the graceful shadows, and take, for momentary
+companionship, creatures full only of love, gladness, and honor. But
+the perfect truth will at last vindicate itself against the partial
+truth; the help which we can gain from the unsubstantial vision will
+be only like that which we may sometimes receive, in weariness, from
+the scent of a flower or the passing of a breeze. For all firm aid and
+steady use, we must look to harder realities; and, as far as the
+painter himself is regarded, we can only receive such work as the sign
+of an amiable imbecility. It is indeed ideal; but ideal as a fair
+dream is in the dawn of morning, before the faculties are astir. The
+apparent completeness of grace can never be attained without much
+definite falsification as well as omission; stones, over which we
+cannot stumble, must be ill-drawn stones; trees, which are all
+gentleness and softness, cannot be trees of wood; nor companies
+without evil in them, companies of flesh and blood. The habit of
+falsification (with whatever aim) begins always in dulness and ends
+always in incapacity; nothing can be more pitiable than any endeavor
+by Stothard to express facts beyond his own sphere of soft pathos or
+graceful mirth, and nothing more unwise than the aim at a similar
+ideality by any painter who has power to render a sincerer truth.
+
+� 6. I remember another interesting example of ideality on this same
+root, but belonging to another branch of it, in the works of a young
+German painter, which I saw some time ago in a London drawingroom.
+He had been travelling in Italy, and had brought home a portfolio of
+sketches remarkable alike for their fidelity and purity. Every one
+was a laborious and accurate study of some particular spot. Every
+cottage, every cliff, every tree, at the site chosen, had been
+drawn; and drawn with palpable sincerity of portraiture, and yet in
+such a spirit that it was impossible to conceive that any sin or
+misery had ever entered into one of the scenes he had represented;
+and the volcanic horrors of Radicofani, the pestilent gloom of the
+Pontines, and the boundless despondency of the Campagna became under
+his hand, only various appearances of Paradise.
+
+It was very interesting to observe the minute emendations or
+omissions by which this was effected. To set the tiles the slightest
+degree more in order upon a cottage roof; to insist upon the
+vine-leaves at the window, and let the shadow which fell from them
+naturally conceal the rent in the wall; to draw all the flowers in
+the foreground, and miss the weeds; to draw all the folds of the
+white clouds, and miss those of the black ones; to mark the graceful
+branches of the trees, and, in one way or another, beguile the eye
+from those which were ungainly; to give every peasant-girl whose
+face was visible the expression of an angel, and every one whose
+back was turned the bearing of a princess; finally, to give a
+general look of light, clear organization, and serene vitality to
+every feature in the landscape;--such were his artifices, and such
+his delights. It was impossible not to sympathize deeply with the
+spirit of such a painter; and it was just cause for gratitude to be
+permitted to travel, as it were, through Italy with such a friend.
+But his work had, nevertheless, its stern limitations and marks of
+everlasting inferiority. Always soothing and pathetic, it could
+never be sublime, never perfectly nor entrancingly beautiful; for
+the narrow spirit of correction could not cast itself fully into any
+scene; the calm cheerfulness which shrank from the shadow of the
+cypress, and the distortion of the olive, could not enter into the
+brightness of the sky that they pierced, nor the softness of the
+bloom that they bore: for every sorrow that his heart turned from,
+he lost a consolation; for every fear which he dared not confront,
+he lost a portion of his hardiness; the unsceptred sweep of the
+storm-clouds, the fair freedom of glancing shower and flickering
+sunbeam, sank into sweet rectitudes and decent formalisms; and,
+before eyes that refused to be dazzled or darkened, the hours of
+sunset wreathed their rays unheeded, and the mists of the Apennines
+spread their blue veils in vain.
+
+� 7. To this inherent shortcoming and narrowness of reach the farther
+defect was added, that this work gave no useful representation of the
+state of facts in the country which it pretended to contemplate. It was
+not only wanting in all the higher elements of beauty, but wholly
+unavailable for instruction of any kind beyond that which exists in
+pleasurableness of pure emotion. And considering what cost of labor was
+devoted to the series of drawings, it could not but be matter for grave
+blame, as well as for partial contempt, that a man of amiable feeling
+and considerable intellectual power should thus expend his life in the
+declaration of his own petty pieties and pleasant reveries, leaving the
+burden of human sorrow unwitnessed; and the power of God's judgments
+unconfessed; and, while poor Italy lay wounded and moaning at his feet,
+pass by, in priestly calm, lest the whiteness of his decent vesture
+should be spotted with unhallowed blood.
+
+� 8. Of several other forms of Purism I shall have to speak
+hereafter, more especially of that exhibited in the landscapes of
+the early religious painters; but these examples are enough, for the
+present, to show the general principle that the purest ideal, though
+in some measure true, in so far as it springs from the true longings
+of an earnest mind, is yet necessarily in many things deficient or
+blamable, and _always_ an indication of some degree of weakness in
+the mind pursuing it. But, on the other hand, it is to be noted that
+entire scorn of this purist ideal is the sign of a far greater
+weakness. Multitudes of petty artists, incapable of any noble
+sensation whatever, but acquainted, in a dim way, with the
+technicalities of the schools, mock at the art whose depths they
+cannot fathom, and whose motives they cannot comprehend, but of
+which they can easily detect the imperfections, and deride the
+simplicities. Thus poor fumigatory Fuseli, with an art composed of
+the tinsel of the stage and the panics of the nursery, speaks
+contemptuously of the name of Angelico as "dearer to sanctity than
+to art." And a large portion of the resistance to the noble
+Pre-Raphaelite movement of our own days has been offered by men who
+suppose the entire function of the artist in this world to consist
+in laying on color with a large brush, and surrounding dashes of
+flake white with bituminous brown; men whose entire capacities of
+brain, soul, and sympathy, applied industriously to the end of their
+lives, would not enable them, at last, to paint so much as one of
+the leaves of the nettles at the bottom of Hunt's picture of the
+Light of the World.[23]
+
+� 9. It is finally to be remembered, therefore, that Purism is always
+noble when it is _instinctive_. It is not the greatest thing that can
+be done, but it is probably the greatest thing that the man who does
+it can do, provided it comes from his heart. True, it is a sign of
+weakness, but it is not in our choice whether we will be weak or
+strong; and there is a certain strength which can only be made perfect
+in weakness. If he is working in humility, fear of evil, desire of
+beauty, and sincere purity of purpose and thought, he will produce
+good and helpful things; but he must be much on his guard against
+supposing himself to be greater than his fellows, because he has shut
+himself into this calm and cloistered sphere. His only safety lies in
+knowing himself to be, on the contrary, _less_ than his fellows, and
+in always striving, so far as he can find it in his heart, to extend
+his delicate narrowness towards the great naturalist ideal. The whole
+group of modern German purists have lost themselves, because they
+founded their work not on humility, nor on religion, but on small
+self-conceit. Incapable of understanding the great Venetians, or any
+other masters of true imaginative power, and having fed what mind they
+had with weak poetry and false philosophy, they thought themselves the
+best and greatest of artistic mankind, and expected to found a new
+school of painting in pious plagiarism and delicate pride. It is
+difficult at first to decide which is the more worthless, the
+spiritual affectation of the petty German, or the composition and
+chiaroscuro of the petty Englishman; on the whole, however, the latter
+have lightest weight, for the pseudo-religious painter must, at all
+events, pass much of his time in meditation upon solemn subjects, and
+in examining venerable models; and may sometimes even cast a little
+useful reflected light, or touch the heart with a pleasant echo.
+
+  [22] As noted above in Chap. IV � 20.
+
+  [23] Not that the Pre-Raphaelite is a purist movement, it is stern
+       naturalist; but its unfortunate opposers, who neither know
+       what nature is, nor what purism is, have mistaken the simple
+       nature for morbid purism, and therefore cried out against it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+OF THE TRUE IDEAL:--SECONDLY, NATURALIST.
+
+
+� 1. We now enter on the consideration of that central and highest
+branch of ideal art which concerns itself simply with things as they
+ARE, and accepts, in all of them, alike the evil and the good. The
+question is, therefore, how the art which represents things simply as
+they are, can be called ideal at all. How does it meet that
+requirement stated in Chap. III. � 4, as imperative on all great art,
+that it shall be inventive, and a product of the imagination? It meets
+it preeminently by that power of arrangement which I have endeavored,
+at great length and with great pains, to define accurately in the
+chapter on Imagination associative in the second volume. That is to
+say, accepting the weaknesses, faults, and wrongnesses in all things
+that it sees, it so places and harmonizes them that they form a noble
+whole, in which the imperfection of each several part is not only
+harmless, but absolutely essential, and yet in which whatever is good
+in each several part shall be completely displayed.
+
+� 2. This operation of true idealism holds, from the least things to
+the greatest. For instance, in the arrangement of the smallest masses
+of color, the false idealist, or even the purist, depends upon
+perfecting each separate hue, and raises them all, as far as he can,
+into costly brilliancy; but the naturalist takes the coarsest and
+feeblest colors of the things around him, and so interweaves and
+opposes them that they become more lovely than if they had all been
+bright. So in the treatment of the human form. The naturalist will
+take it as he finds it; but, with such examples as his picture may
+rationally admit of more or less exalted beauty, he will associate
+inferior forms, so as not only to set off those which are most
+beautiful, but to bring out clearly what good there is in the inferior
+forms themselves; finally using such measure of absolute evil as
+there is commonly in nature, both for teaching and for contrast.
+
+In Tintoret's Adoration of the Magi, the Madonna is not an enthroned
+queen, but a fair girl, full of simplicity and almost childish
+sweetness. To her are opposed (as Magi) two of the noblest and most
+thoughtful of the Venetian senators in extreme old age,--the utmost
+manly dignity, in its decline, being set beside the utmost feminine
+simplicity, in its dawn. The steep foreheads and refined features of
+the nobles are, again, opposed to the head of a negro servant, and
+of an Indian, both, however, noble of their kind. On the other side
+of the picture, the delicacy of the Madonna is farther enhanced by
+contrast with a largely made farm-servant, leaning on a basket. All
+these figures are in repose: outside, the troop of the attendants of
+the Magi is seen coming up at the gallop.
+
+� 3. I bring forward this picture, observe, not as an example of the
+ideal in conception of religious subject, but of the general ideal
+treatment of the human form; in which the peculiarity is, that the
+beauty of each figure is displayed to the utmost, while yet, taken
+separately the Madonna is an unaltered portrait of a Venetian girl,
+the Magi are unaltered Venetian Senators, and the figure with the
+basket, an unaltered market-woman of Mestre.
+
+And the greater the master of the ideal, the more perfectly true in
+_portraiture_ will his individual figures be always found, the more
+subtle and bold his arts of harmony and contrast. This is a universal
+principle, common to all great art. Consider, in Shakspere, how Prince
+Henry is opposed to Falstaff, Falstaff to Shallow, Titania to Bottom,
+Cordelia to Regan, Imogen to Cloten, and so on; while all the meaner
+idealists disdain the naturalism, and are shocked at the contrasts.
+The fact is, a man who can see truth at all, sees it wholly, and
+neither desires nor dares to mutilate it.
+
+� 4. It is evident that _within_ this faithful idealism, and as one
+branch of it only, will arrange itself the representation of the
+human form and mind in perfection, when this perfection is
+rationally to be supposed or introduced,--that is to say, in the
+highest personages of the story. The careless habit of confining the
+term "ideal" to such representations, and not understanding the
+imperfect ones to be _equally_ ideal in their place, has greatly
+added to the embarrassment and multiplied the errors of artists.[24]
+Thersites is just as ideal as Achilles, and Alecto as Helen; and,
+what is more, all the nobleness of the beautiful ideal depends upon
+its being just as probable and natural as the ugly one, and having
+in itself, occasionally or partially, both faults and familiarities.
+If the next painter who desires to illustrate the character of
+Homer's Achilles, would represent him cutting pork chops for
+Ulysses,[25] he would enable the public to understand the Homeric
+ideal better than they have done for several centuries. For it is to
+be kept in mind that the _naturalist ideal_ has always in it, to the
+full, the power expressed by those two words. It is naturalist,
+because studied from nature, and ideal, because it is mentally
+arranged in a certain manner. Achilles must be represented cutting
+pork chops, because that was one of the things which the nature of
+Achilles involved his doing: he could not be shown wholly as
+Achilles, if he were not shown doing that. But he shall do it at
+such time and place as Homer chooses.
+
+� 5. Now, therefore, observe the main conclusions which follow from
+these two conditions, attached always to art of this kind. First, it
+is to be taken straight from nature; it is to be the plain narration
+of something the painter or writer saw. Herein is the chief practical
+difference between the higher and lower artists; a difference which I
+feel more and more every day that I give to the study of art. All the
+great men see what they paint before they paint it,--see it in a
+perfectly passive manner,--cannot help seeing it if they would;
+whether in their mind's eye, or in bodily fact, does not matter; very
+often the mental vision is, I believe, in men of imagination, clearer
+than the bodily one; but vision it is, of one kind or another,--the
+whole scene, character, or incident passing before them as in second
+sight, whether they will or no, and requiring them to paint it as they
+see it; they not daring, under the might of its presence, to
+alter[26] one jot or tittle of it as they write it down or paint it
+down; it being to them in its own kind and degree always a true vision
+or Apocalypse, and invariably accompanied in their hearts by a feeling
+correspondent to the words,--"Write the things _which thou hast seen_,
+and the things which _are_."
+
+And the whole power, whether of painter or poet, to describe rightly
+what we call an ideal thing, depends upon its being thus, to him, not
+an ideal, but a _real_ thing. No man ever did or ever will work well,
+but either from actual sight or sight of faith; and all that we call
+ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and
+visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent. The heroes of
+Phidias are simply representations of such noble human persons as he
+every day saw, and the gods of Phidias simply representations of such
+noble divine persons as he thoroughly believed to exist, and did in
+mental vision truly behold. Hence I said in the second preface to the
+Seven Lamps of Architecture: "All great art represents something that
+it sees or believes in; nothing unseen or uncredited."
+
+� 6. And just because it is always something that it sees or
+believes in, there is the peculiar character above noted, almost
+unmistakable, in all high and true ideals, of having been as it were
+studied from the life, and involving pieces of sudden familiarity,
+and close _specific_ painting which never would have been admitted
+or even thought of, had not the painter drawn either from the bodily
+life or from the life of faith. For instance, Dante's centaur,
+Chiron, dividing his beard with his arrow before he can speak, is a
+thing that no mortal would ever have thought of, if he had not
+actually seen the centaur do it. They might have composed handsome
+bodies of men and horses in all possible ways, through a whole life
+of pseudo-idealism, and yet never dreamed of any such thing. But the
+real living centaur actually trotted across Dante's brain, and he
+saw him do it.
+
+� 7. And on account of this reality it is, that the great idealists
+venture into all kinds of what, to the pseudo-idealists, are
+"vulgarities." Nay, _venturing_ is the wrong word; the great men
+have no choice in the matter; they do not know or care whether the
+things they describe are vulgarities or not. They _saw_ them: they
+are the facts of the case. If they had merely composed what they
+describe, they would have had it at their will to refuse this
+circumstance or add that. But they did not compose it. It came to
+them ready fashioned; they were too much impressed by it to think
+what was vulgar or not vulgar in it. It might be a very wrong thing
+in a centaur to have so much beard; but so it was. And, therefore,
+among the various ready tests of true greatness there is not any
+more certain than this daring reference to, or use of, mean and
+little things--mean and little, that is, to mean and little minds;
+but, when used by the great men, evidently part of the noble whole
+which is authoritatively present before them. Thus, in the highest
+poetry, as partly above noted in the first chapter, there is no word
+so familiar but a great man will bring good out of it, or rather, it
+will bring good to him, and answer some end for which no other word
+would have done equally well.
+
+� 8. A common person, for instance, would be mightily puzzled to apply
+the word "whelp" to any one with a view of flattering him. There is a
+certain freshness and energy in the term, which gives it
+agreeableness; but it seems difficult, at first hearing, to use it
+complimentarily. If the person spoken of be a prince, the difficulty
+seems increased; and when, farther, he is at one and the same moment
+to be called a "whelp" and contemplated as a hero, it seems that a
+common idealist might well be brought to a pause. But hear Shakspere
+do it:--
+
+                           "Invoke his warlike spirit,
+      And your great uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,
+      Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy,
+      Making defeat on the full power of France,
+      While his most mighty father on a hill
+      Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp
+      Forage in blood of French nobility."
+
+So a common idealist would have been rather alarmed at the thought
+of introducing the name of a street in Paris--Straw Street--Rue de
+Fouarre--into the midst of a description of the highest heavens. Not
+so Dante,--
+
+      "Beyond, thou mayst the flaming lustre scan
+        Of Isidore, of Bede, and that Richart
+      Who was in contemplation more than man.
+      And he, from whom thy looks returning are
+        To me, a spirit was, that in austere
+      Deep musings often thought death kept too far.
+      That is the light eternal of Sigier,
+        Who while in Rue de Fouarre his days he wore,
+      Has argued hateful truths in haughtiest ear."    CAYLEY.
+
+What did it matter to Dante, up in heaven there, whether the mob
+below thought him vulgar or not! Sigier _had_ read in Straw Street;
+that was the fact, and he had to say so, and there an end.
+
+� 9. There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate and _real_
+vulgarity of mind or defective education than the want of power to
+understand the universality of the ideal truth; the absence of
+sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects, which have in
+them so much of divine, that nothing is small to them, and nothing
+large; but with equal and unoffended vision they take in the sum of
+the world,--Straw Street and the seventh heavens,--in the same
+instant. A certain portion of this divine spirit is visible even in
+the lower examples of all the true men; it is, indeed, perhaps, the
+clearest test of their belonging to the true and great group, that
+they are continually touching what to the multitude appear
+vulgarities. The higher a man stands, the more the word "vulgar"
+becomes unintelligible to him. Vulgar? what, that poor farmer's girl
+of William Hunt's, bred in the stable, putting on her Sunday gown,
+and pinning her best cap out of the green and red pin-cushion! Not
+so; she may be straight on the road to those high heavens, and may
+shine hereafter as one of the stars in the firmament for ever. Nay,
+even that lady in the satin bodice with her arm laid over a
+balustrade to show it, and her eyes turned up to heaven to show
+them; and the sportsman waving his rifle for the terror of beasts,
+and displaying his perfect dress for the delight of men, are kept,
+by the very misery and vanity of them, in the thoughts of a great
+painter, at a sorrowful level, somewhat above vulgarity. It is only
+when the minor painter takes them on his easel, that they become
+things for the universe to be ashamed of.
+
+We may dismiss this matter of vulgarity in plain and few words, at
+least as far as regards art. There is never vulgarity in a _whole_
+truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It
+cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in
+affectation.
+
+� 10. "Well, but," (at this point the reader asks doubtfully,) "if
+then your great central idealist is to show all truth, low as well
+as lovely, receiving it in this passive way, what becomes of all
+your principles of selection, and of setting in the right place,
+which you were talking about up to the end of your fourth paragraph?
+How is Homer to enforce upon Achilles the cutting of the pork chops
+'only at such time as Homer chooses,' if Homer is to have _no_
+choice, but merely to see the thing done, and sing it as he sees
+it?" Why, the choice, as well as the vision, is _manifested_ to
+Homer. The vision comes to him in its chosen order. Chosen _for_
+him, not _by_ him, but yet full of visible and exquisite choice,
+just as a sweet and perfect dream will come to a sweet and perfect
+person, so that, in some sense, they may be said to have chosen
+their dream, or composed it; and yet they could not help dreaming it
+so, and in no other wise. Thus, exactly thus, in all results of true
+inventive power, the whole harmony of the thing done seems as if it
+had been wrought by the most exquisite rules. But to him who did it,
+it presented itself so, and his will, and knowledge, and
+personality, for the moment went for nothing; he became simply a
+scribe, and wrote what he heard and saw.
+
+And all efforts to do things of a similar kind by rule or by
+thought, and all efforts to mend or rearrange the first order of the
+vision, are not inventive; on the contrary, they ignore and deny
+invention. If any man, seeing certain forms laid on the canvas, does
+by his reasoning power determine that certain changes wrought in
+them would mend or enforce them, that is not only uninventive, but
+contrary to invention, which must be the involuntary occurrence of
+certain forms or fancies to the mind in the order they are to be
+portrayed. Thus the knowing of rules and the exertion of judgment
+have a tendency to check and confuse the fancy in its flow; so that
+it will follow, that, in exact proportion as a master knows anything
+about rules of right and wrong, he is likely to be uninventive; and
+in exact proportion as he holds higher rank and has nobler
+inventive power, he will know less of rules; not despising them, but
+simply feeling that between him and them there is nothing in
+common,--that dreams cannot be ruled--that as they come, so they
+must be caught, and they cannot be caught in any other shape than
+that they come in; and that he might as well attempt to rule a
+rainbow into rectitude, or cut notches in a moth's wings to hold it
+by, as in any wise attempt to modify, by rule, the forms of the
+involuntary vision.
+
+� 11. And this, which by reason we have thus anticipated, is in
+reality universally so. There is no exception. The great men never
+know how or why they do things. They have no rules; cannot
+comprehend the nature of rules;--do not, usually, even know, in what
+they do, what is best or what is worst: to them it is all the same;
+something they cannot help saying or doing,--one piece of it as good
+as another, and none of it (it seems to _them_) worth much. The
+moment any man begins to talk about rules, in whatsoever art, you
+may know him for a second-rate man; and, if he talks about them
+_much_, he is a third-rate, or not an artist at all. To _this_ rule
+there is no exception in any art; but it is perhaps better to be
+illustrated in the art of music than in that of painting. I fell by
+chance the other day upon a work of De Stendhal's, "Vies de Haydn,
+de Mozart, et de Metastase," fuller of common sense than any book I
+ever read on the arts; though I see, by the slight references made
+occasionally to painting, that the author's knowledge therein is
+warped and limited by the elements of general teaching in the
+schools around him; and I have not yet, therefore, looked at what he
+has separately written on painting. But one or two passages out of
+this book on music are closely to our present purpose.
+
+"Counterpoint is related to mathematics: a fool, with patience,
+becomes a respectable savant in that; but for the part of genius,
+melody, it has no rules. No art is so utterly deprived of precepts
+for the production of the beautiful. So much the better for it and
+for us. Cimarosa, when first at Prague his air was executed, Pria
+che spunti in ciel l'Aurora, never heard the pedants say to him,
+'Your air is fine, because you have followed such and such a rule
+established by Pergolese in such an one of his airs; but it would
+be finer still if you had conformed yourself to such another rule
+from which Galluppi never deviated.'"
+
+Yes: "so much the better for it, and for us;" but I trust the time
+will soon come when melody in painting will be understood, no less
+than in music, and when people will find that, there also, the great
+melodists have no rules, and cannot have any, and that there are in
+this, as in sound, "no precepts for the production of the beautiful."
+
+� 12. Again. "Behold, my friend, an example of that simple way of
+answering which embarrasses much. One asked him (Haydn) the _reason_
+for a harmony--for a passage's being assigned to one instrument
+rather than another; but all he ever answered was, 'I have done it,
+because it does well.'" Farther on, De Stendhal relates an anecdote
+of Haydn; I believe one well known, but so much to our purpose that
+I repeat it. Haydn had agreed to give some lessons in counterpoint
+to an English nobleman. "'For our first lesson,' said the pupil,
+already learned in the art--drawing at the same time a quatuor of
+Haydn's from his pocket, 'for our first lesson may we examine this
+quatuor; and will you tell me the reasons of certain modulations,
+which I cannot entirely approve because they are contrary to the
+principles?' Haydn, a little surprised, declared himself ready to
+answer. The nobleman began; and at the very first measures found
+matter for objection. Haydn, _who invented habitually_, and who was
+the contrary of a pedant, found himself much embarrassed, and
+answered always, 'I have done that because it has a good effect. I
+have put that passage there because it does well.' The Englishman,
+who judged that these answers proved nothing, recommenced his
+proofs, and demonstrated to him, by very good reasons, that his
+quatuor was good for nothing. 'But, my lord, arrange this quatuor
+then to your fancy,--play it so, and you will see which of the two
+ways is the best.' 'But why is yours the best which is contrary to
+the rules?' 'Because it is the pleasantest.' The nobleman replied.
+Haydn at last lost patience, and said, 'I see, my lord, it is you
+who have the goodness to give lessons to me, and truly I am forced
+to confess to you that I do not deserve the honor.' The partizan of
+the rules departed, still astonished that in following the rules to
+the letter one cannot infallibly produce a 'Matrimonio Segreto.'"
+
+This anecdote, whether in all points true or not, is in its tendency
+most instructive, except only in that it makes _one_ false inference
+or admission, namely, that a good composition can be _contrary_ to
+the rules. It may be contrary to certain principles, supposed in
+ignorance to be general; but every great composition is in perfect
+harmony with all true rules, and involves thousands too delicate for
+ear, or eye, or thought, to trace; still it is possible to reason,
+with infinite pleasure and profit, about these principles, when the
+thing is once done; only, all our reasoning will not enable any one
+to do another thing like it, because all reasoning falls infinitely
+short of the divine instinct. Thus we may reason wisely over the way
+a bee builds its comb, and be profited by finding out certain things
+about the angles of it. But the bee knows nothing about those
+matters. It builds its comb in a far more inevitable way. And, from
+a bee to Paul Veronese, all master-workers work with this awful,
+this inspired unconsciousness.
+
+� 13. I said just now that there was no exception to _this_ law,
+that the great men never knew how or why they did things. It is, of
+course, only with caution that such a broad statement should be
+made; but I have seen much of different kinds of artists, and I have
+always found the knowledge of, and attention to, rules so
+_accurately_ in the inverse ratio to the power of the painter, that
+I have myself no doubt that the law is constant, and that men's
+smallness may be trigonometrically estimated by the attention which,
+in their work, they pay to principles, especially principles of
+composition. The general way in which the great men speak is of
+"_trying_ to do" this or that, just as a child would tell of
+something he had seen and could not utter. Thus, in speaking of the
+drawing of which I have given an etching farther on (a scene on the
+St. Gothard[27]), Turner asked if I had been to see "that litter of
+stones which I _endeavored_ to represent;" and William Hunt, when I
+asked him one day as he was painting, why he put on such and such a
+color, answered, "I don't know; I am just _aiming_ at it;" and
+Turner, and he, and all the other men I have known who could paint,
+always spoke and speak in the same way; not in any selfish restraint
+of their knowledge, but in pure simplicity. While all the men whom I
+know, who _cannot_ paint, are ready with admirable reasons for
+everything they have done; and can show, in the most conclusive way,
+that Turner is wrong, and how he might be improved.
+
+� 14. And this is the reason for the somewhat singular, but very
+palpable truth that the Chinese, and Indians, and other semi-civilized
+nations, can color better than we do, and that an Indian shawl or
+Chinese vase are still, in invention of color, inimitable by us. It is
+their glorious ignorance of all rules that does it; the pure and true
+instincts have play, and do their work,--instincts so subtle, that the
+least warping or compression breaks or blunts them; and the moment we
+begin teaching people any rules about color, and make them do this or
+that, we crush the instinct generally for ever. Hence, hitherto, it has
+been an actual necessity, in order to obtain power of coloring, that a
+nation should be half-savage: everybody could color in the twelfth and
+thirteenth centuries; but we were ruled and legalized into grey in the
+fifteenth;--only a little salt simplicity of their sea natures at
+Venice still keeping their precious, shellfishy purpleness and power;
+and now that is gone; and nobody can color anywhere, except the Hindoos
+and Chinese; but that need not be so, and will not be so long; for, in
+a little while, people will find out their mistake, and give up talking
+about rules of color, and then everybody will color again, as easily as
+they now talk.
+
+� 15. Such, then, being the generally passive or instinctive character
+of right invention, it may be asked how these unmanageable instincts
+are to be rendered practically serviceable in historical or poetical
+painting,--especially historical, in which given facts are to be
+represented. Simply by the sense and self-control of the whole man;
+not by control of the particular fancy or vision. He who habituates
+himself, in his daily life, to seek for the stern facts in whatever he
+hears or sees, will have these facts again brought before him by the
+involuntary imaginative power in their noblest associations; and he
+who seeks for frivolities and fallacies, will have frivolities and
+fallacies again presented to him in his dreams. Thus if, in reading
+history for the purpose of painting from it, the painter severely
+seeks for the accurate circumstances of every event; as, for instance,
+determining the exact spot of ground on which his hero fell, the way
+he must have been looking at the moment, the height the sun was at (by
+the hour of the day), and the way in which the light must have fallen
+upon his face, the actual number and individuality of the persons by
+him at the moment, and such other veritable details, ascertaining and
+dwelling upon them without the slightest care for any desirableness or
+poetic propriety in them, but for their own truth's sake; then these
+truths will afterwards rise up and form the body of his imaginative
+vision, perfected and united as his inspiration may teach. But if, in
+reading the history, he does not regard these facts, but thinks only
+how it might all most prettily, and properly, and impressively have
+happened, then there is nothing but prettiness and propriety to form
+the body of his future imagination, and his whole ideal becomes false.
+So, in the higher or expressive part of the work, the whole virtue of
+it depends on his being able to quit his own personality, and enter
+successively into the hearts and thoughts of each person; and in all
+this he is still passive: in gathering the truth he is passive, not
+determining what the truth to be gathered shall be; and in the after
+vision he is passive, not determining, but as his dreams will have it,
+what the truth to be represented shall be; only according to his own
+nobleness is his power of entering into the hearts of noble persons,
+and the general character of his dream of them.[28]
+
+� 16. It follows from all this, evidently, that a great idealist
+never can be egotistic. The whole of his power depends upon his
+losing sight and feeling of his own existence, and becoming a mere
+witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of visions,--always
+passive in sight, passive in utterance,--lamenting continually that
+he cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he has seen. Not
+by any means a proud state for a man to be in. But the man who has
+no invention is always setting things in order, and putting the
+world to rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming himself
+on his doings as supreme in all ways.
+
+� 17. There is still the question open, What are the principal
+directions in which this ideal faculty is to exercise itself most
+usefully for mankind?
+
+This question, however, is not to the purpose of our present work,
+which respects landscape-painting only; it must be one of those left
+open to the reader's thoughts, and for future inquiry in another
+place. One or two essential points I briefly notice.
+
+In Chap. IV. � 5. it was said, that one of the first functions of
+imagination was traversing the scenes of history, and forcing the
+facts to become again visible. But there is so little of such force
+in written history, that it is no marvel there should be none
+hitherto in painting. There does not exist, as far as I know, in the
+world a single example of a good historical picture (that is to say,
+of one which, allowing for necessary dimness in art as compared with
+nature, yet answers nearly the same ends in our minds as the sight
+of the real event would have answered); the reason being, the
+universal endeavor to get _effects_ instead of facts, already shown
+as the root of false idealism. True historical ideal, founded on
+sense, correctness of knowledge, and purpose of usefulness, does not
+yet exist; the production of it is a task which the closing
+nineteenth century may propose to itself.
+
+� 18. Another point is to be observed. I do not, as the reader may
+have lately perceived, insist on the distinction between historical
+and poetical painting, because, as noted in the 22nd paragraph of
+the third chapter, all great painting must be both.
+
+Nevertheless, a certain distinction must generally exist between men
+who, like Horace Vernet, David, or Domenico Tintoret, would employ
+themselves in painting, more or less graphically, the outward
+verities of passing events--battles, councils, &c.--of their day
+(who, supposing them to work worthily of their mission, would
+become, properly so called, historical or narrative painters); and
+men who sought, in scenes of perhaps less outward importance, "noble
+grounds for noble emotion;"--who would be, in a certain separate
+sense, _poetical_ painters, some of them taking for subjects events
+which had actually happened, and others themes from the poets; or,
+better still, becoming poets themselves in the entire sense, and
+inventing the story as they painted it. Painting seems to me only
+just to be beginning, in this sense also, to take its proper
+position beside literature, and the pictures of the "Awakening
+Conscience," "Huguenot," and such others, to be the first fruits of
+its new effort.
+
+� 19. Finally, as far as I can observe, it is a constant law that
+the greatest men, whether poets or historians, live entirely in
+their own age, and that the greatest fruits of their work are
+gathered out of their own age. Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth
+century; Chaucer, England in the fourteenth; Masaccio, Florence in
+the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice in the sixteenth;--all of them
+utterly regardless of anachronism and minor error of every kind, but
+getting always vital truth out of the vital present.
+
+� 20. If it be said that Shakspere wrote perfect historical plays on
+subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer, that they
+_are_ perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries in
+them, but a life which all men recognise for the human life of all
+time; and this it is, not because Shakspere sought to give universal
+truth, but because, painting honestly and completely from the men
+about him, he painted that human nature which is, indeed, constant
+enough,--a rogue in the fifteenth century being, _at heart_, what a
+rogue is in the nineteenth and was in the twelfth; and an honest or
+a knightly man being, in like manner, very similar to other such at
+any other time. And the work of these great idealists is, therefore,
+always universal; not because it is _not portrait_, but because it
+is _complete_ portrait down to the heart, which is the same in all
+ages: and the work of the mean idealists is _not_ universal, not
+because it is portrait, but because it is _half_ portrait,--of the
+outside, the manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret
+and Shakspere paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English
+nature as they saw it in their time, down to the root; and it does
+for _all_ time; but as for any care to cast themselves into the
+particular ways and tones of thought, or custom, of past time in
+their historical work, you will find it in neither of them, nor in
+any other perfectly great man that I know of.
+
+� 21. If there had been no vital truth in their present, it is hard to
+say what these men could have done. I suppose, primarily, they would
+not have existed; that they, and the matter they have to treat of, are
+given together, and that the strength of the nation and its historians
+correlatively rise and fall--Herodotus springing out of the dust of
+Marathon. It is also hard to say how far our better general
+acquaintance with minor details of past history may make us able to
+turn the shadow on the imaginative dial backwards, and naturally to
+live, and even live strongly if we choose, in past periods; but this
+main truth will always be unshaken, that the only historical painting
+deserving the name is portraiture of our own living men and our own
+passing times,[29] and that all efforts to summon up the events of
+bygone periods, though often useful and touching, must come under an
+inferior class of poetical painting; nor will it, I believe, ever be
+much followed as their main work by the strongest men, but only by the
+weaker and comparatively sentimental (rather than imaginative) groups.
+This marvellous first half of the nineteenth century has in this
+matter, as in nearly all others, been making a double blunder. It has,
+under the name of improvement, done all it could to EFFACE THE RECORDS
+which departed ages have left of themselves, while it has declared the
+FORGERY OF FALSE RECORDS of these same ages to be the great work of
+its historical painters! I trust that in a few years more we shall
+come somewhat to our senses in the matter, and begin to perceive that
+our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and
+to say for ourselves also what shall be true for the future. Let us
+strive, with just veneration for that future, first to do what is
+worthy to be spoken, and then to speak it faithfully; and, with
+veneration for the past, recognize that it is indeed in the power of
+love to preserve the monument, but not of incantation to raise the
+dead.
+
+  [24] The word "ideal" is used in this limited sense in the chapter
+       on Generic Beauty in the second volume, but under protest.
+       See � 4 in that chapter.
+
+  [25] II. ix. 209.
+
+  [26] "And yet you have just said it shall be at such time and
+       place as Homer chooses. Is not this _altering_?" No; wait a
+       little, and read on.
+
+  [27] See Plate XXI. in Chap. III. Vol. IV.
+
+  [28] The reader should, of course, refer for further details on
+       this subject to the chapters on Imagination in Vol. II., of
+       which I am only glancing now at the practical results.
+
+  [29] See Edinburgh Lectures, p. 217.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+OF THE TRUE IDEAL: THIRDLY, GROTESQUE.
+
+
+� 1. I have already, in the Stones of Venice, had occasion to
+analyze, as far as I was able, the noble nature and power of
+grotesque conception; I am not sorry occasionally to refer the
+reader to that work, the fact being that it and this are parts of
+one whole, divided merely as I had occasion to follow out one or
+other of its branches; for I have always considered architecture as
+an essential part of landscape; and I think the study of its best
+styles and real meaning one of the necessary functions of the
+landscape-painter; as, in like manner, the architect cannot be a
+master-workman until all his designs are guided by understanding of
+the wilder beauty of pure nature. But, be this as it may, the
+discussion of the grotesque element belonged most properly to the
+essay on architecture, in which that element must always find its
+fullest development.
+
+� 2. The Grotesque is in that chapter[30] divided principally into
+three kinds:
+
+(A). Art arising from healthful but irrational play of the
+imagination in times of rest.
+
+(B). Art arising from irregular and accidental contemplation of
+terrible things; or evil in general.
+
+(C). Art arising from the confusion of the imagination by the
+presence of truths which it cannot wholly grasp.
+
+It is the central form of this art, arising from contemplation of
+evil, which forms the link of connection between it and the
+sensualist ideals, as pointed out above in the second paragraph of
+the sixth chapter, the fact being that the imagination, when at
+play, is curiously like bad children, and likes to play with fire;
+in its entirely serious moods it dwells by preference on beautiful
+and sacred images, but in its mocking or playful moods it is apt to
+jest, sometimes bitterly, with undercurrent of sternest pathos,
+sometimes waywardly, sometimes slightly and wickedly, with death and
+sin; hence an enormous mass of grotesque art, some most noble and
+useful, as Holbein's Dance of Death, and Albert Durer's Knight and
+Death,[31] going down gradually through various conditions of less
+and less seriousness into an art whose only end is that of mere
+excitement, or amusement by terror, like a child making mouths at
+another, more or less redeemed by the degree of wit or fancy in the
+grimace it makes, as in the demons of Teniers and such others; and,
+lower still, in the demonology of the stage.
+
+� 3. The form arising from an entirely healthful and open play of
+the imagination, as in Shakspere's Ariel and Titania, and in Scott's
+White Lady, is comparatively rare. It hardly ever is free from some
+slight taint of the inclination to evil; still more rarely is it,
+when so free, natural to the mind; for the moment we begin to
+contemplate sinless beauty we are apt to get serious; and moral
+fairy tales, and such other innocent work, are hardly ever truly,
+that is to say, naturally imaginative; but for the most part
+laborious inductions and compositions. The moment any real vitality
+enters them, they are nearly sure to become satirical, or slightly
+gloomy, and so connect themselves with the evil-enjoying branch.
+
+� 4. The third form of the Grotesque is a thoroughly noble one. It
+is that which arises out of the use or fancy of tangible signs to
+set forth an otherwise less expressible truth; including nearly the
+whole range of symbolical and allegorical art and poetry. Its
+nobleness has been sufficiently insisted upon in the place before
+referred to. (Chapter on Grotesque Renaissance, �� LXIII. LXIV. &c.)
+Of its practical use, especially in painting, deeply despised among
+us, because grossly misunderstood, a few words must be added here.
+
+A fine grotesque is the expression, in a moment, by a series of
+symbols thrown together in bold and fearless connection, of truths
+which it would have taken a long time to express in any verbal way,
+and of which the connection is left for the beholder to work out
+for himself; the gaps, left or overleaped by the haste of the
+imagination, forming the grotesque character.
+
+� 5. For instance, Spenser desires to tell us, (1.) that envy is the
+most untamable and unappeasable of the passions, not to be soothed
+by any kindness; (2.) that with continual labor it invents evil
+thoughts out of its own heart; (3.) that even in this, its power of
+doing harm is partly hindered by the decaying and corrupting nature
+of the evil it lives in; (4.) that it looks every way, and that
+whatever it sees is altered and discolored by its own nature; (5.)
+which discoloring, however, is to it a veil, or disgraceful dress,
+in the sight of others; (6.) and that it never is free from the most
+bitter suffering, (7.) which cramps all its acts and movements,
+enfolding and crushing it while it torments. All this it has
+required a somewhat long and languid sentence for me to say in
+unsymbolical terms,--not, by the way, that they _are_ unsymbolical
+altogether, for I have been forced, whether I would or not, to use
+_some_ figurative words; but even with this help the sentence is
+long and tiresome, and does not with any vigor represent the truth.
+It would take some prolonged enforcement of each sentence to make it
+felt, in ordinary ways of talking. But Spenser puts it all into a
+grotesque, and it is done shortly and at once, so that we feel it
+fully, and see it, and never forget it. I have numbered above the
+statements which had to be made. I now number them with the same
+numbers, as they occur in the several pieces of the grotesque:--
+
+              "And next to him malicious Envy rode
+         (1.) Upon a ravenous wolfe, and (2. 3.) still did chaw
+              Between his cankred[32] teeth a venemous tode
+              That all the poison ran about his jaw.
+      (4. 5.) All in a kirtle of discolourd say
+              He clothed was, y-paynted full of eies;
+         (6.) And in his bosome secretly there lay
+              An hatefull snake, the which his tail uptyes
+         (7.) In many folds, and mortall sting implyes."
+
+There is the whole thing in nine lines; or, rather, in one image,
+which will hardly occupy any room at all on the mind's shelves, but
+can be lifted out, whole, whenever we want it. All noble grotesques
+are concentrations of this kind, and the noblest convey truths
+which nothing else could convey; and not only so, but convey them,
+in minor cases with a delightfulness,--in the higher instances with
+an awfulness,--which no mere utterance of the symbolised truth would
+have possessed, but which belongs to the effort of the mind to
+unweave the riddle, or to the sense it has of there being an
+infinite power and meaning in the thing seen, beyond all that is
+apparent therein, giving the highest sublimity even to the most
+trivial object so presented and so contemplated.
+
+      "'Jeremiah, what seest thou?'
+      'I see a seething pot, and the face thereof is toward the north,
+      'Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the
+         inhabitants of the land.'"
+
+And thus in all ages and among all nations, grotesque idealism has
+been the element through which the most appalling and eventful truth
+has been wisely conveyed, from the most sublime words of true
+Revelation, to the [Greek: "all' hot' an H�mionos basileus,"] &c., of
+the oracles, and the more or less doubtful teaching of dreams; and so
+down to ordinary poetry. No element of imagination has a wider range,
+a more magnificent use, or so colossal a grasp of sacred truth.
+
+� 6. How, then, is this noble power best to be employed in the art
+of painting?
+
+We hear it not unfrequently asserted that symbolism or
+personification should not be introduced in painting at all. Such
+assertions are in their grounds unintelligible, and in their
+substance absurd. Whatever is in words described as visible, may
+with all logical fitness[33] be rendered so by colors, and not only
+is this a legitimate branch of ideal art, but I believe there is
+hardly any other so widely useful and instructive; and I heartily
+wish that every great allegory which the poets ever invented were
+powerfully put on canvas, and easily accessible by all men, and that
+our artists were perpetually exciting themselves to invent more. And
+as far as authority bears on the question, the simple fact is that
+allegorical painting has been the delight of the greatest men and of
+the wisest multitudes, from the beginning of art, and will be till
+art expires. Orcagua's Triumph of Death; Simon Memmi's frescoes in
+the Spanish Chapel; Giotto's principal works at Assisi, and partly
+at the Arena; Michael Angelo's two best statues, the Night and Day;
+Albert Durer's noble Melancholy, and hundreds more of his best
+works; a full third, I should think, of the works of Tintoret and
+Veronese, and nearly as large a portion of those of Raphael and
+Rubens, are entirely symbolical or personifiant; and, except in the
+case of the last-named painter, are always among the most
+interesting works the painters executed. The greater and more
+thoughtful the artists, the more they delight in symbolism, and the
+more fearlessly they employ it. Dead symbolism, second-hand
+symbolism, pointless symbolism, are indeed objectionable enough; but
+so are most other things that are dead, second-hand, and pointless.
+It is also true that both symbolism and personification are somewhat
+more apt than most things to have their edges taken off by too much
+handling; and what with our modern Fames, Justices, and various
+metaphorical ideals, largely used for signs and other such purposes,
+there is some excuse for our not well knowing what the real power of
+personification is. But that power is gigantic and inexhaustible,
+and ever to be grasped with peculiar joy by the painter, because it
+permits him to introduce picturesque elements and flights of fancy
+into his work, which otherwise would be utterly inadmissible; to
+bring the wild beasts of the desert into the room of state, fill the
+air with inhabitants as well as the earth, and render the least
+(visibly) interesting incidents themes for the most thrilling drama.
+Even Tintoret might sometimes have been hard put to it, when he had
+to fill a large panel in the Ducal Palace with the portrait of a
+nowise interesting Doge, unless he had been able to lay a winged
+lion beside him, ten feet long from the nose to the tail, asleep
+upon the Turkey carpet; and Rubens could certainly have made his
+flatteries of Mary of Medicis palatable to no one but herself,
+without the help of rosy-cheeked goddesses of abundance, and
+seven-headed hydras of rebellion.
+
+� 7. For observe, not only does the introduction of these imaginary
+beings permit greater fantasticism of _incident_, but also infinite
+fantasticism of _treatment_; and, I believe, so far from the pursuit
+of the false ideal having in any wise exhausted the realms of
+fantastic imagination, those realms have hardly yet been entered, and
+that a universe of noble dream-land lies before us, yet to be
+conquered. For, hitherto, when fantastic creatures have been
+introduced, either the masters have been so realistic in temper that
+they made the spirits as substantial as their figures of flesh and
+blood,--as Rubens, and, for the most part, Tintoret; or else they have
+been weak and unpractised in realization, and have painted transparent
+or cloudy spirits because they had no power of painting grand ones.
+But if a really great painter, thoroughly capable of giving
+substantial truth, and master of the elements of pictorial effect
+which have been developed by modern art, would solemnly, and yet
+fearlessly, cast his fancy free in the spiritual world, and faithfully
+follow out such masters of that world as Dante and Spenser, there
+seems no limit to the splendor of thought which painting might
+express. Consider, for instance, how the ordinary personifications of
+Charity oscillate between the mere nurse of many children, of
+Reynolds, and the somewhat painfully conceived figure with flames
+issuing from the heart, of Giotto; and how much more significance
+might be given to the representation of Love, by amplifying with
+tenderness the thought of Dante, "Tanta rossa, che a pena fora dentro
+al foco nota,"[34] that is to say, by representing the loveliness of
+her face and form as all flushed with glow of crimson light, and, as
+she descended through heaven, all its clouds colored by her presence
+as they are by sunset. In the hands of a feeble painter, such an
+attempt would end in mere caricature; but suppose it taken up by
+Correggio, adding to his power of flesh-painting the (not
+inconsistent) feeling of Angelico in design, and a portion of Turner's
+knowledge of the clouds. There is nothing impossible in such a
+conjunction as this. Correggio, trained in another school, might have
+even himself shown some such extent of grasp; and in Turner's picture
+of the dragon of the Hesperides, Jason, vignette to Voyage of Columbus
+("Slowly along the evening sky they went"), and such others, as well
+as in many of the works of Watts and Rosetti, is already visible, as I
+trust, the dawn of a new era of art, in a true unison of the grotesque
+with the realistic power.
+
+� 8. There is, however, unquestionably, a severe limit, in the case
+of all inferior masters, to the degree in which they may venture to
+realize grotesque conception, and partly, also, a limit in the
+nature of the thing itself, there being many grotesque ideas which
+may be with safety suggested dimly by words or slight lines, but
+which will hardly bear being painted into perfect definiteness. It
+is very difficult, in reasoning on this matter, to divest ourselves
+of the prejudices which have been forced upon us by the base
+grotesque of men like Bronzino, who, having no true imagination, are
+apt, more than others, to try by startling realism to enforce the
+monstrosity that has no terror in itself. But it is nevertheless
+true, that, unless in the hands of the very greatest men, the
+grotesque seems better to be expressed merely in line, or light and
+shade, or mere abstract color, so as to mark it for a thought rather
+than a substantial fact. Even if Albert Durer had perfectly painted
+his Knight and Death, I question if we should feel it so great a
+thought as we do in the dark engraving. Blake, perfectly powerful in
+the etched grotesque of the book of Job, fails always more or less
+as soon as he adds color; not merely for want of power (his eye for
+color being naturally good), but because his subjects seem, in a
+sort, insusceptible of completion; and the two inexpressibly noble
+and pathetic woodcut grotesques of Alfred Rethel's, Death the
+Avenger, and Death the Friend, could not, I think, but with
+disadvantage, be advanced into pictorial color.
+
+And what is thus doubtfully true of the pathetic grotesque, is
+assuredly and always true of the jesting grotesque. So far as it
+expresses any transient flash of wit or satire, the less labor of
+line, or color, given to its expression the better; elaborate
+jesting being always intensely painful.
+
+� 9. For these several reasons, it seems not only permissible, but
+even desirable, that the art by which the grotesque is expressed
+should be more or less imperfect, and this seems a most beneficial
+ordinance as respects the human race in general. For the grotesque
+being not only a most forceful instrument of teaching, but a most
+natural manner of expression, springing as it does at once from any
+tendency to playfulness in minds highly comprehensive of truth; and
+being also one of the readiest ways in which such satire or wit as
+may be possessed by men of any inferior rank of mind can be for
+perpetuity expressed, it becomes on all grounds desirable that what
+is suggested in times of play should be rightly sayable without
+toil; and what occurs to men of inferior power or knowledge, sayable
+without any high degree of skill. Hence it is an infinite good to
+mankind when there is full acceptance of the grotesque, slightly
+sketched or expressed; and, if field for such expression be frankly
+granted, an enormous mass of intellectual power is turned to
+everlasting use, which, in this present century of ours, evaporates
+in street gibing or vain revelling; all the good wit and satire
+expiring in daily talk, (like foam on wine,) which in the thirteenth
+and fourteenth centuries had a permitted and useful expression in
+the arts of sculpture and illumination, like foam fixed into
+chalcedony. It is with a view (not the least important among many
+others bearing upon art) to the reopening of this great field of
+human intelligence, long entirely closed, that I am striving to
+introduce Gothic architecture into daily domestic use; and to revive
+the art of illumination, properly so called; not the art of
+miniature-painting in books, or on vellum, which has ridiculously
+been confused with it; but of making _writing_, simple writing,
+beautiful to the eye, by investing it with the great chord of
+perfect color, blue, purple, scarlet, white, and gold, and in that
+chord of color, permitting the continual play of the fancy of the
+writer in every species of grotesque imagination, carefully
+excluding shadow; the distinctive difference between illumination
+and painting proper, being, that illumination admits _no_ shadows,
+but only gradations of pure color. And it is in this respect that
+illumination is specially fitted for grotesque expression; for, when
+I used the term "_pictorial_ color," just now, in speaking of the
+completion of the grotesque of Death the Avenger, I meant to
+distinguish such color from the abstract, shadeless hues which are
+eminently fitted for grotesque thought. The requirement, respecting
+the slighter grotesque, is only that it shall be _incompletely_
+expressed. It may have light and shade without color (as in etching
+and sculpture), or color without light and shade (illumination), but
+must not, except in the hands of the greatest masters, have both.
+And for some conditions of the playful grotesque, the abstract
+color is a much more delightful element of expression than the
+abstract light and shade.
+
+� 10. Such being the manifold and precious uses of the true
+grotesque, it only remains for us to note carefully how it is to be
+distinguished from the false and vicious grotesque which results
+from idleness, instead of noble rest; from malice, instead of the
+solemn contemplation of necessary evil; and from general degradation
+of the human spirit, instead of its subjection, or confusion, by
+thoughts too high for it. It is easy for the reader to conceive how
+different the fruits of two such different states of mind _must_ be;
+and yet how like in many respects, and apt to be mistaken, one for
+the other;--how the jest which springs from mere fatuity, and vacant
+want of penetration or purpose, is everlastingly, infinitely,
+separated from, and yet may sometimes be mistaken for, the bright,
+playful, fond, far-sighted jest of Plato, or the bitter, purposeful,
+sorrowing jest of Aristophanes; how, again, the horror which springs
+from guilty love of foulness and sin, may be often mistaken for the
+inevitable horror which a great mind must sometimes feel in the full
+and penetrative sense of their presence;--how, finally, the vague
+and foolish inconsistencies of undisciplined dream or reverie may be
+mistaken for the compelled inconsistencies of thoughts too great to
+be well sustained, or clearly uttered. It is easy, I say, to
+understand what a difference there must indeed be between these; and
+yet how difficult it may be always to define it, or lay down laws
+for the discovery of it, except by the just instinct of minds set
+habitually in all things to discern right from wrong.
+
+� 11. Nevertheless, one good and characteristic instance may be of
+service in marking the leading directions in which the contrast is
+discernible. On the opposite page, Plate I., I have put, beside each
+other, a piece of true grotesque, from the Lombard-Gothic, and of
+false grotesque from classical (Roman) architecture. They are both
+griffins; the one on the left carries on his back one of the main
+pillars of the porch of the cathedral of Verona; the one on the
+right is on the frieze of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina at
+Rome, much celebrated by Renaissance and bad modern architects.
+
+In some respects, however, this classical griffin deserves its
+reputation. It is exceedingly fine in lines of composition, and, I
+believe (I have not examined the original closely), very exquisite
+in execution. For these reasons, it is all the better for our
+purpose. I do not want to compare the worst false grotesque with the
+best true, but rather, on the contrary, the best false with the
+simplest true, in order to see how the delicately wrought lie fails
+in the presence of the rough truth; for rough truth in the present
+case it is, the Lombard sculpture being altogether untoward and
+imperfect in execution.[35]
+
+� 12. "Well, but," the reader says, "what do you mean by calling
+_either_ of them true? There never were such beasts in the world as
+either of these?"
+
+No, never: but the difference is, that the Lombard workman did
+really see a griffin in his imagination, and carved it from the
+life, meaning to declare to all ages that he had verily seen with
+his immortal eyes such a griffin as that; but the classical workman
+never saw a griffin at all, nor anything else; but put the whole
+thing together by line and rule.
+
+� 13. "How do you know that?"
+
+Very easily. Look at the two, and think over them. You know a
+griffin is a beast composed of lion and eagle. The classical workman
+set himself to fit these together in the most ornamental way
+possible. He accordingly carves a sufficiently satisfactory lion's
+body, then attaches very gracefully cut wings to the sides: then,
+because he cannot get the eagle's head on the broad lion's
+shoulders, fits the two together by something like a horse's neck
+(some griffins being wholly composed of a horse and eagle), then,
+finding the horse's neck look weak and unformidable, he strengthens
+it by a series of bosses, like vertebrae, in front, and by a series
+of spiny cusps, instead of a mane, on the ridge; next, not to lose
+the whole leonine character about the neck, he gives a remnant of
+the lion's beard, turned into a sort of griffin's whisker, and
+nicely curled and pointed; then an eye, probably meant to look grand
+and abstracted, and therefore neither lion's nor eagle's; and,
+finally, an eagle's beak, very sufficiently studied from a real
+one. The whole head being, it seems to him, still somewhat wanting
+in weight and power, he brings forward the right wing behind it, so
+as to enclose it with a broad line. This is the finest thing in the
+composition, and very masterly, both in thought, and in choice of
+the exactly right point where the lines of wing and beak should
+intersect (and it may be noticed in passing, that all men, who can
+compose at all, have this habit of encompassing or governing broken
+lines with broad ones, wherever it is possible, of which we shall
+see many instances hereafter). The whole griffin, thus gracefully
+composed, being, nevertheless, when all is done, a very composed
+griffin, is set to very quiet work, and raising his left foot, to
+balance his right wing, sets it on the tendril of a flower so
+lightly as not even to bend it down, though, in order to reach it,
+his left leg is made half as long again as his right.
+
+� 14. We may be pretty sure, if the carver had ever seen a griffin,
+he would have reported of him as doing something else than _that_
+with his feet. Let us see what the Lombardic workman saw him doing.
+
+Remember, first, the griffin, though part lion and part eagle, has
+the united _power of both_. He is not merely a bit of lion and a bit
+of eagle, but whole lion, incorporate with whole eagle. So when we
+really see one, we may be quite sure we shall not find him wanting
+in anything necessary to the might either of beast or bird.
+
+Well, among things essential to the might of a lion, perhaps, on the
+whole, the most essential are his _teeth_. He could get on pretty
+well even without his claws, usually striking his prey down with a
+blow, woundless; but he could by no means get on without his teeth.
+Accordingly, we see that the real or Lombardic griffin has the
+carnivorous teeth bare to the root, and the peculiar hanging of the
+jaw at the back, which marks the flexible and gaping mouth of the
+devouring tribes.
+
+Again; among things essential to the might of an eagle, next to his
+wings (which are of course prominent in both examples), are his
+_claws_. It is no use his being able to tear anything with his beak,
+if he cannot first hold it in his claws; he has comparatively no
+leonine power of striking with his feet, but a magnificent power of
+grip with them. Accordingly, we see that the real griffin, while his
+feet are heavy enough to strike like a lion's, has them also
+extended far enough to give them the eagle's grip with the back
+claw; and has, moreover, some of the bird-like wrinkled skin over
+the whole foot, marking this binding power the more; and that he has
+besides verily got something to hold with his feet, other than a
+flower, of which more presently.
+
+� 15. Now observe, the Lombardic workman did not do all this because
+he had thought it out, as you and I are doing together; he never
+thought a bit about it. He simply saw the beast; saw it as plainly
+as you see the writing on this page, and of course could not be
+wrong in anything he told us of it.
+
+Well, what more does he tell us? Another thing, remember, essential
+to an eagle is that it should fly _fast_. It is no use its having
+wings at all if it is to be impeded in the use of them. Now it would
+be difficult to impede him more thoroughly than by giving him two
+cocked ears to catch the wind.
+
+Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false griffin _has_ them
+so set, and, consequently, as he flew, there would be a continual
+humming of the wind on each side of his head, and he would have an
+infallible earache when he got home. But the real griffin has his
+ears flat to his head, and all the hair of them blown back, even to
+a point, by his fast flying, and the aperture is downwards, that he
+may hear anything going on upon the earth, where his prey is. In the
+false griffin the aperture is upwards.
+
+� 16. Well, what more? As he is made up of the natures of lion and
+eagle, we may be very certain that a real griffin is, on the whole,
+fond of eating, and that his throat will look as if he occasionally
+took rather large pieces, besides being flexible enough to let him
+bend and stretch his head in every direction as he flies.
+
+Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false one has got those
+bosses upon his neck like vertebrae, which must be infinitely in his
+way when he is swallowing, and which are evidently inseparable, so
+that he cannot _stretch_ his neck any more than a horse. But the
+real griffin is all loose about the neck, evidently being able to
+make it almost as much longer as he likes; to stretch and bend it
+anywhere, and swallow anything, besides having some of the grand
+strength of the bull's dewlap in it when at rest.
+
+� 17. What more? Having both lion and eagle in him, it is probable
+that the real griffin will have an infinite look of repose as well
+as power of activity. One of the notablest things about a lion is
+his magnificent _indolence_, his look of utter disdain of trouble
+when there is no occasion for it; as, also, one of the notablest
+things about an eagle is his look of inevitable vigilance, even when
+quietest. Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false griffin
+is quite sleepy and dead in the eye, thus contradicting his eagle's
+nature, but is putting himself to a great deal of unnecessary
+trouble with his paws, holding one in a most painful position merely
+to touch a flower, and bearing the whole weight of his body on the
+other, thus contradicting his lion's nature.
+
+But the real griffin is primarily, with his eagle's nature, wide
+awake; evidently quite ready for whatever may happen; and with his
+lion's nature, laid all his length on his belly, prone and
+ponderous; his two paws as simply put out before him as a drowsy
+puppy's on a drawingroom hearth-rug; not but that he has got
+something to do with them, worthy of such paws; but he takes not one
+whit more trouble about it than is absolutely necessary. He has
+merely got a poisonous winged dragon to hold, and for such a little
+matter as that, he may as well do it lying down and at his ease,
+looking out at the same time for any other piece of work in his way.
+He takes the dragon by the middle, one paw under the wing, another
+above, gathers him up into a knot, puts two or three of his claws
+well into his back, crashing through the scales of it and wrinkling
+all the flesh up from the wound, flattens him down against the
+ground, and so lets him do what he likes. The dragon tries to bite
+him, but can only bring his head round far enough to get hold of his
+own wing, which he bites in agony instead; flapping the griffin's
+dewlap with it, and wriggling his tail up against the griffin's
+throat; the griffin being, as to these minor proceedings, entirely
+indifferent, sure that the dragon's body cannot drag itself one
+hair's breadth off those ghastly claws, and that its head can do no
+harm but to itself.
+
+� 18. Now observe how in all this, through every separate part and
+action of the creature, the imagination is _always_ right. It
+evidently _cannot_ err; it meets every one of our requirements
+respecting the griffin as simply as if it were gathering up the
+bones of the real creature out of some ancient rock. It does not
+itself know or care, any more than the peasant laboring with his
+spade and axe, what is wanted to meet our theories or fancies. It
+knows simply what is there, and brings out the positive creature,
+errorless, unquestionable. So it is throughout art, and in all that
+the imagination does; if anything be wrong it is not the
+imagination's fault, but some inferior faculty's, which would have
+its foolish say in the matter, and meddled with the imagination, and
+said, the bones ought to be put together tail first, or upside down.
+
+� 19. This, however, we need not be amazed at, because the very
+essence of the imagination is already defined to be the seeing to
+the heart; and it is not therefore wonderful that it should never
+err; but it is wonderful, on the other hand, how the composing
+legalism does _nothing else_ than err. One would have thought that,
+by mere chance, in this or the other element of griffin, the
+griffin-composer might have struck out a truth; that he might have
+had the luck to set the ears back, or to give some grasp to the
+claw. But, no; from beginning to end it is evidently impossible for
+him to be anything but wrong; his whole soul is instinct with lies;
+no veracity can come within hail of him; to him, all regions of
+right and life are for ever closed.
+
+� 20. And another notable point is, that while the imagination
+receives truth in this simple way, it is all the while receiving
+statutes of composition also, far more noble than those for the sake
+of which the truth was lost by the legalist. The ornamental lines in
+the classical griffin appear at first finer than in the other; but
+they only appear so because they are more commonplace and more
+palpable. The subtlety of the sweeping and rolling curves in the
+real griffin, the way they waver and change and fold, down the neck,
+and along the wing, and in and out among the serpent coils, is
+incomparably grander, merely as grouping of ornamental line, than
+anything in the other; nor is it fine as ornamental only, but as
+massively useful, giving weight of stone enough to answer the
+entire purpose of pedestal sculpture. Note, especially, the
+insertion of the three plumes of the dragon's broken wing in the
+outer angle, just under the large coil of his body; this filling of
+the gap being one of the necessities, not of the pedestal block
+merely, but a means of getting mass and breadth, which all composers
+desire more or less, but which they seldom so perfectly accomplish.
+
+So that taking the truth first, the honest imagination gains
+everything; it has its griffinism, and grace, and usefulness, all at
+once: but the false composer, caring for nothing but himself and his
+rules, loses everything,--griffinism, grace, and all.
+
+� 21. I believe the reader will now sufficiently see how the terms
+"true" and "false" are in the most accurate sense attachable to the
+opposite branches of what might appear at first, in both cases, the
+merest wildness of inconsistent reverie. But they are even to be
+attached, in a deeper sense than that in which we have hitherto used
+them, to these two compositions. For the imagination hardly ever
+works in this intense way, unencumbered by the inferior faculties,
+unless it be under the influence of some solemn purpose or
+sentiment. And to all the falseness and all the verity of these two
+ideal creatures this farther falsehood and verity have yet to be
+added, that the classical griffin has, at least in this place, no
+other intent than that of covering a level surface with entertaining
+form; but the Lombardic griffin is a profound expression of the most
+passionate symbolism. Under its eagle's wings are two wheels,[36]
+which mark it as connected, in the mind of him who wrought it, with
+the living creatures of the vision of Ezekiel: "When they went, the
+wheels went by them, and whithersoever the spirit was to go, they
+went, and the wheels were lifted up over against them, for the
+spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels." Thus signed, the
+winged shape becomes at once one of the acknowledged symbols of the
+Divine power; and, in its unity of lion and eagle, the workman of
+the middle ages always means to set forth the unity of the human and
+divine natures,[37] In this unity it bears up the pillars of the
+Church, set for ever as the corner stone. And the faithful and
+true imagination beholds it, in this unity, with everlasting
+vigilance and calm omnipotence, restrain the seed of the serpent
+crushed upon the earth; leaving the head of it free, only for a
+time, that it may inflict in its fury profounder destruction upon
+itself,--in this also full of deep meaning. The Divine power does
+not slay the evil creature. It wounds and restrains it only. Its
+final and _deadly_ wound is inflicted by itself.
+
+[Illustration: 1. True and False Griffins. Medi�val. Classical.]
+
+  [30] On the Grotesque Renaissance, vol. iii.
+
+  [31] See Appendix I. Vol. IV. "Modern Grotesque."
+
+  [32] Cankred--because he cannot then bite hard.
+
+  [33] Though, perhaps, only in a subordinate degree. See farther
+       on, � 8.
+
+  [34] "So red, that in the midst of the fire she could hardly have
+       been seen."
+
+  [35] If there be any inaccuracy in the right-hand griffin, I am
+       sorry, but am not answerable for it, as the plate has been
+       faithfully reduced from a large French lithograph, the best I
+       could find. The other is from a sketch of my own.
+
+  [36] At the extremities of the wings,--not seen in the plate.
+
+  [37] Compare the Purgatorio, canto xxix. &c.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+OF FINISH.
+
+
+� 1. I am afraid the reader must be, by this time, almost tired of
+hearing about truth. But I cannot help this; the more I have
+examined the various forms of art, and exercised myself in receiving
+their differently intended impressions, the more I have found this
+truthfulness a final test, the only test of lasting power; and,
+although our concern in this part of our inquiry is, professedly,
+with the beauty which blossoms out of truth, still I find myself
+compelled always to gather it by the stalk, not by the petals. I
+cannot hold the beauty, nor be sure of it for a moment, but by
+feeling for that strong stem.
+
+We have, in the preceding chapters, glanced through the various
+operations of the imaginative power of man; with this almost
+painfully monotonous result, that its greatness and honor were
+always simply in proportion to the quantity of truth it grasped. And
+now the question, left undetermined some hundred pages back (Chap.
+II. � 6), recurs to us in a simpler form than it could before. How
+far is this true imagination to be truly represented? How far should
+the perfect conception of Pallas be so given as to look like Pallas
+herself, rather than like the picture of Pallas?
+
+� 2. A question, this, at present of notable interest, and demanding
+instant attention. For it seemed to us, in reasoning about Dante's
+views of art, that he was, or might be, right in desiring realistic
+completeness; and yet, in what we have just seen of the grotesque
+ideal, it seemed there was a certain desirableness in incompleteness.
+And the schools of art in Europe are, at this moment, set in two
+hostile ranks,--not nobly hostile, but spitefully and scornfully,
+having for one of the main grounds of their dispute the apparently
+simple question, how far a picture may be carried forward in detail,
+or how soon it may be considered as finished.
+
+I propose, therefore, in the present chapter, to examine, as
+thoroughly as I can, the real signification of this word, Finish, as
+applied to art, and to see if in this, as in other matters, our
+almost tiresome test is not the only right one; whether there be not
+a _fallacious_ finish and a _faithful_ finish, and whether the
+dispute, which seems to be only about completion and incompletion,
+has not therefore, at the bottom of it, the old and deep grounds of
+fallacy and fidelity.
+
+� 3. Observe, first, there are two great and separate senses in
+which we call a thing finished, or well finished. One, which refers
+to the mere neatness and completeness of the actual work, as we
+speak of a well-finished knife-handle or ivory toy (as opposed to
+ill-cut ones); and, secondly, a sense which refers to the effect
+produced by the thing done, as we call a picture well-finished if it
+is so full in its details, as to produce the effect of reality on
+the spectator. And, in England, we seem at present to value highly
+the first sort of finish which belongs to work_manship_, in our
+manufactures and general doings of any kind, but to despise totally
+the impressive finish which belongs to the _work_; and therefore we
+like smooth ivories better than rough ones,--but careless scrawls or
+daubs better than the most complete paintings. Now, I believe that
+we exactly reverse the fitness of judgment in this matter, and that
+we ought, on the contrary, to despise the finish of work_manship_,
+which is done for vanity's sake, and to love the finish of _work_,
+which is done for truth's sake,--that we ought, in a word, to finish
+our ivory toys more roughly, and our pictures more delicately.
+
+Let us think over this matter.
+
+� 4. Perhaps one of the most remarkable points of difference between
+the English and Continental nations is in the degree of finish given to
+their ordinary work. It is enough to cross from Dover to Calais to feel
+this difference; and to travel farther only increases the sense of it.
+English windows for the most part fit their sashes, and their woodwork
+is neatly planed and smoothed; French windows are larger, heavier, and
+framed with wood that looks as if it had been cut to its shape with a
+hatchet; they have curious and cumbrous fastenings, and can only be
+forced asunder or together by some ingenuity and effort, and even then
+not properly. So with everything else--French, Italian, and German,
+and, as far as I know, Continental. Foreign drawers do not slide as
+well as ours: foreign knives do not cut so well; foreign wheels do not
+turn so well, and we commonly plume ourselves much upon this, believing
+that generally the English people do their work better and more
+thoroughly, or as they say, "turn it out of their hands in better
+style," than foreigners. I do not know how far this is really the case.
+There may be a flimsy neatness, as well as a substantial roughness; it
+does not necessarily follow that the window which shuts easiest will
+last the longest, or that the harness which glitters the most is
+assuredly made of the toughest leather. I am afraid, that if this
+peculiar character of finish in our workmanship ever arose from a
+greater heartiness and thoroughness in our ways of doing things, it
+does so only now in the case of our best manufacturers; and that a
+great deal of the work done in England, however good in appearance, is
+but treacherous and rotten in substance. Still, I think that there is
+really in the English mind, for the most part, a stronger desire to do
+things as well as they can be done, and less inclination to put up with
+inferiorities or insufficiencies, than in general characterise the
+temper of foreigners. There is in this conclusion no ground for
+national vanity; for though the desire to do things as well as they can
+be done at first appears like a virtue, it is certainly not so in all
+its forms. On the contrary, it proceeds in nine cases out of ten more
+from vanity than conscientiousness; and that, moreover, often a weak
+vanity. I suppose that as much finish is displayed in the fittings of
+the private carriages of our young rich men as in any other department
+of English manufacture; and that our St. James's Street cabs, dogcarts,
+and liveries are singularly perfect in their way. But the feeling with
+which this perfection is insisted upon (however desirable as a sign of
+energy of purpose) is not in itself a peculiarly amiable or noble
+feeling; neither is it an ignoble disposition which would induce a
+country gentleman to put up with certain deficiencies in the appearance
+of his country-made carriage. It is true that such philosophy may
+degenerate into negligence, and that much thought and long discussion
+would be needed before we could determine satisfactorily the limiting
+lines between virtuous contentment and faultful carelessness; but at
+all events we have no right at once to pronounce ourselves the wisest
+people because we like to do all things in the best way. There are many
+little things which to do admirably is to waste both time and cost; and
+the real question is not so much whether we have done a given thing as
+well as possible, as whether we have turned a given quantity of labor
+to the best account.
+
+� 5. Now, so far from the labor's being turned to good account which is
+given to our English "finishing," I believe it to be usually
+destructive of the best powers of our workmen's minds. For it is
+evident, in the first place, that there is almost always a useful and a
+useless finish; the hammering and welding which are necessary to
+produce a sword plate of the best quality, are useful finishing; the
+polishing of its surface, useless.[38] In nearly all work this
+distinction will, more or less, take place between substantial finish
+and apparent finish, or what may be briefly characterized as "Make" and
+"Polish." And so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "make," I
+have nothing to say against it. Even the vanity which displays itself
+in giving strength to our work is rather a virtue than a vice. But so
+far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "polish," there is much to be
+said against it; this first, and very strongly, that the qualities
+aimed at in common finishing, namely, smoothness, delicacy, or
+fineness, _cannot_ in reality _exist_, in a degree worth admiring, in
+anything done by human hands. Our best finishing is but coarse and
+blundering work after all We may smooth, and soften, and sharpen till
+we are sick at heart; but take a good magnifying glass to our miracle
+of skill, and the invisible edge is a jagged saw, and the silky thread
+a rugged cable, and the soft surface a granite desert. Let all the
+ingenuity and all the art of the human race be brought to bear upon the
+attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what is
+done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can
+finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the more the
+infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine work in this
+respect. So then it is not a little absurd to weary ourselves in
+struggling towards a point which we never can reach, and to exhaust our
+strength in vain endeavors to produce qualities which exist inimitably
+and inexhaustibly in the commonest things around us.
+
+� 6. But more than this: the fact is that in multitudes of instances,
+instead of gaining greater fineness of finish by our work, we are only
+destroying the fine finish of nature, and substituting coarseness and
+imperfection. For instance, when a rock of any kind has lain for some
+time exposed to the weather, Nature finishes it in her own way; first,
+she takes wonderful pains about its forms, sculpturing it into
+exquisite variety of dint and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it
+into contours, which for fineness no human hand can follow; then she
+colors it; and every one of her touches of color, instead of being a
+powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living trees, glorious in
+strength and beauty, and concealing wonders of structure, which in all
+probability are mysteries even to the eyes of angels. Man comes and
+digs up this finished and marvellous piece of work, which in his
+ignorance he calls a "rough stone." He proceeds to finish it in _his_
+fashion, that is, to split it in two, rend it into ragged blocks, and,
+finally, to chisel its surface into a large number of lumps and knobs,
+all equally shapeless, colorless, deathful, and frightful.[39] And the
+block, thus disfigured, he calls "finished," and proceeds to build
+therewith, and thinks himself great, forsooth, and an intelligent
+animal. Whereas, all that he has really done is, to destroy with utter
+ravage a piece of divine art, which, under the laws appointed by the
+Deity to regulate his work in this world, it must take good twenty
+years to produce the like of again. This he has destroyed, and has
+himself given in its place a piece of work which needs no more
+intelligence to do than a pholas has, or a worm, or the spirit which
+throughout the world has authority over rending, rottenness, and
+decay. I do not say that stone must not be cut; it needs to be cut for
+certain uses; only I say that the cutting it is not "finishing," but
+_un_finishing it; and that so far as the mere fact of chiselling goes,
+the stone is ruined by the human touch. It is with it as with the
+stones of the Jewish altar: "If thou lift up thy tool upon it thou
+hast polluted it." In like manner a tree is a finished thing. But a
+plank, though ever so polished, is not. We need stones and planks, as
+we need food; but we no more bestow an additional admirableness upon
+stone in hewing it, or upon a tree in sawing it, than upon an animal
+in killing it.
+
+� 7. Well, but it will be said, there is certainly a kind of finish in
+stone-cutting, and in every other art, which is meritorious, and which
+consists in smoothing and refining as much as possible. Yes, assuredly
+there is a meritorious finish. First, as it has just been said, that
+which fits a thing for its uses,--as a stone to lie well in its place,
+or the cog of an engine wheel to play well on another; and, secondly,
+a finish belonging properly to the arts; but _that_ finish does not
+consist in smoothing or polishing, but in the _completeness of the
+expression of ideas_. For in painting, there is precisely the same
+difference between the ends proposed in finishing that there is in
+manufacture. Some artists finish for the finish' sake; dot their
+pictures all over, as in some kinds of miniature-painting (when a wash
+of color would have produced as good an effect); or polish their
+pictures all over, making the execution so delicate that the touch of
+the brush cannot be seen, for the sake of the smoothness merely, and
+of the credit they may thus get for great labor; which kind of
+execution, seen in great perfection in many works of the Dutch school,
+and in those of Carlo Dolce, is that polished "language" against which
+I have spoken at length in various portions of the first volume; nor
+is it possible to speak of it with too great severity or contempt,
+where it has been made an ultimate end.
+
+But other artists finish for the impression's sake, not to show
+their skill, nor to produce a smooth piece of work, but that they
+may, with each stroke, render clearer the expression of knowledge.
+And this sort of finish is not, properly speaking, so much
+_completing_ the picture as _adding_ to it. It is not that what is
+painted is more delicately done, but that infinitely _more_ is
+painted. This finish is always noble, and, like all other noblest
+things, hardly ever understood or appreciated. I must here endeavor,
+more especially with respect to the state of quarrel between the
+schools of living painters, to illustrate it thoroughly.
+
+� 8. In sketching the outline, suppose of the trunk of a tree, as in
+Plate 2. (opposite) fig. 1., it matters comparatively little whether
+the outline be given with a bold, or delicate line, so long as it is
+_outline only_. The work is not more "finished" in one case than in
+the other; it is only prepared for being seen at a greater or less
+distance. The real refinement or finish of the line depends, not on
+its thinness, but on its truly following the contours of the tree,
+which it conventionally represents; conventionally, I say, because
+there is no such line round the tree, in reality; and it is set down
+not as an _imit_ation, but a _limit_ation of the form. But if we are
+to add shade to it as in fig. 2., the outline must instantly be made
+proportionally delicate, not for the sake of delicacy as such, but
+because the outline will now, in many parts, stand not for
+limitation of form merely, but for a portion of the _shadow_ within
+that form. Now, as a limitation it was true, but as a shadow it
+would be false, for there is no line of black shadow at the edge of
+the stem. It must, therefore, be made so delicate as not to detach
+itself from the rest of the shadow where shadow exists, and only to
+be seen in the light where limitation is still necessary.
+
+Observe, then, the "finish" of fig. 2. as compared with fig. 1.
+consists, not in its greater delicacy, but in the addition of a
+truth (shadow), a removal, in a great degree, of a conventionalism
+(outline). All true finish consists in one or other of these things.
+Now, therefore, if we are to "finish" farther we must _know_ more or
+_see_ more about the tree. And as the plurality of persons who draw
+trees know nothing of them, and will not look at them, it results
+necessarily that the effort to finish is not only vain, but
+unfinishes--does mischief. In the lower part of the plate, figs. 3,
+4, 5, and 6. are facsimiles of pieces of line engraving, meant to
+represent trunks of trees; 3. and 4. are the commonly accredited
+types of tree-drawing among engravers in the eighteenth century; 5.
+and 6. are quite modern; 3. is from a large and important plate by
+Boydell, from Claude's Molten Calf, dated 1781; 4. by Boydell in
+1776, from Rubens's Waggoner; 5. from a bombastic engraving,
+published about twenty years ago by Meulemeester of Brussels, from
+Raphael's Moses at the Burning Bush; and 6. from the foreground
+of Miller's Modern Italy, after Turner.[40]
+
+[Illustration: 2. Drawing of Tree-Stems.]
+
+All these represent, as far as the engraving goes, simply _nothing_.
+They are not "finished" in any sense but this,--that the paper has
+been covered with lines. 4. is the best, because, in the original work
+of Rubens, the lines of the boughs, and their manner of insertion in
+the trunk, have been so strongly marked, that no engraving could quite
+efface them; and, inasmuch as it represents these facts in the boughs,
+that piece of engraving is more finished than the other examples,
+while its own networked texture is still false and absurd; for there
+is no texture of this knitted-stocking-like description on boughs; and
+if there were, it would not be seen in the shadow, but in the light.
+Miller's is spirited, and looks lustrous, but has no resemblance to
+the original bough of Turner's, which is pale, and does not glitter.
+The Netherlands work is, on the whole, the worst; because, in its
+ridiculous double lines, it adds affectation and conceit to its
+incapacity. But in all these cases the engravers have worked in total
+ignorance both of what is meant by "drawing," and of the form of a
+tree, covering their paper with certain lines, which they have been
+taught to plough in copper, as a husbandman ploughs in clay.
+
+� 9. In the next three examples we have instances of endeavors at
+finish by the hands of artists themselves, marking three stages of
+knowledge or insight, and three relative stages of finish. Fig. 7.
+is Claude's (Liber Veritatis, No. 140., facsimile by Boydell). It
+still displays an appalling ignorance of the forms of trees, but yet
+is, in mode of execution, better--that is, more finished--than the
+engravings, because not _altogether_ mechanical, and showing some
+dim, far-away, blundering memory of a few facts in stems, such as
+their variations of texture and roundness, and bits of young shoots
+of leaves. 8. is Salvator's, facsimiled from part of his original
+etching of the Finding of Oedipus. It displays considerable power
+of handling--not mechanical, but free and firm, and is just so much
+more finished than any of the others as it displays more
+intelligence about the way in which boughs gather themselves out of
+the stem, and about the varying character of their curves. Finally,
+fig. 9. is good work. It is the root of the apple-tree in Albert
+Durer's Adam and Eve, and fairly represents the wrinkles of the
+bark, the smooth portions emergent beneath, and the general anatomy
+of growth. All the lines used conduce to the representation of these
+facts; and the work is therefore highly finished. It still, however,
+leaves out, as not to be represented by such kind of lines, the more
+delicate gradations of light and shade. I shall now "finish" a
+little farther, in the next plate (3.), the mere _insertion of the
+two boughs_ outlined in fig. 1. I do this simply by adding
+assertions of more facts. First, I say that the whole trunk is dark,
+as compared with the distant sky. Secondly, I say that it is rounded
+by gradations of shadow, in the various forms shown. And, lastly, I
+say that (this being a bit of old pine stripped by storm of its
+bark) the wood is fissured in certain directions, showing its grain,
+or _muscle_, seen in complicated contortions at the insertion of the
+arm and elsewhere.
+
+� 10. Now this piece of work, though yet far from complete (we will
+better it presently), is yet more finished than any of the others,
+not because it is more delicate or more skilful, but simply because
+it tells more truth, and admits fewer fallacies. That which conveys
+most information, with least inaccuracy, is always the highest
+finish; and the question whether we prefer art so finished, to art
+unfinished, is not one of taste at all. It is simply a question
+whether we like to know much or little; to see accurately or see
+falsely; and those whose _taste_ in art (if they choose so to call
+it) leads them to like blindness better than sight, and fallacy
+better than fact, would do well to set themselves to some other
+pursuit than that of art.
+
+� 11. In the above plate we have examined chiefly the grain and
+surface of the boughs; we have not yet noticed the finish of their
+curvature. If the reader will look back to the No. 7. (Plate 2.),
+which, in this respect, is the worst of all the set, he will
+immediately observe the exemplification it gives of Claude's principal
+theory about trees; namely, that the boughs always parted from each
+other, two at a time, in the manner of the prongs of an ill-made
+table-fork. It may, perhaps, not be at once believed that this is
+indeed Claude's theory respecting tree-structure, without some
+farther examples of his practice. I have, therefore, assembled on the
+next page, Plate 4., some of the most characteristic passages of
+ramification in the Liber Veritatis; the plates themselves are
+sufficiently cheap (as they should be) and accessible to nearly every
+one, so that the accuracy of the facsimiles may be easily tested. I
+have given in Appendix I. the numbers of the plates from which the
+examples are taken, and it will be found that they have been rather
+improved than libelled, only omitting, of course, the surrounding
+leafage, in order to show accurately the branch-outlines, with which
+alone we are at present concerned. And it would be difficult to bring
+together a series more totally futile and foolish, more singularly
+wrong (as the false griffin was), every way at once; they are stiff,
+and yet have no strength; curved, and yet have no flexibility;
+monotonous, and yet disorderly; unnatural, and yet uninventive. They
+are, in fact, of that commonest kind of tree bough which a child or
+beginner first draws experimentally; nay, I am well assured, that if
+this set of branches had been drawn by a schoolboy, "out of his own
+head," his master would hardly have cared to show them as signs of any
+promise in him.
+
+[Illustration: 3. Strength of Old Pine.]
+
+[Illustration: 4. Ramification, according to Claude.]
+
+� 12. "Well, but do not the trunks of trees fork, and fork mostly
+into two arms at a time?"
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
+
+Yes; but under as stern anatomical law as the limbs of an animal;
+and those hooked junctions in Plate 4. are just as accurately
+representative of the branching of wood as this (fig. 2.) is of a
+neck and shoulders. We should object to such a representation of
+shoulders, because we have some interest in, and knowledge of, human
+form; we do not object to Claude's trees, because we have no
+interest in, nor knowledge of, trees. And if it be still alleged
+that such work is nevertheless enough to give any one an "idea" of a
+tree, I answer that it never gave, nor ever will give, an idea of a
+tree to any one who loves trees; and that, moreover, no idea,
+whatever its pleasantness, is of the smallest value, which is not
+founded on simple facts. What pleasantness may be in _wrong_ ideas
+we do not here inquire; the only question for us has always been,
+and must always be, What are the facts?
+
+� 13. And assuredly those boughs of Claude's are not facts: and
+every one of their contours is, in the worst sense, unfinished,
+without even the expectation or faint hope of possible refinement
+ever coming into them. I do not mean to enter here into the
+discussion of the characters of ramification; that must be in our
+separate inquiry into tree-structure generally; but I will merely
+give one piece of Turner's tree-drawing as an example of what
+finished work really is, even in outline. In plate 5. opposite,
+fig. 1. is the contour (stripped, like Claude's, of its foliage) of
+one of the distant tree-stems in the drawing of Bolton Abbey. In
+order to show its perfectness better by contrast with bad work (as
+we have had, I imagine, enough of Claude), I will take a bit of
+Constable; fig. 2. is the principal tree out of the engraving of the
+Lock on the Stour (Leslie's Life of Constable). It differs from the
+Claude outlines merely in being the kind of work which is produced
+by an uninventive person dashing about idly, with a brush, instead
+of drawing determinately wrong, with a pen: on the one hand worse
+than Claude's, in being lazier; on the other a little better in
+being more free, but, as representative of tree-form, of course
+still wholly barbarous. It is worth while to turn back to the
+description of the uninventive painter at work on a tree (Vol. II.
+chapter on Imaginative Association, � 11), for this trunk of
+Constable's is curiously illustrative of it. One can almost see him,
+first bending it to the right; then, having gone long enough to the
+right, turning to the left; then, having gone long enough to the
+left, away to the right again; then dividing it; and "because there
+is another tree in the picture with two long branches (in this case
+there really is), he knows that this ought to have three or four,
+which must undulate or go backwards and forwards," &c., &c.
+
+� 14. Then study the bit of Turner work: note first its quietness,
+unattractiveness, apparent carelessness whether you look at it or
+not; next note the subtle curvatures within the narrowest limits,
+and, when it branches, the unexpected, out of the way things it
+does, just what nobody could have thought of its doing; shooting out
+like a letter Y, with a nearly straight branch, and then
+correcting its stiffness with a zigzag behind, so that the boughs,
+ugly individually, are beautiful in unison. (In what I have
+hereafter to say about trees, I shall need to dwell much on this
+character of _unexpectedness_. A bough is never drawn rightly if it
+is not wayward, so that although, as just now said, quiet at first,
+not caring to be looked at, the moment it is looked at, it seems
+bent on astonishing you, and doing the last things you expect it to
+do.) But our present purpose is only to note the _finish_ of the
+Turner _curves_, which, though they seem straight and stiff at
+first, are, when you look long, seen to be all tremulous,
+perpetually wavering along every edge into endless melody of change.
+This is finish in line, in exactly the same sense that a fine melody
+is finished in the association of its notes.
+
+[Illustration: 5. Good and Bad Tree-Drawing.]
+
+� 15. And now, farther, let us take a little bit of the Turnerian tree
+in light and shade. I said above I would better the drawing of that
+pine trunk, which, though it has incipient shade, and muscular action,
+has no texture, nor local color. Now, I take about an inch and a half
+of Turner's ash trunks (one of the nearer ones) in this same drawing
+of Bolton Abbey (fig. 3. Plate 5.), and _this_ I cannot better; this
+is perfectly finished; it is not possible to add more truth to it on
+that scale. Texture of bark, anatomy of muscle beneath, reflected
+lights in recessed hollows, stains of dark moss, and flickering
+shadows from the foliage above, all are there, as clearly as the human
+hand can mark them. I place a bit of trunk by Constable (fig. 5.),[41]
+from another plate in Leslie's Life of him (a dell in Helmingham Park,
+Suffolk), for the sake of the same comparison in shade that we have
+above in contour. You see Constable does not know whether he is
+drawing moss or shadow: those dark touches in the middle are confused
+in his mind between the dark stains on the trunk and its dark side;
+there is no anatomy, no cast shadow, nothing but idle sweeps of the
+brush, vaguely circular. The thing is much darker than Turner's, but
+it is not, therefore, finished; it is only blackened. And "to blacken"
+is indeed the proper word for all attempts at finish without
+knowledge. All true finish is _added fact_; and Turner's word for
+finishing a picture was always this significant one, "carry forward."
+But labor without added knowledge can only blacken or stain a picture,
+it cannot finish it.
+
+� 16. And this is especially to be remembered as we pass from
+comparatively large and distant objects, such as this single trunk, to
+the more divided and nearer features of foreground. Some degree of
+ignorance may be hidden, in completing what is far away; but there is
+no concealment possible in close work, and darkening instead of
+finishing becomes then the engraver's only possible resource. It has
+always been a wonderful thing to me to hear people talk of making
+foregrounds "vigorous," "marked," "forcible," and so on. If you will
+lie down on your breast on the next bank you come to (which is
+bringing it _close_ enough, I should think, to give it all the force
+it is capable of), you will see, in the cluster of leaves and grass
+close to your face, something as delicate as this, which I have
+actually so drawn, on the opposite page, a mystery of soft shadow in
+the depths of the grass, with indefinite forms of leaves, which you
+cannot trace or count, within it, and out of that, the nearer leaves
+coming in every subtle gradation of tender light and flickering form,
+quite beyond all delicacy of pencilling to follow; and yet you will
+rise up from that bank (certainly not making it appear coarser by
+drawing a little back from it), and profess to represent it by a few
+blots of "forcible" foreground color. "Well, but I cannot draw every
+leaf that I see on the bank." No, for as we saw, at the beginning of
+this chapter, that no human work could be finished so as to express
+the _delicacy_ of nature, so neither can it be finished so as to
+express the _redundance_ of nature. Accept that necessity; but do not
+deny it; do not call your work finished, when you have, in engraving,
+substituted a confusion of coarse black scratches, or in water-color a
+few edgy blots, for ineffable organic beauty. Follow that beauty as
+far as you can, remembering that just as far as you see, know, and
+represent it, just so far your work is finished; as far as you fall
+short of it, your work is _un_finished; and as far as you substitute
+any other thing for it, your work is spoiled.
+
+[Illustration: 6. Foreground Leafage.]
+
+� 17. How far Turner followed it, is not easily shown; for his
+finish is so delicate as to be nearly uncopiable. I have just said
+it was not possible to finish that ash trunk of his, farther, on
+such a scale.[42] By using a magnifying-glass, and giving the same
+help to the spectator, it might perhaps be possible to add and
+exhibit a few more details; but even as it is, I cannot by line
+engraving express all that there is in that piece of tree-trunk, on
+the same scale. I _have_ therefore magnified the upper part of it in
+fig 4. (Plate 5.), so that the reader may better see the beautiful
+lines of curvature into which even its slightest shades and spots
+are cast. Every quarter of an inch in Turner's drawings will bear
+magnifying in the same way; much of the finer work in them can
+hardly be traced, except by the keenest sight, until it is
+magnified. In his painting of Ivy Bridge,[43] the veins are drawn on
+the wings of a butterfly, not above three lines in diameter; and in
+one of his smaller drawings of Scarborough, in my own possession,
+the muscle-shells on the beach are rounded, and some shown as shut,
+some as open, though none are as large as one of the letters of this
+type; and yet this is the man who was thought to belong to the
+"dashing" school, literally because most people had not patience or
+delicacy of sight enough to trace his endless detail.
+
+� 18. "Suppose it was so," perhaps the reader replies; "still I do
+not like detail so delicate that it can hardly be seen." Then you
+like nothing in Nature (for you will find she always carries her
+detail too far to be traced). This point, however, we shall examine
+hereafter; it is not the question now whether we _like_ finish or
+not; our only inquiry here is, what finish _means_; and I trust the
+reader is beginning to be satisfied that it does indeed mean nothing
+but consummate and accumulated truth, and that our old monotonous
+test must still serve us here as elsewhere. And it will become us to
+consider seriously why (if indeed it be so) we dislike this kind of
+finish--dislike an accumulation of truth. For assuredly all
+authority is against us, and _no truly great man can be named in the
+arts--but it is that of one who finished to his utmost_. Take
+Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Raphael for a triad, to begin with.
+_They_ all completed their detail with such subtlety of touch and
+gradation, that, in a careful drawing by any of the three, you
+cannot see where the pencil ceased to touch the paper; the stroke of
+it is so tender, that, when you look close to the drawing you can
+see nothing; you only see the effect of it a little way back! Thus
+tender in execution,--and so complete in detail, that Leonardo must
+needs draw _every several vein in the little agates_ and pebbles of
+the gravel under the feet of the St. Anne in the Louvre. Take a
+quartett after the triad--Titian, Tintoret, Bellini, and Veronese.
+Examine the vine-leaves of the Bacchus and Ariadne, (Titian's) in
+the National Gallery; examine the borage blossoms, painted petal by
+petal, though lying loose on the table, in Titian's Supper at
+Emmaus, in the Louvre, or the snail-shells on the ground in his
+Entombment;[44] examine the separately designed patterns on every
+drapery of Veronese, in his Marriage in Cana; go to Venice and see
+how Tintoret paints the strips of black bark on the birch trunk that
+sustains the platform in his Adoration of the Magi: how Bellini
+fills the rents of his ruined walls with the most exquisite clusters
+of the erba della Madonna.[45] You will find them all in a tale.
+Take a quintett after the quartett--Francia, Angelico, Durer,
+Hemling, Perugino,--and still the witness is one, still the same
+striving in all to such utmost perfection as their knowledge and
+hand could reach.
+
+Who shall gainsay these men? Above all, who shall gainsay them when
+they and Nature say precisely the same thing? For where does Nature
+pause in _her_ finishing--that finishing which consists not in the
+smoothing of surface, but the filling of space, and the
+multiplication of life and thought?
+
+Who shall gainsay them? I, for one, dare not; but accept their
+teaching, with Nature's, in all humbleness.
+
+"But is there, then, no good in any work which does not pretend to
+perfectness? Is there no saving clause from this terrible
+requirement of completion? And if there be none, what is the meaning
+of all you have said elsewhere about rudeness as the glory of Gothic
+work, and, even a few pages back, about the danger of finishing, for
+our modern workmen?"
+
+Indeed there are many saving clauses, and there is much good in
+imperfect work. But we had better cast the consideration of these
+drawbacks and exceptions into another chapter, and close this one,
+without obscuring, in any wise, our broad conclusion that "finishing"
+means in art simply "telling more truth;" and that whatever we have in
+any sort begun wisely, it is good to finish thoroughly.
+
+  [38] "With his Yemen sword for aid;
+         Ornament it carried none,
+       But the notches on the blade."
+
+  [39] See the base of the new Army and Navy Clubhouse.
+
+  [40] I take this example from Miller, because, on the whole, he is
+       the best engraver of Turner whom we have.
+
+  [41] Fig. 5. is not, however, so _lustrous_ as Constable's; I
+       cannot help this, having given the original plate to my good
+       friend Mr. Cousen, with strict charge to facsimile it
+       faithfully: but the figure is all the fairer, as a
+       representation of Constable's art, for those mezzotints in
+       Leslie's life of him have many qualities of drawing which are
+       quite wanting in Constable's blots of color. The comparison
+       shall be made elaborately, between picture and picture, in
+       the section on Vegetation.
+
+  [42] It is of the exact size of the original, the whole drawing
+       being about 15-1/2 inches by 11 in.
+
+  [43] An oil painting (about 3 ft. by 4 ft. 6 in.), and very broad
+       in its masses. In the possession of E. Bicknell, Esq.
+
+  [44] These snail-shells are very notable, occurring as they do in,
+       perhaps, the very grandest and broadest of all Titian's
+       compositions.
+
+  [45] Linaria Cymbalaria, the ivy-leaved toadflax of English
+       gardens.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+OF THE USE OF PICTURES.
+
+
+� 1. I am afraid this will be a difficult chapter; one of drawbacks,
+qualifications, and exceptions. But the more I see of useful truths,
+the more I find that, like human beings, they are eminently biped;
+and, although, as far as apprehended by human intelligence, they are
+usually seen in a crane-like posture, standing on one leg, whenever
+they are to be stated so as to maintain themselves against all
+attack it is quite necessary they should stand on two, and have
+their complete balance on opposite fulcra.
+
+� 2. I doubt not that one objection, with which as well as with
+another we may begin, has struck the reader very forcibly, after
+comparing the illustrations above given from Turner, Constable, and
+Claude. He will wonder how it was that Turner, finishing in this
+exquisite way, and giving truths by the thousand, where other
+painters gave only one or two, yet, of all painters, seemed to
+obtain least acknowledgeable resemblance to nature, so that the
+world cried out upon him for a madman, at the moment when he was
+giving exactly the highest and most consummate truth that had ever
+been seen in landscape.
+
+And he will wonder why still there seems reason for this outcry.
+Still, after what analysis and proof of his being right have as yet
+been given, the reader may perhaps be saying to himself: "All this
+reasoning is of no use to me. Turner does _not_ give me the idea of
+nature; I do not feel before one of his pictures as I should in the
+real scene. Constable takes me out into the shower, and Claude into
+the sun; and De Wint makes me feel as if I were walking in the
+fields; but Turner keeps me in the house, and I know always that I
+am looking at a picture."
+
+I might answer to this; Well, what else _should_ he do? If you want
+to feel as if you were in a shower, cannot you go and get wet without
+help from Constable? If you want to feel as if you were walking in the
+fields, cannot you go and walk in them without help from De Wint? But
+if you want to sit in your room and look at a beautiful picture, why
+should you blame the artist for giving you one? This _was_ the answer
+actually made to me by various journalists, when first I showed that
+Turner was truer than other painters: "Nay," said they, "we do not
+want truth, we want something else than truth; we would not have
+nature, but something better than nature."
+
+� 3. I do not mean to accept that answer, although it seems at this
+moment to make for me: I have never accepted it. As I raise my eyes
+from the paper, to think over the curious mingling in it, of direct
+error, and far away truth, I see upon the room-walls, first,
+Turner's drawing of the chain of the Alps from the Superga above
+Turin; then a study of a block of gneiss at Chamouni, with the
+purple Aiguilles-Rouges behind it; another, of the towers of the
+Swiss Fribourg, with a cluster of pine forest behind them; then
+another Turner, Isola Bella, with the blue opening of the St.
+Gothard in the distance; and then a fair bit of thirteenth century
+illumination, depicting, at the top of the page, the Salutation; and
+beneath, the painter who painted it, sitting in his little convent
+cell, with a legend above him to this effect--
+
+      "ego jah{ann}es sc{ri}psi hunc librum."
+             I, John, wrote this book.
+
+None of these things are bad pieces of art; and yet,--if it were
+offered to me to have, instead of them, so many windows, out of
+which I should see, first, the real chain of the Alps from the
+Superga; then the real block of gneiss, and Aiguilles-Rouges; then
+the real towers of Fribourg, and pine forest; the real Isola Bella;
+and, finally, the true Mary and Elizabeth; and beneath them, the
+actual old monk at work in his cell,--I would very unhesitatingly
+change my five pictures for the five windows; and so, I apprehend,
+would most people, not, it seems to me, unwisely.
+
+"Well, then," the reader goes on to question me, "the more closely
+the picture resembles such a window the better it must be?"
+
+Yes.
+
+"Then if Turner does not give me the impression of such a window,
+that is of Nature, there must be something wrong in Turner?"
+
+Yes.
+
+"And if Constable and De Wint give me the impression of such a
+window, there must be something right in Constable and De Wint?"
+
+Yes.
+
+"And something more right than in Turner?"
+
+No.
+
+"Will you explain yourself?"
+
+I _have_ explained myself, long ago, and that fully; perhaps too
+fully for the simple sum of the explanation to be remembered. If the
+reader will glance back to, and in the present state of our inquiry,
+reconsider in the first volume, Part I. Sec. I. Chap. V., and Part
+II. Sec. _I._ Chap. VII., he will find our present difficulties
+anticipated. There are some truths, easily obtained, which give a
+deceptive resemblance to Nature; others only to be obtained with
+difficulty, which cause no deception, but give inner and deep
+resemblance. These two classes of truths cannot be obtained
+together; choice must be made between them. The bad painter gives
+the cheap deceptive resemblance. The good painter gives the precious
+non-deceptive resemblance. Constable perceives in a landscape that
+the grass is wet, the meadows flat, and the boughs shady; that is to
+say, about as much as, I suppose, might in general be apprehended,
+between them, by an intelligent fawn and a skylark. Turner perceives
+at a glance the whole sum of visible truth open to human
+intelligence. So Berghem perceives nothing in a figure, beyond the
+flashes of light on the folds of its dress; but Michael Angelo
+perceives every flash of thought that is passing through its spirit;
+and Constable and Berghem may imitate windows; Turner and Michael
+Angelo can by no means imitate windows. But Turner and Michael
+Angelo are nevertheless the best.
+
+� 4. "Well but," the reader persists, "you admitted just now that
+because Turner did not get his work to look like a window there was
+something wrong in him."
+
+I did so; if he were quite right he would have _all_ truth, low as
+well as high; that is, he would be Nature and not Turner; but that
+is impossible to man. There is much that is wrong in him; much that
+is infinitely wrong in all human effort. But, nevertheless, in some
+an infinity of Betterness above other human effort.
+
+"Well, but you said you would change your Turners for windows, why
+not, therefore, for Constables?"
+
+Nay, I did not say that I would change them for windows _merely_,
+but for windows which commanded the chain of the Alps and Isola
+Bella. That is to say, for all the truth that there is in Turner,
+and all the truth besides which is not in him; but I would not
+change them for Constables, to have a small piece of truth which is
+not in Turner, and none of the mighty truth which there is.
+
+� 5. Thus far, then, though the subject is one requiring somewhat
+lengthy explanation, it involves no real difficulty. There is not
+the slightest inconsistency in the mode in which throughout this
+work I have desired the relative merits of painters to be judged. I
+have always said, he who is closest to Nature is best. All rules are
+useless, all genius is useless, all labor is useless, if you do not
+give facts; the more facts you give the greater you are; and there
+is no fact so unimportant as to be prudently despised, if it be
+possible to represent it. Nor, but that I have long known the truth
+of Herbert's lines,
+
+                                "Some men are
+      Full of themselves, and answer their own notion,"
+
+would it have been without intense surprise that I heard querulous
+readers asking, "how it was possible" that I could praise
+Pre-Raphaelitism and Turner also. For, from the beginning of this
+book to this page of it, I have never praised Turner highly for any
+other cause than that he _gave facts_ more _delicately_, more
+Pre-Raphaelitically, than other men. Careless readers, who dashed at
+the descriptions and missed the arguments, took up their own
+conceptions of the cause of my liking Turner, and said to
+themselves: "Turner cannot draw, Turner is generalizing, vague,
+visionary; and the Pre-Raphaelites are hard and distinct. How can
+any one like both?"[46] But _I_ never said that Turner could not
+draw. _I_ never said that he was vague or visionary. What _I_ said
+was, that nobody had ever drawn so well: that nobody was so certain,
+so _un_-visionary; that nobody had ever given so many hard and
+downright facts. Glance back to the first volume, and note the
+expressions now. "He is the only painter who ever drew a mountain or
+a stone;[47] the only painter who can draw the stem of a tree; the
+only painter who has ever drawn the sky, previous artists having
+only drawn it typically or partially, but he absolutely and
+universally." Note how he is praised in his rock drawing for "not
+selecting a pretty or interesting morsel here or there, but giving
+the whole truth, with all the relations of its parts."[48] Observe
+how the _great virtue_ of the landscape of Cima da Conegliano and
+the early sacred painters is said to be giving "entire, exquisite,
+humble, realization--a strawberry-plant in the foreground with a
+blossom, _and a berry just set_, _and one half ripe, and one ripe_,
+all patiently and innocently painted from the _real thing, and_
+_therefore most divine_." Then re-read the following paragraph (�
+10.), carefully, and note its conclusion, that the thoroughly great
+men are those who have done everything thoroughly, and who have
+never despised anything, however small, of God's making; with the
+instance given of Wordsworth's daisy casting its shadow on a stone;
+and the following sentence, "Our painters must come to this before
+they have done their duty." And yet, when our painters _did_ come to
+this, did do their duty, and did paint the daisy with its shadow
+(this passage having been written years before Pre-Raphaelitism was
+thought of), people wondered how I could possibly like what was
+neither more nor less than the precise fulfilment of my own most
+earnest exhortations and highest hopes.
+
+� 6. Thus far, then, all I have been saying is absolutely
+consistent, and tending to one simple end. Turner is praised for his
+truth and finish; that truth of which I am beginning to give
+examples. Pre-Raphaelitism is praised for its truth and finish; and
+the whole duty inculcated upon the artist is that of being in all
+respects as like Nature as possible.
+
+And yet this is not all I have to do. There is more than this to be
+inculcated upon the student, more than this to be admitted or
+established before the foundations of just judgment can be laid.
+
+For, observe, although I believe any sensible person would exchange
+his pictures, however good, for windows, he would not feel, and
+ought not to feel, that the arrangement was _entirely_ gainful to
+him. He would feel it was an exchange of a less good of one kind,
+for a greater of another kind, but that it was definitely
+_exchange_, not pure gain, not merely getting more truth instead of
+less. The picture would be a serious loss; something gone which the
+actual landscape could never restore, though it might give something
+better in its place, as age may give to the heart something better
+than its youthful delusion, but cannot give again the sweetness of
+that delusion.
+
+� 7. What is this in the picture which is precious to us, and yet is
+not natural? Hitherto our arguments have tended, on the whole,
+somewhat to the depreciation of art; and the reader may every now and
+then, so far as he has been convinced by them, have been inclined to
+say, "Why not give up this whole science of Mockery at once, since
+its only virtue is in representing facts, and it cannot, at best,
+represent them completely, besides being liable to all manner of
+shortcomings and dishonesties,--why not keep to the facts, to real
+fields, and hills, and men, and let this dangerous painting alone?"
+
+No, it would not be well to do this. Painting has its peculiar
+virtues, not only consistent with but even resulting from, its
+shortcomings and weaknesses. Let us see what these virtues are.
+
+� 8. I must ask permission, as I have sometimes done before, to
+begin apparently a long way from the point.
+
+Not long ago, as I was leaving one of the towns of Switzerland early
+in the morning, I saw in the clouds behind the houses an Alp which I
+did not know, a grander Alp than any I knew, nobler than the
+Schreckhorn or the M�nch; terminated, as it seemed, on one side by a
+precipice of almost unimaginable height; on the other, sloping away
+for leagues in one field of lustrous ice, clear and fair and blue,
+flashing here and there into silver under the morning sun. For a
+moment I received a sensation of as much sublimity as any natural
+object could possibly excite; the next moment, I saw that my unknown
+Alp was the glass roof of one of the workshops of the town, rising
+above its nearer houses, and rendered aerial and indistinct by some
+pure blue wood smoke which rose from intervening chimneys.
+
+It is evident, that so far as the mere delight of the eye was
+concerned, the glass roof was here equal, or at least equal for a
+moment, to the Alp. Whether the power of the object over the heart
+was to be small or great, depended altogether upon what it was
+understood for, upon its being taken possession of and apprehended
+in its full nature, either as a granite mountain or a group of panes
+of glass; and thus, always, the real majesty of the appearance of
+the thing to us, depends upon the degree in which we ourselves
+possess the power of understanding it,--that penetrating, possession
+taking power of the imagination, which has been long ago defined[49]
+as the very life of the man, considered as a _seeing_ creature. For
+though the casement had indeed been an Alp, there are many persons
+on whose minds it would have produced no more effect than the glass
+roof. It would have been to them a glittering object of a certain
+apparent length and breadth, and whether of glass or ice, whether
+twenty feet in length, or twenty leagues, would have made no
+difference to them; or, rather, would not have been in any wise
+conceived or considered by them. Examine the nature of your own
+emotion (if you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you find all
+the brightness of that emotion hanging, like dew on gossamer, on a
+curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. First, you have
+a vague idea of its size, coupled with wonder at the work of the
+great Builder of its walls and foundations, then an apprehension of
+its eternity, a pathetic sense of its perpetualness, and your own
+transientness, as of the grass upon its sides; then, and in this
+very sadness, a sense of strange companionship with past generations
+in seeing what they saw. They did not see the clouds that are
+floating over your head; nor the cottage wall on the other side of
+the field; nor the road by which you are travelling. But they saw
+_that_. The wall of granite in the heavens was the same to them as
+to you. They have ceased to look upon it; you will soon cease to
+look also, and the granite wall will be for others. Then, mingled
+with these more solemn imaginations, come the understandings of the
+gifts and glories of the Alps, the fancying forth of all the
+fountains that well from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are
+born out of its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind
+between its cliffs, and all the ch�lets that gleam among its clouds,
+and happy farmsteads couched upon its pastures; while together with
+the thoughts of these, rise strange sympathies with all the unknown
+of human life, and happiness, and death, signified by that narrow
+white flame of the everlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky.
+
+These images, and far more than these, lie at the root of the emotion
+which you feel at the sight of the Alp. You may not trace them in your
+heart, for there is a great deal more in your heart, of evil and good,
+than you ever can trace; but they stir you and quicken you for all
+that. Assuredly, so far as you feel more at beholding the snowy
+mountain than any other object of the same sweet silvery grey, these
+are the kind of images which cause you to do so; and, observe, these
+are nothing more than a greater apprehension of the _facts_ of the
+thing. We call the power "Imagination," because it imagines or
+conceives; but it is only noble imagination if it imagines or
+conceives _the truth_. And, according to the degree of knowledge
+possessed, and of sensibility to the pathetic or impressive character
+of the things known, will be the degree of this imaginative delight.
+
+� 9. But the main point to be noted at present is, that if the
+imagination can be excited to this its peculiar work, it matters
+comparatively little what it is excited by. If the smoke had not
+cleared partially away, the glass roof might have pleased me as well
+as an alp, until I had quite lost sight of it; and if, in a picture,
+the imagination can be once caught, and, without absolute affront
+from some glaring fallacy, set to work in its own field, the
+imperfection of the historical details themselves is, to the
+spectator's enjoyment, of small consequence.
+
+Hence it is, that poets and men of strong feeling in general, are
+apt to be among the very worst judges of painting. The slightest
+hint is enough for them. Tell them that a white stroke means a ship,
+and a black stain, a thunderstorm, and they will be perfectly
+satisfied with both, and immediately proceed to remember all that
+they ever felt about ships and thunderstorms, attributing the whole
+current and fulness of their own feelings to the painter's work;
+while probably, if the picture be really good, and full of stern
+fact, the poet, or man of feeling, will find some of its fact _in
+his way_, out of the particular course of his own thoughts,--be
+offended at it, take to criticising and wondering at it, detect, at
+last, some imperfection in it,--such as must be inherent in all
+human work,--and so finally quarrel with, and reject the whole
+thing. Thus, Wordsworth writes many sonnets to Sir George Beaumont
+and Haydon, none to Sir Joshua or to Turner.
+
+� 10. Hence also the error into which many superficial artists fall,
+in speaking of "addressing the imagination" as the only end of art.
+It is quite true that the imagination must be addressed; but it may
+be very sufficiently addressed by the stain left by an ink-bottle
+thrown at the wall. The thrower has little credit, though an
+imaginative observer may find, perhaps, more to amuse him in the
+erratic nigrescence than in many a labored picture. And thus, in a
+slovenly or ill-finished picture, it is no credit to the artist that
+he has "addressed the imagination;" nor is the success of such an
+appeal any criterion whatever of the merit of the work. The duty of
+an artist is not only to address and awaken, but to _guide_ the
+imagination; and there is no safe guidance but that of simple
+concurrence with fact. It is no matter that the picture takes the
+fancy of A. or B., that C. writes sonnets to it, and D. feels it to
+be divine. This is still the only question for the artist, or for
+us:--"Is it a fact? Are things really so? Is the picture an Alp
+among pictures, full, firm, eternal; or only a glass house, frail,
+hollow, contemptible, demolishable; calling, at all honest hands,
+for detection and demolition?"
+
+� 11. Hence it is also that so much grievous difficulty stands in
+the way of obtaining _real opinion_ about pictures at all. Tell any
+man, of the slightest imaginative power, that such and such a
+picture is good, and means this or that: tell him, for instance,
+that a Claude is good, and that it means trees, and grass, and
+water; and forthwith, whatever faith, virtue, humility, and
+imagination there are in the man, rise up to help Claude, and to
+declare that indeed it is all "excellent good, i'faith;" and
+whatever in the course of his life he has felt of pleasure in trees
+and grass, he will begin to reflect upon and enjoy anew, supposing
+all the while it is the picture he is enjoying. Hence, when once a
+painter's reputation is accredited, it must be a stubborn kind of
+person indeed whom he will not please, or seem to please; for all
+the vain and weak people pretend to be pleased with him, for their
+own credit's sake, and all the humble and imaginative people
+seriously and honestly fancy they _are_ pleased with him, deriving
+indeed, very certainly, delight from his work, but a delight which,
+if they were kept in the same temper, they would equally derive
+(and, indeed, constantly do derive) from the grossest daub that can
+be manufactured in imitation by the pawnbroker. Is, therefore, the
+pawnbroker's imitation as good as the original? Not so. There is the
+certain test of goodness and badness, which I am always striving to
+get people to use. As long as they are satisfied if they find their
+feelings pleasantly stirred and their fancy gaily occupied, so long
+there is for them no good, no bad. Anything may please, or anything
+displease, them; and their entire manner of thought and talking
+about art is mockery, and all their judgments are laborious
+injustices. But let them, in the teeth of their pleasure or
+displeasure, simply put the calm question,--Is it so? Is that the
+way a stone is shaped, the way a cloud is wreathed, the way a leaf
+is veined? and they are safe. They will do no more injustice to
+themselves nor to other men; they will learn to whose guidance they
+may trust their imagination, and from whom they must for ever
+withhold its reins.
+
+� 12. "Well, but why have you dragged in this poor spectator's
+imagination at all, if you have nothing more to say for it than
+this; if you are merely going to abuse it, and go back to your
+tiresome facts?"
+
+Nay; I am not going to abuse it. On the contrary, I have to assert,
+in a temper profoundly venerant of it, that though we must not
+suppose everything is right when this is aroused, we may be sure
+that something is wrong when this is _not_ aroused. The something
+wrong may be in the spectator or in the picture; and if the picture
+be demonstrably in accordance with truth, the odds are, that it is
+in the spectator; but there is wrong somewhere; for the work of the
+picture is indeed eminently to get at this imaginative power in the
+beholder, and all its facts are of no use whatever if it does not.
+No matter how much truth it tells if the hearer be asleep. Its first
+work is to wake him, then to teach him.
+
+� 13. Now, observe, while, as it penetrates into the nature of
+things, the imagination is preeminently a beholder of things _as_
+they _are_, it is, in its creative function, an eminent beholder of
+things _when_ and _where_ they are NOT; a seer, that is, in the
+prophetic sense, calling "the things that are not as though they
+were," and for ever delighting to dwell on that which is not
+tangibly present. And its great function being the calling forth, or
+back, that which is not visible to bodily sense, it has of course
+been made to take delight in the fulfilment of its proper function,
+and preeminently to enjoy, and spend its energy, on things past and
+future, or out of sight, rather than things present, or in sight. So
+that if the imagination is to be called to take delight in any
+object, it will not be always well, if we can help it, to put the
+_real_ object there, before it. The imagination would on the whole
+rather have it _not_ there;--the reality and substance are rather in
+the imagination's way; it would think a good deal more of the thing
+if it could not see it. Hence, that strange and sometimes fatal
+charm, which there is in all things as long as we wait for them, and
+the moment we have lost them; but which fades while we possess
+them;--that sweet bloom of all that is far away, which perishes
+under our touch. Yet the feeling of this is not a weakness; it is
+one of the most glorious gifts of the human mind, making the whole
+infinite future, and imperishable past, a richer inheritance, if
+faithfully inherited, than the changeful, frail, fleeting present;
+it is also one of the many witnesses in us to the truth that these
+present and tangible things are not meant to satisfy us. The
+instinct becomes a weakness only when it is weakly indulged, and
+when the faculty which was intended by God to give back to us what
+we have lost, and gild for us what is to come, is so perverted as
+only to darken what we possess. But, perverted or pure, the instinct
+itself is everlasting, and the substantial presence even of the
+things which we love the best, will inevitably and for ever be found
+wanting in _one_ strange and tender charm, which belonged to the
+dreams of them.
+
+� 14. Another character of the imagination is equally constant, and,
+to our present inquiry, of yet greater importance. It is eminently a
+_weariable_ faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing
+fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ
+itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails
+under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily
+fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has
+had rest. And this is the real nature of the weariness which is so
+often felt in travelling, from seeing too much. It is not that the
+monotony and number of the beautiful things seen have made them
+valueless, but that the imaginative power has been overtaxed; and,
+instead of letting it rest, the traveller, wondering to find himself
+dull, and incapable of admiration, seeks for something more
+admirable, excites, and torments, and drags the poor fainting
+imagination up by the shoulders: "Look at this, and look at that,
+and this more wonderful still!"--until the imaginative faculty
+faints utterly away, beyond all farther torment or pleasure, dead
+for many a day to come; and the despairing prodigal takes to
+horse-racing in the Campagna, good now for nothing else than that;
+whereas, if the imagination had only been laid down on the grass,
+among simple things, and left quiet for a little while, it would
+have come to itself gradually, recovered its strength and color, and
+soon been fit for work again. So that, whenever the imagination is
+tired, it is necessary to find for it something, not _more_
+admirable but _less_ admirable; such as in that weak state it can
+deal with; then give it peace, and it will recover.
+
+� 15. I well recollect the walk on which I first found out this; it
+was on the winding road from Sallenche, sloping up the hills towards
+St. Gervais, one cloudless Sunday afternoon. The road circles softly
+between bits of rocky bank and mounded pasture; little cottages and
+chapels gleaming out from among the trees at every turn. Behind me,
+some leagues in length, rose the jagged range of the mountains of the
+R�posoir; on the other side of the valley, the mass of the Aiguille de
+Varens, heaving its seven thousand feet of cliff into the air at a
+single effort, its gentle gift of waterfall, the Nant d'Arpenaz, like
+a pillar of cloud at its feet; Mont Blanc and all its aiguilles, one
+silver flame, in front of me; marvellous blocks of mossy granite and
+dark glades of pine around me; but I could enjoy nothing, and could
+not for a long while make out what was the matter with me, until at
+last I discovered that if I confined myself to one thing,--and that a
+little thing,--a tuft of moss, or a single crag at the top of the
+Varens, or a wreath or two of foam at the bottom of the Nant
+d'Arpenaz, I began to enjoy it directly, because then I had mind
+enough to put into the thing, and the enjoyment arose from the
+quantity of the imaginative energy I could bring to bear upon it; but
+when I looked at or thought of all together, moss, stones, Varens,
+Nant d'Arpenaz, and Mont Blanc, I had not mind enough to give to all,
+and none were of any value. The conclusion which would have been
+formed, upon this, by a German philosopher, would have been that the
+Mont Blanc _was_ of no value; that he and his imagination only were of
+value; that the Mont Blanc, in fact, except so far as he was able to
+look at it, could not be considered as having any existence. But the
+only conclusion which occurred to me as reasonable under the
+circumstances (I have seen no ground for altering it since) was, that
+I was an exceedingly small creature, much tired, and, at the moment,
+not a little stupid, for whom a blade of grass, or a wreath of foam,
+was quite food enough and to spare, and that if I tried to take any
+more, I should make myself ill. Whereupon, associating myself
+fraternally with some ants, who were deeply interested in the
+conveyance of some small sticks over the road, and rather, as I think
+they generally are, in too great a hurry about it, I returned home in
+a little while with great contentment, thinking how well it was
+ordered that, as Mont Blanc and his pine forests could not be
+everywhere, nor all the world come to see them, the human mind, on the
+whole, should enjoy itself most surely in an ant-like manner, and be
+happy and busy with the bits of stick and grains of crystal that fall
+in its way to be handled, in daily duty.
+
+� 16. It follows evidently from the first of these characters of the
+imagination, its dislike of substance and presence, that a picture has
+in some measure even an advantage with us in not being real. The
+imagination rejoices in having something to do, springs up with all
+its willing power, flattered and happy; and ready with its fairest
+colors and most tender pencilling, to prove itself worthy of the
+trust, and exalt into sweet supremacy the shadow that has been
+confided to its fondness. And thus, so far from its being at all an
+object to the painter to make his work look real, he ought to dread
+such a consummation as the loss of one of its most precious claims
+upon the heart. So far from striving to convince the beholder that
+what he sees is substance, his mind should be to what he paints as the
+fire to the body on the pile, burning away the ashes, leaving the
+unconquerable shade--an immortal dream. So certain is this, that the
+slightest local success in giving the deceptive appearance of
+reality--the imitation, for instance, of the texture of a bit of wood,
+with its grain in relief--will instantly destroy the charm of a whole
+picture; the imagination feels itself insulted and injured, and passes
+by with cold contempt; nay, however beautiful the whole scene may be,
+as of late in much of our highly wrought painting for the stage, the
+mere fact of its being deceptively real is enough to make us tire of
+it; we may be surprised and pleased for a moment, but the imagination
+will not on those terms be persuaded to give any of its help, and, in
+a quarter of an hour, we wish the scene would change.
+
+� 17. "Well, but then, what becomes of all these long dogmatic
+chapters of yours about giving nothing but the truth, and as much
+truth as possible?"
+
+The chapters are all quite right. "Nothing but the Truth," I say
+still. "As much Truth as possible," I say still. But truth so
+presented, that it will need the help of the imagination to make it
+real. Between the painter and the beholder, each doing his proper
+part, the reality should be sustained; and after the beholding
+imagination has come forward and done its best, then, with its help,
+and in the full action of it, the beholder should be able to say, I
+feel as if I were at the real place, or seeing the real incident.
+But not without that help.
+
+� 18. Farther, in consequence of that other character of the
+imagination, fatiguableness, it is a great advantage to the picture
+that it need not present too much at once, and that what it does
+present may be so chosen and ordered as not only to be more easily
+seized, but to give the imagination rest, and, as it were, places to
+lie down and stretch its limbs in; kindly vacancies, beguiling it
+back into action, with pleasant and cautious sequence of incident;
+all jarring thoughts being excluded, all vain redundance denied, and
+all just and sweet transition permitted.
+
+And thus it is that, for the most part, imperfect sketches,
+engravings, outlines, rude sculptures, and other forms of abstraction,
+possess a charm which the most finished picture frequently wants. For
+not only does the finished picture excite the imagination less, but,
+like nature itself, it _taxes_ it more. None of it can be enjoyed till
+the imagination is brought to bear upon it; and the details of the
+completed picture are so numerous, that it needs greater strength and
+willingness in the beholder to follow them all out; the redundance,
+perhaps, being not too great for the mind of a careful observer, but
+too great for a casual or careless observer. So that although the
+perfection of art will always consist in the utmost _acceptable_
+completion, yet, as every added idea will increase the difficulty of
+apprehension, and every added touch advance the dangerous realism
+which makes the imagination languid, the difference between a noble
+and ignoble painter is in nothing more sharply defined than in
+this,--that the first wishes to put into his work as much truth as
+possible, and yet to keep it looking _un_-real; the second wishes to
+get through his work lazily, with as little truth as possible, and yet
+to make it look real; and, so far as they add color to their abstract
+sketch, the first realizes for the sake of the color, and the second
+colors for the sake of the realization.[50]
+
+� 19. And then, lastly, it is another infinite advantage possessed
+by the picture, that in these various differences from reality it
+becomes the expression of the power and intelligence of a
+companionable human soul. In all this choice, arrangement,
+penetrative sight, and kindly guidance, we recognize a supernatural
+operation, and perceive, not merely the landscape or incident as in
+a mirror, but, besides, the presence of what, after all, may perhaps
+be the most wonderful piece of divine work in the whole matter--the
+great human spirit through which it is manifested to us. So that,
+although with respect to many important scenes, it might, as we saw
+above, be one of the most precious gifts that could be given us to
+see them with _our own eyes_, yet also in many things it is more
+desirable to be permitted to see them with the eyes of others; and
+although, to the small, conceited, and affected painter displaying
+his narrow knowledge and tiny dexterities, our only word may be,
+"Stand aside from between that nature and me," yet to the great
+imaginative painter--greater a million times in every faculty of
+soul than we--our word may wisely be, "Come between this nature and
+me--this nature which is too great and too wonderful for me; temper
+it for me, interpret it to me; let me see with your eyes, and hear
+with your ears, and have help and strength from your great spirit."
+
+All the noblest pictures have this character. They are true or
+inspired ideals, seen in a moment to _be_ ideal; that is to say, the
+result of all the highest powers of the imagination, engaged in the
+discovery and apprehension of the purest truths, and having so
+arranged them as best to show their preciousness and exalt their
+clearness. They are always orderly, always one, ruled by one great
+purpose throughout, in the fulfilment of which every atom of the
+detail is called to help, and would be missed if removed; this
+peculiar oneness being the result, not of obedience to any teachable
+law, but of the magnificence of tone in the perfect mind, which
+accepts only what is good for its great purposes, rejects whatever is
+foreign or redundant, and instinctively and instantaneously ranges
+whatever it accepts, in sublime subordination and helpful brotherhood.
+
+� 20. Then, this being the greatest art, the lowest art is the
+mimicry of it,--the subordination of nothing to nothing; the
+elaborate arrangement of sightlessness and emptiness; the order
+which has no object; the unity which has no life, and the law which
+has no love; the light which has nothing to illumine, and shadow
+which has nothing to relieve.[51]
+
+� 21. And then, between these two, comes the wholesome, happy, and
+noble--though not noblest--art of simple transcript from nature;
+into which, so far as our modern Pre-Raphaelitism falls, it will
+indeed do sacred service in ridding us of the old fallacies and
+componencies, but cannot itself rise above the level of simple and
+happy usefulness. So far as it is to be great, it must add,--and so
+far as it _is_ great, has already added,--the great imaginative
+element to all its faithfulness in transcript. And for this reason,
+I said in the close of my Edinburgh Lectures, that Pre-Raphaelitism,
+as long as it confined itself to the simple copying of nature, could
+not take the character of the highest class of art. But it has
+already, almost unconsciously, supplied the defect, and taken that
+character, in all its best results; and, so far as it ought,
+hereafter, it will assuredly do so, as soon as it is permitted to
+maintain itself in any other position than that of stern antagonism
+to the composition teachers around it. I say "so far as it ought,"
+because, as already noticed in that same place, we have enough, and
+to spare, of noble _inventful_ pictures; so many have we, that we
+let them moulder away on the walls and roofs of Italy without one
+regretful thought about them. But of simple transcripts from nature,
+till now we have had none; even Van Eyck and Albert Durer having
+been strongly filled with the spirit of grotesque idealism; so that
+the Pre-Raphaelites have, to the letter, fulfilled Steele's
+description of the author, who "determined to write in an entirely
+new manner, and describe things exactly as they took place."
+
+� 22. We have now, I believe, in some sort answered most of the
+questions which were suggested to us during our statement of the
+nature of great art. I could recapitulate the answers; but perhaps
+the reader is already sufficiently wearied of the recurrence of the
+terms "Ideal," "Nature," "Imagination," "Invention," and will hardly
+care to see them again interchanged among each other, in the
+formalities of a summary. What difficulties may yet occur to him
+will, I think, disappear as he either re-reads the passages which
+suggested them, or follows out the consideration of the subject for
+himself:--this very simple, but very precious, conclusion being
+continually remembered by him as the sum of all; that greatness in
+art (as assuredly in all other things, but more distinctly in this
+than in most of them,) is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but
+_the expression of the mind of a God-made great man_; that teach, or
+preach, or labor as you will, everlasting difference is set between
+one man's capacity and another's; and that this God-given supremacy
+is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the world at one time
+as another. What you can manufacture, or communicate, you can lower
+the price of, but this mental supremacy is incommunicable; you will
+never multiply its quantity, nor lower its price; and nearly the
+best thing that men can generally do is to set themselves, not to
+the attainment, but the discovery of this; learning to know gold,
+when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamonds from flint-sand,
+being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to
+make diamonds out of our own charcoal. And for this God-made
+supremacy, I generally have used, and shall continue to use, the
+word Inspiration, not carelessly nor lightly, but in all logical
+calmness and perfect reverence. We English have many false ideas
+about reverence: we should be shocked, for instance, to see a
+market-woman come into church with a basket of eggs on her arm: we
+think it more reverent to lock her out till Sunday; and to surround
+the church with respectability of iron railings, and defend it with
+pacing inhabitation of beadles. I believe this to be _ir_reverence;
+and that it is more truly reverent, when the market-woman, hot and
+hurried, at six in the morning, her head much confused with
+calculations of the probable price of eggs, can nevertheless get
+within church porch, and church aisle, and church chancel, lay the
+basket down on the very steps of the altar, and receive thereat so
+much of help and hope as may serve her for the day's work. In like
+manner we are solemnly, but I think not wisely, shocked at any one
+who comes hurriedly into church, in any figurative way, with his
+basket on his arm; and perhaps, so long as we feel it so, it is
+better to keep the basket out. But, as for this one commodity of
+high mental supremacy, it cannot be kept out, for the very fountain
+of it is in the church wall, and there is no other right word for it
+but this of Inspiration; a word, indeed, often ridiculously
+perverted, and irreverently used of fledgling poets and pompous
+orators--no one being offended then, and yet cavilled at when
+quietly used of the spirit that it is in a truly great man; cavilled
+at, chiefly, it seems to me, because we expect to know inspiration
+by the look of it. Let a man have shaggy hair, dark eyes, a rolling
+voice, plenty of animal energy, and a facility of rhyming or
+sentencing, and--improvisatore or sentimentalist--we call him
+"inspired" willingly enough; but let him be a rough, quiet worker,
+not proclaiming himself melodiously in any wise, but familiar with
+us, unpretending, and letting all his littlenesses and feeblenesses
+be seen, unhindered,--wearing an ill-cut coat withal, and, though he
+be such a man as is only sent upon the earth once in five hundred
+years, for some special human teaching, it is irreverent to call him
+"inspired." But, be it irreverent or not, this word I must always
+use; and the rest of what work I have here before me, is simply to
+prove the truth of it, with respect to the one among these mighty
+spirits whom we have just lost; who divided his hearers, as many an
+inspired speaker has done before now, into two great sects--a large
+and a narrow; these searching the Nature-scripture calmly, "whether
+those things were so," and those standing haughtily on their Mars
+hill, asking, "what will this babbler say?"
+
+  [46] People of any sense, however, confined themselves to wonder.
+       I think it was only in the Art Journal of September 1st,
+       1854, that any writer had the meanness to charge me with
+       insincerity. "The pictures of Turner and the works of the
+       Pre-Raphaelites are the very antipodes of each other; it is,
+       therefore, impossible that one and the same individual can
+       with any _show of sincerity_ [Note, by the way, the Art-Union
+       has no idea that _real_ sincerity is a thing existent or
+       possible at all. All that it expects or hopes of human nature
+       is, that it should have _show_ of sincerity,] stand forth as
+       the thick and thin [I perceive the writer intends to teach me
+       English, as well as honesty,] eulogist of both. With a
+       certain knowledge of art, such as may be possessed by the
+       author of English Painters, [Note, farther, that the eminent
+       critic does not so much as know the title of the book he is
+       criticising,] it is not difficult to praise any bad or
+       mediocre picture that may be qualified with extravagance or
+       mysticism. This author owes the public a heavy debt of
+       explanation, which a lifetime spent in ingenious
+       reconciliations would not suffice to discharge. A fervent
+       admiration of certain pictures by Turner, and, at the same
+       time, of some of the severest productions of the
+       Pre-Raphaelites, presents an insuperable problem to persons
+       whose taste in art is regulated by definite principles."
+
+  [47] Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. � 46.
+
+  [48] Part II. Sec. IV. Chap. IV. � 23., and Part II. Sec. I. Chap.
+       VII. � 9. The whole of the Preface to the Second Edition is
+       written to maintain this one point of specific detail against
+       the advocates of generalization.
+
+  [49] Vol. II. Chapter on Penetrative Imagination.
+
+  [50] Several other points connected with this subject have already
+       been noticed in the last chapter of the Stones of Venice, �
+       21. &c.
+
+  [51] "Though my pictures should have nothing else, they shall have
+       Chiaroscuro."--CONSTABLE (in Leslie's Life of him). It is
+       singular to reflect what that fatal Chiaroscuro has done in
+       art, in the full extent of its influence. It has been not
+       only shadow, but shadow of Death: passing over the face of
+       the ancient art, as death itself might over a fair human
+       countenance; whispering, as it reduced it to the white
+       projections and lightless orbits of the skull, "Thy face
+       shall have nothing else, but it shall have Chiaroscuro."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE.
+
+
+� 1. Having now obtained, I trust, clear ideas, up to a certain
+point, of what is generally right and wrong in all art, both in
+conception and in workmanship, we have to apply these laws of right
+to the particular branch of art which is the subject of our present
+inquiry, namely, landscape-painting. Respecting which, after the
+various meditations into which we have been led on the high duties
+and ideals of art, it may not improbably occur to us first to
+ask,--whether it be worth inquiring about at all.
+
+That question, perhaps the reader thinks, should have been asked and
+answered before I had written, or he read, two volumes and a half
+about it. So I _had_ answered it, in my own mind; but it seems time
+now to give the grounds for this answer. If, indeed, the reader has
+never suspected that landscape-painting was anything but good,
+right, and healthy work, I should be sorry to put any doubt of its
+being so into his mind; but if, as seems to me more likely, he,
+living in this busy and perhaps somewhat calamitous age, has some
+suspicion that landscape-painting is but an idle and empty business,
+not worth all our long talk about it, then, perhaps, he will be
+pleased to have such suspicion done away, before troubling himself
+farther with these disquisitions.
+
+� 2. I should rather be glad, than otherwise, that he _had_ formed
+some suspicion on this matter. If he has at all admitted the truth
+of anything hitherto said respecting great art, and its choices of
+subject, it seems to me he ought, by this time, to be questioning
+with himself whether road-side weeds, old cottages, broken stones,
+and such other materials, be worthy matters for grave men to busy
+themselves in the imitation of. And I should like him to probe this
+doubt to the deep of it, and bring all his misgivings out to the
+broad light, that we may see how we are to deal with them, or
+ascertain if indeed they are too well founded to be dealt with.
+
+� 3. And to this end I would ask him now to imagine himself
+entering, for the first time in his life, the room of the Old
+Water-Color Society; and to suppose that he has entered it, not for
+the sake of a quiet examination of the paintings one by one, but in
+order to seize such ideas as it may generally suggest respecting the
+state and meaning of modern as compared with elder, art. I suppose
+him, of course, that he may be capable of such a comparison, to be
+in some degree familiar with the different forms in which art has
+developed itself within the periods historically known to us; but
+never, till that moment, to have seen any completely modern work. So
+prepared, and so unprepared, he would, as his ideas began to arrange
+themselves, be first struck by the number of paintings representing
+blue mountains, clear lakes, and ruined castles or cathedrals, and
+he would say to himself: "There is something strange in the mind of
+these modern people! Nobody ever cared about blue mountains before,
+or tried to paint the broken stones of old walls." And the more he
+considered the subject, the more he would feel the peculiarity; and,
+as he thought over the art of Greeks and Romans, he would still
+repeat, with increasing certainty of conviction: "Mountains! I
+remember none. The Greeks did not seem, as artists, to know that
+such things were in the world. They carved, or variously
+represented, men, and horses, and beasts, and birds, and all kinds
+of living creatures,--yes, even down to cuttle-fish; and trees, in a
+sort of way; but not so much as the outline of a mountain; and as
+for lakes, they merely showed they knew the difference between salt
+and fresh water by the fish they put into each." Then he would pass
+on to medi�val art: and still he would be obliged to repeat:
+"Mountains! I remember none. Some careless and jagged arrangements
+of blue spires or spikes on the horizon, and, here and there, an
+attempt at representing an overhanging rock with a hole through it;
+but merely in order to divide the light behind some human figure.
+Lakes! No, nothing of the kind,--only blue bays of sea put in to
+fill up the background when the painter could not think of anything
+else. Broken-down buildings! No; for the most part very complete
+and well-appointed buildings, if any; and never buildings at all,
+but to give place or explanation to some circumstance of human
+conduct." And then he would look up again to the modern pictures,
+observing, with an increasing astonishment, that here the human
+interest had, in many cases, altogether disappeared. That mountains,
+instead of being used only as a blue ground for the relief of the
+heads of saints, were themselves the exclusive subjects of reverent
+contemplation; that their ravines, and peaks, and forests, were all
+painted with an appearance of as much enthusiasm as had formerly
+been devoted to the dimple of beauty, or the frowns of asceticism;
+and that all the living interest which was still supposed necessary
+to the scene, might be supplied by a traveller in a slouched hat, a
+beggar in a scarlet cloak, or, in default of these, even by a heron
+or a wild duck.
+
+And if he could entirely divest himself of his own modern habits of
+thought, and regard the subjects in question with the feelings of a
+knight or monk of the middle ages, it might be a question whether
+those feelings would not rapidly verge towards contempt. "What!" he
+might perhaps mutter to himself, "here are human beings spending the
+whole of their lives in making pictures of bits of stone and runlets
+of water, withered sticks and flying frogs, and actually not a
+picture of the gods or the heroes! none of the saints or the
+martyrs! none of the angels and demons! none of councils or battles,
+or any other single thing worth the thought of a man! Trees and
+clouds indeed! as if I should not see as many trees as I cared to
+see, and more, in the first half of my day's journey to-morrow, or
+as if it mattered to any man whether the sky were clear or cloudy,
+so long as his armor did not get too hot in the sun!"
+
+� 5. There can be no question that this would have been somewhat the
+tone of thought with which either a Laced�monian, a soldier of Rome in
+her strength, or a knight of the thirteenth century, would have been
+apt to regard these particular forms of our present art. Nor can there
+be any question that, in many respects, their judgment would have been
+just. It is true that the indignation of the Spartan or Roman would
+have been equally excited against any appearance of luxurious
+industry; but the medi�val knight would, to the full, have admitted
+the nobleness of art; only he would have had it employed in decorating
+his church or his prayer-book, nor in imitating moors and clouds. And
+the feelings of all the three would have agreed in this,--that their
+main ground of offence must have been the want of _seriousness_ and
+_purpose_ in what they saw. They would all have admitted the nobleness
+of whatever conduced to the honor of the gods, or the power of the
+nation; but they would not have understood how the skill of human life
+could be wisely spent in that which did no honor either to Jupiter or
+to the Virgin; and which in no wise tended, apparently, either to the
+accumulation of wealth, the excitement of patriotism, or the
+advancement of morality.
+
+� 6. And exactly so far forth their judgment would be just, as the
+landscape-painting could indeed be shown, for others as well as for
+them, to be art of this nugatory kind; and so far forth unjust, as
+that painting could be shown to depend upon, or cultivate, certain
+sensibilities which neither the Greek nor medi�val knight possessed,
+and which have resulted from some extraordinary change in human nature
+since their time. We have no right to assume, without very accurate
+examination of it, that this change has been an ennobling one. The
+simple fact, that we are, in some strange way, different from all the
+great races that have existed before us, cannot at once be received as
+the proof of our own greatness; nor can it be granted, without any
+question, that we have a legitimate subject of complacency in being
+under the influence of feelings, with which neither Miltiades nor the
+Black Prince, neither Homer nor Dante, neither Socrates nor St.
+Francis, could for an instant have sympathized.
+
+� 7. Whether, however, this fact be one to excite our pride or not,
+it is assuredly one to excite our deepest interest. The fact itself
+is certain. For nearly six thousand years the energies of man have
+pursued certain beaten paths, manifesting some constancy of feeling
+throughout all that period, and involving some fellowship at heart,
+among the various nations who by turns succeeded or surpassed each
+other in the several aims of art or policy. So that, for these
+thousands of years, the whole human race might be to some extent
+described in general terms. Man was a creature separated from all
+others by his instinctive sense of an Existence superior to his own,
+invariably manifesting this sense of the being of a God more
+strongly in proportion to his own perfectness of mind and body; and
+making enormous and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some
+persuasion of the immediate presence or approval of the Divinity. So
+that, on the whole, the best things he did were done as in the
+presence, or for the honor, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to
+help him to imagine them, or temples raised to their honor, or acts
+of self-sacrifice done in the hope of their love, he brought
+whatever was best and skilfullest in him into their service, and
+lived in a perpetual subjection to their unseen power. Also, he was
+always anxious to know something definite about them; and his chief
+books, songs, and pictures were filled with legends about them, or
+especially devoted to illustration of their lives and nature.
+
+� 8. Next to these gods he was always anxious to know something
+about his human ancestors; fond of exalting the memory, and telling
+or painting the history of old rulers and benefactors; yet full of
+an enthusiastic confidence in himself, as having in many ways
+advanced beyond the best efforts of past time; and eager to record
+his own doings for future fame. He was a creature eminently warlike,
+placing his principal pride in dominion; eminently beautiful, and
+having great delight in his own beauty: setting forth this beauty by
+every species of invention in dress, and rendering his arms and
+accoutrements superbly decorative of his form. He took, however,
+very little interest in anything but what belonged to humanity;
+caring in no wise for the external world, except as it influenced
+his own destiny; honoring the lightning because it could strike him,
+the sea because it could drown him, the fountains because they gave
+him drink, and the grass because it yielded him seed; but utterly
+incapable of feeling any special happiness in the love of such
+things, or any earnest emotion about them, considered as separate
+from man; therefore giving no time to the study of them;--knowing
+little of herbs, except only which were hurtful, and which healing;
+of stones, only which would glitter brightest in a crown, or last
+the longest in a wall; of the wild beasts, which were best for food,
+and which the stoutest quarry for the hunter;--thus spending only
+on the lower creatures and inanimate things his waste energy, his
+dullest thoughts, his most languid emotions, and reserving all his
+acuter intellect for researches into his own nature and that of the
+gods; all his strength of will for the acquirement of political or
+moral power; all his sense of beauty for things immediately
+connected with his own person and life; and all his deep affections
+for domestic or divine companionship.
+
+Such, in broad light and brief terms, was man for five thousand
+years. Such he is no longer. Let us consider what he is now,
+comparing the descriptions clause by clause.
+
+� 9. I. He _was_ invariably sensible of the existence of gods, and
+went about all his speculations or works holding this as an
+acknowledged fact, making his best efforts in their service. _Now_
+he is capable of going through life with hardly any positive idea on
+this subject,--doubting, fearing, suspecting, analyzing,--doing
+everything, in fact, _but_ believing; hardly ever getting quite up
+to that point which hitherto was wont to be the starting point for
+all generations. And human work has accordingly hardly any reference
+to spiritual beings, but is done either from a patriotic or personal
+interest,--either to benefit mankind, or reach some selfish end, not
+(I speak of human work in the broad sense) to please the gods.
+
+II. He _was_ a beautiful creature, setting forth this beauty by all
+means in his power, and depending upon it for much of his authority
+over his fellows. So that the ruddy cheek of David, and the ivory
+skin of Atrides, and the towering presence of Saul, and the blue
+eyes of Coeur de Lion, were among the chief reasons why they
+should be kings; and it was one of the aims of all education, and of
+all dress, to make the presence of the human form stately and
+lovely. _Now_ it has become the task of grave philosophy partly to
+depreciate or conceal this bodily beauty; and even by those who
+esteem it in their hearts, it is not made one of the great ends of
+education: man has become, upon the whole, an ugly animal, and is
+not ashamed of his ugliness.
+
+III. He _was_ eminently warlike. He is _now_ gradually becoming more
+and more ashamed of all the arts and aims of battle. So that the
+desire of dominion, which was once frankly confessed or boasted of as
+a heroic passion, is now sternly reprobated or cunningly disclaimed.
+
+IV. He _used_ to take no interest in anything but what immediately
+concerned himself. _Now_, he has deep interest in the abstract
+natures of things, inquires as eagerly into the laws which regulate
+the economy of the material world, as into those of his own being,
+and manifests a passionate admiration of inanimate objects, closely
+resembling, in its elevation and tenderness, the affection which he
+bears to those living souls with which he is brought into the
+nearest fellowship.
+
+� 10. It is this last change only which is to be the subject of our
+present inquiry; but it cannot be doubted that it is closely
+connected with all the others, and that we can only thoroughly
+understand its nature by considering it in this connection. For,
+regarded by itself, we might, perhaps, too rashly assume it to be a
+natural consequence of the progress of the race. There appears to be
+a diminution of selfishness in it, and a more extended and heartfelt
+desire of understanding the manner of God's working; and this the
+more, because one of the permanent characters of this change is a
+greater accuracy in the statement of external facts. When the eyes
+of men were fixed first upon themselves, and upon nature solely and
+secondarily as bearing upon their interests, it was of less
+consequence to them what the ultimate laws of nature were, than what
+their immediate effects were upon human beings. Hence they could
+rest satisfied with phenomena instead of principles, and accepted
+without scrutiny every fable which seemed sufficiently or gracefully
+to account for those phenomena. But so far as the eyes of men are
+now withdrawn from themselves, and turned upon the inanimate things
+about them, the results cease to be of importance, and the laws
+become essential.
+
+� 11. In these respects, it might easily appear to us that this
+change was assuredly one of steady and natural advance. But when we
+contemplate the others above noted, of which it is clearly one of
+the branches or consequences, we may suspect ourselves of
+over-rashness in our self-congratulation, and admit the necessity of
+a scrupulous analysis both of the feeling itself and of its
+tendencies.
+
+Of course a complete analysis, or anything like it, would involve a
+treatise on the whole history of the world. I shall merely endeavor
+to note some of the leading and more interesting circumstances
+bearing on the subject, and to show sufficient practical ground for
+the conclusion, that landscape painting is indeed a noble and useful
+art, though one not long known by man. I shall therefore examine, as
+best I can, the effect of landscape, 1st, on the Classical mind;
+2ndly, on the Medi�val mind; and lastly, on the Modern mind. But
+there is one point of some interest respecting the effect of it on
+_any_ mind, which must be settled first, and this I will endeavor to
+do in the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY.
+
+
+� 1. German dulness and English affectation, have of late much
+multiplied among us the use of two of the most objectionable words
+that were ever coined by the troublesomeness of metaphysicians,
+--namely, "Objective" and "Subjective."
+
+No words can be more exquisitely, and in all points, useless; and I
+merely speak of them that I may, at once and for ever, get them out
+of my way and out of my reader's. But to get that done, they must be
+explained.
+
+The word "Blue," say certain philosophers, means the sensation of
+color which the human eye receives in looking at the open sky, or at
+a bell gentian.
+
+Now, say they farther, as this sensation can only be felt when the
+eye is turned to the object, and as, therefore, no such sensation is
+produced by the object when nobody looks at it, therefore the thing,
+when it is not looked at, is not blue; and thus (say they) there are
+many qualities of things which depend as much on something else as
+on themselves. To be sweet, a thing must have a taster; it is only
+sweet while it is being tasted, and if the tongue had not the
+capacity of taste, then the sugar would not have the quality of
+sweetness.
+
+And then they agree that the qualities of things which thus depend
+upon our perception of them, and upon our human nature as affected
+by them, shall be called Subjective; and the qualities of things
+which they always have, irrespective of any other nature, as
+roundness or squareness, shall be called Objective.
+
+From these ingenious views the step is very easy to a farther
+opinion, that it does not much matter what things are in themselves,
+but only what they are to us; and that the only real truth of them
+is their appearance to, or effect upon, us. From which position,
+with a hearty desire for mystification, and much egotism,
+selfishness, shallowness, and impertinence, a philosopher may easily
+go so far as to believe, and say, that everything in the world
+depends upon his seeing or thinking of it, and that nothing,
+therefore, exists, but what he sees or thinks of.
+
+� 2. Now, to get rid of all these ambiguities and troublesome words
+at once, be it observed that the word "Blue" does _not_ mean the
+_sensation_ caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the
+_power_ of producing that sensation; and this power is always there,
+in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and
+would remain there though there were not left a man on the face of
+the earth. Precisely in the same way gunpowder has a power of
+exploding. It will not explode if you put no match to it. But it has
+always the power of so exploding, and is therefore called an
+explosive compound, which it very positively and assuredly is,
+whatever philosophy may say to the contrary.
+
+In like manner, a gentian does not produce the sensation of blueness
+if you don't look at it. But it has always the power of doing so;
+its particles being everlastingly so arranged by its Maker. And,
+therefore, the gentian and the sky are always verily blue, whatever
+philosophy may say to the contrary; and if you do not see them blue
+when you look at them, it is not their fault but yours.[52]
+
+� 3. Hence I would say to these philosophers: If, instead of using
+the sonorous phrase, "It is objectively so," you will use the plain
+old phrase, "It _is_ so;" and if instead of the sonorous phrase, "It
+is subjectively so," you will say, in plain old English, "It does
+so," or "It seems so to me;" you will, on the whole, be more
+intelligible to your fellow-creatures: and besides, if you find
+that a thing which generally "does so" to other people (as a gentian
+looks blue to most men) does _not_ so to you, on any particular
+occasion, you will not fall into the impertinence of saying that the
+thing is not so, or did not so, but you will say simply (what you
+will be all the better for speedily finding out) that something is
+the matter with you. If you find that you cannot explode the
+gunpowder, you will not declare that all gunpowder is subjective,
+and all explosion imaginary, but you will simply suspect and declare
+yourself to be an ill-made match. Which, on the whole, though there
+may be a distant chance of a mistake about it, is, nevertheless, the
+wisest conclusion you can come to until farther experiment.[53]
+
+� 4. Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words quite
+out of our way, we may go on at our ease to examine the point in
+question,--namely, the difference between the ordinary, proper, and
+true appearances of things to us; and the extraordinary, or false
+appearances, when we are under the influence of emotion, or
+contemplative fancy;[54] false appearances, I say, as being entirely
+unconnected with any real power or character in the object, and only
+imputed to it by us.
+
+For instance--
+
+      "The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould
+      Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold."[55]
+
+This is very beautiful and yet very untrue. The crocus is not a
+spendthrift, but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold, but saffron.
+How is it that we enjoy so much the having it put into our heads
+that it is anything else than a plain crocus?
+
+It is an important question. For, throughout our past reasonings
+about art, we have always found that nothing could be good or
+useful, or ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is
+something pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless
+_un_true. And what is more, if we think over our favorite poetry, we
+shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all
+the more for being so.
+
+� 5. It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this
+fallacy is of two principal kinds. Either, as in this case of the
+crocus, it is the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no real
+expectation that it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy caused
+by an excited state of the feelings, making us, for the time, more
+or less irrational. Of the cheating of the fancy we shall have to
+speak presently; but, in this chapter, I want to examine the nature
+of the other error, that which the mind admits, when affected
+strongly by emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke,--
+
+      "They rowed her in across the rolling foam--
+      The cruel, crawling foam."
+
+The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind
+which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one
+in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have
+the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our
+impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize
+as the "Pathetic fallacy."
+
+� 6. Now we are in the habit of considering this fallacy as
+eminently a character of poetical description, and the temper of
+mind in which we allow it, as one eminently poetical, because
+passionate. But, I believe, if we look well into the matter, that
+we shall find the greatest poets do not often admit this kind of
+falseness,--that it is only the second order of poets who much
+delight in it.[56]
+
+Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of
+Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough," he gives the most
+perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness,
+passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for
+an instant losing his own clear perception that _these_ are souls,
+and _those_ are leaves: he makes no confusion of one with the other.
+But when Coleridge speaks of
+
+      "The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
+      That dances as often as dance it can,"
+
+he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea about the
+leaf: he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not;
+confuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with
+merriment, and the wind that shakes it with music. Here, however,
+there is some beauty, even in the morbid passage; but take an
+instance in Homer and Pope. Without the knowledge of Ulysses,
+Elpenor, his youngest follower, has fallen from an upper chamber in
+the Circean palace, and has been left dead, unmissed by his leader,
+or companions, in the haste of their departure. They cross the sea
+to the Cimmerian land; and Ulysses summons the shades from Tartarus.
+The first which appears is that of the lost Elpenor. Ulysses,
+amazed, and in exactly the spirit of bitter and terrified lightness
+which is seen in Hamlet,[57] addresses the spirit with the simple,
+startled words:--
+
+    "Elpenor? How camest thou under the Shadowy darkness? Hast
+    thou come faster on foot than I in my black ship?"
+
+Which Pope renders thus:--
+
+      "O, say, what angry power Elpenor led
+      To glide in shades, and wander with the dead?
+      How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined,
+      Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?"
+
+I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in the
+nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind! And yet how is
+it that these conceits are so painful now, when they have been
+pleasant to us in the other instances?
+
+� 7. For a very simple reason. They are not a _pathetic_ fallacy at
+all, for they are put into the mouth of the wrong passion--a passion
+which never could possibly have spoken them--agonized curiosity.
+Ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter; and the very last
+thing his mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest
+in any wise what was _not_ a fact. The delay in the first three
+lines, and conceit in the last, jar upon us instantly, like the most
+frightful discord in music. No poet of true imaginative power could
+possibly have written the passage. It is worth while comparing the
+way a similar question is put by the exquisite sincerity of Keats:--
+
+                  "He wept, and his bright tears
+        Went trickling down the golden bow he held.
+        Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood;
+        While from beneath some cumb'rous boughs hard by,
+        With solemn step, an awful goddess came.
+        And there was purport in her looks for him,
+        Which he with eager guess began to read:
+        Perplexed the while, melodiously he said,
+        '_How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?_'"
+
+Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some
+sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Coleridge's fallacy has no
+discord in it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge. Without farther
+questioning, I will endeavor to state the main bearings of this
+matter.
+
+� 8. The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, is, as I
+said above, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal
+fully with what is before them or upon them; borne away, or
+over-clouded, or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a more or less
+noble state, according to the force of the emotion which has induced
+it. For it is no credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate
+in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them;
+and it is in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in the
+ranks of being, that the emotions should be strong enough to
+vanquish, partly, the intellect, and make it believe what they
+choose. But it is still a grander condition when the intellect also
+rises, till it is strong enough to assert its rule against, or
+together with, the utmost efforts of the passions; and the whole man
+stands in an iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in
+no wise evaporating; even if he melts, losing none of his weight.
+
+So, then, we have the three ranks: the man who perceives rightly,
+because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very
+accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then,
+secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to
+whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a star, or a
+sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly,
+there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and
+to whom the primrose is for ever nothing else than itself--a little
+flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever
+and how many soever the associations and passions may be, that crowd
+around it. And, in general, these three classes may be rated in
+comparative order, as the men who are not poets at all, and the
+poets of the second order, and the poets of the first; only however
+great a man may be, there are always some subjects which _ought_ to
+throw him off his balance; some, by which his poor human capacity of
+thought should be conquered, and brought into the inaccurate and
+vague state of perception, so that the language of the highest
+inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild in metaphor,
+resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker things.
+
+� 9. And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel
+nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think
+weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel
+strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and
+the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to
+influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because
+what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual
+condition of prophetic inspiration.
+
+� 10. I separate these classes, in order that their character may be
+clearly understood; but of course they are united each to the other
+by imperceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to the
+influences to which it is subjected, passes at different times into
+the various states. Still, the difference between the great and less
+man is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of _alterability_. That
+is to say, the one knows too much, and perceives and feels too much
+of the past and future, and of all things beside and around that
+which immediately affects him, to be in any wise shaken by it. His
+mind is made up; his thoughts have an accustomed current; his ways
+are steadfast; it is not this or that new sight which will at once
+unbalance him. He is tender to impression at the surface, like a
+rock with deep moss upon it; but there is too much mass of him to be
+moved. The smaller man, with the same degree of sensibility, is at
+once carried off his feet; he wants to do something he did not want
+to do before; he views all the universe in a new light through his
+tears; he is gay or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as
+things come and go to him. Therefore the high creative poet might
+even be thought, to a great extent, impassive (as shallow people
+think Dante stern), receiving indeed all feelings to the full, but
+having a great centre of reflection and knowledge in which he stands
+serene, and watches the feeling, as it were, from far off.
+
+Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire command of himself, and
+can look around calmly, at all moments, for the image or the word that
+will best tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. But Keats and
+Tennyson, and the poets of the second order, are generally themselves
+subdued by the feelings under which they write, or, at least, write as
+choosing to be so, and therefore admit certain expressions and modes
+of thought which are in some sort diseased or false.
+
+� 11. Now so long as we see that the _feeling_ is true, we pardon,
+or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which it
+induces: we are pleased, for instance, with those lines of
+Kingsley's, above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe
+foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow. But the moment
+the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment every such
+expression becomes untrue, as being for ever untrue in the external
+facts. And there is no greater baseness in literature than the habit
+of using these metaphorical expressions in cool blood. An inspired
+writer, in full impetuosity of passion, may speak wisely and truly
+of "raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame;" but it is
+only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking
+of "raging waves," "remorseless floods," "ravenous billows," &c.;
+and it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check
+all such habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the
+_pure fact_, out of which if any feeling comes to him or his reader,
+he knows it must be a true one.
+
+To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who represents a man in
+despair, desiring that his body may be cast into the sea,
+
+      "_Whose changing mound, and foam that passed away_,
+      Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay."
+
+Observe, there is not a single false, or even overcharged,
+expression. "Mound" of the sea wave is perfectly simple and true;
+"changing" is as familiar as may be; "foam that passed away,"
+strictly literal; and the whole line descriptive of the reality with
+a degree of accuracy which I know not any other verse, in the range
+of poetry, that altogether equals. For most people have not a
+distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave. The
+word "wave" is used too generally of ripples and breakers, and
+bendings in light drapery or grass: it does not by itself convey a
+perfect image. But the word "mound" is heavy, large, dark, definite;
+there is no mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor missing the sight
+of it. Then the term "changing" has a peculiar force also. Most
+people think of waves as rising and falling. But if they look at the
+sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves do not rise and
+fall. They change. Change both place and form, but they do not fall;
+one wave goes on, and on, and still on; now lower, now higher, now
+tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself together like a
+wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the same wave, till at last
+it seems struck by something, and changes, one knows not
+how,--becomes another wave.
+
+The close of the line insists on this image, and paints it still
+more perfectly,--"foam that passed away." Not merely melting,
+disappearing, but passing on, out of sight, on the career of the
+wave. Then, having put the absolute ocean fact as far as he may
+before our eyes, the poet leaves us to feel about it as we may, and
+to trace for ourselves the opposite fact,--the image of the green
+mounds that do not change, and the white and written stones that do
+not pass away; and thence to follow out also the associated images
+of the calm life with the quiet grave, and the despairing life with
+the fading foam:--
+
+                   "Let no man move his bones."
+    "As for Samaria, her king is cut off like the foam upon the water."
+
+But nothing of this is actually told or pointed out, and the
+expressions, as they stand, are perfectly severe and accurate, utterly
+uninfluenced by the firmly governed emotion of the writer. Even the
+word "mock" is hardly an exception, as it may stand merely for
+"deceive" or "defeat," without implying any impersonation of the
+waves.
+
+� 12. It may be well, perhaps, to give one or two more instances to
+show the peculiar dignity possessed by all passages which thus limit
+their expression to the pure fact, and leave the hearer to gather
+what he can from it. Here is a notable one from the Iliad. Helen,
+looking from the Sc�an gate of Troy over the Grecian host, and
+telling Priam the names of its captains, says at last:--
+
+    "I see all the other dark-eyed Greeks; but two I cannot
+    see,--Castor and Pollux,--whom one mother bore with me. Have
+    they not followed from fair Laced�mon, or have they indeed
+    come in their sea-wandering ships, but now will not enter into
+    the battle of men, fearing the shame and the scorn that is in
+    me?"
+
+Then Homer:--
+
+    "So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth
+    possessed, there in Laced�mon, in the dear fatherland."
+
+Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the extreme. The poet
+has to speak of the earth in sadness, but he will not let that
+sadness affect or change his thoughts of it. No; though Castor and
+Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our mother still, fruitful,
+life-giving. These are the facts of the thing. I see nothing else
+than these. Make what you will of them.
+
+� 13. Take another very notable instance from Casimir de la Vigne's
+terrible ballad, "La Toilette de Constance." I must quote a few
+lines out of it here and there, to enable the reader who has not the
+book by him, to understand its close.
+
+            "Vite, Anna, vite; au miroir
+              Plus vite, Anna. L'heure s'avance,
+            Et je vais au bal ce soir
+              Chez l'ambassadeur de France.
+
+      Y pensez vous, ils sont fan�s, ces noeuds,
+        Ils sont d'hier, mon Dieu, comme tout passe!
+      Que du r�seau qui retient mes cheveux
+        Les glands d'azur retombent avec gr�ce.
+      Plus haut! Plus bas! Vous ne comprenez rien!
+        Que sur mon front ce saphir �tincelle:
+      Vous me piquez, mal-adroite. Ah, c'est bien,
+        Bien,--ch�re Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle.
+
+      Celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier
+        (Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'esp�re.
+      (Ah, fi, profane, est-ce l� mon collier?
+        Quoi! ces grains d'or b�nits par le Saint P�re!)
+      Il y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main
+        En y pensant, � peine je respire;
+      P�re Anselmo doit m'entendre demain,
+        Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire?
+
+            Vite un coup d'oeil au miroir,
+              Le dernier.----J'ai l'assurance
+            Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir
+              Chez l'ambassadeur de France.
+
+      Pr�s du foyer, Constance s'admirait.
+        Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une �tincelle!
+      Au feu. Courez; Quand l'espoir l'enivrait
+        Tout perdre ainsi! Quoi! Mourir,--et si belle!
+      L'horrible feu ronge avec volupt�
+        Ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'�l�ve,
+      Et sans pitie d�vore sa beaut�,
+        Ses dixhuit ans, h�las, et son doux r�ve!
+
+            Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour!
+              On disait, Pauvre Constance!
+            Et on dansait, jusqu'au jour,
+              Chez l'ambassadeur de France."
+
+Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the poet does not say.
+What you may think about it, he does not know. He has nothing to do
+with that. There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber.
+There they danced, till the morning, at the Ambassador's of France.
+Make what you will of it.
+
+If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I have quoted
+only about the third part, he will find that there is not, from
+beginning to end of it, a single poetical (so called) expression,
+except in one stanza. The girl speaks as simple prose as may be; there
+is not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing.
+The poet stands by, impassive as a statue, recording her words just as
+they come. At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of
+death, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him. He records no
+longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. The fire
+gnaws with _voluptuousness--without pity_. It is soon past. The fate
+is fixed for ever; and he retires into his pale and crystalline
+atmosphere of truth. He closes all with the calm veracity,
+
+      "They said, 'Poor Constance!'"
+
+� 14. Now in this there is the exact type of the consummate poetical
+temperament. For, be it clearly and constantly remembered, that the
+greatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness of
+feeling, and command of it. A poet is great, first in proportion to
+the strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted,
+in proportion to his government of it; there being, however, always
+a point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed
+this government, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and
+wild fancy becomes just and true. Thus the destruction of the
+kingdom of Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of
+Israel. The fact is too great, too wonderful. It overthrows him,
+dashes him into a confused element of dreams. All the world is, to
+his stunned thought, full of strange voices. "Yea, the fir-trees
+rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, 'Since thou art
+gone down to the grave, no feller is come up against us.'" So, still
+more, the thought of the presence of Deity cannot be borne without
+this great astonishment. "The mountains and the hills shall break
+forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the fields shall
+clap their hands."
+
+� 15. But by how much this feeling is noble when it is justified by
+the strength of its cause, by so much it is ignoble when there is not
+cause enough for it; and beyond all other ignobleness is the mere
+affectation of it, in hardness of heart. Simply bad writing may almost
+always, as above noticed, be known by its adoption of these fanciful
+metaphorical expressions, as a sort of current coin; yet there is even
+a worse, at least a more harmful, condition of writing than this, in
+which such expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up,
+but, by some master, skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberately
+wrought out with chill and studied fancy; as if we should try to make
+an old lava stream look red-hot again, by covering it with dead
+leaves, or white-hot, with hoar-frost.
+
+When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the character of a
+truly good and holy man, he permits himself for a moment to be
+overborne by the feeling so far as to exclaim--
+
+      "Where shall I find him? angels, tell me where.
+      You know him; he is near you; point him out.
+      Shall I see glories beaming from his brow,
+      Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?"
+
+This emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true and right. But now
+hear the cold-hearted Pope say to a shepherd girl--
+
+      "Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade!
+      Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade;
+      Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove,
+      And winds shall waft it to the powers above.
+      But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain,
+      The wondering forests soon should dance again;
+      The moving mountains hear the powerful call,
+      And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall."
+
+This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken for, the language
+of passion. It is simple falsehood, uttered by hypocrisy; definite
+absurdity, rooted in affectation, and coldly asserted in the teeth
+of nature and fact. Passion will indeed go far in deceiving itself;
+but it must be a strong passion, not the simple wish of a lover to
+tempt his mistress to sing. Compare a very closely parallel passage
+in Wordsworth, in which the lover has lost his mistress:
+
+      "Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid,
+      When thus his moan he made:--
+
+      'Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak,
+        Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie,
+      That in some other way yon smoke
+        May mount into the sky.
+
+      If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough,
+        Headlong, the waterfall must come,
+        Oh, let it, then, be dumb--
+      Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now.'"
+
+Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a waterfall
+to be silent, if it is not to hang listening; but with what
+different relation to the mind that contemplates them! Here, in the
+extremity of its agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which
+at the same moment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly
+believes possible, in a vague impression that a miracle _might_ be
+wrought to give relief even to a less sore distress,--that nature is
+kind, and God is kind, and that grief is strong; it knows not well
+what _is_ possible to such grief. To silence a stream, to move a
+cottage wall,--one might think it could do as much as that!
+
+� 16. I believe these instances are enough to illustrate the main
+point I insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy,--that so far
+as it _is_ a fallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of
+mind, and comparatively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired
+prophet it is a sign of the incapacity of his human sight or thought
+to bear what has been revealed to it. In ordinary poetry, if it is
+found in the thoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign of
+his belonging to the inferior school; if in the thoughts of the
+characters imagined by him, it is right or wrong according to the
+genuineness of the emotion from which it springs; always, however,
+implying necessarily _some_ degree of weakness in the character.
+
+Take two most exquisite instances from master hands. The Jessy of
+Shenstone, and the Ellen of Wordsworth, have both been betrayed and
+deserted. Jessy, in the course of her most touching complaint, says:
+
+      "If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray,
+        Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure,
+      'Hope not to find delight in us,' they say,
+        'For we are spotless, Jessy; we are pure.'"
+
+Compare with this some of the words of Ellen:
+
+      "'Ah, why,' said Ellen, sighing to herself,
+      'Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge,
+      And nature, that is kind in woman's breast,
+      And reason, that in man is wise and good,
+      And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,--
+      Why do not these prevail for human life,
+      To keep two hearts together, that began
+      Their springtime with one love, and that have need
+      Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet
+      To grant, or be received; while that poor bird--
+      O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me
+      Been faithless, hear him;--though a lowly creature,
+      One of God's simple children, that yet know not
+      The Universal Parent, _how_ he sings!
+      As if he wished the firmament of heaven
+      Should listen, and give back to him the voice
+      Of his triumphant constancy and love.
+      The proclamation that he makes, how far
+      His darkness doth transcend our fickle light.'"
+
+The perfection of both these passages, as far as regards truth and
+tenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insuperable.
+But, of the two characters imagined, Jessy is weaker than Ellen,
+exactly in so far as something appears to her to be in nature which is
+not. The flowers do not really reproach her. God meant them to comfort
+her, not to taunt her; they would do so if she saw them rightly.
+
+Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring
+emotion. There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her
+thoughts. She reasons as calmly as if she did not feel. And,
+although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its
+desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant admit
+any veracity in the thought. "As if," she says,--"I know he means
+nothing of the kind; but it does verily seem as if." The reader will
+find, by examining the rest of the poem, that Ellen's character is
+throughout consistent in this clear though passionate strength.
+
+It then being, I hope, now made clear to the reader in all respects
+that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic,
+feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion
+of Truth is entire, over this, as over every other natural and just
+state of the human mind, we may go on to the subject for the dealing
+with which this prefatory inquiry became necessary; and why
+necessary, we shall see forthwith.[58]
+
+  [52] It is quite true, that in all qualities involving sensation,
+       there may be a doubt whether different people receive the
+       same sensation from the same thing (compare Part II. Sec. I.
+       Chap. V. � 6.); but, though this makes such facts not
+       distinctly explicable, it does not alter the facts
+       themselves. I derive a certain sensation, which I call
+       sweetness, from sugar. That is a fact. Another person feels a
+       sensation, which _he_ also calls sweetness, from sugar. That
+       is also a fact. The sugar's power to produce these two
+       sensations, which we suppose to be, and which are, in all
+       probability, very nearly the same in both of us, and, on the
+       whole, in the human race, is its sweetness.
+
+  [53] In fact (for I may as well, for once, meet our German friends
+       in their own style), all that has been subjected to us on
+       this subject seems object to this great objection; that the
+       subjection of all things (subject to no exceptions) to senses
+       which are, in us, both subject and abject, and objects of
+       perpetual contempt, cannot but make it our ultimate object to
+       subject ourselves to the senses, and to remove whatever
+       objections existed to such subjection. So that, finally, that
+       which is the subject of examination or object of attention,
+       uniting thus in itself the characters of subness and obness
+       (so that, that which has no obness in it should be called
+       sub-subjective, or a sub-subject, and that which has no
+       subness in it should be called upper or ober-objective, or an
+       ob-object); and we also, who suppose ourselves the objects of
+       every arrangement, and are certainly the subjects of every
+       sensual impression, thus uniting in ourselves, in an obverse
+       or adverse manner, the characters of obness and subness, must
+       both become metaphysically dejected or rejected, nothing
+       remaining in _us_ objective, but subjectivity, and the very
+       objectivity of the object being lost in the abyss of this
+       subjectivity of the Human.
+
+       There is, however, some meaning in the above sentence, if the
+       reader cares to make it out; but in a pure German sentence of
+       the highest style there is often none whatever. See Appendix
+       II. "German Philosophy."
+
+  [54] Contemplative, in the sense explained in Part III. Sec. II.
+       Chap. IV.
+
+  [55] Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her
+       Recollections of a Literary Life.
+
+  [56] I admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two
+       orders I mean the Creative (Shakspere, Homer, Dante), and
+       Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson). But
+       both of these must be _first_-rate in their range, though
+       their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in
+       _quality_ no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind.
+       There is quite enough of the best,--much more than we can
+       ever read or enjoy in the length of a life; and it is a
+       literal wrong or sin in any person to encumber us with
+       inferior work. I have no patience with apologies made by
+       young pseudo-poets, "that they believe there is _some_ good
+       in what they have written: that they hope to do better in
+       time," etc. _Some_ good! If there is not _all_ good, there is
+       no good. If they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble
+       us now? Let them rather courageously burn all they have done,
+       and wait for the better days. There are few men, ordinarily
+       educated, who in moments of strong feeling could not strike
+       out a poetical thought, and afterwards polish it so as to be
+       presentable. But men of sense know better than so to waste
+       their time; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the
+       touch of the master's hand on the chords too well to fumble
+       among them after him. Nay, more than this; all inferior
+       poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away
+       the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched
+       commonalty to good thoughts; and, in general, adds to the
+       weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable
+       manner. There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary
+       men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in
+       the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more
+       noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than
+       to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the
+       world.
+
+  [57] "Well said, Old mole! can'st work i' the ground so fast?"
+
+  [58] I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances,
+       both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just
+       come upon, in Maude:
+
+                                 "For a great speculation had fail'd;
+          And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with
+                despair;
+        And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling
+                wail'd,
+          And the _flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro'
+                the air_."
+
+            "There has fallen a splendid tear
+              From the passion-flower at the gate.
+            _The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near!'_
+              _And the white rose weeps, 'She is late.'_
+            _The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear!'_
+              _And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE.
+
+
+� 1. My reason for asking the reader to give so much of his time to
+the examination of the pathetic fallacy was, that, whether in
+literature or in art, he will find it eminently characteristic of
+the modern mind; and in the landscape, whether of literature or art,
+he will also find the modern painter endeavoring to express
+something which he, as a living creature, imagines in the lifeless
+object, while the classical and medi�val painters were content with
+expressing the unimaginary and actual qualities of the object
+itself. It will be observed that, according to the principle stated
+long ago, I use the words painter and poet quite indifferently,
+including in our inquiry the landscape of literature, as well as
+that of painting; and this the more because the spirit of classical
+landscape has hardly been expressed in any other way than by words.
+
+� 2. Taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely a very notable
+circumstance, to begin with, that this pathetic fallacy is eminently
+characteristic of modern painting. For instance, Keats, describing a
+wave, breaking, out at sea, says of it--
+
+      "Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar,
+      Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence."
+
+That is quite perfect, as an example of the modern manner. The idea
+of the peculiar action with which foam rolls down a long, large wave
+could not have been given by any other words so well as by this
+"wayward indolence." But Homer would never have written, never
+thought of, such words. He could not by any possibility have lost
+sight of the great fact that the wave, from the beginning to the end
+of it, do what it might, was still nothing else than salt water; and
+that salt water could not be either wayward or indolent. He will
+call the waves "over-roofed," "full-charged," "monstrous,"
+"compact-black," "dark-clear," "violet-colored," "wine-colored," and
+so on. But every one of these epithets is descriptive of pure
+physical nature. "Over-roofed" is the term he invariably uses of
+anything--rock, house, or wave--that nods over at the brow; the
+other terms need no explanation; they are as accurate and intense in
+truth as words can be, but they never show the slightest feeling of
+anything animated in the ocean. Black or clear, monstrous or
+violet-colored, cold salt water it is always, and nothing but that.
+
+� 3. "Well, but the modern writer, by his admission of the tinge of
+fallacy, has given an idea of something in the action of the wave
+which Homer could not, and surely, therefore, has made a step in
+advance? Also there appears to be a degree of sympathy and feeling
+in the one writer, which there is not in the other; and as it has
+been received for a first principle that writers are great in
+proportion to the intensity of their feelings, and Homer seems to
+have no feelings about the sea but that it is black and deep, surely
+in this respect also the modern writer is the greater?"
+
+Stay a moment. Homer _had_ some feeling about the sea; a faith in
+the animation of it much stronger than Keats's. But all this sense
+of something living in it, he separates in his mind into a great
+abstract image of a Sea Power. He never says the waves rage, or the
+waves are idle. But he says there is somewhat in, and greater than,
+the waves, which rages, and is idle, and _that_ he calls a god.
+
+� 4. I do not think we ever enough endeavor to enter into what a
+Greek's real notion of a god was. We are so accustomed to the modern
+mockeries of the classical religion, so accustomed to hear and see
+the Greek gods introduced as living personages, or invoked for help,
+by men who believe neither in them nor in any other gods, that we
+seem to have infected the Greek ages themselves with the breath, and
+dimmed them with the shade, of our hypocrisy; and are apt to think
+that Homer, as we know that Pope, was merely an ingenious fabulist;
+nay, more than this, that all the nations of past time were
+ingenious fabulists also, to whom the universe was a lyrical drama,
+and by whom whatsoever was said about it was merely a witty
+allegory, or a graceful lie, of which the entire upshot and
+consummation was a pretty statue in the middle of the court, or at
+the end of the garden.
+
+This, at least, is one of our forms of opinion about Greek faith; not,
+indeed, possible altogether to any man of honesty or ordinary powers
+of thought; but still so venomously inherent in the modern philosophy
+that all the pure lightning of Carlyle cannot as yet quite burn it out
+of any of us. And then, side by side with this mere infidel folly,
+stands the bitter short-sightedness of Puritanism, holding the
+classical god to be either simply an idol,--a block of stone
+ignorantly, though sincerely, worshipped,--or else an actual diabolic
+or betraying power, usurping the place of god.
+
+� 5. Both these Puritanical estimates of Greek deity are of course
+to some extent true. The corruption of classical worship is barren
+idolatry; and that corruption was deepened, and variously directed
+to their own purposes, by the evil angels. But this was neither the
+whole, nor the principal part, of Pagan worship. Pallas was not, in
+the pure Greek mind, merely a powerful piece of ivory in a temple at
+Athens; neither was the choice of Leonidas between the alternatives
+granted him by the oracle, of personal death, or ruin to his
+country, altogether a work of the Devil's prompting.
+
+� 6. What, then, was actually the Greek god? In what way were these
+two ideas of human form, and divine power, credibly associated in
+the ancient heart, so as to become a subject of true faith,
+irrespective equally of fable, allegory, superstitious trust in
+stone, and demoniacal influence?
+
+It seems to me that the Greek had exactly the same instinctive
+feeling about the elements that we have ourselves; that to Homer, as
+much as to Casimir de la Vigne, fire seemed ravenous and pitiless;
+to Homer, as much as to Keats, the sea-wave appeared wayward or
+idle, or whatever else it may be to the poetical passion. But then
+the Greek reasoned upon this sensation, saying to himself: "I can
+light the fire, and put it out; I can dry this water up, or drink
+it. It cannot be the fire or the water that rages, or that is
+wayward. But it must be something _in_ this fire and _in_ the water,
+which I cannot destroy by extinguishing the one, or evaporating the
+other, any more than I destroy myself by cutting off my finger; _I_
+was _in_ my finger,--something of me at least was; I had a power
+over it, and felt pain in it, though I am still as much myself when
+it is gone. So there may be a power in the water which is not water,
+but to which the water is as a body;--which can strike with it, move
+in it, suffer in it, yet not be destroyed in it. This something,
+this great Water Spirit, I must not confuse with the waves, which
+are only its body. _They_ may flow hither and thither, increase or
+diminish. _That_ must be indivisible--imperishable--a god. So of
+fire also; those rays which I can stop, and in the midst of which I
+cast a shadow, cannot be divine, nor greater than I. They cannot
+feel, but there may be something in them that feels,--a glorious
+intelligence, as much nobler and more swift than mine, as these
+rays, which are its body, are nobler and swifter than my flesh;--the
+spirit of all light, and truth, and melody, and revolving hours."
+
+� 7. It was easy to conceive, farther, that such spirits should be
+able to assume at will a human form, in order to hold intercourse
+with men, or to perform any act for which their proper body, whether
+fire, earth, or air, was unfitted. And it would have been to place
+them beneath, instead of above, humanity, if, assuming the form of
+man, they could not also have tasted his pleasures. Hence the easy
+step to the more or less material ideas of deities, which are apt at
+first to shock us, but which are indeed only dishonorable so far as
+they represent the gods as false and unholy. It is not the
+materialism, but the vice, which degrades the conception; for the
+materialism itself is never positive or complete. There is always
+some sense of exaltation in the spiritual and immortal body; and of
+a power proceeding from the visible form through all the infinity of
+the element ruled by the particular god. The precise nature of the
+idea is well seen in the passage of the Iliad which describes the
+river Scamander defending the Trojans against Achilles. In order to
+remonstrate with the hero, the god assumes a human form, which
+nevertheless is in some way or other instantly recognized by
+Achilles as that of the river-god: it is addressed at once as a
+river, not as a man; and its voice is the voice of a river, "out of
+the deep whirlpools."[59] Achilles refuses to obey its commands; and
+from the human form it returns instantly into its natural or divine
+one, and endeavors to overwhelm him with waves. Vulcan defends
+Achilles, and sends fire against the river, which suffers in its
+water-body, till it is able to bear no more. At last even the "nerve
+of the river," or "strength of the river" (note the expression),
+feels the fire, and this "strength of the river" addresses Vulcan in
+supplications for respite. There is in this precisely the idea of a
+vital part of the river-body, which acted and felt, and which, if
+the fire reached it, was death, just as would be the case if it
+touched a vital part of the human body. Throughout the passage the
+manner of conception is perfectly clear and consistent; and if, in
+other places, the exact connection between the ruling spirit and the
+thing ruled is not so manifest, it is only because it is almost
+impossible for the human mind to dwell long upon such subjects
+without falling into inconsistencies, and gradually slackening its
+effort to grasp the entire truth; until the more spiritual part of
+it slips from its hold, and only the human form of the god is left,
+to be conceived and described as subject to all the errors of
+humanity. But I do not believe that the idea ever weakens itself
+down to mere allegory. When Pallas is said to attack and strike down
+Mars, it does not mean merely that Wisdom at that moment prevailed
+against Wrath. It means that there are indeed two great spirits, one
+entrusted to guide the human soul to wisdom and chastity, the other
+to kindle wrath and prompt to battle. It means that these two
+spirits, on the spot where, and at the moment when, a great contest
+was to be decided between all that they each governed in man, then
+and there assumed human form, and human weapons, and did verily and
+materially strike at each other, until the Spirit of Wrath was
+crushed. And when Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the
+woods, it does not mean merely as Wordsworth puts it, that the poet
+or shepherd saw the moon and stars glancing between the branches of
+the trees, and wished to say so figuratively. It means that there
+is a living spirit, to which the light of the moon is a body; which
+takes delight in glancing between the clouds and following the wild
+beasts as they wander through the night; and that this spirit
+sometimes assumes a perfect human form, and in this form, with real
+arrows, pursues and slays the wild beasts, which with its mere
+arrows of moonlight it could not slay; retaining, nevertheless, all
+the while, its power, and being in the moonlight, and in all else
+that it rules.
+
+� 8. There is not the smallest inconsistency or unspirituality in
+this conception. If there were, it would attach equally to the
+appearance of the angels to Jacob, Abraham, Joshua, or Manoah. In
+all those instances the highest authority which governs our own
+faith requires us to conceive divine power clothed with a human form
+(a form so real that it is recognized for superhuman only by its
+"doing wondrously"), and retaining, nevertheless, sovereignty and
+omnipresence in all the world. This is precisely, as I understand
+it, the heathen idea of a God; and it is impossible to comprehend
+any single part of the Greek mind until we grasp this faithfully,
+not endeavoring to explain it away in any wise, but accepting, with
+frank decision and definition, the tangible existence of its
+deities;--blue-eyed--white-fleshed--human-hearted,--capable at their
+choice of meeting man absolutely in his own nature--feasting with
+him--talking with him--fighting with him, eye to eye, or breast to
+breast, as Mars with Diomed; or else, dealing with him in a more
+retired spirituality, as Apollo sending the plague upon the Greeks,
+when his quiver rattles at his shoulders as he moves, and yet the
+darts sent forth of it strike not as arrows, but as plague; or,
+finally, retiring completely into the material universe which they
+properly inhabit, and dealing with man through that, as Scamander
+with Achilles through his waves.
+
+� 9. Nor is there anything whatever in the various actions recorded of
+the gods, however apparently ignoble, to indicate weakness of belief
+in them. Very frequently things which appear to us ignoble are merely
+the simplicities of a pure and truthful age. When Juno beats Diana
+about the ears with her own quiver, for instance, we start at first,
+as if Homer could not have believed that they were both real
+goddesses. But what should Juno have done? Killed Diana with a look?
+Nay, she neither wished to do so, nor could she have done so, by the
+very faith of Diana's goddess-ship. Diana is as immortal as herself.
+Frowned Diana into submission? But Diana has come expressly to try
+conclusions with her, and will by no means be frowned into submission.
+Wounded her with a celestial lance? That sounds more poetical, but it
+is in reality partly more savage, and partly more absurd, than Homer.
+More savage, for it makes Juno more cruel, therefore less divine; and
+more absurd, for it only seems elevated in tone, because we use the
+word "celestial," which means nothing. What sort of a thing is a
+"celestial" lance? Not a wooden one. Of what then? Of moonbeams, or
+clouds, or mist. Well, therefore, Diana's arrows were of mist too; and
+her quiver, and herself, and Juno, with her lance, and all, vanish
+into mist. Why not have said at once, if that is all you mean, that
+two mists met, and one drove the other back? That would have been
+rational and intelligible, but not to talk of celestial lances. Homer
+had no such misty fancy; he believed the two goddesses were there in
+true bodies, with true weapons, on the true earth; and still I ask,
+what should Juno have done? Not beaten Diana? No; for it is
+un-lady-like. Un-English-lady-like, yes; but by no means
+un-Greek-lady-like, nor even un-natural-lady-like. If a modern lady
+does _not_ beat her servant or her rival about the ears, it is oftener
+because she is too weak, or too proud, than because she is of purer
+mind than Homer's Juno. She will not strike them; but she will
+overwork the one or slander the other without pity; and Homer would
+not have thought that one whit more goddess-like than striking them
+with her open hand.
+
+� 10. If, however, the reader likes to suppose that while the two
+goddesses in personal presence thus fought with arrow and quiver,
+there was also a broader and vaster contest supposed by Homer
+between the elements they ruled; and that the goddess of the
+heavens, as she struck the goddess of the moon on the flushing
+cheek, was at the same instant exercising omnipresent power in the
+heavens themselves, and gathering clouds, with which, filled with
+the moon's own arrows or beams, she was encumbering and concealing
+the moon; he is welcome to this out-carrying of the idea, provided
+that he does not pretend to make it an interpretation instead of a
+mere extension, nor think to explain away my real, running,
+beautiful beaten Diana, into a moon behind clouds.[60]
+
+� 11. It is only farther to be noted, that the Greek conception of
+Godhead, as it was much more real than we usually suppose, so it was
+much more bold and familiar than to a modern mind would be possible.
+I shall have something more to observe, in a little while, of the
+danger of our modern habit of endeavoring to raise ourselves to
+something like comprehension of the truth of divinity, instead of
+simply believing the words in which the Deity reveals Himself to us.
+The Greek erred rather on the other side, making hardly any effort
+to conceive divine mind as above the human; and no more shrinking
+from frank intercourse with a divine being, or dreading its
+immediate presence, than that of the simplest of mortals. Thus
+Atrides, enraged at his sword's breaking in his hand upon the helmet
+of Paris, after he had expressly invoked the assistance of Jupiter,
+exclaims aloud, as he would to a king who had betrayed him, "Jove,
+Father, there is not another god more evil-minded than thou!" and
+Helen, provoked at Paris's defeat, and oppressed with pouting shame
+both for him and for herself, when Venus appears at her side, and
+would lead her back to the delivered Paris, impatiently tells the
+goddess to "go and take care of Paris herself."
+
+� 12. The modern mind is naturally, but vulgarly and unjustly,
+shocked by this kind of familiarity. Rightly understood, it is not
+so much a sign of misunderstanding of the divine nature as of good
+understanding of the human. The Greek lived, in all things, a
+healthy, and, in a certain degree, a perfect life. He had no morbid
+or sickly feeling of any kind. He was accustomed to face death
+without the slightest shrinking, to undergo all kinds of bodily
+hardship without complaint, and to do what he supposed right and
+honorable, in most cases, as a matter of course. Confident of his
+own immortality, and of the power of abstract justice, he expected
+to be dealt with in the next world as was right, and left the
+matter much in his gods' hands; but being thus immortal, and finding
+in his own soul something which it seemed quite as difficult to
+master, as to rule the elements, he did not feel that it was an
+appalling superiority in those gods to have bodies of water, or
+fire, instead of flesh, and to have various work to do among the
+clouds and waves, out of his human way; or sometimes, even, in a
+sort of service to himself. Was not the nourishment of herbs and
+flowers a kind of ministering to his wants? were not the gods in
+some sort his husbandmen, and spirit-servants? Their mere strength
+or omnipresence did not seem to him a distinction absolutely
+terrific. It might be the nature of one being to be in two places at
+once, and of another to be only in one; but that did not seem of
+itself to infer any absolute lordliness of one nature above the
+other, any more than an insect must be a nobler creature than a man,
+because it can see on four sides of its head, and the man only in
+front. They could kill him or torture him, it was true; but even
+that not unjustly, or not for ever. There was a fate, and a Divine
+Justice, greater than they; so that if they did wrong, and he right,
+he might fight it out with them, and have the better of them at
+last. In a general way, they were wiser, stronger, and better than
+he; and to ask counsel of them, to obey them, to sacrifice to them,
+to thank them for all good, this was well; but to be utterly
+downcast before them, or not to tell them his mind in plain Greek if
+they seemed to him to be conducting themselves in an ungodly
+manner,--this would not be well.
+
+� 13. Such being their general idea of the gods, we can now easily
+understand the habitual tone of their feelings towards what was
+beautiful in nature. With us, observe, the idea of the Divinity is
+apt to get separated from the life of nature; and imagining our God
+upon a cloudy throne, far above the earth, and not in the flowers or
+waters, we approach those visible things with a theory that they are
+dead, governed by physical laws, and so forth. But coming to them,
+we find the theory fail; that they are not dead; that, say what we
+choose about them, the instinctive sense of their being alive is too
+strong for us; and in scorn of all physical law, the wilful fountain
+sings, and the kindly flowers rejoice. And then, puzzled, and yet
+happy; pleased, and yet ashamed of being so; accepting sympathy
+from nature, which we do not believe it gives, and giving sympathy
+to nature, which we do not believe it receives,--mixing, besides,
+all manner of purposeful play and conceit with these involuntary
+fellowships,--we fall necessarily into the curious web of hesitating
+sentiment, pathetic fallacy, and wandering fancy, which form a great
+part of our modern view of nature. But the Greek never removed his
+god out of nature at all; never attempted for a moment to contradict
+his instinctive sense that God was everywhere. "The tree _is_ glad,"
+said he, "I know it is; I can cut it down; no matter, there was a
+nymph in it. The water _does_ sing," said he; "I can dry it up; but
+no matter, there was a naiad in it." But in thus clearly defining
+his belief, observe, he threw it entirely into a human form, and
+gave his faith to nothing but the image of his own humanity. What
+sympathy and fellowship he had, were always for the spirit _in_ the
+stream, not for the stream; always for the dryad _in_ the wood, not
+for the wood. Content with this human sympathy, he approached the
+actual waves and woody fibres with no sympathy at all. The spirit
+that ruled them, he received as a plain fact. Them, also, ruled and
+material, he received as plain facts; they, without their spirit,
+were dead enough. A rose was good for scent, and a stream for sound
+and coolness; for the rest, one was no more than leaves, the other
+no more than water; he could not make anything else of them; and the
+divine power, which was involved in their existence, having been all
+distilled away by him into an independent Flora or Thetis, the poor
+leaves or waves were left, in mere cold corporealness, to make the
+most of their being discernibly red and soft, clear and wet, and
+unacknowledged in any other power whatsoever.
+
+� 14. Then, observe farther, the Greeks lived in the midst of the
+most beautiful nature, and were as familiar with blue sea, clear
+air, and sweet outlines of mountain, as we are with brick walls,
+black smoke, and level fields. This perfect familiarity rendered all
+such scenes of natural beauty unexciting, if not indifferent, to
+them, by lulling and overwearying the imagination as far as it was
+concerned with such things; but there was another kind of beauty
+which they found it required effort to obtain, and which, when
+thoroughly obtained, seemed more glorious than any of this wild
+loveliness--the beauty of the human countenance and form. This, they
+perceived, could only be reached by continual exercise of virtue;
+and it was in Heaven's sight, and theirs, all the more beautiful
+because it needed this self-denial to obtain it. So they set
+themselves to reach this, and having gained it, gave it their
+principal thoughts, and set it off with beautiful dress as best they
+might. But making this their object, they were obliged to pass their
+lives in simple exercise and disciplined employments. Living
+wholesomely, giving themselves no fever fits, either by fasting or
+over-eating, constantly in the open air, and full of animal spirit
+and physical power, they became incapable of every morbid condition
+of mental emotion. Unhappy love, disappointed ambition, spiritual
+despondency, or any other disturbing sensation, had little power
+over the well-braced nerves, and healthy flow of the blood; and what
+bitterness might yet fasten on them was soon boxed or raced out of a
+boy, and spun or woven out of a girl, or danced out of both. They
+had indeed their sorrows, true and deep, but still, more like
+children's sorrows than ours, whether bursting into open cry of
+pain, or hid with shuddering under the veil, still passing over the
+soul as clouds do over heaven, not sullying it, not mingling with
+it;--darkening it perhaps long or utterly, but still not becoming
+one with it, and for the most part passing away in dashing rain of
+tears, and leaving the man unchanged; in nowise affecting, as our
+sorrow does, the whole tone of his thought and imagination
+thenceforward.
+
+How far our melancholy may be deeper and wider than theirs, in its
+roots and view, and therefore nobler, we shall consider presently;
+but at all events, they had the advantage of us in being entirety
+free from all those dim and feverish sensations which result from
+unhealthy state of the body. I believe that a large amount of the
+dreamy and sentimental sadness, tendency to reverie, and general
+patheticalness of modern life results merely from derangement of
+stomach; holding to the Greek life the same relation that the
+feverish night of an adult does to a child's sleep.
+
+� 15. Farther. The human beauty, which, whether in its bodily being
+or in imagined divinity, had become, for the reasons we have seen,
+the principal object of culture and sympathy to these Greeks, was,
+in its perfection, eminently orderly, symmetrical, and tender.
+Hence, contemplating it constantly in this state, they could not but
+feel a proportionate fear of all that was disorderly, unbalanced,
+and rugged. Having trained their stoutest soldiers into a strength
+so delicate and lovely, that their white flesh, with their blood
+upon it, should look like ivory stained with purple;[61] and having
+always around them, in the motion and majesty of this beauty, enough
+for the full employment of their imagination, they shrank with dread
+or hatred from all the ruggedness of lower nature,--from the
+wrinkled forest bark, the jagged hill-crest, and irregular,
+inorganic storm of sky; looking to these for the most part as
+adverse powers, and taking pleasure only in such portions of the
+lower world as were at once conducive to the rest and health of the
+human frame, and in harmony with the laws of its gentler beauty.
+
+� 16. Thus, as far as I recollect, without a single exception, every
+Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a
+fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove. This ideal is very
+interestingly marked, as intended for a perfect one, in the fifth
+book of the Odyssey; when Mercury himself stops for a moment, though
+on a message, to look at a landscape "which even an immortal might
+be gladdened to behold." This landscape consists of a cave covered
+with a running vine, all blooming into grapes, and surrounded by a
+grove of alder, poplar, and sweet-smelling cypress. Four fountains
+of white (foaming) water, springing _in succession_ (mark the
+orderliness), and close to one another, flow away in different
+directions, through a meadow full of violets and parsley (parsley,
+to mark its moisture, being elsewhere called "marsh-nourished," and
+associated with the lotus);[62] the air is perfumed not only by
+these violets and by the sweet cypress, but by Calypso's fire of
+finely chopped cedar wood, which sends a smoke as of incense,
+through the island; Calypso herself is singing; and finally, upon
+the trees are resting, or roosting, owls, hawks, and "long-tongued
+sea-crows." Whether these last are considered as a part of the
+ideal landscape, as marine singing-birds, I know not; but the
+approval of Mercury appears to be elicited chiefly by the fountains
+and violet meadow.
+
+� 17. Now the notable things in this description are, first, the
+evident subservience of the whole landscape to human comfort, to the
+foot, the taste, or the smell; and, secondly, that throughout the
+passage there is not a single figurative word expressive of the
+things being in any wise other than plain grass, fruit or flower. I
+have used the term "spring" of the fountains, because, without
+doubt, Homer means that they sprang forth brightly, having their
+source at the foot of the rocks (as copious fountains nearly always
+have); but Homer does not say "spring," he says simply flow, and
+uses only one word for "growing softly," or "richly," of the tall
+trees, the vine, and the violets. There is, however, some expression
+of sympathy with the sea-birds; he speaks of them in precisely the
+same terms, as in other places of naval nations, saying they "have
+care of the works of the sea."
+
+� 18. If we glance through the references to pleasant landscape which
+occur in other parts of the Odyssey, we shall always be struck by this
+quiet subjection of their every feature to human service, and by the
+excessive similarity in the scenes. Perhaps the spot intended, after
+this, to be most perfect, may be the garden of Alcinous, where the
+principal ideas are, still more definitely, order, symmetry, and
+fruitfulness; the beds being duly ranged between rows of vines, which,
+as well as the pear, apple, and fig-trees, bear fruit continually,
+some grapes being yet sour, while others are getting black; there are
+plenty of "_orderly_ square beds of herbs," chiefly leeks, and two
+fountains, one running through the garden, and one under the pavement
+of the palace to a reservoir for the citizens. Ulysses, pausing to
+contemplate this scene, is described nearly in the same terms as
+Mercury pausing to contemplate the wilder meadow; and it is
+interesting to observe, that, in spite of all Homer's love of
+symmetry, the god's admiration is excited by the free fountains, wild
+violets, and wandering vine; but the mortal's, by the vines in rows,
+the leeks in beds, and the fountains in pipes.
+
+Ulysses has, however, one touching reason for loving vines in rows.
+His father had given him fifty rows for himself, when he was a boy,
+with corn between them (just as it now grows in Italy). Proving his
+identity afterwards to his father, whom he finds at work in his
+garden, "with thick gloves on, to keep his hands from the thorns,"
+he reminds him of these fifty rows of vines, and of the "thirteen
+pear-trees and ten apple-trees" which he had given him; and Laertes
+faints upon his neck.
+
+� 19. If Ulysses had not been so much of a gardener, it might have
+been received as a sign of considerable feeling for landscape
+beauty, that, intending to pay the very highest possible compliment
+to the Princess Nausicaa (and having indeed, the moment before,
+gravely asked her whether she was a goddess or not), he says that he
+feels, at seeing her, exactly as he did when he saw the young
+palm-tree growing at Apollo's shrine at Delos. But I think the taste
+for trim hedges and upright trunks has its usual influence over him
+here also, and that he merely means to tell the princess that she is
+delightfully tall and straight.
+
+� 20. The princess is, however, pleased by his address, and tells
+him to wait outside the town, till she can speak to her father about
+him. The spot to which she directs him is another ideal piece of
+landscape, composed of a "beautiful grove of aspen poplars, a
+fountain, and a meadow," near the road-side; in fact, as nearly as
+possible such a scene as meets the eye of the traveller every
+instant on the much-despised lines of road through lowland France;
+for instance, on the railway between Arras and Amiens;--scenes, to
+my mind, quite exquisite in the various grouping and grace of their
+innumerable poplar avenues, casting sweet, tremulous shadows over
+their level meadows and labyrinthine streams. We know that the
+princess means aspen poplars, because soon afterwards we find her
+fifty maid-servants at the palace, all spinning, and in perpetual
+motion, compared to the "leaves of the tall poplar;" and it is with
+exquisite feeling that it is made afterwards[63] the chief tree in
+the groves of Proserpine; its light and quivering leafage having
+exactly the melancholy expression of fragility, faintness, and
+inconstancy which the ancients attributed to the disembodied
+spirit.[64] The likeness to the poplars by the streams of Amiens is
+more marked still in the Iliad, where the young Simois, struck by
+Ajax, falls to the earth "like an aspen that has grown in an
+irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots springing from its
+top, which some coach-making man has cut down with his keen iron,
+that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and it lies
+parching by the side of the stream." It is sufficiently notable that
+Homer, living in mountainous and rocky countries, dwells thus
+delightedly on all the _flat_ bits; and so I think invariably the
+inhabitants of mountain countries do, but the inhabitants of the
+plains do not, in any similar way, dwell delightedly on mountains.
+The Dutch painters are perfectly contented with their flat fields
+and pollards: Rubens, though he had seen the Alps, usually composes
+his landscapes of a hayfield or two, plenty of pollards and willows,
+a distant spire, a Dutch house with a moat about it, a windmill, and
+a ditch. The Flemish sacred painters are the only ones who introduce
+mountains in the distance, as we shall see presently; but rather in
+a formal way than with any appearance of enjoyment. So Shakspere
+never speaks of mountains with the slightest joy, but only of
+lowland flowers, flat fields, and Warwickshire streams. And if we
+talk to the mountaineer, he will usually characterize his own
+country to us as a "pays affreux," or in some equivalent, perhaps
+even more violent, German term: but the lowland peasant does not
+think his country frightful; he either will have no ideas beyond it,
+or about it; or will think it a very perfect country, and be apt to
+regard any deviation from its general principle of flatness with
+extreme disfavor; as the Lincolnshire farmer in Alton Locke: "I'll
+shaw 'ee some'at like a field o' beans, I wool--none o' this here
+darned ups and downs o' hills, to shake a body's victuals out of his
+inwards--all so vlat as a barn door, for vorty mile on end--there's
+the country to live in!"
+
+I do not say whether this be altogether right (though certainly not
+wholly wrong), but it seems to me that there must be in the simple
+freshness and fruitfulness of level land, in its pale upright
+trees, and gentle lapse of silent streams, enough for the
+satisfaction of the human mind in general; and I so far agree with
+Homer, that if I had to educate an artist to the full perception of
+the meaning of the word "gracefulness" in landscape, I should send
+him neither to Italy nor to Greece, but simply to those poplar
+groves between Arras and Amiens.
+
+� 21. But to return more definitely to our Homeric landscape. When
+it is perfect, we have, as in the above instances, the foliage and
+meadows together; when imperfect, it is always either the foliage or
+the meadow; pre�minently the meadow, or arable field. Thus, meadows
+of asphodel are prepared for the happier dead; and even Orion, a
+hunter among the mountains in his lifetime, pursues the ghosts of
+beasts in these asphodel meadows after death.[65] So the sirens sing
+in a meadow; and throughout the Odyssey there is a general tendency
+to the depreciation of poor Ithaca, because it is rocky, and only
+fit for goats, and has "no meadows;" for which reason Telemachus
+refuses Atrides's present of horses, congratulating the Spartan king
+at the same time on ruling over a plain which has "plenty of lotus
+in it, and rushes," with corn and barley. Note this constant
+dwelling on the marsh plants, or, at least, those which grow in flat
+and well-irrigated land, or beside streams: when Scamander, for
+instance, is restrained by Vulcan, Homer says, very sorrowfully,
+that "all his lotus, and reeds, and rushes were burnt;" and thus
+Ulysses, after being shipwrecked and nearly drowned, and beaten
+about the sea for many days and nights, on raft and mast, at last
+getting ashore at the mouth of a large river, casts himself down
+first upon its _rushes_, and then, in thankfulness, kisses the
+"corn-giving land," as most opposed, in his heart, to the fruitless
+and devouring sea.[66]
+
+� 22. In this same passage, also, we find some peculiar expressions of
+the delight which the Greeks had in trees, for, when Ulysses first
+comes in sight of land, which gladdens him, "as the reviving of a
+father from his sickness gladdens his children," it is not merely the
+sight of the land itself which gives him such pleasure, but of the
+"land and _wood_." Homer never throws away any words, at least in such
+a place as this; and what in another poet would have been merely the
+filling up of the deficient line with an otherwise useless word, is in
+him the expression of the general Greek sense, that land of any kind
+was in nowise grateful or acceptable till there was _wood_ upon it (or
+corn; but the corn, in the flats, could not be seen so far as the
+black masses of forest on the hill sides), and that, as in being rushy
+and corn-giving, the low land, so in being woody, the high land, was
+most grateful to the mind of the man who for days and nights had been
+wearied on the engulphing sea. And this general idea of wood and corn,
+as the types of the fatness of the whole earth, is beautifully marked
+in another place of the Odyssey,[67] where the sailors in a desert
+island, having no flour or corn to offer as a meat offering with their
+sacrifices, take the leaves of the trees, and scatter them over the
+burnt offering instead.
+
+� 23. But still, every expression of the pleasure which Ulysses has in
+this landing and resting, contains uninterruptedly the reference to
+the utility and sensible pleasantness of all things, not to their
+beauty. After his first grateful kiss given to the corn-growing land,
+he considers immediately how he is to pass the night: for some minutes
+hesitating whether it will be best to expose himself to the misty
+chill from the river, or run the risk of wild beasts in the wood. He
+decides for the wood, and finds in it a bower formed by a sweet and a
+wild olive tree, interlacing their branches, or--perhaps more
+accurately translating Homer's intensely graphic expression--"changing
+their branches with each other" (it is very curious how often, in an
+entanglement of wood, one supposes the branches to belong to the wrong
+trees), and forming a roof penetrated by neither rain, sun, nor wind.
+Under this bower Ulysses collects the "_vain_ (or _frustrate_)
+outpouring of the dead leaves"--another exquisite expression, used
+elsewhere of useless grief or shedding of tears;--and, having got
+enough together, makes his bed of them, and goes to sleep, having
+covered himself up with them, "as embers are covered up with ashes."
+
+Nothing can possibly be more intensely possessive of the _facts_
+than this whole passage; the sense of utter deadness and emptiness,
+and frustrate fall in the leaves; of dormant life in the human
+body,--the fire, and heroism, and strength of it, lulled under the
+dead brown heap, as embers under ashes, and the knitting of
+interchanged and close strength of living boughs above. But there is
+not the smallest apparent sense of there being _beauty_ elsewhere
+than in the human being. The wreathed wood is admired simply as
+being a perfect roof for it; the fallen leaves only as being a
+perfect bed for it; and there is literally no more excitement of
+emotion in Homer, as he describes them, nor does he expect us to be
+more excited or touched by hearing about them, than if he had been
+telling us how the chamber-maid at the Bull aired the four-poster,
+and put on two extra blankets.
+
+� 24. Now, exactly this same contemplation of subservience to human
+use makes the Greek take some pleasure in _rocks_, when they assume
+one particular form, but one only--that of a _cave_. They are
+evidently quite frightful things to him under any other condition,
+and most of all if they are rough and jagged; but if smooth, looking
+"sculptured," like the sides of a ship, and forming a cave or
+shelter for him, he begins to think them endurable. Hence,
+associating the ideas of rich and sheltering wood, sea, becalmed and
+made useful as a port by projecting promontories of rock, and
+smoothed caves or grottoes in the rocks themselves, we get the
+pleasantest idea which the Greek could form of a landscape, next to
+a marsh with poplars in it; not, indeed, if possible, ever to be
+without these last: thus, in commending the Cyclops' country as one
+possessed of every perfection, Homer first says: "They have soft
+_marshy_ meadows near the sea, and good, rich, crumbling,
+ploughing-land, giving fine deep crops, and vines always giving
+fruit;" then, "a port so quiet, that they have no need of cables in
+it; and at the head of the port, a beautiful clear spring just
+_under a cave_, and _aspen poplars all round it_."[68]
+
+� 25. This, it will be seen, is very nearly Homer's usual "ideal;"
+but, going into the middle of the island, Ulysses comes on a rougher
+and less agreeable bit, though still fulfilling certain required
+conditions of endurableness; a "cave shaded with laurels," which,
+having no poplars about it, is, however, meant to be somewhat
+frightful, and only fit to be inhabited by a Cyclops. So in the
+country of the L�strygons, Homer, preparing his reader gradually for
+something very disagreeable, represents the rocks as bare and
+"exposed to the sun;" only with some smooth and slippery roads over
+them, by which the trucks bring down wood from the higher hills. Any
+one familiar with Swiss slopes of hills must remember how often he
+has descended, sometimes faster than was altogether intentional, by
+these same slippery woodman's track roads.
+
+And thus, in general, whenever the landscape is intended to be
+lovely, it verges towards the ploughed land and poplars; or, at
+worst, to _woody_ rocks; but, if intended to be painful, the rocks
+are bare and "sharp." This last epithet, constantly used by Homer
+for mountains, does not altogether correspond, in Greek, to the
+English term, nor is it intended merely to characterize the sharp
+mountain summits; for it never would be applied simply to the edge
+or point of a sword, but signifies rather "harsh," "bitter," or
+"painful," being applied habitually to fate, death, and in Od. ii.
+333. to a halter; and, as expressive of general objectionableness
+and unpleasantness, to all high, dangerous, or peaked mountains, as
+the Maleian promontory (a much dreaded one), the crest of Parnassus,
+the Tereian mountain, and a grim or untoward, though, by keeping off
+the force of the sea, protective, rock at the mouth of the Jardanus;
+as well as habitually to inaccessible or impregnable fortresses
+built on heights.
+
+� 26. In all this I cannot too strongly mark the utter absence of
+any trace of the feeling for what we call the picturesque, and the
+constant dwelling of the writer's mind on what was available,
+pleasant, or useful; his ideas respecting all landscape being not
+uncharacteristically summed, finally, by Pallas herself; when,
+meeting Ulysses, who after his long wandering does not recognize his
+own country, and meaning to describe it as politely and soothingly
+as possible, she says:[69]--"This Ithaca of ours is, indeed, a rough
+country enough, and not good for driving in; but, still, things
+might be worse: it has plenty of corn, and good wine, and _always
+rain_, and soft nourishing dew; and it has good feeding for goats
+and oxen, and all manner of wood, and springs fit to drink at all
+the year round."
+
+We shall see presently how the blundering, pseudo-picturesque,
+pseudo-classical minds of Claude and the Renaissance landscape
+painters, wholly missing Homer's practical common sense, and equally
+incapable of feeling the quiet natural grace and sweetness of his
+asphodel meadows, tender aspen poplars, or running vines,--fastened
+on his _ports_ and _caves_, as the only available features of his
+scenery; and appointed the type of "classical landscape"
+thenceforward to consist in a bay of insipid sea, and a rock with a
+hole through it.[70]
+
+� 27. It may indeed be thought that I am assuming too hastily that
+this was the general view of the Greeks respecting landscape, because
+it was Homer's. But I believe the true mind of a nation, at any
+period, is always best ascertainable by examining that of its greatest
+men; and that simpler and truer results will be attainable for us by
+simply comparing Homer, Dante, and Walter Scott, than by attempting
+(what my limits must have rendered absurdly inadequate, and in which,
+also, both my time and knowledge must have failed me) an analysis of
+the landscape in the range of contemporary literature. All that I can
+do, is to state the general impression which has been made upon me by
+my desultory reading, and to mark accurately the grounds for this
+impression, in the works of the greatest men. Now it is quite true
+that in others of the Greeks, especially in �schylus and Aristophanes,
+there is infinitely more of modern feeling, of pathetic fallacy, love
+of picturesque or beautiful form, and other such elements, than there
+is in Homer; but then these appear to me just the parts of them which
+were not Greek, the elements of their minds by which (as one division
+of the human race always must be with subsequent ones) they are
+connected with the medi�vals and moderns. And without doubt, in his
+influence over future mankind, Homer is eminently the Greek of Greeks;
+if I were to associate any one with him it would be Herodotus, and I
+believe all I have said of the Homeric landscape will be found equally
+true of the Herodotean, as assuredly it will be of the Platonic; the
+contempt, which Plato sometimes expresses by the mouth of Socrates,
+for the country in general, except so far as it is shady, and has
+cicadas and running streams to make pleasant noises in it, being
+almost ludicrous. But Homer is the great type, and the more notable
+one because of his influence on Virgil, and, through him, on Dante,
+and all the after ages: and in like manner, if we can get the abstract
+of medi�val landscape out of Dante, it will serve us as well as if we
+had read all the songs of the troubadours, and help us to the farther
+changes in derivative temper, down to all modern time.
+
+� 28. I think, therefore, the reader may safely accept the
+conclusions about Greek landscape which I have got for him out of
+Homer; and in these he will certainly perceive something very
+different from the usual imaginations we form of Greek feelings. We
+think of the Greeks as poetical, ideal, imaginative, in the way that
+a modern poet or novelist is; supposing that their thoughts about
+their mythology and world were as visionary and artificial as ours
+are: but I think the passages I have quoted show that it was not so,
+although it may be difficult for us to apprehend the strange
+minglings in them of the elements of faith, which, in our days, have
+been blended with other parts of human nature in a totally different
+guise. Perhaps the Greek mind may be best imagined by taking, as its
+groundwork, that of a good, conscientious, but illiterate, Scotch
+Presbyterian Border farmer of a century or two back, having perfect
+faith in the bodily appearances of Satan and his imps; and in all
+kelpies, brownies, and fairies. Substitute for the indignant terrors
+in this man's mind, a general persuasion of the _Divinity_, more or
+less beneficent, yet faultful, of all these beings; that is to say,
+take away his belief in the demoniacal malignity of the fallen
+spiritual world, and lower, in the same degree, his conceptions of
+the angelical, retaining for him the same firm faith in both; keep
+his ideas about flowers and beautiful scenery much as they
+are,--his delight in regular ploughed land and meadows, and a neat
+garden (only with rows of gooseberry bushes instead of vines,)
+being, in all probability, about accurately representative of the
+feelings of Ulysses; then, let the military spirit that is in him,
+glowing against the Border forager, or the foe of old Flodden and
+Chevy-Chase, be made more principal, with a higher sense of
+nobleness in soldiership, not as a careless excitement, but a
+knightly duty; and increased by high cultivation of every personal
+quality, not of mere shaggy strength, but graceful strength, aided
+by a softer climate, and educated in all proper harmony of sight and
+sound: finally, instead of an informed Christian, suppose him to
+have only the patriarchal Jewish knowledge of the Deity, and even
+this obscured by tradition, but still thoroughly solemn and
+faithful, requiring his continual service as a priest of burnt
+sacrifice and meat offering; and I think we shall get a pretty close
+approximation to the vital being of a true old Greek; some slight
+difference still existing in a feeling which the Scotch farmer would
+have of a pleasantness in blue hills and running streams, wholly
+wanting in the Greek mind; and perhaps also some difference of views
+on the subjects of truth and honesty. But the main points, the easy,
+athletic, strongly logical and argumentative, yet fanciful and
+credulous, characters of mind, would be very similar in both; and
+the most serious change in the substance of the stuff among the
+modifications above suggested as necessary to turn the Scot into the
+Greek, is that effect of softer climate and surrounding luxury,
+inducing the practice of various forms of polished art,--the more
+polished, because the practical and realistic tendency of the
+Hellenic mind (if my interpretation of it be right) would quite
+prevent it from taking pleasure in any irregularities of form, or
+imitations of the weeds and wildnesses of that mountain nature with
+which it thought itself born to contend. In its utmost refinement of
+work, it sought eminently for orderliness; carried the principle of
+the leeks in squares, and fountains in pipes, perfectly out in its
+streets and temples; formalized whatever decoration it put into its
+minor architectural mouldings, and reserved its whole heart and
+power to represent the action of living men, or gods, though not
+unconscious meanwhile, of
+
+      "The simple, the sincere delight;
+      The habitual scene of hill and dale
+      The rural herds, the vernal gale;
+      The tangled vetches' purple bloom;
+      The fragrance of the bean's perfume,--
+      Theirs, theirs alone, who cultivate the soil,
+      And drink the cup of thirst, and eat the bread of toil."
+
+  [59] Compare Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto i. stanza 15., and
+       canto v. stanza 2. In the first instance, the river-spirit is
+       accurately the Homeric god, only Homer would have believed in
+       it,--Scott did not; at least not altogether.
+
+  [60] Compare the exquisite lines of Longfellow on the sunset in
+       the Golden Legend:--
+
+           "The day is done, and slowly from the scene
+           The stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts,
+           And puts them back into his golden quiver."
+
+
+  [61] Iliad iv. 141.
+
+  [62] Iliad ii. 776.
+
+  [63] Odyssey, x. 510.
+
+  [64] Compare the passage in Dante referred to above, Chap. XII. � 6.
+
+  [65] Odyssey, xi. 571. xxiv. 13. The couch of Ceres, with Homer's
+       usual faithfulness, is made of a _ploughed_ field, v. 127.
+
+  [66] Odyssey, v. 398.
+
+  [67] Odyssey, xii. 357.
+
+  [68] Odyssey, ix. 132. &c. Hence Milton's
+
+           "From haunted spring, and dale,
+           Edged with poplar pale."
+
+  [69] Odyssey, xiii. 236. &c.
+
+  [70] Educated, as we shall see hereafter, first in this school,
+       Turner gave the hackneyed composition a strange power and
+       freshness, in his Glaucus and Scylla.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+OF MEDI�VAL LANDSCAPE:--FIRST, THE FIELDS.
+
+
+� 1. IN our examination of the spirit of classical landscape, we
+were obliged to confine ourselves to what is left to us in written
+description. Some interesting results might indeed have been
+obtained by examining the Egyptian and Ninevite landscape sculpture,
+but in nowise conclusive enough to be worth the pains of the
+inquiry; for the landscape of sculpture is necessarily confined in
+range, and usually inexpressive of the complete feelings of the
+workman, being introduced rather to explain the place and
+circumstances of events, than for its own sake. In the Middle Ages,
+however, the case is widely different. We have written landscape,
+sculptured landscape, and painted landscape, all bearing united
+testimony to the tone of the national mind in almost every
+remarkable locality of Europe.
+
+� 2. That testimony, taken in its breadth, is very curiously
+conclusive. It marks the medi�val mind as agreeing altogether with
+the ancients, in holding that flat land, brooks, and groves of
+aspens, compose the pleasant places of the earth, and that rocks and
+mountains are, for inhabitation, altogether to be reprobated and
+detested; but as disagreeing with the classical mind totally in this
+other most important respect, that the pleasant flat land is never a
+ploughed field, nor a rich lotus meadow good for pasture, but
+_garden_ ground covered with flowers, and divided by fragrant
+hedges, with a castle in the middle of it. The aspens are delighted
+in, not because they are good for "coach-making men" to make
+cart-wheels of, but because they are shady and graceful; and the
+fruit-trees, covered with delicious fruit, especially apple and
+orange, occupy still more important positions in the scenery.
+Singing-birds--not "sea-crows," but nightingales[71]--perch on every
+bough; and the ideal occupation of mankind is not to cultivate
+either the garden or the meadow, but to gather roses and eat oranges
+in the one, and ride out hawking over the other.
+
+Finally, mountain scenery, though considered as disagreeable for
+general inhabitation, is always introduced as being proper to
+meditate in, or to encourage communion with higher beings; and in
+the ideal landscape of daily life, mountains are considered
+agreeable things enough, so that they be far enough away.
+
+In this great change there are three vital points to be noticed.
+
+[Sidenote: � 3. Three essential characters: 1. Pride in idleness.]
+
+The first, the disdain of agricultural pursuits by the nobility; a
+fatal change, and one gradually bringing about the ruin of that
+nobility. It is expressed in the medi�val landscape by the eminently
+pleasurable and horticultural character of everything; by the
+fences, hedges, castle walls, and masses of useless, but lovely
+flowers, especially roses. The knights and ladies are represented
+always as singing, or making love, in these pleasant places. The
+idea of setting an old knight, like Laertes (whatever his state of
+fallen fortune), "with thick gloves on to keep his hands from the
+thorns," to prune a row of vines, would have been regarded as the
+most monstrous violation of the decencies of life; and a senator,
+once detected in the home employments of Cincinnatus, could, I
+suppose, thenceforward hardly have appeared in society.
+
+[Sidenote: � 4. 2. Poetical observance of nature.]
+
+The second vital point is the evidence of a more sentimental
+enjoyment of external nature. A Greek, wishing really to enjoy
+himself, shut himself into a beautiful atrium, with an excellent
+dinner, and a society of philosophical or musical friends. But a
+medi�val knight went into his pleasance, to gather roses and hear
+the birds sing; or rode out hunting or hawking. His evening feast,
+though riotous enough sometimes, was not the height of his day's
+enjoyment; and if the attractions of the world are to be shown
+typically to him, as opposed to the horrors of death, they are never
+represented by a full feast in a chamber, but by a delicate dessert
+in an orange grove, with musicians under the trees; or a ride on a
+May morning, hawk on fist.
+
+This change is evidently a healthy, and a very interesting one.
+
+[Sidenote: � 5. 3. Disturbed conscience.]
+
+The third vital point is the marked sense that this hawking and
+apple-eating are not altogether right; that there is something else
+to be done in the world than that; and that the mountains, as
+opposed to the pleasant garden-ground, are places where that other
+something may best be learned;--which is evidently a piece of
+infinite and new respect for the mountains, and another healthy
+change in the tone of the human heart.
+
+Let us glance at the signs and various results of these changes, one
+by one.
+
+[Sidenote: � 6. Derivative characters: 1. Love of flowers.]
+
+The two first named, evil and good as they are, are very closely
+connected. The more poetical delight in external nature proceeds
+just from the fact that it is no longer looked upon with the eye of
+the farmer; and in proportion as the herbs and flowers cease to be
+regarded as useful, they are felt to be charming. Leeks are not now
+the most important objects in the garden, but lilies and roses; the
+herbage which a Greek would have looked at only with a view to the
+number of horses it would feed, is regarded by the medi�val knight
+as a green carpet for fair feet to dance upon, and the beauty of its
+softness and color is proportionally felt by him; while the brook,
+which the Greek rejoiced to dismiss into a reservoir under the
+palace threshold, would be, by the medi�val, distributed into
+pleasant pools, or forced into fountains; and regarded alternately
+as a mirror for fair faces, and a witchery to ensnare the sunbeams
+and the rainbow.
+
+[Sidenote: � 7. 2. Less definite gratitude to God.]
+
+And this change of feeling involves two others, very important. When
+the flowers and grass were regarded as means of life, and therefore
+(as the thoughtful laborer of the soil must always regard them) with
+the reverence due to those gifts of God which were most necessary to
+his existence; although their own beauty was less felt, their
+proceeding from the Divine hand was more seriously acknowledged, and
+the herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree yielding fruit, though in
+themselves less admired, were yet solemnly connected in the heart
+with the reverence of Ceres, Pomona, or Pan. But when the sense of
+these necessary uses was more or less lost, among the upper classes,
+by the delegation of the art of husbandry to the hands of the
+peasant, the flower and fruit, whose bloom or richness thus became
+a mere source of pleasure, were regarded with less solemn sense of
+the Divine gift in them; and were converted rather into toys than
+treasures, chance gifts for gaiety, rather than promised rewards of
+labor; so that while the Greek could hardly have trodden the formal
+furrow, or plucked the clusters from the trellised vine, without
+reverent thoughts of the deities of field and leaf, who gave the
+seed to fructify, and the bloom to darken, the medi�val knight
+plucked the violet to wreathe in his lady's hair, or strewed the
+idle rose on the turf at her feet, with little sense of anything in
+the nature that gave them, but a frail, accidental, involuntary
+exuberance; while also the Jewish sacrificial system being now done
+away, as well as the Pagan mythology, and, with it, the whole
+conception of meat offering or firstfruits offering, the chiefest
+seriousness of all the thoughts connected with the gifts of nature
+faded from the minds of the classes of men concerned with art and
+literature; while the peasant, reduced to serf level, was incapable
+of imaginative thought, owing to his want of general cultivation.
+But on the other hand, exactly in proportion as the idea of definite
+spiritual presence in material nature was lost, the mysterious sense
+of _unaccountable_ life in the things themselves would be increased,
+and the mind would instantly be laid open to all those currents of
+fallacious, but pensive and pathetic sympathy, which we have seen to
+be characteristic of modern times.
+
+[Sidenote: � 3. Gloom caused by enforced solitude.]
+
+Farther: a singular difference would necessarily result from the far
+greater loneliness of baronial life, deprived as it was of all
+interest in agricultural pursuits. The palace of a Greek leader in
+early times might have gardens, fields, and farms around it, but was
+sure to be near some busy city or sea-port: in later times, the city
+itself became the principal dwelling-place, and the country was
+visited only to see how the farm went on, or traversed in a line of
+march. Far other was the life of the medi�val baron, nested on his
+solitary jut of crag; entering into cities only occasionally for some
+grave political or warrior's purpose, and, for the most part, passing
+the years of his life in lion-like isolation; the village inhabited by
+his retainers straggling indeed about the slopes of the rocks at his
+feet, but his own dwelling standing gloomily apart, between them and
+the uncompanionable clouds, commanding, from sunset to sunrise, the
+flowing flame of some calm unvoyaged river, and the endless undulation
+of the untraversable hills. How different must the thoughts about
+nature have been, of the noble who lived among the bright marble
+porticos of the Greek groups of temple or palace,--in the midst of a
+plain covered with corn and olives, and by the shore of a sparkling
+and freighted sea,--from those of the master of some mountain
+promontory in the green recesses of Northern Europe, watching night by
+night, from amongst his heaps of storm-broken stone, rounded into
+towers, the lightning of the lonely sea flash round the sands of
+Harlech, or the mists changing their shapes forever, among the
+changeless pines, that fringe the crests of Jura.
+
+[Sidenote: � 9. And frequent pilgrimage.]
+
+Nor was it without similar effect on the minds of men that their
+journeyings and pilgrimages became more frequent than those of the
+Greek, the extent of ground traversed in the course of them larger,
+and the mode of travel more companionless. To the Greek, a voyage to
+Egypt, or the Hellespont, was the subject of lasting fame and fable,
+and the forests of the Danube and the rocks of Sicily closed for him
+the gates of the intelligible world. What parts of that narrow world
+he crossed were crossed with fleets or armies; the camp always
+populous on the plain, and the ships drawn in cautious symmetry around
+the shore. But to the medi�val knight, from Scottish moor to Syrian
+sand, the world was one great exercise ground, or field of adventure;
+the staunch pacing of his charger penetrated the pathlessness of
+outmost forest, and sustained the sultriness of the most secret
+desert. Frequently alone,--or, if accompanied, for the most part only
+by retainers of lower rank, incapable of entering into complete
+sympathy with any of his thoughts,--he must have been compelled often
+to enter into dim companionship with the silent nature around him, and
+must assuredly sometimes have talked to the wayside flowers of his
+love, and to the fading clouds of his ambition.
+
+[Sidenote: 4. Dread of mountains.]
+
+� 10. But, on the other hand, the idea of retirement from the world
+for the sake of self-mortification, of combat with demons, or
+communion with angels, and with their King,--authoritatively
+commended as it was to all men by the continual practice of Christ
+Himself,--gave to all mountain solitude at once a sanctity and a
+terror, in the medi�val mind, which were altogether different from
+anything that it had possessed in the un-Christian periods. On the
+one side, there was an idea of sanctity attached to rocky
+wilderness, because it had always been among hills that the Deity
+had manifested himself most intimately to men, and to the hills that
+His saints had nearly always retired for meditation, for especial
+communion with Him, and to prepare for death. Men acquainted with
+the history of Moses, alone at Horeb, or with Israel at Sinai,--of
+Elijah by the brook Cherith, and in the Horeb cave; of the deaths of
+Moses and Aaron on Hor and Nebo; of the preparation of Jephthah's
+daughter for her death among the Judea Mountains; of the continual
+retirement of Christ Himself to the mountains for prayer, His
+temptation in the desert of the Dead Sea, His sermon on the hills of
+Capernaum, His transfiguration on the crest of Tabor, and his
+evening and morning walks over Olivet for the four or five days
+preceding His crucifixion,--were not likely to look with irreverent
+or unloving eyes upon the blue hills that girded their golden
+horizon, or drew upon them the mysterious clouds out of the height
+of the darker heaven. But with this impression of their greater
+sanctity was involved also that of a peculiar terror. In all
+this,--their haunting by the memories of prophets, the presences of
+angels, and the everlasting thoughts and words of the Redeemer,--the
+mountain ranges seemed separated from the active world, and only to
+be fitly approached by hearts which were condemnatory of it. Just in
+so much as it appeared necessary for the noblest men to retire to
+the hill-recesses before their missions could be accomplished or
+their spirits perfected, in so far did the daily world seem by
+comparison to be pronounced profane and dangerous; and to those who
+loved that world, and its work, the mountains were thus voiceful
+with perpetual rebuke, and necessarily contemplated with a kind of
+pain and fear, such as a man engrossed by vanity feels at being by
+some accident forced to hear a startling sermon, or to assist at a
+funeral service. Every association of this kind was deepened by the
+practice and the precept of the time; and thousands of hearts,
+which might otherwise have felt that there was loveliness in the
+wild landscape, shrank from it in dread, because they knew that the
+monk retired to it for penance, and the hermit for contemplation.
+The horror which the Greek had felt for hills only when they were
+uninhabitable and barren, attached itself now to many of the
+sweetest spots of earth; the feeling was conquered by political
+interests, but never by admiration; military ambition seized the
+frontier rock, or maintained itself in the unassailable pass; but it
+was only for their punishment, or in their despair, that men
+consented to tread the crocused slopes of the Chartreuse, or the
+soft glades and dewy pastures of Vallombrosa.
+
+� 11. In all these modifications of temper and principle there
+appears much which tends to passionate, affectionate, or awe-struck
+observance of the features of natural scenery, closely resembling,
+in all but this superstitious dread of mountains, our feelings at
+the present day. But _one_ character which the medi�vals had in
+common with the ancients, and that exactly the most eminent
+character in both, opposed itself steadily to all the feelings we
+have hitherto been examining,--the admiration, namely, and constant
+watchfulness, of human beauty. Exercised in nearly the same manner
+as the Greeks, from their youth upwards, their countenances were
+cast even in a higher mould; for, although somewhat less regular in
+feature, and affected by minglings of Northern bluntness and
+stolidity of general expression, together with greater thinness of
+lip and shaggy formlessness of brow, these less sculpturesque
+features were, nevertheless, touched with a seriousness and
+refinement proceeding first from the modes of thought inculcated by
+the Christian religion, and secondly from their more romantic and
+various life. Hence a degree of personal beauty, both male and
+female, was attained in the Middle Ages, with which classical
+periods could show nothing for a moment comparable; and this beauty
+was set forth by the most perfect splendor, united with grace, in
+dress, which the human race have hitherto invented. The strength of
+their art-genius was directed in great part to this object; and
+their best workmen and most brilliant fanciers were employed in
+wreathing the mail or embroidering the robe. The exquisite arts of
+enamelling and chasing metal enabled them to make the armor as
+radiant and delicate as the plumage of a tropical bird; and the most
+various and vivid imaginations were displayed in the alternations of
+color, and fiery freaks of form, on shield and crest; so that of all
+the beautiful things which the eyes of men could fall upon, in the
+world about them, the most beautiful must have been a young knight
+riding out in morning sunshine, and in faithful hope.
+
+      "His broad, clear brow in sunlight glowed;
+      On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
+      From underneath his helmet flowed
+      His coal-black curls, as on he rode.
+      All in the blue, unclouded weather,
+      Thick jewelled shone the saddle leather;
+      The helmet and the helmet feather
+      Burned like one burning flame together;
+      And the gemmy bridle glittered free,
+      Like to some branch of stars we see
+      Hung in the golden galaxy."
+
+[Sidenote: � 12. 5. care for human beauty.]
+
+Now, the effect of this superb presence of human beauty on men in
+general was, exactly as it had been in Greek times, first, to turn
+their thoughts and glances in great part away from all other beauty
+but that, and to make the grass of the field take to them always more
+or less the aspect of a carpet to dance upon, a lawn to tilt upon, or
+a serviceable crop of hay; and, secondly, in what attention they paid
+to this lower nature, to make them dwell exclusively on what was
+graceful, symmetrical, and bright in color. All that was rugged,
+rough, dark, wild, unterminated, they rejected at once, as the domain
+of "salvage men" and monstrous giants: all that they admired was
+tender, bright, balanced, enclosed, symmetrical--only symmetrical in
+the noble and free sense: for what we moderns call "symmetry," or
+"balance," differs as much from medi�val symmetry as the poise of a
+grocer's scales, or the balance of an Egyptian mummy with its hands
+tied to its sides, does from the balance of a knight on his horse,
+striking with the battle-axe, at the gallop; the mummy's balance
+looking wonderfully perfect, and yet sure to be one-sided if you weigh
+the dust of it,--the knight's balance swaying and changing like the
+wind, and yet as true and accurate as the laws of life.
+
+[Sidenote: � 13. 6. Symmetrical government of design.]
+
+And this love of symmetry was still farther enhanced by the peculiar
+duties required of art at the time; for, in order to fit a flower or
+leaf for inlaying in armor, or showing clearly in glass, it was
+absolutely necessary to take away its complexity, and reduce it to
+the condition of a disciplined and orderly pattern; and this the
+more, because, for all military purposes, the device, whatever it
+was, had to be distinctly intelligible at extreme distance. That it
+should be a good imitation of nature, when seen near, was of no
+moment; but it was of highest moment that when first the knight's
+banner flashed in the sun at the turn of the mountain road, or rose,
+torn and bloody, through the drift of the battle dust, it should
+still be discernible what the bearing was.
+
+      "At length, the freshening western blast
+      Aside the shroud of battle cast;
+      And first the ridge of mingled spears
+      Above the brightening cloud appears;
+      And in the smoke the pennons flew,
+      As in the storm the white sea-mew;
+      Then marked they, dashing broad and far
+      The broken billows of the war.
+      Wide raged the battle on the plain;
+      Spears shook, and falchions flashed amain,
+      Fell England's arrow-flight like rain;
+      Crests rose, and stooped, and rose again,
+          Wild and disorderly.
+      Amidst the scene of tumult, high,
+      _They saw Lord Marmion's falcon fly,
+      And stainless Tunstall's banner white,
+      And Edmund Howard's lion bright._"
+
+It was needed, not merely that they should see it was a falcon, but
+Lord Marmion's falcon; not only a lion, but the Howard's lion.
+Hence, to the one imperative end of _intelligibility_, every minor
+resemblance to nature was sacrificed, and above all, the _curved_,
+which are chiefly the confusing lines; so that the straight,
+elongated back, doubly elongated tail, projected and separate claws,
+and other rectilinear unnaturalnesses of form, became the means by
+which the leopard was, in midst of the mist and storm of battle,
+distinguished from the dog, or the lion from the wolf; the most
+admirable fierceness and vitality being, in spite of these
+necessary changes (so often shallowly sneered at by the modern
+workman), obtained by the old designer.
+
+Farther, it was necessary to the brilliant harmony of color, and
+clear setting forth of everything, that all confusing shadows, all
+dim and doubtful lines should be rejected: hence at once an utter
+denial of natural appearances by the great body of workmen; and a
+calm rest in a practice of representation which would make either
+boar or lion blue, scarlet, or golden, according to the device of
+the knight, or the need of such and such a color in that place of
+the pattern; and which wholly denied that any substance ever cast a
+shadow, or was affected by any kind of obscurity.
+
+[Sidenote: � 14. 7. Therefore, inaccurate rendering of nature.]
+
+All this was in its way, and for its end, absolutely right, admirable,
+and delightful; and those who despise it, laugh at it, or derive no
+pleasure from it, are utterly ignorant of the highest principles of
+art, and are mere tyros and beginners in the practice of color. But,
+admirable though it might be, one necessary result of it was a farther
+withdrawal of the observation of men from the refined and subtle
+beauty of nature; so that the workman who first was led to think
+_lightly_ of natural beauty, as being subservient to human, was next
+led to think _inaccurately_ of natural beauty, because he had
+continually to alter and simplify it for his practical purposes.
+
+� 15. Now, assembling all these different sources of the peculiar
+medi�val feeling towards nature in one view, we have:
+
+    1st. Love of the garden instead of love of the farm, leading
+    to a sentimental contemplation of nature, instead of a
+    practical and agricultural one. (�� 3. 4. 6.)
+
+    2nd. Loss of sense of actual Divine presence, leading to
+    fancies of fallacious animation, in herbs, flowers, clouds,
+    &c. (� 7.)
+
+    3rd. Perpetual, and more or less undisturbed, companionship
+    with wild nature. (�� 8. 9.)
+
+    4th. Apprehension of demoniacal and angelic presence among
+    mountains, leading to a reverent dread of them. (� 10.)
+
+    5th. Principalness of delight in human beauty, leading to
+    comparative contempt of natural objects. (� 11.)
+
+    6th. Consequent love of order, light, intelligibility, and
+    symmetry, leading to dislike of the wildness, darkness, and
+    mystery of nature. (� 12.)
+
+    7th. Inaccuracy of observance of nature, induced by the
+    habitual practice of change on its forms. (� 13.)
+
+From these mingled elements, we should necessarily expect to find
+resulting, as the characteristic of medi�val landscape art, compared
+with Greek, a far higher sentiment about it, and affection for it,
+more or less subdued by still greater respect for the loveliness of
+man, and therefore subordinated entirely to human interests; mingled
+with curious traces of terror, piety, or superstition, and cramped
+by various formalisms,--some wise and necessary, some feeble, and
+some exhibiting needless ignorance and inaccuracy.
+
+Under these lights, let us examine the facts.
+
+� 16. The landscape of the Middle Ages is represented in a central
+manner by the illuminations of the MSS. of Romances, executed about
+the middle of the fifteenth century. On one side of these stands the
+earlier landscape work, more or less treated as simple decoration;
+on the other, the later landscape work, becoming more or less
+affected with modern ideas and modes of imitation.
+
+These central fifteenth century landscapes are almost invariably
+composed of a grove or two of tall trees, a winding river, and a
+castle, or a garden: the peculiar feature of both these last being
+_trimness_; the artist always dwelling especially on the fences;
+wreathing the espaliers indeed prettily with sweet-briar, and
+putting pots of orange-trees on the tops of the walls, but taking
+great care that there shall be no loose bricks in the one, nor
+broken stakes in the other,--the trouble and ceaseless warfare of
+the times having rendered security one of the first elements of
+pleasantness, and making it impossible for any artist to conceive
+Paradise but as surrounded by a moat, or to distinguish the road to
+it better than by its narrow wicket gate, and watchful porter.
+
+� 17. One of these landscapes is thus described by Macaulay: "We
+have an exact square, enclosed by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel,
+and Euphrates, each with a convenient bridge in the centre;
+rectangular beds of flowers; a long canal neatly bricked and railed
+in; the tree of knowledge, clipped like one of the limes behind the
+Tuileries, standing in the centre of the grand alley; the snake
+turned round it, the man on the right hand, the woman on the left,
+and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round them."
+
+All this is perfectly true; and seems in the description very
+curiously foolish. The only curious folly, however, in the matter is
+the exquisite _na�vet�_ of the historian, in supposing that the
+quaint landscape indicates in the understanding of the painter so
+marvellous an inferiority to his own; whereas, it is altogether his
+own wit that is at fault, in not comprehending that nations, whose
+youth had been decimated among the sands and serpents of Syria, knew
+probably nearly as much about Eastern scenery as youths trained in
+the schools of the modern Royal Academy; and that this curious
+symmetry was entirely symbolic, only more or less modified by the
+various instincts which I have traced above. Mr. Macaulay is
+evidently quite unaware that the serpent with the human head, and
+body twisted round the tree, was the universally accepted symbol of
+the evil angel, from the dawn of art up to Michael Angelo; that the
+greatest sacred artists invariably place the man on the one side of
+the tree, the woman on the other, in order to denote the enthroned
+and balanced dominion about to fall by temptation; that the beasts
+are ranged (when they _are_ so, though this is much more seldom the
+case,) in a circle round them, expressly to mark that they were then
+not wild, but obedient, intelligent, and orderly beasts; and that
+the four rivers are trenched and enclosed on the four sides, to mark
+that the waters which now wander in waste, and destroy in fury, had
+then for their principal office to "water the garden" of God. The
+description is, however, sufficiently apposite and interesting, as
+bearing upon what I have noted respecting the eminent _fence_-loving
+spirit of the medi�vals.
+
+� 18. Together with this peculiar formality, we find an infinite
+delight in drawing pleasant flowers, always articulating and outlining
+them completely; the sky is always blue, having only a few delicate
+white clouds in it, and in the distance are blue mountains, very far
+away, if the landscape is to be simply delightful; but brought near,
+and divided into quaint overhanging rocks, if it is intended to be
+meditative, or a place of saintly seclusion. But the whole of it
+always,--flowers, castles, brooks, clouds, and rocks,--subordinate to
+the human figures in the foreground, and painted for no other end than
+that of explaining their adventures and occupations.
+
+[Illustration: 7. Botany of 13th Century. (Apple-tree and Cyclamen)]
+
+� 19. Before the idea of landscape had been thus far developed, the
+representations of it had been purely typical; the objects which had
+to be shown in order to explain the scene of the event, being firmly
+outlined, usually on a pure golden or chequered color background,
+not on sky. The change from the golden background, (characteristic
+of the finest thirteenth century work) and the colored chequer
+(which in like manner belongs to the finest fourteenth) to the blue
+sky, gradated to the horizon, takes place early in the fifteenth
+century, and is the _crisis_ of change in the spirit of medi�val
+art. Strictly speaking, we might divide the art of Christian times
+into two great masses--Symbolic and Imitative;--the symbolic,
+reaching from the earliest periods down to the close of the
+fourteenth century, and the imitative from that close to the present
+time; and, then, the most important circumstance indicative of the
+culminating point, or turn of tide, would be this of the change from
+chequered background to sky background. The uppermost figure in
+Plate 7. opposite, representing the tree of knowledge, taken from a
+somewhat late thirteenth century Hebrew manuscript (Additional
+11,639) in the British Museum, will at once illustrate Mr.
+Macaulay's "serpent turned round the tree," and the mode of
+introducing the chequer background, will enable the reader better to
+understand the peculiar feeling of the period, which no more
+intended the formal walls or streams for an imitative representation
+of the Garden of Eden, than these chequers for an imitation of sky.
+
+� 20. The moment the sky is introduced (and it is curious how
+perfectly it is done _at once_, many manuscripts presenting, in
+alternate pages, chequered backgrounds, and deep blue skies
+exquisitely gradated to the horizon)--the moment, I say, the sky is
+introduced, the spirit of art becomes for evermore changed, and
+thenceforward it gradually proposes imitation more and more as an
+end, until it reaches the Turnerian landscape. This broad division
+into two schools would therefore be the most true and accurate we
+could employ, but not the most convenient. For the great medi�val
+art lies in a cluster about the culminating point, including
+symbolism on one side, and imitation on the other, and extending
+like a radiant cloud upon the mountain peak of ages, partly down
+both sides of it, from the year 1200 to 1500; the brightest part of
+the cloud leaning a little backwards, and poising itself between
+1250 and 1350. And therefore the most convenient arrangement is into
+Romanesque and barbaric art, up to 1200,--medi�val art, 1200 to
+1500,--and modern art, from 1500 downwards. But it is only in the
+earlier or symbolic medi�val art, reaching up to the close of the
+fourteenth century, that the peculiar modification of natural forms
+for decorative purposes is seen in its perfection, with all its
+beauty, and all its necessary shortcomings; the minds of men being
+accurately balanced between that honor for the superior human form
+which they shared with the Greek ages, and the sentimental love of
+nature which was peculiar to their own. The expression of the two
+feelings will be found to vary according to the material and place
+of the art; in painting, the conventional forms are more adopted, in
+order to obtain definition, and brilliancy of color, while in
+sculpture the life of nature is often rendered with a love and
+faithfulness which put modern art to shame. And in this earnest
+contemplation of the natural facts, united with an endeavor to
+simplify, for clear expression, the results of that contemplation,
+the ornamental artists arrived at two abstract conclusions about
+form, which are highly curious and interesting.
+
+� 21. They saw, first, that a leaf might always be considered as a
+sudden expansion of the stem that bore it; an uncontrollable
+expression of delight, on the part of the twig, that spring had come,
+shown in a fountain-like expatiation of its tender green heart into
+the air. They saw that in this violent proclamation of its delight and
+liberty, whereas the twig had, until that moment, a disposition only
+to grow quietly forwards, it expressed its satisfaction and extreme
+pleasure in sunshine by springing out to right and left. Let _a b_,
+Fig. 1. Plate 8., be the twig growing forward in the direction from
+_a_ to _b_. It reaches the point _b_, and then--spring coming,--not
+being able to contain itself, it bursts out in every direction, even
+springing backwards at first for joy; but as this backward
+direction is contrary to its own proper fate and nature, it cannot go
+on so long, and the length of each rib into which it separates is
+proportioned accurately to the degree in which the proceedings of that
+rib are in harmony with the natural destiny of the plant. Thus the rib
+_c_, entirely contradictory, by the direction of his life and energy,
+of the general intentions to the tree, is but a short-lived rib; _d_,
+not quite so opposite to his fate, lives longer; _e_, accommodating
+himself still more to the spirit of progress, attains a greater length
+still; and the largest rib of all is the one who has not yielded at
+all to the erratic disposition of the others when spring came, but,
+feeling quite as happy about the spring as they did, nevertheless took
+no holiday, minded his business, and grew straightforward.
+
+[Illustration: 8. The Growth of Leaves.]
+
+� 22. Fig. 6. in the same plate, which shows the disposition of the
+ribs in the leaf of an American Plane, exemplifies the principle
+very accurately; it is indeed more notably seen in this than in most
+leaves, because the ribs at the base have evidently had a little
+fraternal quarrel about their spring holiday; and the more
+gaily-minded ones, getting together into trios on each side, have
+rather pooh-poohed and laughed at the seventh brother in the middle,
+who wanted to go on regularly, and attend to his work. Nevertheless,
+though thus starting quite by himself in life, this seventh brother,
+quietly pushing on in the right direction, lives longest, and makes
+the largest fortune, and the triple partnerships on the right and
+left meet with a very minor prosperity.
+
+� 23. Now if we inclose Fig. 1. in Plate 8. with two curves passing
+through the extremities of the ribs, we get Fig. 2., the central type
+of all leaves. Only this type is modified of course in a thousand ways
+by the life of the plant. If it be marsh or aquatic, instead of
+springing out in twigs, it is almost certain to expand in soft
+currents, as the liberated stream does at its mouth into the ocean,
+Fig. 3. (Alisma Plantago); if it be meant for one of the crowned and
+lovely trees of the earth, it will separate into stars, and each ray
+of the leaf will form a ray of light in the crown, Fig. 5.
+(Horsechestnut); and if it be a commonplace tree, rather prudent and
+practical than imaginative, it will not expand all at once, but throw
+out the ribs every now and then along the central rib, like a
+merchant taking his occasional and restricted holiday, Fig. 4. (Elm).
+
+� 24. Now in the bud, where all these proceedings on the leaf's part
+are first imagined, the young leaf is generally (always?) doubled up in
+embryo, so as to present the profile of the half-leaves, as Fig. 7.,
+only in exquisite complexity of arrangement; Fig. 9., for instance, is
+the profile of the leaf-bud of a rose. Hence the general arrangement of
+line represented by Fig. 8. (in which the lower line is slightly curved
+to express the bending life in the spine) is everlastingly typical of
+the expanding powers of joyful vegetative youth; and it is of all
+simple forms the most exquisitely delightful to the human mind. It
+presents itself in a thousand different proportions and variations in
+the buds and profiles of leaves; those being always the loveliest in
+which, either by accidental perspective of position, or inherent
+character in the tree, it is most frequently presented to the eye. The
+branch of bramble, for instance, Fig. 10. at the bottom of Plate 8.,
+owes its chief beauty to the perpetual recurrence of this typical form;
+and we shall find presently the enormous importance of it, even in
+mountain ranges, though, in these, _falling_ force takes the place of
+_vital_ force.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
+
+� 25. This abstract conclusion the great thirteenth century artists
+were the first to arrive at; and whereas, before their time,
+ornament had been constantly refined into intricate and
+subdivided symmetries, they were content with this simple form as
+the termination of its most important features. Fig. 3., which is a
+scroll out of a Psalter executed in the latter half of the
+thirteenth century, is a sufficient example of a practice at that
+time absolutely universal.
+
+[Illustration: 9. Botany of the 14th Century. From the Prayer-book of
+Yolande of Navarre.]
+
+� 26. The second great discovery of the Middle Ages in floral
+ornament, was that, in order completely to express the law of
+subordination among the leaf-ribs, two ribs were necessary, _and no
+more_, on each side of the leaf, forming a series of three with the
+central one, because proportion is between three terms at least.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+That is to say, when they had only three ribs altogether, as _a_,
+Fig. 4., no _law_ of relation was discernible between the ribs, or
+the leaflets they bore; but by the addition of a third on each
+side as at _b_, proportion instantly was expressible, whether
+arithmetical or geometrical, or of any other kind. Hence the
+adoption of forms more or less approximating to that at _c_ (young
+ivy), or _d_ (wild geranium), as the favorite elements of their
+floral ornament, those leaves being in their disposition of masses,
+the simplest which can express a perfect law of proportion, just as
+the outline Fig. 7. Plate 8. is the simplest which can express a
+perfect law of growth.
+
+Plate 9. opposite gives, in rude outline, the arrangement of the
+border of one of the pages of a missal in my own possession, executed
+for the Countess Yolande of Flanders,[72] in the latter half of the
+fourteenth century, and furnishing, in exhaustless variety, the most
+graceful examples I have ever seen of the favorite decoration at the
+period, commonly now known as the "Ivy leaf" pattern.
+
+� 27. In thus reducing these two everlasting laws of beauty to their
+simplest possible exponents, the medi�val workmen were the first to
+discern and establish the principles of decorative art to the end of
+time, nor of decorative art merely, but of mass arrangement in
+general. For the members of any great composition, arranged about a
+centre, are always reducible to the law of the ivy leaf, the best
+cathedral entrances having five porches corresponding in
+proportional purpose to its five lobes (three being an imperfect,
+and seven a superfluous number); while the loveliest groups of lines
+attainable in any pictorial composition are always based on the
+section of the leaf-bud, Fig. 7. Plate 8., or on the relation of its
+ribs to the convex curve enclosing them.
+
+� 28. These discoveries of ultimate truth are, I believe, never made
+philosophically, but instinctively; so that wherever we find a high
+abstract result of the kind, we may be almost sure it has been the
+work of the penetrative imagination, acting under the influence of
+strong affection. Accordingly, when we enter on our botanical
+inquiries, I shall have occasion to show with what tender and loving
+fidelity to nature the masters of the thirteenth century always
+traced the leading lines of their decorations, either in
+missal-painting or sculpture, and how totally in this respect their
+methods of subduing, for the sake of distinctness, the natural forms
+they loved so dearly, differ from the iron formalisms to which the
+Greeks, careless of all that was not completely divine or completely
+human, reduced the thorn of the acanthus, and softness of the lily.
+Nevertheless, in all this perfect and loving decorative art, we have
+hardly any careful references to other landscape features than herbs
+and flowers; mountains, water, and clouds are introduced so rudely,
+that the representations of them can never be received for anything
+else than letters or signs. Thus the _sign_ of clouds, in the
+thirteenth century, is an undulating band, usually in painting, of
+blue edged with white, in sculpture, wrought so as to resemble very
+nearly the folds of a curtain closely tied, and understood for
+clouds only by its position, as surrounding angels or saints in
+heaven, opening to souls ascending at the Last Judgment, or forming
+canopies over the Saviour or the Virgin. Water is represented by
+zigzag lines, nearly resembling those employed for clouds, but
+distinguished, in sculpture, by having fish in it; in painting, both
+by fish and a more continuous blue or green color. And when these
+unvaried symbols are associated under the influence of that love of
+firm fence, moat, and every other means of definition which we have
+seen to be one of the prevailing characteristics of the medi�val
+mind, it is not possible for us to conceive, through the rigidity of
+the signs employed, what were the real feelings of the workman or
+spectator about the natural landscape. We see that the thing carved
+or painted is not intended in any wise to imitate the truth, or
+convey to us the feelings which the workman had in contemplating the
+truth. He has got a way of talking about it so definite and cold,
+and tells us with his chisel so calmly that the knight had a castle
+to attack, or the saint a river to cross dryshod, without making the
+smallest effort to describe pictorially either castle or river, that
+we are left wholly at fault as to the nature of the emotion with
+which he contemplated the real objects. But that emotion, as the
+intermediate step between the feelings of the Grecian and the
+Modern, it must be our aim to ascertain as clearly as possible; and,
+therefore, finding it not at this period completely expressed in
+visible art, we must, as we did with the Greeks, take up the written
+landscape instead, and examine this medi�val sentiment as we find it
+embodied in the poem of Dante.
+
+� 29. The thing that must first strike us in this respect, as we
+turn our thoughts to the poem, is, unquestionably, the _formality_
+of its landscape.
+
+Milton's effort, in all that he tells us of his Inferno, is to make
+it indefinite; Dante's, to make it _definite_. Both, indeed,
+describe it as entered through gates; but, within the gate, all is
+wild and fenceless with Milton, having indeed its four rivers,--the
+last vestige of the medi�val tradition,--but rivers which flow
+through a waste of mountain and moorland, and by "many a frozen,
+many a fiery Alp." But Dante's Inferno is accurately separated into
+circles drawn with well-pointed compasses; mapped and properly
+surveyed in every direction, trenched in a thoroughly good style of
+engineering from depth to depth, and divided in the "_accurate_
+middle" (dritto mezzo) of its deepest abyss, into a concentric
+series of ten moats and embankments, like those about a castle, with
+bridges from each embankment to the next; precisely in the manner of
+those bridges over Hiddekel and Euphrates, which Mr. Macaulay thinks
+so innocently designed, apparently not aware that he is also
+laughing at Dante. These larger fosses are of rock, and the bridges
+also; but as he goes further into detail, Dante tells us of various
+minor fosses and embankments, in which he anxiously points out to us
+not only the formality, but the neatness and perfectness, of the
+stonework. For instance, in describing the river Phlegethon, he
+tells us that it was "paved with stone at the bottom, and at the
+sides, and _over the edges of the sides_," just as the water is at
+the baths of Bulicame; and for fear we should think this embankment
+at all _larger_ than it really was, Dante adds, carefully, that it
+was made just like the embankments of Ghent or Bruges against the
+sea, or those in Lombardy which bank the Brenta, only "not so high,
+nor so wide," as any of these. And besides the trenches, we have two
+well-built castles; one like Ecbatana, with seven circuits of wall
+(and surrounded by a fair stream), wherein the great poets and sages
+of antiquity live; and another, a great fortified city with walls of
+iron, red-hot, and a deep fosse round it, and full of "grave
+citizens,"--the city of Dis.
+
+� 30. Now, whether this be in what we moderns call "good taste," or
+not, I do not mean just now to inquire--Dante having nothing to do
+with taste, but with the facts of what he had seen; only, so far as
+the imaginative faculty of the two poets is concerned, note that
+Milton's vagueness is not the sign of imagination, but of its
+absence, so far as it is significative in the matter. For it does
+not follow, because Milton did not map out his Inferno as Dante did,
+that he _could_ not have done so if he had chosen; only, it was the
+easier and less imaginative process to leave it vague than to
+define it. Imagination is always the seeing and asserting faculty;
+that which obscures or conceals may be judgment, or feeling, but not
+invention. The invention, whether good or bad, is in the accurate
+engineering, not in the fog and uncertainty.
+
+� 31. When we pass with Dante from the Inferno to Purgatory, we have
+indeed more light and air, but no more liberty; being now confined
+on various ledges cut into a mountain side, with a precipice on one
+hand and a vertical wall on the other; and, lest here also we should
+make any mistake about magnitudes, we are told that the ledges were
+eighteen feet wide,[73] and that the ascent from one to the other
+was by steps, made like those which go up from Florence to the
+church of San Minieto.[74]
+
+Lastly, though in the Paradise there is perfect freedom and infinity
+of space, though for trenches we have planets, and for cornices
+constellations, yet there is more cadence, procession, and order
+among the redeemed souls than any others; they fly, so as to
+describe letters and sentences in the air, and rest in circles, like
+rainbows, or determinate figures, as of a cross and an eagle; in
+which certain of the more glorified natures are so arranged as to
+form the eye of the bird, while those most highly blessed are
+arranged with their white crowds in leaflets, so as to form the
+image of a white rose in the midst of heaven.
+
+� 32. Thus, throughout the poem, I conceive that the first striking
+character of its scenery is intense definition; precisely the
+reflection of that definiteness which we have already traced in
+pictorial art. But the second point which seems noteworthy is, that
+the flat ground and embanked trenches are reserved for the Inferno;
+and that the entire territory of the Purgatory is a mountain, thus
+marking the sense of that purifying and perfecting influence in
+mountains which we saw the medi�val mind was so ready to suggest.
+The same general idea is indicated at the very commencement of the
+poem, in which Dante is overwhelmed by fear and sorrow in passing
+through a dark forest, but revives on seeing the sun touch the top
+of a hill, afterwards called by Virgil "the pleasant mount--the
+cause and source of all delight."
+
+� 33. While, however, we find this greater honor paid to mountains, I
+think we may perceive a much greater dread and dislike of woods. We
+saw that Homer seemed to attach a pleasant idea, for the most part, to
+forests; regarding them as sources of wealth and places of shelter;
+and we find constantly an idea of sacredness attached to them, as
+being haunted especially by the gods; so that even the wood which
+surrounds the house of Circe is spoken of as a sacred thicket, or
+rather, as a sacred glade, or labyrinth of glades (of the particular
+word used I shall have more to say presently); and so the wood is
+sought as a kindly shelter by Ulysses, in spite of its wild beasts;
+and evidently regarded with great affection by Sophocles, for, in a
+passage which is always regarded by readers of Greek tragedy with
+peculiar pleasure, the aged and blind Oedipus, brought to rest in "the
+sweetest resting-place" in all the neighborhood of Athens, has the
+spot described to him as haunted perpetually by nightingales, which
+sing "in the green glades and in the dark ivy, and in the
+thousand-fruited, sunless, and windless thickets of the god"
+(Bacchus); the idea of the complete shelter from wind and sun being
+here, as with Ulysses, the uppermost one. After this come the usual
+staples of landscape,--narcissus, crocus, plenty of rain, olive trees;
+and last, and the greatest boast of all,--"it is a good country for
+horses, and conveniently by the sea;" but the prominence and
+pleasantness of the thick wood in the thoughts of the writer are very
+notable; whereas to Dante the idea of a forest is exceedingly
+repulsive, so that, as just noticed, in the opening of his poem, he
+cannot express a general despair about life more strongly than by
+saying he was lost in a wood so savage and terrible, that "even to
+think or speak of it is distress,--it was so bitter,--it was something
+next door to death;" and one of the saddest scenes in all the Inferno
+is in a forest, of which the trees are haunted by lost souls; while
+(with only one exception,) whenever the country is to be beautiful, we
+find ourselves coming out into open air and open meadows.
+
+It is quite true that this is partly a characteristic, not merely of
+Dante, or of medi�val writers, but of _southern_ writers; for the
+simple reason that the forest, being with them higher upon the
+hills, and more out of the way than in the north was generally a
+type of lonely and savage places; while in England, the
+"greenwood," coming up to the very walls of the towns, it was
+possible to be "merry in the good greenwood," in a sense which an
+Italian could not have understood. Hence Chaucer, Spenser, and
+Shakspere send their favorites perpetually to the woods for pleasure
+or meditation; and trust their tender Canace, or Rosalind, or
+Helena, or Silvia, or Belphoebe, where Dante would have sent no one
+but a condemned spirit. Nevertheless, there is always traceable in
+the medi�val mind a dread of thick foliage, which was not present to
+that of a Greek; so that, even in the north, we have our sorrowful
+"children in the wood," and black huntsmen of the Hartz forests, and
+such other wood terrors; the principal reason for the difference
+being that a Greek, being by no means given to travelling, regarded
+his woods as so much valuable property; and if he ever went into
+them for pleasure expected to meet one or two gods in the course of
+his walk, but no banditti; while a medi�val, much more of a solitary
+traveller, and expecting to meet with no gods in the thickets, but
+only with thieves, or a hostile ambush, or a bear, besides a great
+deal of troublesome ground for his horse, and a very serious chance,
+next to a certainty, of losing his way, naturally kept in the open
+ground as long as he could, and regarded the forests, in general,
+with anything but an eye of favor.
+
+� 34. These, I think, are the principal points which must strike us,
+when we first broadly think of the poem as compared with classical
+work. Let us now go a little more into detail.
+
+As Homer gave us an ideal landscape, which even a god might have been
+pleased to behold, so Dante gives us, fortunately, an ideal landscape,
+which is specially intended for the terrestrial paradise. And it will
+doubtless be with some surprise, after our reflections above on the
+general tone of Dante's feelings, that we find ourselves here first
+entering a _forest_, and that even a _thick_ forest. But there is a
+peculiar meaning in this. With any other poet than Dante, it might
+have been regarded as a wanton inconsistency. Not so with him: by
+glancing back to the two lines which explain the nature of Paradise,
+we shall see what he means by it. Virgil tells him, as he enters it,
+"Henceforward, take thine own pleasure for guide; thou art beyond the
+steep ways, and beyond all Art;"--meaning, that the perfectly purified
+and noble human creature, having no pleasure but in right, is past
+all effort, and past all _rule_. Art has no existence for such a
+being. Hence, the first aim of Dante, in his landscape imagery, is to
+show evidence of this perfect liberty, and of the purity and
+sinlessness of the new nature, converting pathless ways into happy
+ones. So that all those fences and formalisms which had been needed
+for him in imperfection, are removed in this paradise; and even the
+pathlessness of the wood, the most dreadful thing possible to him in
+his days of sin and shortcoming, is now a joy to him in his days of
+purity. And as the fencelessness and thicket of sin led to the
+fettered and fearful order of eternal punishment, so the fencelessness
+and thicket of the free virtue lead to the loving and constellated
+order of eternal happiness.
+
+� 35. This forest, then, is very like that of Colonos in several
+respects--in its peace and sweetness, and number of birds; it
+differs from it only in letting a light breeze through it, being
+therefore somewhat thinner than the Greek wood; the tender lines
+which tell of the voices of the birds mingling with the wind, and of
+the leaves all turning one way before it, have been more or less
+copied by every poet since Dante's time. They are, so far as I know,
+the sweetest passage of wood description which exists in literature.
+
+Before, however, Dante has gone far in this wood,--that is to say,
+only so far as to have lost sight of the place where he entered it,
+or rather, I suppose, of the light under the boughs of the outside
+trees, and it must have been a very thin wood indeed if he did not
+do this in some quarter of a mile's walk,--he comes to a little
+river, three paces over, which bends the blades of grass to the
+left, with a meadow on the other side of it; and in this meadow
+
+      "A lady, graced with solitude, who went
+        Singing, and setting flower by flower apart,
+      By which the path she walked on was besprent.
+      'Ah, lady beautiful, that basking art
+        In beams of love, if I may trust thy face,
+      Which useth to bear witness of the heart,
+      Let liking come on thee,' said I, 'to trace
+        Thy path a little closer to the shore,
+      Where I may reap the hearing of thy lays.
+      Thou mindest me, how Proserpine of yore
+        Appeared in such a place, what time her mother
+      Lost her, and she the spring, for evermore.'
+      As, pointing downwards and to one another
+        Her feet, a lady bendeth in the dance,
+      And barely setteth one before the other,
+      Thus, on the scarlet and the saffron glance
+        Of flowers, with motion maidenlike she bent
+      (Her modest eyelids drooping and askance);
+      And there she gave my wishes their content,
+        Approaching, so that her sweet melodies
+      Arrived upon mine ear with what they meant.
+      When first she came amongst the blades, that rise,
+        Already wetted, from the goodly river,
+      She graced me by the lifting of her eyes."   (CAYLEY.)
+
+� 36. I have given this passage at length, because, for our
+purposes, it is by much the most important, not only in Dante, but
+in the whole circle of poetry. This lady, observe, stands on the
+opposite side of the little stream, which, presently, she explains
+to Dante is Lethe, having power to cause forgetfulness of all evil,
+and she stands just among the bent blades of grass at its edge. She
+is first seen gathering flower from flower, then "passing
+continually the multitudinous flowers through her hands," smiling at
+the same time so brightly, that her first address to Dante is to
+prevent him from wondering at her, saying, "if he will remember the
+verse of the ninety-second Psalm, beginning. 'Delectasti,' he will
+know why she is so happy."
+
+And turning to the verse of the Psalm, we find it written, "Thou,
+Lord, hast made me glad _through Thy works_. I will triumph _in the
+works of Thy hands_;" or, in the very words in which Dante would
+read it,--
+
+      "Quia delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua,
+      Et in operibus manuum Tuarum exultabo."
+
+� 37. Now we could not for an instant have had any difficulty in
+understanding this, but that, some way farther on in the poem, this
+lady is called Matilda, and it is with reason supposed by the
+commentators to be the great Countess Matilda of the eleventh
+century; notable equally for her ceaseless activity, her brilliant
+political genius, her perfect piety, and her deep reverence for the
+see of Rome. This Countess Matilda is therefore Dante's guide in
+the terrestrial paradise, as Beatrice is afterwards in the
+celestial; each of them having a spiritual and symbolic character in
+their glorified state, yet retaining their definite personality.
+
+The question is, then, what is the symbolic character of the
+Countess Matilda, as the guiding spirit of the terrestrial paradise?
+Before Dante had entered this paradise he had rested on a step of
+shelving rock, and as he watched the stars he slept, and dreamed,
+and thus tells us what he saw:--
+
+      "A lady, young and beautiful, I dreamed,
+      Was passing o'er a lea; and, as she came,
+      Methought I saw her ever and anon
+      Bending to cull the flowers; and thus she sang:
+      'Know ye, whoever of my name would ask,
+      That I am Leah; for my brow to weave
+      A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply;
+      To please me at the crystal mirror, here
+      I deck me. But my sister Rachel, she
+      Before her glass abides the livelong day,
+      Her radiant eyes beholding, charmed no less
+      Than I with this delightful task. Her joy
+      In contemplation, as in labor mine.'"
+
+This vision of Rachel and Leah has been always, and with
+unquestionable truth, received as a type of the Active and
+Contemplative life, and as an introduction to the two divisions of the
+paradise which Dante is about to enter. Therefore the unwearied spirit
+of the Countess Matilda is understood to represent the Active life,
+which forms the felicity of Earth; and the spirit of Beatrice the
+Contemplative life, which forms the felicity of Heaven. This
+interpretation appears at first straightforward and certain; but it
+has missed count of exactly the most important fact in the two
+passages which we have to explain. Observe: Leah gathers the flowers
+to decorate _herself_, and delights in _Her Own_ Labor. Rachel sits
+silent, contemplating herself, and delights in _Her Own_ Image. These
+are the types of the Unglorified Active and Contemplative powers of
+Man. But Beatrice and Matilda are the same powers, Glorified. And how
+are they Glorified? Leah took delight in her own labor; but
+Matilda--"in operibus _manuum Tuarum_"--_in God's labor_: Rachel in
+the sight of her own face; Beatrice in the sight of _God's face_.
+
+� 38. And thus, when afterwards Dante sees Beatrice on her throne, and
+prays her that, when he himself shall die, she would receive him with
+kindness, Beatrice merely looks down for an instant, and answers with
+a single smile, then "towards the eternal fountain turns."
+
+Therefore it is evident that Dante distinguishes in both cases, not
+between earth and heaven, but between perfect and imperfect happiness,
+whether in earth or heaven. The active life which has only the service
+of man for its end, and therefore gathers flowers, with Leah, for its
+own decoration, is indeed happy, but not perfectly so; it has only the
+happiness of the dream, belonging essentially to the dream of human
+life, and passing away with it. But the active life which labors for
+the more and more discovery of God's work, is perfectly happy, and is
+the life of the terrestrial paradise, being a true foretaste of
+heaven, and beginning in earth, as heaven's vestibule. So also the
+contemplative life which is concerned with human feeling and thought
+and beauty--the life which is in earthly poetry and imagery of noble
+earthly emotion--is happy, but it is the happiness of the dream; the
+contemplative life which has God's person and love in Christ for its
+object, has the happiness of eternity. But because this higher
+happiness is also begun here on earth, Beatrice descends to earth; and
+when revealed to Dante first, he sees the image of the twofold
+personality of Christ reflected in her _eyes_; as the flowers, which
+are, to the medi�val heart, the chief work of God, are for ever
+passing through Matilda's _hands_.
+
+� 39. Now, therefore, we see that Dante, as the great prophetic
+exponent of the heart of the Middle Ages, has, by the lips of the
+spirit of Matilda, declared the medi�val faith,--that all perfect
+active life was "the expression of man's delight _in God's work_;"
+and that all their political and warlike energy, as fully shown in
+the mortal life of Matilda, was yet inferior and impure,--the energy
+of the dream,--compared with that which on the opposite bank of
+Lethe stood "choosing flower from flower." And what joy and peace
+there were in this work is marked by Matilda's being the person who
+draws Dante through the stream of Lethe, so as to make him forget
+all sin, and all sorrow: throwing her arms round him, she plunges
+his head under the waves of it; then draws him through, crying to
+him, "_hold me, hold me_" (tiemmi, tiemmi), and so presents him,
+thus bathed, free from all painful memory, at the feet of the spirit
+of the more heavenly contemplation.
+
+� 40. The reader will, I think, now see, with sufficient
+distinctness, why I called this passage the most important, for our
+present purposes, in the whole circle of poetry. For it contains the
+first great confession of the discovery by the human race (I mean as
+a matter of experience, not of revelation), that their happiness was
+not in themselves, and that their labor was not to have their own
+service as its chief end. It embodies in a few syllables the
+_sealing_ difference between the Greek and the medi�val, in that the
+former sought the flower and herb for his own uses, the latter for
+God's honor; the former, primarily and on principle, contemplated
+his own beauty and the workings of his own mind, and the latter,
+primarily and on principle, contemplated Christ's beauty and the
+workings of the mind of Christ.
+
+� 41. I will not at present follow up this subject any farther; it
+being enough that we have thus got to the root of it, and have a
+great declaration of the central medi�val purpose, whereto we may
+return for solution of all future questions. I would only,
+therefore, desire the reader now to compare the Stones of Venice,
+vol. i. chap. xx. �� 15. 16.; the Seven Lamps of Architecture, chap.
+iv. � 3.; and the second volume of this work, Chap. II. �� 9. 10.,
+and Chap. III. � 10.; that he may, in these several places, observe
+how gradually our conclusions are knitting themselves together as we
+are able to determine more and more of the successive questions that
+come before us: and, finally, to compare the two interesting
+passages in Wordsworth, which, without any memory of Dante,
+nevertheless, as if by some special ordaining, describe in matters
+of modern life exactly the soothing or felicitous powers of the two
+active spirits of Dante--Leah and Matilda, Excursion, book v. line
+608. to 625., and book vi. line 102. to 214.
+
+� 42. Having thus received from Dante this great lesson, as to the
+spirit in which medi�val landscape is to be understood, what else we
+have to note respecting it, as seen in his poem, will be
+comparatively straightforward and easy. And first, we have to
+observe the place occupied in his mind by _color_. It has already
+been shown, in the Stones of Venice, vol. ii. chap. v. �� 30--34,
+that color is the most _sacred_ element of all visible things.
+Hence, as the medi�val mind contemplated them first for their
+sacredness, we should, beforehand, expect that the first thing it
+would seize would be the color; and that we should find its
+expressions and renderings of color infinitely more loving and
+accurate than among the Greeks.
+
+� 43. Accordingly, the Greek sense of color seems to have been so
+comparatively dim and uncertain, that it is almost impossible to
+ascertain what the real idea was which they attached to any word
+alluding to hue: and above all, color, though pleasant to their
+eyes, as to those of all human beings, seems never to have been
+impressive to their feelings. They liked purple, on the whole, the
+best; but there was no sense of cheerfulness or pleasantness in one
+color, and gloom in another, such as the medi�vals had.
+
+For instance, when Achilles goes, in great anger and sorrow, to
+complain to Thetis of the scorn done him by Agamemnon, the sea appears
+to him "wine-colored." One might think this meant that the sea looked
+dark and reddish-purple to him, in a kind of sympathy with his anger.
+But we turn to the passage of Sophocles, which has been above
+quoted--a passage peculiarly intended to express peace and rest--and
+we find that the birds sing among "wine-colored" ivy. The uncertainty
+of conception of the hue itself, and entire absence of expressive
+character in the word, could hardly be more clearly manifested.
+
+� 44. Again: I said the Greek liked purple, as a general source of
+enjoyment, better than any other color. So he did, and so all healthy
+persons who have eye for color, and are unprejudiced about it, do; and
+will to the end of time, for a reason presently to be noted. But so
+far was this instinctive preference for purple from giving, in the
+Greek mind, any consistently cheerful or sacred association to the
+color, that Homer constantly calls death "purple death."
+
+� 45. Again: in the passage of Sophocles, so often spoken of, I said
+there was some difficulty respecting a word often translated
+"thickets." I believe, myself, it means glades; literally, "going
+places" in the woods,--that is to say, places where, either naturally
+or by force, the trees separate, so as to give some accessible
+avenue. Now, Sophocles tells us the birds sang in these "_green_ going
+places;" and we take up the expression gratefully, thinking the old
+Greek perceived and enjoyed, as we do, the sweet fall of the eminently
+_green_ light through the leaves when they are a little thinner than
+in the heart of the wood. But we turn to the tragedy of Ajax, and are
+much shaken in our conclusion about the meaning of the word, when we
+are told that the body of Ajax is to lie unburied, and be eaten by
+sea-birds on the "_green_ sand." The formation, geologically
+distinguished by that title, was certainly not known to Sophocles; and
+the only conclusion which, it seems to me, we can come to under the
+circumstances,--assuming Ariel's[75] authority as to the color of
+pretty sand, and the ancient mariner's (or, rather, his hearer's[76])
+as to the color of ugly sand, to be conclusive,--is that Sophocles
+really did not know green from yellow or brown.
+
+� 46. Now, without going out of the terrestrial paradise, in which
+Dante last left us, we shall be able at once to compare with this
+Greek incertitude the precision of the medi�val eye for color. Some
+three arrowflights further up into the wood we come to a tall tree,
+which is at first barren, but, after some little time, visibly opens
+into flowers, of a color "less than that of roses, but more than
+that of violets."
+
+It certainly would not be possible, in words, to come nearer to the
+_definition_ of the exact hue which Dante meant--that of the
+apple-blossom. Had he employed any simple color-phrase, as a "pale
+pink," or "violet-pink," or any other such combined expression, he
+still could not have completely got at the delicacy of the hue; he
+might perhaps have indicated its kind, but not its tenderness; but
+by taking the rose-leaf as the type of the delicate red, and then
+enfeebling this with the violet grey, he gets, as closely as
+language can carry him, to the complete rendering of the vision,
+though it is evidently felt by him to be in its perfect beauty
+ineffable; and rightly so felt, for of all lovely things which grace
+the spring time in our fair temperate zone, I am not sure but this
+blossoming of the apple-tree is the fairest. At all events, I find
+it associated in my mind with four other kinds of color, certainly
+principal among the gifts of the northern earth, namely:
+
+    1st. Bell gentians growing close together, mixed with lilies
+    of the valley, on the Jura pastures.
+
+    2nd. Alpine roses with dew upon them, under low rays of
+    morning sunshine, touching the tops of the flowers.
+
+    3rd. Bell heather in mass, in full light, at sunset.
+
+    4th. White narcissus (red-centred) in mass, on the Vevay
+    pastures, in sunshine, after rain.
+
+And I know not where in the group to place the wreaths of
+apple-blossoms, in the Vevay orchards, with the far-off blue of the
+lake of Geneva seen between the flowers.
+
+A Greek, however, would have regarded this blossom simply with the
+eyes of a Devonshire farmer, as bearing on the probable price of
+cider, and would have called it red, cerulean, purple, white,
+hyacinthine, or generally "aglaos," agreeable, as happened to suit
+his verse.
+
+� 47. Again: we have seen how fond the Greek was of composing his
+paradises of rather damp grass; but that in this fondness for grass
+there was always an undercurrent of consideration for his horses; and
+the characters in it which pleased him most were its depth and
+freshness; not its color. Now, if we remember carefully the general
+expressions, respecting grass, used in modern literature, I think
+nearly the commonest that occurs to us will be that of "enamelled"
+turf or sward. This phrase is usually employed by our pseudo-poets,
+like all their other phrases, without knowing what it means, because
+it has been used by other writers before them, and because they do not
+know what else to say of grass. If we were to ask them what enamel
+was, they could not tell us; and if we asked why grass was like
+enamel, they could not tell us. The expression _has_ a meaning,
+however, and one peculiarly characteristic of medi�val and modern
+temper.
+
+� 48. The first instance I know of its right use, though very
+probably it had been so employed before, is in Dante. The righteous
+spirits of the pre-Christian ages are seen by him, though in the
+Inferno, yet in a place open, luminous, and high, walking upon the
+"green enamel."
+
+I am very sure that Dante did not use this phrase as we use it. He
+knew well what enamel was; and his readers, in order to understand
+him thoroughly, must remember what it is,--a vitreous paste,
+dissolved in water, mixed with metallic oxides, to give it the
+opacity and the color required, spread in a moist state on metal,
+and afterwards hardened by fire, so as never to change. And Dante
+means, in using this metaphor of the grass of the Inferno, to mark
+that it is laid as a tempering and cooling substance over the dark,
+metallic, gloomy ground; but yet so hardened by the fire, that it is
+not any more fresh or living grass, but a smooth, silent, lifeless
+bed of eternal green. And we know how _hard_ Dante's idea of it was;
+because afterwards, in what is perhaps the most awful passage of the
+whole Inferno, when the three furies rise at the top of the burning
+tower, and catching sight of Dante, and not being able to get at
+him, shriek wildly for the Gorgon to come up too, that they may turn
+him into stone,--the word _stone_ is not hard enough for them. Stone
+might crumble away after it was made, or something with life might
+grow upon it; no, it shall not be stone; they will make enamel of
+him; nothing can grow out of that; it is dead for ever.[77]
+
+    "Venga Medusa, si lo farem di _Smalto_."
+
+� 49. Now, almost in the opening of the Purgatory, as there at the
+entrance of the Inferno, we find a company of great ones resting in
+a grassy place. But the idea of the grass now is very different. The
+word now used is not "enamel," but "herb," and instead of being
+merely green, it is covered with flowers of many colors. With the
+usual medi�val accuracy, Dante insists on telling us precisely what
+these colors were, and how bright; which he does by naming the
+actual pigments used in illumination,--"Gold, and fine silver, and
+cochineal, and white lead, and Indian wood, serene and lucid, and
+fresh emerald, just broken, would have been excelled, as less is by
+greater, by the flowers and grass of the place." It is evident that
+the "emerald" here means the emerald green of the illuminators; for
+a fresh emerald is no brighter than one which is not fresh, and
+Dante was not one to throw away his words thus. Observe, then, we
+have here the idea of the growth, life, and variegation of the
+"green herb," as opposed to the smalto of the Inferno; but the
+colors of the variegation are illustrated and defined by the
+reference to actual pigments; and, observe, because the other colors
+are rather bright, the blue ground (Indian wood, indigo?) is sober;
+lucid, but serene; and presently two angels enter, who are dressed
+in green drapery, but of a paler green than the grass, which Dante
+marks, by telling us that it was "the green of leaves just budded."
+
+� 50. In all this, I wish the reader to observe two things: first, the
+general carefulness of the poet in defining color, distinguishing it
+precisely as a painter would (opposed to the Greek carelessness about
+it); and, secondly, his regarding the grass for its greenness and
+variegation, rather than, as a Greek would have done, for its depth
+and freshness. This greenness or brightness, and variegation, are
+taken up by later and modern poets, as the things intended to be
+chiefly expressed by the word "enamelled;" and, gradually, the term is
+taken to indicate any kind of bright and interchangeable coloring;
+there being always this much of propriety about it, when used of
+greensward, that such sward is indeed, like enamel, a coat of bright
+color on a comparatively dark ground; and is thus a sort of natural
+jewelry and painter's work, different from loose and large vegetation.
+The word is often awkwardly and falsely used, by the later poets, of
+all kinds of growth and color; as by Milton of the flowers of Paradise
+showing themselves over its wall; but it retains, nevertheless,
+through all its jaded inanity, some half-unconscious vestige of the
+old sense, even to the present day.
+
+� 51. There are, it seems to me, several important deductions to be
+made from these facts. The Greek, we have seen, delighted in the
+grass for its usefulness; the medi�val, as also we moderns, for its
+color and beauty. But both dwell on it as the _first_ element of the
+lovely landscape; we saw its use in Homer, we see also that Dante
+thinks the righteous spirits of the heathen enough comforted in
+Hades by having even the _image_ of green grass put beneath their
+feet; the happy resting-place in Purgatory has no other delight than
+its grass and flowers; and, finally, in the terrestrial paradise,
+the feet of Matilda pause where the Lethe stream first bends the
+blades of grass. Consider a little what a depth there is in this
+great instinct of the human race. Gather a single blade of grass,
+and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of
+fluted green. Nothing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or
+beauty. A very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a
+few delicate long lines meeting in a point,--not a perfect point
+neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or
+apparently much cared for example of Nature's workmanship; made, as
+it seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast
+into the oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and
+flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet,
+think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers that
+beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to
+the eyes and good for food,--stately palm and pine, strong ash and
+oak, scented citron, burdened vine,--there be any by man so deeply
+loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble
+green. It seems to me not to have been without a peculiar
+significance, that our Lord, when about to work the miracle which,
+of all that He showed, appears to have been felt by the multitude as
+the most impressive,--the miracle of the loaves,--commanded the
+people to sit down by companies "upon the green grass." He was about
+to feed them with the principal produce of earth and the sea, the
+simplest representations of the food of mankind. He gave them the
+seed of the herb; He bade them sit down upon the herb itself, which
+was as great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest, as its
+perfect fruit, for their sustenance; thus, in this single order and
+act, when rightly understood, indicating for evermore how the
+Creator had entrusted the comfort, consolation, and sustenance of
+man, to the simplest and most despised of all the leafy families of
+the earth. And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe
+merely to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by
+that glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless,
+and peaceful spears. The fields! Follow but forth for a little time
+the thoughts of all that we ought to recognise in those words. All
+spring and summer is in them,--the walks by silent, scented
+paths,--the rests in noon-day heat,--the joy of herds and
+flocks,--the power of all shepherd life and meditation,--the life of
+sunlight upon the world, falling in emerald streaks, and falling in
+soft blue shadows, where else it would have struck upon the dark
+mould, or scorching dust,--pastures beside the pacing brooks,--soft
+banks and knolls of lowly hills,--thymy slopes of down overlooked by
+the blue line of lifted sea,--crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or
+smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet,
+and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices: all these
+are summed in those simple words; and these are not all. We may not
+measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in our own
+land; though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that
+meadow sweetness, Shakspere's peculiar joy, would open on us more
+and more, yet we have it but in part. Go out, in the spring time,
+among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to
+the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller
+gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and
+as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all
+veiled and dim with blossom,--paths that for ever droop and rise
+over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation,
+steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new mown heaps,
+filling all the air with fainter sweetness,--look up towards the
+higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently
+into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may,
+perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th
+Psalm, "He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains."
+
+� 52. There are also several lessons symbolically connected with this
+subject, which we must not allow to escape us. Observe, the peculiar
+characters of the grass, which adapt it especially for the service of
+man, are its apparent _humility_, and _cheerfulness_. Its humility, in
+that it seems created only for lowest service,--appointed to be
+trodden on, and fed upon. Its cheerfulness, in that it seems to exult
+under all kinds of violence and suffering. You roll it, and it is
+stronger the next day; you mow it, and it multiplies its shoots, as if
+it were grateful; you tread upon it, and it only sends up richer
+perfume. Spring comes, and it rejoices with all the earth,--glowing
+with variegated flame of flowers,--waving in soft depth of fruitful
+strength. Winter comes, and though it will not mock its fellow plants
+by growing then, it will not pine and mourn, and turn colorless or
+leafless as they. It is always green; and is only the brighter and
+gayer for the hoar-frost.
+
+� 53. Now, these two characters--of humility, and joy under
+trial--are exactly those which most definitely distinguish the
+Christian from the Pagan spirit. Whatever virtue the pagan possessed
+was rooted in pride, and fruited with sorrow. It began in the
+elevation of his own nature; it ended but in the "verde smalto"--the
+hopeless green--of the Elysian fields. But the Christian virtue is
+rooted in self-debasement, and strengthened under suffering by
+gladness of hope. And remembering this, it is curious to observe how
+utterly without gladness the Greek heart appears to be in watching
+the flowering grass, and what strange discords of expression arise
+sometimes in consequence. There is one, recurring once or twice in
+Homer, which has always pained me. He says, "the Greek army was on
+the fields, as thick as flowers in the spring." It might be so; but
+flowers in spring time are not the image by which Dante would have
+numbered soldiers on their path of battle. Dante could not have
+thought of the flowering of the grass but as associated with
+happiness. There is a still deeper significance in the passage
+quoted, a little while ago, from Homer, describing Ulysses casting
+himself down on the _rushes_ and the corn-giving land at the river
+shore,--the rushes and corn being to him only good for rest and
+sustenance,--when we compare it with that in which Dante tells us he
+was ordered to descend to the shore of the lake as he entered
+Purgatory, to gather a _rush_, and gird himself with it, it being to
+him the emblem not only of rest, but of humility under chastisement,
+the rush (or reed) being the only plant which can grow there;--"no
+plant which bears leaves, or hardens its bark, can live on that
+shore, because it does not yield to the chastisement of its waves."
+It cannot but strike the reader singularly how deep and harmonious a
+significance runs through all these words of Dante--how every
+syllable of them, the more we penetrate it, becomes a seed of
+farther thought! For, follow up this image of the girding with the
+reed, under trial, and see to whose feet it will lead us. As the
+grass of the earth, thought of as the herb yielding seed, leads us
+to the place where our Lord commanded the multitude to sit down by
+companies upon the green grass; so the grass of the waters, thought
+of as sustaining itself among the waters of affliction, leads us to
+the place where a stem of it was put into our Lord's hand for his
+sceptre; and in the crown of thorns, and the rod of reed, was
+foreshown the everlasting truth of the Christian ages--that all
+glory was to be begun in suffering, and all power in humility.
+
+Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest of
+all, from Isaiah xl. 6., we find, the grass and flowers are types,
+in their passing, of the passing of human life, and, in their
+excellence, of the excellence of human life; and this in a twofold
+way; first, by their Beneficence, and then, by their endurance:--the
+grass of the earth, in giving the seed of corn, and in its beauty
+under tread of foot and stroke of scythe; and the grass of the
+waters, in giving its freshness for our rest, and in its bending
+before the wave.[78] But understood in the broad human and Divine
+sense, the "_herb_ yielding seed" (as opposed to the fruit-tree
+yielding fruit) includes a third family of plants, and fulfils a
+third office to the human race. It includes the great family of the
+lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the _three_ offices of giving
+food, raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfilment; consider the
+association of the linen garment and the linen embroidery, with the
+priestly office, and the furniture of the tabernacle: and consider
+how the rush has been, in all time, the first natural carpet thrown
+under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely
+set forth by the three families of plants; not arbitrarily or
+fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked
+for us by Scriptural words:
+
+1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the grass for food and
+beauty.--"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil
+not, neither do they spin."
+
+2nd. Humility; in the grass for rest.--"A bruised reed shall He not
+break."
+
+3rd. Love; in the grass for clothing (because of its swift
+kindling),--"The smoking flax shall He not quench."
+
+And then, finally, observe the confirmation of these last two images
+in, I suppose, the most important prophecy, relating to the future
+state of the Christian Church, which occurs in the Old Testament,
+namely, that contained in the closing chapters of Ezekiel. The
+measures of the Temple of God are to be taken; and because it is
+only by charity and humility that those measures ever can be taken,
+the angel has "a line of _flax_ in his hand, and a measuring
+_reed_." The use of the line was to measure the land, and of the
+reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of
+the church, or its labors, are to be measured by _humility_, and its
+territory or land, by _love_.
+
+The limits of the Church have, indeed, in later days, been measured,
+to the world's sorrow, by another kind of flaxen line, burning with
+the fire of unholy zeal, not with that of Christian charity; and
+perhaps the best lesson which we can finally take to ourselves, in
+leaving these sweet fields of the medi�val landscape, is the memory
+that, in spite of all the fettered habits of thought of his age,
+this great Dante, this inspired exponent of what lay deepest at the
+heart of the early Church, placed his terrestrial paradise where
+there had ceased to be fence or division, and where the grass of the
+earth was bowed down, in unity of direction, only by the soft waves
+that bore with them the forgetfulness of evil.
+
+  [71] The peculiar dislike felt by the medi�vals for the _sea_, is
+       so interesting a subject of inquiry, that I have reserved it
+       for separate discussion in another work, in present
+       preparation, "Harbors of England."
+
+  [72] Married to Philip, younger son of the King of Navarre, in
+       1352. She died in 1394.
+
+  [73] "Three times the length of a human body."--Purg. x. 24.
+
+  [74] Purg. xii. 102.
+
+  [75] "Come unto these _yellow_ sands."
+
+  [76] "And thou art long, and lank, and _brown_,
+       As is the ribbed sea sand."
+
+  [77] Compare parallel passage, making Dante hard or changeless in
+       good Purg. viii. 114.
+
+  [78] So also in Isa. xxxv. 7., the prevalence of righteousness and
+       peace over all evil is thus foretold:
+
+       "In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be
+       _grass_, with _reeds_ and _rushes_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+OF MEDI�VAL LANDSCAPE:--SECONDLY, THE ROCKS.
+
+
+� 1. I closed the last chapter, not because our subject was
+exhausted, but to give the reader breathing time, and because I
+supposed he would hardly care to turn back suddenly from the
+subjects of thought last suggested, to the less pregnant matters of
+inquiry connected with medi�val landscape. Nor was the pause
+mistimed even as respects the order of our subjects; for hitherto we
+have been arrested chiefly by the beauty of the pastures and fields,
+and have followed the medi�val mind in its fond regard of leaf and
+flower. But now we have some hard hill-climbing to do; and the
+remainder of our investigation must be carried on, for the most
+part, on hands and knees, so that it is not ill done of us first to
+take breath.
+
+� 2. It will be remembered that in the last chapter, � 14., we
+supposed it probable that there would be considerable inaccuracies
+in the medi�val mode of regarding nature. Hitherto, however, we have
+found none; but, on the contrary, intense accuracy, precision, and
+affection. The reason of this is, that all floral and foliaged
+beauty might be perfectly represented, as far as its form went, in
+the sculpture and ornamental painting of the period; hence the
+attention of men was thoroughly awakened to that beauty. But as
+mountains and clouds and large features of natural scenery could not
+be accurately represented, we must be prepared to find them not so
+carefully contemplated,--more carefully, indeed, than by the Greeks,
+but still in no wise as the things themselves deserve.
+
+� 3. It was besides noticed that mountains, though regarded with
+reverence by the medi�val, were also the subjects of a certain
+dislike and dread. And we have seen already that in fact the place
+of the soul's purification, though a mountain, is yet by Dante
+subdued, whenever there is any pleasantness to be found upon it,
+from all mountainous character into grassy recesses, or slopes to
+rushy shore; and, in his general conception of it, resembles much
+more a castle mound, surrounded by terraced walks,--in the manner,
+for instance, of one of Turner's favorite scenes, the bank under
+Richmond Castle (Yorkshire); or, still more, one of the hill slopes
+divided by terraces, above the Rhine, in which the picturesqueness
+of the ground has been reduced to the form best calculated for the
+growing of costly wine, than any scene to which we moderns should
+naturally attach the term "Mountainous." On the other hand, although
+the Inferno is just as accurately measured and divided as the
+Purgatory, it is nevertheless cleft into rocky chasms which possess
+something of true mountain nature--nature which we moderns of the
+north should most of us seek with delight, but which, to the great
+Florentine, appeared adapted only for the punishment of lost
+spirits, and which, on the mind of nearly all his countrymen, would
+to this day produce a very closely correspondent effect; so that
+their graceful language, dying away on the north side of the Alps,
+gives its departing accents to proclaim its detestation of hardness
+and ruggedness; and is heard for the last time, as it bestows on the
+noblest defile in all the Grisons, if not in all the Alpine chain,
+the name of the "_evil_ way"--"la Via Mala."
+
+� 4. This "evil way," though much deeper and more sublime,
+corresponds closely in general character to Dante's "Evil-pits,"
+just as the banks of Richmond do to his mountain of Purgatory; and
+it is notable that Turner has been led to illustrate, with his whole
+strength, the character of both; having founded, as it seems to me,
+his early dreams of mountain form altogether on the sweet banks of
+the Yorkshire streams, and rooted his hardier thoughts of it in the
+rugged clefts of the Via Mala.
+
+� 5. Nor of the Via Mala only: a correspondent defile on the St.
+Gothard,--so terrible in one part of it, that it can, indeed,
+suggest no ideas but those of horror to minds either of northern or
+southern temper, and whose wild bridge, cast from rock to rock over
+a chasm as utterly hopeless and escapeless as any into which Dante
+gazed from the arches of Malebolge, has been, therefore, ascribed
+both by northern and southern lips to the master-building of the
+great spirit of evil--supplied to Turner the element of his most
+terrible thoughts in mountain vision, even to the close of his life.
+The noblest plate in the series of the Liber Studiorum,[79] one
+engraved by his own hand, is of that bridge; the last mountain
+journey he ever took was up the defile; and a rocky bank and arch,
+in the last mountain drawing which he ever executed with his perfect
+power, are remembrances of the path by which he had traversed in his
+youth this Malebolge of the St. Gothard.
+
+� 6. It is therefore with peculiar interest, as bearing on our own
+proper subject, that we must examine Dante's conception of the rocks
+of the eighth circle. And first, as to general tone of color: from
+what we have seen of the love of the medi�val for bright and
+variegated color, we might guess that his chief cause of dislike to
+rocks would be, in Italy, their comparative colorlessness. With
+hardly an exception, the range of the Apennines is composed of a
+stone of which some special account is given hereafter in the
+chapters on Materials of Mountains, and of which one peculiarity,
+there noticed, is its monotony of hue. Our slates and granites are
+often of very lovely colors; but the Apennine limestone is so grey
+and toneless, that I know not any mountain district so utterly
+melancholy as those which are composed of this rock, when unwooded.
+Now, as far as I can discover from the internal evidence in his
+poem, nearly all Dante's mountain wanderings had been upon this
+ground. He had journeyed once or twice among the Alps, indeed, but
+seems to have been impressed chiefly by the road from Garda to
+Trent, and that along the Corniche, both of which are either upon
+those limestones, or a dark serpentine, which shows hardly any color
+till it is polished. It is not ascertainable that he had ever seen
+rocky scenery of the finely colored kind, aided by the Alpine
+mosses: I do not know the fall at Forli (Inferno, xvi. 99.), but
+every other scene to which he alludes is among these Apennine
+limestones; and when he wishes to give the idea of enormous mountain
+size, he names Tabernicch and Pietra-pana,--the one clearly chosen
+only for the sake of the last syllable of its name, in order to make
+a sound as of cracking ice, with the two sequent rhymes of the
+stanza,--and the other is an Apennine near Lucca.
+
+� 7. His idea, therefore, of rock color, founded on these
+experiences, is that of a dull or ashen grey, more or less stained
+by the brown of iron ochre, precisely as the Apennine limestones
+nearly always are; the grey being peculiarly cold and disagreeable.
+As we go down the very hill which stretches out from Pietra-pana
+towards Lucca, the stones laid by the road-side to mend it are of
+this ashen grey, with efflorescences of manganese and iron in the
+fissures. The whole of Malebolge is made of this rock, "All wrought
+in stone of iron-colored grain."[80]
+
+Perhaps the iron color may be meant to predominate in Evil-pits; but
+the definite grey limestone color is stated higher up, the river
+Styx flowing at the base of "malignant _grey_ cliffs"[81] (the word
+malignant being given to the iron-colored Malebolge also); and the
+same whitish-grey idea is given again definitely in describing the
+robe of the purgatorial or penance angel, which is "of the color of
+ashes, or earth dug dry." Ashes necessarily mean _wood_-ashes in an
+Italian mind, so that we get the tone very pale; and there can be no
+doubt whatever about the hue meant, because it is constantly seen on
+the sunny sides of the Italian hills, produced by the scorching of
+the ground, a dusty and lifeless whitish grey, utterly painful and
+oppressive; and I have no doubt that this color, assumed eminently
+also by limestone crags in the sun, is the quality which Homer means
+to express by a term he applies often to bare rocks, and which is
+usually translated "craggy," or "rocky." Now Homer is indeed quite
+capable of talking of "rocky rocks," just as he talks sometimes of
+"wet water;" but I think he means more by this word: it sounds as if
+it were derived from another, meaning "meal," or "flour," and I have
+little doubt it means "mealy white;" the Greek limestones being for
+the most part brighter in effect than the Apennine ones.
+
+� 8. And the fact is, that the great and pre-eminent fault of
+southern, as compared with northern scenery, is this rock-whiteness,
+which gives to distant mountain ranges, lighted by the sun, sometimes
+a faint and monotonous glow, hardly detaching itself from the whiter
+parts of the sky, and sometimes a speckled confusion of white light
+with blue shadow, breaking up the whole mass of the hills, and making
+them look near and small; the whiteness being still distinct at the
+distance of twenty or twenty-five miles. The inferiority and
+meagreness of such effects of hill, compared with the massive purple
+and blue of our own heaps of crags and morass, or the solemn
+grass-green and pine-purples of the Alps, have always struck me most
+painfully; and they have rendered it impossible for any poet or
+painter studying in the south, to enter with joy into hill scenery.
+Imagine the difference to Walter Scott, if instead of the single
+lovely color which, named by itself alone, was enough to describe his
+hills,--
+
+      "Their southern rapine to renew,
+      Far in the distant Cheviot's _blue_,"--
+
+a dusty whiteness had been the image that first associated itself
+with a hill range, and he had been obliged, instead of "blue"
+Cheviots, to say, "barley-meal-colored" Cheviots.
+
+� 9. But although this would cause a somewhat painful shock even to
+a modern mind, it would be as nothing when compared with the pain
+occasioned by absence of color to a medi�val one. We have been
+trained, by our ingenious principles of Renaissance architecture, to
+think that meal-color and ash-color are the properest colors of all;
+and that the most aristocratic harmonies are to be deduced out of
+grey mortar and creamy stucco. Any of our modern classical
+architects would delightedly "face" a heathery hill with Roman
+cement; and any Italian sacristan would, but for the cost of it, at
+once whitewash the Cheviots. But the medi�vals had not arrived at
+these abstract principles of taste. They liked fresco better than
+whitewash; and, on the whole, thought that Nature was in the right
+in painting her flowers yellow, pink, and blue;--not grey.
+Accordingly, this absence of color from rocks, as compared with
+meadows and trees, was in their eyes an unredeemable defect; nor did
+it matter to them whether its place was supplied by the grey neutral
+tint, or the iron-colored stain; for both colors, grey and brown,
+were, to them, hues of distress, despair, and mortification, hence
+adopted always for the dresses of monks; only the word "brown" bore,
+in their color vocabulary, a still gloomier sense than with us. I
+was for some time embarrassed by Dante's use of it with respect to
+dark skies and water. Thus, in describing a simple twilight--not a
+Hades twilight, but an ordinarily fair evening--(Inf. ii. 1.) he
+says, the "brown" air took the animals of earth away from their
+fatigues;--the waves under Charon's boat are "brown" (Inf. iii.
+117.); and Lethe, which is perfectly clear and yet dark, as with
+oblivion, is "bruna-bruna," "brown, _exceeding_ brown." Now, clearly
+in all these cases no _warmth_ is meant to be mingled in the color.
+Dante had never seen one of our bog-streams, with its porter-colored
+foam; and there can be no doubt that, in calling Lethe brown, he
+means that it was dark slate grey, inclining to black; as, for
+instance, our clear Cumberland lakes, which, looked straight down
+upon where they are deep, seem to be lakes of ink. I am sure this is
+the color he means; because no clear stream or lake on the Continent
+ever looks brown, but blue or green; and Dante, by merely taking
+away the pleasant color, would get at once to this idea of grave
+clear grey. So, when he was talking of twilight, his eye for color
+was far too good to let him call it _brown_ in our sense. Twilight
+is not brown, but purple, golden, or dark grey; and this last was
+what Dante meant. Farther, I find that this negation of color is
+always the means by which Dante subdues his tones. Thus the fatal
+inscription on the Hades gate is written in "obscure color," and the
+air which torments the passionate spirits is "aer nero" _black_ air
+(Inf. v. 51.), called presently afterwards (line 81.) malignant air,
+just as the grey cliffs are called malignant cliffs.
+
+� 10. I was not, therefore, at a loss to find out what Dante meant
+by the word; but I was at a loss to account for his not, as it
+seemed, acknowledging the existence of the color of _brown_ at all;
+for if he called dark neutral tint "brown," it remained a question
+what term he would use for things of the color of burnt umber. But,
+one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to
+be sitting by one of our best living modern colorists, watching him
+at his work, when he said, suddenly, and by mere accident, after we
+had been talking of other things, "Do you know I have found that
+there is no _brown_ in Nature? What we call brown is always a
+variety either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by
+umber, unless altered by contrast."
+
+� 11. It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends,
+how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the medi�val sense of
+hue;--how far, on the other hand, it cuts into the heart of the old
+umber idolatries of Sir George Beaumont and his colleagues, the "where
+do you put your _brown_ tree" system; the code of Cremona-violin-
+colored foregrounds, of brown varnish and asphaltum; and all the old
+night-owl science, which, like Young's pencil of sorrow,
+
+      "In melancholy dipped, _embrowns_ the whole."
+
+Nay, I do Young an injustice by associating his words with the
+asphalt schools; for his eye for color was true, and like Dante's;
+and I doubt not that he means dark grey, as Byron purple-grey in
+that night piece in the Siege of Corinth, beginning
+
+      "'Tis midnight; on the mountains _brown_
+      The cold, round moon looks deeply down;"
+
+and, by the way, Byron's best piece of evening color farther
+certifies the hues of Dante's twilight,--it
+
+      "Dies like the dolphin, when it gasps away--
+      The last still loveliest; till 'tis gone, and all is _grey_."
+
+� 12. Let not, however, the reader confuse the use of brown, as an
+expression of a natural tint, with its use as a means of _getting
+other tints_. Brown is often an admirable ground, just because it is
+the only tint which is _not_ to be in the finished picture, and
+because it is the best basis of many silver greys and purples, utterly
+opposite to it in their nature. But there is infinite difference
+between laying a brown ground as a representation of shadow,--and as a
+base for light; and also an infinite difference between using brown
+shadows, associated with colored lights--always the characteristic of
+false schools of color--and using brown as a warm neutral tint for
+general study. I shall have to pursue this subject farther hereafter,
+in noticing how brown is used by great colorists in their studies,
+not as color, but as the pleasantest negation of color, possessing
+more transparency than black, and having more pleasant and sunlike
+warmth. Hence Turner, in his early studies, used blue for distant
+neutral tint, and brown for foreground neutral tint; while, as he
+advanced in color science, he gradually introduced, in the place of
+brown, strange purples, altogether peculiar to himself, founded,
+apparently, on Indian red and vermilion, and passing into various
+tones of russet and orange.[82] But, in the meantime, we must go back
+to Dante and his mountains.
+
+� 13. We find, then, that his general type of rock color was meant,
+whether pale or dark, to be a colorless grey--the most melancholy
+hue which he supposed to exist in Nature (hence the synonym for it,
+subsisting even till late times, in medi�val appellatives of dress,
+"_sad_-colored")--with some rusty stain from iron; or perhaps the
+"color ferrigno" of the Inferno does not involve even so much of
+orange, but ought to be translated "iron grey."
+
+This being his idea of the color of rocks, we have next to observe
+his conception of their substance. And I believe it will be found that
+the character on which he fixes first in them is _frangibility_
+--breakableness to bits, as opposed to wood, which can be sawn or
+rent, but not shattered with a hammer, and to metal, which is tough
+and malleable.
+
+Thus, at the top of the abyss of the seventh circle, appointed for
+the "violent," or souls who had done evil by force, we are told,
+first, that the edge of it was composed of "great broken stones in a
+circle;" then, that the place was "Alpine;" and, becoming hereupon
+attentive, in order to hear what an Alpine place is like, we find
+that it was "like the place beyond Trent, where the rock, either by
+earthquake, or failure of support, has broken down to the plain, so
+that it gives any one at the top some means of getting down to the
+bottom." This is not a very elevated or enthusiastic description of
+an Alpine scene; and it is far from mended by the following verses,
+in which we are told that Dante "began to go down by this great
+_unloading_ of stones," and that they moved often under his feet by
+reason of the new weight. The fact is that Dante, by many
+expressions throughout the poem, shows himself to have been a
+notably bad climber; and being fond of sitting in the sun, looking
+at his fair Baptistery, or walking in a dignified manner on flat
+pavement in a long robe, it puts him seriously out of his way when
+he has to take to his hands and knees, or look to his feet; so that
+the first strong impression made upon him by any Alpine scene
+whatever, is, clearly, that it is bad walking. When he is in a
+fright and hurry, and has a very steep place to go down, Virgil has
+to carry him altogether, and is obliged to encourage him, again and
+again, when they have a steep slope to go up,--the first ascent of
+the purgatorial mountain. The similes by which he illustrates the
+steepness of that ascent are all taken from the Riviera of Genoa,
+now traversed by a good carriage road under the name of the
+Corniche; but as this road did not exist in Dante's time, and the
+steep precipices and promontories were then probably traversed by
+footpaths, which, as they necessarily passed in many places over
+crumbling and slippery limestone, were doubtless not a little
+dangerous, and as in the manner they commanded the bays of sea
+below, and lay exposed to the full blaze of the south-eastern sun,
+they corresponded precisely to the situation of the path by which he
+ascends above the purgatorial sea, the image could not possibly have
+been taken from a better source for the fully conveying his idea to
+the reader: nor, by the way, is there reason to discredit, in _this_
+place, his powers of climbing; for, with his usual accuracy, he has
+taken the angle of the path for us, saying it was considerably more
+than forty-five. Now a continuous mountain slope of forty-five
+degrees is already quite unsafe either for ascent or descent, except
+by zigzag paths; and a greater slope than this could not be climbed,
+straightforward, but by help of crevices or jags in the rock, and
+great physical exertion besides.
+
+� 14. Throughout these passages, however, Dante's thoughts are
+clearly fixed altogether on the question of mere accessibility or
+inaccessibility. He does not show the smallest interest in the
+rocks, except as things to be conquered; and his description of
+their appearance is utterly meagre, involving no other epithets than
+"erto" (steep or upright), Inf. xix. 131., Purg. iii. 48. &c.;
+"sconcio" (monstrous), Inf. xix. 131.; "stagliata" (cut), Inf. xvii.
+134.; "maligno" (malignant), Inf. vii. 108; "duro" (hard), xx. 25.;
+with "large" and "broken" (rotto) in various places. No idea of
+roundness, massiveness, or pleasant form of any kind appears for a
+moment to enter his mind; and the different names which are given to
+the rocks in various places seem merely to refer to variations in
+size: thus a "rocco" is a part of a "scoglio," Inf. xx. 25. and
+xxvi. 27.; a "scheggio" (xxi. 69. and xxvi. 17.) is a less fragment
+yet; a "petrone," or "sasso," is a large stone or boulder (Purg. iv.
+101. 104.), and "pietra," a less stone,--both of these last terms,
+especially "sasso," being used for any large mountainous mass, as in
+Purg. xxi. 106.; and the vagueness of the word "monte" itself, like
+that of the French "montagne," applicable either to a hill on a
+post-road requiring the drag to be put on,--or to the Mont Blanc,
+marks a peculiar carelessness in both nations, at the time of the
+formation of their languages, as to the sublimity of the higher
+hills; so that the effect produced on an English ear by the word
+"mountain," signifying always a mass of a certain large size, cannot
+be conveyed either in French or Italian.
+
+� 15. In all these modes of regarding rocks we find (rocks being in
+themselves, as we shall see presently, by no means monstrous or
+frightful things) exactly that inaccuracy in the medi�val mind which
+we had been led to expect, in its bearings on things contrary to the
+spirit of that symmetrical and perfect humanity which had formed its
+ideal; and it is very curious to observe how closely in the terms he
+uses, and the feelings they indicate, Dante here agrees with Homer.
+For the word stagliata (cut) corresponds very nearly to a favorite
+term of Homer's respecting rocks "sculptured," used by him also of
+ships' sides; and the frescoes and illuminations of the Middle Ages
+enable us to ascertain exactly what this idea of "cut" rock was.
+
+� 16. In Plate 10. I have assembled some examples, which will give
+the reader a sufficient knowledge of medi�val rock-drawing, by men
+whose names are known. They are chiefly taken from engravings, with
+which the reader has it in his power to compare them,[83] and if,
+therefore, any injustice is done to the original paintings the fault
+is not mine; but the general impression conveyed is quite accurate,
+and it would not have been worth while, where work is so deficient
+in first conception, to lose time in insuring accuracy of facsimile.
+Some of the crags may be taller here, or broader there, than in the
+original paintings; but the character of the work is perfectly
+preserved, and that is all with which we are at present concerned.
+
+[Illustration: 10. Geology of the Middle Ages.]
+
+Figs. 1. and 5. are by Ghirlandajo; 2. by Filippo Pesellino; 4. by
+Leonardo da Vinci; and 6. by Andrea del Castagno. All these are
+indeed workmen of a much later period than Dante, but the system of
+rock-drawing remains entirely unchanged from Giotto's time to
+Ghirlandajo's;--is then altered only by an introduction of
+stratification indicative of a little closer observance of nature,
+and so remains until Titian's time. Fig 1. is exactly representative
+of one of Giotto's rocks, though actually by Ghirlandajo; and Fig.
+2. is rather less skilful than Giotto's ordinary work. Both these
+figures indicate precisely what Homer and Dante meant by "cut"
+rocks. They had observed the concave smoothness of certain rock
+fractures as eminently distinctive of rock from earth, and use the
+term "cut" or "sculptured" to distinguish the smooth surface from
+the knotty or sandy one, having observed nothing more respecting its
+real contours than is represented in Figs. 1. and 2., which look as
+if they had been hewn out with an adze. Lorenzo Ghiberti preserves
+the same type, even in his finest work.
+
+Fig. 3., from an interesting sixteenth century MS. in the British
+Museum (Cotton, Augustus, A. 5.), is characteristic of the best
+later illuminators' work; and Fig. 5., from Ghirlandajo, is pretty
+illustrative of Dante's idea of terraces on the purgatorial
+mountain. It is the road by which the Magi descend in his picture of
+their Adoration, in the Academy of Florence. Of the other examples I
+shall have more to say in the chapter on Precipices; meanwhile we
+have to return to the landscape of the poem.
+
+� 17. Inaccurate as this conception of rock was, it seems to have been
+the only one which, in medi�val art had place as representative of
+mountain scenery. To Dante, mountains are inconceivable except as
+great broken stones or crags; all their broad contours and undulations
+seem to have escaped his eye. It is, indeed, with his usual undertone
+of symbolic meaning that he describes the great broken stones, and the
+fall of the shattered mountain, as the entrance to the circle
+appointed for the punishment of the violent; meaning that the violent
+and cruel, notwithstanding all their iron hardness of heart, have no
+true strength, but, either by earthquake, or want of support, fall at
+last into desolate ruin, naked, loose, and shaking under the tread.
+But in no part of the poem do we find allusion to mountains in any
+other than a stern light; nor the slightest evidence that Dante cared
+to look at them. From that hill of San Miniato, whose steps he knew so
+well, the eye commands, at the farther extremity of the Val d'Arno,
+the whole purple range of the mountains of Carrara, peaked and mighty,
+seen always against the sunset light in silent outline, the chief
+forms that rule the scene as twilight fades away. By this vision Dante
+seems to have been wholly unmoved, and, but for Lucan's mention of
+Aruns at Luna, would seemingly not have spoken of the Carrara hills in
+the whole course of his poem: when he does allude to them, he speaks
+of their white marble, and their command of stars and sea, but has
+evidently no regard for the hills themselves. There is not a single
+phrase or syllable throughout the poem which indicates such a regard.
+Ugolino, in his dream, seemed to himself to be in the mountains, "by
+cause of which the Pisan cannot see Lucca;" and it is impossible to
+look up from Pisa to that hoary slope without remembering the awe that
+there is in the passage; nevertheless, it was as a hunting-ground only
+that he remembered those hills. Adam of Brescia, tormented with
+eternal thirst, remembers the hills of Romena, but only for the sake
+of their sweet waters:
+
+      "The rills that glitter down the grassy slopes
+      Of Casentino, making fresh and soft
+      The banks whereby they glide to Arno's stream,
+      Stand ever in my view."
+
+And, whenever hills are spoken of as having any influence on
+character, the repugnance to them is still manifest; they are always
+causes of rudeness or cruelty:
+
+      "But that ungrateful and malignant race,
+      Who in old times came down from Fesole,
+      _Ay, and still smack of their rough mountain flint_,
+      Will, for thy good deeds, show thee enmity.
+      Take heed thou cleanse thee of their ways."
+
+So again--
+
+                "As one _mountain-bred_,
+      Rugged, and clownish, if some city's walls
+      He chance to enter, round him stares agape."
+
+� 18. Finally, although the Carrara mountains are named as having
+command of the stars and sea, the _Alps_ are never specially
+mentioned but in bad weather, or snow. On the sand of the circle of
+the blasphemers--
+
+                "Fell slowly wafting down
+      Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow
+      On Alpine summit, when the wind is hushed."
+
+So the Paduans have to defend their town and castles against
+inundation,
+
+              "Ere the genial warmth be felt,
+      On Chiarentana's top."
+
+The clouds of anger, in Purgatory, can only be figured to the reader
+who has
+
+      "On an Alpine height been ta'en by cloud,
+      Through which thou sawest no better than the mole
+      Doth through opacous membrane."
+
+And in approaching the second branch of Lethe, the seven ladies
+pause,--
+
+                "Arriving at the verge
+      Of a dim umbrage hoar, such as is seen
+      Beneath green leaves and gloomy branches oft
+      To overbrow a bleak and Alpine cliff."
+
+� 19. Truly, it is unfair of Dante, that when he is going to use
+snow for a lovely image, and speak of it as melting away under
+heavenly sunshine, he must needs put it on the Apennines, not on the
+Alps:
+
+            "As snow that lies
+      Amidst the living rafters, on the back
+      Of Italy, congealed, when drifted high
+      And closely piled by rough Sclavonian blasts,
+      Breathe but the land whereon no shadow falls,
+      And straightway melting, it distils away,
+      Like a fire-washed taper; thus was I,
+      Without a sigh, or tear, consumed in heart."
+
+The reader will thank me for reminding him, though out of its proper
+order, of the exquisite passage of Scott which we have to compare
+with this:
+
+      "As snow upon the mountain's breast
+      Slides from the rock that gave it rest,
+      Sweet Ellen glided from her stay,
+      And at the monarch's feet she lay."
+
+Examine the context of this last passage, and its beauty is quite
+beyond praise; but note the northern love of rocks in the very first
+words I have to quote from Scott, "The rocks that gave it rest." Dante
+could not have thought of his "cut rocks" as giving rest even to snow.
+He must put it on the pine branches, if it is to be at peace.
+
+� 20. There is only one more point to be noticed in the Dantesque
+landscape; namely, the feeling entertained by the poet towards the
+sky. And the love of mountains is so closely connected with the love
+of clouds, the sublimity of both depending much on their
+association, that having found Dante regardless of the Carrara
+mountains as seen from San Miniato, we may well expect to find him
+equally regardless of the clouds in which the sun sank behind them.
+Accordingly, we find that his only pleasure in the sky depends on
+its "white clearness,"--that turning into "bianca aspette di
+celestro" which is so peculiarly characteristic of fine days in
+Italy. His pieces of pure pale light are always exquisite. In the
+dawn on the purgatorial mountain, first, in its pale white, he sees
+the "tremola della marina"--trembling of the sea; then it becomes
+vermilion; and at last, near sunrise, orange. These are precisely
+the changes of a calm and perfect dawn. The scenery of Paradise
+begins with "Day added to day," the light of the sun so flooding the
+heavens, that "never rain nor river made lake so wide;" and
+throughout the Paradise all the beauty depends on spheres of light,
+or stars, never on clouds. But the pit of the Inferno is at first
+sight obscure, deep, and so _cloudy_ that at its bottom nothing
+could be seen. When Dante and Virgil reach the marsh in which the
+souls of those who have been angry and sad in their lives are for
+ever plunged, they find it covered with thick fog; and the condemned
+souls say to them,--
+
+                          "We once were sad,
+      In the _sweet air, made gladsome by the sun_.
+      Now in these murky settlings are we sad."
+
+Even the angel crossing the marsh to help them is annoyed by this
+bitter marsh smoke, "fummo acerbo," and continually sweeps it with
+his hand from before his face.
+
+Anger, on the purgatorial mountain, is in like manner imaged,
+because of its blindness and wildness, by the Alpine clouds. As they
+emerge from its mist they see the white light radiated through the
+fading folds of it; and, except this appointed cloud, no other can
+touch the mountain of purification.
+
+              "Tempest none, shower, hail, or snow,
+      Hoar-frost, or dewy moistness, higher falls,
+      Than that brief scale of threefold steps. Thick clouds,
+      Nor scudding rack, are ever seen, swift glance
+      Ne'er lightens, nor Thaumantian iris gleams."
+
+Dwell for a little while on this intense love of Dante for
+light,--taught, as he is at last by Beatrice, to gaze on the sun
+itself like an eagle,--and endeavor to enter into his equally
+intense detestation of all mist, rack of cloud, or dimness of rain;
+and then consider with what kind of temper he would have regarded a
+landscape of Copley Fielding's or passed a day in the Highlands. He
+has, in fact, assigned to the souls of the gluttonous no other
+punishment in the Inferno than perpetuity of Highland weather:
+
+                                    "Showers
+      Ceaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchanged
+      For ever, both in kind and in degree,--
+      Large hail, discolored water, sleety flaw,
+      Through the dim midnight air streamed down amain."
+
+� 21. However, in this immitigable dislike of clouds, Dante goes
+somewhat beyond the general temper of his age. For although the calm
+sky was alone loved, and storm and rain were dreaded by all men,
+yet the white horizontal clouds of serene summer were regarded with
+great affection by all early painters, and considered as one of the
+accompaniments of the manifestation of spiritual power; sometimes,
+for theological reasons which we shall soon have to examine, being
+received, even without any other sign, as the types of blessing or
+Divine acceptance: and in almost every representation of the
+heavenly paradise, these level clouds are set by the early painters
+for its floor, or for thrones of its angels; whereas Dante retains
+steadily, through circle after circle, his cloudless thought, and
+concludes his painting of heaven, as he began it upon the
+purgatorial mountain, with the image of shadowless morning:
+
+      "I raised my eyes, and as at morn is seen
+      The horizon's eastern quarter to excel,
+      So likewise, that pacific Oriflamb
+      Glowed in the midmost, and toward every part,
+      With like gradation paled away its flame."
+
+But the best way of regarding this feeling of Dante's is as the
+ultimate and most intense expression of the love of light, color,
+and clearness, which, as we saw above, distinguished the medi�val
+from the Greek on one side, and, as we shall presently see,
+distinguished him from the modern on the other. For it is evident
+that precisely in the degree in which the Greek was agriculturally
+inclined, in that degree the sight of clouds would become to him
+more acceptable than to the medi�val knight, who only looked for the
+fine afternoons in which he might gather the flowers in his garden,
+and in no wise shared or imagined the previous anxieties of his
+gardener. Thus, when we find Ulysses comforted about Ithaca, by
+being told it had "plenty of rain," and the maids of Colonos
+boasting of their country for the same reason, we may be sure that
+they had some regard for clouds; and accordingly, except
+Aristophanes, of whom more presently, all the Greek poets speak
+fondly of the clouds, and consider them the fitting resting-places
+of the gods; including in their idea of clouds not merely the thin
+clear cirrus, but the rolling and changing volume of the
+thundercloud; nor even these only, but also the dusty whirlwind
+cloud of the earth, as in that noble chapter of Herodotus which
+tells us of the cloud, full of mystic voices, that rose out of the
+dust of Eleusis, and went down to Salamis. Clouds and rain were of
+course regarded with a like gratitude by the eastern and southern
+nations--Jews and Egyptians; and it is only among the northern
+medi�vals, with whom fine weather was rarely so prolonged as to
+occasion painful drought, or dangerous famine, and over whom the
+clouds broke coldly and fiercely when they came, that the love of
+serene light assumes its intense character, and the fear of tempest
+is gloomiest; so that the powers of the clouds which to the Greek
+foretold his conquest at Salamis, and with whom he fought in
+alliance, side by side with their lightnings, under the crest of
+Parnassus, seemed, in the heart of the Middle Ages, to be only under
+the dominion of the spirit of evil. I have reserved, for our last
+example of the landscape of Dante, the passage in which this
+conviction is expressed; a passage not less notable for its close
+description of what the writer feared and disliked, than for the
+ineffable tenderness, in which Dante is always raised as much above
+all other poets, as in softness the rose above all other flowers. It
+is the spirit of Buonconte da Montefeltro who speaks:
+
+      "Then said another: 'Ah, so may thy wish,
+      That takes thee o'er the mountain, be fulfilled,
+      As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine!
+      Of Montefeltro I; Buonconte I:
+      Giovanna, nor none else, have care for me;
+      Sorrowing with these I therefore go.' I thus:
+      From Campaldino's field what force or chance
+      Drew thee, that ne'er thy sepulchre was known?'
+      'Oh!' answered he, 'at Casentino's foot
+      A stream there courseth, named Archiano, sprung
+      In Apennine, above the hermit's seat.
+      E'en where its name is cancelled, there came I,
+      Pierced in the throat, fleeing away on foot,
+      And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speech
+      failed me; and finishing with Mary's name,
+      I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained.
+                        ...
+      _That evil will, which in his intellect
+      Still follows evil, came;_
+                           ... the valley, soon
+      As day was spent, _he covered o'er with cloud_.
+      From Pratomagno to the mountain range,
+      And stretched the sky above; so that the air,
+      Impregnate, changed to water. Fell the rain;
+      And to the fosses came all that the land
+      Contained not; and as mightiest streams are wont.
+      To the great river, with such headlong sweep,
+      Rushed, that nought stayed its course. My stiffened frame,
+      Laid at his mouth, the fell Archiano found,
+      And dashed it into Arno; from my breast
+      Loosening the cross, that of myself I made
+      When overcome with pain. He hurled me on,
+      Along the banks and bottom of his course;
+      Then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.'"
+
+Observe, Buonconte, as he dies, crosses his arms over his breast,
+pressing them together, partly in his pain, partly in prayer. His
+body thus lies by the river shore, as on a sepulchral monument, the
+arms folded into a cross. The rage of the river, under the influence
+of the evil demon, _unlooses this cross_, dashing the body supinely
+away, and rolling it over and over by bank and bottom. Nothing can
+be truer to the action of a stream in fury than these lines. And how
+desolate is it all! The lonely flight,--the grisly wound, "pierced
+in the throat,"--the death, without help or pity,--only the name of
+Mary on the lips,-and the cross folded over the heart. Then the rage
+of the demon and the river,--the noteless grave,--and, at last, even
+she who had been most trusted forgetting him,--
+
+      "Giovanna, none else have care for me."
+
+There is, I feel assured, nothing else like it in all the range of
+poetry; a faint and harsh echo of it, only, exists in one Scottish
+ballad, "The Twa Corbies."
+
+Here, then, I think, we may close our inquiry into the nature of the
+medi�val landscape; not but that many details yet require to be worked
+out; but these will be best observed by recurrence to them, for
+comparison with similar details in modern landscape,--our principal
+purpose, the getting at the governing tones and temper of conception,
+being, I believe, now sufficiently accomplished. And I think that our
+subject may be best pursued by immediately turning from the medi�val
+to the perfectly modern landscape; for although I have much to say
+respecting the transitional state of mind exhibited in the sixteenth
+and seventeenth centuries, I believe the transitions may be more
+easily explained after we have got clear sight of the extremes; and
+that by getting perfect and separate hold of the three great phases of
+art,--Greek, medi�val, and modern,--we shall be enabled to trace, with
+least chance of error, those curious vacillations which brought us to
+the modern temper while vainly endeavoring to resuscitate the Greek. I
+propose, therefore, in the next chapter, to examine the spirit of
+modern landscape, as seen generally in modern painting, and especially
+in the poetry of Scott.
+
+  [79] It is an unpublished plate. I know only two impressions of it.
+
+  [80] (Cayley.) "Tutto di pietra, e di color ferrigno"--Inf. xviii. 2.
+
+  [81] "Maligne piagge grige."--Inf. vii. 108.
+
+  [82] It is in these subtle purples that even the more
+       elaborate passages of the earlier drawings are worked; as,
+       for instance, the Highland streams, spoken of in
+       Pre-Raphaelitism. Also, Turner could, by opposition, get what
+       color he liked out of a brown. I have seen cases in which he
+       had made it stand for the purest _rose_ light.
+
+  [83] The references are in Appendix I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+OF MODERN LANDSCAPE.
+
+
+� 1. We turn our eyes, therefore, as boldly and as quickly as may
+be, from these serene fields and skies of medi�val art, to the most
+characteristic examples of modern landscape. And, I believe, the
+first thing that will strike us, or that ought to strike us, is
+their _cloudiness_.
+
+Out of perfect light and motionless air, we find ourselves on a
+sudden brought under sombre skies, and into drifting wind; and, with
+fickle sunbeams flashing in our face, or utterly drenched with sweep
+of rain, we are reduced to track the changes of the shadows on the
+grass, or watch the rents of twilight through angry cloud. And we
+find that whereas all the pleasure of the medi�val was in
+_stability_, _definiteness_, and _luminousness_, we are expected to
+rejoice in darkness, and triumph in mutability; to lay the
+foundation of happiness in things which momentarily change or fade;
+and to expect the utmost satisfaction and instruction from what is
+impossible to arrest, and difficult to comprehend.
+
+� 2. We find, however, together with this general delight in breeze
+and darkness, much attention to the real form of clouds, and careful
+drawing of effects of mist: so that the appearance of objects, as
+seen through it, becomes a subject of science with us: and the
+faithful representation of that appearance is made of primal
+importance, under the name of aerial perspective. The aspects of
+sunset and sunrise, with all their attendant phenomena of cloud and
+mist, are watchfully delineated; and in ordinary daylight landscape,
+the sky is considered of so much importance, that a principal mass
+of foliage, or a whole foreground, is unhesitatingly thrown into
+shade merely to bring out the form of a white cloud. So that, if a
+general and characteristic name were needed for modern landscape
+art, none better could be invented than "the service of clouds."
+
+� 3. And this name would, unfortunately, be characteristic of our
+art in more ways than one. In the last chapter, I said that all the
+Greeks spoke kindly about the clouds, except Aristophanes; and he, I
+am sorry to say (since his report is so unfavorable), is the only
+Greek who had studied them attentively. He tells us, first, that
+they are "great goddesses to idle men;" then, that they are
+"mistresses of disputings, and logic, and monstrosities, and noisy
+chattering;" declares that whoso believes in their divinity must
+first disbelieve in Jupiter, and place supreme power in the hands of
+an unknown god "Whirlwind;" and, finally, he displays their
+influence over the mind of one of their disciples, in his sudden
+desire "to speak ingeniously concerning smoke."
+
+There is, I fear, an infinite truth in this Aristophanic judgment
+applied to our modern cloud-worship. Assuredly, much of the love of
+mystery in our romances, our poetry, our art, and, above all, in our
+metaphysics, must come under that definition so long ago given by
+the great Greek, "speaking ingeniously concerning smoke." And much
+of the instinct, which, partially developed in painting, may be now
+seen throughout every mode of exertion of mind,--the easily
+encouraged doubt, easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and
+delight in the changing and the marvellous, as opposed to the old
+quiet serenity of social custom and religious faith,--is again
+deeply defined in those few words, the "dethroning of Jupiter," the
+"coronation of the whirlwind."
+
+� 4. Nor of whirlwind merely, but also of darkness or ignorance
+respecting all stable facts. That darkening of the foreground to
+bring out the white cloud, is, in one aspect of it, a type of the
+subjection of all plain and positive fact, to what is uncertain and
+unintelligible. And as we examine farther into the matter, we shall
+be struck by another great difference between the old and modern
+landscape, namely, that in the old no one ever thought of drawing
+anything but as well _as he could_. That might not be _well_, as we
+have seen in the case of rocks; but it was as well as he _could_,
+and always distinctly. Leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was
+equally drawn with care and clearness, and its essential characters
+shown. If it was an oak tree, the acorns were drawn; if a flint
+pebble, its veins were drawn; if an arm of the sea, its fish were
+drawn; if a group of figures, their faces and dresses were drawn--to
+the very last subtlety of expression and end of thread that could be
+got into the space, far off or near. But now our ingenuity is all
+"concerning smoke." Nothing is truly drawn but that; all else is
+vague, slight, imperfect; got with as little pains as possible. You
+examine your closest foreground, and find no leaves; your largest
+oak, and find no acorns; your human figure, and find a spot of red
+paint instead of a face; and in all this, again and again, the
+Aristophanic words come true, and the clouds seem to be "great
+goddesses to idle men."
+
+� 5. The next thing that will strike us, after this love of clouds, is
+the love of liberty. Whereas the medi�val was always shutting himself
+into castles, and behind fosses, and drawing brickwork neatly, and
+beds of flowers primly, our painters delight in getting to the open
+fields and moors; abhor all hedges and moats; never paint anything but
+free-growing trees, and rivers gliding "at their own sweet will;"
+eschew formality down to the smallest detail; break and displace the
+brickwork which the medi�val would have carefully cemented; leave
+unpruned the thickets he would have delicately trimmed; and, carrying
+the love of liberty even to license, and the love of wildness even to
+ruin, take pleasure at last in every aspect of age and desolation
+which emancipates the objects of nature from the government of
+men;--on the castle wall displacing its tapestry with ivy, and
+spreading, through the garden, the bramble for the rose.
+
+� 6. Connected with this love of liberty we find a singular
+manifestation of love of mountains, and see our painters traversing
+the wildest places of the globe in order to obtain subjects with
+craggy foregrounds and purple distances. Some few of them remain
+content with pollards and flat land; but these are always men of
+third-rate order; and the leading masters, while they do not reject
+the beauty of the low grounds, reserve their highest powers to paint
+Alpine peaks or Italian promontories. And it is eminently
+noticeable, also, that this pleasure in the mountains is never
+mingled with fear, or tempered by a spirit of meditation, as with
+the medi�val; but it is always free and fearless, brightly
+exhilarating, and wholly unreflective; so that the painter feels
+that his mountain foreground may be more consistently animated by a
+sportsman than a hermit; and our modern society in general goes to
+the mountains, not to fast, but to feast, and leaves their glaciers
+covered with chicken-bones and egg-shells.
+
+� 7. Connected with this want of any sense of solemnity in mountain
+scenery, is a general profanity of temper in regarding all the rest
+of nature; that is to say, a total absence of faith in the presence
+of any deity therein. Whereas the medi�val never painted a cloud,
+but with the purpose of placing an angel in it; and a Greek never
+entered a wood without expecting to meet a god in it; _we_ should
+think the appearance of an angel in the cloud wholly unnatural, and
+should be seriously surprised by meeting a god anywhere. Our chief
+ideas about the wood are connected with poaching. We have no belief
+that the clouds contain more than so many inches of rain or hail,
+and from our ponds and ditches expect nothing more divine than ducks
+and watercresses.
+
+� 8. Finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a strong
+tendency to deny the sacred element of color, and make our boast in
+blackness. For though occasionally glaring, or violent, modern color
+is on the whole eminently sombre, tending continually to grey or
+brown, and by many of our best painters consistently falsified, with
+a confessed pride in what they call chaste or subdued tints; so
+that, whereas a medi�val paints his sky bright blue, and his
+foreground bright green, gilds the towers of his castles, and
+clothes his figures with purple and white, we paint our sky grey,
+our foreground black, and our foliage brown, and think that enough
+is sacrificed to the sun in admitting the dangerous brightness of a
+scarlet cloak or a blue jacket.
+
+� 9. These, I believe, are the principal points which would strike
+us instantly, if we were to be brought suddenly into an exhibition
+of modern landscapes out of a room filled with medi�val work. It is
+evident that there are both evil and good in this change; but how
+much evil, or how much good, we can only estimate by considering, as
+in the former divisions of our inquiry, what are the real roots of
+the habits of mind which have caused them.
+
+[Sidenote: Distinctive characters of the modern mind:]
+
+And first, it is evident that the title "Dark Ages," given to the
+medi�val centuries, is, respecting art, wholly inapplicable. They
+were, on the contrary, the bright ages; ours are the dark ones. I do
+not mean metaphysically, but literally. They were the ages of gold:
+ours are the ages of umber.
+
+[Sidenote: 1. Despondency arising from faithlessness.]
+
+This is partly mere mistake in us; we build brown brick walls, and
+wear brown coats, because we have been blunderingly taught to do so,
+and go on doing so mechanically. There is, however, also some cause
+for the change in our own tempers. On the whole, these are much
+_sadder_ ages than the early ones; not sadder in a noble and deep way,
+but in a dim, wearied way,--the way of ennui, and jaded intellect, and
+uncomfortableness of soul and body. The Middle Ages had their wars and
+agonies, but also intense delights. Their gold was dashed with blood;
+but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their life was interwoven with white
+and purple; ours is one seamless stuff of brown. Not that we are
+without apparent festivity, but festivity more or less forced,
+mistaken, embittered, incomplete--not of the heart. How wonderfully,
+since Shakspere's time, have we lost the power of laughing at bad
+jests! The very finish of our wit belies our gaiety.
+
+� 10. The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, I believe,
+our want of faith. There never yet was a generation of men (savage or
+civilized) who, taken as a body, so wofully fulfilled the words,
+"having no hope, and without God in the world," as the present
+civilized European race. A Red Indian or Otaheitan savage has more
+sense of a Divine existence round him, or government over him, than
+the plurality of refined Londoners and Parisians; and those among us
+who may in some sense be said to believe, are divided almost without
+exception into two broad classes, Romanist and Puritan; who, but for
+the interference of the unbelieving portions of society, would, either
+of them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; the
+Romanist having always done so whenever he could, from the beginning
+of their separation, and the Puritan at this time holding himself in
+complacent expectation of the destruction of Rome by volcanic fire.
+Such division as this between persons nominally of one religion, that
+is to say, believing in the same God, and the same Revelation, cannot
+but become a stumbling-block of the gravest kind to all thoughtful and
+far-sighted men,--a stumbling-block which they can only surmount under
+the most favorable circumstances of early education. Hence, nearly all
+our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of
+them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the
+plurality in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what
+practical work lies ready to their hands. Most of our scientific men
+are in this last class; our popular authors either set themselves
+definitely against all religious form, pleading for simple truth and
+benevolence (Thackeray, Dickens), or give themselves up to bitter and
+fruitless statement of facts (De Balzac), or surface-painting (Scott),
+or careless blasphemy, sad or smiling (Byron, Beranger). Our earnest
+poets, and deepest thinkers, are doubtful and indignant (Tennyson,
+Carlyle); one or two, anchored, indeed, but anxious, or weeping
+(Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning); and of these two, the first is not so
+sure of his anchor, but that now and then it drags with him, even to
+make him cry out,--
+
+                        "Great God, I had rather be
+      A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn:
+        So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
+      Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn."
+
+In politics, religion is now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or
+affectation. Over German religious pictures the inscription, "See
+how Pious I am," can be read at a glance by any clear-sighted
+person. Over French and English religious pictures, the inscription,
+"See how Impious I am," is equally legible. All sincere and modest
+art is, among us, profane.[84]
+
+[Sidenote: � 11. 2. Levity from the same cause.]
+
+This faithlessness operates among us according to our tempers,
+producing either sadness or levity, and being the ultimate root
+alike of our discontents and of our wantonnesses. It is marvellous
+how full of contradiction it makes us; we are first dull, and seek
+for wild and lonely places because we have no heart for the garden;
+presently we recover our spirits, and build an assembly room among
+the mountains, because we have no reverence for the desert. I do not
+know if there be game on Sinai, but I am always expecting to hear of
+some one's shooting over it.
+
+� 12. There is, however, another, and a more innocent root of our
+delight in wild scenery.
+
+[Sidenote: 3. Reactionary love of inanimate beauty.]
+
+All the Renaissance principles of art tended, as I have before often
+explained, to the setting Beauty above Truth, and seeking for it
+always at the expense of truth. And the proper punishment of such
+pursuit--the punishment which all the laws of the universe rendered
+inevitable--was, that those who thus pursued beauty should wholly lose
+sight of beauty. All the thinkers of the age, as we saw previously,
+declared that it did not exist. The age seconded their efforts, and
+banished beauty, so far as human effort could succeed in doing so,
+from the face of the earth, and the form of man. To powder the hair,
+to patch the cheek, to hoop the body, to buckle the foot, were all
+part and parcel of the same system which reduced streets to brick
+walls, and pictures to brown stains. One desert of Ugliness was
+extended before the eyes of mankind; and their pursuit of the
+beautiful, so recklessly continued, received unexpected consummation
+in high-heeled shoes and periwigs,--Gower Street, and Gaspar Poussin.
+
+� 13. Reaction from this state was inevitable, if any true life was
+left in the races of mankind; and, accordingly, though still forced,
+by rule and fashion, to the producing and wearing all that is ugly,
+men steal out, half-ashamed of themselves for doing so, to the
+fields and mountains; and, finding among these the color, and
+liberty, and variety, and power, which are for ever grateful to
+them, delight in these to an extent never before known; rejoice in
+all the wildest shattering of the mountain side, as an opposition to
+Gower Street; gaze in a rapt manner at sunsets and sunrises, to see
+there the blue, and gold, and purple, which glow for them no longer
+on knight's armor or temple porch; and gather with care out of the
+fields, into their blotted herbaria, the flowers which the five
+orders of architecture have banished from their doors and casements.
+
+[Sidenote: � 14. 4. Disdain of beauty in man.]
+
+The absence of care for personal beauty, which is another great
+characteristic of the age, adds to this feeling in a twofold way:
+first, by turning all reverent thoughts away from human nature; and
+making us think of men as ridiculous or ugly creatures, getting
+through the world as well as they can, and spoiling it in doing so;
+not ruling it in a kingly way and crowning all its loveliness. In
+the Middle Ages hardly anything but vice could be caricatured,
+because virtue was always visibly and personally noble; now virtue
+itself is apt to inhabit such poor human bodies, that no aspect of
+it is invulnerable to jest; and for all fairness we have to seek to
+the flowers, for all sublimity, to the hills.
+
+The same want of care operates, in another way, by lowering the
+standard of health, increasing the susceptibility to nervous or
+sentimental impressions, and thus adding to the other powers of
+nature over us whatever charm may be felt in her fostering the
+melancholy fancies of brooding idleness.
+
+[Sidenote: � 15. 5. Romantic imagination of the past.]
+
+It is not, however, only to existing inanimate nature that our want
+of beauty in person and dress has driven us. The imagination of it,
+as it was seen in our ancestors, haunts us continually; and while we
+yield to the present fashions, or act in accordance with the dullest
+modern principles of economy and utility, we look fondly back to the
+manners of the ages of chivalry, and delight in painting, to the
+fancy, the fashions we pretend to despise, and the splendors we
+think it wise to abandon. The furniture and personages of our
+romance are sought, when the writer desires to please most easily,
+in the centuries which we profess to have surpassed in everything;
+the art which takes us into the present times is considered as both
+daring and degraded; and while the weakest words please us, and are
+regarded as poetry, which recall the manners of our forefathers, or
+of strangers, it is only as familiar and vulgar that we accept the
+description of our own.
+
+In this we are wholly different from all the races that preceded us.
+All other nations have regarded their ancestors with reverence as
+saints or heroes; but have nevertheless thought their own deeds and
+ways of life the fitting subjects for their arts of painting or of
+verse. We, on the contrary, regard our ancestors as foolish and
+wicked, but yet find our chief artistic pleasures in descriptions of
+their ways of life.
+
+The Greeks and medi�vals honored, but did not imitate, their
+forefathers; we imitate, but do not honor.
+
+[Sidenote: � 16. 6. Interest in science.]
+
+[Sidenote: 7. Fear of war.]
+
+With this romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in history, and in
+external nature, the satisfaction it cannot find in ordinary life,
+we mingle a more rational passion, the due and just result of newly
+awakened powers of attention. Whatever may first lead us to the
+scrutiny of natural objects, that scrutiny never fails of its
+reward. Unquestionably they are intended to be regarded by us with
+both reverence and delight; and every hour we give to them renders
+their beauty more apparent, and their interest more engrossing.
+Natural science--which can hardly be considered to have existed
+before modern times--rendering our knowledge fruitful in
+accumulation and exquisite in accuracy, has acted for good or evil,
+according to the temper of the mind which received it; and though it
+has hardened the faithlessness of the dull and proud, has shown new
+grounds for reverence to hearts which were thoughtful and humble.
+The neglect of the art of war, while it has somewhat weakened and
+deformed the body,[85] has given us leisure and opportunity for
+studies to which, before, time and space were equally wanting; lives
+which once were early wasted on the battle field are now passed
+usefully in the study; nations which exhausted themselves in annual
+warfare now dispute with each other the discovery of new planets;
+and the serene philosopher dissects the plants, and analyzes the
+dust, of lands which were of old only traversed by the knight in
+hasty march, or by the borderer in heedless rapine.
+
+� 17. The elements of progress and decline being thus strangely
+mingled in the modern mind, we might beforehand anticipate that one
+of the notable characters of our art would be its inconsistency;
+that efforts would be made in every direction, and arrested by every
+conceivable cause and manner of failure; that in all we did, it
+would become next to impossible to distinguish accurately the
+grounds for praise or for regret; that all previous canons of
+practice and methods of thought would be gradually overthrown, and
+criticism continually defied by successes which no one had expected,
+and sentiments which no one could define.
+
+� 18. Accordingly, while, in our inquiries into Greek and medi�val
+art, I was able to describe, in general terms, what all men did or
+felt, I find now many characters in many men; some, it seems to me,
+founded on the inferior and evanescent principles of modernism, on
+its recklessness, impatience, or faithlessness; others founded on
+its science, its new affection for nature, its love of openness and
+liberty. And among all these characters, good or evil, I see that
+some, remaining to us from old or transitional periods, do not
+properly belong to us, and will soon fade away; and others, though
+not yet distinctly developed, are yet properly our own, and likely
+to grow forward into greater strength.
+
+For instance: our reprobation of bright color is, I think, for the
+most part, mere affectation, and must soon be done away with.
+Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety, will indeed always express
+themselves through art in brown and grey, as in Rembrandt,
+Caravaggio, and Salvator; but we are not wholly vulgar, dull, or
+impious; nor, as moderns, are we necessarily obliged to continue so
+in any wise. Our greatest men, whether sad or gay, still delight,
+like the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues. The coloring of
+Scott and Byron is full and pure; that of Keats and Tennyson rich
+even to excess. Our practical failures in coloring are merely the
+necessary consequences of our prolonged want of practice during the
+periods of Renaissance affectation and ignorance; and the only
+durable difference between old and modern coloring, is the
+acceptance of certain hues, by the modern, which please him by
+expressing that melancholy peculiar to his more reflective or
+sentimental character, and the greater variety of them necessary to
+express his greater science.
+
+� 19. Again: if we ever become wise enough to dress consistently and
+gracefully, to make health a principal object in education, and to
+render our streets beautiful with art, the external charm of past
+history will in great measure disappear. There is no essential
+reason, because we live after the fatal seventeenth century, that we
+should never again be able to confess interest in sculpture, or see
+brightness in embroidery; nor, because now we choose to make the
+night deadly with our pleasures, and the day with our labors,
+prolonging the dance till dawn, and the toil to twilight, that we
+should never again learn how rightly to employ the sacred trusts of
+strength, beauty, and time. Whatever external charm attaches itself
+to the past, would then be seen in proper subordination to the
+brightness of present life; and the elements of romance would exist,
+in the earlier ages, only in the attraction which must generally
+belong to whatever is unfamiliar; in the reverence which a noble
+nation always pays to its ancestors; and in the enchanted light
+which races, like individuals, must perceive in looking back to the
+days of their childhood.
+
+� 20. Again: the peculiar levity with which natural scenery is
+regarded by a large number of modern minds cannot be considered as
+entirely characteristic of the age, inasmuch as it never can belong
+to its greatest intellects. Men of any high mental power must be
+serious, whether in ancient or modern days: a certain degree of
+reverence for fair scenery is found in all our great writers without
+exception,--even the one who has made us laugh oftenest, taking us
+to the valley of Chamouni, and to the sea beach, there to give peace
+after suffering, and change revenge into pity.[86] It is only the
+dull, the uneducated, or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet on
+the hill sides; and levity, as a ruling character, cannot be
+ascribed to the whole nation, but only to its holiday-making
+apprentices, and its House of Commons.
+
+� 21. We need not, therefore, expect to find any single poet or
+painter representing the entire group of powers, weaknesses, and
+inconsistent instincts which govern or confuse our modern life. But
+we may expect that in the man who seems to be given by Providence as
+the type of the age (as Homer and Dante were given, as the types of
+classical and medi�val mind), we shall find whatever is fruitful and
+substantial to be completely present, together with those of our
+weaknesses, which are indeed nationally characteristic, and
+compatible with general greatness of mind; just as the weak love of
+fences, and dislike of mountains, were found compatible with Dante's
+greatness in other respects.
+
+� 22. Farther: as the admiration of mankind is found, in our times,
+to have in great part passed from men to mountains, and from human
+emotion to natural phenomena, we may anticipate that the great
+strength of art will also be warped in this direction; with this
+notable result for us, that whereas the greatest painters or painter
+of classical and medi�val periods, being wholly devoted to the
+representation of humanity, furnished us with but little to examine
+in landscape, the greatest painters or painter of modern times will
+in all probability be devoted to landscape principally; and farther,
+because in representing human emotion words surpass painting, but in
+representing natural scenery painting surpasses words, we may
+anticipate also that the painter and poet (for convenience' sake I
+here use the words in opposition) will somewhat change their
+relations of rank in illustrating the mind of the age; that the
+painter will become of more importance, the poet of less; and that
+the relations between the men who are the types and firstfruits of
+the age in word and work,--namely, Scott and Turner,--will be, in
+many curious respects, different from those between Homer and
+Phidias, or Dante and Giotto.
+
+It is this relation which we have now to examine.
+
+� 23. And, first, I think it probable that many readers may be
+surprised at my calling Scott the great representative of the mind
+of the age in literature. Those who can perceive the intense
+penetrative depth of Wordsworth, and the exquisite finish and
+melodious power of Tennyson, may be offended at my placing in higher
+rank that poetry of careless glance, and reckless rhyme, in which
+Scott poured out the fancies of his youth; and those who are
+familiar with the subtle analysis of the French novelists, or who
+have in any wise submitted themselves to the influence of German
+philosophy, may be equally indignant at my ascribing a principality
+to Scott among the literary men of Europe, in an age which has
+produced De Balzac and Goethe.
+
+So also in painting, those who are acquainted with the sentimental
+efforts made at present by the German religious and historical
+schools, and with the disciplined power and learning of the French,
+will think it beyond all explanation absurd to call a painter of
+light water-color landscapes, eighteen inches by twelve, the first
+representative of the arts of the age. I can only crave the reader's
+patience, and his due consideration of the following reasons for my
+doing so, together with those advanced in the farther course of the
+work.
+
+� 24. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility.
+I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his own power, or hesitation in
+speaking of his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation
+between what _he_ can do and say, and the rest of the world's
+sayings and doings. All great men not only know their business, but
+usually know that they know it; and are not only right in their main
+opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them; only,
+they do not think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows
+he can build a good dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to
+one who had found fault with his work, "It cannot be better done;"
+Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that
+would have puzzled anybody else;--only they do not expect their
+fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them; they have a
+curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is
+not _in_ them, but _through_ them; that they could not do or be
+anything else than God-made them. And they see something divine and
+God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly,
+incredibly merciful.
+
+� 25. Now, I find among the men of the present age, as far as I know
+them, this character in Scott and Turner preeminently; I am not
+sure if it is not in them alone. I do not find Scott talking about
+the dignity of literature, nor Turner about the dignity of painting.
+They do their work, feeling that they cannot well help it; the story
+must be told, and the effect put down; and if people like it, well
+and good; and if not, the world will not be much the worse.
+
+I believe a very different impression of their estimate of
+themselves and their doings will be received by any one who reads
+the conversations of Wordsworth or Goethe. The _slightest_
+manifestation of jealousy or self-complacency is enough to mark a
+second-rate character of the intellect; and I fear that especially
+in Goethe, such manifestations are neither few nor slight.
+
+� 26. Connected with this general humility is the total absence of
+affectation in these men,--that is to say, of any assumption of
+manner or behavior in their work, in order to attract attention. Not
+but that they are mannerists both. Scott's verse is strongly
+mannered, and Turner's oil painting; but the manner of it is
+necessitated by the feelings of the men, entirely natural to both,
+never exaggerated for the sake of show. I hardly know any other
+literary or pictorial work of the day which is not in some degree
+affected. I am afraid Wordsworth was often affected in his
+simplicity, and De Balzac in his finish. Many fine French writers
+are affected in their reserve, and full of stage tricks in placing
+of sentences. It is lucky if in German writers we ever find so much
+as a sentence without affectation. I know no painters without it,
+except one or two Pre-Raphaelites (chiefly Holman Hunt), and some
+simple water-color painters, as William Hunt, William Turner of
+Oxford, and the late George Robson; but these last have no
+invention, and therefore by our fourth canon, Chap. III. sec. 21.,
+are excluded from the first rank of artists; and of the
+Pre-Raphaelites there is here no question, as they in no wise
+represent the modern school.
+
+� 27. Again: another very important, though not infallible, test of
+greatness is, as we have often said, the appearance of Ease with
+which the thing is done. It may be that, as with Dante and Leonardo,
+the finish given to the work effaces the evidence of ease; but where
+the ease is manifest, as in Scott, Turner, and Tintoret; and the
+thing done is very noble, it is a strong reason for placing the men
+above those who confessedly work with great pains. Scott writing his
+chapter or two before breakfast--not retouching, Turner finishing a
+whole drawing in a forenoon before he goes out to shoot (providing
+always the chapter and drawing be good), are instantly to be set
+above men who confessedly have spent the day over the work, and
+think the hours well spent if it has been a little mended between
+sunrise and sunset. Indeed, it is no use for men to think to appear
+great by working fast, dashing, and scrawling; the thing they do
+must be good and great, cost what time it may; but if it _be_ so,
+and they have honestly and unaffectedly done it with _no effort_, it
+is probably a greater and better thing than the result of the
+hardest efforts of others.
+
+� 28. Then, as touching the kind of work done by these two men, the
+more I think of it I find this conclusion more impressed upon
+me,--that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is
+to _see_ something, and tell what it _saw_ in a plain way. Hundreds
+of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think
+for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and
+religion,--all in one.
+
+Therefore, finding the world of Literature more or less divided into
+Thinkers and Seers, I believe we shall find also that the Seers are
+wholly the greater race of the two. A true Thinker, who has practical
+purpose in his thinking, and is sincere, as Plato, or Carlyle, or
+Helps, becomes in some sort a seer, and must be always of infinite use
+in his generation; but an affected Thinker, who supposes his thinking
+of any other importance than as it tends to work, is about the vainest
+kind of person that can be found in the occupied classes. Nay, I
+believe that metaphysicians and philosophers are, on the whole, the
+greatest troubles the world has got to deal with; and that while a
+tyrant or bad man is of some use in teaching people submission or
+indignation, and a thoroughly idle man is only harmful in setting an
+idle example, and communicating to other lazy people his own lazy
+misunderstandings, busy metaphysicians are always entangling _good_
+and _active_ people, and weaving cobwebs among the finest wheels of
+the world's business; and are as much as possible, by all prudent
+persons, to be brushed out of their way, like spiders, and the meshed
+weed that has got into the Cambridgeshire canals, and other such
+impediments to barges and business. And if we thus clear the
+metaphysical element out of modern literature, we shall find its bulk
+amazingly diminished, and the claims of the remaining writers, or of
+those whom we have thinned by this abstraction of their straw
+stuffing, much more easily adjusted.[87]
+
+� 29. Again: the mass of sentimental literature, concerned with the
+analysis and description of emotion, headed by the poetry of Byron,
+is altogether of lower rank than the literature which merely
+describes what it saw. The true Seer always feels as intensely as
+any one else; but he does not much describe his feelings. He tells
+you whom he met, and what they said; leaves you to make out, from
+that, what they feel, and what he feels, but goes into little
+detail. And, generally speaking, pathetic writing and careful
+explanation of passion are quite easy, compared with this plain
+recording of what people said or did, or with the right invention of
+what they are likely to say and do; for this reason, that to invent
+a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is
+necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in
+it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens;
+which to do requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a
+separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel
+it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or
+that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the
+feelings of somebody sitting on the other side of the table. Even,
+therefore, when this sentimental literature is first rate, as in
+passages of Byron, Tennyson, and Keats, it ought not to be ranked so
+high as the Creative; and though perfection, even in narrow fields,
+is perhaps as rare as in the wider, and it may be as long before we
+have another In Memoriam as another Guy Mannering, I unhesitatingly
+receive as a greater manifestation of power the right invention of a
+few sentences spoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their
+supper-table, than the most tender and passionate melodies of the
+self-examining verse.
+
+� 30. Having, therefore, cast metaphysical writers out of our way,
+and sentimental writers into the second rank, I do not think Scott's
+supremacy among those who remain will any more be doubtful; nor
+would it, perhaps, have been doubtful before, had it not been
+encumbered by innumerable faults and weaknesses. But it is
+preeminently in these faults and weaknesses that Scott is
+representative of the mind of his age: and because he is the
+greatest man born amongst us, and intended for the enduring type of
+us, all our principal faults must be laid on his shoulders, and he
+must bear down the dark marks to the latest ages; while the smaller
+men, who have some special work to do, perhaps not so much belonging
+to this age as leading out of it to the next, are often kept
+providentially quit of the encumbrances which they had not strength
+to sustain, and are much smoother and pleasanter to look at, in
+their way; only that is a smaller way.
+
+� 31. Thus, the most startling fault of the age being its
+faithlessness, it is necessary that its greatest man should be
+faithless. Nothing is more notable or sorrowful in Scott's mind than
+its incapacity of steady belief in anything. He cannot even resolve
+hardily to believe in a ghost, or a water-spirit; always explains
+them away in an apologetic manner, not believing, all the while,
+even his own explanation. He never can clearly ascertain whether
+there is anything behind the arras but rats; never draws sword, and
+thrusts at it for life or death; but goes on looking at it timidly,
+and saying, "it must be the wind." He is educated a Presbyterian,
+and remains one, because it is the most sensible thing he can do if
+he is to live in Edinburgh; but he thinks Romanism more picturesque,
+and profaneness more gentlemanly: does not see that anything affects
+human life but love, courage, and destiny; which are, indeed, not
+matters of faith at all, but of sight. Any gods but those are very
+misty in outline to him; and when the love is laid ghastly in poor
+Charlotte's coffin; and the courage is no more of use,--the pen
+having fallen from between the fingers; and destiny is sealing the
+scroll,--the God-light is dim in the tears that fall on it.
+
+He is in all this the epitome of his epoch.
+
+� 32. Again: as another notable weakness of the age is its habit of
+looking back, in a romantic and passionate idleness, to the past ages,
+not understanding them all the while, nor really desiring to
+understand them, so Scott gives up nearly the half of his intellectual
+power to a fond, yet purposeless, dreaming over the past, and spends
+half his literary labors in endeavors to revive it, not in reality,
+but on the stage of fiction; endeavors which were the best of the
+kind that modernism made, but still successful only so far as Scott
+put, under the old armor, the everlasting human nature which he knew;
+and totally unsuccessful, so far as concerned the painting of the
+armor itself, which he knew _not_. The excellence of Scott's work is
+precisely in proportion to the degree in which it is sketched from
+present nature. His familiar life is inimitable; his quiet scenes of
+introductory conversation, as the beginning of Rob Roy and
+Redgauntlet, and all his living Scotch characters, mean or noble, from
+Andrew Fairservice to Jeanie Deans, are simply right, and can never be
+bettered. But his romance and antiquarianism, his knighthood and
+monkery, are all false, and he knows them to be false; does not care
+to make them earnest; enjoys them for their strangeness, but laughs at
+his own antiquarianism, all through his own third novel,--with
+exquisite modesty indeed, but with total misunderstanding of the
+function of an Antiquary. He does not see how anything is to be got
+out of the past but confusion, old iron on drawingroom chairs, and
+serious inconvenience to Dr. Heavysterne.
+
+� 33. Again: more than any age that had preceded it, ours had been
+ignorant of the meaning of the word "Art." It had not a single fixed
+principle, and what unfixed principles it worked upon were all wrong.
+It was necessary that Scott should know nothing of art. He neither
+cared for painting nor sculpture, and was totally incapable of forming
+a judgment about them. He had some confused love of Gothic
+architecture, because it was dark, picturesque, old, and like nature;
+but could not tell the worst from the best, and built for himself
+perhaps the most incongruous and ugly pile that gentlemanly modernism
+ever designed; marking, in the most curious and subtle way, that
+mingling of reverence with irreverence which is so striking in the
+age; he reverences Melrose, yet casts one of its piscinas, puts a
+modern steel grate into it, and makes it his fireplace. Like all pure
+moderns, he supposes the Gothic barbarous, notwithstanding his love of
+it; admires, in an equally ignorant way, totally opposite styles; is
+delighted with the new town of Edinburgh; mistakes its dulness for
+purity of taste, and actually compares it, in its deathful formality
+of street, as contrasted with the rudeness of the old town, to
+Britomart taking off her armor.
+
+� 34. Again: as in reverence and irreverence, so in levity and
+melancholy, we saw that the spirit of the age was strangely
+interwoven. Therefore, also, it is necessary that Scott should be
+light, careless, unearnest, and yet eminently sorrowful. Throughout
+all his work there is no evidence of any purpose but to while away
+the hour. His life had no other object than the pleasure of the
+instant, and the establishing of a family name. All his thoughts
+were, in their outcome and end, less than nothing, and vanity. And
+yet, of all poetry that I know, none is so sorrowful as Scott's.
+Other great masters are pathetic in a resolute and predetermined
+way, when they choose; but, in their own minds, are evidently stern,
+or hopeful, or serene; never really melancholy. Even Byron is rather
+sulky and desperate than melancholy; Keats is sad because he is
+sickly; Shelley because he is impious; but Scott is inherently and
+consistently sad. Around all his power, and brightness, and
+enjoyment of eye and heart, the far-away �olian knell is for ever
+sounding; there is not one of those loving or laughing glances of
+his but it is brighter for the film of tears; his mind is like one
+of his own hill rivers,--it is white, and flashes in the sun fairly,
+careless, as it seems, and hasty in its going, but
+
+      "Far beneath, where slow they creep
+      From pool to eddy, dark and deep,
+      Where alders moist, and willows weep,
+          You hear her streams repine."
+
+Life begins to pass from him very early; and while Homer sings
+cheerfully in his blindness, and Dante retains his courage, and
+rejoices in hope of Paradise, through all his exile, Scott, yet
+hardly past his youth, lies pensive in the sweet sunshine and among
+the harvest of his native hills.
+
+      "Blackford, on whose uncultured breast,
+        Among the broom, and thorn, and whin,
+      A truant boy, I sought the nest,
+      Or listed as I lay at rest,
+        While rose on breezes thin
+      The murmur of the city crowd,
+      And, from his steeple jangling loud,
+        St. Giles's mingling din!
+      Now, from the summit to the plain,
+      Waves all the hill with yellow grain;
+        And on the landscape as I look,
+      Nought do I see unchanged remain,
+        Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook;
+      To me they make a heavy moan
+      Of early friendships past and gone."
+
+� 35. Such, then, being the weaknesses which it was necessary that
+Scott should share with his age, in order that he might sufficiently
+represent it, and such the grounds for supposing him, in spite of
+all these weaknesses, the greatest literary man whom that age
+produced, let us glance at the principal points in which his view of
+landscape differs from that of the medi�vals.
+
+I shall not endeavor now, as I did with Homer and Dante, to give a
+complete analysis of all the feelings which appear to be traceable
+in Scott's allusions to landscape scenery,--for this would require a
+volume,--but only to indicate the main points of differing character
+between his temper and Dante's. Then we will examine in detail, not
+the landscape of literature, but that of painting, which must, of
+course, be equally, or even in a higher degree, characteristic of
+the age.
+
+� 36. And, first, observe Scott's habit of looking at nature neither
+as dead, or merely material, in the way that Homer regards it, nor
+as altered by his own feelings, in the way that Keats and Tennyson
+regard it, but as having an animation and pathos of _its own_,
+wholly irrespective of human presence or passion,--an animation
+which Scott loves and sympathizes with, as he would with a fellow
+creature, forgetting himself altogether, and subduing his own
+humanity before what seems to him the power of the landscape.
+
+      "Yon lonely thorn,--would he could tell
+      The changes of his parent dell,
+      Since he, so grey and stubborn now,
+      Waved in each breeze a sapling bough!
+      Would he could tell, how deep the shade
+      A thousand mingled branches made,
+      How broad the shadows of the oak,
+      How clung the rowan to the rock,
+      And through the foliage showed his head,
+      With narrow leaves and berries red!"
+
+Scott does not dwell on the grey stubbornness of the thorn, because he
+himself is at that moment disposed to be dull, or stubborn; neither on
+the cheerful peeping forth of the rowan, because he himself is that
+moment cheerful or curious: but he perceives them both with the kind
+of interest that he would take in an old man, or a climbing boy;
+forgetting himself, in sympathy with either age or youth.
+
+      "And from the grassy slope he sees
+      The Greta flow to meet the Tees,
+      Where issuing from her darksome bed,
+      She caught the morning's eastern red,
+      And through the softening vale below
+      Rolled her bright waves in rosy glow,
+      All blushing to her bridal bed,
+      Like some shy maid, in convent bred;
+          While linnet, lark, and blackbird gay
+      Sing forth her nuptial roundelay."
+
+Is Scott, or are the persons of his story, gay at this moment? Far
+from it. Neither Scott nor Risingham are happy, but the Greta is;
+and all Scott's sympathy is ready for the Greta, on the instant.
+
+� 37. Observe, therefore, this is not _pathetic_ fallacy; for there
+is no passion in _Scott_ which alters nature. It is not the lover's
+passion, making him think the larkspurs are listening for his lady's
+foot; it is not the miser's passion, making him think that dead
+leaves are falling coins; but it is an inherent and continual habit
+of thought, which Scott shares with the moderns in general, being,
+in fact, nothing else than the instinctive sense which men must have
+of the Divine presence, not formed into distinct belief. In the
+Greek it created, as we saw, the faithfully believed gods of the
+elements: in Dante and the medi�vals, it formed the faithfully
+believed angelic presence; in the modern, it creates no perfect
+form, does not apprehend distinctly any Divine being or operation;
+but only a dim, slightly credited animation in the natural object,
+accompanied with great interest and affection for it. This feeling
+is quite universal with us, only varying in depth according to the
+greatness of the heart that holds it; and in Scott, being more than
+usually intense, and accompanied with infinite affection and
+quickness of sympathy, it enables him to conquer all tendencies to
+the pathetic fallacy, and, instead of making Nature anywise
+subordinate to himself, he makes himself subordinate to
+_her_--follows her lead simply--does not venture to bring his own
+cares and thoughts into her pure and quiet presence--paints her in
+her simple and universal truth, adding no result of momentary
+passion or fancy, and appears, therefore, at first shallower than
+other poets, being in reality wider and healthier. "What am I?" he
+says continually, "that I should trouble this sincere nature with my
+thoughts. I happen to be feverish and depressed, and I could see a
+great many sad and strange things in those waves and flowers; but I
+have no business to see such things. Gay Greta! sweet harebells!
+_you_ are not sad nor strange to most people; you are but bright
+water and blue blossoms; you shall not be anything else to me,
+except that I cannot help thinking you are a little alive,--no one
+can help thinking that." And thus, as Nature is bright, serene, or
+gloomy, Scott takes her temper, and paints her as she is; nothing of
+himself being ever intruded, except that far-away Eolian tone, of
+which he is unconscious; and sometimes a stray syllable or two, like
+that about Blackford Hill, distinctly stating personal feeling, but
+all the more modestly for that distinctness and for the clear
+consciousness that it is not the chiming brook, nor the cornfields,
+that are sad, but only the boy that rests by them; so returning on
+the instant to reflect, in all honesty, the image of Nature as she
+is meant by all to be received; nor that in fine words, but in the
+first that come; nor with comment of far-fetched thoughts, but with
+easy thoughts, such as all sensible men ought to have in such
+places, only spoken sweetly; and evidently also with an undercurrent
+of more profound reflection, which here and there murmurs for a
+moment, and which I think, if we choose, we may continually pierce
+down to, and drink deeply from, but which Scott leaves us to seek,
+or shun, at our pleasure.
+
+� 38. And in consequence of this unselfishness and humility, Scott's
+enjoyment of Nature is incomparably greater than that of any other
+poet I know. All the rest carry their cares to her, and begin
+maundering in her ears about their own affairs. Tennyson goes out on
+a furzy common, and sees it is calm autumn sunshine, but it gives
+him no pleasure. He only remembers that it is
+
+            "Dead calm in that noble breast
+      Which heaves but with the heaving deep."
+
+He sees a thundercloud in the evening, and _would_ have "doted and
+pored" on it, but cannot, for fear it should bring the ship bad
+weather. Keats drinks the beauty of Nature violently; but has no more
+real sympathy with her than he has with a bottle of claret. His palate
+is fine; but he "bursts joy's grape against it," gets nothing but
+misery, and a bitter taste of dregs out of his desperate draught.
+
+Byron and Shelley are nearly the same, only with less truth of
+perception, and even more troublesome selfishness. Wordsworth is more
+like Scott, and understands how to be happy, but yet cannot altogether
+rid himself of the sense that he is a philosopher, and ought always to
+be saying something wise. He has also a vague notion that Nature would
+not be able to get on well without Wordsworth; and finds a
+considerable part of his pleasure in looking at himself as well as at
+her. But with Scott the love is entirely humble and unselfish. "I,
+Scott, am nothing, and less than nothing; but these crags, and heaths,
+and clouds, how great they are, how lovely, how for ever to be
+beloved, only for their own silent, thoughtless sake!"
+
+� 39. This pure passion for nature in its abstract being, is still
+increased in its intensity by the two elements above taken notice
+of,--the love of antiquity, and the love of color and beautiful form,
+mortified in our streets, and seeking for food in the wilderness and
+the ruin: both feelings, observe, instinctive in Scott from his
+childhood, as everything that makes a man great is always.
+
+      "And well the lonely infant knew
+      Recesses where the wallflower grew,
+      And honeysuckle loved to crawl
+      Up the long crag and ruined wall.
+      I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
+      The sun in all its round surveyed."
+
+Not that these could have been instinctive in a child in the Middle
+Ages. The sentiments of a people increase or diminish in intensity
+from generation to generation,--every disposition of the parents
+affecting the frame of the mind in their offspring: the soldier's
+child is born to be yet more a soldier, and the politician's to be
+still more a politician; even the slightest colors of sentiment and
+affection are transmitted to the heirs of life; and the crowning
+expression of the mind of a people is given when some infant of
+highest capacity, and sealed with the impress of this national
+character, is born where providential circumstances permit the full
+development of the powers it has received straight from Heaven, and
+the passions which it has inherited from its fathers.
+
+� 40. This love of ancientness, and that of natural beauty,
+associate themselves also in Scott with the love of liberty, which
+was indeed at the root even of all his Jacobite tendencies in
+politics. For, putting aside certain predilections about landed
+property, and family name, and "gentlemanliness" in the club sense
+of the word,--respecting which I do not now inquire whether they
+were weak or wise,--the main element which makes Scott like
+Cavaliers better than Puritans is, that he thinks the former _free_
+and _masterful_ as well as loyal; and the latter _formal_ and
+_slavish_. He is loyal, not so much in respect for law, as in
+unselfish love for the king; and his sympathy is quite as ready for
+any active borderer who breaks the law, or fights the king, in what
+Scott thinks a generous way, as for the king himself. Rebellion of a
+rough, free, and bold kind he is always delighted by; he only
+objects to rebellion on principle and in form: bare-headed and
+open-throated treason he will abet to any extent, but shrinks from
+it in a peaked hat and starched collar: nay, politically, he only
+delights in kingship itself, because he looks upon it as the head
+and centre of liberty; and thinks that, keeping hold of a king's
+hand, one may get rid of the cramps and fences of law; and that the
+people may be governed by the whistle, as a Highland clan on the
+open hill-side, instead of being shut up into hurdled folds or
+hedged fields, as sheep or cattle left masterless.
+
+� 41. And thus nature becomes dear to Scott in a threefold way: dear
+to him, first, as containing those remains or memories of the past,
+which he cannot find in cities, and giving hope of Pr�torian mound
+or knight's grave, in every green slope and shade of its desolate
+places;--dear, secondly, in its moorland liberty, which has for him
+just as high a charm as the fenced garden had for the medi�val:
+
+      "For I was wayward, bold, and wild,
+      A self-willed imp--a grandame's child;
+      But, half a plague, and half a jest,
+      Was still endured, beloved, caressed.
+      For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask
+      The classic poet's well-conned task?
+      Nay, Erskine, nay. On the wild hill
+      Let the wild heathbell flourish still;
+      Cherish the tulip, prune the vine;
+      But freely let the woodbine twine,
+      And leave untrimmed the eglantine;"
+
+--and dear to him, finally, in that perfect beauty, denied alike in
+cities and in men, for which every modern heart had begun at last to
+thirst, and Scott's, in its freshness and power, of all men's, most
+earnestly.
+
+� 42. And in this love of beauty, observe, that (as I said we might
+except) the love of _color_ is a leading element, his healthy mind
+being incapable of losing, under any modern false teaching, its joy
+in brilliancy of hue. Though not so subtle a colorist as Dante,
+which, under the circumstances of the age, he could not be, he
+depends quite as much upon color for his power or pleasure. And, in
+general, if he does not mean to say much about things, the _one_
+character which he will give is color, using it with the most
+perfect mastery and faithfulness, up to the point of possible modern
+perception. For instance, if he has a sea-storm to paint in a single
+line, he does not, as a feebler poet would probably have done, use
+any expression about the temper or form of the waves; does not call
+them angry or mountainous. He is content to strike them out with two
+dashes of Tintoret's favorite colors:
+
+      "_The blackening wave edged with white_;
+      To inch and rock the seamews fly."
+
+There is no form in this. Nay, the main virtue of it is, that it
+gets rid of all form. The dark raging of the sea--what form has
+that? But out of the cloud of its darkness those lightning flashes
+of the foam, coming at their terrible intervals--you need no more.
+
+Again: where he has to describe tents mingled among oaks, he says
+nothing about the form of either tent or tree, but only gives the
+two strokes of color:
+
+      "Thousand pavilions, _white as snow_,
+      _Chequered_ the borough moor below,
+      Oft giving way, where still there stood
+      Some relics of the old oak wood,
+      That darkly huge did intervene,
+      _And tamed the glaring white with green_."
+
+Again: of tents at Flodden:
+
+      "Next morn the Baron climbed the tower,
+      To view, afar, the Scottish power,
+        Encamped on Flodden edge.
+      The white pavilions made a show,
+      Like remnants of the winter snow,
+        Along the dusky ridge."
+
+Again: of trees mingled with dark rocks:
+
+      "Until, where Teith's young waters roll
+      Betwixt him and a wooded knoll,
+      That graced the _sable_ strath with _green_,
+      The chapel of St. Bride was seen."
+
+Again: there is hardly any form, only smoke and color, in his
+celebrated description of Edinburgh:
+
+      "The wandering eye could o'er it go,
+      And mark the distant city glow
+        With gloomy splendor red;
+      For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,
+      That round her sable turrets flow,
+        The morning beams were shed,
+      And tinged them with a lustre proud,
+      Like that which streaks a thundercloud.
+      Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
+      Where the huge castle holds its state,
+        And all the steep slope down,
+      Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
+      Piled deep and massy, close and high,
+        Mine own romantic town!
+      But northward far with purer blaze,
+      On Ochil mountains fell the rays,
+      And as each heathy top they kissed,
+      It gleamed a purple amethyst.
+      Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;
+      Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law:
+        And, broad between them rolled,
+      The gallant Frith the eye might note,
+      Whose islands on its bosom float,
+        Like emeralds chased in gold."
+
+I do not like to spoil a fine passage by italicizing it; but
+observe, the only hints at form, given throughout, are in the
+somewhat vague words, "ridgy," "massy," "close," and "high;" the
+whole being still more obscured by modern mystery, in its most
+tangible form of smoke. But the _colors_ are all definite; note the
+rainbow band of them--gloomy or dusky red, sable (pure black),
+amethyst (pure purple), green, and gold--a noble chord throughout;
+and then, moved doubtless less by the smoky than the amethystine
+part of the group,
+
+      "Fitz Eustace' heart felt closely pent,
+      The spur he to his charger lent,
+        And raised his bridle hand.
+      And making demivolte in air,
+      Cried, 'Where's the coward would not dare
+        To fight for such a laud?'"
+
+I need not multiply examples: the reader can easily trace for
+himself, through verse familiar to us all, the force of these color
+instincts. I will therefore add only two passages, not so completely
+known by heart as most of the poems in which they occur.
+
+      "'Twas silence all. He laid him down
+      Where purple heath profusely strown,
+      And throatwort, with its azure bell,
+      And moss and thyme his cushion swell.
+      There, spent with toil, he listless eyed
+      The course of Greta's playful tide;
+      Beneath her banks, now eddying dun,
+      Now brightly gleaming to the sun,
+      As, dancing over rock and stone,
+      In yellow light her currents shone,
+      Matching in hue the favorite gem
+      Of Albin's mountain diadem.
+      Then tired to watch the current play,
+      He turned his weary eyes away
+      To where the bank opposing showed
+      Its huge square cliffs through shaggy wood.
+      One, prominent above the rest,
+      Reared to the sun its pale grey breast;
+      Around its broken summit grew
+      The hazel rude, and sable yew;
+      A thousand varied lichens dyed
+      Its waste and weather-beaten side;
+      And round its rugged basis lay,
+      By time or thunder rent away,
+      Fragments, that, from its frontlet torn,
+      Were mantled now by verdant thorn."
+
+� 43. Note, first, what an exquisite chord of color is given in the
+succession of this passage. It begins with purple and blue; then
+passes to gold, or cairngorm color (topaz color); then to _pale
+grey_, through which the yellow passes into black; and the black,
+through broken dyes of lichen, into green. Note, secondly,--what is
+indeed so manifest throughout Scott's landscape as hardly to need
+pointing out,--the love of rocks, and true understanding of their
+colors and characters, opposed as it is in every conceivable way to
+Dante's hatred and misunderstanding of them.
+
+I have already traced, in various places, most of the causes of this
+great difference: namely, first, the ruggedness of northern temper
+(compare � 8. of the chapter on the Nature of Gothic in the Stones
+of Venice); then the really greater beauty of the northern rocks, as
+noted when we were speaking of the Apennine limestone; then the need
+of finding beauty among them, if it were to be found anywhere,--no
+well-arranged colors being any more to be seen in dress, but only in
+rock lichens; and, finally, the love of irregularity, liberty, and
+power, springing up in glorious opposition to laws of prosody,
+fashion, and the five orders.
+
+� 44. The other passage I have to quote is still more interesting;
+because it has _no form_ in it _at all_ except in one word
+(chalice), but wholly composes its imagery either of color, or of
+that delicate half-believed life which we have seen to be so
+important an element in modern landscape.
+
+      "The summer dawn's reflected hue
+      _To purple changed Loch Katrine blue_;
+      Mildly and soft the western breeze
+      Just kissed the lake; just stirred the trees;
+      _And the pleased lake, like maiden coy_,
+      _Trembled, but dimpled not, for joy_;
+      The mountain-shadows on her breast
+      Were neither broken nor at rest;
+      In bright uncertainty they lie,
+      Like future joys to Fancy's eye.
+      The water-lily to the light
+      Her chalice reared of silver bright:
+      The doe awoke, and to the lawn,
+      Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn;
+      The grey mist left the mountain side;
+      The torrent showed its glistening pride;
+      Invisible in fl�cked sky,
+      The lark sent down her revelry;
+      The blackbird and the speckled thrush
+      Good-morrow gave from brake and bush;
+      In answer cooed the cushat dove
+      Her notes of peace, and rest, and love."
+
+Two more considerations are, however, suggested by the above
+passage. The first, that the love of natural history, excited by the
+continual attention now given to all wild landscape, heightens
+reciprocally the interest of that landscape, and becomes an
+important element in Scott's description, leading him to finish,
+down to the minutest speckling of breast, and slightest shade of
+attributed emotion, the portraiture of birds and animals; in strange
+opposition to Homer's slightly named "sea-crows, who have care of
+the works of the sea," and Dante's singing-birds, of undefined
+species. Compare carefully a passage, too long to be quoted,--the
+2nd and 3rd stanzas of canto VI. of Rokeby.
+
+� 45. The second, and the last point I have to note, is Scott's
+habit of drawing a slight _moral_ from every scene, just enough to
+excuse to his conscience his want of definite religious feeling; and
+that this slight moral is almost always melancholy. Here he has
+stopped short without entirely expressing it--
+
+      "The mountain shadows ...
+                              ... lie
+      Like future joys to Fancy's eye."
+
+His completed thought would be, that those future joys, like the
+mountain shadows, were never to be attained. It occurs fully uttered
+in many other places. He seems to have been constantly rebuking his
+own worldly pride and vanity, but never purposefully:
+
+      "The foam-globes on her eddies ride,
+      Thick as the schemes of human pride
+      That down life's current drive amain,
+      As frail, as frothy, and as vain."
+
+      "Foxglove, and nightshade, side by side,
+      Emblems of punishment and pride."
+
+      "Her dark eye flashed; she paused and sighed;--
+      'Ah, what have I to do with pride!'"
+
+And hear the thought he gathers from the sunset (noting first the
+Turnerian color,--as usual, its principal element):
+
+      "The sultry summer day is done.
+      The western hills have hid the sun,
+      But mountain peak and village spire
+      Retain reflection of his fire.
+      Old Barnard's towers are purple still,
+      To those that gaze from Toller Hill;
+      Distant and high the tower of Bowes
+      Like steel upon the anvil glows;
+      And Stanmore's ridge, behind that lay,
+      Rich with the spoils of parting day,
+      In crimson and in gold arrayed,
+      Streaks yet awhile the closing shade;
+      Then slow resigns to darkening heaven
+      The tints which brighter hours had given
+      Thus, aged men, full loth and slow,
+      The vanities of life forego,
+      And count their youthful follies o'er
+      Till Memory lends her light no more."
+
+That is, as far as I remember, one of the most finished pieces of
+sunset he has given; and it has a woful moral; yet one which, with
+Scott, is inseparable from the scene.
+
+Hark, again:
+
+      "'Twere sweet to mark the setting day
+      On Bourhope's lonely top decay;
+      And, as it faint and feeble died
+      On the broad lake and mountain's side,
+      To say, 'Thus pleasures fade away;
+      Youth, talents, beauty, thus decay,
+      And leave us dark, forlorn, and grey.'"
+
+And again, hear Bertram:
+
+      "Mine be the eve of tropic sun:
+      With disk like battle target red,
+      He rushes to his burning bed,
+      Dyes the wide wave with bloody light,
+      Then sinks at once; and all is night."
+
+In all places of this kind, where a passing thought is suggested by
+some external scene, that thought is at once a slight and sad one.
+Scott's deeper moral sense is marked in the _conduct_ of his
+stories, and in casual reflections or exclamations arising out of
+their plot, and therefore sincerely uttered; as that of Marmion:
+
+      "Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
+      When first we practise to deceive!"
+
+But the reflections which are founded, not on events, but on scenes,
+are, for the most part, shallow, partly insincere, and, as far as
+sincere, sorrowful. This habit of ineffective dreaming and moralizing
+over passing scenes, of which the earliest type I know is given in
+Jaques, is, as aforesaid, usually the satisfaction made to our modern
+consciences for the want of a sincere acknowledgment of God in nature:
+and Shakspere has marked it as the characteristic of a mind "compact
+of jars" (Act II. Sc. VII., As You Like It). That description attaches
+but too accurately to all the moods which we have traced in the
+moderns generally, and in Scott as the first representative of them;
+and the question now is, what this love of landscape, so composed, is
+likely to lead us to, and what use can be made of it.
+
+We began our investigation, it will be remembered, in order to
+determine whether landscape-painting was worth studying or not. We
+have now reviewed the three principal phases of temper in the
+civilized human race, and we find that landscape has been mostly
+disregarded by great men, or cast into a second place, until now;
+and that now it seems dear to us, partly in consequence of our
+faults, and partly owing to accidental circumstances, soon, in all
+likelihood, to pass away: and there seems great room for question
+still, whether our love of it is a permanent and healthy feeling, or
+only a healthy crisis in a generally diseased state of mind. If the
+former, society will for ever hereafter be affected by its results;
+and Turner, the first great landscape painter, must take a place in
+the history of nations corresponding in art accurately to that of
+Bacon in philosophy;--Bacon having first opened the study of the
+laws of material nature, when, formerly, men had thought only of the
+laws of human mind; and Turner having first opened the study of the
+aspect of material nature, when, before, men had thought only of the
+aspect of the human form. Whether, therefore, the love of landscape
+be trivial and transient, or important and permanent, it now becomes
+necessary to consider. We have, I think, data enough before us for
+the solution of the question, and we will enter upon it,
+accordingly, in the following chapter.
+
+  [84] Pre-Raphaelitism, of course, excepted, which is a new phase
+       of art, in no wise considered in this chapter. Blake was
+       sincere, but full of wild creeds, and somewhat diseased in
+       brain.
+
+  [85] Of course this is only meant of the modern citizen or country
+       gentleman, as compared with a citizen of Sparta or old
+       Florence. I leave it to others to say whether the "neglect of
+       the _art_ of war" may or may not, in a yet more fatal sense,
+       be predicated of the English nation. War, _without_ art, we
+       seem, with God's help, able still to wage nobly.
+
+  [86] See David Copperfield, chap. lv. and lviii.
+
+  [87] Observe, I do not speak thus of metaphysics because I have no
+       pleasure in them. When I speak contemptuously of philology,
+       it may be answered me, that I am a bad scholar; but I cannot
+       be so answered touching metaphysics, for every one conversant
+       with such subjects may see that I have strong inclination
+       that way, which would, indeed, have led me far astray long
+       ago, if I had not learned also some use of my hands, eyes,
+       and feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE.
+
+
+� 1. SUPPOSING then the preceding conclusions correct, respecting
+the grounds and component _elements_ of the pleasure which the
+moderns take in landscape, we have here to consider what are the
+probable or usual _effects_ of this pleasure. Is it a safe or a
+seductive one? May we wisely boast of it, and unhesitatingly indulge
+it? or is it rather a sentiment to be despised when it is slight,
+and condemned when it is intense; a feeling which disinclines us to
+labor, and confuses us in thought; a joy only to the inactive and
+the visionary, incompatible with the duties of life, and the
+accuracies of reflection?
+
+� 2. It seems to me that, as matters stand at present, there is
+considerable ground for the latter opinion. We saw, in the preceding
+chapter, that our love of nature had been partly forced upon us by
+mistakes in our social economy, and led to no distinct issues of
+action or thought. And when we look to Scott--the man who feels it
+most deeply--for some explanation of its effect upon him, we find a
+curious tone of apology (as if for involuntary folly) running
+through his confessions of such sentiment, and a still more curious
+inability to define, beyond a certain point, the character of this
+emotion. He has lost the company of his friends among the hills, and
+turns to these last for comfort. He says, "there is a pleasure in
+the pain" consisting in such thoughts
+
+        "As oft awake
+      By lone St. Mary's silent lake;"
+
+but, when we look for some definition of these thoughts, all that we
+are told is, that they compose
+
+      "A mingled sentiment
+      Of resignation and content!"[88]
+
+a sentiment which, I suppose, many people can attain to on the loss
+of their friends, without the help of lakes or mountains; while
+Wordsworth definitely and positively affirms that _thought_ has
+nothing whatever to do with the matter, and that though, in his
+youth, the cataract and wood "haunted him like a passion," it was
+without the help of any "remoter charm, by thought supplied."
+
+� 3. There is not, however, any question, but that both Scott and
+Wordsworth are here mistaken in their analysis of their feelings.
+Their delight, so far from being without thought, is more than half
+made up of thought, but of thought in so curiously languid and
+neutralized a condition that they cannot trace it. The thoughts are
+beaten to a powder so small that they know not what they are; they
+know only that in such a state they are not good for much, and
+disdain to call them thoughts. But the way in which thought, even
+thus broken, acts in producing the delight will be understood by
+glancing back to �� 9. and 10. of the tenth chapter, in which we
+observed the power of the imagination in exalting any visible
+object, by gathering round it, in farther vision, all the facts
+properly connected with it; this being, as it were, a spiritual or
+second sight, multiplying the power of enjoyment according to the
+fulness of the vision. For, indeed, although in all lovely nature
+there is, first, an excellent degree of simple beauty, addressed to
+the eye alone, yet often what impresses us most will form but a very
+small portion of that visible beauty. That beauty may, for instance,
+be composed of lovely flowers and glittering streams, and blue sky,
+and white clouds; and yet the thing that impresses us most, and
+which we should be sorriest to lose, may be a thin grey film on the
+extreme horizon, not so large, in the space of the scene it
+occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near at hand bush, nor in any
+wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but, because the
+gossamer is known by us for a little bit of spider's work, and the
+other grey film is known to mean a mountain ten thousand feet high,
+inhabited by a race of noble mountaineers, we are solemnly impressed
+by the aspect of it; and yet, all the while the thoughts and
+knowledge which cause us to receive this impression are so obscure
+that we are not conscious of them; we think we are only enjoying the
+visible scene; and the very men whose minds are fullest of such
+thoughts absolutely deny, as we have just heard, that they owe their
+pleasure to anything but the eye, or that the pleasure consists in
+anything else than "Tranquillity."
+
+� 4. And observe, farther, that this comparative Dimness and
+Untraceableness of the thoughts which are the sources of our
+admiration, is not a _fault_ in the thoughts, at such a time. It is,
+on the contrary, a necessary condition of their subordination to the
+pleasure of Sight. If the thoughts were more distinct we should not
+_see_ so well; and beginning definitely to think, we must
+comparatively cease to see. In the instance just supposed, as long as
+we look at the film of mountain or Alp, with only an obscure
+consciousness of its being the source of mighty rivers, that
+consciousness adds to our sense of its sublimity; and if we have ever
+seen the Rhine or the Rhone near their mouths, our knowledge, so long
+as it is only obscurely suggested, adds to our admiration of the Alp;
+but once let the idea define itself,--once let us begin to consider
+seriously _what_ rivers flow from that mountain, to trace their
+course, and to recall determinately our memories of their distant
+aspects,--and we cease to behold the Alp; or, if we still behold it,
+it is only as a point in a map which we are painfully designing, or as
+a subordinate object which we strive to thrust aside, in order to make
+room for our remembrances of Avignon or Rotterdam.
+
+Again: so long as our idea of the multitudes who inhabit the ravines
+at its foot remains indistinct, that idea comes to the aid of all
+the other associations which increase our delight. But let it once
+arrest us, and entice us to follow out some clear course of thought
+respecting the causes of the prosperity or misfortune of the Alpine
+villagers, and the snowy peak again ceases to be visible, or holds
+its place only as a white spot upon the retina, while we pursue our
+meditations upon the religion or the political economy of the
+mountaineers.
+
+� 5. It is thus evident that a curiously balanced condition of the
+powers of mind is necessary to induce full admiration of any natural
+scene. Let those powers be themselves inert, and the mind vacant of
+knowledge, and destitute of sensibility, and the external object
+becomes little more to us than it is to birds or insects; we fall
+into the temper of the clown. On the other hand, let the reasoning
+powers be shrewd in excess, the knowledge vast, or sensibility
+intense, and it will go hard but that the visible object will
+suggest so much that it shall be soon itself forgotten, or become,
+at the utmost, merely a kind of key-note to the course of purposeful
+thought. Newton, probably, did not perceive whether the apple which
+suggested his meditations on gravity was withered or rosy; nor could
+Howard be affected by the picturesqueness of the architecture which
+held the sufferers it was his occupation to relieve.
+
+� 6. This wandering away in thought from the thing seen to the
+business of life, is not, however, peculiar to men of the highest
+reasoning powers, or most active benevolence. It takes place more or
+less in nearly all persons of average mental endowment. They see and
+love what is beautiful, but forget their admiration of it in
+following some train of thought which it suggested, and which is of
+more personal interest to them. Suppose that three or four persons
+come in sight of a group of pine-trees, not having seen pines for
+some time. One, perhaps an engineer, is struck by the manner in
+which their roots hold the ground, and sets himself to examine their
+fibres, in a few minutes retaining little more consciousness of the
+beauty of the trees than if he were a rope-maker untwisting the
+strands of a cable: to another, the sight of the trees calls up some
+happy association, and presently he forgets them, and pursues the
+memories they summoned: a third is struck by certain groupings of
+their colors, useful to him as an artist, which he proceeds
+immediately to note mechanically for future use, with as little
+feeling as a cook setting down the constituents of a newly
+discovered dish; and a fourth, impressed by the wild coiling of
+boughs and roots, will begin to change them in his fancy into
+dragons and monsters, and lose his grasp of the scene in fantastic
+metamorphosis: while, in the mind of the man who has most the power
+of contemplating the thing itself, all these perceptions and trains
+of idea are partially present, not distinctly, but in a mingled and
+perfect harmony. He will not see the colors of the tree so well as
+the artist, nor its fibres so well as the engineer; he will not
+altogether share the emotion of the sentimentalist, nor the trance
+of the idealist; but fancy, and feeling, and perception, and
+imagination, will all obscurely meet and balance themselves in him,
+and he will see the pine-trees somewhat in this manner:
+
+          "Worthier still of note
+      Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
+      Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
+      Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
+      Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
+      Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;
+      Nor uniformed with Phantasy, and looks
+      That threaten the profane; a pillared shade,
+      Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
+      By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
+      Perennially,--beneath whose sable roof
+      Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
+      With unrejoicing berries, ghostly Shapes
+      May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,
+      Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,
+      And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,
+      As in a natural temple scattered o'er
+      With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
+      United worship."
+
+� 7. The power, therefore, of thus fully _perceiving_ any natural
+object depends on our being able to group and fasten all our fancies
+about it as a centre, making a garland of thoughts for it, in which
+each separate thought is subdued and shortened of its own strength,
+in order to fit it for harmony with others; the intensity of our
+enjoyment of the object depending, first, on its own beauty, and
+then on the richness of the garland. And men who have this habit of
+clustering and harmonizing their thoughts are a little too apt to
+look scornfully upon the harder workers who tear the bouquet to
+pieces to examine the stems. This was the chief narrowness of
+Wordsworth's mind; he could not understand that to break a rock with
+a hammer in search of crystal may sometimes be an act not
+disgraceful to human nature, and that to dissect a flower may
+sometimes be as proper as to dream over it; whereas all experience
+goes to teach us, that among men of average intellect the most
+useful members of society are the dissectors, not the dreamers. It
+is not that they love nature or beauty less, but that they love
+result, effect, and progress more; and when we glance broadly along
+the starry crowd of benefactors to the human race, and guides of
+human thought, we shall find that this dreaming love of natural
+beauty--or at least its expression--has been more or less checked by
+them all, and subordinated either to hard work or watching of
+_human_ nature. Thus in all the classical and medi�val periods, it
+was, as we have seen, subordinate to agriculture, war, and religion;
+and in the modern period, in which it has become far more powerful,
+observe in what persons it is chiefly manifested.
+
+  (1.) It is subordinate in        (2.) It is intense in
+          Bacon.                       Mrs. Radclyffe.
+          Milton.                      St. Pierre.
+          Johnson.                     Shenstone.
+          Richardson.                  Byron.
+          Goldsmith.                   Shelley.
+          Young.                       Keats.
+          Newton.                      Burns.
+          Howard.                      Eugene Sue.
+          Fenelon.                     George Sand.
+          Pascal.                      Dumas.
+
+� 8. I have purposely omitted the names of Wordsworth, Tennyson, and
+Scott, in the second list, because, glancing at the two columns as
+they now stand, we may, I think, draw some useful conclusions from
+the high honorableness and dignity of the names on one side, and the
+comparative slightness of those on the other,--conclusions which may
+help us to a better understanding of Scott and Tennyson themselves.
+Glancing, I say, down those columns in their present form, we shall
+at once perceive that the intense love of nature is, in modern
+times, characteristic of persons not of the first order of
+intellect, but of brilliant imagination, quick sympathy, and
+undefined religious principle, suffering also usually under strong
+and ill-governed passions: while in the same individual it will be
+found to vary at different periods, being, for the most part,
+strongest in youth, and associated with force of emotion, and with
+indefinite and feeble powers of thought; also, throughout life,
+perhaps developing itself most at times when the mind is slightly
+unhinged by love, grief, or some other of the passions.
+
+� 9. But, on the other hand, while these feelings of delight in
+natural objects cannot be construed into signs of the highest
+mental powers, or purest moral principles, we see that they are
+assuredly indicative of minds above the usual standard of power, and
+endowed with sensibilities of great preciousness to humanity; so
+that those who find themselves entirely destitute of them, must make
+this want a subject of humiliation, not of pride. The apathy which
+cannot perceive beauty is very different from the stern energy which
+disdains it; and the coldness of heart which receives no emotion
+from external nature, is not to be confounded with the wisdom of
+purpose which represses emotion in action. In the case of most men,
+it is neither acuteness of the reason, nor breadth of humanity,
+which shields them from the impressions of natural scenery, but
+rather low anxieties, vain discontents, and mean pleasures; and for
+one who is blinded to the works of God by profound abstraction or
+lofty purpose, tens of thousands have their eyes sealed by vulgar
+selfishness, and their intelligence crushed by impious care.
+
+Observe, then: we have, among mankind in general, the three orders
+of being;--the lowest, sordid and selfish, which neither sees nor
+feels; the second, noble and sympathetic, but which sees and feels
+without concluding or acting; the third and highest, which loses
+sight in resolution, and feeling in work.[89]
+
+Thus, even in Scott and Wordsworth themselves, the love of nature
+is more or less associated with their weaknesses. Scott shows it
+most in the cruder compositions of his youth, his perfect powers of
+mind being displayed only in dialogues with which description has
+nothing whatever to do. Wordsworth's distinctive work was a war with
+pomp and pretence, and a display of the majesty of simple feelings
+and humble hearts, together with high reflective truth in his
+analysis of the courses of politics and ways of men; without these,
+his love of nature would have been comparatively worthless.
+
+� 10. "If this be so, it is not well to encourage the observance of
+landscape, any more than other ways of dreamily and ineffectually
+spending time?"
+
+Stay a moment. We have hitherto observed this love of natural beauty
+only as it distinguishes one man from another, not as it acts for
+good or evil on those minds to which it necessarily belongs. It may,
+on the whole, distinguish weaker men from stronger men, and yet in
+those weaker men may be of some notable use. It may distinguish
+Byron from St. Bernard, and Shelley from Sir Isaac Newton, and yet
+may, perhaps, be the best thing that Byron and Shelley possess--a
+saving element in them; just as a rush may be distinguished from an
+oak by its bending, and yet the bending may be the saving element
+in the rush, and an admirable gift in its place and way. So that,
+although St. Bernard journeys all day by the Lake of Geneva, and
+asks at evening "where it is," and Byron learns by it "to love earth
+only for its earthly sake,"[90] it does not follow that Byron,
+hating men, was the worse for loving the earth, nor that St.
+Bernard, loving men, was the better or wiser for being blind to it.
+And this will become still more manifest if we examine somewhat
+farther into the nature of this instinct, as characteristic
+especially of youth.
+
+� 11. We saw above that Wordsworth described the feeling as
+independent of thought, and, in the particular place then quoted, he
+_therefore_ speaks of it depreciatingly. But in other places he does
+not speak of it depreciatingly, but seems to think the absence of
+thought involves a certain nobleness:
+
+          "In such high hour
+      Of visitation from the living God
+      _Thought_ was not."
+
+And he refers to the intense delight which he himself felt, and
+which he supposes other men feel, in nature, during their
+thoughtless youth, as an intimation of their immortality, and a joy
+which indicates their having come fresh from the hand of God.
+
+Now, if Wordsworth be right in supposing this feeling to be in some
+degree common to all men, and most vivid in youth, we may question if
+it can be _entirely_ explained as I have now tried to explain it. For
+if it entirely depended on multitudes of ideas, clustering about a
+beautiful object, it might seem that the youth could not feel it so
+strongly as the man, because the man knows more, and must have more
+ideas to make the garland of. Still less can we suppose the pleasure
+to be of that melancholy and languid kind, which Scott defines as
+"Resignation" and "Content;" boys being not distinguished for either
+of those characters, but for eager effort and delightsome discontent.
+If Wordsworth is at all right in this matter, therefore, there must
+surely be some other element in the feeling not yet detected.
+
+� 12. Now, in a question of this subtle kind, relating to a period
+of life when self-examination is rare, and expression imperfect, it
+becomes exceedingly difficult to trace, with any certainty, the
+movements of the minds of others, nor always easy to remember those
+of our own. I cannot, from observation, form any decided opinion as
+to the extent in which this strange delight in nature influences the
+hearts of young persons in general; and, in stating what has passed
+in my own mind, I do not mean to draw any positive conclusion as to
+the nature of the feeling in other children; but the inquiry is
+clearly one in which personal experience is the only safe ground to
+go upon, though a narrow one; and I will make no excuse for talking
+about myself with reference to this subject, because, though there
+is much egotism in the world, it is often the last thing a man
+thinks of doing,--and, though there is much work to be done in the
+world, it is often the best thing a man can do,--to tell the exact
+truth about the movements of his own mind; and there is this farther
+reason, that, whatever other faculties I may or may not possess,
+this gift of taking pleasure in landscape I assuredly possess in a
+greater degree than most men; it having been the ruling passion of
+my life, and the reason for the choice of its field of labor.
+
+� 13. The first thing which I remember as an event in life, was being
+taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar's Crag on Derwentwater; the
+intense joy, mingled with awe, that I had in looking through the
+hollows in the mossy roots, over the crag, into the dark lake, has
+associated itself more or less with all twining roots of trees ever
+since. Two other things I remember, as, in a sort, beginnings of
+life;--crossing Shapfells (being let out of the chaise to run up the
+hills), and going through Glenfarg, near Kinross, in a winter's
+morning, when the rocks where hung with icicles; these being
+culminating points in an early life of more travelling than is usually
+indulged to a child. In such journeyings, whenever they brought me
+near hills, and in all mountain ground and scenery, I had a pleasure,
+as early as I can remember, and continuing till I was eighteen or
+twenty, infinitely greater than any which has been since possible to
+me in anything; comparable for intensity only to the joy of a lover in
+being near a noble and kind mistress, but no more explicable or
+definable than that feeling of love itself. Only thus much I can
+remember, respecting it, which is important to our present subject.
+
+� 14. First: it was never independent of associated thought. Almost
+as soon as I could see or hear, I had got reading enough to give me
+associations with all kinds of scenery; and mountains, in
+particular, were always partly confused with those of my favorite
+book, Scott's Monastery; so that Glenfarg and all other glens were
+more or less enchanted to me, filled with forms of hesitating creed
+about Christie of the Clint Hill, and the monk Eustace; and with a
+general presence of White Lady everywhere. I also generally knew, or
+was told by my father and mother, such simple facts of history as
+were necessary to give more definite and justifiable association to
+other scenes which chiefly interested me, such as the ruins of
+Lochleven and Kenilworth; and thus my pleasure in mountains or ruins
+was never, even in earliest childhood, free from a certain awe and
+melancholy, and general sense of the meaning of death, though in its
+principal influence, entirely exhilarating and gladdening.
+
+� 15. Secondly: it was partly dependent on contrast with a very
+simple and unamused mode of general life; I was born in London, and
+accustomed, for two or three years, to no other prospect than that
+of the brick walls over the way; had no brothers, nor sisters, nor
+companions; and though I could always make myself happy in a quiet
+way, the beauty of the mountains had an additional charm of change
+and adventure which a country-bred child would not have felt.
+
+� 16. Thirdly: there was no definite religious feeling mingled with
+it. I partly believed in ghosts and fairies; but supposed that
+angels belonged entirely to the Mosaic dispensation, and cannot
+remember any single thought or feeling connected with them. I
+believed that God was in heaven, and could hear me and see me; but
+this gave me neither pleasure nor pain, and I seldom thought of it
+at all. I never thought of nature as God's work, but as a separate
+fact or existence.
+
+� 17. Fourthly: it was entirely unaccompanied by powers of
+reflection or invention. Every fancy that I had about nature was put
+into my head by some book; and I never reflected about anything till
+I grew older; and then, the more I reflected, the less nature was
+precious to me: I could then make myself happy, by thinking, in the
+dark, or in the dullest scenery; and the beautiful scenery became
+less essential to my pleasure.
+
+� 18. Fifthly: it was, according to its strength, inconsistent with
+every evil feeling, with spite, anger, covetousness, discontent, and
+every other hateful passion; but would associate itself deeply with
+every just and noble sorrow, joy, or affection. It had not, however,
+always the power to repress what was inconsistent with it; and,
+though only after stout contention, might at last be crushed by what
+it had partly repressed. And as it only acted by setting one impulse
+against another, though it had much power in moulding the character,
+it had hardly any in strengthening it; it formed temperament, but
+never instilled principle; it kept me generally good-humored and
+kindly, but could not teach me perseverance or self-denial: what
+firmness or principle I had was quite independent of it; and it came
+itself nearly as often in the form of a temptation as of a
+safeguard, leading me to ramble over hills when I should have been
+learning lessons, and lose days in reveries which I might have spent
+in doing kindnesses.
+
+� 19. Lastly: although there was no definite religious sentiment
+mingled with it, there was a continual perception of Sanctity in the
+whole of nature, from the slightest thing to the vastest:--an
+instinctive awe, mixed with delight; an indefinable thrill, such as
+we sometimes imagine to indicate the presence of a disembodied
+spirit. I could only feel this perfectly when I was alone; and then
+it would often make me shiver from head to foot with the joy and
+fear of it, when after being some time away from the hills, I first
+got to the shore of a mountain river, where the brown water circled
+among the pebbles, or when I saw the first swell of distant land
+against the sunset, or the first low broken wall, covered with
+mountain moss. I cannot in the least _describe_ the feeling; but I
+do not think this is my fault, nor that of the English language,
+for, I am afraid, no feeling _is_ describable. If we had to explain
+even the sense of bodily hunger to a person who had never felt it,
+we should be hard put to it for words; and this joy in nature seemed
+to me to come of a sort of heart-hunger, satisfied with the presence
+of a Great and Holy Spirit. These feelings remained in their full
+intensity till I was eighteen or twenty, and then, as the reflective
+and practical power increased, and the "cares of this world" gained
+upon me, faded gradually away, in the manner described by Wordsworth
+in his Intimations of Immortality.
+
+� 20. I cannot, of course, tell how far I am justified in supposing
+that these sensations may be reasoned upon as common to children in
+general. In the same degree they are not of course common, otherwise
+children would be, most of them, very different from what they are
+in their choice of pleasures. But, as far as such feelings exist, I
+apprehend they are more or less similar in their nature and
+influence; only producing different characters according to the
+elements with which they are mingled. Thus, a very religious child
+may give up many pleasures to which its instincts lead it, for the
+sake of irksome duties; and an inventive child would mingle its love
+of nature with watchfulness of human sayings and doings: but I
+believe the feelings I have endeavored to describe are the pure
+landscape-instinct; and the likelihoods of good or evil resulting
+from them may be reasoned upon as generally indicating the
+usefulness or danger of the modern love and study of landscape.
+
+� 21. And, first, observe that the charm of romantic association (�
+14.) can be felt only by the modern European child. It rises
+eminently out of the contrast of the beautiful past with the
+frightful and monotonous present; and it depends for its force on
+the existence of ruins and traditions, on the remains of
+architecture, the traces of battlefields, and the precursorship of
+eventful history. The instinct to which it appeals can hardly be
+felt in America, and every day that either beautifies our present
+architecture and dress, or overthrows a stone of medi�val monument,
+contributes to weaken it in Europe. Of its influence on the mind of
+Turner and Prout, and the permanent results which, through them, it
+is likely to effect, I shall have to speak presently.
+
+� 22. Again: the influence of surprise in producing the delight, is
+to be noted as a suspicious or evanescent element in it. Observe, my
+pleasure was chiefly (� 19.) when I _first_ got into beautiful
+scenery, out of London. The enormous influence of novelty--the way
+in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts
+sentiment--is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a
+very sorrowful matter. I think that what Wordsworth speaks of as a
+glory in the child, because it has come fresh from God's hands, is
+in reality nothing more than the freshness of all things to its
+newly opened sight. I find that by keeping long away from hills, I
+can in great part still restore the old childish feeling about them;
+and the more I live and work among them, the more it vanishes.
+
+� 23. This evil is evidently common to all minds; Wordsworth himself
+mourning over it in the same poem:
+
+      "Custom hangs upon us, with a weight
+      Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life."
+
+And if we grow impatient under it, and seek to recover the mental
+energy by more quickly repeated and brighter novelty, it is all over
+with our enjoyment. There is no cure for this evil, any more than for
+the weariness of the imagination already described, but in patience
+and rest: if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will
+become monotonous; and then we are reduced to that old despair, "If
+water chokes, what will you drink after it?" And the two points of
+practical wisdom in this matter are, first, to be content with as
+little novelty as possible at a time; and, secondly, to preserve, as
+much as possible in the world, the sources of novelty.
+
+� 24. I say, first, to be content with as little change as possible.
+If the attention is awake, and the feelings in proper train, a turn
+of a country road, with a cottage beside it, which we have not seen
+before, is as much as we need for refreshment; if we hurry past it,
+and take two cottages at a time, it is already too much: hence, to
+any person who has all his senses about him, a quiet walk along not
+more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, is the most amusing of
+all travelling; and all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion
+to its rapidity. Going by railroad I do not consider as travelling
+at all; it is merely "being sent" to a place, and very little
+different from becoming a parcel; the next step to it would of
+course be telegraphic transport, of which, however, I suppose it has
+been truly said by Octave Feuillet,
+
+    "_Il y aurait des gens assez b�tes_ pour trouver �a amusant."[91]
+
+If we walk more than ten or twelve miles, it breaks up the day too
+much; leaving no time for stopping at the stream sides or shady
+banks, or for any work at the end of the day; besides that the last
+few miles are apt to be done in a hurry, and may then be considered
+as lost ground. But if, advancing thus slowly, after some days we
+approach any more interesting scenery, every yard of the changeful
+ground becomes precious and piquant; and the continual increase of
+hope, and of surrounding beauty, affords one of the most exquisite
+enjoyments possible to the healthy mind; besides that real knowledge
+is acquired of whatever it is the object of travelling to learn, and
+a certain sublimity given to all places, so attained, by the true
+sense of the spaces of earth that separate them. A man who really
+loves travelling would as soon consent to pack a day of such
+happiness into an hour of railroad, as one who loved eating would
+agree, if it were possible, to concentrate his dinner into a pill.
+
+� 25. And, secondly, I say that it is wisdom to preserve as much as
+possible the innocent _sources_ of novelty;--not definite
+inferiorities of one place to another, if such can be done away; but
+differences of manners and customs, of language and architecture. The
+greatest effort ought especially to be made by all wise and
+far-sighted persons, in the present crisis of civilization, to enforce
+the distinction between wholesome reform, and heartless abandonment of
+ancestral custom; between kindly fellowship of nation with nation, and
+ape-like adoption, by one, of the habits of another. It is ludicrously
+awful to see the luxurious inhabitants of London and Paris rushing
+over the Continent (as they say, to _see_ it), and transposing every
+place, as far as lies in their power, instantly into a likeness of
+Regent Street and the Rue de la Paix, which they need not certainly
+have come so far to see. Of this evil I shall have more to say
+hereafter; meantime I return to our main subject.
+
+� 26. The next character we have to note in the landscape-instinct
+(and on this much stress is to be laid), is its total inconsistency
+with all evil passion; its absolute contrariety (whether in the
+contest it were crushed or not) to all care, hatred, envy, anxiety,
+and moroseness. A feeling of this kind is assuredly not one to be
+lightly repressed, or treated with contempt.
+
+But how, if it be so, the reader asks, can it be characteristic of
+passionate and unprincipled men, like Byron, Shelley, and such
+others, and not characteristic of the noblest and most highly
+principled men?
+
+First, because it is itself a passion, and therefore likely to be
+characteristic of passionate men. Secondly, because it is (� 18)
+wholly a separate thing from moral principle, and may or may not be
+joined to strength of will, or rectitude of purpose[92]; only, this
+much is always observable in the men whom it characterizes, that,
+whatever their faults or failings, they always understand and love
+noble qualities of character; they can conceive (if not certain
+phases of piety), at all events, self-devotion of the highest kind;
+they delight in all that is good, gracious, and noble; and though
+warped often to take delight also in what is dark or degraded, that
+delight is mixed with bitter self-reproach; or else is wanton,
+careless, or affected, while their delight in noble things is
+constant and sincere.
+
+� 27. Look back to the two lists given above, � 7. I have not lately
+read anything by Mrs. Radclyffe or George Sand, and cannot,
+therefore, take instances from them; Keats hardly introduced human
+character into his work; but glance over the others, and note the
+general tone of their conceptions. Take St. Pierre's Virginia,
+Byron's Myrrha, Angiolina, and Marina, and Eugene Sue's Fleur de
+Marie; and out of the other lists you will only be able to find
+Pamela, Clementina, and, I suppose, Clarissa,[93] to put beside
+them; and these will not more than match Myrrha and Marina; leaving
+Fleur de Marie and Virginia rivalless. Then meditate a little, with
+all justice and mercy, over the two groups of names; and I think you
+will, at last, feel that there is a pathos and tenderness of heart
+among the lovers of nature in the second list, of which it is nearly
+impossible to estimate either the value or the danger; that the
+sterner consistency of the men in the first may, in great part, have
+arisen only from the, to them, most merciful, appointment of having
+had religious teaching or disciplined education in their youth;
+while their want of love for nature, whether that love be originally
+absent, or artificially repressed, is to none of them an advantage.
+Johnson's indolence, Goldsmith's improvidence, Young's worldliness,
+Milton's severity, and Bacon's servility, might all have been less,
+if they could in any wise have sympathized with Byron's lonely joy
+in a Jura storm,[94] or with Shelley's interest in floating paper
+boats down the Serchio.
+
+� 28. And then observe, farther, as I kept the names of Wordsworth
+and Scott out of the second list, I withdrew, also, certain names
+from the first; and for this reason, that in all the men who are
+named in that list, there is evidently _some_ degree of love for
+nature, which may have been originally of more power than we
+suppose, and may have had an infinitely hallowing and protective
+influence upon them. But there also lived certain men of high
+intellect in that age who had _no_ love of nature whatever. They do
+not appear ever to have received the smallest sensation of ocular
+delight from any natural scene, but would have lived happily all
+their lives in drawingrooms or studies. And, therefore, in these men
+we shall be able to determine, with the greatest chance of accuracy,
+what the real influence of natural beauty is, and what the character
+of a mind destitute of its love. Take, as conspicuous instances, Le
+Sage and Smollett, and you will find, in meditating over their
+works, that they are utterly incapable of conceiving a human soul as
+endowed with any nobleness whatever; their heroes are simply beasts
+endowed with some degree of human intellect;--cunning, false,
+passionate, reckless, ungrateful, and abominable, incapable of noble
+joy, of noble sorrow, of any spiritual perception or hope. I said,
+"beasts with human intellect;" but neither Gil Blas nor Roderick
+Random reach, morally, anything near the level of dogs; while the
+delight which the writers themselves feel in mere filth and pain,
+with an unmitigated foulness and cruelty of heart, is just as
+manifest in every sentence as the distress and indignation which
+with pain and injustice are seen by Shelley and Byron.
+
+� 29. Distinguished from these men by _some_ evidence of love for
+nature, yet an evidence much less clear than that for any of those
+named even in the first list, stand Cervantes, Pope, and Moli�re. It
+is not easy to say how much the character of these last depended on
+their epoch and education; but it is noticeable that the first two
+agree thus far in temper with Le Sage and Smollett,--that they delight
+in dwelling upon vice, misfortune, or folly, as subjects of amusement;
+while yet they are distinguished from Le Sage and Smollett by capacity
+of conceiving nobleness of character, only in a humiliating and
+hopeless way; the one representing all chivalry as insanity, the other
+placing the wisdom of man in a serene and sneering reconciliation of
+good with evil. Of Moli�re I think very differently. Living in the
+blindest period of the world's history, in the most luxurious city,
+and the most corrupted court, of the time, he yet manifests through
+all his writings an exquisite natural wisdom; a capacity for the most
+simple enjoyment; a high sense of all nobleness, honor, and purity,
+variously marked throughout his slighter work, but distinctly made the
+theme of his two perfect plays--the Tartuffe and Misanthrope; and in
+all that he says of art or science he has an unerring instinct for
+what is useful and sincere, and uses his whole power to defend it,
+with as keen a hatred of everything affected and vain. And, singular
+as it may seem, the first definite lesson read to Europe, in that
+school of simplicity of which Wordsworth was the supposed originator
+among the mountains of Cumberland, was, in fact, given in the midst of
+the court of Louis XIV., and by Moli�re. The little canzonet "J'aime
+mieux ma mie," is, I believe, the first Wordsworthian poem brought
+forward on philosophical principles to oppose the schools of art and
+affectation.
+
+� 30. I do not know if, by a careful analysis, I could point out any
+evidences of a capacity for the love of natural scenery in Moli�re
+stealing forth through the slightness of his pastorals; but, if not,
+we must simply set him aside as exceptional, as a man uniting
+Wordsworth's philosophy with Le Sage's wit, turned by circumstances
+from the observance of natural beauty to that of human frailty. And
+thus putting him aside for the moment, I think we cannot doubt of
+our main conclusion, that, though the absence of the love of nature
+is not an assured condemnation, its presence is an invariable sign
+of goodness of heart and justness of moral _perception_, though by
+no means of moral _practice_; that in proportion to the degree in
+which it is felt, will _probably_ be the degree in which all
+nobleness and beauty of character will also be felt; that when it is
+originally absent from any mind, that mind is in many other respects
+hard, worldly, and degraded; that where, having been originally
+present, it is repressed by art or education, that repression
+appears to have been detrimental to the person suffering it; and
+that wherever the feeling exists, it acts for good on the character
+to which it belongs, though, as it may often belong to characters
+weak in other respects, it may carelessly be mistaken for a source
+of evil in them.
+
+� 31. And having arrived at this conclusion by a review of facts,
+which I hope it will be admitted, whether accurate or not, has at
+least been candid, these farther considerations may confirm our
+belief in its truth. Observe: the whole force of education, until
+very lately, has been directed in every possible way to the
+destruction of the love of nature. The only knowledge which has been
+considered essential among us is that of words, and, next after it,
+of the abstract sciences; while every liking shown by children for
+simple natural history has been either violently checked, (if it
+took an inconvenient form for the housemaids,) or else scrupulously
+limited to hours of play: so that it has really been impossible for
+any child earnestly to study the works of God but against its
+conscience; and the love of nature has become inherently the
+characteristic of truants and idlers. While also the art of drawing,
+which is of more real importance to the human race than that of
+writing (because people can hardly draw anything without being of
+some use both to themselves and others, and can hardly write
+anything without wasting their own time and that of others),--this
+art of drawing, I say, which on plain and stern system should be
+taught to every child, just as writing is,--has been so neglected
+and abused, that there is not one man in a thousand, even of its
+professed teachers, who knows its first principles: and thus it
+needs much ill-fortune or obstinacy--much neglect on the part of his
+teachers, or rebellion on his own--before a boy can get leave to use
+his eyes or his fingers; so that those who _can_ use them are for
+the most part neglected or rebellious lads--runaways and bad
+scholars--passionate, erratic, self-willed, and restive against all
+forms of education; while your well-behaved and amiable scholars are
+disciplined into blindness and palsy of half their faculties.
+Wherein there is at once a notable ground for what difference we
+have observed between the lovers of nature and its despisers;
+between the somewhat immoral and unrespectable watchfulness of the
+one, and the moral and respectable blindness of the other.
+
+� 32. One more argument remains, and that, I believe, an unanswerable
+one. As, by the accident of education, the love of nature has been,
+among us, associated with _wilfulness_, so, by the accident of time,
+it has been associated with _faithlessness_. I traced, above, the
+peculiar mode in which this faithlessness was indicated; but I never
+intended to imply, therefore, that it was an invariable concomitant of
+the love. Because it happens that, by various concurrent operations of
+evil, we have been led, according to those words of the Greek poet
+already quoted, "to dethrone the gods, and crown the whirlwind," it is
+no reason that we should forget there was once a time when "the Lord
+answered Job _out of_ the whirlwind." And if we now take final and
+full view of the matter, we shall find that the love of nature,
+wherever it has existed, has been a faithful and sacred element of
+human feeling; that is to say, supposing all circumstances otherwise
+the same with respect to two individuals, the one who loves nature
+most will be _always_ found to have more _faith in God_ than the
+other. It is intensely difficult, owing to the confusing and counter
+influences which always mingle in the data of the problem, to make
+this abstraction fairly; but so far as we can do it, so far, I boldly
+assert, the result is constantly the same: the nature-worship will be
+found to bring with it such a sense of the presence and power of a
+Great Spirit as no mere reasoning can either induce or controvert; and
+where that nature-worship is innocently pursued,--i.e. with due
+respect to other claims on time, feeling, and exertion, and associated
+with the higher principles of religion,--it becomes the channel of
+certain sacred truths, which by no other means can be conveyed.
+
+� 33. This is not a statement which any investigation is needed to
+prove. It comes to us at once from the highest of all authority. The
+greater number of the words which are recorded in Scripture, as
+directly spoken to men by the lips of the Deity, are either simple
+revelations of His law, or special threatenings, commands, and
+promises relating to special events. But two passages of God's
+speaking, one in the Old and one in the New Testament, possess, it
+seems to me, a different character from any of the rest, having been
+uttered, the one to effect the last necessary change in the mind of
+a man whose piety was in other respects perfect; and the other, as
+the first statement to all men of the principles of Christianity by
+Christ Himself--I mean the 38th to 41st chapters of the book of Job,
+and the Sermon on the Mount. Now the first of these passages is,
+from beginning to end, nothing else than a direction of the mind
+which was to be perfected to humble observance of the works of God
+in nature. And the other consists only in the inculcation of _three_
+things: 1st, right conduct; 2nd, looking for eternal life; 3rd,
+trusting God, through watchfulness of His dealings with His
+creation: and the entire contents of the book of Job, and of the
+Sermon on the Mount, will be found resolvable simply into these
+three requirements from all men,--that they should act rightly, hope
+for heaven, and watch God's wonders and work in the earth; the right
+conduct being always summed up under the three heads of _justice_,
+_mercy_, and _truth_, and no mention of any doctrinal point whatsoever
+occurring in either piece of divine teaching.
+
+� 34. As far as I can judge of the ways of men, it seems to me that
+the simplest and most necessary truths are always the last
+believed; and I suppose that well-meaning people in general would
+rather regulate their conduct and creed by almost any other portion
+of Scripture whatsoever, than by that Sermon on the Mount, which
+contains the things that Christ thought it first necessary for all
+men to understand. Nevertheless, I believe the time will soon come
+for the full force of these two passages of Scripture to be
+accepted. Instead of supposing the love of nature necessarily
+connected with the faithlessness of the age, I believe it is
+connected properly with the benevolence and liberty of the age; that
+it is precisely the most healthy element which distinctively belongs
+to us; and that out of it, cultivated no longer in levity or
+ignorance, but in earnestness and as a duty, results will spring of
+an importance at present inconceivable; and lights arise, which, for
+the first time in man's history, will reveal to him the true nature
+of his life, the true field for his energies, and the true relations
+between him and his Maker.
+
+� 35. I will not endeavor here to trace the various modes in which
+these results are likely to be effected, for this would involve an
+essay on education, on the uses of natural history, and the probable
+future destiny of nations. Somewhat on these subjects I have spoken
+in other places; and I hope to find time, and proper place, to say
+more. But one or two observations maybe made merely to suggest the
+directions in which the reader may follow out the subject for
+himself.
+
+The great mechanical impulses of the age, of which most of us are so
+proud, are a mere passing fever, half-speculative, half-childish.
+People will discover at last that royal roads to anything can no
+more be laid in iron than they can in dust; that there are, in fact,
+no royal roads to anywhere worth going to; that if there were, it
+would that instant cease to be worth going to,--I mean so far as the
+things to be obtained are in any way estimable in terms of _price_.
+For there are two classes of precious things in the world: those
+that God gives us for nothing--sun, air, and life (both mortal life
+and immortal); and the secondarily precious things which he gives us
+for a price: these secondarily precious things, worldly wine and
+milk, can only be bought for definite money; they never can be
+cheapened. No cheating nor bargaining will ever get a single thing
+out of nature's "establishment" at half-price. Do we want to be
+strong?--we must work. To be hungry?--we must starve. To be
+happy?--we must be kind. To be wise?--we must look and think. No
+changing of place at a hundred miles an hour, nor making of stuffs a
+thousand yards a minute, will make us one whit stronger, happier, or
+wiser. There was always more in the world than men could see, walked
+they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. And
+they will at last, and soon too, find out that their grand
+inventions for conquering (as they think) space and time, do, in
+reality, conquer nothing; for space and time are, in their own
+essence, unconquerable, and besides did not want any sort of
+conquering; they wanted _using_. A fool always wants to shorten
+space and time: a wise man wants to lengthen both. A fool wants to
+kill space and kill time: a wise man, first to gain them, then to
+animate them. Your railroad, when you come to understand it, is only
+a device for making the world smaller: and as for being able to talk
+from place to place, that is, indeed, well and convenient; but
+suppose you have, originally, nothing to say.[95] We shall be
+obliged at last to confess, what we should long ago have known, that
+the really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does
+a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no
+harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.
+
+� 36. "Well; but railroads and telegraphs are so useful for
+communicating knowledge to savage nations." Yes, if you have any to
+give them. If you know nothing _but_ railroads, and can communicate
+nothing but aqueous vapor and gunpowder,--what then? But if you have
+any other thing than those to give, then the railroad is of use only
+because it communicates that other thing and the question is--what
+that other thing may be. Is it religion? I believe if we had really
+wanted to communicate that, we could have done it in less than 1800
+years, without steam. Most of the good religious communication that
+I remember has been done on foot; and it cannot be easily done
+faster than at foot pace. Is it science? But what science--of
+motion, meat, and medicine? Well; when you have moved your savage,
+and dressed your savage, fed him with white bread, and shown him how
+to set a limb,--what next? Follow out that question. Suppose every
+obstacle overcome; give your savage every advantage of civilization
+to the full: suppose that you have put the Red Indian in tight
+shoes; taught the Chinese how to make Wedgwood's ware, and to paint
+it with colors that will rub off; and persuaded all Hindoo women
+that it is more pious to torment their husbands into graves than to
+burn themselves at the burial,--what next? Gradually, thinking on
+from point to point, we shall come to perceive that all true
+happiness and nobleness are near us, and yet neglected by us; and
+that till we have learned how to be happy and noble, we have not
+much to tell, even to Red Indians. The delights of horse-racing and
+hunting, of assemblies in the night instead of the day, of costly
+and wearisome music, of costly and burdensome dress, of chagrined
+contention for place or power, or wealth, or the eyes of the
+multitude; and all the endless occupation without purpose, and
+idleness without rest, of our vulgar world, are not, it seems to me,
+enjoyments we need be ambitious to communicate. And all real and
+wholesome enjoyments possible to man have been just as possible to
+him, since first he was made of the earth, as they are now; and they
+are possible to him chiefly in peace. To watch the corn grow, and
+the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to
+read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray,--these are the things
+that make men happy; they have always had the power of doing these,
+they never _will_ have power to do more. The world's prosperity or
+adversity depends upon our knowing and teaching these few things:
+but upon iron, or glass, or electricity, or steam, in no wise.
+
+� 37. And I am Utopian and enthusiastic enough to believe, that the
+time will come when the world will discover this. It has now made
+its experiments in every possible direction but the right one; and
+it seems that it must, at last, try the right one, in a mathematical
+necessity. It has tried fighting, and preaching, and fasting, buying
+and selling, pomp and parsimony, pride and humiliation,--every
+possible manner of existence in which it could conjecture there was
+any happiness or dignity; and all the while, as it bought, sold,
+and fought, and fasted, and wearied itself with policies, and
+ambitions, and self-denials, God had placed its real happiness in
+the keeping of the little mosses of the wayside, and of the clouds
+of the firmament. Now and then a weary king, or a tormented slave,
+found out where the true kingdoms of the world were, and possessed
+himself, in a furrow or two of garden ground, of a truly infinite
+dominion. But the world would not believe their report, and went on
+trampling down the mosses, and forgetting the clouds, and seeking
+happiness in its own way, until, at last, blundering and late, came
+natural science; and in natural science not only the observation of
+things, but the finding out of new uses for them. Of course the
+world, having a choice left to it, went wrong as usual, and thought
+that these mere material uses were to be the sources of its
+happiness. It got the clouds packed into iron cylinders, and made it
+carry its wise self at their own cloud pace. It got weavable fibres
+out of the mosses, and made clothes for itself, cheap and
+fine,--here was happiness at last. To go as fast as the clouds, and
+manufacture everything out of anything,--here was paradise, indeed!
+
+� 38. And now, when, in a little while, it is unparadised again, if
+there were any other mistake that the world could make, it would of
+course make it. But I see not that there is any other; and, standing
+fairly at its wits' end, having found that going fast, when it is
+used to it, is no more paradisiacal than going slow; and that all
+the prints and cottons in Manchester cannot make it comfortable in
+its mind, I do verily believe it will come, finally, to understand
+that God paints the clouds and shapes the moss-fibres, that men may
+be happy in seeing Him at His work, and that in resting quietly
+beside Him, and watching His working, and--according to the power He
+has communicated to ourselves, and the guidance He grants,--in
+carrying out His purposes of peace and charity among all His
+creatures, are the only real happinesses that ever were, or will be,
+possible to mankind.
+
+� 39. How far art is capable of helping us in such happiness we
+hardly yet know; but I hope to be able, in the subsequent parts of
+this work, to give some data for arriving at a conclusion in the
+matter. Enough has been advanced to relieve the reader from any
+lurking suspicion of unworthiness in our subject, and to induce him
+to take interest in the mind and work of the great painter who has
+headed the landscape school among us. What farther considerations
+may, within any reasonable limits, be put before him, respecting the
+effect of natural scenery on the human heart, I will introduce in
+their proper places either as we examine, under Turner's guidance,
+the different classes of scenery, or at the close of the whole work;
+and therefore I have only one point more to notice here, namely, the
+exact relation between landscape-painting and natural science,
+properly so-called.
+
+� 40. For it may be thought that I have rashly assumed that the
+Scriptural authorities above quoted apply to that partly superficial
+view of nature which is taken by the landscape-painter, instead of
+to the accurate view taken by the man of science. So far from there
+being rashness in such an assumption, the whole language, both of
+the book of Job and the Sermon on the Mount, gives precisely the
+view of nature which is taken by the uninvestigating affection of a
+humble, but powerful mind. There is no dissection of muscles or
+counting of elements, but the boldest and broadest glance at the
+apparent facts, and the most magnificent metaphor in expressing
+them. "His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. In his neck
+remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him." And
+in the often repeated, never obeyed, command, "Consider the lilies
+of the field," observe there is precisely the delicate attribution
+of life which we have seen to be the characteristic of the modern
+view of landscape,--"They toil not," There is no science, or hint of
+science; no counting of petals, nor display of provisions for
+sustenance: nothing but the expression of sympathy, at once the most
+childish, and the most profound,--"They toil not."
+
+� 41. And we see in this, therefore, that the instinct which leads
+us thus to attribute life to the lowest forms of organic nature,
+does not necessarily spring from faithlessness, nor the deducing a
+moral out of them from an irregular and languid conscientiousness.
+In this, as in almost all things connected with moral discipline,
+the same results may follow from contrary causes; and as there are a
+good and evil contentment, a good and evil discontent, a good and
+evil care, fear, ambition, and so on, there are also good and evil
+forms of this sympathy with nature, and disposition to moralize over
+it.[96] In general, active men, of strong sense and stern principle,
+do not care to see anything in a leaf, but vegetable tissue, and are
+so well convinced of useful moral truth, that it does not strike
+them as a new or notable thing when they find it in any way
+symbolized by material nature; hence there is a strong presumption,
+when first we perceive a tendency in any one to regard trees as
+living, and enunciate moral aphorisms over every pebble they stumble
+against, that such tendency proceeds from a morbid temperament, like
+Shelley's, or an inconsistent one, like Jaques's. But when the
+active life is nobly fulfilled, and the mind is then raised beyond
+it into clear and calm beholding of the world around us, the same
+tendency again manifests itself in the most sacred way: the simplest
+forms of nature are strangely animated by the sense of the Divine
+presence; the trees and flowers seem all, in a sort, children of
+God; and we ourselves, their fellows, made out of the same dust, and
+greater than they only in having a greater portion of the Divine
+power exerted on our frame, and all the common uses and palpably
+visible forms of things, become subordinate in our minds to their
+inner glory,--to the mysterious voices in which they talk to us
+about God, and the changeful and typical aspects by which they
+witness to us of holy truth, and fill us with obedient, joyful, and
+thankful emotion.
+
+� 42. It is in raising us from the first state of inactive reverie
+to the second of useful thought, that scientific pursuits are to be
+chiefly praised. But in restraining us at this second stage, and
+checking the impulses towards higher contemplation, they are to be
+feared or blamed. They may in certain minds be consistent with such
+contemplation; but only by an effort: in their nature they are
+always adverse to it, having a tendency to chill and subdue the
+feelings, and to resolve all things into atoms and numbers. For most
+men, an ignorant enjoyment is better than an informed one; it is
+better to conceive the sky as a blue dome than a dark cavity, and
+the cloud as a golden throne than a sleety mist. I much question
+whether any one who knows optics, however religious he may be, can
+feel in equal degree the pleasure or reverence which an unlettered
+peasant may feel at the sight of a rainbow. And it is mercifully
+thus ordained, since the law of life, for a finite being, with
+respect to the works of an infinite one, must be always an infinite
+ignorance. We cannot fathom the mystery of a single flower, nor is
+it intended that we should; but that the pursuit of science should
+constantly be stayed by the love of beauty, and accuracy of
+knowledge by tenderness of emotion.
+
+� 43. Nor is it even just to speak of the love of beauty as in all
+respects unscientific; for there is a science of the aspects of
+things as well as of their nature; and it is as much a fact to be
+noted in their constitution, that they produce such and such an
+effect upon the eye or heart (as, for instance, that minor scales of
+sound cause melancholy), as that they are made up of certain atoms
+or vibrations of matter.
+
+It is as the master of this science of _Aspects_, that I said, some
+time ago, Turner must eventually be named always with Bacon, the
+master of the science of _Essence_. As the first poet who has, in
+all their range, understood the grounds of noble emotion which exist
+in Landscape, his future influence will be of a still more subtle
+and important character. The rest of this work will therefore be
+dedicated to the explanation of the principles on which he composed,
+and of the aspects of nature which he was the first to discern.
+
+  [88] Marmion, Introduction to canto II.
+
+  [89] The investigation of this subject becomes, therefore,
+       difficult beyond all other parts of our inquiry, since
+       precisely the same sentiments may arise in different minds
+       from totally opposite causes; and the extreme of frivolity
+       may sometimes for a moment desire the same things as the
+       extreme of moral power and dignity. In the following extract
+       from "Marriage," the sentiment expressed by Lady Juliana (the
+       ineffably foolish and frivolous heroine of the story) is as
+       nearly as possible what Dante would have felt, under the same
+       circumstances:
+
+       "The air was soft and genial; not a cloud stained the bright
+       azure of the heavens; and the sun shone out in all his
+       splendor, shedding life and beauty even over the desolate
+       heath-clad hills of Glenfern. But, after they had journeyed a
+       few miles, suddenly emerging from the valley, a scene of
+       matchless beauty burst at once upon the eye. Before them lay
+       the dark blue waters of Lochmarlie, reflecting, as in a
+       mirror, every surrounding object, and bearing on its placid,
+       transparent bosom a fleet of herring-boats, the drapery of
+       whose black, suspended nets contrasted, with picturesque
+       effect, the white sails of the larger vessels, which were
+       vainly spread to catch a breeze. All around, rocks, meadows,
+       woods, and hills mingled in wild and lovely irregularity.
+
+       "Not a breath was stirring, not a sound was heard, save the
+       rushing of a waterfall, the tinkling of some silver rivulet,
+       or the calm rippling of the tranquil lake; now and then, at
+       intervals, the fisherman's Gaelic ditty, chanted as he lay
+       stretched on the sand in some sunny nook; or the shrill,
+       distant sound of childish glee. How delicious to the feeling
+       heart to behold so fair a scene of unsophisticated nature, and
+       to listen to her voice alone, breathing the accents of
+       innocence and joy! But none of the party who now gazed on it
+       had minds capable of being touched with the emotions it was
+       calculated to inspire.
+
+       "Henry, indeed, was rapturous in his expressions of admiration;
+       but he concluded his panegyrics by wondering his brother did
+       not keep a cutter, and resolving to pass a night on board one
+       of the herring-boats, that he might eat the fish in perfection.
+
+       "Lady Juliana thought it might be very pretty, if, instead of
+       those frightful rocks and shabby cottages, there could be
+       villas, and gardens, and lawns, and conservatories, and
+       summer-houses, and statues.
+
+       "Miss Bella observed, if it was hers she would cut down the
+       woods, and level the hills, and have races."
+
+  [90] Childe Harold, canto iii. st. 71.
+
+  [91] Sc�nes et Proverbes. La Crise; (Sc�ne en cal�che, hors
+       Paris.)
+
+  [92] Compare the characters of Fleur de Marie and Rigolette, in
+       the Myst�res de Paris. I know no other instance in which the
+       two tempers are so exquisitely delineated and opposed. Read
+       carefully the beautiful pastoral, in the eighth chapter of
+       the first Part, where Fleur de Marie is first taken into the
+       fields under Montmartre, and compare it with the sixth of the
+       second Part, its accurately traced companion sketch, noting
+       carefully Rigolette's "Non, _je d�teste la campagne_." She
+       does not, however, dislike flowers or birds: "Cette caisse de
+       bois, que Rigolette appellait le jardin de ses oiseaux, �tait
+       remplie de terre recouverte de mousse, pendant l'hiver. Elle
+       travaillait aupr�s de la fen�tre ouverte, �-demi-voil�e par
+       un verdoyant rideau de pois de senteur roses, de capucines
+       oranges, de volubilis bleus et blancs."
+
+  [93] I have not read Clarissa.
+
+  [94] It might be thought that Young _could_ have sympathized with
+       it. He would have made better use of it, but he would not
+       have had the same delight in it. He turns his solitude to
+       good account; but this is because, to him, solitude is
+       sorrow, and his real enjoyment would have been of amiable
+       society, and a place at court.
+
+  [95] "The light-outspeeding telegraph
+       Bears nothing on its beam."    EMERSON.
+
+       See Appendix III., Plagiarism.
+
+  [96] Compare what is said before in various places of good and bad
+       finish, good and bad mystery, &c. If a man were disposed to
+       system-making, he could easily throw together a
+       counter-system to Aristotle's, showing that in all things
+       there were two extremes which exactly resembled each other,
+       but of which one was bad, the other good; and a mean,
+       resembling neither, but better than the one, and worse than
+       the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+OF THE TEACHERS OF TURNER.
+
+
+� 1. The first step to the understanding either the mind or position
+of a great man ought, I think, to be an inquiry into the elements of
+his early instruction, and the mode in which he was affected by the
+circumstances of surrounding life. In making this inquiry, with
+respect to Turner, we shall be necessarily led to take note of the
+causes which had brought landscape-painting into the state in which
+he found it; and, therefore, of those transitions of style which, it
+will be remembered, we overleaped (hoping for a future opportunity
+of examining them) at the close of the fifteenth chapter.
+
+� 2. And first, I said, it will be remembered, some way back, that
+the relations between Scott and Turner would probably be found to
+differ very curiously from those between Dante and Giotto. They
+differ primarily in this,--that Dante and Giotto, living in a
+consistent age, were subjected to one and the same influence, and
+maybe reasoned about almost in similar terms. But Scott and Turner,
+living in an inconsistent age, became subjected to inconsistent
+influences; and are at once distinguished by notable contrarieties,
+requiring separate examination in each.
+
+� 3. Of these, the chief was that Scott, having had the blessing of
+a totally neglected education, was able early to follow most of his
+noble instincts; but Turner, having suffered under the instruction
+of the Royal Academy, had to pass nearly thirty years of his life in
+recovering from its consequences;[97] this permanent result
+following for both,--that Scott never was led into any fault
+foreign to his nature, but spoke what was in him, in rugged or idle
+simplicity; erring only where it was natural to err, and failing
+only where it was impossible to succeed. But Turner, from the
+beginning, was led into constrained and unnatural error; diligently
+debarred from every ordinary help to success. The one thing which
+the Academy _ought_ to have taught him (namely, the simple and safe
+use of oil color), it never taught him; but it carefully repressed
+his perceptions of truth, his capacities of invention, and his
+tendencies of choice. For him it was impossible to do right but in
+the spirit of defiance; and the first condition of his progress in
+learning, was the power to forget.
+
+� 4. One most important distinction in their feelings throughout
+life was necessitated by this difference in early training. Scott
+gathered what little knowledge of architecture he possessed, in
+wanderings among the rocky walls of Crichtoun, Lochleven, and
+Linlithgow, and among the delicate pillars of Holyrood, Roslin, and
+Melrose. Turner acquired his knowledge of architecture at the desk,
+from academical elevations of the Parthenon and St. Paul's; and
+spent a large portion of his early years in taking views of
+gentlemen's seats, temples of the Muses, and other productions of
+modern taste and imagination; being at the same time directed
+exclusively to classical sources for information as to the proper
+subjects of art. Hence, while Scott was at once directed to the
+history of his native land, and to the Gothic fields of imagination;
+and his mind was fed in a consistent, natural, and felicitous way
+from his youth up, poor Turner for a long time knew no inspiration
+but that of Twickenham; no sublimity but that of Virginia Water. All
+the history and poetry presented to him at the age when the mind
+receives its dearest associations, were those of the gods and
+nations of long ago; and his models of sentiment and style were the
+worst and last wrecks of the Renaissance affectations.
+
+� 5. Therefore (though utterly free from affectation), his early
+works are full of an _enforced_ artificialness, and of things
+ill-done and ill-conceived, because foreign to his own instincts;
+and, throughout life, whatever he did, because he thought he _ought_
+to do it, was wrong; all that he planned on any principle, or in
+supposed obedience to canons of taste, was false and abortive: he
+only did right when he ceased to reflect; was powerful only when he
+made no effort, and successful only when he had taken no aim.
+
+� 6. And it is one of the most interesting things connected with the
+study of his art, to watch the way in which his own strength of
+English instinct breaks gradually through fetter and formalism; how
+from Egerian wells he steals away to Yorkshire streamlets; how from
+Homeric rocks, with laurels at the top and caves in the bottom, he
+climbs, at last, to Alpine precipices fringed with pine, and fortified
+with the slopes of their own ruins; and how from Temples of Jupiter
+and Gardens of the Hesperides, a spirit in his feet guides him, at
+last, to the lonely arches of Whitby, and bleak sands of Holy Isle.
+
+� 7. As, however, is the case with almost all inevitable evil, in
+its effect on great minds, a certain good rose even out of this
+warped education; namely, his power of more completely expressing
+all the tendencies of his epoch, and sympathizing with many feelings
+and many scenes which must otherwise have been entirely profitless
+to him. Scott's mind was just as large and full of sympathy as
+Turner's; but having been permitted always to take his own choice
+among sources of enjoyment, Scott was entirely incapable of entering
+into the spirit of any classical scene. He was strictly a Goth and a
+Scot, and his sphere of sensation may be almost exactly limited by
+the growth of heather. But Turner had been forced to pay early
+attention to whatever of good and right there was even in things
+naturally distasteful to him. The charm of early association had
+been cast around much that to other men would have been tame: while
+making drawings of flower-gardens and Palladian mansions, he had
+been taught sympathy with whatever grace or refinement the garden or
+mansion could display, and to the close of life could enjoy the
+delicacy of trellis and parterre, as well as the wildness of the
+wood and the moorland; and watch the staying of the silver fountain
+at its appointed height in the sky, with an interest as earnest, if
+not as intense, as that with which he followed the crash of the
+Alpine cataract into its clouds of wayward rage.
+
+� 8. The distinct losses to be weighed against this gain are, first,
+the waste of time during youth in painting subjects of no interest
+whatsoever,--parks, villas, and ugly architecture in general:
+secondly, the devotion of its utmost strength in later years to
+meaningless classical compositions, such as the Fall and Rise of
+Carthage, Bay of Bai�, Daphne and Leucippus, and such others, which,
+with infinite accumulation of material, are yet utterly heartless and
+emotionless, dead to the very root of thought, and incapable of
+producing wholesome or useful effect on any human mind, except only as
+exhibitions of technical skill and graceful arrangement: and, lastly,
+his incapacity, to the close of life, of entering heartily into the
+spirit of any elevated architecture; for those Palladian and classical
+buildings which he had been taught that it was right to admire, being
+wholly devoid of interest, and in their own formality and barrenness
+quite unmanageable, he was obliged to make them manageable in his
+pictures by disguising them, and to use all kinds of playing shadows
+and glittering lights to obscure their ugly details; and as in their
+best state such buildings are white and colorless, he associated the
+idea of whiteness with perfect architecture generally, and was
+confused and puzzled when he found it grey. Hence he never got
+thoroughly into the feeling of Gothic; its darkness and complexity
+embarrassed him; he was very apt to whiten by way of idealizing it,
+and to cast aside its details in order to get breadth of delicate
+light. In Venice, and the towns of Italy generally, he fastened on the
+wrong buildings, and used those which he chose merely as kind of white
+clouds, to set off his brilliant groups of boats, or burning spaces of
+lagoon. In various other minor ways, which we shall trace in their
+proper place, his classical education hindered or hurt him; but I feel
+it very difficult to say how far the loss was balanced by the general
+grasp it gave his mind; nor am I able to conceive what would have been
+the result, if his aims had been made at once narrower and more
+natural, and he had been led in his youth to delight in Gothic legends
+instead of classical mythology; and, instead of the porticos of the
+Parthenon, had studied in the aisles of Notre Dame.
+
+� 9. It is still more difficult to conjecture whether he gathered
+most good or evil from the pictorial art which surrounded him in his
+youth. What that art was, and how the European schools had arrived
+at it, it now becomes necessary briefly to inquire.
+
+It will be remembered that, in the 14th chapter, we left our
+medi�val landscape (� 18.) in a state of severe formality, and
+perfect subordination to the interest of figure subject. I will now
+rapidly trace the mode and progress of its emancipation.
+
+� 10. The formalized conception of scenery remained little altered
+until the time of Raphael, being only better executed as the
+knowledge of art advanced; that is to say, though the trees were
+still stiff, and often set one on each side of the principal
+figures, their color and relief on the sky were exquisitely
+imitated, and all groups of near leaves and flowers drawn with the
+most tender care, and studious botanical accuracy. The better the
+subjects were painted, however, the more logically absurd they
+became: a background wrought in Chinese confusion of towers and
+rivers, was in early times passed over carelessly, and forgiven for
+the sake of its pleasant color; but it appealed somewhat too far to
+imaginative indulgence when Ghirlandajo drew an exquisite
+perspective view of Venice and her lagoons behind an Adoration of
+the Magi;[98] and the impossibly small boats which might be pardoned
+in a mere illumination, representing the miraculous draught of
+fishes, became, whatever may be said to the contrary, inexcusably
+absurd in Raphael's fully realized landscape; so as at once to
+destroy the credibility of every circumstance of the event.
+
+� 11. A certain charm, however, attached itself to many forms of
+this landscape, owing to their very unnaturalness, as I have
+endeavored to explain already in the last chapter of the second
+volume, �� 9. to 12.; noting, however, there, that it was in no wise
+to be made a subject of imitation; a conclusion which I have since
+seen more and more ground for holding finally. The longer I think
+over the subject, the more I perceive that the pleasure we take in
+such unnatural landscapes is intimately connected with our habit of
+regarding the New Testament as a beautiful poem, instead of a
+statement of plain facts. He who believes thoroughly that the events
+are true will expect, and ought to expect, real olive copse behind
+real Madonna, and no sentimental absurdities in either.
+
+[Illustration: 11. Latest Purism.]
+
+� 12. Nor am I at all sure how far the delight which we take (when I
+say _we_, I mean, in general, lovers of old sacred art) in such
+quaint landscape, arises from its peculiar _falsehood_, and how far
+from its peculiar _truth_. For as it falls into certain errors more
+boldly, so, also, what truth it states, it states more firmly than
+subsequent work. No engravings, that I know, render the backgrounds
+of sacred pictures with sufficient care to enable the reader to
+judge of this matter unless before the works themselves. I have,
+therefore, engraved, on the opposite page, a bit of the background
+of Raphael's Holy Family, in the Tribune of the Uffizii, at
+Florence. I copied the trees leaf for leaf, and the rest of the work
+with the best care I could; the engraver, Mr. Armytage, has
+admirably rendered the delicate atmosphere which partly veils the
+distance. Now I do not know how far it is necessary to such pleasure
+as we receive from this landscape, that the trees should be both so
+straight and formal in stem, and should have branches no thicker
+than threads; or that the outlines of the distant hills should
+approximate so closely to those on any ordinary Wedgewood's china
+pattern. I know that, on the contrary, a great part of the pleasure
+arises from the sweet expression of air and sunshine; from the
+traceable resemblance of the city and tower to Florence and Fesole;
+from the fact that, though the boughs are too thin, the lines of
+ramification are true and beautiful; and from the expression of
+continually varied form in the clusters of leafage. And although all
+lovers of sacred art would shrink in horror from the idea of
+substituting for such a landscape a bit of Cuyp or Rubens, I do not
+think that the horror they feel is because Cuyp and Rubens's
+landscape is _truer_, but because it is _coarser_ and more vulgar in
+associated idea than Raphael's; and I think it possible that the
+true forms of hills, and true thicknesses of boughs, might be
+tenderly stolen into this background of Raphael's without giving
+offence to any one.
+
+� 13. Take a somewhat more definite instance. The rock in Fig. 5.,
+at the side, is one put by Ghirlandajo into the background of his
+Baptism of Christ. I have no doubt Ghirlandajo's own rocks and trees
+are better, in several respects, than those here represented, since
+I have copied them from one of Lasinio's execrable engravings;
+still, the harsh outline, and generally stiff and uninventful
+blankness of the design are true enough, and characteristic of all
+rock-painting of the period. In the plate below I have etched[99]
+the outline of a fragment of one of Turner's cliffs, out of his
+drawing of Bolton Abbey; and it does not seem to me that, supposing
+them properly introduced in the composition, the substitution of the
+soft natural lines for the hard unnatural ones would make
+Ghirlandajo's background one whit less sacred.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
+
+� 14. But be this as it may, the fact is, as ill luck would have it,
+that profanity of feeling, and skill in art, increased together; so
+that we do not find the backgrounds rightly painted till the figures
+become irreligious and feelingless; and hence we associate
+necessarily the perfect landscape with want of feeling. The first
+great innovator was either Masaccio or Filippino Lippi: their works
+are so confused together in the Chapel of the Carmine, that I know
+not to whom I may attribute,--or whether, without being immediately
+quarrelled with, and contradicted, I may attribute to anybody,--the
+landscape background of the fresco of the Tribute Money. But that
+background, with one or two other fragments in the same
+chapel, is far in advance of all other work I have seen of the
+period, in expression of the rounded contours and large slopes of
+hills, and the association of their summits with the clouds. The
+opposite engraving will give some better idea of its character than
+can be gained from the outlines commonly published; though the dark
+spaces, which in the original are deep blue, come necessarily
+somewhat too harshly on the eye when translated into light and
+shade. I shall have occasion to speak with greater speciality of
+this background in examining the forms of hills; meantime, it is
+only as an isolated work that it can be named in the history of
+pictorial progress, for Masaccio died too young to carry out his
+purposes; and the men around him were too ignorant of landscape to
+understand or take advantage of the little he had done. Raphael,
+though he borrowed from him in the human figure, never seems to have
+been influenced by his landscape, and retains either, as in Plate
+11., the upright formalities of Perugino; or, by way of being
+natural, expands his distances into flattish flakes of hill, nearly
+formless, as in the backgrounds of the Charge to Peter and Draught
+of Fishes; and thenceforward the Tuscan and Roman schools grew more
+and more artificial, and lost themselves finally under round-headed
+niches and Corinthian porticos.
+
+[Illustration: 12. The Shores of Wharfe.]
+
+[Illustration: 13. First Mountain Naturalism.]
+
+[Illustration: 14. The Lombard Apennine.]
+
+[Illustration: 15. St. George of the Seaweed.]
+
+� 15. It needed, therefore, the air of the northern mountains and of
+the sea to brace the hearts of men to the development of the true
+landscape schools. I sketched by chance one evening the line of the
+Apennines from the ramparts of Parma, and I have put the rough note
+of it, and the sky that was over it, in Plate 14., and next to this
+(Plate 15.) a moment of sunset, behind the Euganean hills at Venice.
+I shall have occasion to refer to both hereafter; but they have some
+interest here as types of the kind of scenes which were daily set
+before the eyes of Correggio and Titian, and of the sweet free
+spaces of sky through which rose and fell, to them, the colored rays
+of the morning and evening.
+
+� 16. And they are connected, also, with the forms of landscape
+adopted by the Lombardic masters, in a very curious way. We noticed
+that the Flemings, educated entirely in flat land, seemed to be
+always contented with the scenery it supplied; and we should
+naturally have expected that Titian and Correggio, living in the
+midst of the levels of the lagoons, and of the plain of Lombardy,
+would also have expressed, in their backgrounds, some pleasure in
+such level scenery, associated, of course, with the sublimity of the
+far-away Apennine, Euganean, or Alp. But not a whit. The plains of
+mulberry and maize, of sea and shoal, by which they were surrounded,
+never occur in their backgrounds but in cases of necessity; and both
+of them, in all their important landscapes, bury themselves in wild
+wood; Correggio delighting to relieve with green darkness of oak and
+ivy the golden hair and snowy flesh of his figures; and Titian,
+whenever the choice of a scene was in his power, retiring to the
+narrow glens and forests of Cadore.
+
+� 17. Of the vegetation introduced by both, I shall have to speak at
+length in the course of the chapters on Foliage; meantime, I give in
+Plate 16. one of Titian's slightest bits of background, from one of
+the frescoes in the little chapel behind St. Antonio, at Padua,
+which may be compared more conveniently than any of his more
+elaborate landscapes with the purist work from Raphael. For in both
+these examples the trees are equally slender and delicate, only the
+formality of medi�val art is, by Titian, entirely abandoned, and the
+old conception of the aspen grove and meadow done away with for
+ever. We are now far from cities: the painter takes true delight in
+the desert; the trees grow wild and free; the sky also has lost its
+peace, and is writhed into folds of motion, closely impendent upon
+earth, and somewhat threatening, through its solemn light.
+
+� 18. Although, however, this example is characteristic of Titian in
+its wildness, it is not so in its _looseness_. It is only in the
+distant backgrounds of the slightest work, or when he is in a hurry,
+that Titian is vague: in all his near and studied work he completes
+every detail with scrupulous care. The next Plate, 17., a background
+of Tintoret's, from his picture of the Entombment at Parma, is more
+entirely characteristic of the Venetians. Some mistakes made in the
+reduction of my drawing during the course of engraving have cramped
+the curves of the boughs and leaves, of which I will give the true
+outline farther on; meantime the subject, which is that described in
+� 16. of the chapter on Penetrative Imagination, Vol. II., will just
+as well answer the purpose of exemplifying the Venetian love of
+gloom and wildness, united with perfect definition of detail. Every
+leaf and separate blade of grass is drawn; but observe how the
+blades of grass are broken, how completely the aim at expression of
+faultlessness and felicity has been withdrawn, as contrary to the
+laws of the existent world.
+
+[Illustration: 16. Early Naturalism.]
+
+[Illustration: 17. Advanced Naturalism.]
+
+� 19. From this great Venetian school of landscape Turner received
+much important teaching,--almost the only healthy teaching which he
+owed to preceding art. The designs of the Liber Studiorum are founded
+first on nature, but in many cases modified by _forced_ imitation of
+Claude, and _fond_ imitation of Titian. All the worst and feeblest
+studies in the book--as the pastoral with the nymph playing the
+tambourine, that with the long bridge seen through trees, and with the
+flock of goats on the walled road--owe the principal part of their
+imbecilities to Claude; another group (Solway Moss, Peat Bog,
+Lauffenbourg, &c.) is taken with hardly any modification by pictorial
+influence, straight from nature; and the finest works in the book--the
+Grande Chartreuse, Rizpah, Jason, Cephalus, and one or two more--are
+strongly under the influence of Titian.
+
+� 20. The Venetian school of landscape expired with Tintoret, in the
+year 1594; and the sixteenth century closed, like a grave, over the
+great art of the world. There is _no_ entirely sincere or great art
+in the seventeenth century. Rubens and Rembrandt are its two
+greatest men, both deeply stained by the errors and affectations of
+their age. The influence of the Venetians hardly extended to them;
+the tower of the Titianesque art fell southwards; and on the dust of
+its ruins grew various art-weeds, such as Domenichino and the
+Carraccis. Their landscape, which may in few words be accurately
+defined as "Scum of Titian," possesses no single merit, nor any
+ground for the forgiveness of demerit; they are to be named only as
+a link through which the Venetian influence came dimly down to
+Claude and Salvator.
+
+� 21. Salvator possessed real genius, but was crushed by misery in his
+youth, and by fashionable society in his age. He had vigorous animal
+life, and considerable invention, but no depth either of thought or
+perception. He took some hints directly from nature, and expressed
+some conditions of the grotesque of terror with original power; but
+his baseness of thought, and bluntness of sight, were unconquerable;
+and his works possess no value whatsoever for any person versed in the
+walks of noble art. They had little, if any, influence on Turner; if
+any, it was in blinding him for some time to the grace of tree trunks,
+and making him tear them too much into splinters.
+
+� 22. Not so Claude, who may be considered as Turner's principal
+master. Claude's capacities were of the most limited kind; but he
+had tenderness of perception, and sincerity of purpose, and he
+effected a revolution in art. This revolution consisted mainly in
+setting the sun in heaven.[100] Till Claude's time no one had
+seriously thought of painting the sun but conventionally; that is to
+say, as a red or yellow star, (often) with a face in it, under which
+type it was constantly represented in illumination; else it was kept
+out of the picture, or introduced in fragmentary distances, breaking
+through clouds with almost definite rays. Perhaps the honor of
+having first tried to represent the real effect of the sun in
+landscape belongs to Bonifazio, in his pictures of the camps of
+Israel.[101] Rubens followed in a kind of bravado, sometimes making
+the rays issue from anything but the orb of the sun;--here, for
+instance, Fig. 6., is an outline of the position of the sun (at _s_)
+with respect to his own rays, in a sunset behind a tournament in the
+Louvre: and various interesting effects of sunlight issuing from the
+conventional face-filled orb occur in contemporary missal-painting;
+for instance, very richly in the Harleian MS. Brit. Mus. 3469. But
+all this was merely indicative of the tendency to transition which
+may always be traced in any age before the man comes who is to
+_accomplish_ the transition. Claude took up the new idea seriously,
+made the sun his subject, and painted the effects of misty shadows
+cast by his rays over the landscape, and other delicate aerial
+transitions, as no one had ever done before, and, in some respects,
+as no one has done in oil color since.
+
+� 23. "But, how, if this were so, could his capacities be of the
+meanest order?" Because doing _one_ thing well, or better than others
+have done it, does not necessarily imply large capacity. Capacity
+means breadth of glance, understanding of the relations of things, and
+invention, and these are rare and precious; but there are very few men
+who have not done _something_, in the course of their lives, better
+than other people. I could point out many engravers, draughtsmen, and
+artists, who have each a particular merit in their manner, or
+particular field of perception, that nobody else has, or ever had. But
+this does not make them great men, it only indicates a small special
+capacity of some kind: and all the smaller if the gift be very
+peculiar and single; for a great man never so limits himself to one
+thing, as that we shall be able to say, "That's all he can do." If
+Claude had been a great man he would not have been so steadfastly set
+on painting effects of sun; he would have looked at all nature, and at
+all art, and would have painted sun effects somewhat worse, and nature
+universally much better.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
+
+� 24. Such as he was, however, his discovery of the way to make
+pictures look warm was very delightful to the shallow connoisseurs
+of the age. Not that they cared for sunshine; but they liked seeing
+jugglery. They could not feel Titian's noble color, nor Veronese's
+noble composition; but they thought it highly amusing to see the sun
+brought into a picture: and Claude's works were bought and
+delighted in by vulgar people then, for their real-looking suns, as
+pictures are now by vulgar people for having real timepieces in
+their church towers.
+
+� 25. But when Turner arose, with an earnest desire to paint the
+whole of nature, he found that the existence of the sun was an
+important fact, and by no means an easily manageable one. _He_ loved
+sunshine for its own sake; but he could not at first paint it. Most
+things else, he would more or less manage without much technical
+difficulty; but the burning orb and the golden haze could not,
+somehow, be got out of the oil paint. Naturally he went to Claude,
+who really had got them out of oil paint; approached him with great
+reverence, as having done that which seemed to Turner most difficult
+of all technical matters, and he became his faithful disciple. How
+much he learned from him of manipulation, I cannot tell; but one
+thing is certain, that he never quite equalled him in that
+particular forte of his. I imagine that Claude's way of laying on
+oil color was so methodical that it could not possibly be imitated
+by a man whose mechanism was interfered with by hundreds of thoughts
+and aims totally different from Claude's; and, besides, I suppose
+that certain useful principles in the management of paint, of which
+our schools are now wholly ignorant, had come down as far as Claude,
+from the Venetians. Turner at last gave up the attempt, and adopted
+a manipulation of his own, which indeed effected certain objects
+attainable in no other way, but which still was in many respects
+unsatisfactory, dangerous, and deeply to be regretted.
+
+� 26. But meantime his mind had been strongly warped by Claude's
+futilities of conception. It was impossible to dwell on such works for
+any length of time without being grievously harmed by them; and the
+style of Turner's compositions was for ever afterwards weakened or
+corrupted. For, truly, it is almost beyond belief into what depth of
+absurdity Claude plunges continually in his most admired designs. For
+instance; undertaking to paint Moses at the Burning Bush, he
+represents a graceful landscape with a city, a river, and a bridge,
+and plenty of tall trees, and the sea, and numbers of people going
+about their business and pleasure in every direction; and the bush
+burning quietly upon a bank in the corner; rather in the dark, and
+not to be seen without close inspection. It would take some pages of
+close writing to point out, one by one, the inanities of heart, soul,
+and brain which such a conception involves; the ineffable ignorance of
+the nature of the event, and of the scene of it; the incapacity of
+conceiving anything even _in_ ignorance, which should be impressive;
+the dim, stupid, serene, leguminous enjoyment of his sunny
+afternoon--burn the bushes as much as they liked--these I leave the
+reader to think over at his leisure, either before the picture in Lord
+Ellesmere's gallery, or the sketch of it in the Liber Veritatis. But
+all these kinds of fallacy sprung more or less out of the vices of the
+time in which Claude lived; his own peculiar character reaches beyond
+these, to an incapacity of understanding the _main point_ in anything
+he had to represent, down to the minutest detail, which is quite
+unequalled, as far as I know, in human nugatoriness. For instance;
+here, in Fig. 7., is the head, with half the body, of Eneas drawing
+his Bow, from No. 180. of the Liber Veritatis. Observe, the string is
+too long by half; for if the bow were unbent, it would be two feet
+longer than the whole bow. Then the arrow is too long by half, has too
+heavy a head by half; and finally, it actually is _under_ the
+bow-hand, instead of above it. Of the ideal and heroic refinement of
+the head and drapery I will say nothing; but look only at the wretched
+archery, and consider if it would be possible for any child to draw
+the thing with less understanding, or to make more mistakes in the
+given compass.[102]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
+
+� 27. And yet, exquisite as is Claude's instinct for blunder, he has
+not strength of mind enough to blunder in a wholly original manner,
+but he must needs falter out of his way to pick up other people's
+puerilities, and be absurd at second-hand. I have been obliged to
+laugh a little--though I hope reverently--at Ghirlandajo's
+landscapes, which yet we saw had a certain charm of quaintness in
+them when contrasted with his grand figures; but could any one have
+believed that Claude, with all the noble landscapes of Titian set
+before him, and all nature round about him, should yet go back to
+Ghirlandajo for types of form. Yet such is the case. I said that the
+Venetian influence came dimly down to Claude; but the old Florentine
+influence came clearly. The Claudesque landscape is not, as so
+commonly supposed, an idealized abstract of the nature about Rome.
+It is an ultimate condition of the Florentine conventional
+landscape, more or less softened by reference to nature. Fig. 8.,
+from No. 145. of the Liber Veritatis, is sufficiently characteristic
+of Claude's rock-drawing; and compared with Fig. 5. (p. 314), will
+show exactly the kind of modification he made on old and received
+types. We shall see other instances of it hereafter.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
+
+Imagine this kind of reproduction of whatever other people had done
+worst, and this kind of misunderstanding of all that he saw himself
+in nature, carried out in Claude's trees, rocks, ships--in
+everything that he touched,--and then consider what kind of school
+this work was for a young and reverent disciple. As I said, Turner
+never recovered the effects of it; his compositions were always
+mannered, lifeless, and even foolish; and he only did noble things
+when the immediate presence of nature had overpowered the
+reminiscences of his master.
+
+� 28. Of the influence of Gaspar and Nicolo Poussin on Turner, there
+is hardly anything to be said, nor much respecting that which they
+had on landscape generally. Nicolo Poussin had noble powers of
+design, and might have been a thoroughly great painter had he been
+trained in Venice; but his Roman education kept him tame; his
+trenchant severity was contrary to the tendencies of the age, and
+had few imitators compared to the dashing of Salvator, and the mist
+of Claude. Those few imitators adopted his manner without possessing
+either his science or invention; and the Italian school of landscape
+soon expired. Reminiscences of him occur sometimes in Turner's
+compositions of sculptured stones for foreground; and the beautiful
+Triumph of Flora, in the Louvre, probably first showed Turner the
+use of definite flower, or blossom-painting, in landscape. I doubt
+if he took anything from Gaspar; whatever he might have learned from
+him respecting masses of foliage and golden distances, could have
+been learned better, and, I believe, _was_ learned, from Titian.
+
+� 29. Meantime, a lower, but more living school had developed itself
+in the north; Cuyp had painted sunshine as truly as Claude, gilding
+with it a more homely, but far more honestly conceived landscape; and
+the effects of light of De Hooghe and Rembrandt presented examples of
+treatment to which southern art could show no parallel. Turner
+evidently studied these with the greatest care, and with great benefit
+in every way; especially this, that they neutralized the idealisms of
+Claude, and showed the young painter what power might be in plain
+truth, even of the most familiar kind. He painted several pictures in
+imitation of these masters; and those in which he tried to rival Cuyp
+are healthy and noble works, being, in fact, just what most of Cuyp's
+own pictures are--faithful studies of Dutch boats in calm weather, on
+smooth water. De Hooghe was too precise, and Rembrandt too dark, to be
+successfully or affectionately followed by him; but he evidently
+learned much from both.
+
+� 30. Finally, he painted many pictures in the manner of Vandevelde
+(who was the accepted authority of his time in sea painting), and
+received much injury from him. To the close of his life, Turner
+always painted the sea too grey, and too opaque, in consequence of
+his early study of Vandevelde. He never seemed to perceive color so
+truly in the sea as he saw it elsewhere. But he soon discovered the
+poorness of Vandevelde's forms of waves, and raised their meanly
+divided surfaces into massive surge, effecting rapidly other
+changes, of which more in another place.
+
+Such was the art to which Turner, in early years, devoted his most
+earnest thoughts. More or less respectful contemplation of Reynolds,
+Loutherbourg, Wilson, Gainsborough, Morland, and Wilkie, was
+incidentally mingled with his graver study; and he maintained a
+questioning watchfulness of even the smallest successes of his
+brother artists of the modern landscape school. It remains for us
+only to note the position of that living school when Turner, helped
+or misled, as the case may be, by the study of the older artists,
+began to consider what remained for him to do, or design.
+
+� 31. The dead schools of landscape, composed of the works we have
+just been examining, were broadly divisible into northern and
+southern: the Dutch schools, more or less natural, but vulgar; the
+Italian, more or less elevated, but absurd. There was a certain
+foolish elegance in Claude, and a dull dignity in Gaspar; but then
+their work resembled nothing that ever existed in the world. On the
+contrary, a canal or cattle piece of Cuyp's had many veracities
+about it; but they were, at best, truths of the ditch and dairy. The
+grace of nature, or her gloom, her tender and sacred seclusions, or
+her reach of power and wrath, had never been painted; nor had
+_anything_ been painted yet in true _love_ of it; for both Dutch and
+Italians agreed in this, that they always painted for the
+_picture's_ sake, to show how well they could imitate sunshine,
+arrange masses, or articulate straws,--never because they loved the
+scene, or wanted to carry away some memory of it.
+
+And thus, all that landscape of the old masters is to be considered
+merely as a struggle of expiring skill to discover some new
+direction in which to display itself. There was no love of nature in
+the age; only a desire for something new. Therefore those schools
+expired at last, leaving the chasm of nearly utter emptiness between
+them and the true moderns, out of which chasm the new school rises,
+not engrafted on that old one, but, from the very base of all
+things, beginning with mere washes of Indian ink, touched upon with
+yellow and brown; and gradually feeling its way to color.
+
+But this infant school differed inherently from that ancienter one,
+in that its motive was love. However feeble its efforts might be,
+they were _for the sake of the nature_, not of the picture, and
+therefore, having this germ of true life, it grew and throve. Robson
+did not paint purple hills because he wanted to show how he could
+lay on purple; but because he truly loved their dark peaks. Fielding
+did not paint downs to show how dexterously he could sponge out
+mists; but because he loved downs.
+
+This modern school, therefore, became the only true school of
+landscape which had yet existed; the artificial Claude and Gaspar
+work may be cast aside out of our way,--as I have said in my
+Edinburgh lectures, under the general title of "pastoralism,"--and
+from the last landscape of Tintoret, if we look for _life_, we must
+pass at once to the first of Turner.
+
+� 32. What help Turner received from this or that companion of his
+youth is of no importance to any one now. Of course every great man is
+always being helped by everybody,[103] for his gift is to get good out
+of all things and all persons; and also there were two men associated
+with him in early study, who showed high promise in the same field,
+Cousen and Girtin (especially the former), and there is no saying what
+these men might have done had they lived; there might, perhaps, have
+been a struggle between one or other of them and Turner, as between
+Giorgione and Titian. But they lived not; and Turner is the only great
+man whom the school has yet produced,--quite great enough, as we shall
+see, for all that needed to be done. To him, therefore, we now finally
+turn, as the sole object of our inquiry. I shall first reinforce, with
+such additions as they need, those statements of his general
+principles which I made in the first volume, but could not then
+demonstrate fully, for want of time to prepare pictorial illustration;
+and then proceed to examine, piece by piece, his representations of
+the facts of nature, comparing them, as it may seem expedient, with
+what had been accomplished by others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I cannot close this volume without alluding briefly to a subject of
+different interest from any that have occupied us in its pages. For
+it may, perhaps, seem to a general reader heartless and vain to
+enter zealously into questions about our arts and pleasures in a
+time of so great public anxiety as this.
+
+But he will find, if he looks back to the sixth paragraph of the
+opening chapter of the last volume, some statement of feelings,
+which, as they made me despondent in a time of apparent national
+prosperity, now cheer me in one which, though of stern trial, I will
+not be so much a coward as to call one of adversity. And I derive
+this encouragement first from the belief that the War itself, with
+all its bitterness, is, in the present state of the European
+nations, productive of more good than evil; and, secondly, because I
+have more confidence than others generally entertain, in the justice
+of its cause.
+
+I say, first, because I believe the war is at present productive of
+good more than of evil. I will not argue this hardly and coldly, as
+I might, by tracing in past history some of the abundant evidence
+that nations have always reached their highest virtue, and wrought
+their most accomplished works, in times of straitening and battle;
+as, on the other hand, no nation ever yet enjoyed a protracted and
+triumphant peace without receiving in its own bosom ineradicable
+seeds of future decline. I will not so argue this matter; but I will
+appeal at once to the testimony of those whom the war has cost the
+dearest. I know what would be told me, by those who have suffered
+nothing; whose domestic happiness has been unbroken; whose daily
+comfort undisturbed; whose experience of calamity consists, at its
+utmost, in the incertitude of a speculation, the dearness of a
+luxury, or the increase of demands upon their fortune which they
+could meet fourfold without inconvenience. From these, I can well
+believe, be they prudent economists, or careless pleasure-seekers,
+the cry for peace will rise alike vociferously, whether in street or
+senate. But I ask _their_ witness, to whom the war has changed the
+aspect of the earth, and imagery of heaven, whose hopes it has cut
+off like a spider's web, whose treasure it has placed, in a moment,
+under the seals of clay. Those who can never more see sunrise, nor
+watch the climbing light gild the Eastern clouds, without thinking
+what graves it has gilded, first, far down behind the dark
+earth-line,--who never more shall see the crocus bloom in spring,
+without thinking what dust it is that feeds the wild flowers of
+Balaclava. Ask _their_ witness, and see if they will not reply that
+it is well with them, and with theirs; that they would have it no
+otherwise; would not, if they might, receive back their gifts of
+love and life, nor take again the purple of their blood out of the
+cross on the breastplate of England. Ask them: and though they
+should answer only with a sob, listen if it does not gather upon
+their lips into the sound of the old Seyton war-cry--"Set on."
+
+And this not for pride--not because the names of their lost ones
+will be recorded to all time, as of those who held the breach and
+kept the gate of Europe against the North, as the Spartans did
+against the East; and lay down in the place they had to guard, with
+the like home message, "Oh, stranger, go and tell the English that
+we are lying here, having obeyed their words;"--not for this, but
+because, also, they have felt that the spirit which has discerned
+them for eminence in sorrow--the helmed and sworded skeleton that
+rakes with its white fingers the sands of the Black Sea beach into
+grave-heap after grave-heap, washed by everlasting surf of
+tears--has been to them an angel of other things than agony; that
+they have learned, with those hollow, undeceivable eyes of his, to
+see all the earth by the sunlight of deathbeds;--no inch-high stage
+for foolish griefs and feigned pleasures; no dream, neither, as its
+dull moralists told them;--_Any_thing but that: a place of true,
+marvellous, inextricable sorrow and power; a question-chamber of
+trial by rack and fire, irrevocable decision recording continually;
+and no sleep, nor folding of hands, among the demon-questioners;
+none among the angel-watchers, none among the men who stand or fall
+beside those hosts of God. They know now the strength of sacrifice,
+and that its flames can illumine as well as consume; they are bound
+by new fidelities to all that they have saved,--by new love to all
+for whom they have suffered; every affection which seemed to sink
+with those dim life-stains into the dust, has been delegated, by
+those who need it no more, to the cause for which they have expired;
+and every mouldering arm, which will never more embrace the beloved
+ones, has bequeathed to them its strength and its faithfulness.
+
+For the cause of this quarrel is no dim, half-avoidable involution
+of mean interests and errors, as some would have us believe. There
+never was a great war caused by such things. There never can be. The
+historian may trace it, with ingenious trifling, to a courtier's
+jest or a woman's glance; but he does not ask--(and it is the sum of
+questions)--how the warring nations had come to found their
+destinies on the course of the sneer, or the smile. If they have so
+based them, it is time for them to learn, through suffering, how to
+build on other foundations--for great, accumulated, and most
+righteous cause, their foot slides in due time; and against the
+torpor, or the turpitude, of their myriads, there is loosed the
+haste of the devouring sword and the thirsty arrow. But if they have
+set their fortunes on other than such ground, then the war must be
+owing to some deep conviction or passion in their own hearts,--a
+conviction which, in resistless flow, or reckless ebb, or consistent
+stay, is the ultimate arbiter of battle, disgrace, or conquest.
+
+Wherever there is war, there _must_ be injustice on one side or the
+other, or on both. There have been wars which were little more than
+trials of strength between friendly nations, and in which the
+injustice was not to each other, but to the God who gave them life.
+But in a malignant war of these present ages there is injustice of
+ignobler kind, at once to God and man, which _must_ be stemmed for
+both their sakes. It may, indeed, be so involved with national
+prejudices, or ignorances, that neither of the contending nations
+can conceive it as attaching to their cause; nay, the constitution
+of their governments, and the clumsy crookedness of their political
+dealings with each other, may be such as to prevent either of them
+from knowing the actual cause for which they have gone to war.
+Assuredly this is, in a great degree, the state of things with _us_;
+for I noticed that there never came news by telegraph of the
+explosion of a powder-barrel, or of the loss of thirty men by a
+sortie, but the Parliament lost confidence immediately in the
+justice of the war; reopened the question whether we ever should
+have engaged in it, and remained in a doubtful and repentant state
+of mind until one of the enemy's powder-barrels blew up also; upon
+which they were immediately satisfied again that the war was a wise
+and necessary one. How far, therefore, the calamity may have been
+brought upon us by men whose political principles shoot annually
+like the leaves, and change color at every autumn frost:--how loudly
+the blood that has been poured out round the walls of that city, up
+to the horse-bridles, may now be crying from the ground against men
+who did not know, when they first bade shed it, exactly what war
+was, or what blood was, or what life was, or truth, or what anything
+else was upon the earth; and whose tone of opinions touching the
+destinies of mankind depended entirely upon whether they were
+sitting on the right or left side of the House of Commons;--this, I
+repeat, I know not, nor (in all solemnity I say it) do I care to
+know. For if it be so, and the English nation could at the present
+period of its history be betrayed into a war such as this by the
+slipping of a wrong word into a protocol, or bewitched into
+unexpected battle under the budding hallucinations of its sapling
+senators, truly it is time for us to bear the penalty of our
+baseness, and learn, as the sleepless steel glares close upon us,
+how to choose our governors more wisely, and our ways more warily.
+For that which brings swift punishment in war, must have brought
+slow ruin in peace; and those who have now laid down their lives for
+England, have doubly saved her; they have humbled at once her
+enemies and herself; and have done less for her, in the conquest
+they achieve, than in the sorrow that they claim.
+
+But it is not altogether thus: we have not been cast into this war
+by mere political misapprehensions, or popular ignorances. It is
+quite possible that neither we nor our rulers may clearly understand
+the nature of the conflict; and that we may be dealing blows in the
+dark, confusedly, and as a soldier suddenly awakened from slumber by
+an unknown adversary. But I believe the struggle was inevitable, and
+that the sooner it came, the more easily it was to be met, and the
+more nobly concluded. France and England are both of them, from
+shore to shore, in a state of intense progression, change, and
+experimental life. They are each of them beginning to examine, more
+distinctly than ever nations did yet in the history of the world,
+the dangerous question respecting the rights of governed, and the
+responsibilities of governing, bodies; not, as heretofore; foaming
+over them in red frenzy, with intervals of fetter and straw crown,
+but in health, quietness, and daylight, with the help of a good
+Queen and a great Emperor; and to determine them in a way which, by
+just so much as it is more effective and rational, is likely to
+produce more permanent results than ever before on the policy of
+neighboring States, and to force, gradually, the discussion of
+similar questions into their places of silence. To force it,--for
+true liberty, like true religion, is always aggressive or
+persecuted; but the attack is _generally_ made upon it by the nation
+which is to be crushed,--by Persian on Athenian, Tuscan on Roman,
+Austrian on Swiss; or, as now, by Russia upon us and our allies: her
+attack appointed, it seems to me, for confirmation of all our
+greatness, trial of our strength, purging and punishment of our
+futilities, and establishment for ever, in our hands, of the
+leadership in the political progress of the world.
+
+Whether this its providential purpose be accomplished, must depend
+on its enabling France and England to love one another, and teaching
+these, the two noblest foes that ever stood breast to breast among
+the nations, first to decipher the law of international charities;
+first to discern that races, like individuals, can only reach their
+true strength, dignity, or joy, in seeking each the welfare, and
+exulting each in the glory, of the other. It is strange how far we
+still seem from fully perceiving this. We know that two men, cast on
+a desert island, could not thrive in dispeace; we can understand
+that four, or twelve, might still find their account in unity; but
+that a multitude should thrive otherwise than by the contentions of
+its classes, or _two_ multitudes hold themselves in anywise bound by
+brotherly law to serve, support, rebuke, rejoice in one another,
+this seems still as far beyond our conception, as the clearest of
+commandments, "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's
+wealth," is beyond our habitual practice. Yet, if once we comprehend
+that precept in its breadth, and feel that what we now call jealousy
+for our country's honor, is, so far as it tends to other countries'
+_dis_honor, merely one of the worst, because most complacent and
+self-gratulatory, forms of irreligion,--a newly breathed strength
+will, with the newly interpreted patriotism, animate and sanctify
+the efforts of men. Learning, unchecked by envy, will be accepted
+more frankly, throned more firmly, guided more swiftly; charity,
+unchilled by fear, will dispose the laws of each State without
+reluctance to advantage its neighbor by justice to itself; and
+admiration, unwarped by prejudice, possess itself continually of new
+treasure in the arts and the thoughts of the stranger.
+
+If France and England fail of this, if again petty jealousies or
+selfish interests prevail to unknit their hands from the armored
+grasp, then, indeed, their faithful children will have fallen in
+vain; there will be a sound as of renewed lamentation along those
+Euxine waves, and a shaking among the bones that bleach by the
+mounds of Sebastopol. But if they fail not of this,--if we, in our
+love of our queens and kings, remember how France gave to the cause
+of early civilization, first the greatest, then the holiest, of
+monarchs;[104] and France, in her love of liberty, remembers how
+_we_ first raised the standard of Commonwealth, trusted to the grasp
+of one good and strong hand, witnessed for by victory; and so join
+in perpetual compact of our different strengths, to contend for
+justice, mercy, and truth throughout the world,--who dares say that
+one soldier has died in vain? The scarlet of the blood that has
+sealed this covenant will be poured along the clouds of a new
+aurora, glorious in that Eastern heaven; for every sob of wreck-fed
+breaker round those Pontic precipices, the floods shall clap their
+hands between the guarded mounts of the Prince-Angel; and the
+spirits of those lost multitudes, crowned with the olive and rose
+among the laurel, shall haunt, satisfied, the willowy brooks and
+peaceful vales of England, and glide, triumphant, by the poplar
+groves and sunned coteaux of Seine.
+
+  [97] The education here spoken of is, of course, that bearing on
+       the main work of life. In other respects, Turner's education
+       was more neglected than Scott's, and that not beneficently.
+       See the close of the third of my Edinburgh Lectures.
+
+  [98] The picture is in the Uffizii of Florence.
+
+  [99] This etching is prepared for receiving mezzotint in the next
+       volume; it is therefore much heavier in line, especially in
+       the water, than I should have made it, if intended to be
+       complete as it is.
+
+  [100] Compare Vol. I. Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. I repeat here
+        some things that were then said; but it is necessary now to
+        review them in connection with Turner's education, as well
+        as for the sake of enforcing them by illustration.
+
+  [101] Now in the old library of Venice.
+
+  [102] My old friend Blackwood complains bitterly, in his last
+        number, of my having given this illustration at one of my
+        late lectures, saying, that I "have a disagreeable knack of
+        finding out the joints in my opponent's armor," and that "I
+        never fight for love." I never do. I fight for truth,
+        earnestly, and in no wise for jest; and against all lies,
+        earnestly, and in no wise for love. They complain that "a
+        noble adversary is not in Mr. Ruskin's way." No; a noble
+        adversary never was, never will be. With all that is noble
+        I have been, and shall be, in perpetual peace, with all that
+        is ignoble and false everlastingly at war. And as for these
+        Scotch _bourgeois gentilshommes_ with their "Tu n'as pas la
+        patience que je pare," let them look to their fence. But
+        truly, if they will tell me where Claude's strong points
+        are, I will strike there, and be thankful.
+
+  [103] His first drawing master was, I believe, that Mr. Lowe,
+        whose daughters, now aged and poor, have, it seems to me,
+        some claim on public regard, being connected distantly with
+        the memory of Johnson, and closely with that of Turner.
+
+  [104] Charlemagne and St. Louis.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+I. CLAUDE'S TREE-DRAWING.
+
+
+The reader may not improbably hear it said, by persons who are
+incapable of maintaining an honest argument, and therefore incapable
+of understanding or believing the honesty of an adversary, that I
+have caricatured, or unfairly chosen, the examples I give of the
+masters I depreciate. It is evident, in the first place, that I
+could not, if I were even cunningly disposed, adopt a worse policy
+than in so doing; for the discovery of caricature or falsity in my
+representations, would not only invalidate the immediate statement,
+but the whole book; and invalidate it in the most fatal way, by
+showing that all I had ever said about "truth" was hypocrisy, and
+that in my own affairs I expected to prevail by help of lies.
+Nevertheless it necessarily happens, that in endeavors to facsimile
+any work whatsoever, bad or good, some changes are induced from the
+exact aspect of the original. These changes are, of course,
+sometimes harmful, sometimes advantageous; the bad thing generally
+gains; the good thing _always_ loses: so that I am continually
+tormented by finding, in my plates of contrasts, the virtue and vice
+I exactly wanted to talk about, eliminated from _both_ examples. In
+some cases, however, the bad thing will lose also, and then I must
+either cancel the plate, or increase the cost of the work by
+preparing another (at a similar risk), or run the chance of
+incurring the charge of dishonest representation. I desire,
+therefore, very earnestly, and once for all, to have it understood
+that whatever I say in the text, bearing on questions of comparison,
+refers _always_ to the _original_ works; and that, if the reader has
+it in his power, I would far rather he should look at those works
+than at my plates of them; I only give the plates for his immediate
+help and convenience: and I mention this, with respect to my plate
+of Claude's ramification, because, if I have such a thing as a
+prejudice at all, (and, although I do not myself think I have,
+people certainly say so,) it is against Claude; and I might,
+therefore, be sooner suspected of some malice in this plate than in
+others. But I simply gave the original engravings from the Liber
+Veritatis to Mr. Le Keux, earnestly requesting that the portions
+selected might be faithfully copied; and I think he is much to be
+thanked for so carefully and successfully accomplishing the task.
+The figures are from the following plates:--
+
+  No. 1. Part of the central tree in No. 134. of the Liber Veritatis.
+      2. From the largest tree       "   158.
+      3. Bushes at root of tree      "   134.
+      4. Tree on the left            "   183.
+      5. Tree on the left            "    95.
+      6. Tree on the left            "    72.
+      7. Principal tree              "    92.
+      8. Tree on the right           "    32.
+
+If, in fact, any change be effected in the examples in this plate, it
+is for the better; for, thus detached, they all look like small
+boughs, in which the faults are of little consequence; in the original
+works they are seen to be intended for large trunks of trees, and the
+errors are therefore pronounced on a much larger scale.
+
+The plate of medi�val rocks (10.) has been executed with much less
+attention in transcript, because the points there to be illustrated
+were quite indisputable, and the instances were needed merely to show
+the _kind_ of _thing_ spoken of, not the skill of particular masters.
+The example from Leonardo was, however, somewhat carefully treated.
+Mr. Cuff copied it accurately from the only engraving of the picture
+which I believe exists, and with which, therefore, I suppose the world
+is generally content. That engraving, however, in no respect seems to
+me to give the look of the light behind Leonardo's rocks; so I
+afterwards darkened the rocks, and put some light into the sky and
+lily; and the effect is certainly more like that of the picture than
+it is in the same portion of the old engraving.
+
+Of the other masters represented in the plates of this volume, the
+noblest, Tintoret, has assuredly suffered the most (Plate 17.);
+first, in my too hasty drawing from the original, picture; and,
+secondly, through some accidental errors of outline which occurred
+in the reduction to the size of the page; lastly, and chiefly, in
+the withdrawal of the heads of the four figures underneath, in the
+shadow, on which the composition entirely depends. This last evil is
+unavoidable. It is quite impossible to make _extracts_ from the
+great masters without partly spoiling every separated feature; the
+very essence of a noble composition being, that none should bear
+separation from the rest.
+
+The plate from Raphael (11) is, I think, on the whole, satisfactory.
+It cost me much pains, as I had to facsimile the irregular form of
+every leaf; each being, in the original picture, executed with a
+somewhat wayward pencil-stroke of vivid brown on the clear sky.
+
+Of the other plates it would be tedious to speak in detail.
+Generally, it will be found that I have taken most pains to do
+justice to the masters of whom I have to speak depreciatingly; and
+that, if there be calumny at all, it is always of Turner, rather
+than of Claude.
+
+The reader might, however, perhaps suspect me of ill-will towards
+Constable, owing to my continually introducing him for depreciatory
+comparison. So far from this being the case, I had, as will be seen
+in various passages of the first volume, considerable respect for
+the feeling with which he worked; but I was compelled to do harsh
+justice upon him now, because Mr. Leslie, in his unadvised and
+unfortunate _r�chauff�_ of the fallacious art-maxims of the last
+century, has suffered his personal regard for Constable so far to
+prevail over his judgment as to bring him forward as a great artist,
+comparable in some kind with Turner. As Constable's reputation was,
+even before this, most mischievous, in giving countenance to the
+blotting and blundering of Modernism, I saw myself obliged, though
+unwillingly, to carry the suggested comparison thoroughly out.
+
+
+II. GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
+
+The reader must have noticed that I never speak of German art, or
+German philosophy, but in depreciation. This, however, is not
+because I cannot feel, or would not acknowledge, the value and
+power, within certain limits, of both; but because I also feel that
+the immediate tendency of the English mind is to rate them too
+highly; and, therefore, it becomes a necessary task, at present, to
+mark what evil and weakness there are in them, rather than what
+good. I also am brought continually into collision with certain
+extravagances of the German mind, by my own steady pursuit of
+Naturalism as opposed to Idealism; and, therefore, I become
+unfortunately cognizant of the evil, rather than of the good; which
+evil, so far as I feel it, I am bound to declare. And it is not to
+the point to protest, as the Chevalier Bunsen and other German
+writers have done, against the expression of opinions respecting
+their philosophy by persons who have not profoundly or carefully
+studied it; for the very resolution to study any system of
+metaphysics profoundly, must be based, in any prudent man's mind, on
+some preconceived opinion of its worthiness to be studied; which
+opinion of German metaphysics the naturalistic English cannot be led
+to form. This is not to be murmured against,--it is in the simple
+necessity of things. Men who have other business on their hands must
+be content to choose what philosophy they have occasion for, by the
+sample; and when, glancing into the second volume of "Hippolytus,"
+we find the Chevalier Bunsen himself talking of a "finite
+realization of the infinite" (a phrase considerably less rational
+than "a black realization of white"), and of a triad composed of
+God, Man, and Humanity[105] (which is a parallel thing to talking of
+a triad composed of man, dog, and canineness), knowing those
+expressions to be pure, definite, and highly finished nonsense, we
+do not in general trouble ourselves to look any farther. Some one
+will perhaps answer that if one always judged thus by the
+sample,--as, for instance, if one judged of Turner's pictures by the
+head of a figure cut out of one of them,--very precious things might
+often be despised. Not, I think, often. If any one went to Turner,
+expecting to learn figure-drawing from him, the sample of his
+figure-drawing would accurately and justly inform him that he had
+come to the wrong master. But if he came to be taught landscape, the
+smallest fragment of Turner's work would justly exemplify his power.
+It may sometimes unluckily happen that, in such short trial, we
+strike upon an accidentally failing part of the thing to be tried,
+and then we may be unjust; but there is, nevertheless, in multitudes
+of cases, no other way of judging or acting; and the necessity of
+occasionally being unjust is a law of life,--like that of sometimes
+stumbling, or being sick. It will not do to walk at snail's pace all
+our lives for fear of stumbling, nor to spend years in the
+investigation of everything which, by specimen, we must condemn. He
+who seizes all that he plainly discerns to be valuable, and never is
+unjust but when he honestly cannot help it, will soon be enviable in
+his possessions, and venerable in his equity.
+
+Nor can I think that the risk of loss is great in the matter under
+discussion. I have often been told that any one who will read Kant,
+Strauss, and the rest of the German metaphysicians and divines,
+resolutely through, and give his whole strength to the study of them,
+will, after ten or twelve years' labor, discover that there is very
+little harm in them; and this I can well believe; but I believe also
+that the ten or twelve years may be better spent; and that any man who
+honestly wants philosophy not for show, but for _use_, and knowing the
+Proverbs of Solomon, can, by way of Commentary, afford to buy, in
+convenient editions, Plato, Bacon, Wordsworth, Carlyle, and Helps,
+will find that he has got as much as will be sufficient for him and
+his household during life, and of as good quality as need be.
+
+It is also often declared necessary to study the German
+controversialists, because the grounds of religion "must be inquired
+into." I am sorry to hear they have not been inquired into yet; but
+if it be so, there are two ways of pursuing that inquiry: one for
+scholarly men, who have leisure on their hands, by reading all that
+they have time to read, for and against, and arming themselves at
+all points for controversy with all persons; the other,--a shorter
+and simpler way,--for busy and practical men, who want merely to
+find out how to live and die. Now for the learned and leisurely men
+I am not writing; they know what and how to read better than I can
+tell them. For simple and busy men, concerned much with art, which
+is eminently a practical matter, and fatigues the eyes, so as to
+render much reading inexpedient, I _am_ writing; and such men I do,
+to the utmost of my power, dissuade from meddling with German books;
+not because I fear inquiry into the grounds of religion, but because
+the only inquiry which is _possible_ to them must be conducted in a
+totally different way. They have been brought up as Christians, and
+doubt if they should remain Christians. They cannot ascertain, by
+investigation, if the Bible be true; but _if it be_, and Christ ever
+existed, and was God, then, certainly, the Sermon which He has
+permitted for 1800 years to stand recorded as first of all His own
+teaching in the New Testament, must be true. Let them take that
+Sermon and give it fair practical trial: act out every verse of it,
+with no quibbling or explaining away, except the reduction of such
+_evidently_ metaphorical expressions as "cut off thy foot," "pluck
+the beam out of thine eye," to their effectively practical sense.
+Let them act out, or obey, every verse literally for a whole year,
+so far as they can,--a year being little enough time to give to an
+inquiry into religion; and if, at the end of the year, they are not
+satisfied, and still need to prosecute the inquiry, let them try the
+German system if they choose.
+
+
+III. PLAGIARISM.
+
+Some time after I had written the concluding chapter of this work,
+the interesting and powerful poems of Emerson were brought under my
+notice by one of the members of my class at the Working Men's
+College. There is much in some of these poems so like parts of the
+chapter in question, even in turn of expression, that though I do
+not usually care to justify myself from the charge of plagiarism, I
+felt that a few words were necessary in this instance.
+
+I do not, as aforesaid, justify myself, in general, because I know
+there is internal evidence in my work of its originality, if people
+care to examine it; and if they do not, or have not skill enough to
+know genuine from borrowed work, my simple assertion would not
+convince them, especially as the charge of plagiarism is hardly ever
+made but by plagiarists, and persons of the unhappy class who do not
+believe in honesty but on evidence. Nevertheless, as my work is so
+much out of doors, and among pictures, that I have time to read few
+modern books, and am therefore in more danger than most people of
+repeating, as if it were new, what others have said, it may be well
+to note, once for all, that any such apparent plagiarism results in
+fact from my writings being more original than I wish them to be,
+from my having worked out my whole subject in unavoidable, but to
+myself hurtful, ignorance of the labors of others. On the other
+hand, I should be very sorry if I had _not_ been continually taught
+and influenced by the writers whom I love; and am quite unable to
+say to what extent my thoughts have been guided by Wordsworth,
+Carlyle, and Helps; to whom (with Dante and George Herbert, in olden
+time) I owe more than to any other writers;--most of all, perhaps,
+to Carlyle, whom I read so constantly, that, without wilfully
+setting myself to imitate him, I find myself perpetually falling
+into his modes of expression, and saying many things in a "quite
+other," and, I hope, stronger, way, than I should have adopted some
+years ago; as also there are things which I hope are said more
+clearly and simply than before, owing to the influence upon me of
+the beautiful _quiet_ English of Helps. It would be both foolish and
+wrong to struggle to cast off influences of this kind; for they
+consist mainly in a real and healthy help;--the master, in writing
+as in painting, showing certain methods of language which it would
+be ridiculous, and even affected, not to employ, when once shown;
+just as it would have been ridiculous in Bonifacio to refuse to
+employ Titian's way of laying on color, if he felt it the best,
+because he had not himself discovered it. There is all the
+difference in the world between this receiving of guidance, or
+allowing of influence, and wilful imitation, much more, plagiarism;
+nay, the guidance may even innocently reach into local tones of
+thought, and must do so to some extent; so that I find Carlyle's
+stronger thinking coloring mine continually; and should be very
+sorry if I did not; otherwise I should have read him to little
+purpose. But what I have of my own is still all there, and, I
+believe, better brought out, by far, than it would have been
+otherwise. Thus, if we glance over the wit and satire of the popular
+writers of the day, we shall find that the _manner_ of it, so far as
+it is distinctive, is always owing to Dickens; and that out of his
+first exquisite ironies branched innumerable other forms of wit,
+varying with the disposition of the writers; original in the matter
+and substance of them, yet never to have been expressed as they now
+are, but for Dickens.
+
+Many people will suppose that for several ideas in the chapters on
+Landscape I was indebted to Humboldt's Kosmos, and Howitt's Rural
+Scenery. I am indebted to Mr. Howitt's book for much pleasure, but
+for no suggestion, as it was not put into my hands till the chapters
+in question were in type. I wish it had been; as I should have been
+glad to have taken farther note on the landscape of Theocritus, on
+which Mr. Howitt dwells with just delight. Other parts of the book
+will be found very suggestive and helpful to the reader who cares to
+pursue the subject. Of Humboldt's Kosmos I heard much talk when it
+first came out, and looked through it cursorily; but thinking it
+contained no material (connected with my subject)[106] which I had
+not already possessed myself of, I have never since referred to the
+work. I may be mistaken in my estimate of it, but certainly owe it
+absolutely nothing.
+
+It is also often said that I borrow from Pugin. I glanced at Pugin's
+Contrasts once, in the Oxford architectural reading-room, during an
+idle forenoon. His "Remarks on Articles in the Rambler" were brought
+under my notice by some of the reviews. I never read a word of any
+other of his works, not feeling, from the style of his architecture,
+the smallest interest in his opinions.
+
+I have so often spoken, in the preceding pages, of Holman Hunt's
+picture of the Light of the World, that I may as well, in this
+place, glance at the envious charge against it, of being plagiarized
+from a German print.
+
+It is indeed true that there was a painting of the subject before;
+and there were, of course, no paintings of the Nativity before
+Raphael's time, nor of the Last Supper before Leonardo's, else those
+masters could have laid no claim to originality. But what was still
+more singular (the verse to be illustrated being, "Behold, I stand
+at the door and knock"), the principal figure in the antecedent
+picture was knocking at a door, knocked with its right hand, and had
+its face turned to the spectator! Nay, it was even robed in a long
+robe, down to its feet. All these circumstances were the same in Mr.
+Hunt's picture; and as the chances evidently were a hundred to one
+that if he had not been helped to the ideas by the German artist, he
+would have represented the figure as _not_ knocking at any door, as
+turning its back to the spectator, and as dressed in a short robe,
+the plagiarism was considered as demonstrated. Of course no defence
+is possible in such a case. All I can say is, that I shall be
+sincerely grateful to any unconscientious persons who will adapt a
+few more German prints in the same manner.
+
+Finally, touching plagiarism in general, it is to be remembered that
+all men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped:
+they are taught by every person whom they meet, and enriched by
+everything that falls in their way. The greatest is he who has been
+oftenest aided; and, if the attainments of all human minds could be
+traced to their real sources, it would be found that the world had
+been laid most under contribution by the men of most original power,
+and that every day of their existence deepened their debt to their
+race, while it enlarged their gifts to it. The labor devoted to
+trace the origin of any thought, or any invention, will usually
+issue in the blank conclusion that there is nothing new under the
+sun; yet nothing that is truly great can ever be altogether
+borrowed; and he is commonly the wisest, and is always the happiest,
+who receives simply, and without envious question, whatever good is
+offered him, with thanks to its immediate giver.
+
+  [105] I am truly sorry to have introduced such words in an
+        apparently irreverent way. But it would be a guilty
+        reverence which prevented us from exposing fallacy,
+        precisely where fallacy was most dangerous, and shrank from
+        unveiling an error, just because that error existed in
+        parlance respecting the most solemn subjects to which it
+        could possibly be attached.
+
+  [106] See the Fourth Volume.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+           Transcriber's Notes (continued from top of text):
+
+
+  Typographical changes to the original work are as follows:
+
+  Minor punctuation changes have been made without annotation.
+
+  pg 242 paus/pause: Matilda pause where ...
+  pg 277 charater/character: the character of this ...
+  pg 330 cloads/clouds: clouds of rage ...
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Modern Painters Vol. III., by John Ruskin
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN PAINTERS VOL. III. ***
+
+***** This file should be named 38923-8.txt or 38923-8.zip *****
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+    margin-left: 1em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.poem span.i2 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 2em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.poem span.i3 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 3em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.poem span.i4 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 4em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.poem span.i5 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 5em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.poem span.i6 {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 6em;
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+
+/* Transcriber's notes */
+.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA;
+    color: black;
+     font-size:smaller;
+     padding:0.5em;
+     margin-bottom:5em;
+     font-family:sans-serif, serif;
+}
+
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern Painters Vol. III., 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: Modern Painters Vol. III.
+       Containing Part IV., of many things
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: February 19, 2012 [EBook #38923]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN PAINTERS VOL. III. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, RSPIII and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="center" style="margin: auto; max-width: 80em;">
+
+
+<div class="transnote" style="margin: auto; max-width: 35em;">
+<p class="center">Transcriber's Notes:</p>
+
+<p>The original spelling and minor inconsistencies in the spelling and
+formatting have been retained. Unusual and alternative spellings have
+been retained as they appear on the original publication. Hyphenated
+words have been standardized.</p>
+
+<p>Minor typographical changes are listed at the bottom of this text.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<!-- Start Main body of work -->
+
+<!-- ****************************************************************************************** -->
+<!-- ****************************************************************************************** -->
+<!-- ***************************                                  ***************************** -->
+<!-- ***************************     MAIN BODY OF WORK            ***************************** -->
+<!-- ***************************                                  ***************************** -->
+<!-- ****************************************************************************************** -->
+<!-- ****************************************************************************************** -->
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<div style="font-size: 130%;">Library Edition</div>
+<br />
+<br />
+<div style="font-size: 140%">THE COMPLETE WORKS</div>
+<br />
+<div style="font-size: 100%">OF</div>
+<br />
+<div style="font-size: 200%">J&nbsp;O&nbsp;H&nbsp;N&nbsp; R&nbsp;U&nbsp;S&nbsp;K&nbsp;I&nbsp;N</div>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<div style="font-size: 110%">MODERN PAINTERS</div>
+<div style="font-size: 110%"><span class="smcap">Volume II</span>&mdash;OF TRUTH AND THEORETIC FACULTIES</div>
+<div style="font-size: 110%"><span class="smcap">Volume III</span>&mdash;OF MANY THINGS</div>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<div style="font-size: 120%">NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION</div>
+<div style="font-size: 120%">NEW YORK
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp;
+CHICAGO</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<!-- comment out pagenum
+<span class="pagenum">
+	<a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">i</a>
+	<a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">ii</a>
+</span>
+-->
+
+<div style="font-size: 150%">MODERN PAINTERS.</div>
+<br />
+<div style="font-size: 120%">VOL. III.,</div>
+<br />
+<div style="font-size: 60%">CONTAINING</div>
+<br />
+<div style="font-size: 110%">PART IV.,</div>
+<br />
+<div style="font-size: 130%">OF MANY THINGS.</div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<!--
+<span class="pagenum">
+	<a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">iii]</a>
+	<a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">iv]</a>
+</span>
+-->
+
+
+<h2>TABLE OF CONTENTS.</h2>
+<br />
+<div style="font-size: 130%">PART IV.</div>
+<div style="font-size: 130%">OF MANY THINGS.</div>
+<br />
+
+<table summary="Table of Contents" cellpadding="0">
+	<tr>
+		<td>&nbsp;</td>
+		<td>&nbsp;</td>
+		<td>&nbsp;</td>
+		<td><span class="smcap" style="font-size:70%;">PAGE</span></td>
+
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">&nbsp; I.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">Of the received Opinions touching the "Grand Style"</a>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </td>
+		<td class="tdr">1</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">II.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">Of Realization</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">16</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">III.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">Of the Real Nature of Greatness of Style</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">23</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">IV.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">Of the False Ideal:&mdash;First, Religious</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">44</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">V.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">Of the False Ideal:&mdash;Secondly, Profane</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">61</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">VI.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">Of the True Ideal:&mdash;First, Purist</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">70</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">VII.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">Of the True Ideal:&mdash;Secondly, Naturalist</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">77</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">VIII.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">Of the True Ideal:&mdash;Thirdly, Grotesque</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">92</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">IX.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">Of Finish</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">108</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">X.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">Of the Use of Pictures</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">124</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">XI.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">Of the Novelty of Landscape</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">144</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">XII.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">Of the Pathetic Fallacy</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">152</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">XIII.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">Of Classical Landscape</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">168</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">XIV.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">Of Mediæval Landscape:&mdash;First, the Fields</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">191</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">XV.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">Of Mediæval Landscape:&mdash;Secondly, the Rocks</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">229</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">XVI.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">Of Modern Landscape</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">248</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">XVII.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">The Moral of Landscape</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">280</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc">"</td>
+		<td class="tdr">XVIII.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">Of the Teachers of Turner</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">308</td>
+
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td colspan="4"><br /><h2>APPENDIX.</h2></td>
+
+	</tr><tr>
+
+		<td class="tdc"></td>
+		<td class="tdr">I.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#A_I">Claude's Tree-drawing</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">333</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc"></td>
+		<td class="tdr">II.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#A_II">German Philosophy</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">336</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc"></td>
+		<td class="tdr">III.&mdash;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#A_III">Plagiarism</a></td>
+		<td class="tdr">338</td>
+	</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<!--
+<span class="pagenum">
+	<a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">v</a>
+	<a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">vi</a>
+
+</span>
+-->
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h2>LIST OF PLATES TO VOL. III.</h2>
+
+<table summary="List of Plates to Volume III" cellpadding="0">
+	<!--table header -->
+	<tr>
+		<td>&nbsp;</td>
+		<td>&nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span style="font-size:70%"> &nbsp; &nbsp; Drawn by</span></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span style="font-size:70%">&nbsp; &nbsp; Engraved by</span></td>
+		<td>&nbsp;</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+
+	<!--table front piece -->
+		<td class="tdl" colspan="2"><a href="#PLATE_FRONT">Frontispiece. Lake, Land, and Cloud.</a> &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp; </td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>The Author &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp; </i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">J. C. Armytage.</span> &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp;</td>
+		<td>&nbsp;</td>
+
+	<!--list header -->
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdl" colspan="2"><span style="font-size:70%"><br />Plate</span></td>
+		<td>&nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdr" colspan="2"><span style="font-size:70%"><br />&nbsp;Facing page</span></td>
+
+	<!-- begin illu list -->
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">1. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_1">True and False Griffins</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>The Author</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">R. P. Cuff</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">106</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">2. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_2">Drawing of Tree-bark</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>Various</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">J. H. Le Keux</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">114</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">3. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_3">Strength of old Pine</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>The Author</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">J. H. Le Keux</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">116</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">4. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_4">Ramification according to Claude</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>Claude</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">J. H. Le Keux</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">117</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">5. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_5">Good and Bad Tree-drawing</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>Turner and Constable</i> &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp; </td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">J. Cousen</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">118</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">6. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_6">Foreground Leafage</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>The Author</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">J. C. Armytage</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">121</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">7. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_7">Botany of the Thirteenth Century</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>Missal-Painters</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Henry Shaw</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">203</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">8. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_8">The Growth of Leaves</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>The Author</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">R. P. Cuff</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">204</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">9. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_9">Botany of the Fourteenth Century</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>Missal-Painters</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Cuff; H. Swan</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">207</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">10. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_10">Geology of the Middle Ages</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>Leonardo, etc.</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">R. P. Cuff</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">238</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">11. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_11">Latest Purism</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>Raphael</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">J. C. Armytage</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">313</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">12. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_12">The Shores of Wharfe</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>J. W. M. Turner</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Author</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">314</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">13. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_13">First Mountain-Naturalism</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>Masaccio</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">J. H. Le Keux</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">315</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">14. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_14">The Lombard Apennine</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>The Author</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Thos. Lupton</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">315</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">15. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_15">St. George of the Seaweed</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>The Author</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Thos. Lupton</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">315</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">16. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_16">Early Naturalism</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>Titian</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">J. C. Armytage</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">316</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdr">17. &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl"><a href="#PLATE_17">Advanced Naturalism</a></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><i>Tintoret</i></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">J. C. Armytage</span></td>
+		<td class="tdr">316</td>
+	</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+<!--
+<span class="pagenum">
+	<a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">vii</a>
+	<a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">viii</a>
+</span>
+-->
+
+
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>As this preface is nearly all about myself, no one need take
+the trouble of reading it, unless he happens to be desirous of
+knowing&mdash;what I, at least, am bound to state,&mdash;the circumstances
+which have caused the long delay of the work, as well as
+the alterations which will be noticed in its form.</p>
+
+<p>The first and second volumes were written to check, as far
+as I could, the attacks upon Turner which prevented the public
+from honoring his genius, at the time when his power was
+greatest. The check was partially given, but too late; Turner
+was seized by painful illness not long after the second volume
+appeared; his works, towards the close of the year 1845, showed
+a conclusive failure of power; and I saw that nothing remained
+for me to write, but his epitaph.</p>
+
+<p>The critics had done their proper and appointed work; they
+had embittered, more than those who did not know Turner intimately
+could have believed possible, the closing years of his life;
+and had blinded the world in general (as it appears ordained by
+Fate that the world always <i>shall</i> be blinded) to the presence of
+a great spirit among them, till the hour of its departure. With
+them, and their successful work, I had nothing more to do; the
+account of gain and loss, of gifts and gratitude, between Turner
+and his countrymen, was for ever closed. <i>He</i> could only be left
+to his quiet death at Chelsea,&mdash;the sun upon his face; <i>they</i> to
+dispose a length of funeral through Ludgate, and bury, with
+threefold honor, his body in St. Paul's, his pictures at Charing
+Cross, and his purposes in Chancery. But with respect to the
+illustration and preservation of those of his works which remained
+unburied, I felt that much might yet be done, if I could
+at all succeed in proving that these works had some nobleness in
+them, and were worth preservation. I pursued my task, therefore,
+as I had at first proposed, with this only difference in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">vi</a></span>
+method,&mdash;that instead of writing in continued haste, such as I
+had been forced into at first by the urgency of the occasion, I
+set myself to do the work as well as I could, and to collect materials
+for the complete examination of the canons of art received
+among us.</p>
+
+<p>I have now given ten years of my life to the single purpose
+of enabling myself to judge rightly of art, and spent them in
+labor as earnest and continuous as men usually undertake to
+gain position, or accumulate fortune. It is true, that the public
+still call me an "amateur;" nor have I ever been able to persuade
+them that it was possible to work steadily and hard with
+any other motive than that of gaining bread, or to give up a
+fixed number of hours every day to the furtherance of an object
+unconnected with personal interests. I have, however, given up
+so much of life to this object; earnestly desiring to ascertain,
+and be able to teach, the truth respecting art; and also knowing
+that this truth was, by time and labor, definitely ascertainable.</p>
+
+<p>It is an idea too frequently entertained, by persons who are
+not much interested in art, that there are no laws of right or
+wrong concerning it; and that the best art is that which pleases
+most widely. Hence the constant allegation of "dogmatism"
+against any one who states unhesitatingly either preference or
+principle, respecting pictures. There are, however, laws of truth
+and right in painting, just as fixed as those of harmony in
+music, or of affinity in chemistry. Those laws are perfectly
+ascertainable by labor, and ascertainable no other way. It is as
+ridiculous for any one to speak positively about painting who
+has not given a great part of his life to its study, as it would be
+for a person who had never studied chemistry to give a lecture
+on affinities of elements; but it is also as ridiculous for a person
+to speak hesitatingly about laws of painting who has conscientiously
+given his time to their ascertainment, as it would be for
+Mr. Faraday to announce in a dubious manner that iron had an
+affinity for oxygen, and to put the question to the vote of his
+audience whether it had or not. Of course there are many
+things, in all stages of knowledge, which cannot be dogmatically
+stated; and it will be found, by any candid reader, either
+of what I have before written, or of this book, that in many
+cases, I am <i>not</i> dogmatic. The phrase, "I think so," or, "it
+seems so to me," will be met with continually; and I pray the
+reader to believe that I use such expression always in seriousness,
+never as matter of form.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">vii</a></span>
+
+<p>It may perhaps be thought that, considering the not very
+elaborate structure of the following volumes, they might have
+been finished sooner. But it will be found, on reflection, that
+the ranges of inquiry engaged in demanded, even for their slight
+investigation, time and pains which are quite unrepresented in
+the result. It often required a week or two's hard walking to
+determine some geological problem, now dismissed in an unnoticed
+sentence; and it constantly needed examination and
+thought, prolonged during many days in the picture gallery, to
+form opinions which the reader may suppose to be dictated by
+caprice, and will hear only to dispute.</p>
+
+<p>A more serious disadvantage, resulting from the necessary
+breadth of subject, was the chance of making mistakes in minor
+and accessory points. For the labor of a critic who sincerely
+desires to be just, extends into more fields than it is possible
+for any single hand to furrow straightly. He has to take <i>some</i>
+note of many physical sciences; of optics, geometry, geology,
+botany, and anatomy; he must acquaint himself with the works
+of all great artists, and with the temper and history of the times
+in which they lived; he must be a fair metaphysician, and a
+careful observer of the phenomena of natural scenery. It is not
+possible to extend the range of work thus widely, without running
+the chance of occasionally making mistakes; and if I carefully
+guarded against that chance, I should be compelled both to
+shorten my powers of usefulness in many directions, and to lose
+much time over what work I undertook. All that I can secure,
+therefore, is rightness in main points and main tendencies; for
+it is perfectly possible to protect oneself against small errors,
+and yet to make great and final error in the sum of work:
+on the other hand, it is equally possible to fall into many small
+errors, and yet be right in tendency all the while, and entirely
+right in the end. In this respect, some men may be compared
+to careful travellers, who neither stumble at stones, nor slip in
+sloughs, but have, from the beginning of their journey to its
+close, chosen the wrong road; and others to those who, however
+slipping or stumbling at the wayside, have yet their eyes
+fixed on the true gate and goal (stumbling, perhaps, even the
+more because they have), and will not fail of reaching them.
+Such are assuredly the safer guides: he who follows them may
+avoid their slips, and be their companion in attainment.</p>
+
+<p>Although, therefore, it is not possible but that, in the discussion
+of so many subjects as are necessarily introduced in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">viii</a></span>
+following pages, here and there a chance should arise of minor
+mistake or misconception, the reader need not be disturbed by
+the detection of any such. He will find always that they do not
+affect the matter mainly in hand.</p>
+
+<p>I refer especially in these remarks to the chapters on Classical
+and Mediæval Landscape. It is certain, that in many respects,
+the views there stated must be inaccurate or incomplete;
+for how should it be otherwise when the subject is one whose
+proper discussion would require knowledge of the entire history
+of two great ages of the world? But I am well assured that the
+suggestions in those chapters are useful; and that even if, after
+farther study of the subject, the reader should find cause to
+differ with me in this or the other speciality, he will yet thank
+me for helping him to a certain length in the investigation, and
+confess, perhaps, that he could not at last have been right, if I
+had not first ventured to be wrong.</p>
+
+<p>And of one thing he may be certified, that any error I fall
+into will not be in an illogical deduction: I may mistake the
+meaning of a symbol, or the angle of a rock-cleavage, but not
+draw an inconsequent conclusion. I state this, because it has
+often been said that I am not logical, by persons who do not so
+much as know what logic means. Next to imagination, the
+power of perceiving logical relation is one of the rarest among
+men; certainly, of those with whom I have conversed, I have
+found always ten who had deep feeling, quick wit, or extended
+knowledge, for one who could set down a syllogism without a
+flaw; and for ten who could set down a syllogism, only one who
+could <i>entirely</i> understand that a square has four sides. Even as
+I am sending these sheets to press, a work is put into my hand,
+written to prove (I would, from the depth of my heart, it could
+prove) that there was no ground for what I said in the Stones
+of Venice respecting the logical probability of the continuity of
+evil. It seems learned, temperate, thoughtful, everything in
+feeling and aim that a book should be, and yet it begins with
+this sentence:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>"The question cited in our preface, 'Why not infinite good out of infinite
+evil?' must be taken to imply&mdash;for it else can have no weight,&mdash;that in
+order to the production of infinite good, the existence of infinite evil is
+indispensable."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>So, if I had said that there was no reason why honey should not
+be sucked out of a rock, and oil out of a flinty rock, the writer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">ix</a></span>
+would have told me this sentence must be taken to imply&mdash;for it
+else could have no weight,&mdash;that in order to the production of
+honey, the existence of rocks is indispensable. No less intense
+and marvellous are the logical errors into which our best writers
+are continually falling, owing to the notion that laws of logic
+will help them better than common sense. Whereas any man
+who can reason at all, does it instinctively, and takes leaps over
+intermediate syllogisms by the score, yet never misses his footing
+at the end of the leap; but he who cannot instinctively
+argue, might as well, with the gout in both feet, try to follow a
+chamois hunter by the help of crutches, as to follow, by the
+help of syllogism, a person who has the right use of his reason.
+I should not, however, have thought it necessary to allude to
+this common charge against my writings, but that it happens to
+confirm some views I have long entertained, and which the
+reader will find glanced at in their proper place, respecting the
+necessity of a more <i>practically</i> logical education for our youth.
+Of other various charges I need take no note, because they are
+always answered the one by the other. The complaint made
+against me to-day for being narrow and exclusive, is met to-morrow
+by indignation that I should admire schools whose
+characters cannot be reconciled; and the assertion of one critic,
+that I am always contradicting myself, is balanced by the vexation
+of another, at my ten years' obstinacies in error.</p>
+
+<p>I once intended the illustrations to these volumes to be more
+numerous and elaborate, but the art of photography now enables
+any reader to obtain as many memoranda of the facts of nature
+as he needs; and, in the course of my ten years' pause, I have
+formed plans for the representation of some of the works of
+Turner on their own scale; so that it would have been quite
+useless to spend time in reducing drawings to the size of this
+page, which were afterwards to be engraved of their own size.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
+I have therefore here only given illustrations enough to enable
+the reader, who has not access to the works of Turner, to understand
+the principles laid down in the text, and apply them to
+such art as may be within his reach. And I owe sincere thanks
+to the various engravers who have worked with me, for the zeal
+and care with which they have carried out the requirements in
+each case, and overcome difficulties of a nature often widely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">x</a></span>
+differing from those involved by their habitual practice. I
+would not make invidious distinction, where all have done well;
+but may perhaps be permitted to point, as examples of what I
+mean, to the 3rd and 6th Plates in this volume (the 6th being
+left unlettered in order not to injure the effect of its ground),
+in which Mr. Le Keux and Mr. Armytage have exactly facsimiled,
+in line engraving, drawings of mine made on a grey
+ground touched with white, and have given even the <i>loaded</i> look
+of the body color. The power of thus imitating actual touches
+of color with pure lines will be, I believe, of great future importance
+in rendering Turner's work on a large scale. As for the
+merit or demerit of these or other drawings of my own, which
+I am obliged now for the sake of illustration often to engrave,
+I believe I could speak of it impartially, and should unreluctantly
+do so; but I leave, as most readers will think I ought,
+such judgment to them, merely begging them to remember that
+there are two general principles to be kept in mind in examining
+the drawings of any writer on art: the first, that they ought
+at least to show such ordinary skill in draughtsmanship, as to
+prove that the writer knows <i>what</i> the good qualities of drawing
+<i>are</i>; the second, that they are never to be expected to equal, in
+either execution or conception, the work of accomplished artists,&mdash;for
+the simple reason, that in order to do <i>any</i>thing thoroughly
+well, the whole mind, and the whole available time,
+must be given to that single art. It is probable, for reasons
+which will be noted in the following pages, that the critical and
+executive faculties are in great part independent of each other;
+so that it is nearly as great an absurdity to require of any critic
+that he should equal in execution even the work which he condemns,
+as to require of the audience which hisses a piece of
+vocal music that they should instantly chant it in truer harmony
+themselves. But whether this be true or not (it is at least
+untrue to this extent, that a certain power of drawing is <i>indispensable</i>
+to the critic of art), and supposing that the executive
+and critical powers always exist in some correspondent degree in
+the same person, still they cannot be cultivated to the same
+extent. The attention required for the development of a theory
+is necessarily withdrawn from the design of a drawing, and the
+time devoted to the realization of a form is lost to the solution
+of a problem. Choice <i>must</i> at last be made between one and the
+other power, as the principal aim of life; and if the painter
+should find it necessary sometimes to explain one of his pictures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">xi</a></span>
+in words, or the writer to illustrate his meaning with a drawing,
+the skill of the one need not be doubted because his logic is
+feeble, nor the sense of the other because his pencil is listless.</p>
+
+<p>As, however, it is sometimes alleged by the opponents of my
+principles, that I have never <i>done</i> <i>any</i>thing, it is proper that
+the reader should know exactly the amount of work for which
+I am answerable in these illustrations. When an example is
+given from any of the works of Turner, it is either etched by
+myself from the original drawing, or engraved from a drawing
+of mine, translating Turner's work out of color into black and
+white, as for instance, the frontispiece to the fourth volume.
+When a plate is inscribed as "<i>after</i>" such and such a master, I
+have always myself made the drawing, in black and white, from
+the original picture; as, for instance, Plate 11, in this volume.
+If it has been made from a previously existing engraving, it is
+inscribed with the name of the first engraver at the left-hand
+lowest corner; as, for instance, Plate 18, in Vol. IV. Outline
+etchings are either by my own hand on the steel, as Plate 12,
+here, and 20, 21, in Vol. IV.; or copies from my pen drawings,
+etched by Mr. Boys, with a fidelity for which I sincerely thank
+him; one, Plate 22, Vol. IV., is both drawn and etched by
+Mr. Boys from an old engraving. Most of the other illustrations
+are engraved from my own studies from nature. The
+colored Plate (7, in this volume) is from a drawing executed
+with great skill by my assistant, Mr. J. J. Laing, from MSS. in
+the British Museum; and the lithography of it has been kindly
+superintended by Mr. Henry Shaw, whose renderings of mediæval
+ornaments stand, as far as I know, quite unrivalled in
+modern art. The two woodcuts of mediæval design, Figs. 1
+and 3, are also from drawings by Mr. Laing, admirably cut by
+Miss Byfield. I use this word "admirably," not with reference
+to mere delicacy of execution, which can usually be had for
+money, but to the perfect fidelity of facsimile, which is in general
+<i>not</i> to be had for money, and by which Miss Byfield has
+saved me all trouble with respect to the numerous woodcuts in
+the fourth volume; first, by her excellent renderings of various
+portions of Albert Durer's woodcuts; and, secondly, by reproducing,
+to their last dot or scratch, my own pen diagrams,
+drawn in general so roughly that few wood-engravers would
+have condescended to cut them with care, and yet always involving
+some points in which care was indispensable. One or two
+changes have been permitted in the arrangement of the book,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">xii</a></span>
+which make the text in these volumes not altogether a symmetrical
+continuation of that in former ones. Thus, I thought it
+better to put the numbers of paragraphs always at the left-hand
+side of the page; and as the summaries, in small type, appeared
+to me for the most part cumbrous and useless, I have banished
+them, except where there were complicated divisions of subject
+which it seemed convenient to indicate at the margin. I am
+not sorry thus to carry out my own principle of the sacrifice of
+architectural or constructive symmetry to practical service. The
+plates are, in a somewhat unusual way, numbered consecutively
+through the two volumes, as I intend them to be also through
+the fifth. This plan saves much trouble in references.</p>
+
+<p>I have only to express, in conclusion, my regret that it has
+been impossible to finish the work within the limits first proposed.
+Having, of late, found my designs always requiring enlargement
+in process of execution, I will take care, in future, to
+set no limits whatsoever to any good intentions. In the present
+instance I trust the reader will pardon me, as the later efforts of
+our schools of art have necessarily introduced many new topics
+of discussion.</p>
+
+<p>And so I wish him heartily a happy New Year.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 1em; font-size: 80%;">Denmark Hill, Jan. 1856.</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<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> I should be very grateful to the proprietors of pictures or drawings by
+Turner, if they would send me lists of the works in their possession; as I
+am desirous of forming a systematic catalogue of all his works.</p>
+</div>
+
+<!--
+<span class="pagenum">
+	<a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">xiii</a>
+	<a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">xiv</a>
+</span>
+-->
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_FRONT" id="PLATE_FRONT"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus018b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus018w.jpg" height="500"  alt="Frontispiece" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		 Lake, Land, and Cloud. (near Como.)
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span>
+<h1>MODERN PAINTERS.</h1>
+
+<div style="font-size: 140%"><b>PART IV.
+<br />
+OF MANY THINGS.</b></div>
+
+<br />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE RECEIVED OPINIONS TOUCHING THE "GRAND STYLE."</h3>
+
+<p>§ 1. In taking up the clue of an inquiry, now intermitted
+for nearly ten years, it may be well to do as a traveller would,
+who had to recommence an interrupted journey in a guideless
+country; and, ascending, as it were, some little hill beside our
+road, note how far we have already advanced, and what pleasantest
+ways we may choose for farther progress.</p>
+
+<p>I endeavored, in the beginning of the first volume, to divide
+the sources of pleasure open to us in Art into certain groups,
+which might conveniently be studied in succession. After some
+preliminary discussion, it was concluded (Part I. Chap. III.
+§ 86), that these groups were, in the main, three; consisting,
+first, of the pleasures taken in perceiving simple resemblance to
+Nature (Ideas of Truth); secondly, of the pleasures taken in
+the beauty of the things chosen to be painted (Ideas of Beauty);
+and, lastly, of pleasures taken in the meanings and relations of
+these things (Ideas of Relation).</p>
+
+<p>The first volume, treating of the ideas of Truth, was chiefly
+occupied with an inquiry into the various success with which
+different artists had represented the facts of Nature,&mdash;an inquiry
+necessarily conducted very imperfectly, owing to the want of
+pictorial illustration.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span>
+
+<p>The second volume nearly opened the inquiry into the nature
+of ideas of Beauty and Relation, by analysing (as far as I was
+able to do so) the two faculties of the human mind which mainly
+seized such ideas; namely, the contemplative and imaginative
+faculties.</p>
+
+<p>It remains for us to examine the various success of artists,
+especially of the great landscape-painter whose works have been
+throughout our principal subject, in addressing these faculties
+of the human mind, and to consider who among them has conveyed
+the noblest ideas of beauty, and touched the deepest
+sources of thought.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. I do not intend, however, now to pursue the inquiry in
+a method so laboriously systematic; for the subject may, it
+seems to me, be more usefully treated by pursuing the different
+questions which rise out of it just as they occur to us, without
+too great scrupulousness in marking connections, or insisting
+on sequences. Much time is wasted by human beings, in general,
+on establishment of systems; and it often takes more labor
+to master the intricacies of an artificial connection, than to remember
+the separate facts which are so carefully connected. I
+suspect that system-makers, in general, are not of much more
+use, each in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old
+women who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more convenient
+portableness of the same. To cultivate well, and choose well,
+your cherries, is of some importance; but if they can be had in
+their own wild way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, it is
+a better connection for them than any other; and, if they cannot,
+then, so that they be not bruised, it makes to a boy of a
+practical disposition, not much difference whether he gets them
+by handfuls, or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick. I
+purpose, therefore, henceforward to trouble myself little with
+sticks or twine, but to arrange my chapters with a view to convenient
+reference, rather than to any careful division of subjects,
+and to follow out, in any by-ways that may open, on right
+hand or left, whatever question it seems useful at any moment
+to settle.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. And, in the outset, I find myself met by one which I
+ought to have touched upon before&mdash;one of especial interest in
+the present state of the Arts. I have said that the art is great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span>est
+which includes the greatest ideas; but I have not endeavored
+to define the nature of this greatness in the ideas themselves.
+We speak of great truths, of great beauties, great thoughts.
+What is it which makes one truth greater than another, one
+thought greater than another? This question is, I repeat, of
+peculiar importance at the present time; for, during a period
+now of some hundred and fifty years, all writers on Art who
+have pretended to eminence, have insisted much on a supposed
+distinction between what they call the Great and the Low
+Schools; using the terms "High Art," "Great or Ideal Style,"
+and other such, as descriptive of a certain noble manner of
+painting, which it was desirable that all students of Art should
+be early led to reverence and adopt; and characterising as
+"vulgar," or "low," or "realist," another manner of painting
+and conceiving, which it was equally necessary that all students
+should be taught to avoid.</p>
+
+<p>But lately this established teaching, never very intelligible,
+has been gravely called in question. The advocates and self-supposed
+practisers of "High Art" are beginning to be looked
+upon with doubt, and their peculiar phraseology to be treated
+with even a certain degree of ridicule. And other forms of Art
+are partly developed among us, which do not pretend to be high,
+but rather to be strong, healthy, and humble. This matter of
+"highness" in Art, therefore deserves our most careful consideration.
+Has it been, or is it, a true highness, a true princeliness,
+or only a show of it, consisting in courtly manners and
+robes of state? Is it rocky height or cloudy height, adamant or
+vapor, on which the sun of praise so long has risen and set? It
+will be well at once to consider this.</p>
+
+<p>§4. And first, let us get, as quickly as may be, at the exact
+meaning with which the advocates of "High Art" use that
+somewhat obscure and figurative term.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know that the principles in question are anywhere
+more distinctly expressed than in two papers in the Idler, written
+by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of course under the immediate
+sanction of Johnson; and which may thus be considered as the
+utterance of the views then held upon the subject by the artists
+of chief skill, and critics of most sense, arranged in a form so
+brief and clear, as to admit of their being brought before the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span>
+public for a morning's entertainment. I cannot, therefore, it
+seems to me, do better than quote these two letters, or at least
+the important parts of them, examining the exact meaning of
+each passage as it occurs. There are, in all, in the Idler three
+letters on painting, Nos. 76, 79, and 82; of these, the first is
+directed only against the impertinences of pretended connoisseurs,
+and is as notable for its faithfulness, as for its wit, in the
+description of the several modes of criticism in an artificial and
+ignorant state of society; it is only, therefore, in the two last
+papers that we find the expression of the doctrines which it is
+our business to examine.</p>
+
+<p>No. 79 (Saturday, Oct. 20th, 1759) begins, after a short preamble,
+with the following passage:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>"Amongst the painters, and the writers on painting, there is one
+maxim universally admitted and continually inculcated. Imitate nature is
+the invariable rule; but I know none who have explained in what manner
+this rule is to be understood; the sequence of which is, that every one takes
+it in the most obvious sense, that objects are represented naturally when they
+have such relief that they seem real. It may appear strange, perhaps, to
+hear this sense of the rule disputed; but it must be considered, that, if the
+excellency of a painter consisted only in this kind of imitation, Painting
+must lose its rank, and be no longer considered as a liberal art, and sister to
+Poetry, this imitation being nearly mechanical, in which the slowest intellect
+is always sure to succeed best; for the painter of genius cannot stoop
+to drudgery, in which the understanding has no part; and what pretence
+has the art to claim kindred with poetry but by its power over the imagination?
+To this power the painter of genius directs him; in this sense he
+studies nature, and often arrives at his end, even by being unnatural in the
+confined sense of the word."</p>
+
+<p>"The grand style of painting requires this minute attention to be carefully
+avoided, and must be kept as separate from it as the style of poetry
+from that of history. (Poetical ornaments destroy that air of truth and
+plainness which ought to characterise history; but the very being of poetry
+consists in departing from this plain narrative, and adopting every ornament
+that will warm the imagination.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+) To desire to see the excellencies of each
+style united&mdash;to mingle the Dutch with the Italian school, is to join contrarieties,
+which cannot subsist together, and which destroy the efficacy of each
+other."</p></blockquote>			<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span>
+<p>§ 5. We find, first, from this interesting passage, that the
+writer considers the Dutch and Italian masters as severally representative
+of the low and high schools; next, that he considers
+the Dutch painters as excelling in a mechanical imitation, "in
+which the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best;" and,
+thirdly, that he considers the Italian painters as excelling in a
+style which corresponds to that of imaginative poetry in literature,
+and which has an exclusive right to be called the grand
+style.</p>
+
+<p>I wish that it were in my power entirely to concur with the
+writer, and to enforce this opinion thus distinctly stated. I
+have never been a zealous partisan of the Dutch School, and
+should rejoice in claiming Reynolds's authority for the assertion,
+that their manner was one "in which the slowest intellect was
+always sure to succeed best." But before his authority can be
+so claimed, we must observe exactly the meaning of the assertion
+itself, and separate it from the company of some others not perhaps
+so admissible. First, I say, we must observe Reynolds's
+exact meaning, for (though the assertion may at first appear
+singular) a man who uses accurate language is always more
+liable to misinterpretation than one who is careless in his expressions.
+We may assume that the latter means very nearly
+what we at first suppose him to mean, for words which have
+been uttered without thought may be received without examination.
+But when a writer or speaker may be fairly supposed
+to have considered his expressions carefully, and, after having
+revolved a number of terms in his mind, to have chosen the one
+which <i>exactly</i> means the thing he intends to say, we may be
+assured that what costs him time to select, will require from us
+time to understand, and that we shall do him wrong, unless we
+pause to reflect how the word which he has actually employed
+differs from other words which it seems he <i>might</i> have employed.
+It thus constantly happens that persons themselves unaccustomed
+to think clearly, or speak correctly, misunderstand a
+logical and careful writer, and are actually in more danger of
+being misled by language which is measured and precise, than
+by that which is loose and inaccurate.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. Now, in the instance before us, a person not accustomed
+to good writing might very rashly conclude, that when Reynolds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span>
+spoke of the Dutch School as one "in which the slowest intellect
+was sure to succeed best," he meant to say that every successful
+Dutch painter was a fool. We have no right to take his
+assertion in that sense. He says, the <i>slowest</i> intellect. We have
+no right to assume that he meant the <i>weakest</i>. For it is true,
+that in order to succeed in the Dutch style, a man has need of
+qualities of mind eminently deliberate and sustained. He must
+be possessed of patience rather than of power; and must feel no
+weariness in contemplating the expression of a single thought
+for several months together. As opposed to the changeful energies
+of the imagination, these mental characters may be properly
+spoken of as under the general term&mdash;slowness of intellect. But
+it by no means follows that they are necessarily those of weak
+or foolish men.</p>
+
+<p>We observe however, farther, that the imitation which Reynolds
+supposes to be characteristic of the Dutch School is that
+which gives to objects such relief that they seem real, and that
+he then speaks of this art of realistic imitation as corresponding
+to <i>history</i> in literature.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. Reynolds, therefore, seems to class these dull works of
+the Dutch School under a general head, to which they are not
+commonly referred&mdash;that of <i>Historical</i> painting; while he
+speaks of the works of the Italian School not as historical, but
+as <i>poetical</i> painting. His next sentence will farther manifest
+his meaning.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"The Italian attends only to the invariable, the great and general ideas
+which are fixed and inherent in universal nature; the Dutch, on the contrary,
+to literal truth and minute exactness in the detail, as I may say, of nature
+modified by accident. The attention to these petty peculiarities is the very
+cause of this naturalness so much admired in the Dutch pictures, which,
+if we suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly of a lower order, which ought
+to give place to a beauty of a superior kind, since one cannot be obtained
+but by departing from the other.</p>
+
+<p>"If my opinion was asked concerning the works of Michael Angelo,
+whether they would receive any advantage from possessing this mechanical
+merit, I should not scruple to say, they would not only receive no advantage,
+but would lose, in a great measure, the effect which they now have on
+every mind susceptible of great and noble ideas. His works may be said to be
+all genius and soul; and why should they be loaded with heavy matter,
+which can only counteract his purpose by retarding the progress of the
+imagination?"</p></blockquote><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span>
+
+<p>Examining carefully this and the preceding passage, we find
+the author's unmistakable meaning to be, that Dutch painting
+is <i>history</i>; attending to literal truth and "minute exactness in
+the details of nature modified by accident." That Italian painting
+is <i>poetry</i>, attending only to the invariable; and that works
+which attend only to the invariable are full of genius and soul;
+but that literal truth and exact detail are "heavy matter which
+retards the progress of the imagination."</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. This being then indisputably what Reynolds means to
+tell us, let us think a little whether he is in all respects right.
+And first, as he compares his two kinds of painting to history
+and poetry, let us see how poetry and history themselves differ,
+in their use of <i>variable</i> and <i>invariable</i> details. I am writing at
+a window which commands a view of the head of the Lake of
+Geneva; and as I look up from my paper, to consider this point,
+I see, beyond it, a blue breadth of softly moving water, and
+the outline of the mountains above Chillon, bathed in morning
+mist. The first verses which naturally come into my mind
+are&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"A thousand feet in depth below</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The massy waters meet and flow;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">So far the fathom line was sent</span><br />
+<span class="i0">From Chillon's snow-white battlement."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Let us see in what manner this poetical statement is distinguished
+from a historical one.</p>
+
+<p>It is distinguished from a truly historical statement, first, in
+being simply false. The water under the castle of Chillon is
+not a thousand feet deep, nor anything like it.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>
+Herein, certainly,
+these lines fulfil Reynolds's first requirement in poetry,
+"that it should be inattentive to literal truth and minute exactness
+in detail." In order, however, to make our comparison
+more closely in other points, let us assume that what is stated is
+indeed a fact, and that it was to be recorded, first historically,
+and then poetically.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span>
+
+<p>Historically stating it, then, we should say: "The lake was
+sounded from the walls of the castle of Chillon, and found to be
+a thousand feet deep."</p>
+
+<p>Now, if Reynolds be right in his idea of the difference between
+history and poetry, we shall find that Byron leaves out of
+this statement certain <i>un</i>necessary details, and retains only the
+invariable,&mdash;that is to say, the points which the Lake of Geneva
+and castle of Chillon have in common with all other lakes and
+castles.</p>
+
+<p>Let us hear, therefore.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"A thousand feet in depth below."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Below?" Here is, at all events, a word added (instead of
+anything being taken away); invariable, certainly in the case of
+lakes, but not absolutely necessary.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"The massy waters meet and flow."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Massy!" why massy? Because deep water is heavy. The
+word is a good word, but it is assuredly an added detail, and
+expresses a character, not which the Lake of Geneva has in
+common with all other lakes, but which it has in distinction
+from those which are narrow or shallow.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. "Meet and flow." Why meet and flow? Partly to
+make up a rhyme; partly to tell us that the waters are forceful
+as well as massy, and changeful as well as deep. Observe, a
+farther addition of details, and of details more or less peculiar
+to the spot, or, according to Reynolds's definition, of "heavy
+matter, retarding the progress of the imagination."</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"So far the fathom line was sent."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Why fathom line? All lines for sounding are not fathom
+lines. If the lake was ever sounded from Chillon, it was probably
+sounded in metres, not fathoms. This is an addition of
+another particular detail, in which the only compliance with
+Reynolds's requirement is, that there is some chance of its being
+an inaccurate one.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"From Chillon's snow-white battlement."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Why snow-white? Because castle battlements are not usually
+snow-white. This is another added detail, and a detail<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span>
+quite peculiar to Chillon, and therefore exactly the most striking
+word in the whole passage.</p>
+
+<p>"Battlement!" why battlement? Because all walls have
+not battlements, and the addition of the term marks the castle
+to be not merely a prison, but a fortress.</p>
+
+<p>This is a curious result. Instead of finding, as we expected,
+the poetry distinguished from the history by the omission of
+details, we find it consist entirely in the <i>addition</i> of details;
+and instead of being characterized by regard only of the invariable,
+we find its whole power to consist in the clear expression
+of what is singular and particular!</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. The reader may pursue the investigation for himself in
+other instances. He will find in every case that a poetical is
+distinguished from a merely historical statement, not by being
+more vague, but more specific, and it might, therefore, at first
+appear that our author's comparison should be simply reversed,
+and that the Dutch School should be called poetical, and the
+Italian historical. But the term poetical does not appear very
+applicable to the generality of Dutch painting; and a little
+reflection will show us, that if the Italians represent only the
+invariable, they cannot be properly compared even to historians.
+For that which is incapable of change has no history, and
+records which state only the invariable need not be written, and
+could not be read.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. It is evident, therefore, that our author has entangled
+himself in some grave fallacy, by introducing this idea of invariableness
+as forming a distinction between poetical and historical
+art. What the fallacy is, we shall discover as we proceed;
+but as an invading army should not leave an untaken
+fortress in its rear, we must not go on with our inquiry into the
+views of Reynolds until we have settled satisfactorily the question
+already suggested to us, in what the essence of poetical
+treatment really consists. For though, as we have seen, it certainly
+involves the addition of specific details, it cannot be simply
+that addition which turns the history into poetry. For it is
+perfectly possible to add any number of details to a historical
+statement, and to make it more prosaic with every added word.
+As, for instance, "The lake was sounded out of a flat-bottomed
+boat, near the crab tree at the corner of the kitchen-garden,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span>
+and was found to be a thousand feet nine inches deep, with a
+muddy bottom." It thus appears that it is not the multiplication
+of details which constitutes poetry; nor their subtraction
+which constitutes history; but that there must be something
+either in the nature of the details themselves, or the method of
+using them, which invests them with poetical power or historical
+propriety.</p>
+
+<p>§ 12. It seems to me, and may seem to the reader, strange
+that we should need to ask the question, "What is poetry?"
+Here is a word we have been using all our lives, and, I suppose,
+with a very distinct idea attached to it; and when I am now
+called upon to give a definition of this idea, I find myself at a
+pause. What is more singular, I do not at present recollect
+hearing the question often asked, though surely it is a very
+natural one; and I never recollect hearing it answered, or even
+attempted to be answered. In general, people shelter themselves
+under metaphors, and while we hear poetry described as
+an utterance of the soul, an effusion of Divinity, or voice of
+nature, or in other terms equally elevated and obscure, we never
+attain anything like a definite explanation of the character
+which actually distinguishes it from prose.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. I come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion,
+that poetry is "the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble
+grounds for the noble emotions." I mean, by the noble emotions,
+those four principal sacred passions&mdash;Love, Veneration,
+Admiration, and Joy (this latter especially, if unselfish); and
+their opposites&mdash;Hatred, Indignation (or Scorn), Horror, and
+Grief,&mdash;this last, when unselfish, becoming Compassion. These
+passions in their various combinations constitute what is called
+"poetical feeling," when they are felt on noble grounds, that
+is, on great and true grounds. Indignation, for instance, is a
+poetical feeling, if excited by serious injury; but it is not a
+poetical feeling if entertained on being cheated out of a small
+sum of money. It is very possible the manner of the cheat may
+have been such as to justify considerable indignation; but the
+feeling is nevertheless not poetical unless the grounds of it be
+large as well as just. In like manner, energetic admiration
+may be excited in certain minds by a display of fireworks, or a
+street of handsome shops; but the feeling is not poetical, be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span>cause
+the grounds of it are false, and therefore ignoble. There
+is in reality nothing to deserve admiration either in the firing of
+packets of gunpowder, or in the display of the stocks of ware-houses.
+But admiration excited by the budding of a flower is a
+poetical feeling, because it is impossible that this manifestation
+of spiritual power and vital beauty can ever be enough admired.</p>
+
+<p>§ 14. Farther, it is necessary to the existence of poetry that
+the grounds of these feelings should be <i>furnished by the imagination</i>.
+Poetical feeling, that is to say, mere noble emotion, is
+not poetry. It is happily inherent in all human nature deserving
+the name, and is found often to be purest in the least sophisticated.
+But the power of assembling, by the <i>help of the imagination</i>,
+such images as will excite these feelings, is the power of
+the poet or literally of the "Maker."<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+													<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span>
+<p>Now this power of exciting the emotions depends of course
+on the richness of the imagination, and on its choice of those
+images which, in combination, will be most effective, or, for the
+particular work to be done, most fit. And it is altogether impossible
+for a writer not endowed with invention to conceive
+what tools a true poet will make use of, or in what way he will
+apply them, or what unexpected results he will bring out by
+them; so that it is vain to say that the details of poetry ought
+to possess, or ever do possess, any <i>definite</i> character. Generally
+speaking, poetry runs into finer and more delicate details than
+prose; but the details are not poetical because they are more
+delicate, but because they are employed so as to bring out an
+affecting result. For instance, no one but a true poet would
+have thought of exciting our pity for a bereaved father by describing
+his way of locking the door of his house:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Perhaps to himself, at that moment he said,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But of this in my ears not a word did he speak,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>In like manner, in painting, it is altogether impossible to say
+beforehand what details a great painter may make poetical by
+his use of them to excite noble emotions: and we shall, therefore,
+find presently that a painting is to be classed in the great
+or inferior schools, not according to the kind of details which it
+represents, but according to the uses for which it employs them.</p>
+
+<p>§ 15. It is only farther to be noticed, that infinite confusion
+has been introduced into this subject by the careless and illogical
+custom of opposing painting to poetry, instead of regarding
+poetry as consisting in a noble use, whether of colors or words.
+Painting is properly to be opposed to <i>speaking</i> or <i>writing</i>, but
+not to <i>poetry</i>. Both painting and speaking are methods of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span>
+expression. Poetry is the employment of either for the noblest
+purposes.</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. This question being thus far determined, we may proceed
+with our paper in the Idler.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"It is very difficult to determine the exact degree of enthusiasm that the
+arts of painting and poetry may admit. There may, perhaps, be too great
+indulgence as well as too great a restraint of imagination; if the one produces
+incoherent monsters, the other produces what is full as bad, lifeless
+insipidity. An intimate knowledge of the passions, and good sense, but not
+common sense, must at last determine its limits. It has been thought,
+and I believe with reason, that Michael Angelo sometimes transgressed
+those limits; and, I think, I have seen figures of him of which it was very
+difficult to determine whether they were in the highest degree sublime or
+extremely ridiculous. Such faults may be said to be the ebullitions of
+genius; but at least he had this merit, that he never was insipid, and
+whatever passion his works may excite, they will always escape contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"What I have had under consideration is the sublimest style, particularly
+that of Michael Angelo, the Homer of painting. Other kinds may admit
+of this naturalness, which of the lowest kind is the chief merit; but in
+painting, as in poetry, the highest style has the least of common nature."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>From this passage we gather three important indications of
+the supposed nature of the Great Style. That it is the work of
+men in a state of enthusiasm. That it is like the writing of
+Homer; and that it has as little as possible of "common
+nature" in it.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. First, it is produced by men in a state of enthusiasm.
+That is, by men who feel <i>strongly</i> and <i>nobly</i>; for we do not call
+a strong feeling of envy, jealousy, or ambition, enthusiasm.
+That is, therefore, by men who feel poetically. This much we
+may admit, I think, with perfect safety. Great art is produced
+by men who feel acutely and nobly; and it is in some sort an
+expression of this personal feeling. We can easily conceive that
+there may be a sufficiently marked distinction between such art,
+and that which is produced by men who do not feel at all, but
+who reproduce, though ever so accurately, yet coldly, like human
+mirrors, the scenes which pass before their eyes.</p>
+
+<p>§ 18. Secondly, Great Art is like the writing of Homer, and
+this chiefly because it has little of "common nature" in it. We
+are not clearly informed what is meant by common nature in
+this passage. Homer seems to describe a great deal of what is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span>
+common;&mdash;cookery, for instance, very carefully in all its processes.
+I suppose the passage in the Iliad which, on the whole,
+has excited most admiration, is that which describes a wife's
+sorrow at parting from her husband, and a child's fright at its
+father's helmet; and I hope, at least, the former feeling may
+be considered "common nature." But the true greatness of
+Homer's style is, doubtless, held by our author to consist in his
+imaginations of things not only uncommon but impossible (such
+as spirits in brazen armor, or monsters with heads of men and
+bodies of beasts), and in his occasional delineations of the human
+character and form in their utmost, or heroic, strength and beauty.
+We gather then on the whole, that a painter in the Great Style
+must be enthusiastic, or full of emotion, and must paint the
+human form in its utmost strength and beauty, and perhaps
+certain impossible forms besides, liable by persons not in an
+equally enthusiastic state of mind to be looked upon as in some
+degree absurd. This I presume to be Reynolds's meaning, and
+to be all that he intends us to gather from his comparison of
+the Great Style with the writings of Homer. But if that comparison
+be a just one in all respects, surely two other corollaries
+ought to be drawn from it, namely,&mdash;first, that these Heroic or
+Impossible images are to be mingled with others very unheroic
+and very possible; and, secondly, that in the representation of
+the Heroic or Impossible forms, the greatest care must be taken
+in <i>finishing the details</i>, so that a painter must not be satisfied
+with painting well the countenance and the body of his hero,
+but ought to spend the greatest part of his time (as Homer the
+greatest number of verses) in elaborating the sculptured pattern
+on his shield.</p>
+
+<p>§ 19. Let us, however, proceed with our paper.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"One may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm to the modern
+painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the present age. The Italians
+seem to have been continually declining in this respect, from the time
+of Michael Angelo to that of Carlo Maratti, and from thence to the very
+bathos of insipidity to which they are now sunk, so that there is no need of
+remarking, that where I mentioned the Italian painters in opposition to the
+Dutch, I mean not the moderns, but the heads of the old Roman and Bolognian
+schools; nor did I mean to include, in my idea of an Italian painter,
+the Venetian school, <i>which may be said to be the Dutch part of the Italian
+genius</i>. I have only to add a word of advice to the painters, that, however<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>
+excellent they may be in painting naturally, they would not flatter themselves
+very much upon it; and to the connoisseurs, that when they see a
+cat or a fiddle painted so finely, that, as the phrase is, it looks as if you could
+take it up, they would not for that reason immediately compare the painter
+to Raffaelle and Michael Angelo."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In this passage there are four points chiefly to be remarked.
+The first, that in the year 1759, the Italian painters were, in
+our author's opinion, sunk in the very bathos of insipidity. The
+second, that the Venetian painters, i.e. Titian, Tintoret, and
+Veronese, are, in our author's opinion, to be classed with the
+Dutch; that is to say, are painters in a style "in which the
+slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best." Thirdly, that
+painting naturally is not a difficult thing, nor one on which a
+painter should pride himself. And, finally, that connoisseurs,
+seeing a cat or a fiddle successfully painted, ought not therefore
+immediately to compare the painter to Raphael or Michael
+Angelo.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Raphael painted fiddles very carefully in the foreground
+of his St. Cecilia,&mdash;so carefully, that they quite look as if they
+might be taken up. So carefully, that I never yet looked at the
+picture without wishing that somebody <i>would</i> take them up, and
+out of the way. And I am under a very strong persuasion that
+Raphael did not think painting "naturally" an easy thing. It
+will be well to examine into this point a little; and for the
+present, with the reader's permission, we will pass over the first
+two statements in this passage (touching the character of Italian
+art in 1759, and of Venetian art in general), and immediately
+examine some of the evidence existing as to the real dignity of
+"natural" painting&mdash;that is to say, of painting carried to the
+point at which it reaches a deceptive appearance of reality.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<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> I have put this sentence in a parenthesis, because it is inconsistent with
+the rest of the statement, and with the general teaching of the paper; since
+that which "attends only to the invariable" cannot certainly adopt "every
+ornament that will warm the imagination."</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> "MM. Mallet et Pictet, se trouvant sur le lac auprès du château de Chillon,
+le 6 Août, 1774, plongèrent à la profondeur de 312 pieds de un thermomètre,"
+&amp;c.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Saussure</span>, <i>Voyages dans les Alpes</i>, chap. ii. § 33. It appears
+from the next paragraph, that the thermometer was "au fond du lac."</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> Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the "Affliction of Margaret:"</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"I look for ghosts, but none will force</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Their way to me. 'Tis falsely said</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That ever there was intercourse</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Between the living and the dead;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For, surely then, I should have sight</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of him I wait for, day and night,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With love and longing infinite."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+<p>This we call Poetry, because it is invented <i>or made</i> by the writer, entering
+into the mind of a supposed person. Next, take an instance of the
+actual feeling truly experienced and simply expressed by a real person.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing surprised me more than a woman of Argentière, whose cottage
+I went into to ask for milk, as I came down from the glacier of Argentière,
+in the month of March, 1764. An epidemic dysentery had prevailed in the
+village, and, a few months before, had taken away from her, her father, her
+husband, and her brothers, so that she was left alone, with three children in
+the cradle. Her face had something noble in it, and its expression bore the
+seal of a calm and profound sorrow. After having given me milk, she asked
+me whence I came, and what I came there to do, so early in the year.
+When she knew that I was of Geneva, she said to me, 'she could not
+believe that all Protestants were lost souls; that there were many honest
+people among us, and that God was too good and too great to condemn all
+without distinction.' Then, after a moment of reflection, she added, in
+shaking her head, 'But, that which is very strange, is that of so many who
+have gone away, none have ever returned. I,' she added, with an expression
+of grief, 'who have so mourned my husband and my brothers, who
+have never ceased to think of them, who every night conjure them with
+beseechings to tell me where they are, and in what state they are! Ah,
+surely, if they lived anywhere, they would not leave me thus! But, perhaps,'
+she added, 'I am not worthy of this kindness, perhaps the pure and
+innocent spirits of these children,' and she looked at the cradle, 'may have
+their presence, and the joy which is denied to <i>me</i>.'"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Saussure</span>, <i>Voyages
+dans les Alpes</i>, chap. xxiv.</p>
+
+
+<p>This we do not call Poetry, merely because it is not invented, but the
+true utterance of a real person.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF REALIZATION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. In the outset of this inquiry, the reader must thoroughly
+understand that we are not now considering <i>what</i> is to be
+painted, but <i>how far</i> it is to be painted. Not whether Raphael
+does right in representing angels playing upon violins, or
+whether Veronese does right in allowing cats and monkeys to
+join the company of kings: but whether, supposing the subjects
+rightly chosen, they ought on the canvas to look like real
+angels with real violins, and substantial cats looking at veritable
+kings; or only like imaginary angels with soundless violins,
+ideal cats, and unsubstantial kings.</p>
+
+<p>Now, from the first moment when painting began to be a
+subject of literary inquiry and general criticism, I cannot remember
+any writer, not professedly artistical, who has not,
+more or less, in one part of his book or another, countenanced
+the idea that the great end of art is to produce a deceptive
+resemblance of reality. It may be, indeed, that we shall find
+the writers, through many pages, explaining principles of ideal
+beauty, and professing great delight in the evidences of imagination.
+But whenever a picture is to be definitely described,&mdash;whenever
+the writer desires to convey to others some impression
+of an extraordinary excellence, all praise is wound up with some
+such statements as these: "It was so exquisitely painted that
+you expected the figures to move and speak; you approached the
+flowers to enjoy their smell, and stretched your hand towards
+the fruit which had fallen from the branches. You shrunk
+back lest the sword of the warrior should indeed descend, and
+turned away your head that you might not witness the agonies
+of the expiring martyr!"</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. In a large number of instances, language such as this
+will be found to be merely a clumsy effort to convey to others a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span>
+sense of the admiration, of which the writer does not understand
+the real cause in himself. A person is attracted to a
+picture by the beauty of its color, interested by the liveliness
+of its story, and touched by certain countenances or details
+which remind him of friends whom he loved, for scenes in
+which he delighted. He naturally supposes that what gives him
+so much pleasure must be a notable example of the painter's
+skill; but he is ashamed to confess, or perhaps does not know,
+that he is so much a child as to be fond of bright colors and
+amusing incidents; and he is quite unconscious of the associations
+which have so secret and inevitable a power over his heart.
+He casts about for the cause of his delight, and can discover no
+other than that he thought the picture like reality.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. In another, perhaps a still larger number of cases, such
+language will be found to be that of simple ignorance&mdash;the
+ignorance of persons whose position in life compels them to
+speak of art, without having any real enjoyment of it. It is
+inexcusably required from people of the world, that they should
+see merit in Claudes and Titians; and the only merit which
+many persons can either see or conceive in them is, that they
+must be "like nature."</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. In other cases, the deceptive power of the art is really
+felt to be a source of interest and amusement. This is the case
+with a large number of the collectors of Dutch pictures. They
+enjoy seeing what is flat made to look round, exactly as a child
+enjoys a trick of legerdemain; they rejoice in flies which the
+spectator vainly attempts to brush away, and in dew which he
+endeavors to dry by putting the picture in the sun. They take
+it for the greatest compliment to their treasures that they
+should be mistaken for windows; and think the parting of
+Abraham and Hagar adequately represented, if Hagar seems to
+be really crying.</p>
+
+<p>It is against critics and connoisseurs of this latter stamp
+(of whom, in the year 1759, the juries of art were for the most
+part composed) that the essay of Reynolds, which we have been
+examining, was justly directed. But Reynolds had not sufficiently
+considered that neither the men of this class, nor of the
+two other classes above described, constitute the entire body of
+those who praise Art for its realization; and that the holding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span>
+of this apparently shallow and vulgar opinion cannot, in all
+cases, be attributed to the want either of penetration, sincerity,
+or sense. The collectors of Gerard Dows and Hobbimas may be
+passed by with a smile; and the affectations of Walpole and
+simplicities of Vasari dismissed with contempt or with compassion.
+But very different men from these have held precisely
+the same language; and, one amongst the rest, whose authority
+is absolutely, and in all points, overwhelming.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. There was probably never a period in which the influence
+of art over the minds of men seemed to depend less on
+its merely <i>imitative</i> power, than the close of the thirteenth century.
+No painting or sculpture at that time reached more than
+a rude resemblance of reality. Its despised perspective, imperfect
+chiaroscuro, and unrestrained flights of fantastic imagination,
+separated the artist's work from nature by an interval
+which there was no attempt to disguise, and little to diminish.
+And yet, at this very period, the greatest poet of that, or perhaps
+of any other age, and the attached friend of its greatest
+painter, who must over and over again have held full and free
+conversation with him respecting the objects of his art, speaks
+in the following terms of painting, supposed to be carried to
+its highest perfection:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Qual di pennel fu maestro, e di stile</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Che ritraesse l' ombre, e i tratti, ch' ivi</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi:</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Non vide me' di me, chi vide il vero,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Quant' io calcai, fin che chinato givi."</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Dante</span>, <i>Purgatorio</i>, canto xii. 1. 64</span><br />
+</div>
+<br />
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">'What master of the pencil, or the style,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Had traced the shades and lines that might have made</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The subtlest workman wonder? <i>Dead, the dead,</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>The living seemed alive; with clearer view</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>His eye beheld not, who beheld the truth.</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0">Than mine what I did tread on, while I went,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Low bending.'</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Carey.</span></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Dante has here clearly no other idea of the highest art than
+that it should bring back, as in a mirror or vision, the aspect of
+things passed or absent. The scenes of which he speaks are, on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>
+the pavement, for ever represented by angelic power, so that the
+souls which traverse this circle of the rock may see them, as if
+the years of the world had been rolled back, and they again stood
+beside the actors in the moment of action. Nor do I think that
+Dante's authority is absolutely necessary to compel us to admit
+that such art as this <i>might</i> indeed be the highest possible.
+Whatever delight we may have been in the habit of taking in
+pictures, if it were but truly offered to us, to remove at our will
+the canvas from the frame, and in lieu of it to behold, fixed for
+ever, the image of some of those mighty scenes which it has
+been our way to make mere themes for the artist's fancy; if,
+for instance, we could again behold the Magdalene receiving
+her pardon at Christ's feet, or the disciples sitting with Him at
+the table of Emmaus; and this not feebly nor fancifully, but as
+if some silver mirror, that had leaned against the wall of the
+chamber, had been miraculously commanded to retain for ever
+the colors that had flashed upon it for an instant,&mdash;would we
+not part with our picture&mdash;Titian's or Veronese's though it
+might be?</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. Yes, the reader answers, in the instance of such scenes
+as these, but not if the scene represented were uninteresting.
+Not, indeed, if it were utterly vulgar or painful; but we are not
+yet certain that the art which represents what is vulgar or painful
+is itself of much value; and with respect to the art whose
+aim is beauty, even of an inferior order, it seems that Dante's
+idea of its perfection has still much evidence in its favor. For
+among persons of native good sense, and courage enough to
+speak their minds, we shall often find a considerable degree of
+doubt as to the use of art, in consequence of their habitual comparison
+of it with reality. "What is the use, to me, of the
+painted landscape?" they will ask: "I see more beautiful and
+perfect landscapes every day of my life in my forenoon walk."
+"What is the use, to me, of the painted effigy of hero or beauty?
+I can see a stamp of higher heroism, and light of purer beauty,
+on the faces around me, utterly inexpressible by the highest
+human skill." Now, it is evident that to persons of this temper
+the only valuable pictures would indeed be <i>mirrors</i>, reflecting
+permanently the images of the things in which they took delight,
+and of the faces that they loved. "Nay," but the reader<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span>
+interrupts, (if he is of the Idealist school) "I deny that more
+beautiful things are to be seen in nature than in art; on the
+contrary, everything in nature is faulty, and art represents
+nature as perfected." Be it so. Must, therefore, this perfected
+nature be imperfectly represented? Is it absolutely required
+of the painter, who has conceived perfection, that he
+should so paint it as to look only like a picture? Or is not
+Dante's view of the matter right even here, and would it not be
+well that the perfect conception of Pallas should be so given as
+to look like Pallas herself, rather than merely like the picture
+of Pallas?</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. It is not easy for us to answer this question rightly,
+owing to the difficulty of imagining any art which should reach
+the perfection supposed. Our actual powers of imitation are so
+feeble that wherever deception is attempted, a subject of a comparatively
+low or confined order must be chosen. I do not enter
+at present into the inquiry how far the powers of imitation extend;
+but assuredly up to the present period they have been so
+limited that it is hardly possible for us to conceive a deceptive
+art embracing a high range of subject. But let the reader make
+the effort, and consider seriously what he would give at any
+moment to have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those
+which so often rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud
+in its fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their
+changing; to bid the fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and
+the ripples be everlasting upon the lake; and then to bear away
+with him no darkened or feeble sun-stain (though even that is
+beautiful), but a counterfeit which should seem no counterfeit
+&mdash;the true and perfect image of life indeed. Or rather (for the
+full majesty of such a power is not thus sufficiently expressed)
+let him consider that it would be in effect nothing else than a
+capacity of transporting himself at any moment into any scene
+&mdash;a gift as great as can be possessed by a disembodied spirit':
+and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not only the
+present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into
+the very bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust;
+to behold them in act as they lived, but&mdash;with greater privilege
+than ever was granted to the companions of those transient acts
+of life,&mdash;to see them fastened at our will in the gesture and ex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span>pression
+of an instant, and stayed, on the eve of some great
+deed, in immortality of burning purpose. Conceive, so far as
+it is possible, such power as this, and then say whether the art
+which conferred it is to be spoken lightly of, or whether we
+should not rather reverence, as half divine, a gift which would
+go so far as to raise us into the rank, and invest us with the
+felicities, of angels?</p>
+
+<p>Yet such would imitative art be in its perfection. Not by
+any means an easy thing, as Reynolds supposes it. Far from
+being easy, it is so utterly beyond all human power that we have
+difficulty even in conceiving its nature or results&mdash;the best art
+we as yet possess comes so far short of it.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. But we must not rashly come to the conclusion that
+such art would, indeed, be the highest possible. There is much
+to be considered hereafter on the other side; the only conclusion
+we are as yet warranted in forming is, that Reynolds had
+no right to speak lightly or contemptuously of imitative art;
+that in fact, when he did so, he had not conceived its entire
+nature, but was thinking of some vulgar conditions of it, which
+were the only ones known to him, and that, therefore, his whole
+endeavor to explain the difference between great and mean
+art has been disappointed; that he has involved himself in a
+crowd of theories, whose issue he had not foreseen, and committed
+himself to conclusions which he never intended. There
+is an instinctive consciousness in his own mind of the difference
+between high and low art; but he is utterly incapable of explaining
+it, and every effort which he makes to do so involves
+him in unexpected fallacy and absurdity. It is <i>not</i> true that
+Poetry does not concern herself with minute details. It is <i>not</i>
+true that high art seeks only the Invariable. It is <i>not</i> true that
+imitative art is an easy thing. It is <i>not</i> true that the faithful
+rendering of nature is an employment in which "the slowest
+intellect is likely to succeed best." All these successive assertions
+are utterly false and untenable, while the plain truth, a
+truth lying at the very door, has all the while escaped him,&mdash;that
+which was incidentally stated in the preceding chapter,&mdash;namely,
+that the difference between great and mean art lies, not
+in definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, or
+choices of subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span>
+which the effort of the painter is addressed. We cannot say
+that a painter is great because he paints boldly, or paints delicately;
+because he generalizes or particularizes; because he
+loves detail, or because he disdains it. He is great if, by any of
+these means, he has laid open noble truths, or aroused noble
+emotions. It does not matter whether he paint the petal of a
+rose, or the chasms of a precipice, so that Love and Admiration
+attend him as he labors, and wait for ever upon his work. It
+does not matter whether he toil for months upon a few inches
+of his canvas, or cover a palace front with color in a day, so
+only that it be with a solemn purpose that he has filled his heart
+with patience, or urged his hand to haste. And it does not
+matter whether he seek for his subjects among peasants or
+nobles, among the heroic or the simple, in courts or in fields,
+so only that he behold all things with a thirst for beauty, and
+a hatred of meanness and vice. There are, indeed, certain
+methods of representation which are usually adopted by the
+most active minds, and certain characters of subject usually
+delighted in by the noblest hearts; but it is quite possible, quite
+easy, to adopt the manner of painting without sharing the
+activity of mind, and to imitate the choice of subject without
+possessing the nobility of spirit; while, on the other hand, it is
+altogether impossible to foretell on what strange objects the
+strength of a great man will sometimes be concentrated, or by
+what strange means he will sometimes express himself. So that
+true criticism of art never can consist in the mere application of
+rules; it can be just only when it is founded on quick sympathy
+with the innumerable instincts and changeful efforts of human
+nature, chastened and guided by unchanging love of all things
+that God has created to be beautiful, and pronounced to be
+good.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE REAL NATURE OF GREATNESS OF STYLE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. I doubt not that the reader was ill-satisfied with the
+conclusion arrived at in the last chapter. That "great art" is
+art which represents what is beautiful and good, may not seem
+a very profound discovery; and the main question may be
+thought to have been all the time lost sight of, namely, "What
+is beautiful, and what is good?" No; those are not the main,
+at least not the first questions; on the contrary, our subject
+becomes at once opened and simplified as soon as we have left
+those the <i>only</i> questions. For observe, our present task, according
+to our old plan, is merely to investigate the relative degrees
+of the <i>beautiful</i> in the art of different masters; and it is an
+encouragement to be convinced, first of all, that what is lovely
+will also be great, and what is pleasing, noble. Nor is the conclusion
+so much a matter of course as it at first appears, for,
+surprising as the statement may seem, all the confusion into
+which Reynolds has plunged both himself and his readers, in
+the essay we have been examining, results primarily from a
+doubt in his own mind <i>as to the existence of beauty at all</i>. In
+the next paper I alluded to, No. 82 (which needs not, however,
+to be examined at so great length), he calmly attributes the
+whole influence of beauty to custom, saying, that "he has no
+doubt, if we were more used to deformity than to beauty, deformity
+would then lose the idea now annexed to it, and take
+that of beauty; as if the whole world shall agree that Yes and
+No should change their meanings. Yes would then deny, and
+No would affirm!"</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. The world does, indeed, succeed&mdash;oftener than is, perhaps,
+altogether well for the world&mdash;in making Yes mean No,
+and No mean Yes.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>
+But the world has never succeeded, nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>
+ever will, in making itself delight in black clouds more than in
+blue sky, or love the dark earth better than the rose that grows
+from it. Happily for mankind, beauty and ugliness are as positive
+in their nature as physical pain and pleasure, as light and
+darkness, or as life and death; and, though they may be denied
+or misunderstood in many fantastic ways, the most subtle reasoner
+will at last find that color and sweetness are still attractive
+to him, and that no logic will enable him to think the rainbow
+sombre, or the violet scentless. But the theory that beauty
+was merely a result of custom was very common in Johnson's
+time. Goldsmith has, I think, expressed it with more force and
+wit than any other writer, in various passages of the Citizen of
+the World. And it was, indeed, a curious retribution of the
+folly of the world of art, which for some three centuries had
+given itself recklessly to the pursuit of beauty, that at last it
+should be led to deny the very existence of what it had so morbidly
+and passionately sought. It was as if a child should leave
+its home to pursue the rainbow, and then, breathless and hopeless,
+declare that it did not exist. Nor is the lesson less useful
+which may be gained in observing the adoption of such a theory
+by Reynolds himself. It shows how completely an artist may
+be unconscious of the principles of his own work, and how he
+may be led by instinct to <i>do</i> all that is right, while he is misled
+by false logic to <i>say</i> all that is wrong. For nearly every word
+that Reynolds wrote was contrary to his own practice; he seems
+to have been born to teach all error by his precept, and all excellence
+by his example; he enforced with his lips generalization
+and idealism, while with his pencil he was tracing the patterns
+of the dresses of the belles of his day; he exhorted his
+pupils to attend only to the invariable, while he himself was
+occupied in distinguishing every variation of womanly temper;
+and he denied the existence of the beautiful, at the same instant
+that he arrested it as it passed, and perpetuated it for ever.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. But we must not quit the subject here. However inconsistently
+or dimly expressed, there is, indeed, some truth in
+that commonly accepted distinction between high and low art.
+That a thing should be beautiful is not enough; there is, as we
+said in the outset, a higher and lower range of beauty, and some
+ground for separating into various and unequal ranks painters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span>
+who have, nevertheless, each in his several way, represented
+something that was beautiful or good.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, if we would, can we get rid of this conviction. We
+have at all times some instinctive sense that the function of one
+painter is greater than that of another, even supposing each
+equally successful in his own way; and we feel that, if it were
+possible to conquer prejudice, and do away with the iniquities
+of personal feeling, and the insufficiencies of limited knowledge,
+we should all agree in this estimate, and be able to place each
+painter in his right rank, measuring them by a true scale of
+nobleness. We feel that the men in the higher classes of the
+scale would be, in the full sense of the word, Great&mdash;men whom
+one would give much to see the faces of but for an instant; and
+that those in the lower classes of the scale (though none were
+admitted but who had true merit of some kind) would be very
+small men, not greatly exciting either reverence or curiosity.
+And with this fixed instinct in our minds, we permit our teachers
+daily to exhort their pupils to the cultivation of "great art"&mdash;neither
+they nor we having any very clear notion as to what
+the greatness consists in: but sometimes inclining to think it
+must depend on the space of the canvas, and that art on a scale
+of 6 feet by 10 is something spiritually separated from that on a
+scale of 3 feet by 5;&mdash;sometimes holding it to consist in painting
+the nude body, rather than the body decently clothed;&mdash;sometimes
+being convinced that it is connected with the study
+of past history, and that the art is only great which represents
+what the painter never saw, and about which he knows nothing;-and
+sometimes being firmly persuaded that it consists in
+generally finding fault with, and endeavoring to mend, whatsoever
+the Divine Wisdom has made. All which various errors,
+having yet some motes and atoms of truth in the make of each
+of them, deserve some attentive analysis, for they come under
+that general law,&mdash;that "the corruption of the best is the
+worst." There are not <i>worse</i> errors going than these four; and
+yet the truth they contain, and the instinct which urges many
+to preach them, are at the root of all healthy growth in art.
+We ruin one young painter after another by telling him to follow
+great art, without knowing, ourselves, what greatness is;
+and yet the feeling that it verily <i>is</i> something, and that there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>
+are depths and breadths, shallows and narrows, in the matter,
+is all that we have to look to, if we would ever make our art
+serviceable to ourselves or others. To follow art for the sake of
+being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for
+some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is
+the surest way of ending in total extinction. And yet it is only
+by honest reverence for art itself, and by great self-respect in
+the practice of it, that it can be rescued from dilettantism,
+raised to approved honorableness, and brought to the proper
+work it has to accomplish in the service of man.</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. Let us therefore look into the facts of the thing, not
+with any metaphysical, or otherwise vain and troublesome effort
+at acuteness, but in a plain way; for the facts themselves are
+plain enough, and may be plainly stated, only the difficulty is
+that out of these facts, right and left, the different forms of
+misapprehension branch into grievous complexity, and branch
+so far and wide, that if once we try to follow them, they will
+lead us quite from our mark into other separate, though not
+less interesting discussions. The best way will be, therefore, I
+think, to sketch out at once in this chapter, the different characters
+which really constitute "greatness" of style, and to indicate
+the principal directions of the outbranching misapprehensions
+of them; then, in the succeeding chapters, to take up in
+succession those which need more talk about them, and follow
+out at leisure whatever inquiries they may suggest.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. I. <span class="smcap">Choice of Noble Subject</span>.&mdash;Greatness of style
+consists, then: first, in the habitual choice of subjects of
+thought which involve wide interests and profound passions, as
+opposed to those which involve narrow interests and slight passions.
+The style is greater or less in exact proportion to the
+nobleness of the interests and passions involved in the subject.
+The habitual choice of sacred subjects, such as the Nativity,
+Transfiguration, Crucifixion (if the choice be sincere), implies
+that the painter has a natural disposition to dwell on the highest
+thoughts of which humanity is capable; it constitutes him
+so far forth a painter of the highest order, as, for instance,
+Leonardo, in his painting of the Last Supper: he who delights
+in representing the acts or meditations of great men, as, for
+instance, Raphael painting the School of Athens, is, so far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>
+forth, a painter of the second order: he who represents the
+passions and events of ordinary life, of the third. And in this
+ordinary life, he who represents deep thoughts and sorrows, as,
+for instance, Hunt, in his Claudio and Isabella, and such other
+works, is of the highest rank in his sphere; and he who represents
+the slight malignities and passions of the drawingroom,
+as, for instance, Leslie, of the second rank: he who represents
+the sports of boys or simplicities of clowns, as Webster or
+Teniers, of the third rank; and he who represents brutalities
+and vices (for delight in them, and not for rebuke of them), of
+no rank at all, or rather of a negative rank, holding a certain
+order in the abyss.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. The reader will, I hope, understand how much importance
+is to be attached to the sentence in the first parenthesis,
+"if the choice be sincere;" for choice of subject is, of course,
+only available as a criterion of the rank of the painter, when it
+is made from the heart. Indeed, in the lower orders of painting,
+the choice is always made from such heart as the painter
+has; for his selection of the brawls of peasants or sports of
+children can, of course, proceed only from the fact that he has
+more sympathy with such brawls or pastimes than with nobler
+subjects. But the choice of the higher kind of subjects is often
+insincere; and may, therefore, afford no real criterion of the
+painter's rank. The greater number of men who have lately
+painted religious or heroic subjects have done so in mere ambition,
+because they had been taught that it was a good thing
+to be a "high art" painter; and the fact is that, in nine cases
+out of ten, the so-called historical or "high-art" painter is a
+person infinitely inferior to the painter of flowers or still life.
+He is, in modern times, nearly always a man who has great
+vanity without pictorial capacity, and differs from the landscape
+or fruit painter merely in misunderstanding and over-estimating
+his own powers. He mistakes his vanity for inspiration, his
+ambition for greatness of soul, and takes pleasure in what he
+calls "the ideal," merely because he has neither humility nor
+capacity enough to comprehend the real.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. But also observe, it is not enough even that the choice
+be sincere. It must also be wise. It happens very often that a
+man of weak intellect, sincerely desiring to do what is good and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span>
+useful, will devote himself to high art subjects because he thinks
+them the only ones on which time and toil can be usefully
+spent, or, sometimes, because they are really the only ones he
+has pleasure in contemplating. But not having intellect enough
+to enter into the minds of truly great men, or to imagine great
+events as they really happened, he cannot become a great painter;
+he degrades the subjects he intended to honor, and his
+work is more utterly thrown away, and his rank as an artist in
+reality lower, than if he had devoted himself to the imitation of
+the simplest objects of natural history. The works of Overbeck
+are a most notable instance of this form of error.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. It must also be remembered, that in nearly all the great
+periods of art the choice of subject has not been left to the
+painter. His employer,&mdash;abbot, baron, or monarch,&mdash;determined
+for him whether he should earn his bread by making
+cloisters bright with choirs of saints, painting coats of arms on
+leaves of romances, or decorating presence-chambers with complimentary
+mythology; and his own personal feelings are ascertainable
+only by watching, in the themes assigned to him, what
+are the points in which he seems to take most pleasure. Thus,
+in the prolonged ranges of varied subjects with which Benozzo
+Gozzoli decorated the cloisters of Pisa, it is easy to see that love
+of simple domestic incident, sweet landscape, and glittering
+ornament, prevails slightly over the solemn elements of religious
+feeling, which, nevertheless, the spirit of the age instilled into
+him in such measure as to form a very lovely and noble mind,
+though still one of the second order. In the work of Orcagna,
+an intense solemnity and energy in the sublimest groups of his
+figures, fading away as he touches inferior subjects, indicates
+that his home was among the archangels, and his rank among
+the first of the sons of men: while Correggio, in the sidelong
+grace, artificial smiles, and purple languors of his saints, indicates
+the inferior instinct which would have guided his choice
+in quite other directions, had it not been for the fashion of the
+age, and the need of the day.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. It will follow, of course, from the above considerations,
+that the choice which characterises the school of high art is seen
+as much in the treatment of a subject as in its selection, and
+that the expression of the thoughts of the persons represented<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span>
+will always be the first thing considered by the painter who
+worthily enters that highest school. For the artist who sincerely
+chooses the noblest subject will also choose chiefly to
+represent what makes that subject noble, namely, the various
+heroism or other noble emotions of the persons represented. If,
+instead of this, the artist seeks only to make his picture agreeable
+by the composition of its masses and colors, or by any other
+merely pictorial merit, as fine drawing of limbs, it is evident,
+not only that any other subject would have answered his purpose
+as well, but that he is unfit to approach the subject he has
+chosen, because he cannot enter into its deepest meaning, and
+therefore cannot in reality have chosen it for that meaning.
+Nevertheless, while the expression is always to be the first thing
+considered, all other merits must be added to the utmost of the
+painter's power: for until he can both color and draw beautifully
+he has no business to consider himself a painter at all, far
+less to attempt the noblest subjects of painting; and, when he
+has once possessed himself of these powers, he will naturally and
+fitly employ them to deepen and perfect the impression made by
+the sentiment of his subject.</p>
+
+<p>The perfect unison of expression, as the painter's main purpose,
+with the full and natural exertion of his pictorial power in
+the details of the work, is found only in the old Pre-Raphaelite
+periods, and in the modern Pre-Raphaelite school. In the
+works of Giotto, Angelico, Orcagna, John Bellini, and one or
+two more, these two conditions of high art are entirely fulfilled,
+so far as the knowledge of those days enabled them to be fulfilled;
+and in the modern Pre-Raphaelite school they are fulfilled
+nearly to the uttermost. Hunt's Light of the World is, I believe,
+the most perfect instance of expressional purpose with
+technical power, which the world has yet produced.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. Now in the Post Raphaelite period of ancient art, and in
+the spurious high art of modern times, two broad forms of error
+divide the schools; the one consisting in (A) the superseding of
+expression by technical excellence, and the other in (B) the
+superseding of technical excellence by expression.</p>
+
+<p>(A). Superseding expression by technical excellence.&mdash;This
+takes place most frankly, and therefore most innocently, in the
+work of the Venetians. They very nearly ignore expression al<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span>together,
+directing their aim exclusively to the rendering of
+external truths of color and form. Paul Veronese will make
+the Magdalene wash the feet of Christ with a countenance as
+absolutely unmoved as that of any ordinary servant bringing a
+ewer to her master, and will introduce the supper at Emmaus as
+a background to the portraits of two children playing with a
+dog. Of the wrongness or rightness of such a proceeding we
+shall reason in another place; at present we have to note it
+merely as displacing the Venetian work from the highest or
+expressional rank of art. But the error is generally made in a
+more subtle and dangerous way. The artist deceives himself
+into the idea that he is doing all he can to elevate his subject by
+treating it under rules of art, introducing into it accurate science,
+and collecting for it the beauties of (so-called) ideal form;
+whereas he may, in reality, be all the while sacrificing his subject
+to his own vanity or pleasure, and losing truth, nobleness,
+and impressiveness for the sake of delightful lines or creditable
+pedantries.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. (B). Superseding technical excellence by expression.&mdash;This
+is usually done under the influence of another kind of
+vanity. The artist desires that men should think he has an
+elevated soul, affects to despise the ordinary excellence of art,
+contemplates with separated egotism the course of his own
+imaginations or sensations, and refuses to look at the real facts
+round about him, in order that he may adore at leisure the
+shadow of himself. He lives in an element of what he calls
+tender emotions and lofty aspirations; which are, in fact, nothing
+more than very ordinary weaknesses or instincts, contemplated
+through a mist of pride. A large range of modern German
+art comes under this head.</p>
+
+<p>A more interesting and respectable form of this error is
+fallen into by some truly earnest men, who, finding their powers
+not adequate to the attainment of great artistical excellence, but
+adequate to rendering, up to a certain point, the expression of
+the human countenance, devote themselves to that object alone,
+abandoning effort in other directions, and executing the accessaries
+of their pictures feebly or carelessly. With these are associated
+another group of philosophical painters, who suppose the
+artistical merits of other parts <i>adverse</i> to the expression, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span>
+drawing the spectator's attention away from it, and who paint
+in grey color, and imperfect light and shade, by way of enforcing
+the purity of their conceptions. Both these classes of conscientious
+but narrow-minded artists labor under the same
+grievous mistake of imagining that wilful fallacy can ever be
+either pardonable or helpful. They forget that color, if used at
+all, must be either true or false, and that what <i>they</i> call chastity,
+dignity, and reserve, is, to the eye of any person accustomed to
+nature, pure, bold, and impertinent falsehood. It does not, in
+the eyes of any soundly minded man, exalt the expression of a
+female face that the cheeks should be painted of the color of
+clay, nor does it in the least enhance his reverence for a saint to
+find the scenery around him deprived, by his presence, of sunshine.
+It is an important consolation, however, to reflect that
+no artist ever fell into any of these last three errors (under head
+B.) who had really the capacity of becoming a great painter.
+No man ever despised color who could produce it; and the error
+of these sentimentalists and philosophers is not so much in the
+choice of their manner of painting, as in supposing themselves
+capable of painting at all. Some of them might have made
+efficient sculptors, but the greater number had their mission in
+some other sphere than that of art, and would have found, in
+works of practical charity, better employment for their gentleness
+and sentimentalism, than in denying to human beauty its
+color, and to natural scenery its light; in depriving heaven of
+its blue, and earth of its bloom, valor of its glow, and modesty
+of its blush.</p>
+
+<p>§ 12. II. <span class="smcap">Love of Beauty</span>.&mdash;The second characteristic of
+the great school of art is, that it introduces in the conception
+of its subject as much beauty as is possible, consistently with
+truth.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+															<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span>
+<p>For instance, in any subject consisting of a number of figures,
+it will make as many of those figures beautiful as the faithful
+representation of humanity will admit. It will not deny the
+facts of ugliness or decrepitude, or relative inferiority and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>
+superiority of feature as necessarily manifested in a crowd, but
+it will, so far as it is in its power, seek for and dwell upon the
+fairest forms, and in all things insist on the beauty that is in
+them, not on the ugliness. In this respect, schools of art become
+higher in exact proportion to the degree in which they
+apprehend and love the beautiful. Thus, Angelico, intensely
+loving all spiritual beauty, will be of the highest rank; and
+Paul Veronese and Correggio, intensely loving physical and corporeal
+beauty, of the second rank; and Albert Durer, Rubens,
+and in general the Northern artists, apparently insensible to
+beauty, and caring only for truth, whether shapely or not, of
+the third rank; and Teniers and Salvator, Caravaggio, and
+other such worshippers of the depraved, of no rank, or, as we
+said before, of a certain order in the abyss.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. The corruption of the schools of high art, so far as this
+particular quality is concerned, consists in the sacrifice of truth
+to beauty. Great art dwells on all that is beautiful; but false
+art omits or changes all that is ugly. Great art accepts Nature
+as she is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is most
+perfect in her; false art saves itself the trouble of direction by
+removing or altering whatever it thinks objectionable. The
+evil results of which proceeding are twofold.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 14. Evil first,&mdash;that we lose the true <i>force</i> of beauty.</div>
+
+<p>First. That beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts
+ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all
+shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light. A white canvas cannot
+produce an effect of sunshine; the painter must
+darken it in some places before he can make it
+look luminous in others; nor can an uninterrupted
+succession of beauty produce the true effect of beauty; it
+must be foiled by inferiority before its own power can be developed.
+Nature has for the most part mingled her inferior and
+nobler elements as she mingles sunshine with shade, giving due
+use and influence to both, and the painter who chooses to
+remove the shadow, perishes in the burning desert he has created.
+The truly high and beautiful art of Angelico is continually
+refreshed and strengthened by his frank portraiture of
+the most ordinary features of his brother monks, and of the
+recorded peculiarities of ungainly sanctity; but the modern
+German and Raphaelesque schools lose all honor and nobleness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>
+in barber-like admiration of handsome faces, and have, in fact,
+no real faith except in straight noses and curled hair. Paul
+Veronese opposes the dwarf to the soldier, and the negress to
+the queen; Shakspere places Caliban beside Miranda, and Autolycus
+beside Perdita; but the vulgar idealist withdraws his
+beauty to the safety of the saloon, and his innocence to the
+seclusion of the cloister; he pretends that he does this in delicacy
+of choice and purity of sentiment, while in truth he has
+neither courage to front the monster, nor wit enough to furnish
+the knave.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 15. Evil second,&mdash;we lose the true <i>quantity</i> of beauty.</div>
+
+<p>It is only by the habit of representing faithfully all things,
+that we can truly learn what is beautiful and what is not. The
+ugliest objects contain some element of beauty; and in all, it is
+an element peculiar to themselves, which cannot
+be separated from their ugliness, but must either
+be enjoyed together with it, or not at all. The
+more a painter accepts nature as he finds it, the more unexpected
+beauty he discovers in what he at first despised; but
+once let him arrogate the right of rejection, and he will gradually
+contract his circle of enjoyment, until what he supposed
+to be nobleness of selection ends in narrowness of perception.
+Dwelling perpetually upon one class of ideas, his art becomes at
+once monstrous and morbid; until at last he cannot faithfully
+represent even what he chooses to retain; his discrimination
+contracts into darkness, and his fastidiousness fades into fatuity.</p>
+
+<p>High art, therefore, consists neither in altering, nor in improving
+nature; but in seeking throughout nature for "whatsoever
+things are lovely, and whatsoever things are pure;" in
+loving these, in displaying to the utmost of the painter's power
+such loveliness as is in them, and directing the thoughts of
+others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis. Of the
+degree in which this can be done, and in which it may be permitted
+to gather together, without falsifying, the finest forms or
+thoughts, so as to create a sort of perfect vision, we shall have
+to speak hereafter: at present, it is enough to remember that
+art (<i>cæteris paribus</i>) is great in exact proportion to the love of
+beauty shown by the painter, provided that love of beauty forfeit
+no atom of truth.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span>
+
+<p>§ 16. III. <span class="smcap">Sincerity</span>.&mdash;The next<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
+characteristic of great art
+is that it includes the largest possible quantity of Truth in the
+most perfect possible harmony. If it were possible for art to
+give all the truths of nature, it ought to do it. But this is not
+possible. Choice must always be made of some facts which <i>can</i>
+be represented, from among others which must be passed by in
+silence, or even, in some respects, misrepresented. The inferior
+artist chooses unimportant and scattered truths; the great
+artist chooses the most necessary first, and afterwards the most
+consistent with these, so as to obtain the greatest possible and
+most harmonious <i>sum</i>. For instance, Rembrandt always
+chooses to represent the exact force with which the light on the
+most illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions.
+In order to obtain this, in most cases, not very important
+truth, he sacrifices the light and color of five sixths of his
+picture; and the expression of every character of objects which
+depends on tenderness of shape or tint. But he obtains his
+single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expression is
+dependent upon it, with magnificent skill and subtlety. Veronese,
+on the contrary, chooses to represent the great relations of
+visible things to each other, to the heaven above, and to the
+earth beneath them. He holds it more important to show how
+a figure stands relieved from delicate air, or marble wall; how
+as a red, or purple, or white figure, it separates itself, in clear
+discernibility, from things not red, nor purple, nor white; how
+infinite daylight shines round it; how innumerable veils of faint
+shadow invest it; how its blackness and darkness are, in the
+excess of their nature, just as limited and local as its intensity
+of light: all this, I say, he feels to be more important than
+showing merely the exact <i>measure</i> of the spark of sunshine that
+gleams on a dagger-hilt, or glows on a jewel. All this, moreover,
+he feels to be harmonious,&mdash;capable of being joined in one
+great system of spacious truth. And with inevitable watchfulness,
+inestimable subtlety, he unites all this in tenderest balance,
+noting in each hair's-breadth of color, not merely what its rightness
+or wrongness is in itself, but what its relation is to every
+other on his canvas; restraining, for truth's sake, his exhaustless
+energy, reining back, for truth's sake, his fiery strength;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span>veiling,
+ before truth, the vanity of brightness; penetrating, for
+truth, the discouragement of gloom; ruling his restless invention
+with a rod of iron; pardoning no error, no thoughtlessness,
+no forgetfulness; and subduing all his powers, impulses, and
+imaginations, to the arbitrament of a merciless justice, and the
+obedience of an incorruptible verity.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 17. Corollary 1st: great art is generally distinct.</div>
+
+<p>I give this instance with respect to color and shade; but, in
+the whole field of art, the difference between the great and
+inferior artists is of the same kind, and may be determined at
+once by the question, which of them conveys the largest sum of
+truth? It follows from this principle, that in
+general all <i>great</i> drawing is <i>distinct</i> drawing; for
+truths which are rendered indistinctly might, for
+the most part, as well not be rendered at all. There are, indeed,
+certain facts of mystery, and facts of indistinctness, in all
+objects, which must have their proper place in the general harmony,
+and the reader will presently find me, when we come to
+that part of our investigation, telling him that all good drawing
+must in some sort be <i>in</i>distinct. We may, however, understand
+this apparent contradiction, by reflecting that the highest
+knowledge always involves a more advanced perception of the
+fields of the unknown; and, therefore, it may most truly be
+said, that to know anything well involves a profound sensation
+of ignorance, while yet it is equally true that good and noble
+knowledge is distinguished from vain and useless knowledge
+chiefly by its clearness and distinctness, and by the vigorous
+consciousness of what is known and what is not.</p>
+
+<p>So in art. The best drawing involves a wonderful perception
+and expression of indistinctness; and yet all noble drawing is
+separated from the ignoble by its distinctness, by its fine expression
+and firm assertion of <i>Something</i>; whereas the bad drawing,
+without either firmness or fineness, expresses and asserts <i>Nothing</i>.
+The first thing, therefore, to be looked for as a sign of
+noble art, is a clear consciousness of what is drawn and what is
+not; the bold statement, and frank confession&mdash;"<i>This</i> I
+know," "<i>that</i> I know not;" and, generally speaking, all
+haste, slurring, obscurity, indecision, are signs of low art, and
+all calmness, distinctness, luminousness, and positiveness, of
+high art.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 18. Corollary 2d: Great art is generally large in masses and in
+scale.</div>
+
+<p>It follows, secondly, from this principle, that as the great
+painter is always attending to the sum and harmony of his
+truths rather than to one or the other of any group, a quality of
+Grasp is visible in his work, like the power of a
+great reasoner over his subject, or a great poet over
+his conception, manifesting itself very often in
+missing out certain details or less truths (which,
+though good in themselves, he finds are in the way of others),
+and in a sweeping manner of getting the beginnings and
+ends of things shown at once, and the squares and depths
+rather than the surfaces: hence, on the whole, a habit of looking
+at large masses rather than small ones; and even a physical
+largeness of handling, and love of working, if possible, on a
+large scale; and various other qualities, more or less imperfectly
+expressed by such technical terms as breadth, massing, unity,
+boldness, &amp;c., all of which are, indeed, great qualities when they
+mean breadth of truth, weight of truth, unity of truth, and
+courageous assertion of truth; but which have all their correlative
+errors and mockeries, almost universally mistaken for them,&mdash;the
+breadth which has no contents, the weight which has no
+value, the unity which plots deception, and the boldness which
+faces out fallacy.</p>
+
+<p>§ 19. And it is to be noted especially respecting largeness of
+scale, that though for the most part it is characteristic of the
+more powerful masters, they having both more invention wherewith
+to fill space (as Ghirlandajo wished that he might paint all
+the walls of Florence), and, often, an impetuosity of mind
+which makes them like free play for hand and arm (besides that
+they usually desire to paint everything in the foreground of
+their picture of the natural size), yet, as this largeness of scale
+involves the placing of the picture at a considerable distance
+from the eye, and this distance involves the loss of many delicate
+details, and especially of the subtle lines of expression in
+features, it follows that the masters of refined detail and human
+expression are apt to prefer a small scale to work upon; so that
+the chief masterpieces of expression which the world possesses
+are small pictures by Angelico, in which the figures are rarely
+more than six or seven inches high; in the best works of
+Raphael and Leonardo the figures are almost always less than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span>
+life, and the best works of Turner do not exceed the size of 18
+inches by 12.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 20. Corollary 3d: Great art is always delicate.</div>
+
+<p>As its greatness depends on the sum of truth, and this sum
+of truth can always be increased by delicacy of handling, it
+follows that all great art must have this delicacy to the utmost
+possible degree. This rule is infallible and inflexible.
+All coarse work is the sign of low art. Only,
+it is to be remembered, that coarseness must be
+estimated by the distance from the eye; it being necessary to
+consult this distance, when great, by laying on touches which appear
+coarse when seen near; but which, so far from being coarse,
+are, in reality, more delicate in a master's work than the finest
+close handling, for they involve a calculation of result, and are
+laid on with a subtlety of sense precisely correspondent to that
+with which a good archer draws his bow; the spectator seeing
+in the action nothing but the strain of the strong arm, while
+there is, in reality, in the finger and eye, an ineffably delicate
+estimate of distance, and touch on the arrow plume. And,
+indeed, this delicacy is generally quite perceptible to those who
+know what the truth is, for strokes by Tintoret or Paul Veronese,
+which were done in an instant, and look to an ignorant
+spectator merely like a violent dash of loaded color, (and are, as
+such, imitated by blundering artists,) are, in fact, modulated by
+the brush and finger to that degree of delicacy that no single
+grain of the color could be taken from the touch without injury;
+and little golden particles of it, not the size of a gnat's
+head, have important share and function in the balances of light
+in a picture perhaps fifty feet long. Nearly <i>every</i> other rule
+applicable to art has some exception but this. This has absolutely
+none. All great art is delicate art, and all coarse art is
+bad art. Nay, even to a certain extent, all <i>bold</i> art is bad art;
+for boldness is not the proper word to apply to the courage and
+swiftness of a great master, based on knowledge, and coupled
+with fear and love. There is as much difference between the
+boldness of the true and the false masters, as there is between
+the courage of a pure woman and the shamelessness of a lost
+one.</p>
+
+<p>§ 21. IV. <span class="smcap">Invention</span>.&mdash;The last characteristic of great art
+is that it must be inventive, that is, be produced by the imagi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span>nation.
+In this respect, it must precisely fulfil the definition
+already given of poetry; and not only present grounds for noble
+emotion, but furnish these grounds by <i>imaginative power</i>.
+Hence there is at once a great bar fixed between the two schools
+of Lower and Higher Art. The lower merely copies what is set
+before it, whether in portrait, landscape, or still-life; the higher
+either entirely imagines its subject, or arranges the materials
+presented to it, so as to manifest the imaginative power in all
+the three phases which have been already explained in the
+second volume.</p>
+
+<p>And this was the truth which was confusedly present in
+Reynolds's mind when he spoke, as above quoted, of the difference
+between Historical and Poetical Painting. <i>Every relation
+of the plain facts which the painter saw</i> is proper <i>historical</i>
+painting.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>
+If those facts are unimportant (as that he saw a
+gambler quarrel with another gambler, or a sot enjoying himself
+with another sot), then the history is trivial; if the facts are
+important (as that he saw such and such a great man look thus,
+or act thus, at such a time), then the history is noble: in each
+case perfect truth of narrative being supposed, otherwise the
+whole thing is worthless, being neither history nor poetry, but
+plain falsehood. And farther, as greater or less elegance and
+precision are manifested in the relation or painting of the incidents,
+the merit of the work varies; so that, what with difference
+of subject, and what with difference of treatment, historical
+painting falls or rises in changeful eminence, from
+Dutch trivialities to a Velasquez portrait, just as historical talking
+or writing varies in eminence, from an old woman's story-telling
+up to Herodotus. Besides which, certain operations of
+the imagination come into play inevitably, here and there, so as
+to touch the history with some light of poetry, that is, with
+some light shot forth of the narrator's mind, or brought out by
+the way he has put the accidents together; and wherever the
+imagination has thus had anything to do with the matter at all
+(and it must be somewhat cold work where it has not), then, the
+confines of the lower and higher schools touching each other, the
+work is colored by both; but there is no reason why, therefore,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>
+we should in the least confuse the historical and poetical characters,
+any more than that we should confuse blue with crimson,
+because they may overlap each other, and produce purple.</p>
+
+<p>§ 22. Now, historical or simply narrative art is very precious
+in its proper place and way, but it is never <i>great</i> art until the
+poetical or imaginative power touches it; and in proportion to
+the stronger manifestation of this power, it becomes greater and
+greater, while the highest art is purely imaginative, all its materials
+being wrought into their form by invention; and it differs,
+therefore, from the simple historical painting, exactly as Wordsworth's
+stanza, above quoted, differs from Saussure's plain narrative
+of the parallel fact; and the imaginative painter differs
+from the historical painter in the manner that Wordsworth
+differs from Saussure.</p>
+
+<p>§ 23. Farther, imaginative art always <i>includes</i> historical art;
+so that, strictly speaking, according to the analogy above used,
+we meet with the pure blue, and with the crimson ruling the
+blue and changing it into kingly purple, but not with the pure
+crimson: for all imagination must deal with the knowledge it
+has before accumulated; it never produces anything but by
+combination or contemplation. Creation, in the full sense, is
+impossible to it. And the mode in which the historical faculties
+are included by it is often quite simple, and easily seen. Thus,
+in Hunt's great poetical picture of the Light of the World, the
+whole thought and arrangement of the picture being imaginative,
+the several details of it are wrought out with simple portraiture;
+the ivy, the jewels, the creeping plants, and the moonlight
+being calmly studied or remembered from the things themselves.
+But of all these special ways in which the invention
+works with plain facts, we shall have to treat farther afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>§ 24. And now, finally, since this poetical power includes the
+historical, if we glance back to the other qualities required in
+great art, and put all together, we find that the sum of them is
+simply the sum of all the powers of man. For as (1) the choice
+of the high subject involves all conditions of right moral choice,
+and as (2) the love of beauty involves all conditions of right
+admiration, and as (3) the grasp of truth involves all strength
+of sense, evenness of judgment, and honesty of purpose, and as
+(4) the poetical power involves all swiftness of invention, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>
+accuracy of historical memory, the sum of all these powers is
+the sum of the human soul. Hence we see why the word
+"Great" is used of this art. It is literally great. It compasses
+and calls forth the entire human spirit, whereas any other kind
+of art, being more or less small or narrow, compasses and calls
+forth only <i>part</i> of the human spirit. Hence the idea of its
+magnitude is a literal and just one, the art being simply less or
+greater in proportion to the number of faculties it exercises and
+addresses.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>
+And this is the ultimate meaning of the definition
+I gave of it long ago, as containing the "greatest number of the
+greatest ideas."</p>
+
+<p>§ 25. Such, then, being the characters required in order to
+constitute high art, if the reader will think over them a little,
+and over the various ways in which they may be falsely assumed,
+he will easily perceive how spacious and dangerous a
+field of discussion they open to the ambitious critic, and of error
+to the ambitious artist; he will see how difficult it must be,
+either to distinguish what is truly great art from the mockeries
+of it, or to rank the real artists in any thing like a progressive
+system of greater and less. For it will have been observed that
+the various qualities which form greatness are partly inconsistent
+with each other (as some virtues are, docility and firmness
+for instance), and partly independent of each other; and the
+fact is, that artists differ not more by mere capacity, than by
+the component <i>elements</i> of their capacity, each possessing in
+very different proportions the several attributes of greatness; so
+that, classed by one kind of merit, as, for instance, purity of
+expression, Angelico will stand highest; classed by another,
+sincerity of manner, Veronese will stand highest; classed by
+another, love of beauty, Leonardo will stand highest; and so
+on; hence arise continual disputes and misunderstandings
+among those who think that high art must always be one and
+the same, and that great artists ought to unite all great attributes
+in an equal degree.</p>
+
+<p>§ 26. In one of the exquisitely finished tales of Marmontel,
+a company of critics are received at dinner by the hero of the
+story, an old gentleman, somewhat vain of his <i>acquired</i> taste,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span>
+and his niece, by whose incorrigible <i>natural</i> taste, he is seriously
+disturbed and tormented. During the entertainment, "On
+parcourut tous les genres de littérature, et pour donner plus
+d'essor a l'érudition et à la critique, on mit sur le tapis cette
+question toute neuve, sçavoir, lequel méritoit le préference de
+Corneille ou de Racine. L'on disoit même là-dessus les plus
+belles choses du monde, lorsque la petite nièce, qui n'avoit pas
+dit un mot, s'avisa de demander naïvement lequel des deux
+fruits, de l'orange ou de la pêche, avoit le gout les plus exquis
+et méritoit le plus d'éloges. Son oncle rougit de sa simplicité,
+et les convives baissèrent tous les yeux sans daigner répondre à
+cette bêtise. Ma nièce, dit Fintac, a votre âge, il faut sçavoir
+écouter, et se taire."</p>
+
+<p>I cannot close this chapter with shorter or better advice to
+the reader, than merely, whenever he hears discussions about
+the relative merits of great masters, to remember the young
+lady's question. It is, indeed, true that there <i>is</i> a relative
+merit, that a peach is nobler than a hawthorn berry, and still
+more a hawthorn berry than a bead of the nightshade; but in
+each rank of fruits, as in each rank of masters, one is endowed
+with one virtue, and another with another; their glory is their
+dissimilarity, and they who propose to themselves in the training
+of an artist that he should unite the coloring of Tintoret,
+the finish of Albert Durer, and the tenderness of Correggio, are
+no wiser than a horticulturist would be, who made it the object
+of his labor to produce a fruit which should unite in itself the
+lusciousness of the grape, the crispness of the nut, and the
+fragrance of the pine.</p>
+
+<p>§ 27. And from these considerations one most important
+practical corollary is to be deduced, with the good help of Mademoiselle's
+Agathe's simile, namely, that the greatness or smallness
+of a man is, in the most conclusive sense, determined for
+him at his birth, as strictly as it is determined for a fruit
+whether it is to be a currant or an apricot. Education, favorable
+circumstances, resolution, and industry can do much; in a
+certain sense they do <i>everything</i>; that is to say, they determine
+whether the poor apricot shall fall in the form of a green bead,
+blighted by an east wind, shall be trodden under foot, or
+whether it shall expand into tender pride, and sweet brightness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span>
+of golden velvet. But apricot out of currant,&mdash;great man out
+of small,&mdash;did never yet art or effort make; and, in a general
+way, men have their excellence nearly fixed for them when they
+are born; a little cramped and frost-bitten on one side, a little
+sun-burnt and fortune-spotted on the other, they reach, between
+good and evil chances, such size and taste as generally belong to
+the men of their calibre, and the small in their serviceable
+bunches, the great in their golden isolation, have, these no
+cause for regret, nor those for disdain.</p>
+
+<p>§ 28. Therefore it is, that every system of teaching is false
+which holds forth "great art" as in any wise to be taught to
+students, or even to be aimed at by them. Great art is precisely
+that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently
+and finally the expression of the spirits of great men; so that
+the only wholesome teaching is that which simply endeavors to
+fix those characters of nobleness in the pupil's mind, of which
+it seems easily susceptible; and without holding out to him, as
+a possible or even probable result, that he should ever paint
+like Titian, or carve like Michael Angelo, enforces upon him
+the manifest possibility, and assured duty, of endeavoring to
+draw in a manner at least honest and intelligible; and cultivates
+in him those general charities of heart, sincerities of
+thought, and graces of habit which are likely to lead him,
+throughout life, to prefer openness to affectation, realities to
+shadows, and beauty to corruption.</p>
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<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> Del "nò," per lì danar, vi "sì" far ita.</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> As here, for the first time, I am obliged to use the terms Truth and
+Beauty in a kind of opposition, I must therefore stop for a moment to state
+clearly the relation of these two qualities of art; and to protest against the
+vulgar and foolish habit of confusing truth and beauty with each other.
+People with shallow powers of thought, desiring to flatter themselves with
+the sensation of having attained profundity, are continually doing the most
+serious mischief by introducing confusion into plain matters, and then valuing
+themselves on being confounded. Nothing is more common than to hear
+people who desire to be thought philosophical, declare that "beauty is
+truth," and "truth is beauty." I would most earnestly beg every sensible
+person who hears such an assertion made, to nip the germinating philosopher
+in his ambiguous bud; and beg him, if he really believes his own
+assertion, never thenceforward to use two words for the same thing. The
+fact is, truth and beauty are entirely distinct, though often related, things.
+One is a property of statements, the other of objects. The statement that
+"two and two make four" is true, but it is neither beautiful nor ugly, for
+it is invisible; a rose is lovely, but it is neither true nor false, for it is
+silent. That which shows nothing cannot be fair, and that which asserts
+nothing cannot be false. Even the ordinary use of the words false and true
+as applied to artificial and real things, is inaccurate. An artificial rose is
+not a "false" rose, it is not a rose at all. The falseness is in the person who
+states, or induces the belief, that it is a rose.
+</p><p>
+Now, therefore, in things concerning art, the words true and false are
+only to be rightly used while the picture is considered as a statement of
+facts. The painter asserts that this which he has painted is the form of a
+dog, a man, or a tree. If it be <i>not</i> the form of a dog, a man, or a tree, the
+painter's statement is false; and therefore we justly speak of a false line,
+or false color; not that any line or color can in themselves be false, but they
+become so when they convey a statement that they resemble something
+which they do <i>not</i> resemble. But the beauty of the lines or colors is wholly
+independent of any such statement. They may be beautiful lines, though
+quite inaccurate, and ugly lines though quite faithful. A picture may be
+frightfully ugly, which represents with fidelity some base circumstance of
+daily life; and a painted window may be exquisitely beautiful, which
+represents men with eagles' faces, and dogs with blue heads and crimson
+tails (though, by the way, this is not in the strict sense <i>false</i> art, as we shall
+see hereafter, inasmuch as it means no assertion that men ever <i>had</i> eagles'
+faces). If this were not so, it would be impossible to sacrifice truth to
+beauty; for to attain the one would always be to attain the other. But,
+unfortunately, this sacrifice is exceedingly possible, and it is chiefly this
+which characterizes the false schools of high art, so far as high art consists
+in the pursuit of beauty. For although truth and beauty are independent
+of each other, it does not follow that we are at liberty to pursue whichever
+we please. They are indeed separable, but it is wrong to separate them;
+they are to be sought together in the order of their worthiness; that is to
+say, truth first, and beauty afterwards. High art differs from low art in
+possessing an excess of beauty in addition to its truth, not in possessing an
+excess of beauty inconsistent with truth.</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> I name them in order of <i>in</i>creasing not decreasing importance.</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> Compare my Edinburgh Lectures, lecture iv. p. 218, et seq. (2nd edition).</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> Compare Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. iv. § 7, and § 21.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE FALSE IDEAL:&mdash;FIRST, RELIGIOUS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. Having now gained some general notion of the meaning
+of "great art," we may, without risk of confusing ourselves,
+take up the questions suggested incidentally in the preceding
+chapter, and pursue them at leisure. Of these, two principal
+ones are closely connected with each other, to wit, that put in
+the 12th paragraph&mdash;How may beauty be sought in defiance of
+truth? and that in the 23rd paragraph&mdash;How does the imagination
+show itself in dealing with truth? These two, therefore,
+which are, besides, the most important of all, and, if well answered,
+will answer many others inclusively, we shall find it
+most convenient to deal with at once.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. The pursuit, by the imagination, of beautiful and
+strange thoughts or subjects, to the exclusion of painful or common
+ones, is called among us, in these modern days, the pursuit
+of "<i>the ideal</i>;" nor does any subject deserve more attentive
+examination than the manner in which this pursuit is entered
+upon by the modern mind. The reader must pardon me for
+making in the outset one or two statements which may appear
+to him somewhat wide of the matter, but which, (if he admits
+their truth,) he will, I think, presently perceive to reach to the
+root of it. Namely,</p>
+
+<p>That men's proper business in this world falls mainly into
+three divisions:</p>
+
+<p>First, to know themselves, and the existing state of the things
+they have to do with.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, to be happy in themselves, and in the existing
+state of things.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly, to mend themselves, and the existing state of
+things, as far as either are marred or mendable.</p>
+
+<p>These, I say, are the three plain divisions of proper human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span>
+business on this earth. For these three, the following are usually
+substituted and adopted by human creatures:</p>
+
+<p>First, to be totally ignorant of themselves, and the existing
+state of things.</p>
+
+<p>"Secondly, to be miserable in themselves, and in the existing
+state of things.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly, to let themselves, and the existing state of things,
+alone (at least in the way of correction).</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. The dispositions which induce us to manage, thus
+wisely, the affairs of this life seem to be:</p>
+
+<p>First, a fear of disagreeable facts, and conscious shrinking
+from clearness of light, which keep us from examining ourselves,
+and increase gradually into a species of instinctive terror
+at all truth, and love of glosses, veils, and decorative lies of every
+sort.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, a general readiness to take delight in anything
+past, future, far off, or somewhere else, rather than in things
+now, near, and here; leading us gradually to place our pleasure
+principally in the exercise of the imagination, and to build all
+our satisfaction on things as they are <i>not</i>. Which power being
+one not accorded to the lower animals, and having indeed, when
+disciplined, a very noble use, we pride ourselves upon it, whether
+disciplined or not, and pass our lives complacently, in substantial
+discontent, and visionary satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. Now <i>nearly</i> all artistical and poetical seeking after the
+ideal is only one branch of this base habit&mdash;the abuse of the
+imagination, in allowing it to find its whole delight in the impossible
+and untrue; while the faithful pursuit of the ideal is
+an honest use of the imagination, giving full power and presence
+to the possible and true.</p>
+
+<p>It is the difference between these two uses of it which we
+have to examine.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. And, first, consider what are the legitimate uses of the
+imagination, that is to say, of the power of perceiving, or conceiving
+with the mind, things which cannot be perceived by the
+senses.</p>
+
+<p>Its first and noblest use is, to enable us to bring sensibly to
+our sight the things which are recorded as belonging to our
+future state, or as invisibly surrounding us in this. It is given<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span>
+us, that we may imagine the cloud of witnesses in heaven and
+earth, and see, as if they were now present, the souls of the
+righteous waiting for us; that we may conceive the great army
+of the inhabitants of heaven, and discover among them those
+whom we most desire to be with for ever; that we may be able
+to vision forth the ministry of angels beside us, and see the
+chariots of fire on the mountains that gird us round; but above
+all, to call up the scenes and facts in which we are commanded
+to believe, and be present, as if in the body, at every recorded
+event of the history of the Redeemer. Its second and ordinary
+use is to empower us to traverse the scenes of all other history,
+and force the facts to become again visible, so as to make upon us
+the same impression which they would have made if we had witnessed
+them; and in the minor necessities of life, to enable us,
+out of any present good, to gather the utmost measure of enjoyment
+by investing it with happy associations, and, in any present
+evil, to lighten it, by summoning back the images of other
+hours; and, also, to give to all mental truths some visible type
+in allegory, simile, or personification, which shall more deeply
+enforce them; and, finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied,
+to refresh it with such innocent play as shall be most in harmony
+with the suggestive voices of natural things, permitting
+it to possess living companionship instead of silent beauty, and
+create for itself fairies in the grass and naiads in the wave.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. These being the uses of imagination, its abuses are
+either in creating, for mere pleasure, false images, where it is
+its <i>duty</i> to create true ones; or in turning what was intended
+for the mere refreshment of the heart into its daily food, and
+changing the innocent pastimes of an hour into the guilty occupation
+of a life.</p>
+
+<p>Let us examine the principal forms of this misuse, one by
+one.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. First, then, the imagination is chiefly warped and dishonored
+by being allowed to create false images, where it is its
+duty to create true ones. And this most dangerously in matters
+of religion. For a long time, when art was in its infancy, it
+remained unexposed to this danger, because it could not, with
+any power, realize or create <i>any</i> thing. It consisted merely in
+simple outlines and pleasant colors; which were understood to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>
+be nothing more than signs of the thing thought of, a sort of
+pictorial letter for it, no more pretending to represent it than
+the written characters of its name. Such art excited the imagination,
+while it pleased the eye. But it <i>asserted</i> nothing, for it
+could realize nothing. The reader glanced at it as a glittering
+symbol, and went on to form truer images for himself. This act
+of the mind may be still seen in daily operation in children, as
+they look at brightly colored pictures in their story-books.
+Such pictures neither deceive them nor satisfy them; they only
+set their own inventive powers to work in the directions required.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. But as soon as art obtained the power of realization, it
+obtained also that of <i>assertion</i>. As fast as the painter advanced
+in skill he gained also in credibility, and that which he perfectly
+represented was perfectly believed, or could be disbelieved only
+by an actual effort of the beholder to escape from the fascinating
+deception. What had been faintly declared, might be painlessly
+denied; but it was difficult to discredit things forcibly
+alleged; and representations, which had been innocent in discrepancy,
+became guilty in consistency.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft">
+	<a name="FIG_1" id="FIG_1"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus066b.png" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus066w.jpg" style="margin-bottom: -2em;" width="250"  alt="Fig 1" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption" style="margin-top: -3em;"><br />
+		<span class="smcap">Fig.</span> 1.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 9. For instance, when in the thirteenth century, the nativity
+was habitually represented by such a symbol as that on
+the next page, fig. 1, there was not the smallest possibility that
+such a picture could disturb, in the mind of the reader of the
+New Testament, the simple meaning of the words "wrapped
+him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger." That
+this manger was typified by a trefoiled arch<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>
+would no more
+prevent his distinct understanding of the narrative, than the
+grotesque heads introduced above it would interfere with his
+firm comprehension of the words "ox" or "ass;" while if
+there were anything in the action of the principal figures suggestive
+of real feeling, that suggestion he would accept, together
+with the general pleasantness of the lines and colors in the decorative
+letter; but without having his faith in the unrepresented<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>
+and actual scene obscured for a moment. But it was far otherwise,
+when Francia or Perugino, with exquisite
+power of representing the human form, and
+high knowledge of the mysteries of art, devoted
+all their skill to the delineation of an impossible
+scene; and painted, for their subjects
+of the Nativity, a beautiful and queenly lady,
+her dress embroidered with gold, and with a
+crown of jewels upon her hair, kneeling, on
+a floor of inlaid
+and precious marble,
+before
+a crowned
+child, laid
+under a portico
+of Lombardic<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+architecture;
+with a sweet,
+verdurous,
+and vivid
+landscape in
+the distance,
+full of winding
+rivers,
+village spires,
+and baronial towers.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>
+It is quite
+true that the frank absurdity of
+the thought prevented its being
+received as a deliberate contradiction
+of the truths of Scripture;
+but it is no less certain, that the
+continual presentment to the mind of this beautiful
+and fully realized imagery more and more chilled its
+power of apprehending the real truth; and that
+when pictures of this description met the eye in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>
+every corner of every chapel, it was physically impossible to
+dwell distinctly upon facts the direct reverse of those represented.
+The word "Virgin" or "Madonna," instead of calling
+up the vision of a simple Jewish girl, bearing the calamities
+of poverty, and the dishonors of inferior station, summoned instantly
+the idea of a graceful princess, crowned with gems, and
+surrounded by obsequious ministry of kings and saints. The
+fallacy which was presented to the imagination was indeed discredited,
+but also the fact which was <i>not</i> presented to the imagination
+was forgotten; all true grounds of faith were gradually
+undermined, and the beholder was either enticed into mere luxury
+of fanciful enjoyment, believing nothing; or left, in his
+confusion of mind, the prey of vain tales and traditions; while
+in his best feelings he was unconsciously subject to the power of
+the fallacious picture, and with no sense of the real cause of his
+error, bowed himself, in prayer or adoration, to the lovely lady
+on her golden throne, when he would never have dreamed of
+doing so to the Jewish girl in her outcast poverty, or, in her
+simple household, to the carpenter's wife.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>§ 10. But a shadow of increasing darkness fell upon the human
+mind as art proceeded to still more perfect realization. These
+fantasies of the earlier painters, though they darkened faith,
+never hardened <i>feeling</i>; on the contrary, the frankness of their
+unlikelihood proceeded mainly from the endeavor on the part of
+the painter to express, not the actual fact, but the enthusiastic
+state of his own feelings about the fact; he covers the Virgin's
+dress with gold, not with any idea of representing the Virgin as
+she ever was, or ever will be seen, but with a burning desire to
+show what his love and reverence would think fittest for her.
+He erects for the stable a Lombardic portico, not because he
+supposes the Lombardi to have built stables in Palestine in the
+days of Tiberius, but to show that the manger in which Christ
+was laid is, in his eyes, nobler than the greatest architecture in
+the world. He fills his landscape with church spires and silver
+streams, not because he supposes that either were in sight of
+Bethlehem, but to remind the beholder of the peaceful course
+and succeeding power of Christianity. And, regarded with due
+sympathy and clear understanding of these thoughts of the
+artist, such pictures remain most impressive and touching, even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>
+to this day. I shall refer to them in future, in general terms,
+as the pictures of the "Angelican Ideal"&mdash;Angelico being the
+central master of the school.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. It was far otherwise in the next step of the Realistic
+progress. The greater his powers became, the more the mind of
+the painter was absorbed in their attainment, and complacent
+in their display. The early arts of laying on bright colors
+smoothly, of burnishing golden ornaments, or tracing, leaf by
+leaf, the outlines of flowers, were not so difficult as that they
+should materially occupy the thoughts of the artist, or furnish
+foundation for his conceit; he learned these rudiments of his
+work without pain, and employed them without pride, his spirit
+being left free to express, so far as it was capable of them, the
+reaches of higher thought. But when accurate shade, and subtle
+color, and perfect anatomy, and complicated perspective,
+became necessary to the work, the artist's whole energy was
+employed in learning the laws of these, and his whole pleasure
+consisted in exhibiting them. His life was devoted, not to the
+objects of art, but to the cunning of it; and the sciences of
+composition and light and shade were pursued as if there were
+abstract good in them;&mdash;as if, like astronomy or mathematics,
+they were ends in themselves, irrespective of anything to be
+effected by them. And without perception, on the part of any
+one, of the abyss to which all were hastening, a fatal change of
+aim took place throughout the whole world of art. In early
+times <i>art was employed for the display of religious facts</i>; now,
+<i>religious facts were employed for the display of art</i>. The transition,
+though imperceptible, was consummate; it involved the
+entire destiny of painting. It was passing from the paths of
+life to the paths of death.</p>
+
+<p>§ 12. And this change was all the more fatal, because at
+first veiled by an appearance of greater dignity and sincerity
+than were possessed by the older art. One of the earliest results
+of the new knowledge was the putting away the greater part of
+the <i>unlikelihoods</i> and fineries of the ancient pictures, and an
+apparently closer following of nature and probability. All the
+fantasy which I have just been blaming as disturbant of the
+simplicity of faith, was first subdued,&mdash;then despised and cast
+aside. The appearances of nature were more closely followed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>
+everything; and the crowned Queen-Virgin of Perugino sank
+into a simple Italian mother in Raphael's Madonna of the
+Chair.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. Was not this, then, a healthy change? No. It
+<i>would</i> have been healthy if it had been effected with a pure
+motive, and the new truths would have been precious if they
+had been sought for truth's sake. But they were not sought
+for truth's sake, but for pride's; and truth which is sought for
+display may be just as harmful as truth which is spoken in malice.
+The glittering childishness of the old art was rejected, not
+because it was false, but because it was easy; and, still more,
+because the painter had no longer any religious passion to
+express. He could think of the Madonna now very calmly,
+with no desire to pour out the treasures of earth at her feet, or
+crown her brows with the golden shafts of heaven. He could
+think of her as an available subject for the display of transparent
+shadows, skilful tints, and scientific foreshortenings,&mdash;as a
+fair woman, forming, if well painted, a pleasant piece of furniture
+for the corner of a boudoir, and best imagined by combination
+of the beauties of the prettiest contadinas. He could
+think of her, in her last maternal agony, with academical discrimination;
+sketch in first her skeleton, invest her, in serene
+science, with the muscles of misery and the fibres of sorrow;
+then cast the grace of antique drapery over the nakedness of her
+desolation, and fulfil, with studious lustre of tears and delicately
+painted pallor, the perfect type of the "Mater Dolorosa."</p>
+
+<p>§ 14. It was thus that Raphael thought of the Madonna.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>Now observe, when the subject was thus scientifically completed,
+it became necessary, as we have just said, to the full display
+of all the power of the artist, that it should in many
+respects be more faithfully imagined than it had been hitherto,
+"Keeping," "Expression," "Historical Unity," and such
+other requirements, were enforced on the painter, in the same
+tone, and with the same purpose, as the purity of his oil and
+the accuracy of his perspective. He was told that the figure of
+Christ should be "dignified," those of the Apostles "expressive,"
+that of the Virgin "modest," and those of children "in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span>nocent."
+All this was perfectly true; and in obedience to
+such directions, the painter proceeded to manufacture certain
+arrangements of apostolic sublimity, virginal mildness, and
+infantine innocence, which, being free from the quaint imperfection
+and contradictoriness of the early art, were looked upon
+by the European public as true things, and trustworthy representations
+of the events of religious history. The pictures of
+Francia and Bellini had been received as pleasant visions. But
+the cartoons of Raphael were received as representations of historical
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>§ 15. Now, neither they, nor any other work of the period,
+were representations either of historical or possible fact. They
+were, in the strictest sense of the word, "compositions"&mdash;cold
+arrangements of propriety and agreeableness, according to academical
+formulas; the painter never in any case making the
+slightest effort to conceive the thing as it must have happened,
+but only to gather together graceful lines and beautiful faces, in
+such compliance with commonplace ideas of the subject as
+might obtain for the whole an "epic unity," or some such
+other form of scholastic perfectness.</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. Take a very important instance.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose there is no event in the whole life of Christ to
+which, in hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious
+thirst to knew the close facts of it, or with more earnest and
+passionate dwelling upon every syllable of its recorded narrative,
+than Christ's showing Himself to his disciples at the lake
+of Galilee. There is something preeminently open, natural,
+full fronting our disbelief in this manifestation. The others,
+recorded after the resurrection, were sudden, phantom-like,
+occurring to men in profound sorrow and wearied agitation of
+heart; not, it might seem, safe judges of what they saw. But
+the agitation was now over. They had gone back to their daily
+work, thinking still their business lay net-wards, unmeshed
+from the literal rope and drag. "Simon Peter saith unto
+them, 'I go a fishing,' They say unto him, 'We also go with
+thee,'" True words enough, and having far echo beyond those
+Galilean hills. That night they caught nothing; but when the
+morning came, in the clear light of it, behold a figure stood on
+the shore. They were not thinking of anything but their fruit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>less
+hauls. They had no guess who it was. It asked them simply
+if they had caught anything. They said no. And it tells
+them to cast yet again. And John shades his eyes from the
+morning sun with his hand, to look who it is; and though the
+glinting of the sea, too, dazzles him, he makes out who it is, at
+last; and poor Simon, not to be outrun this time, tightens, his
+fisher's coat about him, and dashes in, over the nets. One
+would have liked to see him swim those hundred yards, and
+stagger to his knees on the beach.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow
+way as men in general do get, in this world, to its true shore,
+much impeded by that wonderful "dragging the net with
+fishes;" but they get there&mdash;seven of them in all;&mdash;first the
+Denier, and then the slowest believer, and then the quickest believer,
+and then the two throne-seekers, and two more, we know
+not who.</p>
+
+<p>They sit down on the shore face to face with Him, and eat
+their broiled fish as He bids. And then, to Peter, all dripping
+still, shivering, and amazed, staring at Christ in the sun, on the
+other side of the coal fire,&mdash;thinking a little, perhaps, of what
+happened by another coal fire, when it was colder, and having
+had no word once changed with him by his Master since that
+look of His,&mdash;to him, so amazed, comes the question, "Simon,
+lovest thou me?" Try to feel that a little, and think of it till
+it is true to you; and then, take up that infinite monstrosity
+and hypocrisy&mdash;Raphael's cartoon of the Charge to Peter.
+Note, first, the bold fallacy&mdash;the putting <i>all</i> the Apostles there,
+a mere lie to serve the Papal heresy of the Petric supremacy, by
+putting them all in the background while Peter receives the
+charge, and making them all witnesses to it. Note the handsomely
+curled hair and neatly tied sandals of the men who had
+been out all night in the sea-mists and on the slimy decks.
+Note their convenient dresses for going a-fishing, with trains
+that lie a yard along the ground, and goodly fringes,&mdash;all made
+to match, an apostolic fishing costume.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>
+Note how Peter
+especially (whose chief glory was in his wet coat <i>girt</i> about him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>
+and naked limbs) is enveloped in folds and fringes, so as to
+kneel and hold his keys with grace. No fire of coals at all, nor
+lonely mountain shore, but a pleasant Italian landscape, full of
+villas and churches, and a flock of sheep to be pointed at; and
+the whole group of Apostles, not round Christ, as they would
+have been naturally, but straggling away in a line, that they
+may all be shown.</p>
+
+<p>The simple truth is, that the moment we look at the picture
+we feel our belief of the whole thing taken away. There is,
+visibly, no possibility of that group ever having existed, in any
+place, or on any occasion. It is all a mere mythic absurdity,
+and faded concoction of fringes, muscular arms, and curly
+heads of Greek philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. Now, the evil consequences of the acceptance of this
+kind of religious idealism for true, were instant and manifold.
+So far as it was received and trusted in by thoughtful persons,
+it only served to chill all the conceptions of sacred history
+which they might otherwise have obtained. Whatever they
+could have fancied for themselves about the wild, strange, infinitely
+stern, infinitely tender, infinitely varied veracities of the
+life of Christ, was blotted out by the vapid fineries of Raphael;
+the rough Galilean pilot, the orderly custom receiver, and all
+the questioning wonder and fire of uneducated apostleship, were
+obscured under an antique mask of philosophical faces and long
+robes. The feeble, subtle, suffering, ceaseless energy and humiliation
+of St. Paul were confused with an idea of a meditative
+Hercules leaning on a sweeping sword;<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>
+and the mighty presences
+of Moses and Elias were softened by introductions of delicate
+grace, adopted from dancing nymphs and rising Auroras,<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+												<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>
+
+<p>Now, no vigorously minded religious person could possibly
+receive pleasure or help from such art as this; and the necessary
+result was the instant rejection of it by the healthy religion
+of the world. Raphael ministered, with applause, to the impious
+luxury of the Vatican, but was trampled under foot at once
+by every believing and advancing Christian of his own and subsequent
+times; and thenceforward pure Christianity and "high
+art" took separate roads, and fared on, as best they might,
+independently of each other.</p>
+
+<p>§ 18. But although Calvin, and Knox, and Luther, and
+their flocks, with all the hardest-headed and truest-hearted
+faithful left in Christendom, thus spurned away the spurious
+art, and all art with it, (not without harm to themselves, such
+as a man must needs sustain in cutting off a decayed limb<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a>)
+certain conditions of weaker Christianity suffered the false system
+to retain influence over them; and to this day, the clear
+and tasteless poison of the art of Raphael infects with sleep
+of infidelity the hearts of millions of Christians. It is the
+first cause of all that preeminent <i>dulness</i> which characterizes
+what Protestants call sacred art; a dulness not merely
+baneful in making religion distasteful to the young, but in sickening,
+as we have seen, all vital belief of religion in the old. A
+dim sense of impossibility attaches itself always to the graceful
+emptiness of the representation; we feel instinctively that the
+painted Christ and painted apostle are not beings that ever did
+or could exist; and this fatal sense of fair fabulousness, and
+well-composed impossibility, steals gradually from the picture
+into the history, until we find ourselves reading St. Mark or St.
+Luke with the same admiring, but uninterested, incredulity,
+with which we contemplate Raphael.</p>
+
+<p>§ 19. On a certain class of minds, however, these Raphaelesque
+and other sacred paintings of high order, have had, of
+late years, another kind of influence, much resembling that
+which they had at first on the most pious Romanists. They are
+used to excite certain conditions of religious dream or reverie;
+being again, as in earliest times, regarded not as representations
+of fact, but as expressions of sentiment respecting the fact. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span>
+this way the best of them have unquestionably much purifying
+and enchanting power; and they are helpful opponents to sinful
+passion and weakness of every kind. A fit of unjust anger,
+petty malice, unreasonable vexation, or dark passion, cannot
+certainly, in a mind of ordinary sensibility, hold its own in the
+presence of a good engraving from any work of Angelico, Memling,
+or Perugino. But I nevertheless believe, that he who
+trusts much to such helps will find them fail him at his need;
+and that the dependence, in any great degree, on the presence
+or power of a picture, indicates a wonderfully feeble sense of the
+presence and power of God. I do not think that any man, who
+is thoroughly certain that Christ is in the room, will care what
+sort of pictures of Christ he has on its walls; and, in the plurality
+of cases, the delight taken in art of this kind is, in
+reality, nothing more than a form of graceful indulgence of
+those sensibilities which the habits of a disciplined life restrain
+in other directions. Such art is, in a word, the opera and
+drama of the monk. Sometimes it is worse than this, and the
+love of it is the mask under which a general thirst for morbid
+excitement will pass itself for religion. The young lady who
+rises in the middle of the day, jaded by her last night's ball,
+and utterly incapable of any simple or wholesome religious
+exercise, can still gaze into the dark eyes of the Madonna di
+San Sisto, or dream over the whiteness of an ivory crucifix, and
+returns to the course of her daily life in full persuasion that her
+morning's feverishness has atoned for her evening's folly. And
+all the while, the art which possesses these very doubtful advantages
+is acting for undoubtful detriment, in the various ways
+above examined, on the inmost fastnesses of faith; it is throwing
+subtle endearments round foolish traditions, confusing
+sweet fancies with sound doctrines, obscuring real events with
+unlikely semblances, and enforcing false assertions with pleasant
+circumstantiality, until, to the usual, and assuredly sufficient,
+difficulties standing in the way of belief, its votaries have
+added a habit of sentimentally changing what they know to be
+true, and of dearly loving what they confess to be false.</p>
+
+<p>§ 20. Has there, then (the reader asks emphatically), been
+<i>no</i> true religious ideal? Has religious art never been of any
+service to mankind? I fear, on the whole, not. Of true relig<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>ious
+ideal, representing events historically recorded, with solemn
+effort at a sincere and unartificial conception, there exist,
+as yet, hardly any examples. Nearly all good religious pictures
+fall into one or other branch of the false ideal already examined,
+either into the Angelican (passionate ideal) or the Raphaelesque
+(philosophical ideal). But there is one true form of religious
+art, nevertheless, in the pictures of the passionate ideal
+which represent imaginary beings of another world. Since it is
+evidently right that we should try to imagine the glories of the
+next world, and as this imagination must be, in each separate
+mind, more or less different, and unconfined by any laws of
+material fact, the passionate ideal has not only full scope here,
+but it becomes our duty to urge its powers to its utmost, so that
+every condition of beautiful form and color may be employed to
+invest these scenes with greater delightfulness (the whole being,
+of course, received as an assertion of possibility, not of absolute
+fact). All the paradises imagined by the religious painters&mdash;the
+choirs of glorified saints, angels, and spiritual powers, when
+painted with full belief in this possibility of their existence, are
+true ideals; and so far from our having dwelt on these too
+much, I believe, rather, we have not trusted them enough, nor
+accepted them enough, as possible statements of most precious
+truth. Nothing but unmixed good can accrue to any mind
+from the contemplation of Orcagna's Last Judgment or his triumph
+of death, of Angelico's Last Judgment and Paradise, or
+any of the scenes laid in heaven by the other faithful religious
+masters; and the more they are considered, not as works of art,
+but as real visions of real things, more or less imperfectly set
+down, the more good will be got by dwelling upon them. The
+same is true of all representations of Christ as a living presence
+among us now, as in Hunt's Light of the World.</p>
+
+<p>§ 21. For the rest, there is a reality of conception in some
+of the works of Benozzo Gozzoli, Ghirlandajo, and Giotto,
+which approaches to a true ideal, even of recorded facts. But
+the examination of the various degrees in which sacred art has
+reached its proper power is not to our present purpose; still
+less, to investigate the infinitely difficult question of its past
+operation on the Christian mind. I hope to prosecute my
+inquiry into this subject in another work; it being enough here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span>
+to mark the forms of ideal error, without historically tracing
+their extent, and to state generally that my impression is, up to
+the present moment, that the best religious art has been <i>hitherto</i>
+rather a fruit, and attendant sign, of sincere Christianity than
+a promoter of or help to it. More, I think, has always been
+done for God by few words than many pictures, and more by
+few acts than many words.</p>
+
+<p>§ 22. I must not, however, quit the subject without insisting
+on the chief practical consequence of what we have observed,
+namely, that sacred art, so far from being exhausted,
+has yet to attain the development of its highest branches; and
+the task, or privilege, yet remains for mankind, to produce an
+art which shall be at once entirely skilful and entirely <i>sincere</i>.
+All the histories of the Bible are, in my judgment, yet waiting
+to be painted. Moses has never been painted; Elijah never;
+David never (except as a mere ruddy stripling); Deborah never;
+Gideon never; Isaiah never. What single example does the
+reader remember of painting which suggested so much as the
+faintest shadow of these people, or of their deeds? Strong men
+in armor, or aged men with flowing beards, he <i>may</i> remember,
+who, when he looked at his Louvre or Uffizii catalogue, he
+found were intended to stand for David or for Moses. But does
+he suppose that, if these pictures had suggested to him the feeblest
+image of the presence of such men, he would have passed
+on, as he assuredly did, to the next picture,&mdash;representing,
+doubtless, Diana and Actaeon, or Cupid and the Graces, or a
+gambling quarrel in a pothouse,&mdash;with no sense of pain, or surprise?
+Let him meditate over the matter, and he will find ultimately
+that what I say is true, and that religious art, at once
+complete and sincere, never yet has existed.</p>
+
+<p>§ 23. It will exist: nay, I believe the era of its birth has
+come, and that those bright Turnerian imageries, which the
+European public declared to be "dotage," and those calm Pre-Raphaelite
+studies which, in like manner, it pronounced "puerility,"
+form the first foundation that has been ever laid for true
+sacred art. Of this we shall presently reason farther. But, be
+it as it may, if we would cherish the hope that sacred art may,
+indeed, arise for <i>us</i>, two separate cautions are to be addressed to
+the two opposed classes of religionists whose influence will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>
+chiefly retard that hope's accomplishment. The group calling
+themselves Evangelical ought no longer to render their religion
+an offence to men of the world by associating it only with the
+most vulgar forms of art. It is not necessary that they should
+admit either music or painting into religious service; but, if
+they admit either the one or the other, let it not be bad music
+nor bad painting: it is certainly in nowise more for Christ's
+honor that His praise should be sung discordantly, or His
+miracles painted discreditably, than that His word should be
+preached ungrammatically. Some Evangelicals, however, seem
+to take a morbid pride in the triple degradation.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 24. The opposite class of men, whose natural instincts
+lead them to mingle the refinements of art with all the offices
+and practices of religion, are to be warned, on the contrary,
+how they mistake their enjoyments for their duties, or confound
+poetry with faith. I admit that it is impossible for one man to
+judge another in this matter, and that it can never be said with
+certainty how far what seems frivolity may be force, and what
+seems the indulgence of the heart may be, indeed, its dedication.
+I am ready to believe that Metastasio, expiring in a canzonet,
+may have died better than if his prayer had been in unmeasured
+syllables.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>
+But, for the most part, it is assuredly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>
+much to be feared lest we mistake a surrender to the charms of
+art for one to the service of God; and, in the art which we permit,
+lest we substitute sentiment for sense, grace for utility.
+And for us all there is in this matter even a deeper danger than
+that of indulgence. There is the danger of Artistical Pharisaism.
+Of all the forms of pride and vanity, as there are none
+more subtle, so I believe there are none more sinful, than those
+which are manifested by the Pharisees of art. To be proud of
+birth, of place, of wit, of bodily beauty, is comparatively innocent,
+just because such pride is more natural, and more easily
+detected. But to be proud of our sanctities; to pour contempt
+upon our fellows, because, forsooth, we like to look at Madonnas
+in bowers of roses, better than at plain pictures of plain
+things; and to make this religious art of ours the expression of
+our own perpetual self-complacency,&mdash;congratulating ourselves,
+day by day, on our purities, proprieties, elevations, and inspirations,
+as above the reach of common mortals,&mdash;this I believe to
+be one of the wickedest and foolishest forms of human egotism;
+and, truly, I had rather, with great, thoughtless, humble
+Paul Veronese, make the Supper at Emmaus a background for
+two children playing with a dog (as, God knows, men do usually
+put it in the background to everything, if not out of sight altogether),
+than join that school of modern Germanism which
+wears its pieties for decoration as women wear their diamonds,
+and flaunts the dry fleeces of its phylacteries between its dust
+and the dew of heaven.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+<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> The curious inequality of this little trefoil is not a mistake; it is faithfully
+copied by the draughtsman from the MS. Perhaps the actual date of
+the illumination may be a year or two past the thirteenth century, i.e., 1300&mdash;1310:
+but it is quite characteristic of the thirteenth century treatment in
+the figures.</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> Lombardic, i.e. in the style of Pietro and Tullio Lombardo, in the
+fifteenth century (not <i>Lombard</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> All this, it will be observed, is that seeking for beauty at the cost of
+truth which we have generally noted in the last chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> This is one form of the sacrifice of expression to technical merit, generally
+noted at the end of the 10th paragraph of the last chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> I suppose Raphael intended a reference to Numbers xv. 38; but if he
+did, the <i>blue</i> riband, or "vitta," as it is in the Vulgate, should have been on
+the borders too.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> In the St. Cecilia of Bologna.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> In the Transfiguration. Do but try to believe that Moses and Elias are
+really there talking with Christ. Moses in the loveliest heart and midst of
+the land which once it had been denied him to behold,&mdash;Elijah treading the
+earth again, from which he had been swept to heaven in fire; both now
+with a mightier message than ever they had given in life,&mdash;mightier, in closing
+their own mission,&mdash;mightier, in speaking to Christ "of His decease,
+which He should accomplish at Jerusalem." They, men of like passions
+once with us, appointed to speak to the Redeemer of His death.
+</p><p>
+And, then, look at Raphael's kicking gracefulnesses.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Luther had no dislike of religious art on principle. Even the stove in
+his chamber was wrought with sacred subjects. See Mrs. Stowe's Sunny
+Memories.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a>
+ I do not know anything more humiliating to a man of common sense,
+than to open what is called an "illustrated Bible" of modern days. See, for
+instance, the plates in Brown's Bible (octavo: Edinburgh, 1840), a standard
+evangelical edition. Our habit of reducing the psalms to doggerel before we
+will condescend to sing them, is a parallel abuse. It is marvellous to think
+that human creatures with tongues and souls should refuse to chant the
+verse: "Before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up thy strength,
+and come and help us;" preferring this:&mdash;</p>
+
+	<div class="poem">
+		<span class="i0">"Behold, how Benjamin expects,</span><br />
+		<span class="i1">With Ephraim and Manasseh joined,</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">In their deliverance, the effects</span><br />
+		<span class="i1">Of thy resistless strength to find!"</span><br />
+	</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a>
+"En 1780, âgé de quatre-vingt-deux ans, au moment de recevoir le
+viatique, il rassembla ses forces, et chanta, à son Créateur:</p>
+
+	<div class="poem">
+		<span class="i0">'Eterno Genitor</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">Io t' offro il proprio figlio</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">Che in pegno del tuo amor</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">Si vuole a me donar.</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">A lui rivolgi il ciglio,</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">Mira chi t' offro; e poi,</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">Niega, Signor, se puoi,</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">Niega di perdonar'".&mdash;</span><br />
+		<span style="margin-left:6em;">&mdash;<span class="smcap">De Stendhal</span>, <i>Via de Metastasio</i>.</span>
+	</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE FALSE IDEAL:&mdash;SECONDLY, PROFANE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. Such having been the effects of the pursuit of ideal
+beauty on the religious mind of Europe, we might be tempted
+next to consider in what way the same movement affected the
+art which concerned itself with profane subject, and, through
+that art, the whole temper of modern civilization.</p>
+
+<p>I shall, however, merely glance at this question. It is a
+very painful and a very wide one. Its discussion cannot come
+properly within the limits, or even within the aim, of a work
+like this; it ought to be made the subject of a separate essay,
+and that essay should be written by some one who had passed
+less of his life than I have among the mountains, and more of
+it among men. But one or two points may be suggested for the
+reader to reflect upon at his leisure.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. I said just now that we might be tempted to consider
+how this pursuit of the ideal <i>affected</i> profane art. Strictly
+speaking, it brought that art into existence. As long as men
+sought for truth first, and beauty secondarily, they cared chiefly,
+of course, for the <i>chief</i> truth, and all art was instinctively
+religious. But as soon as they sought for beauty first, and
+truth secondarily, they were punished by losing sight of spiritual
+truth altogether, and the profane (properly so called)
+schools of art were instantly developed.</p>
+
+<p>The perfect human beauty, which, to a large part of the community,
+was by far the most interesting feature in the work of
+the rising school, might indeed be in some degree consistent
+with the agony of Madonnas, and the repentance of Magdalenes;
+but could not be exhibited in fulness, when the subjects,
+however irreverently treated, nevertheless demanded some
+decency in the artist, and some gravity in the spectator. The
+newly acquired powers of rounding limbs, and tinting lips, had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span>
+too little scope in the sanctities even of the softest womanhood;
+and the newly acquired conceptions of the nobility of
+nakedness could in no wise be expressed beneath the robes of
+the prelate or the sackcloth of the recluse. But the source
+from which these ideas had been received afforded also full field
+for their expression; the heathen mythology, which had furnished
+the examples of these heights of art, might again become
+the subject of the inspirations it had kindled;&mdash;with the additional
+advantage that it could now be delighted in, without being
+believed; that its errors might be indulged, unrepressed by
+its awe; and those of its deities whose function was temptation
+might be worshipped, in scorn of those whose hands were
+charged with chastisement.</p>
+
+<p>So, at least, men dreamed in their foolishness,&mdash;to find, as
+the ages wore on, that the returning Apollo bore not only his
+lyre, but his arrows; and that at the instant of Cytherea's
+resurrection to the sunshine, Persephone had reascended her
+throne in the deep.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. Little thinking this, they gave themselves up fearlessly
+to the chase of the new delight, and exhausted themselves in
+the pursuit of an ideal now doubly false. Formerly, though
+they attempted to reach an unnatural beauty, it was yet in representing
+historical facts and real persons; <i>now</i> they sought for
+the same unnatural beauty in representing tales which they
+knew to be fictitious, and personages who they knew had never
+existed. Such a state of things had never before been found in
+any nation. Every people till then had painted the acts of
+their kings, the triumphs of their armies, the beauty of their
+race, or the glory of their gods. They showed the things they
+had seen or done; the beings they truly loved or faithfully
+adored. But the ideal art of modern Europe was the shadow of
+a shadow; and with mechanism substituted for perception, and
+bodily beauty for spiritual life, it set itself to represent men it
+had never seen, customs it had never practised, and gods in
+whom it had never believed.</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. Such art could of course have no help from the virtues,
+nor claim on the energies of men. It necessarily rooted itself
+in their vices and their idleness; and of their vices principally
+in two, pride and sensuality. To the pride, was attached emi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>nently
+the art of architecture; to the sensuality, those of painting
+and sculpture. Of the fall of architecture, as resultant from
+the formalist pride of its patrons and designers, I have spoken
+elsewhere. The sensualist ideal, as seen in painting and sculpture,
+remains to be examined here. But one interesting circumstance
+is to be observed with respect to the manner of the
+separation of these arts. Pride, being wholly a vice, and in
+every phase inexcusable, wholly betrayed and destroyed the art
+which was founded on it. But passion, having some root and
+use in healthy nature, and only becoming guilty in excess, did
+not altogether destroy the art founded upon it. The architecture
+of Palladio is wholly virtueless and despicable. Not so the
+Venus of Titian, nor the Antiope of Correggio.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. We find, then, at the close of the sixteenth century, the
+arts of painting and sculpture wholly devoted to entertain the
+indolent and satiate the luxurious. To effect these noble ends,
+they took a thousand different forms; painting, however, of
+course being the most complying, aiming sometimes at mere
+amusement by deception in landscapes, or minute imitation of
+natural objects; sometimes giving more piquant excitement in
+battle-pieces full of slaughter, or revels deep in drunkenness;
+sometimes entering upon serious subjects, for the sake of grotesque
+fiends and picturesque infernos, or that it might introduce
+pretty children as cherubs, and handsome women as Magdalenes
+and Maries of Egypt, or portraits of patrons in the
+character of the more decorous saints: but more frequently, for
+direct flatteries of this kind, recurring to Pagan mythology, and
+painting frail ladies as goddesses or graces, and foolish kings in
+radiant apotheosis; while, for the earthly delight of the persons
+whom it honored as divine, it ransacked the records of luscious
+fable, and brought back, in fullest depth of dye and flame of
+fancy, the impurest dreams of the un-Christian ages.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. Meanwhile, the art of sculpture, less capable of ministering
+to mere amusement, was more or less reserved for the
+affectations of taste; and the study of the classical statues introduced
+various ideas on the subjects of "purity," "chastity,"
+and "dignity," such as it was possible for people to
+entertain who were themselves impure, luxurious, and ridiculous.
+It is a matter of extreme difficulty to explain the exact<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span>
+character of this modern sculpturesque ideal; but its relation to
+the true ideal may be best understood by considering it as in
+exact parallelism with the relation of the word "taste" to the
+word "love." Wherever the word "taste" is used with respect
+to matters of art, it indicates either that the thing spoken of
+belongs to some inferior class of objects, or that the person
+speaking has a false conception of its nature. For, consider
+the exact sense in which a work of art is said to be "in good or
+bad taste." It does not mean that it is true, or false; that it
+is beautiful, or ugly; but that it does or does not comply either
+with the laws of choice, which are enforced by certain modes of
+life; or the habits of mind produced by a particular sort of
+education. It does not mean merely fashionable, that is, complying
+with a momentary caprice of the upper classes; but it
+means agreeing with the habitual sense which the most refined
+education, common to those upper classes at the period, gives to
+their whole mind. Now, therefore, so far as that education
+does indeed tend to make the senses delicate, and the perceptions
+accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased with quiet
+instead of gaudy color, and with graceful instead of coarse
+form; and, by long acquaintance with the best things, to discern
+quickly what is fine from what is common;&mdash;so far,
+acquired taste is an honorable faculty, and it is true praise of
+anything to say it is "in good taste." But so far as this
+higher education has a tendency to narrow the sympathies and
+harden the heart, diminishing the interest of all beautiful
+things by familiarity, until even what is best can hardly please,
+and what is brightest hardly entertain;&mdash;so far as it fosters
+pride, and leads men to found the pleasure they take in anything,
+not on the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in
+which it indicates some greatness of their own (as people build
+marble porticos, and inlay marble floors, not so much because
+they like the colors of marble, or find it pleasant to the foot, as
+because such porches and floors are costly, and separated in all
+human eyes from plain entrances of stone and timber);&mdash;so far
+as it leads people to prefer gracefulness of dress, manner, and
+aspect, to value of substance and heart, liking a well said thing
+better than a true thing, and a well trained manner better than
+a sincere one, and a delicately formed face better than a good-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>natured
+one, and in all other ways and things setting custom
+and semblance above everlasting truth;&mdash;so far, finally, as it induces
+a sense of inherent distinction between class and class,
+and causes everything to be more or less despised which has no
+social rank, so that the affection, pleasure, or grief of a clown
+are looked upon as of no interest compared with the affection
+and grief of a well-bred man;&mdash;just so far, in all these several
+ways, the feeling induced by what is called a "liberal education"
+is utterly adverse to the understanding of noble art; and
+the name which is given to the feeling,&mdash;Taste, Goût, Gusto,&mdash;in
+all languages, indicates the baseness of it, for it implies that
+art gives only a kind of pleasure analogous to that derived from
+eating by the palate.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. Modern education, not in art only, but in all other
+things referable to the same standard, has invariably given taste
+in this bad sense; it has given fastidiousness of choice without
+judgment, superciliousness of manner without dignity, refinement
+of habit without purity, grace of expression without sincerity,
+and desire of loveliness without love; and the modern
+"Ideal" of high art is a curious mingling of the gracefulness
+and reserve of the drawingroom with a certain measure of
+classical sensuality. Of this last element, and the singular artifices
+by which vice succeeds in combining it with what appears
+to be pure and severe, it would take us long to reason fully; I
+would rather leave the reader to follow out for himself the consideration
+of the influence, in this direction, of statues,
+bronzes, and paintings, as at present employed by the upper
+circles of London, and (especially) Paris; and this not so
+much in the works which are really fine, as in the multiplied
+coarse copies of them; taking the widest range, from Dannaeker's
+Ariadne down to the amorous shepherd and shepherdess
+in china on the drawingroom time-piece, rigidly questioning,
+in each case, how far the charm of the art does indeed depend
+on some appeal to the inferior passions. Let it be considered,
+for instance, exactly how far the value of a picture of a girl's
+head by Greuze would be lowered in the market, if the dress,
+which now leaves the bosom bare, were raised to the neck; and
+how far, in the commonest lithograph of some utterly popular
+subject,&mdash;for instance, the teaching of Uncle Tom by Eva,&mdash;the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>
+sentiment which is supposed to be excited by the exhibition of
+Christianity in youth is complicated with that which depends
+upon Eva's having a dainty foot and a well-made satin slipper;&mdash;and
+then, having completely determined for himself how far
+the element exists, consider farther, whether, when art is thus
+frequent (for frequent he will assuredly find it to be) in its appeal
+to the lower passions, it is likely to attain the highest
+order of merit, or be judged by the truest standards of judgment.
+For, of all the causes which have combined, in modern
+times, to lower the rank of art, I believe this to be one of the
+most fatal; while, reciprocally, it may be questioned how far
+society suffers, in its turn, from the influences possessed over it
+by the arts it has degraded. It seems to me a subject of the
+very deepest interest to determine what has been the effect upon
+the European nations of the great change by which art became
+again capable of ministering delicately to the lower passions, as
+it had in the worst days of Rome; how far, indeed, in all ages,
+the fall of nations may be attributed to art's arriving at this
+particular stage among them. I do not mean that, in any of
+its stages, it is incapable of being employed for evil, but that
+assuredly an Egyptian, Spartan, or Norman was unexposed to
+the kind of temptation which is continually offered by the delicate
+painting and sculpture of modern days; and, although the
+diseased imagination might complete the imperfect image of
+beauty from the colored image on the wall,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>
+or the most revolting
+thoughts be suggested by the mocking barbarism of the
+Gothic sculpture, their hard outline and rude execution were
+free from all the subtle treachery which now fills the flushed
+canvas and the rounded marble.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. I cannot, however, pursue this inquiry here. For our
+present purpose it is enough to note that the feeling, in itself so
+debased, branches upwards into that of which, while no one has
+cause to be ashamed, no one, on the other hand, has cause to be
+proud, namely, the admiration of physical beauty in the human
+form, as distinguished from expression of character. Every
+one can easily appreciate the merit of regular features and well-formed
+limbs, but it requires some attention, sympathy, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>
+sense, to detect the charm of passing expression, or life-disciplined
+character. The beauty of the Apollo Belvidere, or
+Venus de Medicis, is perfectly palpable to any shallow fine lady
+or fine gentleman, though they would have perceived none in
+the face of an old weather-beaten St. Peter, or a grey-haired
+"Grandmother Lois." The knowledge that long study is
+necessary to produce these regular types of the human form
+renders the facile admiration matter of eager self-complacency;
+the shallow spectator, delighted that he can really, and without
+hypocrisy, admire what required much thought to produce, supposes
+himself endowed with the highest critical faculties, and
+easily lets himself be carried into rhapsodies about the "ideal,"
+which, when all is said, if they be accurately examined, will be
+found literally to mean nothing more than that the figure has
+got handsome calves to its legs, and a straight nose.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. That they do mean, in reality, nothing more than this
+may be easily ascertained by watching the taste of the same persons
+in other things. The fashionable lady who will write five
+or six pages in her diary respecting the effect upon her mind of
+such and such an "ideal" in marble, will have her drawing
+room table covered with Books of Beauty, in which the engravings
+represent the human form in every possible aspect of distortion
+and affectation; and the connoisseur who, in the morning,
+pretends to the most exquisite taste in the antique, will be
+seen, in the evening, in his opera-stall, applauding the least
+graceful gestures of the least modest figurante.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. But even this vulgar pursuit of physical beauty (vulgar
+in the profoundest sense, for there is no vulgarity like the
+vulgarity of education) would be less contemptible if it really
+succeeded in its object; but, like all pursuits carried to inordinate
+length, it defeats itself. Physical beauty <i>is</i> a noble thing
+when it is seen in perfectness; but the manner in which the
+moderns pursue their ideal prevents their ever really seeing what
+they are always seeking; for, requiring that all forms should be
+regular and faultless, they permit, or even compel, their painters
+and sculptors to work chiefly by rule, altering their models
+to fit their preconceived notions of what is right. When such
+artists look at a face, they do not give it the attention necessary
+to discern what beauty is already in its peculiar features; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>
+only to see how best it may be altered into something for which
+they have themselves laid down the laws. Nature never unveils
+her beauty to such a gaze. She keeps whatever she has done
+best, close sealed, until it is regarded with reverence. To the
+painter who honors her, she will open a revelation in the face of
+a street mendicant; but in the work of the painter who alters
+her, she will make Portia become ignoble and Perdita graceless.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. Nor is the effect less for evil on the mind of the general
+observer. The lover of ideal beauty, with all his conceptions
+narrowed by rule, never looks carefully enough upon the
+features which do not come under his law (or any others), to
+discern the inner beauty in them. The strange intricacies
+about the lines of the lips, and marvellous shadows and watch-fires
+of the eye, and wavering traceries of the eyelash, and infinite
+modulations of the brow, wherein high humanity is embodied,
+are all invisible to him. He finds himself driven back at
+last, with all his idealism, to the lionne of the ball-room, whom
+youth and passion can as easily distinguish as his utmost critical
+science; whereas, the observer who has accustomed himself
+to take human faces as God made them, will often find as much
+beauty on a village green as in the proudest room of state, and as
+much in the free seats of a church aisle, as in all the sacred
+paintings of the Vatican or the Pitti.</p>
+
+<p>§ 12. Then, farther, the habit of disdaining ordinary truth,
+and seeking to alter it so as to fit the fancy of the beholder,
+gradually infects the mind in all its other operation; so that it
+begins to propose to itself an ideal in history, an ideal in general
+narration, an ideal in portraiture and description, and in
+every thing else where truth may be painful or uninteresting;
+with the necessary result of more or less weakness, wickedness,
+and uselessness in all that is done or said, with the desire of
+concealing this painful truth. And, finally, even when truth is
+not intentionally concealed, the pursuer of idealism will pass his
+days in false and useless trains of thought, pluming himself, all
+the while, upon his superiority therein to the rest of mankind.
+A modern German, without either invention or sense, seeing a
+rapid in a river, will immediately devote the remainder of the
+day to the composition of dialogues between amorous water
+nymphs and unhappy mariners; while the man of true inven<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>tion,
+power, and sense will, instead, set himself to consider
+whether the rocks in the river could have their points knocked
+off, or the boats upon it be made with stronger bottoms.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. Of this final baseness of the false ideal, its miserable
+waste of time, strength, and available intellect of man, by turning,
+as I have said above, innocence of pastime into seriousness
+of occupation, it is, of course, hardly possible to sketch out
+even so much as the leading manifestations. The vain and
+haughty projects of youth for future life; the giddy reveries
+of insatiable self exaltation; the discontented dreams of what
+might have been or should be, instead of the thankful understanding
+of what is; the casting about for sources of interest in
+senseless fiction, instead of the real human histories of the people
+round us; the prolongation from age to age of romantic
+historical deceptions instead of sifted truth; the pleasures
+taken in fanciful portraits of rural or romantic life in poetry
+and on the stage, without the smallest effort to rescue the living
+rural population of the world from its ignorance or misery;
+the excitement of the feelings by labored imagination of
+spirits, fairies, monsters, and demons, issuing in total blindness
+of heart and sight to the true presences of beneficent or
+destructive spiritual powers around us; in fine, the constant
+abandonment of all the straightforward paths of sense and
+duty, for fear of losing some of the enticement of ghostly
+joys, or trampling somewhat "sopra lor vanità, che par persona;"
+all these various forms of false idealism have so entangled
+the modern mind, often called, I suppose ironically,
+practical, that truly I believe there never yet was idolatry of
+stock or staff so utterly unholy as this our idolatry of shadows;
+nor can I think that, of those who burnt incense under oaks,
+and poplars, and elms, because "the shadow thereof was good,"
+it could in any wise be more justly or sternly declared than of
+us&mdash;"The wind hath bound them up in her wings, and they
+shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Ezek. xxiii. 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Hosea, chap. iv. 12, 13, and 19.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE TRUE IDEAL:&mdash;FIRST, PURIST.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. Having thus glanced at the principal modes in which
+the imagination works for evil, we must rapidly note also the
+principal directions in which its operation is admissible, even in
+changing or strangely combining what is brought within its
+sphere.</p>
+
+<p>For hitherto we have spoken as if every change wilfully
+wrought by the imagination was an error; apparently implying
+that its only proper work was to summon up the memories of
+past events, and the anticipations of future ones, under aspects
+which would bear the sternest tests of historical investigation,
+or abstract reasoning. And in general this is, indeed, its
+noblest work. Nevertheless, it has also permissible functions
+peculiarly its own, and certain rights of feigning, and adorning,
+and fancifully arranging, inalienable from its nature. Everything
+that is natural is, within certain limits, right; and we
+must take care not, in over-severity, to deprive ourselves of any
+refreshing or animating power ordained to be in us for our
+help.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. (A). It was noted in speaking above of the Angelican
+or passionate ideal, that there was a certain virtue in it dependent
+on the expression of its loving enthusiasm. (Chap. <span class="smcap">IV.</span>
+§ 10.)</p>
+
+<p>(B). In speaking of the pursuit of beauty as one of the characteristics
+of the highest art, it was also said that there were
+certain ways of showing this beauty by gathering together,
+without altering, the finest forms, and marking them by gentle
+emphasis. (Chap. <span class="smcap">III.</span> § 15.)</p>
+
+<p>(C). And in speaking of the true uses of imagination it was
+said, that we might be allowed to create for ourselves, in innocent
+play, fairies and naiads, and other such fictitious creatures.
+(Chap. <span class="smcap">IV.</span> § 5.)</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span>
+
+<p>Now this loving enthusiasm, which seeks for a beauty fit to
+be the object of eternal love; this inventive skill, which kindly
+displays what exists around us in the world; and this playful
+energy of thought which delights in various conditions of the
+impossible, are three forms of idealism more or less connected
+with the three tendencies of the artistical mind which I had
+occasion to explain in the chapter on the Nature of Gothic, in
+the Stones of Venice. It was there pointed out, that, the
+things around us containing mixed good and evil, certain men
+chose the good and left the evil (thence properly called Purists);
+others received both good and evil together (thence properly
+called Naturalists); and others had a tendency to choose
+the evil and leave the good, whom, for convenience' sake, I
+termed Sensualists. I do not mean to say that painters of
+fairies and naiads must belong to this last and lowest class, or
+habitually choose the evil and leave the good; but there is,
+nevertheless, a strange connection between the reinless play of
+the imagination, and a sense of the presence of evil, which is
+usually more or less developed in those creations of the imagination
+to which we properly attach the word <i>Grotesque</i>.</p>
+
+<p>For this reason, we shall find it convenient to arrange what
+we have to note respecting true idealism under the three
+heads&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+A. Purist Idealism.<br />
+B. Naturalist Idealism.<br />
+C. Grotesque Idealism.<br />
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>§ 3. A. Purist Idealism.&mdash;It results from the unwillingness
+of men whose dispositions are more than ordinarily tender and
+holy, to contemplate the various forms of definite evil which
+necessarily occur in the daily aspects of the world around them.
+They shrink from them as from pollution, and endeavor to
+create for themselves an imaginary state, in which pain and imperfection
+either do not exist, or exist in some edgeless and
+enfeebled condition.</p>
+
+<p>As, however, pain and imperfection are, by eternal laws,
+bound up with existence, so far as it is visible to us, the
+endeavor to cast them away invariably indicates a comparative
+childishness of mind, and produces a childish form of art. In
+general, the effort is most successful when it is most naïve, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span>
+when the ignorance of the draughtsman is in some frank proportion
+to his innocence. For instance, one of the modes of treatment,
+the most conducive to this ideal expression, is simply
+drawing everything without shadows, as if the sun were everywhere
+at once. This, in the present state of our knowledge, we
+could not do with grace, because we could not do it without
+fear or shame. But an artist of the thirteenth century did it
+with no disturbance of conscience,&mdash;knowing no better, or
+rather, in some sense, we might say, knowing no worse. It is,
+however, evident, at first thought, that all representations of
+nature without evil must either be ideals of a future world, or
+be false ideals, if they are understood to be representations of
+facts. They can only be classed among the branches of the
+true ideal, in so far as they are understood to be nothing more
+than expressions of the painter's personal affections or hopes.</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. Let us take one or two instances in order clearly to explain
+our meaning.</p>
+
+<p>The life of Angelico was almost entirely spent in the endeavor
+to imagine the beings belonging to another world. By
+purity of life, habitual elevation of thought, and natural sweetness
+of disposition, he was enabled to express the sacred affections
+upon the human countenance as no one ever did before or
+since. In order to effect clearer distinction between heavenly
+beings and those of this world, he represents the former as
+clothed in draperies of the purest color, crowned with glories of
+burnished gold, and entirely shadowless. With exquisite choice
+of gesture, and disposition of folds of drapery, this mode of
+treatment gives perhaps the best idea of spiritual beings which
+the human mind is capable of forming. It is, therefore, a true
+ideal;<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>
+but the mode in which it is arrived at (being so far mechanical
+and contradictory of the appearances of nature) necessarily
+precludes those who practise it from being complete masters
+of their art. It is always childish, but beautiful in its
+childishness.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. The works of our own Stothard are examples of the
+operation of another mind, singular in gentleness and purity,
+upon mere worldly subject. It seems as if Stothard could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>
+conceive wickedness, coarseness, or baseness; every one of his
+figures looks as if it had been copied from some creature who
+had never harbored an unkind thought, or permitted itself in
+an ignoble action. With this immense love of mental purity
+is joined, in Stothard, a love of mere physical smoothness and
+softness, so that he lived in a universe of soft grass and stainless
+fountains, tender trees, and stones at which no foot could
+stumble.</p>
+
+<p>All this is very beautiful, and may sometimes urge us to an
+endeavor to make the world itself more like the conception of
+the painter. At least, in the midst of its malice, misery, and
+baseness, it is often a relief to glance at the graceful shadows,
+and take, for momentary companionship, creatures full only of
+love, gladness, and honor. But the perfect truth will at last
+vindicate itself against the partial truth; the help which we
+can gain from the unsubstantial vision will be only like that
+which we may sometimes receive, in weariness, from the scent
+of a flower or the passing of a breeze. For all firm aid and
+steady use, we must look to harder realities; and, as far as the
+painter himself is regarded, we can only receive such work as
+the sign of an amiable imbecility. It is indeed ideal; but ideal
+as a fair dream is in the dawn of morning, before the faculties
+are astir. The apparent completeness of grace can never be
+attained without much definite falsification as well as omission;
+stones, over which we cannot stumble, must be ill-drawn
+stones; trees, which are all gentleness and softness, cannot be
+trees of wood; nor companies without evil in them, companies
+of flesh and blood. The habit of falsification (with whatever
+aim) begins always in dulness and ends always in incapacity;
+nothing can be more pitiable than any endeavor by Stothard to
+express facts beyond his own sphere of soft pathos or graceful
+mirth, and nothing more unwise than the aim at a similar
+ideality by any painter who has power to render a sincerer
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. I remember another interesting example of ideality on
+this same root, but belonging to another branch of it, in the
+works of a young German painter, which I saw some time ago
+in a London drawingroom. He had been travelling in Italy,
+and had brought home a portfolio of sketches remarkable alike<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>
+for their fidelity and purity. Every one was a laborious and
+accurate study of some particular spot. Every cottage, every
+cliff, every tree, at the site chosen, had been drawn; and drawn
+with palpable sincerity of portraiture, and yet in such a spirit
+that it was impossible to conceive that any sin or misery had
+ever entered into one of the scenes he had represented; and
+the volcanic horrors of Radicofani, the pestilent gloom of the
+Pontines, and the boundless despondency of the Campagna became
+under his hand, only various appearances of Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>It was very interesting to observe the minute emendations or
+omissions by which this was effected. To set the tiles the
+slightest degree more in order upon a cottage roof; to insist
+upon the vine-leaves at the window, and let the shadow which
+fell from them naturally conceal the rent in the wall; to draw
+all the flowers in the foreground, and miss the weeds; to draw
+all the folds of the white clouds, and miss those of the black
+ones; to mark the graceful branches of the trees, and, in one
+way or another, beguile the eye from those which were ungainly;
+to give every peasant-girl whose face was visible the expression
+of an angel, and every one whose back was turned the
+bearing of a princess; finally, to give a general look of light,
+clear organization, and serene vitality to every feature in the
+landscape;&mdash;such were his artifices, and such his delights. It
+was impossible not to sympathize deeply with the spirit of such
+a painter; and it was just cause for gratitude to be permitted
+to travel, as it were, through Italy with such a friend. But his
+work had, nevertheless, its stern limitations and marks of everlasting
+inferiority. Always soothing and pathetic, it could
+never be sublime, never perfectly nor entrancingly beautiful;
+for the narrow spirit of correction could not cast itself fully
+into any scene; the calm cheerfulness which shrank from the
+shadow of the cypress, and the distortion of the olive, could not
+enter into the brightness of the sky that they pierced, nor the
+softness of the bloom that they bore: for every sorrow that his
+heart turned from, he lost a consolation; for every fear which
+he dared not confront, he lost a portion of his hardiness; the
+unsceptred sweep of the storm-clouds, the fair freedom of glancing
+shower and flickering sunbeam, sank into sweet rectitudes
+and decent formalisms; and, before eyes that refused to be dazzled
+or darkened, the hours of sunset wreathed their rays un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>heeded,
+and the mists of the Apennines spread their blue veils
+in vain.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. To this inherent shortcoming and narrowness of reach
+the farther defect was added, that this work gave no useful
+representation of the state of facts in the country which it pretended
+to contemplate. It was not only wanting in all the
+higher elements of beauty, but wholly unavailable for instruction
+of any kind beyond that which exists in pleasurableness of
+pure emotion. And considering what cost of labor was devoted
+to the series of drawings, it could not but be matter for grave
+blame, as well as for partial contempt, that a man of amiable
+feeling and considerable intellectual power should thus expend
+his life in the declaration of his own petty pieties and pleasant
+reveries, leaving the burden of human sorrow unwitnessed; and
+the power of God's judgments unconfessed; and, while poor
+Italy lay wounded and moaning at his feet, pass by, in priestly
+calm, lest the whiteness of his decent vesture should be spotted
+with unhallowed blood.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. Of several other forms of Purism I shall have to speak
+hereafter, more especially of that exhibited in the landscapes of
+the early religious painters; but these examples are enough, for
+the present, to show the general principle that the purest ideal,
+though in some measure true, in so far as it springs from the
+true longings of an earnest mind, is yet necessarily in many
+things deficient or blamable, and <i>always</i> an indication of some
+degree of weakness in the mind pursuing it. But, on the other
+hand, it is to be noted that entire scorn of this purist ideal is
+the sign of a far greater weakness. Multitudes of petty artists,
+incapable of any noble sensation whatever, but acquainted,
+in a dim way, with the technicalities of the schools, mock at the
+art whose depths they cannot fathom, and whose motives they
+cannot comprehend, but of which they can easily detect the imperfections,
+and deride the simplicities. Thus poor fumigatory
+Fuseli, with an art composed of the tinsel of the stage and the
+panics of the nursery, speaks contemptuously of the name of
+Angelico as "dearer to sanctity than to art." And a large
+portion of the resistance to the noble Pre-Raphaelite movement
+of our own days has been offered by men who suppose the
+entire function of the artist in this world to consist in laying
+on color with a large brush, and surrounding dashes of flake<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>
+white with bituminous brown; men whose entire capacities of
+brain, soul, and sympathy, applied industriously to the end of
+their lives, would not enable them, at last, to paint so much as
+one of the leaves of the nettles at the bottom of Hunt's picture
+of the Light of the World.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 9. It is finally to be remembered, therefore, that Purism
+is always noble when it is <i>instinctive</i>. It is not the greatest
+thing that can be done, but it is probably the greatest thing
+that the man who does it can do, provided it comes from his
+heart. True, it is a sign of weakness, but it is not in our
+choice whether we will be weak or strong; and there is a certain
+strength which can only be made perfect in weakness. If
+he is working in humility, fear of evil, desire of beauty, and
+sincere purity of purpose and thought, he will produce good
+and helpful things; but he must be much on his guard against
+supposing himself to be greater than his fellows, because he has
+shut himself into this calm and cloistered sphere. His only
+safety lies in knowing himself to be, on the contrary, <i>less</i> than
+his fellows, and in always striving, so far as he can find it in his
+heart, to extend his delicate narrowness towards the great naturalist
+ideal. The whole group of modern German purists have
+lost themselves, because they founded their work not on humility,
+nor on religion, but on small self-conceit. Incapable of
+understanding the great Venetians, or any other masters of true
+imaginative power, and having fed what mind they had with
+weak poetry and false philosophy, they thought themselves the
+best and greatest of artistic mankind, and expected to found a
+new school of painting in pious plagiarism and delicate pride.
+It is difficult at first to decide which is the more worthless, the
+spiritual affectation of the petty German, or the composition
+and chiaroscuro of the petty Englishman; on the whole, however,
+the latter have lightest weight, for the pseudo-religious
+painter must, at all events, pass much of his time in meditation
+upon solemn subjects, and in examining venerable models; and
+may sometimes even cast a little useful reflected light, or touch
+the heart with a pleasant echo.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a>
+ As noted above in Chap. IV § 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a>
+Not that the Pre-Raphaelite is a purist movement, it is stern naturalist;
+but its unfortunate opposers, who neither know what nature is, nor
+what purism is, have mistaken the simple nature for morbid purism, and
+therefore cried out against it.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE TRUE IDEAL:&mdash;SECONDLY, NATURALIST.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. We now enter on the consideration of that central and
+highest branch of ideal art which concerns itself simply with
+things as they ARE, and accepts, in all of them, alike the evil
+and the good. The question is, therefore, how the art which
+represents things simply as they are, can be called ideal at all.
+How does it meet that requirement stated in Chap. III. § 4, as
+imperative on all great art, that it shall be inventive, and a
+product of the imagination? It meets it preeminently by that
+power of arrangement which I have endeavored, at great length
+and with great pains, to define accurately in the chapter on Imagination
+associative in the second volume. That is to say,
+accepting the weaknesses, faults, and wrongnesses in all things
+that it sees, it so places and harmonizes them that they form a
+noble whole, in which the imperfection of each several part is
+not only harmless, but absolutely essential, and yet in which
+whatever is good in each several part shall be completely displayed.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. This operation of true idealism holds, from the least
+things to the greatest. For instance, in the arrangement of the
+smallest masses of color, the false idealist, or even the purist,
+depends upon perfecting each separate hue, and raises them all,
+as far as he can, into costly brilliancy; but the naturalist takes
+the coarsest and feeblest colors of the things around him, and
+so interweaves and opposes them that they become more lovely
+than if they had all been bright. So in the treatment of the
+human form. The naturalist will take it as he finds it; but,
+with such examples as his picture may rationally admit of more
+or less exalted beauty, he will associate inferior forms, so as not
+only to set off those which are most beautiful, but to bring out
+clearly what good there is in the inferior forms themselves;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span>
+finally using such measure of absolute evil as there is commonly
+in nature, both for teaching and for contrast.</p>
+
+<p>In Tintoret's Adoration of the Magi, the Madonna is not an
+enthroned queen, but a fair girl, full of simplicity and almost
+childish sweetness. To her are opposed (as Magi) two of the
+noblest and most thoughtful of the Venetian senators in extreme
+old age,&mdash;the utmost manly dignity, in its decline, being
+set beside the utmost feminine simplicity, in its dawn. The
+steep foreheads and refined features of the nobles are, again,
+opposed to the head of a negro servant, and of an Indian, both,
+however, noble of their kind. On the other side of the picture,
+the delicacy of the Madonna is farther enhanced by contrast
+with a largely made farm-servant, leaning on a basket. All
+these figures are in repose: outside, the troop of the attendants
+of the Magi is seen coming up at the gallop.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. I bring forward this picture, observe, not as an example
+of the ideal in conception of religious subject, but of the
+general ideal treatment of the human form; in which the peculiarity
+is, that the beauty of each figure is displayed to the
+utmost, while yet, taken separately the Madonna is an unaltered
+portrait of a Venetian girl, the Magi are unaltered Venetian Senators,
+and the figure with the basket, an unaltered market-woman
+of Mestre.</p>
+
+<p>And the greater the master of the ideal, the more perfectly
+true in <i>portraiture</i> will his individual figures be always found,
+the more subtle and bold his arts of harmony and contrast.
+This is a universal principle, common to all great art. Consider,
+in Shakspere, how Prince Henry is opposed to Falstaff,
+Falstaff to Shallow, Titania to Bottom, Cordelia to Regan, Imogen
+to Cloten, and so on; while all the meaner idealists disdain
+the naturalism, and are shocked at the contrasts. The
+fact is, a man who can see truth at all, sees it wholly, and
+neither desires nor dares to mutilate it.</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. It is evident that <i>within</i> this faithful idealism, and as
+one branch of it only, will arrange itself the representation of
+the human form and mind in perfection, when this perfection
+is rationally to be supposed or introduced,&mdash;that is to say, in
+the highest personages of the story. The careless habit of confining
+the term "ideal" to such representations, and not under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span>standing
+the imperfect ones to be <i>equally</i> ideal in their place,
+has greatly added to the embarrassment and multiplied the
+errors of artists.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a>
+Thersites is just as ideal as Achilles, and
+Alecto as Helen; and, what is more, all the nobleness of the
+beautiful ideal depends upon its being just as probable and natural
+as the ugly one, and having in itself, occasionally or partially,
+both faults and familiarities. If the next painter who
+desires to illustrate the character of Homer's Achilles, would
+represent him cutting pork chops for Ulysses,<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a>
+he would enable
+the public to understand the Homeric ideal better than they
+have done for several centuries. For it is to be kept in mind
+that the <i>naturalist ideal</i> has always in it, to the full, the power
+expressed by those two words. It is naturalist, because studied
+from nature, and ideal, because it is mentally arranged in a certain
+manner. Achilles must be represented cutting pork chops,
+because that was one of the things which the nature of Achilles
+involved his doing: he could not be shown wholly as Achilles,
+if he were not shown doing that. But he shall do it at such
+time and place as Homer chooses.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. Now, therefore, observe the main conclusions which
+follow from these two conditions, attached always to art of this
+kind. First, it is to be taken straight from nature; it is to be
+the plain narration of something the painter or writer saw.
+Herein is the chief practical difference between the higher and
+lower artists; a difference which I feel more and more every
+day that I give to the study of art. All the great men see what
+they paint before they paint it,&mdash;see it in a perfectly passive
+manner,&mdash;cannot help seeing it if they would; whether in their
+mind's eye, or in bodily fact, does not matter; very often the
+mental vision is, I believe, in men of imagination, clearer than
+the bodily one; but vision it is, of one kind or another,&mdash;the
+whole scene, character, or incident passing before them as in
+second sight, whether they will or no, and requiring them to
+paint it as they see it; they not daring, under the might of its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span>
+presence, to alter<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>
+one jot or tittle of it as they write it down or
+paint it down; it being to them in its own kind and degree
+always a true vision or Apocalypse, and invariably accompanied
+in their hearts by a feeling correspondent to the words,&mdash;"Write
+the things <i>which thou hast seen</i>, and the things which
+<i>are</i>."</p>
+
+<p>And the whole power, whether of painter or poet, to describe
+rightly what we call an ideal thing, depends upon its being
+thus, to him, not an ideal, but a <i>real</i> thing. No man ever did
+or ever will work well, but either from actual sight or sight of
+faith; and all that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because
+to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it,
+true and existent. The heroes of Phidias are simply representations
+of such noble human persons as he every day saw, and
+the gods of Phidias simply representations of such noble divine
+persons as he thoroughly believed to exist, and did in mental
+vision truly behold. Hence I said in the second preface to the
+Seven Lamps of Architecture: "All great art represents something
+that it sees or believes in; nothing unseen or uncredited."</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. And just because it is always something that it sees or
+believes in, there is the peculiar character above noted, almost
+unmistakable, in all high and true ideals, of having been as it
+were studied from the life, and involving pieces of sudden
+familiarity, and close <i>specific</i> painting which never would have
+been admitted or even thought of, had not the painter drawn
+either from the bodily life or from the life of faith. For
+instance, Dante's centaur, Chiron, dividing his beard with his
+arrow before he can speak, is a thing that no mortal would ever
+have thought of, if he had not actually seen the centaur do it.
+They might have composed handsome bodies of men and horses
+in all possible ways, through a whole life of pseudo-idealism,
+and yet never dreamed of any such thing. But the real living
+centaur actually trotted across Dante's brain, and he saw him
+do it.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. And on account of this reality it is, that the great idealists
+venture into all kinds of what, to the pseudo-idealists, are
+"vulgarities." Nay, <i>venturing</i> is the wrong word; the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span>
+men have no choice in the matter; they do not know or care
+whether the things they describe are vulgarities or not. They
+<i>saw</i> them: they are the facts of the case. If they had merely
+composed what they describe, they would have had it at their
+will to refuse this circumstance or add that. But they did not
+compose it. It came to them ready fashioned; they were too
+much impressed by it to think what was vulgar or not vulgar in
+it. It might be a very wrong thing in a centaur to have so
+much beard; but so it was. And, therefore, among the various
+ready tests of true greatness there is not any more certain
+than this daring reference to, or use of, mean and little things&mdash;mean
+and little, that is, to mean and little minds; but, when
+used by the great men, evidently part of the noble whole which
+is authoritatively present before them. Thus, in the highest
+poetry, as partly above noted in the first chapter, there is no
+word so familiar but a great man will bring good out of it, or
+rather, it will bring good to him, and answer some end for
+which no other word would have done equally well.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. A common person, for instance, would be mightily
+puzzled to apply the word "whelp" to any one with a view of
+flattering him. There is a certain freshness and energy in the
+term, which gives it agreeableness; but it seems difficult, at first
+hearing, to use it complimentarily. If the person spoken of be
+a prince, the difficulty seems increased; and when, farther, he
+is at one and the same moment to be called a "whelp" and
+contemplated as a hero, it seems that a common idealist might
+well be brought to a pause. But hear Shakspere do it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6">"Invoke his warlike spirit,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And your great uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Making defeat on the full power of France,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">While his most mighty father on a hill</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Forage in blood of French nobility."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>So a common idealist would have been rather alarmed at the
+thought of introducing the name of a street in Paris&mdash;Straw
+Street&mdash;Rue de Fouarre&mdash;into the midst of a description of the
+highest heavens. Not so Dante,&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Beyond, thou mayst the flaming lustre scan</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Of Isidore, of Bede, and that Richart</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Who was in contemplation more than man.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And he, from whom thy looks returning are</span><br />
+<span class="i1">To me, a spirit was, that in austere</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Deep musings often thought death kept too far.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That is the light eternal of Sigier,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Who while in Rue de Fouarre his days he wore,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Has argued hateful truths in haughtiest ear."</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 16em;"><span class="smcap">Cayley.</span></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>What did it matter to Dante, up in heaven there, whether the
+mob below thought him vulgar or not! Sigier <i>had</i> read in
+Straw Street; that was the fact, and he had to say so, and there
+an end.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate
+and <i>real</i> vulgarity of mind or defective education than the want
+of power to understand the universality of the ideal truth; the
+absence of sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects,
+which have in them so much of divine, that nothing is small to
+them, and nothing large; but with equal and unoffended vision
+they take in the sum of the world,&mdash;Straw Street and the seventh
+heavens,&mdash;in the same instant. A certain portion of this
+divine spirit is visible even in the lower examples of all the true
+men; it is, indeed, perhaps, the clearest test of their belonging
+to the true and great group, that they are continually touching
+what to the multitude appear vulgarities. The higher a man
+stands, the more the word "vulgar" becomes unintelligible to
+him. Vulgar? what, that poor farmer's girl of William
+Hunt's, bred in the stable, putting on her Sunday gown, and
+pinning her best cap out of the green and red pin-cushion!
+Not so; she may be straight on the road to those high heavens,
+and may shine hereafter as one of the stars in the firmament for
+ever. Nay, even that lady in the satin bodice with her arm laid
+over a balustrade to show it, and her eyes turned up to heaven
+to show them; and the sportsman waving his rifle for the terror
+of beasts, and displaying his perfect dress for the delight of
+men, are kept, by the very misery and vanity of them, in the
+thoughts of a great painter, at a sorrowful level, somewhat
+above vulgarity. It is only when the minor painter takes them
+on his easel, that they become things for the universe to be
+ashamed of.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span>
+
+<p>We may dismiss this matter of vulgarity in plain and few
+words, at least as far as regards art. There is never vulgarity
+in a <i>whole</i> truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant
+or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment
+of truth, or in affectation.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. "Well, but," (at this point the reader asks doubtfully,)
+"if then your great central idealist is to show all truth,
+low as well as lovely, receiving it in this passive way, what becomes
+of all your principles of selection, and of setting in the
+right place, which you were talking about up to the end of your
+fourth paragraph? How is Homer to enforce upon Achilles the
+cutting of the pork chops 'only at such time as Homer
+chooses,' if Homer is to have <i>no</i> choice, but merely to see the
+thing done, and sing it as he sees it?" Why, the choice, as
+well as the vision, is <i>manifested</i> to Homer. The vision comes
+to him in its chosen order. Chosen <i>for</i> him, not <i>by</i> him, but
+yet full of visible and exquisite choice, just as a sweet and perfect
+dream will come to a sweet and perfect person, so that, in
+some sense, they may be said to have chosen their dream, or
+composed it; and yet they could not help dreaming it so, and
+in no other wise. Thus, exactly thus, in all results of true inventive
+power, the whole harmony of the thing done seems as if
+it had been wrought by the most exquisite rules. But to him
+who did it, it presented itself so, and his will, and knowledge,
+and personality, for the moment went for nothing; he became
+simply a scribe, and wrote what he heard and saw.</p>
+
+<p>And all efforts to do things of a similar kind by rule or by
+thought, and all efforts to mend or rearrange the first order of
+the vision, are not inventive; on the contrary, they ignore and
+deny invention. If any man, seeing certain forms laid on the
+canvas, does by his reasoning power determine that certain
+changes wrought in them would mend or enforce them, that is
+not only uninventive, but contrary to invention, which must be
+the involuntary occurrence of certain forms or fancies to the
+mind in the order they are to be portrayed. Thus the knowing
+of rules and the exertion of judgment have a tendency to check
+and confuse the fancy in its flow; so that it will follow, that, in
+exact proportion as a master knows anything about rules of
+right and wrong, he is likely to be uninventive; and in exact<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>
+proportion as he holds higher rank and has nobler inventive
+power, he will know less of rules; not despising them, but simply
+feeling that between him and them there is nothing in common,&mdash;that
+dreams cannot be ruled&mdash;that as they come, so they
+must be caught, and they cannot be caught in any other shape
+than that they come in; and that he might as well attempt to
+rule a rainbow into rectitude, or cut notches in a moth's wings
+to hold it by, as in any wise attempt to modify, by rule, the
+forms of the involuntary vision.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. And this, which by reason we have thus anticipated,
+is in reality universally so. There is no exception. The great
+men never know how or why they do things. They have no
+rules; cannot comprehend the nature of rules;&mdash;do not, usually,
+even know, in what they do, what is best or what is worst: to
+them it is all the same; something they cannot help saying or
+doing,&mdash;one piece of it as good as another, and none of it (it
+seems to <i>them</i>) worth much. The moment any man begins to
+talk about rules, in whatsoever art, you may know him for a
+second-rate man; and, if he talks about them <i>much</i>, he is a third-rate,
+or not an artist at all. To <i>this</i> rule there is no exception
+in any art; but it is perhaps better to be illustrated in the art
+of music than in that of painting. I fell by chance the other
+day upon a work of De Stendhal's, "Vies de Haydn, de Mozart,
+et de Metastase," fuller of common sense than any book I ever
+read on the arts; though I see, by the slight references made
+occasionally to painting, that the author's knowledge therein is
+warped and limited by the elements of general teaching in the
+schools around him; and I have not yet, therefore, looked at
+what he has separately written on painting. But one or two
+passages out of this book on music are closely to our present
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"Counterpoint is related to mathematics: a fool, with
+patience, becomes a respectable savant in that; but for the part
+of genius, melody, it has no rules. No art is so utterly deprived
+of precepts for the production of the beautiful. So
+much the better for it and for us. Cimarosa, when first at
+Prague his air was executed, Pria che spunti in ciel l'Aurora,
+never heard the pedants say to him, 'Your air is fine, because
+you have followed such and such a rule established by Pergolese<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span>
+in such an one of his airs; but it would be finer still if you had
+conformed yourself to such another rule from which Galluppi
+never deviated.'"</p>
+
+<p>Yes: "so much the better for it, and for us;" but I trust
+the time will soon come when melody in painting will be understood,
+no less than in music, and when people will find that,
+there also, the great melodists have no rules, and cannot have
+any, and that there are in this, as in sound, "no precepts for
+the production of the beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>§ 12. Again. "Behold, my friend, an example of that
+simple way of answering which embarrasses much. One asked
+him (Haydn) the <i>reason</i> for a harmony&mdash;for a passage's being
+assigned to one instrument rather than another; but all he ever
+answered was, 'I have done it, because it does well.'" Farther
+on, De Stendhal relates an anecdote of Haydn; I believe one
+well known, but so much to our purpose that I repeat it.
+Haydn had agreed to give some lessons in counterpoint to an
+English nobleman. "'For our first lesson,' said the pupil,
+already learned in the art&mdash;drawing at the same time a quatuor
+of Haydn's from his pocket, 'for our first lesson may we examine
+this quatuor; and will you tell me the reasons of certain
+modulations, which I cannot entirely approve because they are
+contrary to the principles?' Haydn, a little surprised, declared
+himself ready to answer. The nobleman began; and at the
+very first measures found matter for objection. Haydn, <i>who
+invented habitually</i>, and who was the contrary of a pedant,
+found himself much embarrassed, and answered always, 'I have
+done that because it has a good effect. I have put that passage
+there because it does well.' The Englishman, who judged that
+these answers proved nothing, recommenced his proofs, and
+demonstrated to him, by very good reasons, that his quatuor
+was good for nothing. 'But, my lord, arrange this quatuor
+then to your fancy,&mdash;play it so, and you will see which of the
+two ways is the best.' 'But why is yours the best which is
+contrary to the rules?' 'Because it is the pleasantest.' The
+nobleman replied. Haydn at last lost patience, and said, 'I
+see, my lord, it is you who have the goodness to give lessons to
+me, and truly I am forced to confess to you that I do not
+deserve the honor.' The partizan of the rules departed, still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>
+astonished that in following the rules to the letter one cannot
+infallibly produce a 'Matrimonio Segreto.'"</p>
+
+<p>This anecdote, whether in all points true or not, is in its
+tendency most instructive, except only in that it makes <i>one</i> false
+inference or admission, namely, that a good composition can be
+<i>contrary</i> to the rules. It may be contrary to certain principles,
+supposed in ignorance to be general; but every great composition
+is in perfect harmony with all true rules, and involves
+thousands too delicate for ear, or eye, or thought, to trace; still
+it is possible to reason, with infinite pleasure and profit, about
+these principles, when the thing is once done; only, all our
+reasoning will not enable any one to do another thing like it,
+because all reasoning falls infinitely short of the divine instinct.
+Thus we may reason wisely over the way a bee builds its comb,
+and be profited by finding out certain things about the angles of
+it. But the bee knows nothing about those matters. It builds
+its comb in a far more inevitable way. And, from a bee to
+Paul Veronese, all master-workers work with this awful, this
+inspired unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. I said just now that there was no exception to <i>this</i>
+law, that the great men never knew how or why they did
+things. It is, of course, only with caution that such a broad
+statement should be made; but I have seen much of different
+kinds of artists, and I have always found the knowledge of, and
+attention to, rules so <i>accurately</i> in the inverse ratio to the
+power of the painter, that I have myself no doubt that the law
+is constant, and that men's smallness may be trigonometrically
+estimated by the attention which, in their work, they pay to
+principles, especially principles of composition. The general
+way in which the great men speak is of "<i>trying</i> to do" this or
+that, just as a child would tell of something he had seen and
+could not utter. Thus, in speaking of the drawing of which I
+have given an etching farther on (a scene on the St. Gothard<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a>),
+Turner asked if I had been to see "that litter of stones which I
+<i>endeavored</i> to represent;" and William Hunt, when I asked
+him one day as he was painting, why he put on such and such a
+color, answered, "I don't know; I am just <i>aiming</i> at it;" and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>
+Turner, and he, and all the other men I have known who could
+paint, always spoke and speak in the same way; not in any selfish
+restraint of their knowledge, but in pure simplicity. While
+all the men whom I know, who <i>cannot</i> paint, are ready with
+admirable reasons for everything they have done; and can
+show, in the most conclusive way, that Turner is wrong, and
+how he might be improved.</p>
+
+<p>§ 14. And this is the reason for the somewhat singular, but
+very palpable truth that the Chinese, and Indians, and other
+semi-civilized nations, can color better than we do, and that an
+Indian shawl or Chinese vase are still, in invention of color, inimitable
+by us. It is their glorious ignorance of all rules that
+does it; the pure and true instincts have play, and do their
+work,&mdash;instincts so subtle, that the least warping or compression
+breaks or blunts them; and the moment we begin teaching
+people any rules about color, and make them do this or that, we
+crush the instinct generally for ever. Hence, hitherto, it has
+been an actual necessity, in order to obtain power of coloring,
+that a nation should be half-savage: everybody could color in
+the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but we were ruled and
+legalized into grey in the fifteenth;&mdash;only a little salt simplicity
+of their sea natures at Venice still keeping their precious, shellfishy
+purpleness and power; and now that is gone; and nobody
+can color anywhere, except the Hindoos and Chinese; but that
+need not be so, and will not be so long; for, in a little while,
+people will find out their mistake, and give up talking about
+rules of color, and then everybody will color again, as easily as
+they now talk.</p>
+
+<p>§ 15. Such, then, being the generally passive or instinctive
+character of right invention, it may be asked how these unmanageable
+instincts are to be rendered practically serviceable in
+historical or poetical painting,&mdash;especially historical, in which
+given facts are to be represented. Simply by the sense and self-control
+of the whole man; not by control of the particular
+fancy or vision. He who habituates himself, in his daily life,
+to seek for the stern facts in whatever he hears or sees, will
+have these facts again brought before him by the involuntary
+imaginative power in their noblest associations; and he who
+seeks for frivolities and fallacies, will have frivolities and falla<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>cies
+again presented to him in his dreams. Thus if, in reading
+history for the purpose of painting from it, the painter severely
+seeks for the accurate circumstances of every event; as, for instance,
+determining the exact spot of ground on which his hero
+fell, the way he must have been looking at the moment, the
+height the sun was at (by the hour of the day), and the way in
+which the light must have fallen upon his face, the actual number
+and individuality of the persons by him at the moment, and
+such other veritable details, ascertaining and dwelling upon
+them without the slightest care for any desirableness or poetic
+propriety in them, but for their own truth's sake; then
+these truths will afterwards rise up and form the body of
+his imaginative vision, perfected and united as his inspiration
+may teach. But if, in reading the history, he does not regard
+these facts, but thinks only how it might all most prettily, and
+properly, and impressively have happened, then there is nothing
+but prettiness and propriety to form the body of his future
+imagination, and his whole ideal becomes false. So, in the
+higher or expressive part of the work, the whole virtue of it
+depends on his being able to quit his own personality, and enter
+successively into the hearts and thoughts of each person; and
+in all this he is still passive: in gathering the truth he is passive,
+not determining what the truth to be gathered shall be;
+and in the after vision he is passive, not determining, but as his
+dreams will have it, what the truth to be represented shall be;
+only according to his own nobleness is his power of entering
+into the hearts of noble persons, and the general character of
+his dream of them.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 16. It follows from all this, evidently, that a great idealist
+never can be egotistic. The whole of his power depends upon
+his losing sight and feeling of his own existence, and becoming
+a mere witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of visions,&mdash;always
+passive in sight, passive in utterance,&mdash;lamenting continually
+that he cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he
+has seen. Not by any means a proud state for a man to be in.
+But the man who has no invention is always setting things in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span>
+order, and putting the world to rights, and mending, and beautifying,
+and pluming himself on his doings as supreme in all
+ways.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. There is still the question open, What are the principal
+directions in which this ideal faculty is to exercise itself
+most usefully for mankind?</p>
+
+<p>This question, however, is not to the purpose of our present
+work, which respects landscape-painting only; it must be one
+of those left open to the reader's thoughts, and for future inquiry
+in another place. One or two essential points I briefly
+notice.</p>
+
+<p>In Chap. <span class="smcap">IV</span>. § 5. it was said, that one of the first functions
+of imagination was traversing the scenes of history, and forcing
+the facts to become again visible. But there is so little of such
+force in written history, that it is no marvel there should be none
+hitherto in painting. There does not exist, as far as I know, in
+the world a single example of a good historical picture (that is to
+say, of one which, allowing for necessary dimness in art as compared
+with nature, yet answers nearly the same ends in our
+minds as the sight of the real event would have answered); the
+reason being, the universal endeavor to get <i>effects</i> instead of
+facts, already shown as the root of false idealism. True historical
+ideal, founded on sense, correctness of knowledge, and purpose
+of usefulness, does not yet exist; the production of it is a
+task which the closing nineteenth century may propose to itself.</p>
+
+<p>§ 18. Another point is to be observed. I do not, as the
+reader may have lately perceived, insist on the distinction between
+historical and poetical painting, because, as noted in the
+22nd paragraph of the third chapter, all great painting must be
+both.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, a certain distinction must generally exist between
+men who, like Horace Vernet, David, or Domenico Tintoret,
+would employ themselves in painting, more or less graphically,
+the outward verities of passing events&mdash;battles, councils,
+&amp;c.&mdash;of their day (who, supposing them to work worthily of
+their mission, would become, properly so called, historical or
+narrative painters); and men who sought, in scenes of perhaps
+less outward importance, "noble grounds for noble emotion;"&mdash;who
+would be, in a certain separate sense, <i>poetical</i> painters,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>
+some of them taking for subjects events which had actually happened,
+and others themes from the poets; or, better still, becoming
+poets themselves in the entire sense, and inventing the
+story as they painted it. Painting seems to me only just to be
+beginning, in this sense also, to take its proper position beside
+literature, and the pictures of the "Awakening Conscience,"
+"Huguenot," and such others, to be the first fruits of its new
+effort.</p>
+
+<p>§ 19. Finally, as far as I can observe, it is a constant law
+that the greatest men, whether poets or historians, live entirely
+in their own age, and that the greatest fruits of their work are
+gathered out of their own age. Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth
+century; Chaucer, England in the fourteenth; Masaccio,
+Florence in the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice in the sixteenth;&mdash;all
+of them utterly regardless of anachronism and minor
+error of every kind, but getting always vital truth out of the
+vital present.</p>
+
+<p>§ 20. If it be said that Shakspere wrote perfect historical
+plays on subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer,
+that they <i>are</i> perfect plays just because there is no care
+about centuries in them, but a life which all men recognise for
+the human life of all time; and this it is, not because Shakspere
+sought to give universal truth, but because, painting honestly
+and completely from the men about him, he painted that
+human nature which is, indeed, constant enough,&mdash;a rogue in
+the fifteenth century being, <i>at heart</i>, what a rogue is in the
+nineteenth and was in the twelfth; and an honest or a knightly
+man being, in like manner, very similar to other such at any
+other time. And the work of these great idealists is, therefore,
+always universal; not because it is <i>not portrait</i>, but because it
+is <i>complete</i> portrait down to the heart, which is the same in all
+ages: and the work of the mean idealists is <i>not</i> universal, not
+because it is portrait, but because it is <i>half</i> portrait,&mdash;of the
+outside, the manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus
+Tintoret and Shakspere paint, both of them, simply Venetian
+and English nature as they saw it in their time, down to the
+root; and it does for <i>all</i> time; but as for any care to cast themselves
+into the particular ways and tones of thought, or custom,
+of past time in their historical work, you will find it in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>
+neither of them, nor in any other perfectly great man that I
+know of.</p>
+
+<p>§ 21. If there had been no vital truth in their present, it is
+hard to say what these men could have done. I suppose, primarily,
+they would not have existed; that they, and the matter
+they have to treat of, are given together, and that the strength
+of the nation and its historians correlatively rise and fall&mdash;Herodotus
+springing out of the dust of Marathon. It is also
+hard to say how far our better general acquaintance with minor
+details of past history may make us able to turn the shadow on
+the imaginative dial backwards, and naturally to live, and even
+live strongly if we choose, in past periods; but this main truth
+will always be unshaken, that the only historical painting deserving
+the name is portraiture of our own living men and our
+own passing times,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a>
+and that all efforts to summon up the
+events of bygone periods, though often useful and touching,
+must come under an inferior class of poetical painting; nor will
+it, I believe, ever be much followed as their main work by the
+strongest men, but only by the weaker and comparatively sentimental
+(rather than imaginative) groups. This marvellous first
+half of the nineteenth century has in this matter, as in nearly
+all others, been making a double blunder. It has, under the
+name of improvement, done all it could to <span class="smcap">EFFACE THE RECORDS</span>
+which departed ages have left of themselves, while it has declared
+the <span class="smcap">FORGERY OF FALSE RECORDS</span> of these same ages to be
+the great work of its historical painters! I trust that in a few
+years more we shall come somewhat to our senses in the matter,
+and begin to perceive that our duty is to preserve what the past
+has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves also what shall
+be true for the future. Let us strive, with just veneration for
+that future, first to do what is worthy to be spoken, and then to
+speak it faithfully; and, with veneration for the past, recognize
+that it is indeed in the power of love to preserve the monument,
+but not of incantation to raise the dead.</p>
+<hr class="fn" />
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a>
+The word "ideal" is used in this limited sense in the chapter on Generic
+Beauty in the second volume, but under protest. See § 4 in that
+chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>
+II. ix. 209.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a>
+"And yet you have just said it shall be at such time and place as
+Homer chooses. Is not this <i>altering</i>?"  No; wait a little, and read on.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a>
+See Plate XXI. in Chap. III. Vol. IV.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a>
+The reader should, of course, refer for further details on this subject
+to the chapters on Imagination in Vol. II., of which I am only glancing
+now at the practical results.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a>
+See Edinburgh Lectures, p. 217.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE TRUE IDEAL: THIRDLY, GROTESQUE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. I have already, in the Stones of Venice, had occasion
+to analyze, as far as I was able, the noble nature and power of
+grotesque conception; I am not sorry occasionally to refer the
+reader to that work, the fact being that it and this are parts of
+one whole, divided merely as I had occasion to follow out one
+or other of its branches; for I have always considered architecture
+as an essential part of landscape; and I think the study of
+its best styles and real meaning one of the necessary functions
+of the landscape-painter; as, in like manner, the architect cannot
+be a master-workman until all his designs are guided by understanding
+of the wilder beauty of pure nature. But, be this
+as it may, the discussion of the grotesque element belonged
+most properly to the essay on architecture, in which that element
+must always find its fullest development.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. The Grotesque is in that chapter<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>
+divided principally
+into three kinds:</p>
+
+<p>(A). Art arising from healthful but irrational play of the
+imagination in times of rest.</p>
+
+<p>(B). Art arising from irregular and accidental contemplation
+of terrible things; or evil in general.</p>
+
+<p>(C). Art arising from the confusion of the imagination by
+the presence of truths which it cannot wholly grasp.</p>
+
+<p>It is the central form of this art, arising from contemplation
+of evil, which forms the link of connection between it and the
+sensualist ideals, as pointed out above in the second paragraph
+of the sixth chapter, the fact being that the imagination, when
+at play, is curiously like bad children, and likes to play with
+fire; in its entirely serious moods it dwells by preference on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span>
+beautiful and sacred images, but in its mocking or playful
+moods it is apt to jest, sometimes bitterly, with undercurrent
+of sternest pathos, sometimes waywardly, sometimes slightly
+and wickedly, with death and sin; hence an enormous mass of
+grotesque art, some most noble and useful, as Holbein's Dance
+of Death, and Albert Durer's Knight and Death,<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a>
+going down
+gradually through various conditions of less and less seriousness
+into an art whose only end is that of mere excitement, or
+amusement by terror, like a child making mouths at another,
+more or less redeemed by the degree of wit or fancy in the
+grimace it makes, as in the demons of Teniers and such others;
+and, lower still, in the demonology of the stage.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. The form arising from an entirely healthful and open
+play of the imagination, as in Shakspere's Ariel and Titania,
+and in Scott's White Lady, is comparatively rare. It hardly
+ever is free from some slight taint of the inclination to evil;
+still more rarely is it, when so free, natural to the mind; for
+the moment we begin to contemplate sinless beauty we are apt
+to get serious; and moral fairy tales, and such other innocent
+work, are hardly ever truly, that is to say, naturally imaginative;
+but for the most part laborious inductions and compositions.
+The moment any real vitality enters them, they are
+nearly sure to become satirical, or slightly gloomy, and so connect
+themselves with the evil-enjoying branch.</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. The third form of the Grotesque is a thoroughly noble
+one. It is that which arises out of the use or fancy of tangible
+signs to set forth an otherwise less expressible truth; including
+nearly the whole range of symbolical and allegorical art and
+poetry. Its nobleness has been sufficiently insisted upon in the
+place before referred to. (Chapter on Grotesque Renaissance,
+§§ <span class="smcap">LXIII. LXIV.</span> &amp;c.) Of its
+practical use, especially in painting,
+deeply despised among us, because grossly misunderstood, a few
+words must be added here.</p>
+
+<p>A fine grotesque is the expression, in a moment, by a series
+of symbols thrown together in bold and fearless connection, of
+truths which it would have taken a long time to express in any
+verbal way, and of which the connection is left for the beholder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span>
+to work out for himself; the gaps, left or overleaped by the
+haste of the imagination, forming the grotesque character.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. For instance, Spenser desires to tell us, (1.) that envy
+is the most untamable and unappeasable of the passions, not to
+be soothed by any kindness; (2.) that with continual labor it
+invents evil thoughts out of its own heart; (3.) that even in
+this, its power of doing harm is partly hindered by the decaying
+and corrupting nature of the evil it lives in; (4.) that it looks
+every way, and that whatever it sees is altered and discolored by
+its own nature; (5.) which discoloring, however, is to it a veil,
+or disgraceful dress, in the sight of others; (6.) and that it
+never is free from the most bitter suffering, (7.) which cramps all
+its acts and movements, enfolding and crushing it while it torments.
+All this it has required a somewhat long and languid
+sentence for me to say in unsymbolical terms,&mdash;not, by the way,
+that they <i>are</i> unsymbolical altogether, for I have been forced,
+whether I would or not, to use <i>some</i> figurative words; but even
+with this help the sentence is long and tiresome, and does not
+with any vigor represent the truth. It would take some prolonged
+enforcement of each sentence to make it felt, in ordinary
+ways of talking. But Spenser puts it all into a grotesque, and
+it is done shortly and at once, so that we feel it fully, and see
+it, and never forget it. I have numbered above the statements
+which had to be made. I now number them with the same
+numbers, as they occur in the several pieces of the grotesque:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+                 <span style="margin-left: 6em;">"And next to him malicious Envy rode</span><br />
+    <span style="margin-left: 3.9em;">(1.)&nbsp; Upon a ravenous wolfe, and (2. 3.) still did chaw</span><br />
+                  <span style="margin-left: 6em;">Between his cankred<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> teeth a venemous tode</span><br />
+                  <span style="margin-left: 6em;">That all the poison ran about his jaw.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 2.9em;">(4. 5.)&nbsp; All in a kirtle of discolourd say</span><br />
+                  <span style="margin-left: 6em;">He clothed was, y-paynted full of eies;</span><br />
+      <span style="margin-left: 3.9em">(6.)&nbsp; And in his bosome secretly there lay</span><br />
+                  <span style="margin-left: 6em;">An hatefull snake, the which his tail uptyes</span><br />
+      <span style="margin-left: 3.9em">(7.)&nbsp; In many folds, and mortall sting implyes."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>There is the whole thing in nine lines; or, rather, in one
+image, which will hardly occupy any room at all on the mind's
+shelves, but can be lifted out, whole, whenever we want it. All
+noble grotesques are concentrations of this kind, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>noblest
+ convey truths which nothing else could convey; and
+not only so, but convey them, in minor cases with a delightfulness,&mdash;in
+the higher instances with an awfulness,&mdash;which no
+mere utterance of the symbolised truth would have possessed,
+but which belongs to the effort of the mind to unweave the riddle,
+or to the sense it has of there being an infinite power and
+meaning in the thing seen, beyond all that is apparent therein,
+giving the highest sublimity even to the most trivial object so
+presented and so contemplated.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"'Jeremiah, what seest thou?'</span><br />
+<span class="i0">'I see a seething pot, and the face thereof is toward the north,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">'Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And thus in all ages and among all nations, grotesque idealism
+has been the element through which the most appalling and
+eventful truth has been wisely conveyed, from the most sublime
+words of true Revelation, to the "ἀλλ᾿ ὅτ᾿ ἂν ἡμίονος βασιλεὐς," &amp;c.,
+of the oracles, and the more or less doubtful teaching
+of dreams; and so down to ordinary poetry. No element
+of imagination has a wider range, a more magnificent use, or so
+colossal a grasp of sacred truth.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. How, then, is this noble power best to be employed in
+the art of painting?</p>
+
+<p>We hear it not unfrequently asserted that symbolism or personification
+should not be introduced in painting at all. Such
+assertions are in their grounds unintelligible, and in their substance
+absurd. Whatever is in words described as visible, may
+with all logical fitness<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a>
+be rendered so by colors, and not only
+is this a legitimate branch of ideal art, but I believe there is
+hardly any other so widely useful and instructive; and I heartily
+wish that every great allegory which the poets ever invented
+were powerfully put on canvas, and easily accessible by all men,
+and that our artists were perpetually exciting themselves to invent
+more. And as far as authority bears on the question, the
+simple fact is that allegorical painting has been the delight of
+the greatest men and of the wisest multitudes, from the beginning
+of art, and will be till art expires. Orcagua's Triumph of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span>
+Death; Simon Memmi's frescoes in the Spanish Chapel; Giotto's
+principal works at Assisi, and partly at the Arena; Michael
+Angelo's two best statues, the Night and Day; Albert Durer's
+noble Melancholy, and hundreds more of his best works; a full
+third, I should think, of the works of Tintoret and Veronese,
+and nearly as large a portion of those of Raphael and Rubens,
+are entirely symbolical or personifiant; and, except in the case
+of the last-named painter, are always among the most interesting
+works the painters executed. The greater and more
+thoughtful the artists, the more they delight in symbolism, and
+the more fearlessly they employ it. Dead symbolism, second-hand
+symbolism, pointless symbolism, are indeed objectionable
+enough; but so are most other things that are dead, second-hand,
+and pointless. It is also true that both symbolism and
+personification are somewhat more apt than most things to have
+their edges taken off by too much handling; and what with our
+modern Fames, Justices, and various metaphorical ideals,
+largely used for signs and other such purposes, there is some
+excuse for our not well knowing what the real power of personification
+is. But that power is gigantic and inexhaustible, and
+ever to be grasped with peculiar joy by the painter, because it
+permits him to introduce picturesque elements and flights of
+fancy into his work, which otherwise would be utterly inadmissible;
+to bring the wild beasts of the desert into the room of
+state, fill the air with inhabitants as well as the earth, and render
+the least (visibly) interesting incidents themes for the most
+thrilling drama. Even Tintoret might sometimes have been
+hard put to it, when he had to fill a large panel in the Ducal
+Palace with the portrait of a nowise interesting Doge, unless he
+had been able to lay a winged lion beside him, ten feet long
+from the nose to the tail, asleep upon the Turkey carpet; and
+Rubens could certainly have made his flatteries of Mary of
+Medicis palatable to no one but herself, without the help of
+rosy-cheeked goddesses of abundance, and seven-headed hydras
+of rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. For observe, not only does the introduction of these imaginary
+beings permit greater fantasticism of <i>incident</i>, but also
+infinite fantasticism of <i>treatment</i>; and, I believe, so far from the
+pursuit of the false ideal having in any wise exhausted the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>
+realms of fantastic imagination, those realms have hardly yet
+been entered, and that a universe of noble dream-land lies before
+us, yet to be conquered. For, hitherto, when fantastic
+creatures have been introduced, either the masters have been so
+realistic in temper that they made the spirits as substantial as
+their figures of flesh and blood,&mdash;as Rubens, and, for the most
+part, Tintoret; or else they have been weak and unpractised in
+realization, and have painted transparent or cloudy spirits because
+they had no power of painting grand ones. But if a
+really great painter, thoroughly capable of giving substantial
+truth, and master of the elements of pictorial effect which have
+been developed by modern art, would solemnly, and yet fearlessly,
+cast his fancy free in the spiritual world, and faithfully
+follow out such masters of that world as Dante and Spenser,
+there seems no limit to the splendor of thought which painting
+might express. Consider, for instance, how the ordinary personifications
+of Charity oscillate between the mere nurse of
+many children, of Reynolds, and the somewhat painfully conceived
+figure with flames issuing from the heart, of Giotto; and
+how much more significance might be given to the representation
+of Love, by amplifying with tenderness the thought of
+Dante, "Tanta rossa, che a pena fora dentro al foco nota,"<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>
+that is to say, by representing the loveliness of her face and
+form as all flushed with glow of crimson light, and, as she descended
+through heaven, all its clouds colored by her presence
+as they are by sunset. In the hands of a feeble painter, such an
+attempt would end in mere caricature; but suppose it taken up
+by Correggio, adding to his power of flesh-painting the (not inconsistent)
+feeling of Angelico in design, and a portion of Turner's
+knowledge of the clouds. There is nothing impossible in
+such a conjunction as this. Correggio, trained in another
+school, might have even himself shown some such extent of
+grasp; and in Turner's picture of the dragon of the Hesperides,
+Jason, vignette to Voyage of Columbus ("Slowly along
+the evening sky they went"), and such others, as well as in
+many of the works of Watts and Rosetti, is already visible, as I
+trust, the dawn of a new era of art, in a true unison of the grotesque
+with the realistic power.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>
+
+<p>§ 8. There is, however, unquestionably, a severe limit, in the
+case of all inferior masters, to the degree in which they may
+venture to realize grotesque conception, and partly, also, a limit
+in the nature of the thing itself, there being many grotesque
+ideas which may be with safety suggested dimly by words or
+slight lines, but which will hardly bear being painted into perfect
+definiteness. It is very difficult, in reasoning on this matter,
+to divest ourselves of the prejudices which have been forced
+upon us by the base grotesque of men like Bronzino, who, having
+no true imagination, are apt, more than others, to try by
+startling realism to enforce the monstrosity that has no terror
+in itself. But it is nevertheless true, that, unless in the hands
+of the very greatest men, the grotesque seems better to be
+expressed merely in line, or light and shade, or mere abstract
+color, so as to mark it for a thought rather than a substantial
+fact. Even if Albert Durer had perfectly painted his Knight
+and Death, I question if we should feel it so great a thought as
+we do in the dark engraving. Blake, perfectly powerful in the
+etched grotesque of the book of Job, fails always more or less as
+soon as he adds color; not merely for want of power (his eye for
+color being naturally good), but because his subjects seem, in a
+sort, insusceptible of completion; and the two inexpressibly
+noble and pathetic woodcut grotesques of Alfred Rethel's,
+Death the Avenger, and Death the Friend, could not, I think,
+but with disadvantage, be advanced into pictorial color.</p>
+
+<p>And what is thus doubtfully true of the pathetic grotesque,
+is assuredly and always true of the jesting grotesque. So far as
+it expresses any transient flash of wit or satire, the less labor of
+line, or color, given to its expression the better; elaborate jesting
+being always intensely painful.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. For these several reasons, it seems not only permissible,
+but even desirable, that the art by which the grotesque is
+expressed should be more or less imperfect, and this seems a
+most beneficial ordinance as respects the human race in general.
+For the grotesque being not only a most forceful instrument of
+teaching, but a most natural manner of expression, springing as
+it does at once from any tendency to playfulness in minds
+highly comprehensive of truth; and being also one of the readiest
+ways in which such satire or wit as may be possessed by men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>
+of any inferior rank of mind can be for perpetuity expressed, it
+becomes on all grounds desirable that what is suggested in
+times of play should be rightly sayable without toil; and what
+occurs to men of inferior power or knowledge, sayable without
+any high degree of skill. Hence it is an infinite good to mankind
+when there is full acceptance of the grotesque, slightly
+sketched or expressed; and, if field for such expression be
+frankly granted, an enormous mass of intellectual power is
+turned to everlasting use, which, in this present century of
+ours, evaporates in street gibing or vain revelling; all the good
+wit and satire expiring in daily talk, (like foam on wine,) which
+in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had a permitted and
+useful expression in the arts of sculpture and illumination, like
+foam fixed into chalcedony. It is with a view (not the least important
+among many others bearing upon art) to the reopening
+of this great field of human intelligence, long entirely closed,
+that I am striving to introduce Gothic architecture into daily
+domestic use; and to revive the art of illumination, properly so
+called; not the art of miniature-painting in books, or on vellum,
+which has ridiculously been confused with it; but of making
+<i>writing</i>, simple writing, beautiful to the eye, by investing it
+with the great chord of perfect color, blue, purple, scarlet,
+white, and gold, and in that chord of color, permitting the continual
+play of the fancy of the writer in every species of grotesque
+imagination, carefully excluding shadow; the distinctive
+difference between illumination and painting proper, being,
+that illumination admits <i>no</i> shadows, but only gradations of
+pure color. And it is in this respect that illumination is specially
+fitted for grotesque expression; for, when I used the
+term "<i>pictorial</i> color," just now, in speaking of the completion
+of the grotesque of Death the Avenger, I meant to distinguish
+such color from the abstract, shadeless hues which are eminently
+fitted for grotesque thought. The requirement, respecting
+the slighter grotesque, is only that it shall be <i>incompletely</i>
+expressed. It may have light and shade without color (as in
+etching and sculpture), or color without light and shade (illumination),
+but must not, except in the hands of the greatest
+masters, have both. And for some conditions of the playful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span>
+grotesque, the abstract color is a much more delightful element
+of expression than the abstract light and shade.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. Such being the manifold and precious uses of the true
+grotesque, it only remains for us to note carefully how it is to
+be distinguished from the false and vicious grotesque which
+results from idleness, instead of noble rest; from malice, instead
+of the solemn contemplation of necessary evil; and from
+general degradation of the human spirit, instead of its subjection,
+or confusion, by thoughts too high for it. It is easy for
+the reader to conceive how different the fruits of two such different
+states of mind <i>must</i> be; and yet how like in many
+respects, and apt to be mistaken, one for the other;&mdash;how the
+jest which springs from mere fatuity, and vacant want of penetration
+or purpose, is everlastingly, infinitely, separated from,
+and yet may sometimes be mistaken for, the bright, playful,
+fond, far-sighted jest of Plato, or the bitter, purposeful, sorrowing
+jest of Aristophanes; how, again, the horror which springs
+from guilty love of foulness and sin, may be often mistaken for
+the inevitable horror which a great mind must sometimes feel
+in the full and penetrative sense of their presence;&mdash;how,
+finally, the vague and foolish inconsistencies of undisciplined
+dream or reverie may be mistaken for the compelled inconsistencies
+of thoughts too great to be well sustained, or clearly
+uttered. It is easy, I say, to understand what a difference there
+must indeed be between these; and yet how difficult it may be
+always to define it, or lay down laws for the discovery of it, except
+by the just instinct of minds set habitually in all things to
+discern right from wrong.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. Nevertheless, one good and characteristic instance
+may be of service in marking the leading directions in which
+the contrast is discernible. On the opposite page, Plate I., I
+have put, beside each other, a piece of true grotesque, from the
+Lombard-Gothic, and of false grotesque from classical (Roman)
+architecture. They are both griffins; the one on the left
+carries on his back one of the main pillars of the porch of the
+cathedral of Verona; the one on the right is on the frieze of
+the temple of Antoninus and Faustina at Rome, much celebrated
+by Renaissance and bad modern architects.</p>
+
+<p>In some respects, however, this classical griffin deserves its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>
+reputation. It is exceedingly fine in lines of composition, and,
+I believe (I have not examined the original closely), very exquisite
+in execution. For these reasons, it is all the better for our
+purpose. I do not want to compare the worst false grotesque
+with the best true, but rather, on the contrary, the best false
+with the simplest true, in order to see how the delicately
+wrought lie fails in the presence of the rough truth; for rough
+truth in the present case it is, the Lombard sculpture being
+altogether untoward and imperfect in execution.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 12. "Well, but," the reader says, "what do you mean by
+calling <i>either</i> of them true? There never were such beasts in
+the world as either of these?"</p>
+
+<p>No, never: but the difference is, that the Lombard workman
+did really see a griffin in his imagination, and carved it
+from the life, meaning to declare to all ages that he had verily
+seen with his immortal eyes such a griffin as that; but the classical
+workman never saw a griffin at all, nor anything else; but
+put the whole thing together by line and rule.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. "How do you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>Very easily. Look at the two, and think over them. You
+know a griffin is a beast composed of lion and eagle. The
+classical workman set himself to fit these together in the most
+ornamental way possible. He accordingly carves a sufficiently
+satisfactory lion's body, then attaches very gracefully cut
+wings to the sides: then, because he cannot get the eagle's
+head on the broad lion's shoulders, fits the two together by
+something like a horse's neck (some griffins being wholly composed
+of a horse and eagle), then, finding the horse's neck look
+weak and unformidable, he strengthens it by a series of bosses,
+like vertebrae, in front, and by a series of spiny cusps, instead
+of a mane, on the ridge; next, not to lose the whole leonine
+character about the neck, he gives a remnant of the lion's
+beard, turned into a sort of griffin's whisker, and nicely curled
+and pointed; then an eye, probably meant to look grand and
+abstracted, and therefore neither lion's nor eagle's; and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
+finally, an eagle's beak, very sufficiently studied from a real
+one. The whole head being, it seems to him, still somewhat
+wanting in weight and power, he brings forward the right wing
+behind it, so as to enclose it with a broad line. This is the finest
+thing in the composition, and very masterly, both in
+thought, and in choice of the exactly right point where the
+lines of wing and beak should intersect (and it may be noticed
+in passing, that all men, who can compose at all, have this
+habit of encompassing or governing broken lines with broad
+ones, wherever it is possible, of which we shall see many
+instances hereafter). The whole griffin, thus gracefully composed,
+being, nevertheless, when all is done, a very composed
+griffin, is set to very quiet work, and raising his left foot, to
+balance his right wing, sets it on the tendril of a flower so
+lightly as not even to bend it down, though, in order to reach it,
+his left leg is made half as long again as his right.</p>
+
+<p>§ 14. We may be pretty sure, if the carver had ever seen a
+griffin, he would have reported of him as doing something else
+than <i>that</i> with his feet. Let us see what the Lombardic workman
+saw him doing.</p>
+
+<p>Remember, first, the griffin, though part lion and part
+eagle, has the united <i>power of both</i>. He is not merely a bit of
+lion and a bit of eagle, but whole lion, incorporate with whole
+eagle. So when we really see one, we may be quite sure we
+shall not find him wanting in anything necessary to the might
+either of beast or bird.</p>
+
+<p>Well, among things essential to the might of a lion, perhaps,
+on the whole, the most essential are his <i>teeth</i>. He could get on
+pretty well even without his claws, usually striking his prey
+down with a blow, woundless; but he could by no means get on
+without his teeth. Accordingly, we see that the real or Lombardic
+griffin has the carnivorous teeth bare to the root, and the
+peculiar hanging of the jaw at the back, which marks the flexible
+and gaping mouth of the devouring tribes.</p>
+
+<p>Again; among things essential to the might of an eagle,
+next to his wings (which are of course prominent in both examples),
+are his <i>claws</i>. It is no use his being able to tear anything
+with his beak, if he cannot first hold it in his claws; he has
+comparatively no leonine power of striking with his feet, but a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>
+magnificent power of grip with them. Accordingly, we see
+that the real griffin, while his feet are heavy enough to strike
+like a lion's, has them also extended far enough to give them
+the eagle's grip with the back claw; and has, moreover, some of
+the bird-like wrinkled skin over the whole foot, marking this
+binding power the more; and that he has besides verily got
+something to hold with his feet, other than a flower, of which
+more presently.</p>
+
+<p>§ 15. Now observe, the Lombardic workman did not do all
+this because he had thought it out, as you and I are doing
+together; he never thought a bit about it. He simply saw the
+beast; saw it as plainly as you see the writing on this page, and
+of course could not be wrong in anything he told us of it.</p>
+
+<p>Well, what more does he tell us? Another thing, remember,
+essential to an eagle is that it should fly <i>fast</i>. It is no use
+its having wings at all if it is to be impeded in the use of them.
+Now it would be difficult to impede him more thoroughly than
+by giving him two cocked ears to catch the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false griffin <i>has</i>
+them so set, and, consequently, as he flew, there would be a
+continual humming of the wind on each side of his head, and
+he would have an infallible earache when he got home. But
+the real griffin has his ears flat to his head, and all the hair of
+them blown back, even to a point, by his fast flying, and the
+aperture is downwards, that he may hear anything going on
+upon the earth, where his prey is. In the false griffin the aperture
+is upwards.</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. Well, what more? As he is made up of the natures
+of lion and eagle, we may be very certain that a real griffin is,
+on the whole, fond of eating, and that his throat will look as if
+he occasionally took rather large pieces, besides being flexible
+enough to let him bend and stretch his head in every direction
+as he flies.</p>
+
+<p>Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false one has
+got those bosses upon his neck like vertebrae, which must be infinitely
+in his way when he is swallowing, and which are evidently
+inseparable, so that he cannot <i>stretch</i> his neck any more
+than a horse. But the real griffin is all loose about the neck,
+evidently being able to make it almost as much longer as he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span>
+likes; to stretch and bend it anywhere, and swallow anything,
+besides having some of the grand strength of the bull's dewlap
+in it when at rest.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. What more? Having both lion and eagle in him, it is
+probable that the real griffin will have an infinite look of repose
+as well as power of activity. One of the notablest things about
+a lion is his magnificent <i>indolence</i>, his look of utter disdain of
+trouble when there is no occasion for it; as, also, one of the
+notablest things about an eagle is his look of inevitable vigilance,
+even when quietest. Look, again, at the two beasts.
+You see the false griffin is quite sleepy and dead in the eye,
+thus contradicting his eagle's nature, but is putting himself to
+a great deal of unnecessary trouble with his paws, holding one in
+a most painful position merely to touch a flower, and bearing
+the whole weight of his body on the other, thus contradicting
+his lion's nature.</p>
+
+<p>But the real griffin is primarily, with his eagle's nature,
+wide awake; evidently quite ready for whatever may happen;
+and with his lion's nature, laid all his length on his belly, prone
+and ponderous; his two paws as simply put out before him as a
+drowsy puppy's on a drawingroom hearth-rug; not but that he
+has got something to do with them, worthy of such paws; but
+he takes not one whit more trouble about it than is absolutely
+necessary. He has merely got a poisonous winged dragon to
+hold, and for such a little matter as that, he may as well do it
+lying down and at his ease, looking out at the same time for
+any other piece of work in his way. He takes the dragon by
+the middle, one paw under the wing, another above, gathers
+him up into a knot, puts two or three of his claws well into his
+back, crashing through the scales of it and wrinkling all the
+flesh up from the wound, flattens him down against the ground,
+and so lets him do what he likes. The dragon tries to bite
+him, but can only bring his head round far enough to get hold
+of his own wing, which he bites in agony instead; flapping the
+griffin's dewlap with it, and wriggling his tail up against the
+griffin's throat; the griffin being, as to these minor proceedings,
+entirely indifferent, sure that the dragon's body cannot
+drag itself one hair's breadth off those ghastly claws, and that
+its head can do no harm but to itself.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>
+
+<p>§ 18. Now observe how in all this, through every separate
+part and action of the creature, the imagination is <i>always</i> right.
+It evidently <i>cannot</i> err; it meets every one of our requirements
+respecting the griffin as simply as if it were gathering up the
+bones of the real creature out of some ancient rock. It does
+not itself know or care, any more than the peasant laboring
+with his spade and axe, what is wanted to meet our theories or
+fancies. It knows simply what is there, and brings out the
+positive creature, errorless, unquestionable. So it is throughout
+art, and in all that the imagination does; if anything be
+wrong it is not the imagination's fault, but some inferior
+faculty's, which would have its foolish say in the matter, and
+meddled with the imagination, and said, the bones ought to be
+put together tail first, or upside down.</p>
+
+<p>§ 19. This, however, we need not be amazed at, because the
+very essence of the imagination is already defined to be the seeing
+to the heart; and it is not therefore wonderful that it
+should never err; but it is wonderful, on the other hand, how
+the composing legalism does <i>nothing else</i> than err. One would
+have thought that, by mere chance, in this or the other element
+of griffin, the griffin-composer might have struck out a truth;
+that he might have had the luck to set the ears back, or to give
+some grasp to the claw. But, no; from beginning to end it is
+evidently impossible for him to be anything but wrong; his
+whole soul is instinct with lies; no veracity can come within
+hail of him; to him, all regions of right and life are for ever
+closed.</p>
+
+<p>§ 20. And another notable point is, that while the imagination
+receives truth in this simple way, it is all the while receiving
+statutes of composition also, far more noble than those for
+the sake of which the truth was lost by the legalist. The ornamental
+lines in the classical griffin appear at first finer than in
+the other; but they only appear so because they are more commonplace
+and more palpable. The subtlety of the sweeping
+and rolling curves in the real griffin, the way they waver and
+change and fold, down the neck, and along the wing, and in
+and out among the serpent coils, is incomparably grander,
+merely as grouping of ornamental line, than anything in the
+other; nor is it fine as ornamental only, but as massively use<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>ful,
+giving weight of stone enough to answer the entire purpose
+of pedestal sculpture. Note, especially, the insertion of
+the three plumes of the dragon's broken wing in the outer
+angle, just under the large coil of his body; this filling of the
+gap being one of the necessities, not of the pedestal block
+merely, but a means of getting mass and breadth, which all
+composers desire more or less, but which they seldom so perfectly
+accomplish.</p>
+
+<p>So that taking the truth first, the honest imagination gains
+everything; it has its griffinism, and grace, and usefulness, all
+at once: but the false composer, caring for nothing but himself
+and his rules, loses everything,&mdash;griffinism, grace, and all.</p>
+
+
+<a name="PLATE_1" id="PLATE_1"></a>
+<table summary="PLATE 1 with captions">
+	<tr>
+		<td class="tdl" colspan="2">
+			<a href="images/illus125b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+				<img style="margin-bottom: -.6em;" src="images/illus125leftw.jpg" height="350"  alt="PLATE 1" />
+			</a>
+		</td>
+		<td> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</td>
+		<td class="tdl" colspan="2">
+			<a href="images/illus125b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+				<img style="margin-bottom: -.6em;" src="images/illus125rightw.jpg" height="350"  alt="PLATE 1" />
+			</a>
+		</td>
+	</tr><tr>
+
+		<td class="tdl"><span style="font-size: 60%">J. Ruskin.</span></td>      <td class="tdr"><span style="font-size: 60%">R. P. Cuff.</span></td>
+		<td></td>
+		<td class="tdl"><span style="font-size: 60%">From Lithograph.</span></td><td class="tdr"><span style="font-size: 60%">R. P. Cuff.</span></td>
+	</tr><tr>
+
+		<td class="tdc" colspan="5"><span class="caption">1. True and False Griffins.</span></td>
+	</tr><tr>
+		<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><span class="caption">Mediæval.</span></td>
+		<td></td>
+		<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><span class="caption">Classical.</span></td>
+	</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<p>§ 21. I believe the reader will now sufficiently see how the
+terms "true" and "false" are in the most accurate sense attachable
+to the opposite branches of what might appear at first,
+in both cases, the merest wildness of inconsistent reverie. But
+they are even to be attached, in a deeper sense than that in
+which we have hitherto used them, to these two compositions.
+For the imagination hardly ever works in this intense way, unencumbered
+by the inferior faculties, unless it be under the
+influence of some solemn purpose or sentiment. And to all the
+falseness and all the verity of these two ideal creatures this farther
+falsehood and verity have yet to be added, that the classical
+griffin has, at least in this place, no other intent than that of
+covering a level surface with entertaining form; but the Lombardic
+griffin is a profound expression of the most passionate
+symbolism. Under its eagle's wings are two wheels,<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a>
+which mark it as connected, in the mind of him who wrought it, with
+the living creatures of the vision of Ezekiel: "When they
+went, the wheels went by them, and whithersoever the spirit
+was to go, they went, and the wheels were lifted up over against
+them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels."
+Thus signed, the winged shape becomes at once one of the
+acknowledged symbols of the Divine power; and, in its unity
+of lion and eagle, the workman of the middle ages always means
+to set forth the unity of the human and divine natures,<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>
+In
+this unity it bears up the pillars of the Church, set for ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>
+as the corner stone. And the faithful and true imagination
+beholds it, in this unity, with everlasting vigilance and calm
+omnipotence, restrain the seed of the serpent crushed upon the
+earth; leaving the head of it free, only for a time, that it may
+inflict in its fury profounder destruction upon itself,&mdash;in this
+also full of deep meaning. The Divine power does not slay the
+evil creature. It wounds and restrains it only. Its final and
+<i>deadly</i> wound is inflicted by itself.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a>
+On the Grotesque Renaissance, vol. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a>
+See Appendix I. Vol. IV. "Modern Grotesque."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a>
+Cankred&mdash;because he cannot then bite hard.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a>
+Though, perhaps, only in a subordinate degree. See farther on, § 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a>
+"So red, that in the midst of the fire she could hardly have been seen."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a>
+If there be any inaccuracy in the right-hand griffin, I am sorry, but
+am not answerable for it, as the plate has been faithfully reduced from a
+large French lithograph, the best I could find. The other is from a sketch
+of my own.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a>
+At the extremities of the wings,&mdash;not seen in the plate.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a>
+Compare the Purgatorio, canto xxix. &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF FINISH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. I am afraid the reader must be, by this time, almost
+tired of hearing about truth. But I cannot help this; the
+more I have examined the various forms of art, and exercised
+myself in receiving their differently intended impressions, the
+more I have found this truthfulness a final test, the only test of
+lasting power; and, although our concern in this part of our
+inquiry is, professedly, with the beauty which blossoms out of
+truth, still I find myself compelled always to gather it by the
+stalk, not by the petals. I cannot hold the beauty, nor be sure
+of it for a moment, but by feeling for that strong stem.</p>
+
+<p>We have, in the preceding chapters, glanced through the
+various operations of the imaginative power of man; with this
+almost painfully monotonous result, that its greatness and
+honor were always simply in proportion to the quantity of truth
+it grasped. And now the question, left undetermined some
+hundred pages back (Chap. <span class="smcap">II.</span> § 6), recurs to us in a simpler
+form than it could before. How far is this true imagination to
+be truly represented? How far should the perfect conception
+of Pallas be so given as to look like Pallas herself, rather than
+like the picture of Pallas?</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. A question, this, at present of notable interest, and
+demanding instant attention. For it seemed to us, in reasoning
+about Dante's views of art, that he was, or might be, right
+in desiring realistic completeness; and yet, in what we have
+just seen of the grotesque ideal, it seemed there was a certain
+desirableness in incompleteness. And the schools of art in
+Europe are, at this moment, set in two hostile ranks,&mdash;not
+nobly hostile, but spitefully and scornfully, having for one of
+the main grounds of their dispute the apparently simple question,
+how far a picture may be carried forward in detail, or how
+soon it may be considered as finished.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>
+
+<p>I propose, therefore, in the present chapter, to examine, as
+thoroughly as I can, the real signification of this word, Finish,
+as applied to art, and to see if in this, as in other matters, our
+almost tiresome test is not the only right one; whether there be
+not a <i>fallacious</i> finish and a <i>faithful</i> finish, and whether the
+dispute, which seems to be only about completion and incompletion,
+has not therefore, at the bottom of it, the old and deep
+grounds of fallacy and fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. Observe, first, there are two great and separate senses
+in which we call a thing finished, or well finished. One, which
+refers to the mere neatness and completeness of the actual
+work, as we speak of a well-finished knife-handle or ivory toy
+(as opposed to ill-cut ones); and, secondly, a sense which refers
+to the effect produced by the thing done, as we call a picture
+well-finished if it is so full in its details, as to produce the effect
+of reality on the spectator. And, in England, we seem at present
+to value highly the first sort of finish which belongs to
+work<i>manship</i>, in our manufactures and general doings of any
+kind, but to despise totally the impressive finish which belongs
+to the <i>work</i>; and therefore we like smooth ivories better than
+rough ones,&mdash;but careless scrawls or daubs better than the most
+complete paintings. Now, I believe that we exactly reverse the
+fitness of judgment in this matter, and that we ought, on the
+contrary, to despise the finish of work<i>manship</i>, which is done
+for vanity's sake, and to love the finish of <i>work</i>, which is done
+for truth's sake,&mdash;that we ought, in a word, to finish our ivory
+toys more roughly, and our pictures more delicately.</p>
+
+<p>Let us think over this matter.</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. Perhaps one of the most remarkable points of difference
+between the English and Continental nations is in the
+degree of finish given to their ordinary work. It is enough to
+cross from Dover to Calais to feel this difference; and to travel
+farther only increases the sense of it. English windows for the
+most part fit their sashes, and their woodwork is neatly planed
+and smoothed; French windows are larger, heavier, and framed
+with wood that looks as if it had been cut to its shape with a
+hatchet; they have curious and cumbrous fastenings, and can
+only be forced asunder or together by some ingenuity and
+effort, and even then not properly. So with everything else<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>&mdash;French,
+Italian, and German, and, as far as I know, Continental.
+Foreign drawers do not slide as well as ours: foreign
+knives do not cut so well; foreign wheels do not turn so well,
+and we commonly plume ourselves much upon this, believing
+that generally the English people do their work better and more
+thoroughly, or as they say, "turn it out of their hands in better
+style," than foreigners. I do not know how far this is really
+the case. There may be a flimsy neatness, as well as a substantial
+roughness; it does not necessarily follow that the window
+which shuts easiest will last the longest, or that the harness
+which glitters the most is assuredly made of the toughest
+leather. I am afraid, that if this peculiar character of finish in
+our workmanship ever arose from a greater heartiness and thoroughness
+in our ways of doing things, it does so only now in
+the case of our best manufacturers; and that a great deal of
+the work done in England, however good in appearance, is but
+treacherous and rotten in substance. Still, I think that there
+is really in the English mind, for the most part, a stronger
+desire to do things as well as they can be done, and less inclination
+to put up with inferiorities or insufficiencies, than in
+general characterise the temper of foreigners. There is in
+this conclusion no ground for national vanity; for though the
+desire to do things as well as they can be done at first appears
+like a virtue, it is certainly not so in all its forms. On the contrary,
+it proceeds in nine cases out of ten more from vanity
+than conscientiousness; and that, moreover, often a weak
+vanity. I suppose that as much finish is displayed in the
+fittings of the private carriages of our young rich men as in any
+other department of English manufacture; and that our St.
+James's Street cabs, dogcarts, and liveries are singularly perfect
+in their way. But the feeling with which this perfection is insisted
+upon (however desirable as a sign of energy of purpose) is
+not in itself a peculiarly amiable or noble feeling; neither is it
+an ignoble disposition which would induce a country gentleman
+to put up with certain deficiencies in the appearance of his
+country-made carriage. It is true that such philosophy may
+degenerate into negligence, and that much thought and long
+discussion would be needed before we could determine satisfactorily
+the limiting lines between virtuous contentment and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>
+faultful carelessness; but at all events we have no right at once
+to pronounce ourselves the wisest people because we like to do
+all things in the best way. There are many little things which
+to do admirably is to waste both time and cost; and the real
+question is not so much whether we have done a given thing as
+well as possible, as whether we have turned a given quantity of
+labor to the best account.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. Now, so far from the labor's being turned to good
+account which is given to our English "finishing," I believe it
+to be usually destructive of the best powers of our workmen's
+minds. For it is evident, in the first place, that there is almost
+always a useful and a useless finish; the hammering and welding
+which are necessary to produce a sword plate of the best
+quality, are useful finishing; the polishing of its surface,
+useless.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a>
+In nearly all work this distinction will, more or less,
+take place between substantial finish and apparent finish, or
+what may be briefly characterized as "Make" and "Polish."
+And so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "make," I
+have nothing to say against it. Even the vanity which displays
+itself in giving strength to our work is rather a virtue than a
+vice. But so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "polish,"
+there is much to be said against it; this first, and very strongly,
+that the qualities aimed at in common finishing, namely,
+smoothness, delicacy, or fineness, <i>cannot</i> in reality <i>exist</i>, in a
+degree worth admiring, in anything done by human hands.
+Our best finishing is but coarse and blundering work after all
+We may smooth, and soften, and sharpen till we are sick at
+heart; but take a good magnifying glass to our miracle of skill,
+and the invisible edge is a jagged saw, and the silky thread a
+rugged cable, and the soft surface a granite desert. Let all the
+ingenuity and all the art of the human race be brought to bear
+upon the attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they
+could not do what is done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a
+bubble. God alone can finish; and the more intelligent the
+human mind becomes, the more the infiniteness of interval is
+felt between human and divine work in this respect. So then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+it is not a little absurd to weary ourselves in struggling towards
+a point which we never can reach, and to exhaust our strength
+in vain endeavors to produce qualities which exist inimitably
+and inexhaustibly in the commonest things around us.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. But more than this: the fact is that in multitudes of
+instances, instead of gaining greater fineness of finish by our
+work, we are only destroying the fine finish of nature, and substituting
+coarseness and imperfection. For instance, when a
+rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the weather,
+Nature finishes it in her own way; first, she takes wonderful
+pains about its forms, sculpturing it into exquisite variety of
+dint and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into contours,
+which for fineness no human hand can follow; then she colors
+it; and every one of her touches of color, instead of being a
+powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living trees, glorious
+in strength and beauty, and concealing wonders of structure,
+which in all probability are mysteries even to the eyes of
+angels. Man comes and digs up this finished and marvellous
+piece of work, which in his ignorance he calls a "rough stone."
+He proceeds to finish it in <i>his</i> fashion, that is, to split it in two,
+rend it into ragged blocks, and, finally, to chisel its surface into
+a large number of lumps and knobs, all equally shapeless, colorless,
+deathful, and frightful.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>
+And the block, thus disfigured,
+he calls "finished," and proceeds to build therewith, and
+thinks himself great, forsooth, and an intelligent animal.
+Whereas, all that he has really done is, to destroy with utter
+ravage a piece of divine art, which, under the laws appointed by
+the Deity to regulate his work in this world, it must take good
+twenty years to produce the like of again. This he has destroyed,
+and has himself given in its place a piece of work
+which needs no more intelligence to do than a pholas has, or a
+worm, or the spirit which throughout the world has authority
+over rending, rottenness, and decay. I do not say that stone
+must not be cut; it needs to be cut for certain uses; only I say
+that the cutting it is not "finishing," but <i>un</i>finishing it; and
+that so far as the mere fact of chiselling goes, the stone is
+ruined by the human touch. It is with it as with the stones of
+the Jewish altar: "If thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span>
+polluted it." In like manner a tree is a finished thing. But a
+plank, though ever so polished, is not. We need stones and
+planks, as we need food; but we no more bestow an additional
+admirableness upon stone in hewing it, or upon a tree in sawing
+it, than upon an animal in killing it.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. Well, but it will be said, there is certainly a kind of
+finish in stone-cutting, and in every other art, which is meritorious,
+and which consists in smoothing and refining as much as
+possible. Yes, assuredly there is a meritorious finish. First,
+as it has just been said, that which fits a thing for its uses,&mdash;as
+a stone to lie well in its place, or the cog of an engine wheel to
+play well on another; and, secondly, a finish belonging properly
+to the arts; but <i>that</i> finish does not consist in smoothing
+or polishing, but in the <i>completeness of the expression of ideas</i>.
+For in painting, there is precisely the same difference between
+the ends proposed in finishing that there is in manufacture.
+Some artists finish for the finish' sake; dot their pictures all
+over, as in some kinds of miniature-painting (when a wash of
+color would have produced as good an effect); or polish their
+pictures all over, making the execution so delicate that the
+touch of the brush cannot be seen, for the sake of the smoothness
+merely, and of the credit they may thus get for great
+labor; which kind of execution, seen in great perfection in
+many works of the Dutch school, and in those of Carlo Dolce,
+is that polished "language" against which I have spoken at
+length in various portions of the first volume; nor is it possible
+to speak of it with too great severity or contempt, where it has
+been made an ultimate end.</p>
+
+<p>But other artists finish for the impression's sake, not to
+show their skill, nor to produce a smooth piece of work, but
+that they may, with each stroke, render clearer the expression
+of knowledge. And this sort of finish is not, properly speaking,
+so much <i>completing</i> the picture as <i>adding</i> to it. It is not that
+what is painted is more delicately done, but that infinitely <i>more</i>
+is painted. This finish is always noble, and, like all other
+noblest things, hardly ever understood or appreciated. I must
+here endeavor, more especially with respect to the state of quarrel
+between the schools of living painters, to illustrate it thoroughly.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>
+
+<p>§ 8. In sketching the outline, suppose of the trunk of a
+tree, as in Plate 2. (opposite) fig. 1., it matters comparatively
+little whether the outline be given with a bold, or delicate line,
+so long as it is <i>outline only</i>. The work is not more "finished"
+in one case than in the other; it is only prepared for being seen
+at a greater or less distance. The real refinement or finish of
+the line depends, not on its thinness, but on its truly following
+the contours of the tree, which it conventionally represents;
+conventionally, I say, because there is no such line round the
+tree, in reality; and it is set down not as an <i>imit</i>ation, but a
+<i>limit</i>ation of the form. But if we are to add shade to it as in
+fig. 2., the outline must instantly be made proportionally delicate,
+not for the sake of delicacy as such, but because the outline
+will now, in many parts, stand not for limitation of form
+merely, but for a portion of the <i>shadow</i> within that form.
+Now, as a limitation it was true, but as a shadow it would be
+false, for there is no line of black shadow at the edge of the
+stem. It must, therefore, be made so delicate as not to detach
+itself from the rest of the shadow where shadow exists, and
+only to be seen in the light where limitation is still necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Observe, then, the "finish" of fig. 2. as compared with fig.
+1. consists, not in its greater delicacy, but in the addition of a
+truth (shadow), a removal, in a great degree, of a conventionalism
+(outline). All true finish consists in one or other of these
+things. Now, therefore, if we are to "finish" farther we must
+<i>know</i> more or <i>see</i> more about the tree. And as the plurality of
+persons who draw trees know nothing of them, and will not
+look at them, it results necessarily that the effort to finish is
+not only vain, but unfinishes&mdash;does mischief. In the lower part
+of the plate, figs. 3, 4, 5, and 6. are facsimiles of pieces of line
+engraving, meant to represent trunks of trees; 3. and 4. are
+the commonly accredited types of tree-drawing among engravers
+in the eighteenth century; 5. and 6. are quite modern; 3. is
+from a large and important plate by Boydell, from Claude's
+Molten Calf, dated 1781; 4. by Boydell in 1776, from Rubens's
+Waggoner; 5. from a bombastic engraving, published about
+twenty years ago by Meulemeester of Brussels, from Raphael's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span>
+Moses at the Burning Bush; and 6. from the foreground of
+Miller's Modern Italy, after Turner.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_2" id="PLATE_2"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus135b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus135w.jpg" height="500"  alt="PLATE 2" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		2. Drawing of Tree-Stems.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>All these represent, as far as the engraving goes, simply
+<i>nothing</i>. They are not "finished" in any sense but this,&mdash;that
+the paper has been covered with lines. 4. is the best, because,
+in the original work of Rubens, the lines of the boughs, and
+their manner of insertion in the trunk, have been so strongly
+marked, that no engraving could quite efface them; and, inasmuch
+as it represents these facts in the boughs, that piece of
+engraving is more finished than the other examples, while its
+own networked texture is still false and absurd; for there is no
+texture of this knitted-stocking-like description on boughs;
+and if there were, it would not be seen in the shadow, but in
+the light. Miller's is spirited, and looks lustrous, but has no
+resemblance to the original bough of Turner's, which is pale,
+and does not glitter. The Netherlands work is, on the whole,
+the worst; because, in its ridiculous double lines, it adds affectation
+and conceit to its incapacity. But in all these cases the
+engravers have worked in total ignorance both of what is meant
+by "drawing," and of the form of a tree, covering their paper
+with certain lines, which they have been taught to plough in
+copper, as a husbandman ploughs in clay.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. In the next three examples we have instances of
+endeavors at finish by the hands of artists themselves, marking
+three stages of knowledge or insight, and three relative stages
+of finish. Fig. 7. is Claude's (Liber Veritatis, No. 140., facsimile
+by Boydell). It still displays an appalling ignorance of
+the forms of trees, but yet is, in mode of execution, better&mdash;that
+is, more finished&mdash;than the engravings, because not <i>altogether</i>
+mechanical, and showing some dim, far-away, blundering
+memory of a few facts in stems, such as their variations of
+texture and roundness, and bits of young shoots of leaves. 8. is
+Salvator's, facsimiled from part of his original etching of the
+Finding of &OElig;dipus. It displays considerable power of handling&mdash;not
+mechanical, but free and firm, and is just so much more
+finished than any of the others as it displays more intelligence
+about the way in which boughs gather themselves out of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span>
+stem, and about the varying character of their curves.  Finally,
+fig. 9. is good work.  It is the root of the apple-tree in Albert
+Durer's Adam and Eve, and fairly represents the wrinkles of
+the bark, the smooth portions emergent beneath, and the general
+anatomy of growth. All the lines used conduce to the representation
+of these facts; and the work is therefore highly finished.
+It still, however, leaves out, as not to be represented by
+such kind of lines, the more delicate gradations of light and
+shade. I shall now "finish" a little farther, in the next plate
+(3.), the mere <i>insertion of the two boughs</i> outlined in fig. 1. I
+do this simply by adding assertions of more facts. First, I say
+that the whole trunk is dark, as compared with the distant sky.
+Secondly, I say that it is rounded by gradations of shadow, in
+the various forms shown. And, lastly, I say that (this being
+a bit of old pine stripped by storm of its bark) the wood is
+fissured in certain directions, showing its grain, or <i>muscle</i>, seen
+in complicated contortions at the insertion of the arm and elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. Now this piece of work, though yet far from complete
+(we will better it presently), is yet more finished than any
+of the others, not because it is more delicate or more skilful,
+but simply because it tells more truth, and admits fewer fallacies.
+That which conveys most information, with least inaccuracy,
+is always the highest finish; and the question whether we
+prefer art so finished, to art unfinished, is not one of taste at all.
+It is simply a question whether we like to know much or little;
+to see accurately or see falsely; and those whose <i>taste</i> in art (if
+they choose so to call it) leads them to like blindness better
+than sight, and fallacy better than fact, would do well to set
+themselves to some other pursuit than that of art.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. In the above plate we have examined chiefly the grain
+and surface of the boughs; we have not yet noticed the finish
+of their curvature. If the reader will look back to the No.
+7. (Plate 2.), which, in this respect, is the worst of all the set,
+he will immediately observe the exemplification it gives of
+Claude's principal theory about trees; namely, that the boughs
+always parted from each other, two at a time, in the manner of
+the prongs of an ill-made table-fork. It may, perhaps, not be
+at once believed that this is indeed Claude's theory respecting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>
+tree-structure, without some farther examples of his practice. I
+have, therefore, assembled on the next page, Plate 4., some of
+the most characteristic passages of ramification in the Liber
+Veritatis; the plates themselves are sufficiently cheap (as they
+should be) and accessible to nearly every one, so that the accuracy
+of the facsimiles may be easily tested. I have given in
+Appendix I. the numbers of the plates from which the examples
+are taken, and it will be found that they have been rather
+improved than libelled, only omitting, of course, the surrounding
+leafage, in order to show accurately the branch-outlines,
+with which alone we are at present concerned. And it would
+be difficult to bring together a series more totally futile and
+foolish, more singularly wrong (as the false griffin was), every
+way at once; they are stiff, and yet have no strength; curved,
+and yet have no flexibility; monotonous, and yet disorderly;
+unnatural, and yet uninventive. They are, in fact, of that commonest
+kind of tree bough which a child or beginner first draws
+experimentally; nay, I am well assured, that if this set of
+branches had been drawn by a schoolboy, "out of his own
+head," his master would hardly have cared to show them as
+signs of any promise in him.</p>
+
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_3" id="PLATE_3"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus139b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus139w.jpg" width="500"  alt="PLATE 3" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		3. Strength of Old Pine.
+	</span>
+</div>
+<br />
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_4" id="PLATE_4"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus142b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus142w.jpg" height="500"  alt="PLATE 4" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		4. Ramification, according to Claude.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>§ 12. "Well, but do not the trunks of trees fork, and fork
+mostly into two arms at a time?"</p>
+
+<div class="figright">
+	<a name="FIG_2" id="FIG_2"></a>
+	<img style="margin-bottom:-1.5em; margin-top: 1.5em;" src="images/illus143.png" width="200"  alt="FIG 2" />
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		<span class="smcap">Fig.</span> 2.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Yes; but under as stern anatomical law as the limbs of an
+animal; and those hooked junctions in
+Plate 4. are just as accurately representative
+of the branching of wood as this
+(fig. 2.) is of a neck and shoulders. We
+should object to such a representation of
+shoulders, because we have some interest
+in, and knowledge of, human form; we
+do not object to Claude's trees, because we have no interest in,
+nor knowledge of, trees. And if it be still alleged that such
+work is nevertheless enough to give any one an "idea" of a tree,
+I answer that it never gave, nor ever will give, an idea of a tree
+to any one who loves trees; and that, moreover, no idea, whatever
+its pleasantness, is of the smallest value, which is not
+founded on simple facts. What pleasantness may be in <i>wrong</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>
+ideas we do not here inquire; the only question for us has always
+been, and must always be, What are the facts?</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. And assuredly those boughs of Claude's are not facts:
+and every one of their contours is, in the worst sense, unfinished,
+without even the expectation or faint hope of possible
+refinement ever coming into them. I do not mean to enter
+here into the discussion of the characters of ramification; that
+must be in our separate inquiry into tree-structure generally;
+but I will merely give one piece of Turner's tree-drawing as an
+example of what finished work really is, even in outline. In
+plate 5. opposite, fig. 1. is the contour (stripped, like Claude's,
+of its foliage) of one of the distant tree-stems in the drawing of
+Bolton Abbey. In order to show its perfectness better by contrast
+with bad work (as we have had, I imagine, enough of
+Claude), I will take a bit of Constable; fig. 2. is the principal
+tree out of the engraving of the Lock on the Stour (Leslie's
+Life of Constable). It differs from the Claude outlines merely
+in being the kind of work which is produced by an uninventive
+person dashing about idly, with a brush, instead of drawing determinately
+wrong, with a pen: on the one hand worse than
+Claude's, in being lazier; on the other a little better in being
+more free, but, as representative of tree-form, of course still
+wholly barbarous. It is worth while to turn back to the description
+of the uninventive painter at work on a tree (Vol. II.
+chapter on Imaginative Association, § 11), for this trunk of
+Constable's is curiously illustrative of it. One can almost see
+him, first bending it to the right; then, having gone long
+enough to the right, turning to the left; then, having gone long
+enough to the left, away to the right again; then dividing it;
+and "because there is another tree in the picture with two long
+branches (in this case there really is), he knows that this ought
+to have three or four, which must undulate or go backwards and
+forwards," &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>§ 14. Then study the bit of Turner work: note first its
+quietness, unattractiveness, apparent carelessness whether you
+look at it or not; next note the subtle curvatures within the
+narrowest limits, and, when it branches, the unexpected, out of
+the way things it does, just what nobody could have thought
+of its doing; shooting out like a letter Y, with a nearly straight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>
+branch, and then correcting its stiffness with a zigzag behind,
+so that the boughs, ugly individually, are beautiful in unison.
+(In what I have hereafter to say about trees, I shall need to
+dwell much on this character of <i>unexpectedness</i>. A bough is
+never drawn rightly if it is not wayward, so that although, as
+just now said, quiet at first, not caring to be looked at, the moment
+it is looked at, it seems bent on astonishing you, and
+doing the last things you expect it to do.) But our present
+purpose is only to note the <i>finish</i> of the Turner <i>curves</i>, which,
+though they seem straight and stiff at first, are, when you look
+long, seen to be all tremulous, perpetually wavering along every
+edge into endless melody of change. This is finish in line, in
+exactly the same sense that a fine melody is finished in the association
+of its notes.</p>
+
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_5" id="PLATE_5"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus145b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus145w.jpg" height="500"  alt="PLATE 5" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		5. Good and Bad Tree-Drawing.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>§ 15. And now, farther, let us take a little bit of the Turnerian
+tree in light and shade. I said above I would better the
+drawing of that pine trunk, which, though it has incipient
+shade, and muscular action, has no texture, nor local color.
+Now, I take about an inch and a half of Turner's ash trunks
+(one of the nearer ones) in this same drawing of Bolton Abbey
+(fig. 3. Plate 5.), and <i>this</i> I cannot better; this is perfectly finished;
+it is not possible to add more truth to it on that scale.
+Texture of bark, anatomy of muscle beneath, reflected lights in
+recessed hollows, stains of dark moss, and flickering shadows
+from the foliage above, all are there, as clearly as the human
+hand can mark them. I place a bit of trunk by Constable (fig.
+5.),<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>
+from another plate in Leslie's Life of him (a dell in
+Helmingham Park, Suffolk), for the sake of the same comparison
+in shade that we have above in contour. You see Constable
+does not know whether he is drawing moss or shadow:
+those dark touches in the middle are confused in his mind between
+the dark stains on the trunk and its dark side; there is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span>
+no anatomy, no cast shadow, nothing but idle sweeps of the
+brush, vaguely circular. The thing is much darker than Turner's,
+but it is not, therefore, finished; it is only blackened.
+And "to blacken" is indeed the proper word for all attempts at
+finish without knowledge. All true finish is <i>added fact</i>; and
+Turner's word for finishing a picture was always this significant
+one, "carry forward." But labor without added knowledge can
+only blacken or stain a picture, it cannot finish it.</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. And this is especially to be remembered as we pass
+from comparatively large and distant objects, such as this single
+trunk, to the more divided and nearer features of foreground.
+Some degree of ignorance may be hidden, in completing what is
+far away; but there is no concealment possible in close work,
+and darkening instead of finishing becomes then the engraver's
+only possible resource. It has always been a wonderful thing to
+me to hear people talk of making foregrounds "vigorous,"
+"marked," "forcible," and so on. If you will lie down on
+your breast on the next bank you come to (which is bringing it
+<i>close</i> enough, I should think, to give it all the force it is capable
+of), you will see, in the cluster of leaves and grass close to
+your face, something as delicate as this, which I have actually
+so drawn, on the opposite page, a mystery of soft shadow in the
+depths of the grass, with indefinite forms of leaves, which you
+cannot trace or count, within it, and out of that, the nearer
+leaves coming in every subtle gradation of tender light and flickering
+form, quite beyond all delicacy of pencilling to follow;
+and yet you will rise up from that bank (certainly not making it
+appear coarser by drawing a little back from it), and profess to
+represent it by a few blots of "forcible" foreground color.
+"Well, but I cannot draw every leaf that I see on the bank."
+No, for as we saw, at the beginning of this chapter, that no
+human work could be finished so as to express the <i>delicacy</i> of
+nature, so neither can it be finished so as to express the <i>redundance</i>
+of nature. Accept that necessity; but do not deny it;
+do not call your work finished, when you have, in engraving,
+substituted a confusion of coarse black scratches, or in water-color
+a few edgy blots, for ineffable organic beauty. Follow
+that beauty as far as you can, remembering that just as far as
+you see, know, and represent it, just so far your work is finished;
+as far as you fall short of it, your work is <i>un</i>fini<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>shed;
+and as far as you substitute any other thing for it, your work
+is spoiled.</p>
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_6" id="PLATE_6"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus149b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus149w.jpg" height="500"  alt="PLATE 6" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		6. Foreground Leafage.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 17. How far Turner followed it, is not easily shown; for
+his finish is so delicate as to be nearly uncopiable. I have just
+said it was not possible to finish that ash trunk of his, farther,
+on such a scale.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>
+By using a magnifying-glass, and giving the
+same help to the spectator, it might perhaps be possible to add
+and exhibit a few more details; but even as it is, I cannot by
+line engraving express all that there is in that piece of tree-trunk,
+on the same scale. I <i>have</i> therefore magnified the upper
+part of it in fig 4. (Plate 5.), so that the reader may better see
+the beautiful lines of curvature into which even its slightest
+shades and spots are cast. Every quarter of an inch in Turner's
+drawings will bear magnifying in the same way; much of the
+finer work in them can hardly be traced, except by the keenest
+sight, until it is magnified. In his painting of Ivy Bridge,<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a>
+the veins are drawn on the wings of a butterfly, not above three
+lines in diameter; and in one of his smaller drawings of Scarborough,
+in my own possession, the muscle-shells on the beach
+are rounded, and some shown as shut, some as open, though
+none are as large as one of the letters of this type; and yet this
+is the man who was thought to belong to the "dashing" school,
+literally because most people had not patience or delicacy of
+sight enough to trace his endless detail.</p>
+
+<p>§ 18. "Suppose it was so," perhaps the reader replies;
+"still I do not like detail so delicate that it can hardly be
+seen." Then you like nothing in Nature (for you will find she
+always carries her detail too far to be traced). This point,
+however, we shall examine hereafter; it is not the question now
+whether we <i>like</i> finish or not; our only inquiry here is, what
+finish <i>means</i>; and I trust the reader is beginning to be satisfied
+that it does indeed mean nothing but consummate and accumulated
+truth, and that our old monotonous test must still serve
+us here as elsewhere. And it will become us to consider seri<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>ously
+why (if indeed it be so) we dislike this kind of finish&mdash;dislike
+an accumulation of truth. For assuredly all authority is
+against us, and <i>no truly great man can be named in the arts&mdash;but
+it is that of one who finished to his utmost</i>. Take Leonardo,
+Michael Angelo, and Raphael for a triad, to begin with. <i>They</i>
+all completed their detail with such subtlety of touch and gradation,
+that, in a careful drawing by any of the three, you cannot
+see where the pencil ceased to touch the paper; the stroke
+of it is so tender, that, when you look close to the drawing you
+can see nothing; you only see the effect of it a little way back!
+Thus tender in execution,&mdash;and so complete in detail, that Leonardo
+must needs draw <i>every several vein in the little agates</i> and
+pebbles of the gravel under the feet of the St. Anne in the
+Louvre. Take a quartett after the triad&mdash;Titian, Tintoret, Bellini,
+and Veronese. Examine the vine-leaves of the Bacchus and
+Ariadne, (Titian's) in the National Gallery; examine the borage
+blossoms, painted petal by petal, though lying loose on the
+table, in Titian's Supper at Emmaus, in the Louvre, or the
+snail-shells on the ground in his Entombment;<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a>
+examine the
+separately designed patterns on every drapery of Veronese, in
+his Marriage in Cana; go to Venice and see how Tintoret
+paints the strips of black bark on the birch trunk that sustains
+the platform in his Adoration of the Magi: how Bellini fills the
+rents of his ruined walls with the most exquisite clusters of the
+erba della Madonna.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a>
+You will find them all in a tale. Take a
+quintett after the quartett&mdash;Francia, Angelico, Durer, Hemling,
+Perugino,&mdash;and still the witness is one, still the same striving
+in all to such utmost perfection as their knowledge and
+hand could reach.</p>
+
+<p>Who shall gainsay these men? Above all, who shall gainsay
+them when they and Nature say precisely the same thing?
+For where does Nature pause in <i>her</i> finishing&mdash;that finishing
+which consists not in the smoothing of surface, but the filling
+of space, and the multiplication of life and thought?</p>
+
+<p>Who shall gainsay them? I, for one, dare not; but accept
+their teaching, with Nature's, in all humbleness.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span>
+<p>"But is there, then, no good in any work which does not
+pretend to perfectness? Is there no saving clause from this terrible
+requirement of completion? And if there be none, what
+is the meaning of all you have said elsewhere about rudeness as
+the glory of Gothic work, and, even a few pages back, about the
+danger of finishing, for our modern workmen?"</p>
+
+<p>Indeed there are many saving clauses, and there is much
+good in imperfect work. But we had better cast the consideration
+of these drawbacks and exceptions into another chapter,
+and close this one, without obscuring, in any wise, our
+broad conclusion that "finishing" means in art simply "telling
+more truth;" and that whatever we have in any sort begun
+wisely, it is good to finish thoroughly.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"With his Yemen sword for aid;</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Ornament it carried none,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But the notches on the blade."</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a>
+See the base of the new Army and Navy Clubhouse.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a>
+I take this example from Miller, because, on the whole, he is the best
+engraver of Turner whom we have.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a>
+Fig. 5. is not, however, so <i>lustrous</i> as Constable's; I cannot help this,
+having given the original plate to my good friend Mr. Cousen, with strict
+charge to facsimile it faithfully: but the figure is all the fairer, as a representation
+of Constable's art, for those mezzotints in Leslie's life of him have
+many qualities of drawing which are quite wanting in Constable's blots of
+color. The comparison shall be made elaborately, between picture and picture,
+in the section on Vegetation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a>
+It is of the exact size of the original, the whole drawing being about
+15 <span style="font-size: 80%;"><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches by 11 in.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a>
+An oil painting (about 3 ft. by 4 ft. 6 in.), and very broad in its masses.
+In the possession of E. Bicknell, Esq.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a>
+These snail-shells are very notable, occurring as they do in, perhaps,
+the very grandest and broadest of all Titian's compositions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a>
+Linaria Cymbalaria, the ivy-leaved toadflax of English gardens.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE USE OF PICTURES.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. I am afraid this will be a difficult chapter; one of
+drawbacks, qualifications, and exceptions. But the more I see
+of useful truths, the more I find that, like human beings, they
+are eminently biped; and, although, as far as apprehended by
+human intelligence, they are usually seen in a crane-like posture,
+standing on one leg, whenever they are to be stated so as to
+maintain themselves against all attack it is quite necessary they
+should stand on two, and have their complete balance on opposite
+fulcra.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. I doubt not that one objection, with which as well as
+with another we may begin, has struck the reader very forcibly,
+after comparing the illustrations above given from Turner,
+Constable, and Claude. He will wonder how it was that Turner,
+finishing in this exquisite way, and giving truths by the
+thousand, where other painters gave only one or two, yet, of all
+painters, seemed to obtain least acknowledgeable resemblance to
+nature, so that the world cried out upon him for a madman, at
+the moment when he was giving exactly the highest and most
+consummate truth that had ever been seen in landscape.</p>
+
+<p>And he will wonder why still there seems reason for this
+outcry. Still, after what analysis and proof of his being right
+have as yet been given, the reader may perhaps be saying to
+himself: "All this reasoning is of no use to me. Turner does
+<i>not</i> give me the idea of nature; I do not feel before one of his
+pictures as I should in the real scene. Constable takes me out
+into the shower, and Claude into the sun; and De Wint makes
+me feel as if I were walking in the fields; but Turner keeps me
+in the house, and I know always that I am looking at a picture."</p>
+
+<p>I might answer to this; Well, what else <i>should</i> he do? If<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>
+you want to feel as if you were in a shower, cannot you go and
+get wet without help from Constable? If you want to feel as if
+you were walking in the fields, cannot you go and walk in them
+without help from De Wint? But if you want to sit in your
+room and look at a beautiful picture, why should you blame the
+artist for giving you one? This <i>was</i> the answer actually made
+to me by various journalists, when first I showed that Turner
+was truer than other painters: "Nay," said they, "we do not
+want truth, we want something else than truth; we would not
+have nature, but something better than nature."</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. I do not mean to accept that answer, although it seems
+at this moment to make for me: I have never accepted it. As
+I raise my eyes from the paper, to think over the curious mingling
+in it, of direct error, and far away truth, I see upon the
+room-walls, first, Turner's drawing of the chain of the Alps
+from the Superga above Turin; then a study of a block of
+gneiss at Chamouni, with the purple Aiguilles-Rouges behind it;
+another, of the towers of the Swiss Fribourg, with a cluster of
+pine forest behind them; then another Turner, Isola Bella, with
+the blue opening of the St. Gothard in the distance; and then
+a fair bit of thirteenth century illumination, depicting, at the
+top of the page, the Salutation; and beneath, the painter who
+painted it, sitting in his little convent cell, with a legend above
+him to this effect&mdash;</p>
+
+
+
+<blockquote><p>
+
+<span style="font-size:120%;">
+	<b>"ego ja<span style="text-decoration:overline;">he</span>s s<span style="text-decoration:overline;">cp</span>si hunc librum." </b>
+</span>
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I, John, wrote this book.</span><br />
+
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>None of these things are bad pieces of art; and yet,&mdash;if it
+were offered to me to have, instead of them, so many windows,
+out of which I should see, first, the real chain of the Alps from
+the Superga; then the real block of gneiss, and Aiguilles-Rouges;
+then the real towers of Fribourg, and pine forest; the
+real Isola Bella; and, finally, the true Mary and Elizabeth;
+and beneath them, the actual old monk at work in his cell,&mdash;I
+would very unhesitatingly change my five pictures for the five
+windows; and so, I apprehend, would most people, not, it
+seems to me, unwisely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," the reader goes on to question me, "the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span>
+more closely the picture resembles such a window the better it
+must be?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes.</p>
+
+<p>"Then if Turner does not give me the impression of such a
+window, that is of Nature, there must be something wrong in
+Turner?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes.</p>
+
+<p>"And if Constable and De Wint give me the impression of
+such a window, there must be something right in Constable and
+De Wint?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes.</p>
+
+<p>"And something more right than in Turner?"</p>
+
+<p>No.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you explain yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>I <i>have</i> explained myself, long ago, and that fully; perhaps
+too fully for the simple sum of the explanation to be remembered.
+If the reader will glance back to, and in the present
+state of our inquiry, reconsider in the first volume, Part I.
+Sec. <span class="smcap">I</span>. Chap. <span class="smcap">V.</span>, and Part II. Sec. <i>I.
+</i> Chap. <span class="smcap">VII.</span>,
+he will find our
+present difficulties anticipated. There are some truths, easily
+obtained, which give a deceptive resemblance to Nature; others
+only to be obtained with difficulty, which cause no deception,
+but give inner and deep resemblance. These two classes of
+truths cannot be obtained together; choice must be made between
+them. The bad painter gives the cheap deceptive resemblance.
+The good painter gives the precious non-deceptive
+resemblance. Constable perceives in a landscape that the grass
+is wet, the meadows flat, and the boughs shady; that is to say,
+about as much as, I suppose, might in general be apprehended,
+between them, by an intelligent fawn and a skylark. Turner
+perceives at a glance the whole sum of visible truth open to
+human intelligence. So Berghem perceives nothing in a figure,
+beyond the flashes of light on the folds of its dress; but
+Michael Angelo perceives every flash of thought that is passing
+through its spirit; and Constable and Berghem may imitate
+windows; Turner and Michael Angelo can by no means imitate
+windows. But Turner and Michael Angelo are nevertheless
+the best.</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. "Well but," the reader persists, "you admitted just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span>
+now that because Turner did not get his work to look like a
+window there was something wrong in him."</p>
+
+<p>I did so; if he were quite right he would have <i>all</i> truth, low
+as well as high; that is, he would be Nature and not Turner;
+but that is impossible to man. There is much that is wrong in
+him; much that is infinitely wrong in all human effort. But,
+nevertheless, in some an infinity of Betterness above other
+human effort.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but you said you would change your Turners for windows,
+why not, therefore, for Constables?"</p>
+
+<p>Nay, I did not say that I would change them for windows
+<i>merely</i>, but for windows which commanded the chain of the
+Alps and Isola Bella. That is to say, for all the truth that
+there is in Turner, and all the truth besides which is not in
+him; but I would not change them for Constables, to have a
+small piece of truth which is not in Turner, and none of the
+mighty truth which there is.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. Thus far, then, though the subject is one requiring
+somewhat lengthy explanation, it involves no real difficulty.
+There is not the slightest inconsistency in the mode in which
+throughout this work I have desired the relative merits of
+painters to be judged. I have always said, he who is closest to
+Nature is best. All rules are useless, all genius is useless, all
+labor is useless, if you do not give facts; the more facts you
+give the greater you are; and there is no fact so unimportant as
+to be prudently despised, if it be possible to represent it. Nor,
+but that I have long known the truth of Herbert's lines,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left:10em;">"Some men are</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Full of themselves, and answer their own notion,"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>would it have been without intense surprise that I heard querulous
+readers asking, "how it was possible" that I could praise
+Pre-Raphaelitism and Turner also. For, from the beginning of
+this book to this page of it, I have never praised Turner highly
+for any other cause than that he <i>gave facts</i> more <i>delicately</i>,
+more Pre-Raphaelitically, than other men. Careless readers,
+who dashed at the descriptions and missed the arguments, took
+up their own conceptions of the cause of my liking Turner, and
+said to themselves: "Turner cannot draw, Turner is generaliz<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>ing,
+vague, visionary; and the Pre-Raphaelites are hard and
+distinct. How can any one like both?"<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>
+But <i>I</i> never said
+that Turner could not draw. <i>I</i> never said that he was vague or
+visionary. What <i>I</i> said was, that nobody had ever drawn so
+well: that nobody was so certain, so <i>un</i>-visionary; that nobody
+had ever given so many hard and downright facts. Glance
+back to the first volume, and note the expressions now. "He
+is the only painter who ever drew a mountain or a stone;<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a>
+the only painter who can draw the stem of a tree; the only painter
+who has ever drawn the sky, previous artists having only drawn
+it typically or partially, but he absolutely and universally."
+Note how he is praised in his rock drawing for "not selecting a
+pretty or interesting morsel here or there, but giving the whole
+truth, with all the relations of its parts."<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a>
+Observe how the
+<i>great virtue</i> of the landscape of Cima da Conegliano and the
+early sacred painters is said to be giving "entire, exquisite,
+humble, realization&mdash;a strawberry-plant in the foreground with
+a blossom, <i>and a berry just set</i>, <i>and one half ripe, and one ripe</i>,
+all patiently and innocently painted from the <i>real thing, and</i>
+<i>therefore most divine</i>." Then re-read the following paragraph
+(§ 10.), carefully, and note its conclusion, that the thoroughly
+great men are those who have done everything thoroughly, and
+who have never despised anything, however small, of God's
+making; with the instance given of Wordsworth's daisy casting
+its shadow on a stone; and the following sentence, "Our painters
+must come to this before they have done their duty." And
+yet, when our painters <i>did</i> come to this, did do their duty, and
+did paint the daisy with its shadow (this passage having been
+written years before Pre-Raphaelitism was thought of), people
+wondered how I could possibly like what was neither more nor
+less than the precise fulfilment of my own most earnest exhortations
+and highest hopes.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>
+
+<p>§ 6. Thus far, then, all I have been saying is absolutely consistent,
+and tending to one simple end. Turner is praised for
+his truth and finish; that truth of which I am beginning to
+give examples. Pre-Raphaelitism is praised for its truth and
+finish; and the whole duty inculcated upon the artist is that of
+being in all respects as like Nature as possible.</p>
+
+<p>And yet this is not all I have to do. There is more than
+this to be inculcated upon the student, more than this to be
+admitted or established before the foundations of just judgment
+can be laid.</p>
+
+<p>For, observe, although I believe any sensible person would
+exchange his pictures, however good, for windows, he would
+not feel, and ought not to feel, that the arrangement was
+<i>entirely</i> gainful to him. He would feel it was an exchange of a
+less good of one kind, for a greater of another kind, but that it
+was definitely <i>exchange</i>, not pure gain, not merely getting more
+truth instead of less. The picture would be a serious loss;
+something gone which the actual landscape could never restore,
+though it might give something better in its place, as age may
+give to the heart something better than its youthful delusion,
+but cannot give again the sweetness of that delusion.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. What is this in the picture which is precious to us, and
+yet is not natural? Hitherto our arguments have tended, on
+the whole, somewhat to the depreciation of art; and the reader
+may every now and then, so far as he has been convinced by
+them, have been inclined to say, "Why not give up this whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span>
+science of Mockery at once, since its only virtue is in representing
+facts, and it cannot, at best, represent them completely, besides
+being liable to all manner of shortcomings and dishonesties,&mdash;why
+not keep to the facts, to real fields, and hills, and
+men, and let this dangerous painting alone?"</p>
+
+<p>No, it would not be well to do this. Painting has its peculiar
+virtues, not only consistent with but even resulting from,
+its shortcomings and weaknesses. Let us see what these virtues
+are.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. I must ask permission, as I have sometimes done before,
+to begin apparently a long way from the point.</p>
+
+<p>Not long ago, as I was leaving one of the towns of Switzerland
+early in the morning, I saw in the clouds behind the
+houses an Alp which I did not know, a grander Alp than any I
+knew, nobler than the Schreckhorn or the Mönch; terminated,
+as it seemed, on one side by a precipice of almost unimaginable
+height; on the other, sloping away for leagues in one field of
+lustrous ice, clear and fair and blue, flashing here and there
+into silver under the morning sun. For a moment I received a
+sensation of as much sublimity as any natural object could possibly
+excite; the next moment, I saw that my unknown Alp
+was the glass roof of one of the workshops of the town, rising
+above its nearer houses, and rendered aerial and indistinct by
+some pure blue wood smoke which rose from intervening chimneys.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident, that so far as the mere delight of the eye was
+concerned, the glass roof was here equal, or at least equal for a
+moment, to the Alp. Whether the power of the object over the
+heart was to be small or great, depended altogether upon what
+it was understood for, upon its being taken possession of and
+apprehended in its full nature, either as a granite mountain or
+a group of panes of glass; and thus, always, the real majesty of
+the appearance of the thing to us, depends upon the degree in
+which we ourselves possess the power of understanding it,&mdash;that
+penetrating, possession taking power of the imagination, which
+has been long ago defined<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>
+as the very life of the man, considered
+as a <i>seeing</i> creature. For though the casement had indeed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>
+been an Alp, there are many persons on whose minds it would
+have produced no more effect than the glass roof. It would
+have been to them a glittering object of a certain apparent
+length and breadth, and whether of glass or ice, whether twenty
+feet in length, or twenty leagues, would have made no difference
+to them; or, rather, would not have been in any wise conceived
+or considered by them. Examine the nature of your
+own emotion (if you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you
+find all the brightness of that emotion hanging, like dew on
+gossamer, on a curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect
+knowledge. First, you have a vague idea of its size, coupled
+with wonder at the work of the great Builder of its walls and
+foundations, then an apprehension of its eternity, a pathetic
+sense of its perpetualness, and your own transientness, as of the
+grass upon its sides; then, and in this very sadness, a sense of
+strange companionship with past generations in seeing what
+they saw. They did not see the clouds that are floating over
+your head; nor the cottage wall on the other side of the field;
+nor the road by which you are travelling. But they saw <i>that</i>.
+The wall of granite in the heavens was the same to them as to
+you. They have ceased to look upon it; you will soon cease to
+look also, and the granite wall will be for others. Then, mingled
+with these more solemn imaginations, come the understandings
+of the gifts and glories of the Alps, the fancying
+forth of all the fountains that well from its rocky walls, and
+strong rivers that are born out of its ice, and of all the pleasant
+valleys that wind between its cliffs, and all the châlets that
+gleam among its clouds, and happy farmsteads couched upon
+its pastures; while together with the thoughts of these, rise
+strange sympathies with all the unknown of human life, and
+happiness, and death, signified by that narrow white flame of
+the everlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky.</p>
+
+<p>These images, and far more than these, lie at the root of the
+emotion which you feel at the sight of the Alp. You may not
+trace them in your heart, for there is a great deal more in your
+heart, of evil and good, than you ever can trace; but they stir
+you and quicken you for all that. Assuredly, so far as you feel
+more at beholding the snowy mountain than any other object of
+the same sweet silvery grey, these are the kind of images which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span>
+cause you to do so; and, observe, these are nothing more than
+a greater apprehension of the <i>facts</i> of the thing. We call the
+power "Imagination," because it imagines or conceives; but it
+is only noble imagination if it imagines or conceives <i>the truth</i>.
+And, according to the degree of knowledge possessed, and of
+sensibility to the pathetic or impressive character of the things
+known, will be the degree of this imaginative delight.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. But the main point to be noted at present is, that if
+the imagination can be excited to this its peculiar work, it matters
+comparatively little what it is excited by. If the smoke had
+not cleared partially away, the glass roof might have pleased me
+as well as an alp, until I had quite lost sight of it; and if, in a
+picture, the imagination can be once caught, and, without absolute
+affront from some glaring fallacy, set to work in its own
+field, the imperfection of the historical details themselves is, to
+the spectator's enjoyment, of small consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Hence it is, that poets and men of strong feeling in general,
+are apt to be among the very worst judges of painting. The
+slightest hint is enough for them. Tell them that a white stroke
+means a ship, and a black stain, a thunderstorm, and they will
+be perfectly satisfied with both, and immediately proceed to
+remember all that they ever felt about ships and thunderstorms,
+attributing the whole current and fulness of their own feelings
+to the painter's work; while probably, if the picture be really
+good, and full of stern fact, the poet, or man of feeling, will
+find some of its fact <i>in his way</i>, out of the particular course
+of his own thoughts,&mdash;be offended at it, take to criticising and
+wondering at it, detect, at last, some imperfection in it,&mdash;such
+as must be inherent in all human work,&mdash;and so finally quarrel
+with, and reject the whole thing. Thus, Wordsworth writes
+many sonnets to Sir George Beaumont and Haydon, none to Sir
+Joshua or to Turner.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. Hence also the error into which many superficial
+artists fall, in speaking of "addressing the imagination" as the
+only end of art. It is quite true that the imagination must be
+addressed; but it may be very sufficiently addressed by the stain
+left by an ink-bottle thrown at the wall. The thrower has little
+credit, though an imaginative observer may find, perhaps, more
+to amuse him in the erratic nigrescence than in many a labored<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span>
+picture. And thus, in a slovenly or ill-finished picture, it is no
+credit to the artist that he has "addressed the imagination;"
+nor is the success of such an appeal any criterion whatever of the
+merit of the work. The duty of an artist is not only to address
+and awaken, but to <i>guide</i> the imagination; and there is no safe
+guidance but that of simple concurrence with fact. It is no
+matter that the picture takes the fancy of A. or B., that C.
+writes sonnets to it, and D. feels it to be divine. This is still
+the only question for the artist, or for us:&mdash;"Is it a fact? Are
+things really so? Is the picture an Alp among pictures, full,
+firm, eternal; or only a glass house, frail, hollow, contemptible,
+demolishable; calling, at all honest hands, for detection and
+demolition?"</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. Hence it is also that so much grievous difficulty
+stands in the way of obtaining <i>real opinion</i> about pictures at
+all. Tell any man, of the slightest imaginative power, that
+such and such a picture is good, and means this or that: tell
+him, for instance, that a Claude is good, and that it means
+trees, and grass, and water; and forthwith, whatever faith,
+virtue, humility, and imagination there are in the man, rise up
+to help Claude, and to declare that indeed it is all "excellent
+good, i'faith;" and whatever in the course of his life he has
+felt of pleasure in trees and grass, he will begin to reflect upon
+and enjoy anew, supposing all the while it is the picture he is
+enjoying. Hence, when once a painter's reputation is accredited,
+it must be a stubborn kind of person indeed whom he will
+not please, or seem to please; for all the vain and weak
+people pretend to be pleased with him, for their own credit's
+sake, and all the humble and imaginative people seriously and
+honestly fancy they <i>are</i> pleased with him, deriving indeed, very
+certainly, delight from his work, but a delight which, if they
+were kept in the same temper, they would equally derive (and,
+indeed, constantly do derive) from the grossest daub that can
+be manufactured in imitation by the pawnbroker. Is, therefore,
+the pawnbroker's imitation as good as the original?
+Not so. There is the certain test of goodness and badness,
+which I am always striving to get people to use. As long as
+they are satisfied if they find their feelings pleasantly stirred
+and their fancy gaily occupied, so long there is for them no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>
+good, no bad. Anything may please, or anything displease,
+them; and their entire manner of thought and talking about
+art is mockery, and all their judgments are laborious injustices.
+But let them, in the teeth of their pleasure or displeasure,
+simply put the calm question,&mdash;Is it so? Is that the way a
+stone is shaped, the way a cloud is wreathed, the way a leaf is
+veined? and they are safe. They will do no more injustice to
+themselves nor to other men; they will learn to whose guidance
+they may trust their imagination, and from whom they must for
+ever withhold its reins.</p>
+
+<p>§ 12. "Well, but why have you dragged in this poor spectator's
+imagination at all, if you have nothing more to say for
+it than this; if you are merely going to abuse it, and go back
+to your tiresome facts?"</p>
+
+<p>Nay; I am not going to abuse it. On the contrary, I have
+to assert, in a temper profoundly venerant of it, that though
+we must not suppose everything is right when this is aroused,
+we may be sure that something is wrong when this is <i>not</i>
+aroused. The something wrong may be in the spectator or in
+the picture; and if the picture be demonstrably in accordance
+with truth, the odds are, that it is in the spectator; but there is
+wrong somewhere; for the work of the picture is indeed eminently
+to get at this imaginative power in the beholder, and all
+its facts are of no use whatever if it does not. No matter how
+much truth it tells if the hearer be asleep. Its first work is to
+wake him, then to teach him.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. Now, observe, while, as it penetrates into the nature
+of things, the imagination is preeminently a beholder of things
+<i>as</i> they <i>are</i>, it is, in its creative function, an eminent beholder
+of things <i>when</i> and <i>where</i> they are <span class="smcap">NOT</span>; a seer, that is, in the
+prophetic sense, calling "the things that are not as though
+they were," and for ever delighting to dwell on that which is
+not tangibly present. And its great function being the calling
+forth, or back, that which is not visible to bodily sense, it has of
+course been made to take delight in the fulfilment of its proper
+function, and preeminently to enjoy, and spend its energy,
+on things past and future, or out of sight, rather than things
+present, or in sight. So that if the imagination is to be called
+to take delight in any object, it will not be always well, if we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span>
+can help it, to put the <i>real</i> object there, before it. The imagination
+would on the whole rather have it <i>not</i> there;&mdash;the reality
+and substance are rather in the imagination's way; it would
+think a good deal more of the thing if it could not see it.
+Hence, that strange and sometimes fatal charm, which there is in
+all things as long as we wait for them, and the moment we have
+lost them; but which fades while we possess them;&mdash;that sweet
+bloom of all that is far away, which perishes under our touch.
+Yet the feeling of this is not a weakness; it is one of the most
+glorious gifts of the human mind, making the whole infinite
+future, and imperishable past, a richer inheritance, if faithfully
+inherited, than the changeful, frail, fleeting present; it is also
+one of the many witnesses in us to the truth that these present
+and tangible things are not meant to satisfy us. The instinct
+becomes a weakness only when it is weakly indulged, and when
+the faculty which was intended by God to give back to us what
+we have lost, and gild for us what is to come, is so perverted as
+only to darken what we possess. But, perverted or pure, the instinct
+itself is everlasting, and the substantial presence even of
+the things which we love the best, will inevitably and for ever be
+found wanting in <i>one</i> strange and tender charm, which belonged
+to the dreams of them.</p>
+
+<p>§ 14. Another character of the imagination is equally constant,
+and, to our present inquiry, of yet greater importance. It
+is eminently a <i>weariable</i> faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable
+of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects
+at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long
+time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly
+as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering
+any farther appeal till it has had rest. And this is the real
+nature of the weariness which is so often felt in travelling, from
+seeing too much. It is not that the monotony and number of
+the beautiful things seen have made them valueless, but that the
+imaginative power has been overtaxed; and, instead of letting
+it rest, the traveller, wondering to find himself dull, and incapable
+of admiration, seeks for something more admirable, excites,
+and torments, and drags the poor fainting imagination up by
+the shoulders: "Look at this, and look at that, and this more
+wonderful still!"&mdash;until the imaginative faculty faints utterly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span>
+away, beyond all farther torment or pleasure, dead for many a
+day to come; and the despairing prodigal takes to horse-racing
+in the Campagna, good now for nothing else than that;
+whereas, if the imagination had only been laid down on the
+grass, among simple things, and left quiet for a little while, it
+would have come to itself gradually, recovered its strength and
+color, and soon been fit for work again. So that, whenever
+the imagination is tired, it is necessary to find for it something,
+not <i>more</i> admirable but <i>less</i> admirable; such as in that weak
+state it can deal with; then give it peace, and it will recover.</p>
+
+<p>§ 15. I well recollect the walk on which I first found out
+this; it was on the winding road from Sallenche, sloping up
+the hills towards St. Gervais, one cloudless Sunday afternoon.
+The road circles softly between bits of rocky bank and mounded
+pasture; little cottages and chapels gleaming out from among
+the trees at every turn. Behind me, some leagues in length, rose
+the jagged range of the mountains of the Réposoir; on the other
+side of the valley, the mass of the Aiguille de Varens, heaving
+its seven thousand feet of cliff into the air at a single effort, its
+gentle gift of waterfall, the Nant d'Arpenaz, like a pillar of
+cloud at its feet; Mont Blanc and all its aiguilles, one silver
+flame, in front of me; marvellous blocks of mossy granite and
+dark glades of pine around me; but I could enjoy nothing, and
+could not for a long while make out what was the matter with
+me, until at last I discovered that if I confined myself to one
+thing,&mdash;and that a little thing,&mdash;a tuft of moss, or a single crag
+at the top of the Varens, or a wreath or two of foam at the
+bottom of the Nant d'Arpenaz, I began to enjoy it directly,
+because then I had mind enough to put into the thing, and the
+enjoyment arose from the quantity of the imaginative energy I
+could bring to bear upon it; but when I looked at or thought
+of all together, moss, stones, Varens, Nant d'Arpenaz, and
+Mont Blanc, I had not mind enough to give to all, and none
+were of any value. The conclusion which would have been
+formed, upon this, by a German philosopher, would have been
+that the Mont Blanc <i>was</i> of no value; that he and his imagination
+only were of value; that the Mont Blanc, in fact, except
+so far as he was able to look at it, could not be considered
+as having any existence. But the only conclusion which oc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span>curred
+to me as reasonable under the circumstances (I have seen
+no ground for altering it since) was, that I was an exceedingly
+small creature, much tired, and, at the moment, not a little
+stupid, for whom a blade of grass, or a wreath of foam, was
+quite food enough and to spare, and that if I tried to take
+any more, I should make myself ill. Whereupon, associating
+myself fraternally with some ants, who were deeply interested
+in the conveyance of some small sticks over the road, and
+rather, as I think they generally are, in too great a hurry about
+it, I returned home in a little while with great contentment,
+thinking how well it was ordered that, as Mont Blanc and his
+pine forests could not be everywhere, nor all the world come to
+see them, the human mind, on the whole, should enjoy itself
+most surely in an ant-like manner, and be happy and busy with
+the bits of stick and grains of crystal that fall in its way to be
+handled, in daily duty.</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. It follows evidently from the first of these characters
+of the imagination, its dislike of substance and presence, that a
+picture has in some measure even an advantage with us in not
+being real. The imagination rejoices in having something to
+do, springs up with all its willing power, flattered and happy;
+and ready with its fairest colors and most tender pencilling, to
+prove itself worthy of the trust, and exalt into sweet supremacy
+the shadow that has been confided to its fondness. And thus,
+so far from its being at all an object to the painter to make his
+work look real, he ought to dread such a consummation as the
+loss of one of its most precious claims upon the heart. So far
+from striving to convince the beholder that what he sees is substance,
+his mind should be to what he paints as the fire to the
+body on the pile, burning away the ashes, leaving the unconquerable
+shade&mdash;an immortal dream. So certain is this, that
+the slightest local success in giving the deceptive appearance of
+reality&mdash;the imitation, for instance, of the texture of a bit of
+wood, with its grain in relief&mdash;will instantly destroy the charm
+of a whole picture; the imagination feels itself insulted and injured,
+and passes by with cold contempt; nay, however beautiful
+the whole scene may be, as of late in much of our highly
+wrought painting for the stage, the mere fact of its being
+deceptively real is enough to make us tire of it; we may be sur<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>prised
+and pleased for a moment, but the imagination will not
+on those terms be persuaded to give any of its help, and, in a
+quarter of an hour, we wish the scene would change.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. "Well, but then, what becomes of all these long dogmatic
+chapters of yours about giving nothing but the truth, and
+as much truth as possible?"</p>
+
+<p>The chapters are all quite right. "Nothing but the
+Truth," I say still. "As much Truth as possible," I say still.
+But truth so presented, that it will need the help of the imagination
+to make it real. Between the painter and the beholder,
+each doing his proper part, the reality should be sustained; and
+after the beholding imagination has come forward and done its
+best, then, with its help, and in the full action of it, the beholder
+should be able to say, I feel as if I were at the real place,
+or seeing the real incident. But not without that help.</p>
+
+<p>§ 18. Farther, in consequence of that other character of the
+imagination, fatiguableness, it is a great advantage to the picture
+that it need not present too much at once, and that what
+it does present may be so chosen and ordered as not only to be
+more easily seized, but to give the imagination rest, and, as it
+were, places to lie down and stretch its limbs in; kindly vacancies,
+beguiling it back into action, with pleasant and cautious
+sequence of incident; all jarring thoughts being excluded, all
+vain redundance denied, and all just and sweet transition permitted.</p>
+
+<p>And thus it is that, for the most part, imperfect sketches,
+engravings, outlines, rude sculptures, and other forms of abstraction,
+possess a charm which the most finished picture frequently
+wants. For not only does the finished picture excite the
+imagination less, but, like nature itself, it <i>taxes</i> it more. None
+of it can be enjoyed till the imagination is brought to bear upon
+it; and the details of the completed picture are so numerous,
+that it needs greater strength and willingness in the beholder to
+follow them all out; the redundance, perhaps, being not too
+great for the mind of a careful observer, but too great for a
+casual or careless observer. So that although the perfection of
+art will always consist in the utmost <i>acceptable</i> completion, yet,
+as every added idea will increase the difficulty of apprehension,
+and every added touch advance the dangerous realism which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>
+makes the imagination languid, the difference between a noble
+and ignoble painter is in nothing more sharply defined than in
+this,&mdash;that the first wishes to put into his work as much truth as
+possible, and yet to keep it looking <i>un</i>-real; the second wishes
+to get through his work lazily, with as little truth as possible,
+and yet to make it look real; and, so far as they add color to
+their abstract sketch, the first realizes for the sake of the color,
+and the second colors for the sake of the realization.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 19. And then, lastly, it is another infinite advantage possessed
+by the picture, that in these various differences from reality
+it becomes the expression of the power and intelligence of
+a companionable human soul. In all this choice, arrangement,
+penetrative sight, and kindly guidance, we recognize a supernatural
+operation, and perceive, not merely the landscape or incident
+as in a mirror, but, besides, the presence of what, after all,
+may perhaps be the most wonderful piece of divine work in the
+whole matter&mdash;the great human spirit through which it is
+manifested to us. So that, although with respect to many
+important scenes, it might, as we saw above, be one of the most
+precious gifts that could be given us to see them with <i>our own
+eyes</i>, yet also in many things it is more desirable to be permitted
+to see them with the eyes of others; and although, to the small,
+conceited, and affected painter displaying his narrow knowledge
+and tiny dexterities, our only word may be, "Stand aside from
+between that nature and me," yet to the great imaginative painter&mdash;greater
+a million times in every faculty of soul than we&mdash;our
+word may wisely be, "Come between this nature and me&mdash;this
+nature which is too great and too wonderful for me; temper it
+for me, interpret it to me; let me see with your eyes, and hear
+with your ears, and have help and strength from your great
+spirit."</p>
+
+<p>All the noblest pictures have this character. They are true or
+inspired ideals, seen in a moment to <i>be</i> ideal; that is to say, the
+result of all the highest powers of the imagination, engaged in the
+discovery and apprehension of the purest truths, and having so
+arranged them as best to show their preciousness and exalt their
+clearness. They are always orderly, always one, ruled by one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span>
+great purpose throughout, in the fulfilment of which every atom
+of the detail is called to help, and would be missed if removed;
+this peculiar oneness being the result, not of obedience to any
+teachable law, but of the magnificence of tone in the perfect
+mind, which accepts only what is good for its great purposes,
+rejects whatever is foreign or redundant, and instinctively and
+instantaneously ranges whatever it accepts, in sublime subordination
+and helpful brotherhood.</p>
+
+<p>§ 20. Then, this being the greatest art, the lowest art is the
+mimicry of it,&mdash;the subordination of nothing to nothing; the
+elaborate arrangement of sightlessness and emptiness; the
+order which has no object; the unity which has no life, and the
+law which has no love; the light which has nothing to illumine,
+and shadow which has nothing to relieve.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 21. And then, between these two, comes the wholesome,
+happy, and noble&mdash;though not noblest&mdash;art of simple transcript
+from nature; into which, so far as our modern Pre-Raphaelitism
+falls, it will indeed do sacred service in ridding us of the
+old fallacies and componencies, but cannot itself rise above the
+level of simple and happy usefulness. So far as it is to be
+great, it must add,&mdash;and so far as it <i>is</i> great, has already added,&mdash;the
+great imaginative element to all its faithfulness in transcript.
+And for this reason, I said in the close of my Edinburgh
+Lectures, that Pre-Raphaelitism, as long as it confined
+itself to the simple copying of nature, could not take the character
+of the highest class of art. But it has already, almost
+unconsciously, supplied the defect, and taken that character, in
+all its best results; and, so far as it ought, hereafter, it will
+assuredly do so, as soon as it is permitted to maintain itself in
+any other position than that of stern antagonism to the composition
+teachers around it. I say "so far as it ought," because, as
+already noticed in that same place, we have enough, and to spare,
+of noble <i>inventful</i> pictures; so many have we, that we let them
+moulder away on the walls and roofs of Italy without one regretful
+thought about them. But of simple transcripts from
+nature, till now we have had none; even Van Eyck and Albert
+Durer having been strongly filled with the spirit of grotesque
+idealism; so that the Pre-Raphaelites have, to the letter, fulfilled
+Steele's description of the author, who "determined to write
+in an entirely new manner, and describe things exactly as they
+took place."</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+<p>§ 22. We have now, I believe, in some sort answered most of
+the questions which were suggested to us during our statement
+of the nature of great art. I could recapitulate the answers;
+but perhaps the reader is already sufficiently wearied of the
+recurrence of the terms "Ideal," "Nature," "Imagination,"
+"Invention," and will hardly care to see them again interchanged
+among each other, in the formalities of a summary.
+What difficulties may yet occur to him will, I think, disappear
+as he either re-reads the passages which suggested them, or follows
+out the consideration of the subject for himself:&mdash;this
+very simple, but very precious, conclusion being continually
+remembered by him as the sum of all; that greatness in art (as
+assuredly in all other things, but more distinctly in this than in
+most of them,) is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but <i>the
+expression of the mind of a God-made great man</i>; that teach, or
+preach, or labor as you will, everlasting difference is set between
+one man's capacity and another's; and that this God-given
+supremacy is the priceless thing, always just as rare in
+the world at one time as another. What you can manufacture,
+or communicate, you can lower the price of, but this mental
+supremacy is incommunicable; you will never multiply its
+quantity, nor lower its price; and nearly the best thing that
+men can generally do is to set themselves, not to the attainment,
+but the discovery of this; learning to know gold, when
+we see it, from iron-glance, and diamonds from flint-sand, being
+for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to
+make diamonds out of our own charcoal. And for this God-made
+supremacy, I generally have used, and shall continue to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>
+use, the word Inspiration, not carelessly nor lightly, but in all
+logical calmness and perfect reverence. We English have many
+false ideas about reverence: we should be shocked, for instance,
+to see a market-woman come into church with a basket of eggs
+on her arm: we think it more reverent to lock her out till Sunday;
+and to surround the church with respectability of iron
+railings, and defend it with pacing inhabitation of beadles. I
+believe this to be <i>ir</i>reverence; and that it is more truly reverent,
+when the market-woman, hot and hurried, at six in the
+morning, her head much confused with calculations of the
+probable price of eggs, can nevertheless get within church
+porch, and church aisle, and church chancel, lay the basket
+down on the very steps of the altar, and receive thereat so much
+of help and hope as may serve her for the day's work. In like
+manner we are solemnly, but I think not wisely, shocked at any
+one who comes hurriedly into church, in any figurative way,
+with his basket on his arm; and perhaps, so long as we feel it
+so, it is better to keep the basket out. But, as for this one
+commodity of high mental supremacy, it cannot be kept out,
+for the very fountain of it is in the church wall, and there
+is no other right word for it but this of Inspiration; a word,
+indeed, often ridiculously perverted, and irreverently used of
+fledgling poets and pompous orators&mdash;no one being offended
+then, and yet cavilled at when quietly used of the spirit that it
+is in a truly great man; cavilled at, chiefly, it seems to me, because
+we expect to know inspiration by the look of it. Let a
+man have shaggy hair, dark eyes, a rolling voice, plenty of animal
+energy, and a facility of rhyming or sentencing, and&mdash;improvisatore
+or sentimentalist&mdash;we call him "inspired" willingly
+enough; but let him be a rough, quiet worker, not proclaiming
+himself melodiously in any wise, but familiar with us, unpretending,
+and letting all his littlenesses and feeblenesses be seen, unhindered,&mdash;wearing
+an ill-cut coat withal, and, though he be
+such a man as is only sent upon the earth once in five hundred
+years, for some special human teaching, it is irreverent to call
+him "inspired." But, be it irreverent or not, this word I must
+always use; and the rest of what work I have here before me,
+is simply to prove the truth of it, with respect to the one among<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span>
+these mighty spirits whom we have just lost; who divided his
+hearers, as many an inspired speaker has done before now, into
+two great sects&mdash;a large and a narrow; these searching the
+Nature-scripture calmly, "whether those things were so," and
+those standing haughtily on their Mars hill, asking, "what will
+this babbler say?"</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a>
+People of any sense, however, confined themselves to wonder. I think
+it was only in the Art Journal of September 1st, 1854, that any writer had
+the meanness to charge me with insincerity. "The pictures of Turner and
+the works of the Pre-Raphaelites are the very antipodes of each other; it is,
+therefore, impossible that one and the same individual can with any <i>show of
+sincerity</i> [Note, by the way, the Art-Union has no idea that <i>real</i> sincerity is
+a thing existent or possible at all. All that it expects or hopes of human
+nature is, that it should have <i>show</i> of sincerity,] stand forth as the thick
+and thin [I perceive the writer intends to teach me English, as well as honesty,]
+eulogist of both. With a certain knowledge of art, such as may be
+possessed by the author of English Painters, [Note, farther, that the eminent
+critic does not so much as know the title of the book he is criticising,]
+it is not difficult to praise any bad or mediocre picture that may be qualified
+with extravagance or mysticism. This author owes the public a heavy debt
+of explanation, which a lifetime spent in ingenious reconciliations would
+not suffice to discharge. A fervent admiration of certain pictures by
+Turner, and, at the same time, of some of the severest productions of the
+Pre-Raphaelites, presents an insuperable problem to persons whose taste in
+art is regulated by definite principles."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a>
+Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. § 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a>
+Part II. Sec. IV. Chap. IV. § 23., and Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. § 9.
+The whole of the Preface to the Second Edition is written to maintain this
+one point of specific detail against the advocates of generalization.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a>
+Vol. II. Chapter on Penetrative Imagination.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a>
+Several other points connected with this subject have already been
+noticed in the last chapter of the Stones of Venice, § 21. &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a>
+"Though my pictures should have nothing else, they shall have Chiaroscuro."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Constable</span>
+(in Leslie's Life of him). It is singular to reflect
+what that fatal Chiaroscuro has done in art, in the full extent of its influence.
+It has been not only shadow, but shadow of Death: passing over the
+face of the ancient art, as death itself might over a fair human countenance;
+whispering, as it reduced it to the white projections and lightless
+orbits of the skull, "Thy face shall have nothing else, but it shall have
+Chiaroscuro."</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. Having now obtained, I trust, clear ideas, up to a
+certain point, of what is generally right and wrong in all art,
+both in conception and in workmanship, we have to apply these
+laws of right to the particular branch of art which is the subject
+of our present inquiry, namely, landscape-painting. Respecting
+which, after the various meditations into which we
+have been led on the high duties and ideals of art, it may not
+improbably occur to us first to ask,&mdash;whether it be worth inquiring
+about at all.</p>
+
+<p>That question, perhaps the reader thinks, should have been
+asked and answered before I had written, or he read, two volumes
+and a half about it. So I <i>had</i> answered it, in my own
+mind; but it seems time now to give the grounds for this
+answer. If, indeed, the reader has never suspected that
+landscape-painting was anything but good, right, and healthy work,
+I should be sorry to put any doubt of its being so into his
+mind; but if, as seems to me more likely, he, living in this
+busy and perhaps somewhat calamitous age, has some suspicion
+that landscape-painting is but an idle and empty business, not
+worth all our long talk about it, then, perhaps, he will be
+pleased to have such suspicion done away, before troubling himself
+farther with these disquisitions.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. I should rather be glad, than otherwise, that he <i>had</i>
+formed some suspicion on this matter. If he has at all admitted
+the truth of anything hitherto said respecting great art, and
+its choices of subject, it seems to me he ought, by this time, to
+be questioning with himself whether road-side weeds, old cottages,
+broken stones, and such other materials, be worthy matters
+for grave men to busy themselves in the imitation of. And
+I should like him to probe this doubt to the deep of it, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>
+bring all his misgivings out to the broad light, that we may see
+how we are to deal with them, or ascertain if indeed they are
+too well founded to be dealt with.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. And to this end I would ask him now to imagine himself
+entering, for the first time in his life, the room of the Old
+Water-Color Society; and to suppose that he has entered it, not
+for the sake of a quiet examination of the paintings one by one,
+but in order to seize such ideas as it may generally suggest
+respecting the state and meaning of modern as compared with
+elder, art. I suppose him, of course, that he may be capable of
+such a comparison, to be in some degree familiar with the
+different forms in which art has developed itself within the
+periods historically known to us; but never, till that moment,
+to have seen any completely modern work. So prepared, and
+so unprepared, he would, as his ideas began to arrange themselves,
+be first struck by the number of paintings representing
+blue mountains, clear lakes, and ruined castles or cathedrals,
+and he would say to himself: "There is something strange in
+the mind of these modern people! Nobody ever cared about
+blue mountains before, or tried to paint the broken stones of
+old walls." And the more he considered the subject, the more
+he would feel the peculiarity; and, as he thought over the art
+of Greeks and Romans, he would still repeat, with increasing
+certainty of conviction: "Mountains! I remember none.
+The Greeks did not seem, as artists, to know that such things
+were in the world. They carved, or variously represented,
+men, and horses, and beasts, and birds, and all kinds of living
+creatures,&mdash;yes, even down to cuttle-fish; and trees, in a sort
+of way; but not so much as the outline of a mountain; and as
+for lakes, they merely showed they knew the difference between
+salt and fresh water by the fish they put into each." Then he
+would pass on to mediæval art: and still he would be obliged
+to repeat: "Mountains! I remember none. Some careless and
+jagged arrangements of blue spires or spikes on the horizon,
+and, here and there, an attempt at representing an overhanging
+rock with a hole through it; but merely in order to divide the
+light behind some human figure. Lakes! No, nothing of the
+kind,&mdash;only blue bays of sea put in to fill up the background
+when the painter could not think of anything else. Broken-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>down
+buildings! No; for the most part very complete and
+well-appointed buildings, if any; and never buildings at all,
+but to give place or explanation to some circumstance of human
+conduct." And then he would look up again to the modern
+pictures, observing, with an increasing astonishment, that here
+the human interest had, in many cases, altogether disappeared.
+That mountains, instead of being used only as a blue ground
+for the relief of the heads of saints, were themselves the exclusive
+subjects of reverent contemplation; that their ravines, and
+peaks, and forests, were all painted with an appearance of as
+much enthusiasm as had formerly been devoted to the dimple
+of beauty, or the frowns of asceticism; and that all the living
+interest which was still supposed necessary to the scene, might
+be supplied by a traveller in a slouched hat, a beggar in a
+scarlet cloak, or, in default of these, even by a heron or a wild
+duck.</p>
+
+<p>And if he could entirely divest himself of his own modern
+habits of thought, and regard the subjects in question with the
+feelings of a knight or monk of the middle ages, it might be a
+question whether those feelings would not rapidly verge towards
+contempt. "What!" he might perhaps mutter to himself,
+"here are human beings spending the whole of their lives in
+making pictures of bits of stone and runlets of water, withered
+sticks and flying frogs, and actually not a picture of the gods
+or the heroes! none of the saints or the martyrs! none of the
+angels and demons! none of councils or battles, or any other
+single thing worth the thought of a man! Trees and clouds
+indeed! as if I should not see as many trees as I cared to see,
+and more, in the first half of my day's journey to-morrow, or
+as if it mattered to any man whether the sky were clear or
+cloudy, so long as his armor did not get too hot in the sun!"</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. There can be no question that this would have been
+somewhat the tone of thought with which either a Lacedæmonian,
+a soldier of Rome in her strength, or a knight of the
+thirteenth century, would have been apt to regard these particular
+forms of our present art. Nor can there be any question
+that, in many respects, their judgment would have been just.
+It is true that the indignation of the Spartan or Roman would
+have been equally excited against any appearance of luxurious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span>
+industry; but the mediæval knight would, to the full, have
+admitted the nobleness of art; only he would have had it employed
+in decorating his church or his prayer-book, nor in
+imitating moors and clouds. And the feelings of all the three
+would have agreed in this,&mdash;that their main ground of offence
+must have been the want of <i>seriousness</i> and <i>purpose</i> in what
+they saw. They would all have admitted the nobleness of whatever
+conduced to the honor of the gods, or the power of the
+nation; but they would not have understood how the skill of
+human life could be wisely spent in that which did no honor
+either to Jupiter or to the Virgin; and which in no wise
+tended, apparently, either to the accumulation of wealth, the
+excitement of patriotism, or the advancement of morality.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. And exactly so far forth their judgment would be just,
+as the landscape-painting could indeed be shown, for others as
+well as for them, to be art of this nugatory kind; and so far
+forth unjust, as that painting could be shown to depend upon,
+or cultivate, certain sensibilities which neither the Greek nor
+mediæval knight possessed, and which have resulted from some
+extraordinary change in human nature since their time. We
+have no right to assume, without very accurate examination of
+it, that this change has been an ennobling one. The simple
+fact, that we are, in some strange way, different from all the great
+races that have existed before us, cannot at once be received as
+the proof of our own greatness; nor can it be granted, without
+any question, that we have a legitimate subject of complacency
+in being under the influence of feelings, with which neither
+Miltiades nor the Black Prince, neither Homer nor Dante,
+neither Socrates nor St. Francis, could for an instant have
+sympathized.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. Whether, however, this fact be one to excite our pride
+or not, it is assuredly one to excite our deepest interest. The
+fact itself is certain. For nearly six thousand years the energies
+of man have pursued certain beaten paths, manifesting some
+constancy of feeling throughout all that period, and involving
+some fellowship at heart, among the various nations who by
+turns succeeded or surpassed each other in the several aims of
+art or policy. So that, for these thousands of years, the whole
+human race might be to some extent described in general terms.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span>
+Man was a creature separated from all others by his instinctive
+sense of an Existence superior to his own, invariably manifesting
+this sense of the being of a God more strongly in proportion
+to his own perfectness of mind and body; and making enormous
+and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some persuasion
+of the immediate presence or approval of the Divinity. So
+that, on the whole, the best things he did were done as in the
+presence, or for the honor, of his gods; and, whether in statues,
+to help him to imagine them, or temples raised to their honor,
+or acts of self-sacrifice done in the hope of their love, he brought
+whatever was best and skilfullest in him into their service, and
+lived in a perpetual subjection to their unseen power. Also,
+he was always anxious to know something definite about them;
+and his chief books, songs, and pictures were filled with legends
+about them, or especially devoted to illustration of their lives
+and nature.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. Next to these gods he was always anxious to know
+something about his human ancestors; fond of exalting the
+memory, and telling or painting the history of old rulers and
+benefactors; yet full of an enthusiastic confidence in himself,
+as having in many ways advanced beyond the best efforts of past
+time; and eager to record his own doings for future fame. He
+was a creature eminently warlike, placing his principal pride in
+dominion; eminently beautiful, and having great delight in his
+own beauty: setting forth this beauty by every species of invention
+in dress, and rendering his arms and accoutrements superbly
+decorative of his form. He took, however, very little
+interest in anything but what belonged to humanity; caring in
+no wise for the external world, except as it influenced his own
+destiny; honoring the lightning because it could strike him,
+the sea because it could drown him, the fountains because they
+gave him drink, and the grass because it yielded him seed; but
+utterly incapable of feeling any special happiness in the love of
+such things, or any earnest emotion about them, considered as
+separate from man; therefore giving no time to the study of
+them;&mdash;knowing little of herbs, except only which were hurtful,
+and which healing; of stones, only which would glitter
+brightest in a crown, or last the longest in a wall; of the wild
+beasts, which were best for food, and which the stoutest quarry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>
+for the hunter;&mdash;thus spending only on the lower creatures and
+inanimate things his waste energy, his dullest thoughts, his
+most languid emotions, and reserving all his acuter intellect for
+researches into his own nature and that of the gods; all his
+strength of will for the acquirement of political or moral
+power; all his sense of beauty for things immediately connected
+with his own person and life; and all his deep affections for
+domestic or divine companionship.</p>
+
+<p>Such, in broad light and brief terms, was man for five thousand
+years. Such he is no longer. Let us consider what he is
+now, comparing the descriptions clause by clause.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. I. He <i>was</i> invariably sensible of the existence of gods,
+and went about all his speculations or works holding this as an
+acknowledged fact, making his best efforts in their service.
+<i>Now</i> he is capable of going through life with hardly any positive
+idea on this subject,&mdash;doubting, fearing, suspecting,
+analyzing,&mdash;doing everything, in fact, <i>but</i> believing; hardly ever
+getting quite up to that point which hitherto was wont to be
+the starting point for all generations. And human work has
+accordingly hardly any reference to spiritual beings, but is done
+either from a patriotic or personal interest,&mdash;either to benefit
+mankind, or reach some selfish end, not (I speak of human
+work in the broad sense) to please the gods.</p>
+
+<p>II. He <i>was</i> a beautiful creature, setting forth this beauty by
+all means in his power, and depending upon it for much of his
+authority over his fellows. So that the ruddy cheek of David,
+and the ivory skin of Atrides, and the towering presence of
+Saul, and the blue eyes of C&oelig;ur de Lion, were among the chief
+reasons why they should be kings; and it was one of the aims
+of all education, and of all dress, to make the presence of the
+human form stately and lovely. <i>Now</i> it has become the task
+of grave philosophy partly to depreciate or conceal this bodily
+beauty; and even by those who esteem it in their hearts, it is
+not made one of the great ends of education: man has become,
+upon the whole, an ugly animal, and is not ashamed of his ugliness.</p>
+
+<p>III. He <i>was</i> eminently warlike. He is <i>now</i> gradually becoming
+more and more ashamed of all the arts and aims of
+battle. So that the desire of dominion, which was once frankly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span>
+confessed or boasted of as a heroic passion, is now sternly reprobated
+or cunningly disclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>IV. He <i>used</i> to take no interest in anything but what immediately
+concerned himself. <i>Now</i>, he has deep interest in the
+abstract natures of things, inquires as eagerly into the laws
+which regulate the economy of the material world, as into those
+of his own being, and manifests a passionate admiration of
+inanimate objects, closely resembling, in its elevation and tenderness,
+the affection which he bears to those living souls with
+which he is brought into the nearest fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. It is this last change only which is to be the subject of
+our present inquiry; but it cannot be doubted that it is closely
+connected with all the others, and that we can only thoroughly
+understand its nature by considering it in this connection.
+For, regarded by itself, we might, perhaps, too rashly assume it
+to be a natural consequence of the progress of the race. There
+appears to be a diminution of selfishness in it, and a more
+extended and heartfelt desire of understanding the manner of
+God's working; and this the more, because one of the permanent
+characters of this change is a greater accuracy in the statement
+of external facts. When the eyes of men were fixed first
+upon themselves, and upon nature solely and secondarily as
+bearing upon their interests, it was of less consequence to them
+what the ultimate laws of nature were, than what their immediate
+effects were upon human beings. Hence they could rest
+satisfied with phenomena instead of principles, and accepted
+without scrutiny every fable which seemed sufficiently or gracefully
+to account for those phenomena. But so far as the eyes
+of men are now withdrawn from themselves, and turned upon
+the inanimate things about them, the results cease to be of
+importance, and the laws become essential.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. In these respects, it might easily appear to us that this
+change was assuredly one of steady and natural advance. But
+when we contemplate the others above noted, of which it is
+clearly one of the branches or consequences, we may suspect
+ourselves of over-rashness in our self-congratulation, and admit
+the necessity of a scrupulous analysis both of the feeling itself
+and of its tendencies.</p>
+
+<p>Of course a complete analysis, or anything like it, would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span>
+involve a treatise on the whole history of the world. I shall
+merely endeavor to note some of the leading and more interesting
+circumstances bearing on the subject, and to show sufficient
+practical ground for the conclusion, that landscape painting is
+indeed a noble and useful art, though one not long known by
+man. I shall therefore examine, as best I can, the effect of
+landscape, 1st, on the Classical mind; 2ndly, on the Mediæval
+mind; and lastly, on the Modern mind. But there is one point
+of some interest respecting the effect of it on <i>any</i> mind, which
+must be settled first, and this I will endeavor to do in the next
+chapter.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. German dulness and English affectation, have of late
+much multiplied among us the use of two of the most objectionable
+words that were ever coined by the troublesomeness of
+metaphysicians,&mdash;namely, "Objective" and "Subjective."</p>
+
+<p>No words can be more exquisitely, and in all points, useless;
+and I merely speak of them that I may, at once and for ever,
+get them out of my way and out of my reader's. But to get
+that done, they must be explained.</p>
+
+<p>The word "Blue," say certain philosophers, means the sensation
+of color which the human eye receives in looking at the
+open sky, or at a bell gentian.</p>
+
+<p>Now, say they farther, as this sensation can only be felt
+when the eye is turned to the object, and as, therefore, no such
+sensation is produced by the object when nobody looks at it,
+therefore the thing, when it is not looked at, is not blue; and
+thus (say they) there are many qualities of things which depend
+as much on something else as on themselves. To be sweet, a
+thing must have a taster; it is only sweet while it is being
+tasted, and if the tongue had not the capacity of taste, then the
+sugar would not have the quality of sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>And then they agree that the qualities of things which thus
+depend upon our perception of them, and upon our human
+nature as affected by them, shall be called Subjective; and the
+qualities of things which they always have, irrespective of any
+other nature, as roundness or squareness, shall be called Objective.</p>
+
+<p>From these ingenious views the step is very easy to a farther
+opinion, that it does not much matter what things are in themselves,
+but only what they are to us; and that the only real
+truth of them is their appearance to, or effect upon, us. From
+which position, with a hearty desire for mystification, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span>
+much egotism, selfishness, shallowness, and impertinence, a
+philosopher may easily go so far as to believe, and say, that
+everything in the world depends upon his seeing or thinking of
+it, and that nothing, therefore, exists, but what he sees or
+thinks of.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. Now, to get rid of all these ambiguities and troublesome
+words at once, be it observed that the word "Blue" does <i>not</i>
+mean the <i>sensation</i> caused by a gentian on the human eye; but
+it means the <i>power</i> of producing that sensation; and this power
+is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience
+it or not, and would remain there though there were not left a
+man on the face of the earth. Precisely in the same way gunpowder
+has a power of exploding. It will not explode if you
+put no match to it. But it has always the power of so exploding,
+and is therefore called an explosive compound, which it
+very positively and assuredly is, whatever philosophy may say
+to the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>In like manner, a gentian does not produce the sensation of
+blueness if you don't look at it. But it has always the power of
+doing so; its particles being everlastingly so arranged by its
+Maker. And, therefore, the gentian and the sky are always
+verily blue, whatever philosophy may say to the contrary; and
+if you do not see them blue when you look at them, it is not
+their fault but yours.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 3. Hence I would say to these philosophers: If, instead of
+using the sonorous phrase, "It is objectively so," you will use
+the plain old phrase, "It <i>is</i> so;" and if instead of the sonorous
+phrase, "It is subjectively so," you will say, in plain old English,
+"It does so," or "It seems so to me;" you will, on the
+whole, be more intelligible to your fellow-creatures: and be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>sides,
+if you find that a thing which generally "does so" to
+other people (as a gentian looks blue to most men) does <i>not</i> so
+to you, on any particular occasion, you will not fall into the
+impertinence of saying that the thing is not so, or did not so,
+but you will say simply (what you will be all the better for
+speedily finding out) that something is the matter with you.
+If you find that you cannot explode the gunpowder, you will not
+declare that all gunpowder is subjective, and all explosion imaginary,
+but you will simply suspect and declare yourself to be
+an ill-made match. Which, on the whole, though there may
+be a distant chance of a mistake about it, is, nevertheless, the
+wisest conclusion you can come to until farther experiment.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 4. Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd
+words quite out of our way, we may go on at our ease to examine
+the point in question,&mdash;namely, the difference between
+the ordinary, proper, and true appearances of things to us; and
+the extraordinary, or false appearances, when we are under the
+influence of emotion, or contemplative fancy;<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a>
+false appearances,
+I say, as being entirely unconnected with any real power
+or character in the object, and only imputed to it by us.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span>
+
+<p>For instance&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold."<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This is very beautiful and yet very untrue. The crocus is
+not a spendthrift, but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold,
+but saffron. How is it that we enjoy so much the having it put
+into our heads that it is anything else than a plain crocus?</p>
+
+<p>It is an important question. For, throughout our past
+reasonings about art, we have always found that nothing could
+be good or useful, or ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue.
+But here is something pleasurable in written poetry which is
+nevertheless <i>un</i>true. And what is more, if we think over our
+favorite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and
+that we like it all the more for being so.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that
+this fallacy is of two principal kinds. Either, as in this case of
+the crocus, it is the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no
+real expectation that it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy
+caused by an excited state of the feelings, making us, for the
+time, more or less irrational. Of the cheating of the fancy we
+shall have to speak presently; but, in this chapter, I want to
+examine the nature of the other error, that which the mind
+admits, when affected strongly by emotion. Thus, for instance,
+in Alton Locke,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"They rowed her in across the rolling foam&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The cruel, crawling foam."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of
+mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature
+is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent
+feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness
+in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally
+characterize as the "Pathetic fallacy."</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. Now we are in the habit of considering this fallacy as
+eminently a character of poetical description, and the temper of
+mind in which we allow it, as one eminently poetical, because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span>
+passionate. But, I believe, if we look well into the matter, that
+we shall find the greatest poets do not often admit this kind of
+falseness,&mdash;that it is only the second order of poets who much
+delight in it.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank
+of Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough," he gives the
+most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness,
+passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however,
+for an instant losing his own clear perception that <i>these</i> are
+souls, and <i>those</i> are leaves: he makes no confusion of one with
+the other. But when Coleridge speaks of</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"The one red leaf, the last of its clan,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That dances as often as dance it can,"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea about the
+leaf: he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not; con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span>fuses
+its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with merriment,
+and the wind that shakes it with music. Here, however,
+there is some beauty, even in the morbid passage; but take
+an instance in Homer and Pope. Without the knowledge of
+Ulysses, Elpenor, his youngest follower, has fallen from an
+upper chamber in the Circean palace, and has been left dead,
+unmissed by his leader, or companions, in the haste of their
+departure. They cross the sea to the Cimmerian land; and
+Ulysses summons the shades from Tartarus. The first which
+appears is that of the lost Elpenor. Ulysses, amazed, and in
+exactly the spirit of bitter and terrified lightness which is seen
+in Hamlet,<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a>
+addresses the spirit with the simple, startled words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Elpenor? How camest thou under the Shadowy darkness? Hast
+thou come faster on foot than I in my black ship?"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Which Pope renders thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"O, say, what angry power Elpenor led</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To glide in shades, and wander with the dead?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in
+the nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind! And
+yet how is it that these conceits are so painful now, when they
+have been pleasant to us in the other instances?</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. For a very simple reason. They are not a <i>pathetic</i> fallacy
+at all, for they are put into the mouth of the wrong passion&mdash;a
+passion which never could possibly have spoken them&mdash;agonized
+curiosity. Ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter;
+and the very last thing his mind could do at the moment
+would be to pause, or suggest in any wise what was <i>not</i> a fact.
+The delay in the first three lines, and conceit in the last, jar
+upon us instantly, like the most frightful discord in music. No
+poet of true imaginative power could possibly have written the
+passage. It is worth while comparing the way a similar question
+is put by the exquisite sincerity of Keats:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i3">"He wept, and his bright tears</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Went trickling down the golden bow he held.</span><br />
+																		<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">While from beneath some cumb'rous boughs hard by,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With solemn step, an awful goddess came.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And there was purport in her looks for him,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Which he with eager guess began to read:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Perplexed the while, melodiously he said,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">'<i>How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?</i>'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in
+some sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Coleridge's fallacy
+has no discord in it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge.
+Without farther questioning, I will endeavor to state the main
+bearings of this matter.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, is,
+as I said above, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak
+to deal fully with what is before them or upon them; borne
+away, or over-clouded, or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a
+more or less noble state, according to the force of the emotion
+which has induced it. For it is no credit to a man that he is
+not morbid or inaccurate in his perceptions, when he has no
+strength of feeling to warp them; and it is in general a sign of
+higher capacity and stand in the ranks of being, that the emotions
+should be strong enough to vanquish, partly, the intellect,
+and make it believe what they choose. But it is still a grander
+condition when the intellect also rises, till it is strong enough
+to assert its rule against, or together with, the utmost efforts of
+the passions; and the whole man stands in an iron glow, white
+hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating;
+even if he melts, losing none of his weight.</p>
+
+<p>So, then, we have the three ranks: the man who perceives
+rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is
+very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then,
+secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels,
+and to whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a
+star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And
+then, lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite
+of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever nothing
+else than itself&mdash;a little flower, apprehended in the very plain
+and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the associations
+and passions may be, that crowd around it. And, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span>
+general, these three classes may be rated in comparative order,
+as the men who are not poets at all, and the poets of the second
+order, and the poets of the first; only however great a man may
+be, there are always some subjects which <i>ought</i> to throw him
+off his balance; some, by which his poor human capacity of
+thought should be conquered, and brought into the inaccurate
+and vague state of perception, so that the language of the highest
+inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild in metaphor,
+resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker things.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who
+feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly,
+think weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the
+men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first
+order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures
+can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and
+see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably
+above them. This last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. I separate these classes, in order that their character
+may be clearly understood; but of course they are united each
+to the other by imperceptible transitions, and the same mind,
+according to the influences to which it is subjected, passes at
+different times into the various states. Still, the difference between
+the great and less man is, on the whole, chiefly in this
+point of <i>alterability</i>. That is to say, the one knows too much,
+and perceives and feels too much of the past and future, and of
+all things beside and around that which immediately affects
+him, to be in any wise shaken by it. His mind is made up;
+his thoughts have an accustomed current; his ways are steadfast;
+it is not this or that new sight which will at once unbalance
+him. He is tender to impression at the surface, like a
+rock with deep moss upon it; but there is too much mass of
+him to be moved. The smaller man, with the same degree of
+sensibility, is at once carried off his feet; he wants to do something
+he did not want to do before; he views all the universe
+in a new light through his tears; he is gay or enthusiastic, melancholy
+or passionate, as things come and go to him. Therefore
+the high creative poet might even be thought, to a great
+extent, impassive (as shallow people think Dante stern), receiving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>
+indeed all feelings to the full, but having a great centre of
+reflection and knowledge in which he stands serene, and watches
+the feeling, as it were, from far off.</p>
+
+<p>Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire command of
+himself, and can look around calmly, at all moments, for the
+image or the word that will best tell what he sees to the upper
+or lower world. But Keats and Tennyson, and the poets of the
+second order, are generally themselves subdued by the feelings
+under which they write, or, at least, write as choosing to be so,
+and therefore admit certain expressions and modes of thought
+which are in some sort diseased or false.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. Now so long as we see that the <i>feeling</i> is true, we pardon,
+or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which
+it induces: we are pleased, for instance, with those lines of
+Kingsley's, above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe
+foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow. But the
+moment the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment
+every such expression becomes untrue, as being for ever untrue
+in the external facts. And there is no greater baseness in literature
+than the habit of using these metaphorical expressions in
+cool blood. An inspired writer, in full impetuosity of passion,
+may speak wisely and truly of "raging waves of the sea, foaming
+out their own shame;" but it is only the basest writer who
+cannot speak of the sea without talking of "raging waves,"
+"remorseless floods," "ravenous billows," &amp;c.; and it is one
+of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check all such
+habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the <i>pure
+fact</i>, out of which if any feeling comes to him or his reader, he
+knows it must be a true one.</p>
+
+<p>To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who represents a
+man in despair, desiring that his body may be cast into the sea,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"<i>Whose changing mound, and foam that passed away</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Observe, there is not a single false, or even overcharged, expression.
+"Mound" of the sea wave is perfectly simple and
+true; "changing" is as familiar as may be; "foam that passed
+away," strictly literal; and the whole line descriptive of the
+reality with a degree of accuracy which I know not any other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span>
+verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether equals. For most
+people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness
+of a large wave. The word "wave" is used too generally
+of ripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass:
+it does not by itself convey a perfect image. But the word
+"mound" is heavy, large, dark, definite; there is no mistaking
+the kind of wave meant, nor missing the sight of it. Then the
+term "changing" has a peculiar force also. Most people think
+of waves as rising and falling. But if they look at the sea carefully,
+they will perceive that the waves do not rise and fall.
+They change. Change both place and form, but they do not
+fall; one wave goes on, and on, and still on; now lower, now
+higher, now tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself
+together like a wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the same
+wave, till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, one
+knows not how,&mdash;becomes another wave.</p>
+
+<p>The close of the line insists on this image, and paints it still
+more perfectly,&mdash;"foam that passed away." Not merely melting,
+disappearing, but passing on, out of sight, on the career of
+the wave. Then, having put the absolute ocean fact as far as
+he may before our eyes, the poet leaves us to feel about it as we
+may, and to trace for ourselves the opposite fact,&mdash;the image of
+the green mounds that do not change, and the white and written
+stones that do not pass away; and thence to follow out
+also the associated images of the calm life with the quiet grave,
+and the despairing life with the fading foam:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6">"Let no man move his bones."</span><br />
+<span class="i0">"As for Samaria, her king is cut off like the foam upon the water."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>But nothing of this is actually told or pointed out, and the
+expressions, as they stand, are perfectly severe and accurate,
+utterly uninfluenced by the firmly governed emotion of the
+writer. Even the word "mock" is hardly an exception, as it
+may stand merely for "deceive" or "defeat," without implying
+any impersonation of the waves.</p>
+
+<p>§ 12. It may be well, perhaps, to give one or two more instances
+to show the peculiar dignity possessed by all passages
+which thus limit their expression to the pure fact, and leave the
+hearer to gather what he can from it. Here is a notable one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>
+from the Iliad. Helen, looking from the Scæan gate of Troy
+over the Grecian host, and telling Priam the names of its captains,
+says at last:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I see all the other dark-eyed Greeks; but two I cannot see,&mdash;Castor
+and Pollux,&mdash;whom one mother bore with me. Have they not followed
+from fair Lacedæmon, or have they indeed come in their sea-wandering
+ships, but now will not enter into the battle of men, fearing the shame and
+the scorn that is in me?"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Then Homer:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth possessed,
+there in Lacedæmon, in the dear fatherland."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the extreme.
+The poet has to speak of the earth in sadness, but he will not
+let that sadness affect or change his thoughts of it. No;
+though Castor and Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our mother
+still, fruitful, life-giving. These are the facts of the thing. I
+see nothing else than these. Make what you will of them.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. Take another very notable instance from Casimir de la
+Vigne's terrible ballad, "La Toilette de Constance." I must
+quote a few lines out of it here and there, to enable the reader
+who has not the book by him, to understand its close.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i2">"Vite, Anna, vite; au miroir</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Plus vite, Anna. L'heure s'avance,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et je vais au bal ce soir</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Chez l'ambassadeur de France.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Y pensez vous, ils sont fanés, ces n&oelig;uds,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Ils sont d'hier, mon Dieu, comme tout passe!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Que du réseau qui retient mes cheveux</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Les glands d'azur retombent avec grâce.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Plus haut! Plus bas! Vous ne comprenez rien!</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Que sur mon front ce saphir étincelle:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Vous me piquez, mal-adroite. Ah, c'est bien,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Bien,&mdash;chère Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier</span><br />
+<span class="i1">(Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espère.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">(Ah, fi, profane, est-ce là mon collier?</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Quoi! ces grains d'or bénits par le Saint Père!)</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Il y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main</span><br />
+<span class="i1">En y pensant, à peine je respire;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Père Anselmo doit m'entendre demain,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire?</span><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Vite un coup d'&oelig;il au miroir,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Le dernier.&mdash;&mdash;J'ai l'assurance</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Chez l'ambassadeur de France.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Près du foyer, Constance s'admirait.</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une étincelle!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Au feu. Courez; Quand l'espoir l'enivrait</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Tout perdre ainsi! Quoi! Mourir,&mdash;et si belle!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">L'horrible feu ronge avec volupté</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'élève,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Et sans pitie dévore sa beauté,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Ses dixhuit ans, hélas, et son doux rêve!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">On disait, Pauvre Constance!</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Et on dansait, jusqu'au jour,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Chez l'ambassadeur de France."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the poet does
+not say. What you may think about it, he does not know. He
+has nothing to do with that. There lie the ashes of the dead
+girl in her chamber. There they danced, till the morning, at
+the Ambassador's of France. Make what you will of it.</p>
+
+<p>If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I have
+quoted only about the third part, he will find that there is not,
+from beginning to end of it, a single poetical (so called) expression,
+except in one stanza. The girl speaks as simple prose as
+may be; there is not a word she would not have actually used
+as she was dressing. The poet stands by, impassive as a statue,
+recording her words just as they come. At last the doom seizes
+her, and in the very presence of death, for an instant, his own
+emotions conquer him. He records no longer the facts only,
+but the facts as they seem to him. The fire gnaws with <i>voluptuousness&mdash;without
+pity</i>. It is soon past. The fate is fixed for ever;
+and he retires into his pale and crystalline atmosphere
+of truth. He closes all with the calm veracity,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"They said, 'Poor Constance!'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 14. Now in this there is the exact type of the consummate
+poetical temperament. For, be it clearly and constantly remembered,
+that the greatness of a poet depends upon the two
+faculties, acuteness of feeling, and command of it. A poet is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>
+great, first in proportion to the strength of his passion, and
+then, that strength being granted, in proportion to his government
+of it; there being, however, always a point beyond which
+it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed this government,
+and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and wild
+fancy becomes just and true. Thus the destruction of the kingdom
+of Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of
+Israel. The fact is too great, too wonderful. It overthrows
+him, dashes him into a confused element of dreams. All the
+world is, to his stunned thought, full of strange voices. "Yea,
+the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying,
+'Since thou art gone down to the grave, no feller is come up
+against us.'" So, still more, the thought of the presence of
+Deity cannot be borne without this great astonishment. "The
+mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing,
+and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands."</p>
+
+<p>§ 15. But by how much this feeling is noble when it is justified
+by the strength of its cause, by so much it is ignoble when
+there is not cause enough for it; and beyond all other ignobleness
+is the mere affectation of it, in hardness of heart. Simply
+bad writing may almost always, as above noticed, be known by
+its adoption of these fanciful metaphorical expressions, as a sort
+of current coin; yet there is even a worse, at least a more harmful,
+condition of writing than this, in which such expressions
+are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up, but, by some
+master, skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberately wrought
+out with chill and studied fancy; as if we should try to make
+an old lava stream look red-hot again, by covering it with dead
+leaves, or white-hot, with hoar-frost.</p>
+
+<p>When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the character
+of a truly good and holy man, he permits himself for a
+moment to be overborne by the feeling so far as to exclaim&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Where shall I find him? angels, tell me where.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">You know him; he is near you; point him out.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Shall I see glories beaming from his brow,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true and right.
+But now hear the cold-hearted Pope say to a shepherd girl<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And winds shall waft it to the powers above.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The wondering forests soon should dance again;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The moving mountains hear the powerful call,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken for, the
+language of passion. It is simple falsehood, uttered by hypocrisy;
+definite absurdity, rooted in affectation, and coldly asserted
+in the teeth of nature and fact. Passion will indeed go
+far in deceiving itself; but it must be a strong passion, not the
+simple wish of a lover to tempt his mistress to sing. Compare a
+very closely parallel passage in Wordsworth, in which the lover
+has lost his mistress:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">When thus his moan he made:&mdash;</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">'Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That in some other way yon smoke</span><br />
+<span class="i1">May mount into the sky.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="i0">If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Headlong, the waterfall must come,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Oh, let it, then, be dumb&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a
+waterfall to be silent, if it is not to hang listening; but with
+what different relation to the mind that contemplates them!
+Here, in the extremity of its agony, the soul cries out wildly for
+relief, which at the same moment it partly knows to be impossible,
+but partly believes possible, in a vague impression that a
+miracle <i>might</i> be wrought to give relief even to a less sore distress,&mdash;that
+nature is kind, and God is kind, and that grief is
+strong; it knows not well what <i>is</i> possible to such grief. To
+silence a stream, to move a cottage wall,&mdash;one might think it
+could do as much as that!</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. I believe these instances are enough to illustrate the
+main point I insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy,&mdash;that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span>
+so far as it <i>is</i> a fallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of
+mind, and comparatively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired
+prophet it is a sign of the incapacity of his human sight
+or thought to bear what has been revealed to it. In ordinary
+poetry, if it is found in the thoughts of the poet himself, it is at
+once a sign of his belonging to the inferior school; if in the
+thoughts of the characters imagined by him, it is right or wrong
+according to the genuineness of the emotion from which it
+springs; always, however, implying necessarily <i>some</i> degree of
+weakness in the character.</p>
+
+<p>Take two most exquisite instances from master hands. The
+Jessy of Shenstone, and the Ellen of Wordsworth, have both
+been betrayed and deserted. Jessy, in the course of her most
+touching complaint, says:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">'Hope not to find delight in us,' they say,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">'For we are spotless, Jessy; we are pure.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Compare with this some of the words of Ellen:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"'Ah, why,' said Ellen, sighing to herself,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">'Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And nature, that is kind in woman's breast,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And reason, that in man is wise and good,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Why do not these prevail for human life,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To keep two hearts together, that began</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Their springtime with one love, and that have need</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To grant, or be received; while that poor bird&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Been faithless, hear him;&mdash;though a lowly creature,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">One of God's simple children, that yet know not</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The Universal Parent, <i>how</i> he sings!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As if he wished the firmament of heaven</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Should listen, and give back to him the voice</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of his triumphant constancy and love.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The proclamation that he makes, how far</span><br />
+<span class="i0">His darkness doth transcend our fickle light.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The perfection of both these passages, as far as regards truth
+and tenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insu<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span>perable.
+But, of the two characters imagined, Jessy is weaker
+than Ellen, exactly in so far as something appears to her to be
+in nature which is not. The flowers do not really reproach her.
+God meant them to comfort her, not to taunt her; they would
+do so if she saw them rightly.</p>
+
+<p>Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring
+emotion. There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her
+thoughts. She reasons as calmly as if she did not feel. And,
+although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its
+desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant
+admit any veracity in the thought. "As if," she says,&mdash;"I
+know he means nothing of the kind; but it does verily seem
+as if." The reader will find, by examining the rest of the
+poem, that Ellen's character is throughout consistent in this
+clear though passionate strength.</p>
+
+<p>It then being, I hope, now made clear to the reader in all
+respects that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is
+pathetic, feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the
+dominion of Truth is entire, over this, as over every other
+natural and just state of the human mind, we may go on to the
+subject for the dealing with which this prefatory inquiry became
+necessary; and why necessary, we shall see forthwith.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a>
+It is quite true, that in all qualities involving sensation, there may be
+a doubt whether different people receive the same sensation from the same
+thing (compare Part II. Sec. I. Chap. V. § 6.); but, though this makes
+such facts not distinctly explicable, it does not alter the facts themselves.
+I derive a certain sensation, which I call sweetness, from sugar. That is a
+fact. Another person feels a sensation, which <i>he</i> also calls sweetness, from
+sugar. That is also a fact. The sugar's power to produce these two sensations,
+which we suppose to be, and which are, in all probability, very nearly
+the same in both of us, and, on the whole, in the human race, is its sweetness.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a>
+In fact (for I may as well, for once, meet our German friends in their
+own style), all that has been subjected to us on this subject seems object to
+this great objection; that the subjection of all things (subject to no exceptions)
+to senses which are, in us, both subject and abject, and objects of perpetual
+contempt, cannot but make it our ultimate object to subject ourselves
+to the senses, and to remove whatever objections existed to such
+subjection. So that, finally, that which is the subject of examination or
+object of attention, uniting thus in itself the characters of subness and
+obness (so that, that which has no obness in it should be called sub-subjective,
+or a sub-subject, and that which has no subness in it should be called upper
+or ober-objective, or an ob-object); and we also, who suppose ourselves the
+objects of every arrangement, and are certainly the subjects of every sensual
+impression, thus uniting in ourselves, in an obverse or adverse manner, the
+characters of obness and subness, must both become metaphysically dejected
+or rejected, nothing remaining in <i>us</i> objective, but subjectivity, and the very
+objectivity of the object being lost in the abyss of this subjectivity of the
+Human.
+</p><p>
+There is, however, some meaning in the above sentence, if the reader
+cares to make it out; but in a pure German sentence of the highest style
+there is often none whatever. See Appendix II. "German Philosophy."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a>
+Contemplative, in the sense explained in Part III. Sec. II. Chap. IV.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a>
+Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her Recollections
+of a Literary Life.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a>
+I admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two orders I
+mean the Creative (Shakspere, Homer, Dante), and Reflective or Perceptive
+(Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson). But both of these must be <i>first</i>-rate
+in their range, though their range is different; and with poetry second-rate
+in <i>quality</i> no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. There is quite
+enough of the best,&mdash;much more than we can ever read or enjoy in the
+length of a life; and it is a literal wrong or sin in any person to encumber
+us with inferior work. I have no patience with apologies made by young
+pseudo-poets, "that they believe there is <i>some</i> good in what they have
+written: that they hope to do better in time," etc. <i>Some</i> good! If there is
+not <i>all</i> good, there is no good. If they ever hope to do better, why do they
+trouble us now? Let them rather courageously burn all they have done,
+and wait for the better days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who
+in moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and
+afterwards polish it so as to be presentable. But men of sense know better
+than so to waste their time; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the
+touch of the master's hand on the chords too well to fumble among them
+after him. Nay, more than this; all inferior poetry is an injury to the
+good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon
+and gives a wretched commonalty to good thoughts; and, in general,
+adds to the weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable manner.
+There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which
+have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way;
+and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point
+out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber
+temporarily the world.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a>
+"Well said, Old mole! can'st work i' the ground so fast?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a>
+I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, both
+exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come upon, in Maude:</p>
+
+	<div class="poem" style="margin-left: 1em;">
+		<span class="i6">"For a great speculation had fail'd;</span><br />
+		<span class="i1">And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair;</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd,</span><br />
+		<span class="i1">And the <i>flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air</i>."<br /></span>
+			<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span><br />
+		<span class="i3">"There has fallen a splendid tear</span><br />
+		<span class="i4">From the passion-flower at the gate.</span><br />
+		<span class="i3"><i>The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near!'</i></span><br />
+		<span class="i4"><i>And the white rose weeps, 'She is late.'</i></span><br />
+		<span class="i3"><i>The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear!'</i></span><br />
+		<span class="i4"><i>And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'</i>"</span><br />
+	</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. My reason for asking the reader to give so much of his
+time to the examination of the pathetic fallacy was, that,
+whether in literature or in art, he will find it eminently characteristic
+of the modern mind; and in the landscape, whether of
+literature or art, he will also find the modern painter endeavoring
+to express something which he, as a living creature, imagines in
+the lifeless object, while the classical and mediæval painters were
+content with expressing the unimaginary and actual qualities of
+the object itself. It will be observed that, according to the
+principle stated long ago, I use the words painter and poet quite
+indifferently, including in our inquiry the landscape of literature,
+as well as that of painting; and this the more because the
+spirit of classical landscape has hardly been expressed in any
+other way than by words.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. Taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely a very
+notable circumstance, to begin with, that this pathetic fallacy is
+eminently characteristic of modern painting. For instance,
+Keats, describing a wave, breaking, out at sea, says of it&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>That is quite perfect, as an example of the modern manner.
+The idea of the peculiar action with which foam rolls down a
+long, large wave could not have been given by any other words
+so well as by this "wayward indolence." But Homer would
+never have written, never thought of, such words. He could
+not by any possibility have lost sight of the great fact that the
+wave, from the beginning to the end of it, do what it might,
+was still nothing else than salt water; and that salt water could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span>
+not be either wayward or indolent. He will call the waves
+"over-roofed," "full-charged," "monstrous," "compact-black,"
+"dark-clear," "violet-colored," "wine-colored," and
+so on. But every one of these epithets is descriptive of pure
+physical nature. "Over-roofed" is the term he invariably uses
+of anything&mdash;rock, house, or wave&mdash;that nods over at the brow;
+the other terms need no explanation; they are as accurate and
+intense in truth as words can be, but they never show the
+slightest feeling of anything animated in the ocean. Black or
+clear, monstrous or violet-colored, cold salt water it is always,
+and nothing but that.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. "Well, but the modern writer, by his admission of the
+tinge of fallacy, has given an idea of something in the action of
+the wave which Homer could not, and surely, therefore, has
+made a step in advance? Also there appears to be a degree of
+sympathy and feeling in the one writer, which there is not in
+the other; and as it has been received for a first principle that
+writers are great in proportion to the intensity of their feelings,
+and Homer seems to have no feelings about the sea but that it
+is black and deep, surely in this respect also the modern writer
+is the greater?"</p>
+
+<p>Stay a moment. Homer <i>had</i> some feeling about the sea; a
+faith in the animation of it much stronger than Keats's. But
+all this sense of something living in it, he separates in his
+mind into a great abstract image of a Sea Power. He never
+says the waves rage, or the waves are idle. But he says there is
+somewhat in, and greater than, the waves, which rages, and is
+idle, and <i>that</i> he calls a god.</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. I do not think we ever enough endeavor to enter into
+what a Greek's real notion of a god was. We are so accustomed
+to the modern mockeries of the classical religion, so accustomed
+to hear and see the Greek gods introduced as living personages,
+or invoked for help, by men who believe neither in them nor in
+any other gods, that we seem to have infected the Greek ages
+themselves with the breath, and dimmed them with the shade,
+of our hypocrisy; and are apt to think that Homer, as we know
+that Pope, was merely an ingenious fabulist; nay, more than
+this, that all the nations of past time were ingenious fabulists
+also, to whom the universe was a lyrical drama, and by whom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span>
+whatsoever was said about it was merely a witty allegory, or a
+graceful lie, of which the entire upshot and consummation was
+a pretty statue in the middle of the court, or at the end of the
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>This, at least, is one of our forms of opinion about Greek
+faith; not, indeed, possible altogether to any man of honesty or
+ordinary powers of thought; but still so venomously inherent
+in the modern philosophy that all the pure lightning of Carlyle
+cannot as yet quite burn it out of any of us. And then, side by
+side with this mere infidel folly, stands the bitter short-sightedness
+of Puritanism, holding the classical god to be either simply
+an idol,&mdash;a block of stone ignorantly, though sincerely, worshipped,&mdash;or
+else an actual diabolic or betraying power, usurping
+the place of god.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. Both these Puritanical estimates of Greek deity are of
+course to some extent true. The corruption of classical worship
+is barren idolatry; and that corruption was deepened, and variously
+directed to their own purposes, by the evil angels. But
+this was neither the whole, nor the principal part, of Pagan
+worship. Pallas was not, in the pure Greek mind, merely a
+powerful piece of ivory in a temple at Athens; neither was the
+choice of Leonidas between the alternatives granted him by the
+oracle, of personal death, or ruin to his country, altogether a
+work of the Devil's prompting.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. What, then, was actually the Greek god? In what way
+were these two ideas of human form, and divine power, credibly
+associated in the ancient heart, so as to become a subject of true
+faith, irrespective equally of fable, allegory, superstitious trust
+in stone, and demoniacal influence?</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that the Greek had exactly the same instinctive
+feeling about the elements that we have ourselves; that to
+Homer, as much as to Casimir de la Vigne, fire seemed ravenous
+and pitiless; to Homer, as much as to Keats, the sea-wave appeared
+wayward or idle, or whatever else it may be to the poetical
+passion. But then the Greek reasoned upon this sensation,
+saying to himself: "I can light the fire, and put it out; I
+can dry this water up, or drink it. It cannot be the fire or the
+water that rages, or that is wayward. But it must be something
+<i>in</i> this fire and <i>in</i> the water, which I cannot destroy by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span>
+extinguishing the one, or evaporating the other, any more than
+I destroy myself by cutting off my finger; <i>I</i> was <i>in</i> my finger,&mdash;something
+of me at least was; I had a power over it, and felt
+pain in it, though I am still as much myself when it is gone.
+So there may be a power in the water which is not water, but
+to which the water is as a body;&mdash;which can strike with it,
+move in it, suffer in it, yet not be destroyed in it. This something,
+this great Water Spirit, I must not confuse with the
+waves, which are only its body. <i>They</i> may flow hither and
+thither, increase or diminish. <i>That</i> must be indivisible&mdash;imperishable&mdash;a
+god. So of fire also; those rays which I can stop,
+and in the midst of which I cast a shadow, cannot be divine,
+nor greater than I. They cannot feel, but there may be something
+in them that feels,&mdash;a glorious intelligence, as much
+nobler and more swift than mine, as these rays, which are its
+body, are nobler and swifter than my flesh;&mdash;the spirit of all
+light, and truth, and melody, and revolving hours."</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. It was easy to conceive, farther, that such spirits should
+be able to assume at will a human form, in order to hold intercourse
+with men, or to perform any act for which their proper
+body, whether fire, earth, or air, was unfitted. And it would
+have been to place them beneath, instead of above, humanity,
+if, assuming the form of man, they could not also have tasted
+his pleasures. Hence the easy step to the more or less material
+ideas of deities, which are apt at first to shock us, but which
+are indeed only dishonorable so far as they represent the gods
+as false and unholy. It is not the materialism, but the vice,
+which degrades the conception; for the materialism itself is
+never positive or complete. There is always some sense of exaltation
+in the spiritual and immortal body; and of a power proceeding
+from the visible form through all the infinity of the
+element ruled by the particular god. The precise nature of the
+idea is well seen in the passage of the Iliad which describes the
+river Scamander defending the Trojans against Achilles. In
+order to remonstrate with the hero, the god assumes a human
+form, which nevertheless is in some way or other instantly
+recognized by Achilles as that of the river-god: it is addressed
+at once as a river, not as a man; and its voice is the voice of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span>
+river, "out of the deep whirlpools."<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a>
+Achilles refuses to obey
+its commands; and from the human form it returns instantly
+into its natural or divine one, and endeavors to overwhelm him
+with waves. Vulcan defends Achilles, and sends fire against
+the river, which suffers in its water-body, till it is able to bear
+no more. At last even the "nerve of the river," or "strength
+of the river" (note the expression), feels the fire, and this
+"strength of the river" addresses Vulcan in supplications for
+respite. There is in this precisely the idea of a vital part of the
+river-body, which acted and felt, and which, if the fire reached
+it, was death, just as would be the case if it touched a vital part
+of the human body. Throughout the passage the manner of
+conception is perfectly clear and consistent; and if, in other
+places, the exact connection between the ruling spirit and the
+thing ruled is not so manifest, it is only because it is almost
+impossible for the human mind to dwell long upon such subjects
+without falling into inconsistencies, and gradually slackening
+its effort to grasp the entire truth; until the more spiritual part
+of it slips from its hold, and only the human form of the god is
+left, to be conceived and described as subject to all the errors of
+humanity. But I do not believe that the idea ever weakens
+itself down to mere allegory. When Pallas is said to attack and
+strike down Mars, it does not mean merely that Wisdom at that
+moment prevailed against Wrath. It means that there are indeed
+two great spirits, one entrusted to guide the human soul
+to wisdom and chastity, the other to kindle wrath and prompt
+to battle. It means that these two spirits, on the spot where,
+and at the moment when, a great contest was to be decided
+between all that they each governed in man, then and there
+assumed human form, and human weapons, and did verily and
+materially strike at each other, until the Spirit of Wrath was
+crushed. And when Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in
+the woods, it does not mean merely as Wordsworth puts it, that
+the poet or shepherd saw the moon and stars glancing between
+the branches of the trees, and wished to say so figuratively. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span>
+means that there is a living spirit, to which the light of the
+moon is a body; which takes delight in glancing between the
+clouds and following the wild beasts as they wander through the
+night; and that this spirit sometimes assumes a perfect human
+form, and in this form, with real arrows, pursues and slays the
+wild beasts, which with its mere arrows of moonlight it could
+not slay; retaining, nevertheless, all the while, its power, and
+being in the moonlight, and in all else that it rules.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. There is not the smallest inconsistency or unspirituality
+in this conception. If there were, it would attach equally to
+the appearance of the angels to Jacob, Abraham, Joshua, or
+Manoah. In all those instances the highest authority which
+governs our own faith requires us to conceive divine power
+clothed with a human form (a form so real that it is recognized
+for superhuman only by its "doing wondrously"), and retaining,
+nevertheless, sovereignty and omnipresence in all the world.
+This is precisely, as I understand it, the heathen idea of a God;
+and it is impossible to comprehend any single part of the Greek
+mind until we grasp this faithfully, not endeavoring to explain
+it away in any wise, but accepting, with frank decision and definition,
+the tangible existence of its deities;&mdash;blue-eyed&mdash;white-fleshed&mdash;human-hearted,&mdash;capable
+at their choice of meeting
+man absolutely in his own nature&mdash;feasting with him&mdash;talking
+with him&mdash;fighting with him, eye to eye, or breast to breast, as
+Mars with Diomed; or else, dealing with him in a more retired
+spirituality, as Apollo sending the plague upon the Greeks,
+when his quiver rattles at his shoulders as he moves, and yet the
+darts sent forth of it strike not as arrows, but as plague; or,
+finally, retiring completely into the material universe which
+they properly inhabit, and dealing with man through that, as
+Scamander with Achilles through his waves.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. Nor is there anything whatever in the various actions
+recorded of the gods, however apparently ignoble, to indicate
+weakness of belief in them. Very frequently things which
+appear to us ignoble are merely the simplicities of a pure and
+truthful age. When Juno beats Diana about the ears with her
+own quiver, for instance, we start at first, as if Homer could not
+have believed that they were both real goddesses. But what
+should Juno have done? Killed Diana with a look? Nay, she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span>
+neither wished to do so, nor could she have done so, by the very
+faith of Diana's goddess-ship. Diana is as immortal as herself.
+Frowned Diana into submission? But Diana has come
+expressly to try conclusions with her, and will by no means
+be frowned into submission. Wounded her with a celestial
+lance? That sounds more poetical, but it is in reality partly
+more savage, and partly more absurd, than Homer. More savage,
+for it makes Juno more cruel, therefore less divine; and
+more absurd, for it only seems elevated in tone, because we use
+the word "celestial," which means nothing. What sort of a
+thing is a "celestial" lance? Not a wooden one. Of what
+then? Of moonbeams, or clouds, or mist. Well, therefore,
+Diana's arrows were of mist too; and her quiver, and herself,
+and Juno, with her lance, and all, vanish into mist. Why not
+have said at once, if that is all you mean, that two mists met,
+and one drove the other back? That would have been rational
+and intelligible, but not to talk of celestial lances. Homer had
+no such misty fancy; he believed the two goddesses were there
+in true bodies, with true weapons, on the true earth; and still
+I ask, what should Juno have done? Not beaten Diana? No;
+for it is un-lady-like. Un-English-lady-like, yes; but by no
+means un-Greek-lady-like, nor even un-natural-lady-like. If a
+modern lady does <i>not</i> beat her servant or her rival about the
+ears, it is oftener because she is too weak, or too proud, than
+because she is of purer mind than Homer's Juno. She will not
+strike them; but she will overwork the one or slander the other
+without pity; and Homer would not have thought that one
+whit more goddess-like than striking them with her open hand.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. If, however, the reader likes to suppose that while the
+two goddesses in personal presence thus fought with arrow and
+quiver, there was also a broader and vaster contest supposed by
+Homer between the elements they ruled; and that the goddess
+of the heavens, as she struck the goddess of the moon on the
+flushing cheek, was at the same instant exercising omnipresent
+power in the heavens themselves, and gathering clouds, with
+which, filled with the moon's own arrows or beams, she was
+encumbering and concealing the moon; he is welcome to this
+out-carrying of the idea, provided that he does not pretend to
+make it an interpretation instead of a mere extension, nor think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span>
+to explain away my real, running, beautiful beaten Diana, into
+a moon behind clouds.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 11. It is only farther to be noted, that the Greek conception
+of Godhead, as it was much more real than we usually
+suppose, so it was much more bold and familiar than to a
+modern mind would be possible. I shall have something more
+to observe, in a little while, of the danger of our modern habit
+of endeavoring to raise ourselves to something like comprehension
+of the truth of divinity, instead of simply believing the
+words in which the Deity reveals Himself to us. The Greek
+erred rather on the other side, making hardly any effort to
+conceive divine mind as above the human; and no more shrinking
+from frank intercourse with a divine being, or dreading its
+immediate presence, than that of the simplest of mortals. Thus
+Atrides, enraged at his sword's breaking in his hand upon the
+helmet of Paris, after he had expressly invoked the assistance of
+Jupiter, exclaims aloud, as he would to a king who had betrayed
+him, "Jove, Father, there is not another god more evil-minded
+than thou!" and Helen, provoked at Paris's defeat, and oppressed
+with pouting shame both for him and for herself, when
+Venus appears at her side, and would lead her back to the
+delivered Paris, impatiently tells the goddess to "go and take
+care of Paris herself."</p>
+
+<p>§ 12. The modern mind is naturally, but vulgarly and unjustly,
+shocked by this kind of familiarity. Rightly understood,
+it is not so much a sign of misunderstanding of the
+divine nature as of good understanding of the human. The
+Greek lived, in all things, a healthy, and, in a certain degree, a
+perfect life. He had no morbid or sickly feeling of any kind.
+He was accustomed to face death without the slightest shrinking,
+to undergo all kinds of bodily hardship without complaint,
+and to do what he supposed right and honorable, in most cases,
+as a matter of course. Confident of his own immortality, and
+of the power of abstract justice, he expected to be dealt with in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span>
+the next world as was right, and left the matter much in his
+gods' hands; but being thus immortal, and finding in his own
+soul something which it seemed quite as difficult to master, as
+to rule the elements, he did not feel that it was an appalling
+superiority in those gods to have bodies of water, or fire, instead
+of flesh, and to have various work to do among the clouds and
+waves, out of his human way; or sometimes, even, in a sort of
+service to himself. Was not the nourishment of herbs and
+flowers a kind of ministering to his wants? were not the gods
+in some sort his husbandmen, and spirit-servants? Their mere
+strength or omnipresence did not seem to him a distinction
+absolutely terrific. It might be the nature of one being to be
+in two places at once, and of another to be only in one; but
+that did not seem of itself to infer any absolute lordliness of
+one nature above the other, any more than an insect must be a
+nobler creature than a man, because it can see on four sides of
+its head, and the man only in front. They could kill him or
+torture him, it was true; but even that not unjustly, or not for
+ever. There was a fate, and a Divine Justice, greater than
+they; so that if they did wrong, and he right, he might fight it
+out with them, and have the better of them at last. In a general
+way, they were wiser, stronger, and better than he; and to
+ask counsel of them, to obey them, to sacrifice to them, to thank
+them for all good, this was well; but to be utterly downcast
+before them, or not to tell them his mind in plain Greek if they
+seemed to him to be conducting themselves in an ungodly manner,&mdash;this
+would not be well.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. Such being their general idea of the gods, we can now
+easily understand the habitual tone of their feelings towards
+what was beautiful in nature. With us, observe, the idea of
+the Divinity is apt to get separated from the life of nature; and
+imagining our God upon a cloudy throne, far above the earth, and
+not in the flowers or waters, we approach those visible things
+with a theory that they are dead, governed by physical laws,
+and so forth. But coming to them, we find the theory fail;
+that they are not dead; that, say what we choose about them,
+the instinctive sense of their being alive is too strong for us;
+and in scorn of all physical law, the wilful fountain sings, and
+the kindly flowers rejoice. And then, puzzled, and yet happy;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span>
+pleased, and yet ashamed of being so; accepting sympathy from
+nature, which we do not believe it gives, and giving sympathy
+to nature, which we do not believe it receives,&mdash;mixing, besides,
+all manner of purposeful play and conceit with these involuntary
+fellowships,&mdash;we fall necessarily into the curious web of
+hesitating sentiment, pathetic fallacy, and wandering fancy,
+which form a great part of our modern view of nature. But
+the Greek never removed his god out of nature at all; never
+attempted for a moment to contradict his instinctive sense that
+God was everywhere. "The tree <i>is</i> glad," said he, "I know it
+is; I can cut it down; no matter, there was a nymph in it.
+The water <i>does</i> sing," said he; "I can dry it up; but no
+matter, there was a naiad in it." But in thus clearly defining
+his belief, observe, he threw it entirely into a human form, and
+gave his faith to nothing but the image of his own humanity.
+What sympathy and fellowship he had, were always for the
+spirit <i>in</i> the stream, not for the stream; always for the dryad <i>in</i>
+the wood, not for the wood. Content with this human sympathy,
+he approached the actual waves and woody fibres with no
+sympathy at all. The spirit that ruled them, he received as a
+plain fact. Them, also, ruled and material, he received as plain
+facts; they, without their spirit, were dead enough. A rose was
+good for scent, and a stream for sound and coolness; for the
+rest, one was no more than leaves, the other no more than
+water; he could not make anything else of them; and the
+divine power, which was involved in their existence, having
+been all distilled away by him into an independent Flora or
+Thetis, the poor leaves or waves were left, in mere cold corporealness,
+to make the most of their being discernibly red and
+soft, clear and wet, and unacknowledged in any other power
+whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>§ 14. Then, observe farther, the Greeks lived in the midst of
+the most beautiful nature, and were as familiar with blue sea,
+clear air, and sweet outlines of mountain, as we are with brick
+walls, black smoke, and level fields. This perfect familiarity
+rendered all such scenes of natural beauty unexciting, if not
+indifferent, to them, by lulling and overwearying the imagination
+as far as it was concerned with such things; but there was
+another kind of beauty which they found it required effort to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span>
+obtain, and which, when thoroughly obtained, seemed more
+glorious than any of this wild loveliness&mdash;the beauty of the
+human countenance and form. This, they perceived, could
+only be reached by continual exercise of virtue; and it was in
+Heaven's sight, and theirs, all the more beautiful because it
+needed this self-denial to obtain it. So they set themselves
+to reach this, and having gained it, gave it their principal
+thoughts, and set it off with beautiful dress as best they might.
+But making this their object, they were obliged to pass their
+lives in simple exercise and disciplined employments. Living
+wholesomely, giving themselves no fever fits, either by fasting
+or over-eating, constantly in the open air, and full of animal
+spirit and physical power, they became incapable of every morbid
+condition of mental emotion. Unhappy love, disappointed
+ambition, spiritual despondency, or any other disturbing sensation,
+had little power over the well-braced nerves, and healthy
+flow of the blood; and what bitterness might yet fasten on
+them was soon boxed or raced out of a boy, and spun or woven
+out of a girl, or danced out of both. They had indeed their
+sorrows, true and deep, but still, more like children's sorrows
+than ours, whether bursting into open cry of pain, or hid with
+shuddering under the veil, still passing over the soul as clouds
+do over heaven, not sullying it, not mingling with it;&mdash;darkening
+it perhaps long or utterly, but still not becoming one with
+it, and for the most part passing away in dashing rain of tears,
+and leaving the man unchanged; in nowise affecting, as our
+sorrow does, the whole tone of his thought and imagination
+thenceforward.</p>
+
+<p>How far our melancholy may be deeper and wider than
+theirs, in its roots and view, and therefore nobler, we shall
+consider presently; but at all events, they had the advantage
+of us in being entirety free from all those dim and feverish
+sensations which result from unhealthy state of the body. I
+believe that a large amount of the dreamy and sentimental sadness,
+tendency to reverie, and general patheticalness of modern
+life results merely from derangement of stomach; holding to
+the Greek life the same relation that the feverish night of an
+adult does to a child's sleep.</p>
+
+<p>§ 15. Farther. The human beauty, which, whether in its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span>
+bodily being or in imagined divinity, had become, for the
+reasons we have seen, the principal object of culture and sympathy
+to these Greeks, was, in its perfection, eminently orderly,
+symmetrical, and tender. Hence, contemplating it constantly
+in this state, they could not but feel a proportionate fear of all
+that was disorderly, unbalanced, and rugged. Having trained
+their stoutest soldiers into a strength so delicate and lovely,
+that their white flesh, with their blood upon it, should look
+like ivory stained with purple;<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a>
+and having always around
+them, in the motion and majesty of this beauty, enough for the
+full employment of their imagination, they shrank with dread
+or hatred from all the ruggedness of lower nature,&mdash;from the
+wrinkled forest bark, the jagged hill-crest, and irregular, inorganic
+storm of sky; looking to these for the most part as
+adverse powers, and taking pleasure only in such portions of
+the lower world as were at once conducive to the rest and
+health of the human frame, and in harmony with the laws of
+its gentler beauty.</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. Thus, as far as I recollect, without a single exception,
+every Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed
+of a fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove. This ideal is very
+interestingly marked, as intended for a perfect one, in the fifth
+book of the Odyssey; when Mercury himself stops for a moment,
+though on a message, to look at a landscape "which even
+an immortal might be gladdened to behold." This landscape
+consists of a cave covered with a running vine, all blooming
+into grapes, and surrounded by a grove of alder, poplar, and
+sweet-smelling cypress. Four fountains of white (foaming)
+water, springing <i>in succession</i> (mark the orderliness), and close
+to one another, flow away in different directions, through a
+meadow full of violets and parsley (parsley, to mark its moisture,
+being elsewhere called "marsh-nourished," and associated
+with the lotus);<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a>
+the air is perfumed not only by these violets
+and by the sweet cypress, but by Calypso's fire of finely chopped
+cedar wood, which sends a smoke as of incense, through the
+island; Calypso herself is singing; and finally, upon the trees
+are resting, or roosting, owls, hawks, and "long-tongued sea-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span>crows."
+Whether these last are considered as a part of the
+ideal landscape, as marine singing-birds, I know not; but the
+approval of Mercury appears to be elicited chiefly by the fountains
+and violet meadow.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. Now the notable things in this description are, first,
+the evident subservience of the whole landscape to human comfort,
+to the foot, the taste, or the smell; and, secondly, that
+throughout the passage there is not a single figurative word
+expressive of the things being in any wise other than plain
+grass, fruit or flower. I have used the term "spring" of the
+fountains, because, without doubt, Homer means that they
+sprang forth brightly, having their source at the foot of the
+rocks (as copious fountains nearly always have); but Homer
+does not say "spring," he says simply flow, and uses only one
+word for "growing softly," or "richly," of the tall trees, the
+vine, and the violets. There is, however, some expression of
+sympathy with the sea-birds; he speaks of them in precisely the
+same terms, as in other places of naval nations, saying they
+"have care of the works of the sea."</p>
+
+<p>§ 18. If we glance through the references to pleasant landscape
+which occur in other parts of the Odyssey, we shall always
+be struck by this quiet subjection of their every feature to human
+service, and by the excessive similarity in the scenes. Perhaps
+the spot intended, after this, to be most perfect, may be the
+garden of Alcinous, where the principal ideas are, still more
+definitely, order, symmetry, and fruitfulness; the beds being
+duly ranged between rows of vines, which, as well as the pear,
+apple, and fig-trees, bear fruit continually, some grapes being
+yet sour, while others are getting black; there are plenty of
+"<i>orderly</i> square beds of herbs," chiefly leeks, and two fountains,
+one running through the garden, and one under the
+pavement of the palace to a reservoir for the citizens. Ulysses,
+pausing to contemplate this scene, is described nearly in the
+same terms as Mercury pausing to contemplate the wilder
+meadow; and it is interesting to observe, that, in spite of all
+Homer's love of symmetry, the god's admiration is excited by
+the free fountains, wild violets, and wandering vine; but the
+mortal's, by the vines in rows, the leeks in beds, and the fountains
+in pipes.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span>
+
+<p>Ulysses has, however, one touching reason for loving vines
+in rows. His father had given him fifty rows for himself, when
+he was a boy, with corn between them (just as it now grows in
+Italy). Proving his identity afterwards to his father, whom he
+finds at work in his garden, "with thick gloves on, to keep his
+hands from the thorns," he reminds him of these fifty rows of
+vines, and of the "thirteen pear-trees and ten apple-trees"
+which he had given him; and Laertes faints upon his neck.</p>
+
+<p>§ 19. If Ulysses had not been so much of a gardener, it
+might have been received as a sign of considerable feeling for
+landscape beauty, that, intending to pay the very highest possible
+compliment to the Princess Nausicaa (and having indeed,
+the moment before, gravely asked her whether she was a goddess
+or not), he says that he feels, at seeing her, exactly as he
+did when he saw the young palm-tree growing at Apollo's
+shrine at Delos. But I think the taste for trim hedges and
+upright trunks has its usual influence over him here also, and
+that he merely means to tell the princess that she is delightfully
+tall and straight.</p>
+
+<p>§ 20. The princess is, however, pleased by his address, and
+tells him to wait outside the town, till she can speak to her
+father about him. The spot to which she directs him is another
+ideal piece of landscape, composed of a "beautiful grove of
+aspen poplars, a fountain, and a meadow," near the road-side;
+in fact, as nearly as possible such a scene as meets the eye of
+the traveller every instant on the much-despised lines of road
+through lowland France; for instance, on the railway between
+Arras and Amiens;&mdash;scenes, to my mind, quite exquisite in
+the various grouping and grace of their innumerable poplar
+avenues, casting sweet, tremulous shadows over their level
+meadows and labyrinthine streams. We know that the princess
+means aspen poplars, because soon afterwards we find her fifty
+maid-servants at the palace, all spinning, and in perpetual
+motion, compared to the "leaves of the tall poplar;" and it is
+with exquisite feeling that it is made afterwards<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a>
+the chief tree in
+the groves of Proserpine; its light and quivering leafage having
+exactly the melancholy expression of fragility, faintness, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span>
+inconstancy which the ancients attributed to the disembodied
+spirit.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a>
+The likeness to the poplars by the streams of Amiens
+is more marked still in the Iliad, where the young Simois,
+struck by Ajax, falls to the earth "like an aspen that has grown
+in an irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots springing
+from its top, which some coach-making man has cut down
+with his keen iron, that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair
+chariot, and it lies parching by the side of the stream." It is
+sufficiently notable that Homer, living in mountainous and
+rocky countries, dwells thus delightedly on all the <i>flat</i> bits; and
+so I think invariably the inhabitants of mountain countries do,
+but the inhabitants of the plains do not, in any similar way,
+dwell delightedly on mountains. The Dutch painters are perfectly
+contented with their flat fields and pollards: Rubens,
+though he had seen the Alps, usually composes his landscapes of
+a hayfield or two, plenty of pollards and willows, a distant spire,
+a Dutch house with a moat about it, a windmill, and a ditch.
+The Flemish sacred painters are the only ones who introduce
+mountains in the distance, as we shall see presently; but rather
+in a formal way than with any appearance of enjoyment. So
+Shakspere never speaks of mountains with the slightest joy, but
+only of lowland flowers, flat fields, and Warwickshire streams.
+And if we talk to the mountaineer, he will usually characterize
+his own country to us as a "pays affreux," or in some equivalent,
+perhaps even more violent, German term: but the lowland
+peasant does not think his country frightful; he either will
+have no ideas beyond it, or about it; or will think it a very
+perfect country, and be apt to regard any deviation from its
+general principle of flatness with extreme disfavor; as the Lincolnshire
+farmer in Alton Locke: "I'll shaw 'ee some'at like a
+field o' beans, I wool&mdash;none o' this here darned ups and downs
+o' hills, to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards&mdash;all so
+vlat as a barn door, for vorty mile on end&mdash;there's the country
+to live in!"</p>
+
+<p>I do not say whether this be altogether right (though certainly
+not wholly wrong), but it seems to me that there must be
+in the simple freshness and fruitfulness of level land, in its pale<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span>
+upright trees, and gentle lapse of silent streams, enough for the
+satisfaction of the human mind in general; and I so far agree
+with Homer, that if I had to educate an artist to the full perception
+of the meaning of the word "gracefulness" in landscape,
+I should send him neither to Italy nor to Greece, but
+simply to those poplar groves between Arras and Amiens.</p>
+
+<p>§ 21. But to return more definitely to our Homeric landscape.
+When it is perfect, we have, as in the above instances,
+the foliage and meadows together; when imperfect, it is always
+either the foliage or the meadow; preëminently the meadow,
+or arable field. Thus, meadows of asphodel are prepared for the
+happier dead; and even Orion, a hunter among the mountains
+in his lifetime, pursues the ghosts of beasts in these asphodel
+meadows after death.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a>
+So the sirens sing in a meadow; and
+throughout the Odyssey there is a general tendency to the
+depreciation of poor Ithaca, because it is rocky, and only fit
+for goats, and has "no meadows;" for which reason Telemachus
+refuses Atrides's present of horses, congratulating the
+Spartan king at the same time on ruling over a plain which has
+"plenty of lotus in it, and rushes," with corn and barley.
+Note this constant dwelling on the marsh plants, or, at least,
+those which grow in flat and well-irrigated land, or beside
+streams: when Scamander, for instance, is restrained by Vulcan,
+Homer says, very sorrowfully, that "all his lotus, and
+reeds, and rushes were burnt;" and thus Ulysses, after being
+shipwrecked and nearly drowned, and beaten about the sea for
+many days and nights, on raft and mast, at last getting ashore
+at the mouth of a large river, casts himself down first upon its
+<i>rushes</i>, and then, in thankfulness, kisses the "corn-giving
+land," as most opposed, in his heart, to the fruitless and devouring
+sea.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 22. In this same passage, also, we find some peculiar expressions
+of the delight which the Greeks had in trees, for,
+when Ulysses first comes in sight of land, which gladdens him,
+"as the reviving of a father from his sickness gladdens his
+children," it is not merely the sight of the land itself which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span>
+gives him such pleasure, but of the "land and <i>wood</i>." Homer
+never throws away any words, at least in such a place as this;
+and what in another poet would have been merely the filling up
+of the deficient line with an otherwise useless word, is in him
+the expression of the general Greek sense, that land of any kind
+was in nowise grateful or acceptable till there was <i>wood</i> upon it
+(or corn; but the corn, in the flats, could not be seen so far as
+the black masses of forest on the hill sides), and that, as in
+being rushy and corn-giving, the low land, so in being woody,
+the high land, was most grateful to the mind of the man who
+for days and nights had been wearied on the engulphing sea.
+And this general idea of wood and corn, as the types of the
+fatness of the whole earth, is beautifully marked in another
+place of the Odyssey,<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a>
+where the sailors in a desert island, having
+no flour or corn to offer as a meat offering with their sacrifices,
+take the leaves of the trees, and scatter them over the
+burnt offering instead.</p>
+
+<p>§ 23. But still, every expression of the pleasure which
+Ulysses has in this landing and resting, contains uninterruptedly
+the reference to the utility and sensible pleasantness of all
+things, not to their beauty. After his first grateful kiss given
+to the corn-growing land, he considers immediately how he is
+to pass the night: for some minutes hesitating whether it will
+be best to expose himself to the misty chill from the river, or
+run the risk of wild beasts in the wood. He decides for the
+wood, and finds in it a bower formed by a sweet and a wild olive
+tree, interlacing their branches, or&mdash;perhaps more accurately
+translating Homer's intensely graphic expression&mdash;"changing
+their branches with each other" (it is very curious how often, in
+an entanglement of wood, one supposes the branches to belong to
+the wrong trees), and forming a roof penetrated by neither rain,
+sun, nor wind. Under this bower Ulysses collects the "<i>vain</i>
+(or <i>frustrate</i>) outpouring of the dead leaves"&mdash;another exquisite
+expression, used elsewhere of useless grief or shedding of
+tears;&mdash;and, having got enough together, makes his bed of
+them, and goes to sleep, having covered himself up with them,
+"as embers are covered up with ashes."</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>
+
+<p>Nothing can possibly be more intensely possessive of the
+<i>facts</i> than this whole passage; the sense of utter deadness and
+emptiness, and frustrate fall in the leaves; of dormant life in
+the human body,&mdash;the fire, and heroism, and strength of it,
+lulled under the dead brown heap, as embers under ashes, and
+the knitting of interchanged and close strength of living boughs
+above. But there is not the smallest apparent sense of there
+being <i>beauty</i> elsewhere than in the human being. The wreathed
+wood is admired simply as being a perfect roof for it; the fallen
+leaves only as being a perfect bed for it; and there is literally
+no more excitement of emotion in Homer, as he describes them,
+nor does he expect us to be more excited or touched by hearing
+about them, than if he had been telling us how the chamber-maid
+at the Bull aired the four-poster, and put on two extra
+blankets.</p>
+
+<p>§ 24. Now, exactly this same contemplation of subservience
+to human use makes the Greek take some pleasure in <i>rocks</i>,
+when they assume one particular form, but one only&mdash;that of a
+<i>cave</i>. They are evidently quite frightful things to him under
+any other condition, and most of all if they are rough and jagged;
+but if smooth, looking "sculptured," like the sides of a
+ship, and forming a cave or shelter for him, he begins to think
+them endurable. Hence, associating the ideas of rich and sheltering
+wood, sea, becalmed and made useful as a port by projecting
+promontories of rock, and smoothed caves or grottoes
+in the rocks themselves, we get the pleasantest idea which the
+Greek could form of a landscape, next to a marsh with poplars
+in it; not, indeed, if possible, ever to be without these last:
+thus, in commending the Cyclops' country as one possessed of
+every perfection, Homer first says: "They have soft <i>marshy</i>
+meadows near the sea, and good, rich, crumbling, ploughing-land,
+giving fine deep crops, and vines always giving fruit;"
+then, "a port so quiet, that they have no need of cables in it;
+and at the head of the port, a beautiful clear spring just <i>under
+a cave</i>, and <i>aspen poplars all round it</i>."<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p>
+
+											<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>
+<p>§ 25. This, it will be seen, is very nearly Homer's usual
+"ideal;" but, going into the middle of the island, Ulysses
+comes on a rougher and less agreeable bit, though still fulfilling
+certain required conditions of endurableness; a "cave shaded
+with laurels," which, having no poplars about it, is, however,
+meant to be somewhat frightful, and only fit to be inhabited by
+a Cyclops. So in the country of the Læstrygons, Homer, preparing
+his reader gradually for something very disagreeable,
+represents the rocks as bare and "exposed to the sun;" only
+with some smooth and slippery roads over them, by which the
+trucks bring down wood from the higher hills. Any one familiar
+with Swiss slopes of hills must remember how often he
+has descended, sometimes faster than was altogether intentional,
+by these same slippery woodman's track roads.</p>
+
+<p>And thus, in general, whenever the landscape is intended to
+be lovely, it verges towards the ploughed land and poplars; or,
+at worst, to <i>woody</i> rocks; but, if intended to be painful, the
+rocks are bare and "sharp." This last epithet, constantly used
+by Homer for mountains, does not altogether correspond, in
+Greek, to the English term, nor is it intended merely to characterize
+the sharp mountain summits; for it never would be applied
+simply to the edge or point of a sword, but signifies rather
+"harsh," "bitter," or "painful," being applied habitually to
+fate, death, and in Od. ii. 333. to a halter; and, as expressive of
+general objectionableness and unpleasantness, to all high, dangerous,
+or peaked mountains, as the Maleian promontory (a much
+dreaded one), the crest of Parnassus, the Tereian mountain, and
+a grim or untoward, though, by keeping off the force of the
+sea, protective, rock at the mouth of the Jardanus; as well as
+habitually to inaccessible or impregnable fortresses built on
+heights.</p>
+
+<p>§ 26. In all this I cannot too strongly mark the utter absence
+of any trace of the feeling for what we call the picturesque,
+and the constant dwelling of the writer's mind on what
+was available, pleasant, or useful; his ideas respecting all landscape
+being not uncharacteristically summed, finally, by Pallas
+herself; when, meeting Ulysses, who after his long wandering
+does not recognize his own country, and meaning to describe it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span>
+as politely and soothingly as possible, she says:<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a>
+&mdash;"This Ithaca
+of ours is, indeed, a rough country enough, and not good for
+driving in; but, still, things might be worse: it has plenty of
+corn, and good wine, and <i>always rain</i>, and soft nourishing
+dew; and it has good feeding for goats and oxen, and all manner
+of wood, and springs fit to drink at all the year round."</p>
+
+<p>We shall see presently how the blundering, pseudo-picturesque,
+pseudo-classical minds of Claude and the Renaissance
+landscape painters, wholly missing Homer's practical common
+sense, and equally incapable of feeling the quiet natural grace
+and sweetness of his asphodel meadows, tender aspen poplars,
+or running vines,&mdash;fastened on his <i>ports</i> and <i>caves</i>, as the only
+available features of his scenery; and appointed the type of
+"classical landscape" thenceforward to consist in a bay of insipid
+sea, and a rock with a hole through it.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+<p>§ 27. It may indeed be thought that I am assuming too
+hastily that this was the general view of the Greeks respecting
+landscape, because it was Homer's. But I believe the true
+mind of a nation, at any period, is always best ascertainable by
+examining that of its greatest men; and that simpler and truer
+results will be attainable for us by simply comparing Homer,
+Dante, and Walter Scott, than by attempting (what my limits
+must have rendered absurdly inadequate, and in which, also,
+both my time and knowledge must have failed me) an analysis
+of the landscape in the range of contemporary literature. All
+that I can do, is to state the general impression which has been
+made upon me by my desultory reading, and to mark accurately
+the grounds for this impression, in the works of the greatest
+men. Now it is quite true that in others of the Greeks,
+especially in Æschylus and Aristophanes, there is infinitely
+more of modern feeling, of pathetic fallacy, love of picturesque
+or beautiful form, and other such elements, than there is in
+Homer; but then these appear to me just the parts of them
+which were not Greek, the elements of their minds by which (as
+one division of the human race always must be with subsequent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span>
+ones) they are connected with the mediævals and moderns.
+And without doubt, in his influence over future mankind,
+Homer is eminently the Greek of Greeks; if I were to associate
+any one with him it would be Herodotus, and I believe all I
+have said of the Homeric landscape will be found equally true
+of the Herodotean, as assuredly it will be of the Platonic; the
+contempt, which Plato sometimes expresses by the mouth of
+Socrates, for the country in general, except so far as it is shady,
+and has cicadas and running streams to make pleasant noises in
+it, being almost ludicrous. But Homer is the great type, and
+the more notable one because of his influence on Virgil, and,
+through him, on Dante, and all the after ages: and in like
+manner, if we can get the abstract of mediæval landscape out of
+Dante, it will serve us as well as if we had read all the songs of
+the troubadours, and help us to the farther changes in derivative
+temper, down to all modern time.</p>
+
+<p>§ 28. I think, therefore, the reader may safely accept the
+conclusions about Greek landscape which I have got for him out
+of Homer; and in these he will certainly perceive something
+very different from the usual imaginations we form of Greek
+feelings. We think of the Greeks as poetical, ideal, imaginative,
+in the way that a modern poet or novelist is; supposing
+that their thoughts about their mythology and world were as
+visionary and artificial as ours are: but I think the passages
+I have quoted show that it was not so, although it may be
+difficult for us to apprehend the strange minglings in them of
+the elements of faith, which, in our days, have been blended
+with other parts of human nature in a totally different guise.
+Perhaps the Greek mind may be best imagined by taking, as
+its groundwork, that of a good, conscientious, but illiterate,
+Scotch Presbyterian Border farmer of a century or two back,
+having perfect faith in the bodily appearances of Satan and his
+imps; and in all kelpies, brownies, and fairies. Substitute for
+the indignant terrors in this man's mind, a general persuasion
+of the <i>Divinity</i>, more or less beneficent, yet faultful, of all
+these beings; that is to say, take away his belief in the demoniacal
+malignity of the fallen spiritual world, and lower, in the
+same degree, his conceptions of the angelical, retaining for him
+the same firm faith in both; keep his ideas about flowers and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span>
+beautiful scenery much as they are,&mdash;his delight in regular
+ploughed land and meadows, and a neat garden (only with rows
+of gooseberry bushes instead of vines,) being, in all probability,
+about accurately representative of the feelings of Ulysses; then,
+let the military spirit that is in him, glowing against the Border
+forager, or the foe of old Flodden and Chevy-Chase, be made
+more principal, with a higher sense of nobleness in soldiership,
+not as a careless excitement, but a knightly duty; and increased
+by high cultivation of every personal quality, not of
+mere shaggy strength, but graceful strength, aided by a softer
+climate, and educated in all proper harmony of sight and
+sound: finally, instead of an informed Christian, suppose him
+to have only the patriarchal Jewish knowledge of the Deity,
+and even this obscured by tradition, but still thoroughly solemn
+and faithful, requiring his continual service as a priest of burnt
+sacrifice and meat offering; and I think we shall get a pretty
+close approximation to the vital being of a true old Greek;
+some slight difference still existing in a feeling which the
+Scotch farmer would have of a pleasantness in blue hills and
+running streams, wholly wanting in the Greek mind; and
+perhaps also some difference of views on the subjects of truth
+and honesty. But the main points, the easy, athletic, strongly
+logical and argumentative, yet fanciful and credulous, characters
+of mind, would be very similar in both; and the most
+serious change in the substance of the stuff among the modifications
+above suggested as necessary to turn the Scot into the
+Greek, is that effect of softer climate and surrounding luxury,
+inducing the practice of various forms of polished art,&mdash;the
+more polished, because the practical and realistic tendency of
+the Hellenic mind (if my interpretation of it be right) would
+quite prevent it from taking pleasure in any irregularities of
+form, or imitations of the weeds and wildnesses of that mountain
+nature with which it thought itself born to contend. In
+its utmost refinement of work, it sought eminently for orderliness;
+carried the principle of the leeks in squares, and fountains
+in pipes, perfectly out in its streets and temples; formalized
+whatever decoration it put into its minor architectural
+mouldings, and reserved its whole heart and power to represent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span>
+the action of living men, or gods, though not unconscious
+meanwhile, of</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"The simple, the sincere delight;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The habitual scene of hill and dale</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The rural herds, the vernal gale;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The tangled vetches' purple bloom;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The fragrance of the bean's perfume,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Theirs, theirs alone, who cultivate the soil,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And drink the cup of thirst, and eat the bread of toil."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a>
+Compare Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto i. stanza 15., and canto v.
+stanza 2. In the first instance, the river-spirit is accurately the Homeric
+god, only Homer would have believed in it,&mdash;Scott did not; at least not
+altogether.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a>
+Compare the exquisite lines of Longfellow on the sunset in the Golden
+Legend:&mdash;</p>
+	<div class="poem">
+		<span class="i0">"The day is done, and slowly from the scene</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">The stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts,</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">And puts them back into his golden quiver."</span><br />
+	</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a>
+Iliad iv. 141.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a>
+Iliad ii. 776.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a>
+Odyssey, x. 510.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a>
+Compare the passage in Dante referred to above, Chap. XII. § 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a>
+Odyssey, xi. 571. xxiv. 13. The couch of Ceres, with Homer's usual
+faithfulness, is made of a <i>ploughed</i> field, v. 127.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a>
+Odyssey, v. 398.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a>
+Odyssey, xii. 357.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a>
+Odyssey, ix. 132. &amp;c. Hence Milton's</p>
+
+	<div class="poem">
+		<span class="i0">"From haunted spring, and dale,</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">Edged with poplar pale."</span><br />
+	</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a>
+Odyssey, xiii. 236. &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a>
+Educated, as we shall see hereafter, first in this school, Turner gave
+the hackneyed composition a strange power and freshness, in his Glaucus
+and Scylla.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF MEDIÆVAL LANDSCAPE:&mdash;FIRST, THE FIELDS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. IN our examination of the spirit of classical landscape,
+we were obliged to confine ourselves to what is left to us in
+written description. Some interesting results might indeed
+have been obtained by examining the Egyptian and Ninevite
+landscape sculpture, but in nowise conclusive enough to be
+worth the pains of the inquiry; for the landscape of sculpture
+is necessarily confined in range, and usually inexpressive of the
+complete feelings of the workman, being introduced rather to
+explain the place and circumstances of events, than for its own
+sake. In the Middle Ages, however, the case is widely different.
+We have written landscape, sculptured landscape, and painted
+landscape, all bearing united testimony to the tone of the national
+mind in almost every remarkable locality of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. That testimony, taken in its breadth, is very curiously
+conclusive. It marks the mediæval mind as agreeing altogether
+with the ancients, in holding that flat land, brooks, and groves
+of aspens, compose the pleasant places of the earth, and that
+rocks and mountains are, for inhabitation, altogether to be
+reprobated and detested; but as disagreeing with the classical
+mind totally in this other most important respect, that the
+pleasant flat land is never a ploughed field, nor a rich lotus
+meadow good for pasture, but <i>garden</i> ground covered with
+flowers, and divided by fragrant hedges, with a castle in the
+middle of it. The aspens are delighted in, not because they are
+good for "coach-making men" to make cart-wheels of, but
+because they are shady and graceful; and the fruit-trees, covered
+with delicious fruit, especially apple and orange, occupy
+still more important positions in the scenery. Singing-birds&mdash;not
+"sea-crows," but nightingales<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a>
+&mdash;perch on every bough;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>
+and the ideal occupation of mankind is not to cultivate either
+the garden or the meadow, but to gather roses and eat oranges
+in the one, and ride out hawking over the other.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, mountain scenery, though considered as disagreeable
+for general inhabitation, is always introduced as being proper
+to meditate in, or to encourage communion with higher beings;
+and in the ideal landscape of daily life, mountains are considered
+agreeable things enough, so that they be far enough away.</p>
+
+<p>In this great change there are three vital points to be noticed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 3. Three essential characters: 1. Pride in idleness.</div>
+
+<p>The first, the disdain of agricultural pursuits by the nobility;
+a fatal change, and one gradually bringing about the ruin of that
+nobility. It is expressed in the mediæval landscape by the eminently
+pleasurable and horticultural character of
+everything; by the fences, hedges, castle walls, and
+masses of useless, but lovely flowers, especially roses.
+The knights and ladies are represented always as singing, or
+making love, in these pleasant places. The idea of setting an
+old knight, like Laertes (whatever his state of fallen fortune),
+"with thick gloves on to keep his hands from the thorns," to
+prune a row of vines, would have been regarded as the most
+monstrous violation of the decencies of life; and a senator,
+once detected in the home employments of Cincinnatus, could,
+I suppose, thenceforward hardly have appeared in society.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 4. 2. Poetical observance of nature.</div>
+
+<p>The second vital point is the evidence of a more sentimental
+enjoyment of external nature. A Greek, wishing really to enjoy
+himself, shut himself into a beautiful atrium, with an excellent
+dinner, and a society of philosophical or musical
+friends. But a mediæval knight went into his
+pleasance, to gather roses and hear the birds sing;
+or rode out hunting or hawking. His evening feast, though
+riotous enough sometimes, was not the height of his day's enjoyment;
+and if the attractions of the world are to be shown
+typically to him, as opposed to the horrors of death, they are
+never represented by a full feast in a chamber, but by a delicate
+dessert in an orange grove, with musicians under the trees; or a
+ride on a May morning, hawk on fist.</p>
+
+<p>This change is evidently a healthy, and a very interesting
+one.</p>							<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 5. 3. Disturbed conscience.</div>
+
+<p>The third vital point is the marked sense that this hawking
+and apple-eating are not altogether right; that there is something
+else to be done in the world than that; and that the
+mountains, as opposed to the pleasant garden-ground,
+are places where that other something may
+best be learned;&mdash;which is evidently a piece of infinite and new
+respect for the mountains, and another healthy change in the
+tone of the human heart.</p>
+
+<p>Let us glance at the signs and various results of these
+changes, one by one.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 6. Derivative characters: 1. Love of flowers.</div>
+
+<p>The two first named, evil and good as they are, are very
+closely connected. The more poetical delight in external nature
+proceeds just from the fact that it is no longer looked upon
+with the eye of the farmer; and in proportion as
+the herbs and flowers cease to be regarded as useful,
+they are felt to be charming. Leeks are not
+now the most important objects in the garden, but lilies and
+roses; the herbage which a Greek would have looked at only
+with a view to the number of horses it would feed, is regarded
+by the mediæval knight as a green carpet for fair feet to
+dance upon, and the beauty of its softness and color is proportionally
+felt by him; while the brook, which the Greek rejoiced
+to dismiss into a reservoir under the palace threshold,
+would be, by the mediæval, distributed into pleasant pools, or
+forced into fountains; and regarded alternately as a mirror for
+fair faces, and a witchery to ensnare the sunbeams and the rainbow.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 7. 2. Less definite gratitude to God.</div>
+
+<p>And this change of feeling involves two others, very important.
+When the flowers and grass were regarded as means of
+life, and therefore (as the thoughtful laborer of the soil must
+always regard them) with the reverence due to
+those gifts of God which were most necessary to
+his existence; although their own beauty was less
+felt, their proceeding from the Divine hand was more seriously
+acknowledged, and the herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree yielding
+fruit, though in themselves less admired, were yet solemnly
+connected in the heart with the reverence of Ceres, Pomona, or
+Pan. But when the sense of these necessary uses was more or
+less lost, among the upper classes, by the delegation of the art
+of husbandry to the hands of the peasant, the flower and fruit,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span>
+whose bloom or richness thus became a mere source of pleasure,
+were regarded with less solemn sense of the Divine gift in them;
+and were converted rather into toys than treasures, chance gifts
+for gaiety, rather than promised rewards of labor; so that while
+the Greek could hardly have trodden the formal furrow, or
+plucked the clusters from the trellised vine, without reverent
+thoughts of the deities of field and leaf, who gave the seed to
+fructify, and the bloom to darken, the mediæval knight plucked
+the violet to wreathe in his lady's hair, or strewed the idle rose
+on the turf at her feet, with little sense of anything in the
+nature that gave them, but a frail, accidental, involuntary exuberance;
+while also the Jewish sacrificial system being now
+done away, as well as the Pagan mythology, and, with it, the
+whole conception of meat offering or firstfruits offering, the
+chiefest seriousness of all the thoughts connected with the gifts
+of nature faded from the minds of the classes of men concerned
+with art and literature; while the peasant, reduced to serf level,
+was incapable of imaginative thought, owing to his want of
+general cultivation. But on the other hand, exactly in proportion
+as the idea of definite spiritual presence in material nature
+was lost, the mysterious sense of <i>unaccountable</i> life in the things
+themselves would be increased, and the mind would instantly
+be laid open to all those currents of fallacious, but pensive and
+pathetic sympathy, which we have seen to be characteristic of
+modern times.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">S 8. 3. Gloom, caused by enforced solitude.</div>
+
+<p>Farther: a singular difference would necessarily result from
+the far greater loneliness of baronial life, deprived as it was of
+all interest in agricultural pursuits. The palace of a Greek
+leader in early times might have gardens, fields,
+and farms around it, but was sure to be near some
+busy city or sea-port: in later times, the city
+itself became the principal dwelling-place, and the country was
+visited only to see how the farm went on, or traversed in a line
+of march. Far other was the life of the mediæval baron,
+nested on his solitary jut of crag; entering into cities only
+occasionally for some grave political or warrior's purpose, and,
+for the most part, passing the years of his life in lion-like isolation;
+the village inhabited by his retainers straggling indeed
+about the slopes of the rocks at his feet, but his own dwelling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>
+standing gloomily apart, between them and the uncompanionable
+clouds, commanding, from sunset to sunrise, the flowing
+flame of some calm unvoyaged river, and the endless undulation
+of the untraversable hills. How different must the thoughts
+about nature have been, of the noble who lived among the bright
+marble porticos of the Greek groups of temple or palace,&mdash;in the
+midst of a plain covered with corn and olives, and by the shore
+of a sparkling and freighted sea,&mdash;from those of the master of
+some mountain promontory in the green recesses of Northern
+Europe, watching night by night, from amongst his heaps of
+storm-broken stone, rounded into towers, the lightning of the
+lonely sea flash round the sands of Harlech, or the mists changing
+their shapes forever, among the changeless pines, that fringe
+the crests of Jura.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§9. And frequent pilgrimage.</div>
+
+<p>Nor was it without similar effect on the minds of men that
+their journeyings and pilgrimages became more frequent than
+those of the Greek, the extent of ground traversed in the
+course of them larger, and the mode of travel
+more companionless. To the Greek, a voyage
+to Egypt, or the Hellespont, was the subject of lasting fame
+and fable, and the forests of the Danube and the rocks of Sicily
+closed for him the gates of the intelligible world. What parts
+of that narrow world he crossed were crossed with fleets or
+armies; the camp always populous on the plain, and the ships
+drawn in cautious symmetry around the shore. But to the mediæval
+knight, from Scottish moor to Syrian sand, the world was
+one great exercise ground, or field of adventure; the staunch
+pacing of his charger penetrated the pathlessness of outmost
+forest, and sustained the sultriness of the most secret desert.
+Frequently alone,&mdash;or, if accompanied, for the most part only
+by retainers of lower rank, incapable of entering into complete
+sympathy with any of his thoughts,&mdash;he must have been compelled
+often to enter into dim companionship with the silent
+nature around him, and must assuredly sometimes have talked
+to the wayside flowers of his love, and to the fading clouds of his
+ambition.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">4. Dread of mountains.</div>
+
+<p>§ 10. But, on the other hand, the idea of retirement from
+the world for the sake of self-mortification, of combat with
+demons, or communion with angels, and with their King,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>
+&mdash;authoritatively commended as it was to all men by the continual
+practice of Christ Himself,&mdash;gave to all mountain
+solitude at once a sanctity and a terror, in the
+mediæval mind, which were altogether different from anything
+that it had possessed in the un-Christian periods. On the one
+side, there was an idea of sanctity attached to rocky wilderness,
+because it had always been among hills that the Deity had
+manifested himself most intimately to men, and to the hills
+that His saints had nearly always retired for meditation, for
+especial communion with Him, and to prepare for death. Men
+acquainted with the history of Moses, alone at Horeb, or with
+Israel at Sinai,&mdash;of Elijah by the brook Cherith, and in the
+Horeb cave; of the deaths of Moses and Aaron on Hor and
+Nebo; of the preparation of Jephthah's daughter for her death
+among the Judea Mountains; of the continual retirement of
+Christ Himself to the mountains for prayer, His temptation in
+the desert of the Dead Sea, His sermon on the hills of Capernaum,
+His transfiguration on the crest of Tabor, and his evening
+and morning walks over Olivet for the four or five days
+preceding His crucifixion,&mdash;were not likely to look with irreverent
+or unloving eyes upon the blue hills that girded their
+golden horizon, or drew upon them the mysterious clouds out of
+the height of the darker heaven. But with this impression of
+their greater sanctity was involved also that of a peculiar terror.
+In all this,&mdash;their haunting by the memories of prophets, the
+presences of angels, and the everlasting thoughts and words of
+the Redeemer,&mdash;the mountain ranges seemed separated from the
+active world, and only to be fitly approached by hearts which
+were condemnatory of it. Just in so much as it appeared necessary
+for the noblest men to retire to the hill-recesses before their
+missions could be accomplished or their spirits perfected, in so
+far did the daily world seem by comparison to be pronounced
+profane and dangerous; and to those who loved that world,
+and its work, the mountains were thus voiceful with perpetual
+rebuke, and necessarily contemplated with a kind of pain and
+fear, such as a man engrossed by vanity feels at being by some
+accident forced to hear a startling sermon, or to assist at a
+funeral service. Every association of this kind was deepened
+by the practice and the precept of the time; and thousands of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span>
+hearts, which might otherwise have felt that there was loveliness
+in the wild landscape, shrank from it in dread, because they
+knew that the monk retired to it for penance, and the hermit
+for contemplation. The horror which the Greek had felt for
+hills only when they were uninhabitable and barren, attached
+itself now to many of the sweetest spots of earth; the feeling
+was conquered by political interests, but never by admiration;
+military ambition seized the frontier rock, or maintained itself
+in the unassailable pass; but it was only for their punishment,
+or in their despair, that men consented to tread the crocused
+slopes of the Chartreuse, or the soft glades and dewy pastures
+of Vallombrosa.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. In all these modifications of temper and principle there
+appears much which tends to passionate, affectionate, or awe-struck
+observance of the features of natural scenery, closely
+resembling, in all but this superstitious dread of mountains,
+our feelings at the present day. But <i>one</i> character which the
+mediævals had in common with the ancients, and that exactly
+the most eminent character in both, opposed itself steadily to
+all the feelings we have hitherto been examining,&mdash;the admiration,
+namely, and constant watchfulness, of human beauty.
+Exercised in nearly the same manner as the Greeks, from their
+youth upwards, their countenances were cast even in a higher
+mould; for, although somewhat less regular in feature, and
+affected by minglings of Northern bluntness and stolidity of
+general expression, together with greater thinness of lip and
+shaggy formlessness of brow, these less sculpturesque features
+were, nevertheless, touched with a seriousness and refinement
+proceeding first from the modes of thought inculcated by the
+Christian religion, and secondly from their more romantic and
+various life. Hence a degree of personal beauty, both male and
+female, was attained in the Middle Ages, with which classical
+periods could show nothing for a moment comparable; and this
+beauty was set forth by the most perfect splendor, united with
+grace, in dress, which the human race have hitherto invented.
+The strength of their art-genius was directed in great part to
+this object; and their best workmen and most brilliant fanciers
+were employed in wreathing the mail or embroidering the robe.
+The exquisite arts of enamelling and chasing metal enabled them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>
+to make the armor as radiant and delicate as the plumage of a
+tropical bird; and the most various and vivid imaginations were
+displayed in the alternations of color, and fiery freaks of form,
+on shield and crest; so that of all the beautiful things which
+the eyes of men could fall upon, in the world about them, the
+most beautiful must have been a young knight riding out in
+morning sunshine, and in faithful hope.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"His broad, clear brow in sunlight glowed;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">From underneath his helmet flowed</span><br />
+<span class="i0">His coal-black curls, as on he rode.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">All in the blue, unclouded weather,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thick jewelled shone the saddle leather;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The helmet and the helmet feather</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Burned like one burning flame together;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And the gemmy bridle glittered free,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Like to some branch of stars we see</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Hung in the golden galaxy."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 12. 5. care for human beauty.</div>
+
+<p>Now, the effect of this superb presence of human beauty on
+men in general was, exactly as it had been in Greek times, first,
+to turn their thoughts and glances in great part away from
+all other beauty but that, and to make the grass of
+the field take to them always more or less the aspect
+of a carpet to dance upon, a lawn to tilt upon, or a serviceable
+crop of hay; and, secondly, in what attention they paid to this
+lower nature, to make them dwell exclusively on what was
+graceful, symmetrical, and bright in color. All that was rugged,
+rough, dark, wild, unterminated, they rejected at once, as
+the domain of "salvage men" and monstrous giants: all that
+they admired was tender, bright, balanced, enclosed, symmetrical&mdash;only
+symmetrical in the noble and free sense: for
+what we moderns call "symmetry," or "balance," differs as
+much from mediæval symmetry as the poise of a grocer's scales,
+or the balance of an Egyptian mummy with its hands tied to
+its sides, does from the balance of a knight on his horse, striking
+with the battle-axe, at the gallop; the mummy's balance
+looking wonderfully perfect, and yet sure to be one-sided if you
+weigh the dust of it,&mdash;the knight's balance swaying and changing
+like the wind, and yet as true and accurate as the laws of life.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 13. 6. Symmetrical government of design.</div>
+<p>And this love of symmetry was still farther enhanced by the
+peculiar duties required of art at the time; for, in order to fit
+a flower or leaf for inlaying in armor, or showing clearly in
+glass, it was absolutely necessary to take away its
+complexity, and reduce it to the condition of a
+disciplined and orderly pattern; and this the
+more, because, for all military purposes, the device, whatever it
+was, had to be distinctly intelligible at extreme distance. That
+it should be a good imitation of nature, when seen near, was of
+no moment; but it was of highest moment that when first the
+knight's banner flashed in the sun at the turn of the mountain
+road, or rose, torn and bloody, through the drift of the battle
+dust, it should still be discernible what the bearing was.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"At length, the freshening western blast</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Aside the shroud of battle cast;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And first the ridge of mingled spears</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Above the brightening cloud appears;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And in the smoke the pennons flew,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As in the storm the white sea-mew;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Then marked they, dashing broad and far</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The broken billows of the war.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Wide raged the battle on the plain;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Spears shook, and falchions flashed amain,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Fell England's arrow-flight like rain;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Crests rose, and stooped, and rose again,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Wild and disorderly.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Amidst the scene of tumult, high,</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>They saw Lord Marmion's falcon fly,</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>And stainless Tunstall's banner white,</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>And Edmund Howard's lion bright.</i>"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>It was needed, not merely that they should see it was a
+falcon, but Lord Marmion's falcon; not only a lion, but the
+Howard's lion. Hence, to the one imperative end of <i>intelligibility</i>,
+every minor resemblance to nature was sacrificed, and
+above all, the <i>curved</i>, which are chiefly the confusing lines; so
+that the straight, elongated back, doubly elongated tail, projected
+and separate claws, and other rectilinear unnaturalnesses
+of form, became the means by which the leopard was, in midst
+of the mist and storm of battle, distinguished from the dog, or
+the lion from the wolf; the most admirable fierceness and vital<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>ity
+being, in spite of these necessary changes (so often shallowly
+sneered at by the modern workman), obtained by the old
+designer.</p>
+
+<p>Farther, it was necessary to the brilliant harmony of color,
+and clear setting forth of everything, that all confusing
+shadows, all dim and doubtful lines should be rejected: hence
+at once an utter denial of natural appearances by the great body
+of workmen; and a calm rest in a practice of representation
+which would make either boar or lion blue, scarlet, or golden,
+according to the device of the knight, or the need of such and
+such a color in that place of the pattern; and which wholly
+denied that any substance ever cast a shadow, or was affected by
+any kind of obscurity.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 14. 7. Therefore, inaccurate rendering of nature.</div>
+
+<p>All this was in its way, and for its end, absolutely right,
+admirable, and delightful; and those who despise it, laugh at
+it, or derive no pleasure from it, are utterly ignorant of the
+highest principles of art, and are mere tyros and
+beginners in the practice of color. But, admirable
+though it might be, one necessary result of it was
+a farther withdrawal of the observation of men from the refined
+and subtle beauty of nature; so that the workman who first was
+led to think <i>lightly</i> of natural beauty, as being subservient to
+human, was next led to think <i>inaccurately</i> of natural beauty,
+because he had continually to alter and simplify it for his practical
+purposes.</p>
+
+<p>§ 15. Now, assembling all these different sources of the
+peculiar mediæval feeling towards nature in one view, we have:</p>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>1st. Love of the garden instead of love of the farm, leading to
+a sentimental contemplation of nature, instead of a practical
+and agricultural one. (§§ 3. 4. 6.)</p>
+
+<p>2nd. Loss of sense of actual Divine presence, leading to fancies
+of fallacious animation, in herbs, flowers, clouds, &amp;c.
+(§ 7.)</p>
+
+<p>3rd. Perpetual, and more or less undisturbed, companionship
+with wild nature. (§§ 8. 9.)</p>
+
+<p>4th. Apprehension of demoniacal and angelic presence among
+mountains, leading to a reverent dread of them. (§ 10.)</p>
+
+<p>5th. Principalness of delight in human beauty, leading to comparative
+contempt of natural objects. (§ 11.)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span></p>
+
+<p>6th. Consequent love of order, light, intelligibility, and symmetry,
+leading to dislike of the wildness, darkness, and
+mystery of nature. (§ 12.)</p>
+
+<p>7th. Inaccuracy of observance of nature, induced by the habitual
+practice of change on its forms. (§ 13.)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>From these mingled elements, we should necessarily expect
+to find resulting, as the characteristic of mediæval landscape
+art, compared with Greek, a far higher sentiment about it, and
+affection for it, more or less subdued by still greater respect for
+the loveliness of man, and therefore subordinated entirely to
+human interests; mingled with curious traces of terror, piety,
+or superstition, and cramped by various formalisms,&mdash;some wise
+and necessary, some feeble, and some exhibiting needless ignorance
+and inaccuracy.</p>
+
+<p>Under these lights, let us examine the facts.</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. The landscape of the Middle Ages is represented in a
+central manner by the illuminations of the MSS. of Romances,
+executed about the middle of the fifteenth century. On one
+side of these stands the earlier landscape work, more or less
+treated as simple decoration; on the other, the later landscape
+work, becoming more or less affected with modern ideas and
+modes of imitation.</p>
+
+<p>These central fifteenth century landscapes are almost invariably
+composed of a grove or two of tall trees, a winding river,
+and a castle, or a garden: the peculiar feature of both these last
+being <i>trimness</i>; the artist always dwelling especially on the
+fences; wreathing the espaliers indeed prettily with sweet-briar,
+and putting pots of orange-trees on the tops of the walls, but
+taking great care that there shall be no loose bricks in the one,
+nor broken stakes in the other,&mdash;the trouble and ceaseless warfare
+of the times having rendered security one of the first elements
+of pleasantness, and making it impossible for any artist
+to conceive Paradise but as surrounded by a moat, or to distinguish
+the road to it better than by its narrow wicket gate,
+and watchful porter.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. One of these landscapes is thus described by Macaulay:
+"We have an exact square, enclosed by the rivers Pison, Gihon,
+Hiddekel, and Euphrates, each with a convenient bridge in the
+centre; rectangular beds of flowers; a long canal neatly bricked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span>
+and railed in; the tree of knowledge, clipped like one of the
+limes behind the Tuileries, standing in the centre of the grand
+alley; the snake turned round it, the man on the right hand,
+the woman on the left, and the beasts drawn up in an exact
+circle round them."</p>
+
+<p>All this is perfectly true; and seems in the description very
+curiously foolish. The only curious folly, however, in the
+matter is the exquisite <i>naïveté</i> of the historian, in supposing
+that the quaint landscape indicates in the understanding of the
+painter so marvellous an inferiority to his own; whereas, it is
+altogether his own wit that is at fault, in not comprehending
+that nations, whose youth had been decimated among the sands
+and serpents of Syria, knew probably nearly as much about
+Eastern scenery as youths trained in the schools of the modern
+Royal Academy; and that this curious symmetry was entirely
+symbolic, only more or less modified by the various instincts
+which I have traced above. Mr. Macaulay is evidently quite
+unaware that the serpent with the human head, and body
+twisted round the tree, was the universally accepted symbol of
+the evil angel, from the dawn of art up to Michael Angelo; that
+the greatest sacred artists invariably place the man on the one
+side of the tree, the woman on the other, in order to denote the
+enthroned and balanced dominion about to fall by temptation;
+that the beasts are ranged (when they <i>are</i> so, though this is much
+more seldom the case,) in a circle round them, expressly to mark
+that they were then not wild, but obedient, intelligent, and
+orderly beasts; and that the four rivers are trenched and enclosed
+on the four sides, to mark that the waters which now
+wander in waste, and destroy in fury, had then for their principal
+office to "water the garden" of God. The description is,
+however, sufficiently apposite and interesting, as bearing upon
+what I have noted respecting the eminent <i>fence</i>-loving spirit of
+the mediævals.</p>
+
+<p>§18. Together with this peculiar formality, we find an infinite
+delight in drawing pleasant flowers, always articulating
+and outlining them completely; the sky is always blue, having
+only a few delicate white clouds in it, and in the distance are
+blue mountains, very far away, if the landscape is to be simply
+delightful; but brought near, and divided into quaint over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>hanging
+rocks, if it is intended to be meditative, or a place of
+saintly seclusion. But the whole of it always,&mdash;flowers, castles,
+brooks, clouds, and rocks,&mdash;subordinate to the human figures in
+the foreground, and painted for no other end than that of
+explaining their adventures and occupations.</p>
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_7" id="PLATE_7"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus234topb.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus234topw.jpg" alt="PLATE 7 Top" />
+	</a>
+	<br />
+	<a href="images/illus234botb.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus234botw.jpg" alt="PLATE 7 Bot" />
+	</a>
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		7. Botany of 13<sup>th</sup> Century.<br />(Apple-tree and Cyclamen)
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 19. Before the idea of landscape had been thus far developed,
+the representations of it had been purely typical; the
+objects which had to be shown in order to explain the scene of
+the event, being firmly outlined, usually on a pure golden or
+chequered color background, not on sky. The change from the
+golden background, (characteristic of the finest thirteenth century
+work) and the colored chequer (which in like manner belongs
+to the finest fourteenth) to the blue sky, gradated to the
+horizon, takes place early in the fifteenth century, and is the
+<i>crisis</i> of change in the spirit of mediæval art. Strictly speaking,
+we might divide the art of Christian times into two great
+masses&mdash;Symbolic and Imitative;&mdash;the symbolic, reaching from
+the earliest periods down to the close of the fourteenth century,
+and the imitative from that close to the present time; and,
+then, the most important circumstance indicative of the culminating
+point, or turn of tide, would be this of the change
+from chequered background to sky background. The uppermost
+figure in Plate 7. opposite, representing the tree of knowledge,
+taken from a somewhat late thirteenth century Hebrew
+manuscript (Additional 11,639) in the British Museum, will at
+once illustrate Mr. Macaulay's "serpent turned round the tree,"
+and the mode of introducing the chequer background, will
+enable the reader better to understand the peculiar feeling of
+the period, which no more intended the formal walls or streams
+for an imitative representation of the Garden of Eden, than
+these chequers for an imitation of sky.</p>
+
+<p>§ 20. The moment the sky is introduced (and it is curious
+how perfectly it is done <i>at once</i>, many manuscripts presenting,
+in alternate pages, chequered backgrounds, and deep blue skies
+exquisitely gradated to the horizon)&mdash;the moment, I say, the
+sky is introduced, the spirit of art becomes for evermore
+changed, and thenceforward it gradually proposes imitation
+more and more as an end, until it reaches the Turnerian landscape.
+This broad division into two schools would therefore be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span>
+the most true and accurate we could employ, but not the most
+convenient. For the great mediæval art lies in a cluster about
+the culminating point, including symbolism on one side, and
+imitation on the other, and extending like a radiant cloud upon
+the mountain peak of ages, partly down both sides of it, from
+the year 1200 to 1500; the brightest part of the cloud leaning a
+little backwards, and poising itself between 1250 and 1350.
+And therefore the most convenient arrangement is into Romanesque
+and barbaric art, up to 1200,&mdash;mediæval art, 1200 to
+1500,&mdash;and modern art, from 1500 downwards. But it is only
+in the earlier or symbolic mediæval art, reaching up to the close
+of the fourteenth century, that the peculiar modification of
+natural forms for decorative purposes is seen in its perfection,
+with all its beauty, and all its necessary shortcomings; the
+minds of men being accurately balanced between that honor for
+the superior human form which they shared with the Greek
+ages, and the sentimental love of nature which was peculiar to
+their own. The expression of the two feelings will be found to
+vary according to the material and place of the art; in painting,
+the conventional forms are more adopted, in order to obtain
+definition, and brilliancy of color, while in sculpture the life of
+nature is often rendered with a love and faithfulness which put
+modern art to shame. And in this earnest contemplation of
+the natural facts, united with an endeavor to simplify, for clear
+expression, the results of that contemplation, the ornamental
+artists arrived at two abstract conclusions about form, which
+are highly curious and interesting.</p>
+
+<p>§ 21. They saw, first, that a leaf might always be considered
+as a sudden expansion of the stem that bore it; an uncontrollable
+expression of delight, on the part of the twig, that spring
+had come, shown in a fountain-like expatiation of its tender
+green heart into the air. They saw that in this violent proclamation
+of its delight and liberty, whereas the twig had, until
+that moment, a disposition only to grow quietly forwards, it
+expressed its satisfaction and extreme pleasure in sunshine by
+springing out to right and left. Let <i>a b</i>, Fig. 1. Plate 8., be
+the twig growing forward in the direction from <i>a</i> to <i>b</i>. It
+reaches the point <i>b</i>, and then&mdash;spring coming,&mdash;not being able
+to contain itself, it bursts out in every direction, even springing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span>
+backwards at first for joy; but as this backward direction is
+contrary to its own proper fate and nature, it cannot go on so
+long, and the length of each rib into which it separates is proportioned
+accurately to the degree in which the proceedings of
+that rib are in harmony with the natural destiny of the plant.
+Thus the rib <i>c</i>, entirely contradictory, by the direction of his
+life and energy, of the general intentions to the tree, is but a
+short-lived rib; <i>d</i>, not quite so opposite to his fate, lives longer;
+<i>e</i>, accommodating himself still more to the spirit of progress,
+attains a greater length still; and the largest rib of all is the
+one who has not yielded at all to the erratic disposition of the
+others when spring came, but, feeling quite as happy about the
+spring as they did, nevertheless took no holiday, minded his
+business, and grew straightforward.</p>
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_8" id="PLATE_8"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus237b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus237w.jpg" height="500"  alt="PLATE 8" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		 8. The Growth of Leaves.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 22. Fig. 6. in the same plate, which shows the disposition
+of the ribs in the leaf of an American Plane, exemplifies the
+principle very accurately; it is indeed more notably seen in this
+than in most leaves, because the ribs at the base have evidently
+had a little fraternal quarrel about their spring holiday; and
+the more gaily-minded ones, getting together into trios on each
+side, have rather pooh-poohed and laughed at the seventh
+brother in the middle, who wanted to go on regularly, and
+attend to his work. Nevertheless, though thus starting quite
+by himself in life, this seventh brother, quietly pushing on in
+the right direction, lives longest, and makes the largest fortune,
+and the triple partnerships on the right and left meet with a
+very minor prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>§ 23. Now if we inclose Fig. 1. in Plate 8. with two curves
+passing through the extremities of the ribs, we get Fig. 2., the
+central type of all leaves. Only this type is modified of course
+in a thousand ways by the life of the plant. If it be marsh or
+aquatic, instead of springing out in twigs, it is almost certain to
+expand in soft currents, as the liberated stream does at its
+mouth into the ocean, Fig. 3. (Alisma Plantago); if it be meant
+for one of the crowned and lovely trees of the earth, it will
+separate into stars, and each ray of the leaf will form a ray of
+light in the crown, Fig. 5. (Horsechestnut); and if it be a commonplace
+tree, rather prudent and practical than imaginative,
+it will not expand all at once, but throw out the ribs every now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span>
+and then along the central rib, like a merchant taking his occasional
+and restricted holiday, Fig. 4. (Elm).</p>
+
+<p>§ 24. Now in the bud, where all these proceedings on the
+leaf's part are first imagined, the young leaf is generally
+(always?) doubled up in embryo, so as to present the profile of
+the half-leaves, as Fig. 7., only in exquisite complexity of arrangement;
+Fig. 9., for instance, is the profile of the leaf-bud
+of a rose. Hence the general arrangement of line represented
+by Fig. 8. (in which the lower line is slightly curved to express
+the bending life in the spine) is everlastingly typical of the
+expanding powers of joyful vegetative youth; and it is of all
+simple forms the most exquisitely delightful to the human
+mind. It presents itself in a thousand different proportions and
+variations in the buds and profiles of leaves; those being always
+the loveliest in which, either by accidental perspective of position,
+or inherent character in the tree, it is most frequently
+presented to the eye. The branch of bramble, for instance,
+Fig. 10. at the bottom of Plate 8., owes its chief beauty to the
+perpetual recurrence of this typical form; and we shall find
+presently the enormous importance of it, even in mountain
+ranges, though, in these, <i>falling</i> force takes the place of <i>vital</i>
+force.</p>
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="FIG_3" id="FIG_3"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus240b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus240w.jpg" width="500"  alt="FIG 3" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		 <span class="smcap">Fig.</span> 3.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 25. This abstract conclusion the great thirteenth century
+artists were the first to arrive at; and whereas, before their
+time, ornament had been constantly refined into intricate and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>
+subdivided symmetries, they were content with this simple form
+as the termination of its most important features. Fig. 3.,
+which is a scroll out of a Psalter executed in the latter half of
+the thirteenth century, is a sufficient example of a practice at
+that time absolutely universal.</p>
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_9" id="PLATE_9"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus242b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus242w.jpg" style="margin-bottom: -2em;" height="500"  alt="PLATE 9" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		 9.<br />Botany of the 14<sup>th</sup> Century.<br />
+		 <span style="font-size: 90%;">From the Prayer-book of Yolande of Navarre.</span>
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 26. The second great discovery of the Middle Ages in floral
+ornament, was that, in order completely to express the law
+of subordination among the leaf-ribs, two ribs were necessary,
+<i>and no more</i>, on each side of the leaf, forming a series of three
+with the central one, because proportion is between three terms
+at least.</p>
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="FIG_4" id="FIG_4"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus243.png" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus243.png" width="300"  alt="FIG 4" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		 <span class="smcap">Fig.</span> 4.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>That is to say, when they had only three ribs altogether, as
+<i>a</i>, Fig. 4., no <i>law</i> of relation was discernible between the ribs,
+or the leaflets they bore; but by the addition of a third on each
+side as at <i>b</i>, proportion instantly was expressible, whether
+arithmetical or geometrical, or of any other kind. Hence the
+adoption of forms more or less approximating to that at <i>c</i>
+(young ivy), or <i>d</i> (wild geranium), as the favorite elements of
+their floral ornament, those leaves being in their disposition of
+masses, the simplest which can express a perfect law of proportion,
+just as the outline Fig. 7. Plate 8. is the simplest which
+can express a perfect law of growth.</p>
+
+<p>Plate 9. opposite gives, in rude outline, the arrangement of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>
+the border of one of the pages of a missal in my own possession,
+executed for the Countess Yolande of Flanders,<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a>
+in the latter
+half of the fourteenth century, and furnishing, in exhaustless
+variety, the most graceful examples I have ever seen of the
+favorite decoration at the period, commonly now known as the
+"Ivy leaf" pattern.</p>
+
+<p>§ 27. In thus reducing these two everlasting laws of beauty
+to their simplest possible exponents, the mediæval workmen
+were the first to discern and establish the principles of decorative
+art to the end of time, nor of decorative art merely, but of
+mass arrangement in general. For the members of any great
+composition, arranged about a centre, are always reducible to
+the law of the ivy leaf, the best cathedral entrances having five
+porches corresponding in proportional purpose to its five lobes
+(three being an imperfect, and seven a superfluous number);
+while the loveliest groups of lines attainable in any pictorial
+composition are always based on the section of the leaf-bud, Fig.
+7. Plate 8., or on the relation of its ribs to the convex curve
+enclosing them.</p>
+
+<p>§ 28. These discoveries of ultimate truth are, I believe,
+never made philosophically, but instinctively; so that wherever
+we find a high abstract result of the kind, we may be almost
+sure it has been the work of the penetrative imagination, acting
+under the influence of strong affection. Accordingly, when we
+enter on our botanical inquiries, I shall have occasion to show
+with what tender and loving fidelity to nature the masters of
+the thirteenth century always traced the leading lines of their
+decorations, either in missal-painting or sculpture, and how totally
+in this respect their methods of subduing, for the sake of
+distinctness, the natural forms they loved so dearly, differ from
+the iron formalisms to which the Greeks, careless of all that was
+not completely divine or completely human, reduced the thorn
+of the acanthus, and softness of the lily. Nevertheless, in all
+this perfect and loving decorative art, we have hardly any careful
+references to other landscape features than herbs and flowers;
+mountains, water, and clouds are introduced so rudely,
+that the representations of them can never be received for any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>thing
+else than letters or signs. Thus the <i>sign</i> of clouds, in the
+thirteenth century, is an undulating band, usually in painting,
+of blue edged with white, in sculpture, wrought so as to resemble
+very nearly the folds of a curtain closely tied, and understood
+for clouds only by its position, as surrounding angels or
+saints in heaven, opening to souls ascending at the Last Judgment,
+or forming canopies over the Saviour or the Virgin.
+Water is represented by zigzag lines, nearly resembling those
+employed for clouds, but distinguished, in sculpture, by having
+fish in it; in painting, both by fish and a more continuous blue
+or green color. And when these unvaried symbols are associated
+under the influence of that love of firm fence, moat, and
+every other means of definition which we have seen to be one of
+the prevailing characteristics of the mediæval mind, it is not
+possible for us to conceive, through the rigidity of the signs employed,
+what were the real feelings of the workman or spectator
+about the natural landscape. We see that the thing carved or
+painted is not intended in any wise to imitate the truth, or convey
+to us the feelings which the workman had in contemplating
+the truth. He has got a way of talking about it so definite and
+cold, and tells us with his chisel so calmly that the knight had
+a castle to attack, or the saint a river to cross dryshod, without
+making the smallest effort to describe pictorially either castle or
+river, that we are left wholly at fault as to the nature of the
+emotion with which he contemplated the real objects. But that
+emotion, as the intermediate step between the feelings of the
+Grecian and the Modern, it must be our aim to ascertain as clearly
+as possible; and, therefore, finding it not at this period completely
+expressed in visible art, we must, as we did with the
+Greeks, take up the written landscape instead, and examine this
+mediæval sentiment as we find it embodied in the poem of
+Dante.</p>
+
+<p>§ 29. The thing that must first strike us in this respect, as
+we turn our thoughts to the poem, is, unquestionably, the <i>formality</i>
+of its landscape.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's effort, in all that he tells us of his Inferno, is to
+make it indefinite; Dante's, to make it <i>definite</i>. Both, indeed,
+describe it as entered through gates; but, within the gate, all
+is wild and fenceless with Milton, having indeed its four rivers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>&mdash;the
+last vestige of the mediæval tradition,&mdash;but rivers which
+flow through a waste of mountain and moorland, and by "many
+a frozen, many a fiery Alp." But Dante's Inferno is accurately
+separated into circles drawn with well-pointed compasses; mapped
+and properly surveyed in every direction, trenched in a
+thoroughly good style of engineering from depth to depth, and
+divided in the "<i>accurate</i> middle" (dritto mezzo) of its deepest
+abyss, into a concentric series of ten moats and embankments,
+like those about a castle, with bridges from each embankment
+to the next; precisely in the manner of those bridges over Hiddekel
+and Euphrates, which Mr. Macaulay thinks so innocently
+designed, apparently not aware that he is also laughing at
+Dante. These larger fosses are of rock, and the bridges also;
+but as he goes further into detail, Dante tells us of various
+minor fosses and embankments, in which he anxiously points
+out to us not only the formality, but the neatness and perfectness,
+of the stonework. For instance, in describing the river
+Phlegethon, he tells us that it was "paved with stone at the bottom,
+and at the sides, and <i>over the edges of the sides</i>," just as
+the water is at the baths of Bulicame; and for fear we should
+think this embankment at all <i>larger</i> than it really was, Dante
+adds, carefully, that it was made just like the embankments of
+Ghent or Bruges against the sea, or those in Lombardy which
+bank the Brenta, only "not so high, nor so wide," as any of
+these. And besides the trenches, we have two well-built castles;
+one like Ecbatana, with seven circuits of wall (and surrounded
+by a fair stream), wherein the great poets and sages of
+antiquity live; and another, a great fortified city with walls of
+iron, red-hot, and a deep fosse round it, and full of "grave citizens,"&mdash;the
+city of Dis.</p>
+
+<p>§ 30. Now, whether this be in what we moderns call "good
+taste," or not, I do not mean just now to inquire&mdash;Dante having
+nothing to do with taste, but with the facts of what he had
+seen; only, so far as the imaginative faculty of the two poets is
+concerned, note that Milton's vagueness is not the sign of imagination,
+but of its absence, so far as it is significative in the matter.
+For it does not follow, because Milton did not map out his
+Inferno as Dante did, that he <i>could</i> not have done so if he had
+chosen; only, it was the easier and less imaginative process to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span>
+leave it vague than to define it. Imagination is always the seeing
+and asserting faculty; that which obscures or conceals may
+be judgment, or feeling, but not invention. The invention,
+whether good or bad, is in the accurate engineering, not in the
+fog and uncertainty.</p>
+
+<p>§ 31. When we pass with Dante from the Inferno to Purgatory,
+we have indeed more light and air, but no more liberty;
+being now confined on various ledges cut into a mountain side,
+with a precipice on one hand and a vertical wall on the other;
+and, lest here also we should make any mistake about magnitudes,
+we are told that the ledges were eighteen feet wide,<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a>
+and that the ascent from one to the other was by steps, made like
+those which go up from Florence to the church of San Minieto.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lastly, though in the Paradise there is perfect freedom and
+infinity of space, though for trenches we have planets, and for
+cornices constellations, yet there is more cadence, procession,
+and order among the redeemed souls than any others; they fly,
+so as to describe letters and sentences in the air, and rest in circles,
+like rainbows, or determinate figures, as of a cross and an
+eagle; in which certain of the more glorified natures are so arranged
+as to form the eye of the bird, while those most highly
+blessed are arranged with their white crowds in leaflets, so as to
+form the image of a white rose in the midst of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>§ 32. Thus, throughout the poem, I conceive that the first
+striking character of its scenery is intense definition; precisely
+the reflection of that definiteness which we have already traced
+in pictorial art. But the second point which seems noteworthy
+is, that the flat ground and embanked trenches are reserved for
+the Inferno; and that the entire territory of the Purgatory is a
+mountain, thus marking the sense of that purifying and perfecting
+influence in mountains which we saw the mediæval mind
+was so ready to suggest. The same general idea is indicated at
+the very commencement of the poem, in which Dante is overwhelmed
+by fear and sorrow in passing through a dark forest,
+but revives on seeing the sun touch the top of a hill, afterwards
+called by Virgil "the pleasant mount&mdash;the cause and source of
+all delight."</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>
+<p>§ 33. While, however, we find this greater honor paid to mountains,
+I think we may perceive a much greater dread and dislike
+of woods. We saw that Homer seemed to attach a pleasant
+idea, for the most part, to forests; regarding them as sources
+of wealth and places of shelter; and we find constantly an
+idea of sacredness attached to them, as being haunted especially
+by the gods; so that even the wood which surrounds the house
+of Circe is spoken of as a sacred thicket, or rather, as a sacred
+glade, or labyrinth of glades (of the particular word used I shall
+have more to say presently); and so the wood is sought as a
+kindly shelter by Ulysses, in spite of its wild beasts; and evidently
+regarded with great affection by Sophocles, for, in a passage
+which is always regarded by readers of Greek tragedy with
+peculiar pleasure, the aged and blind &OElig;dipus, brought to rest in
+"the sweetest resting-place" in all the neighborhood of Athens,
+has the spot described to him as haunted perpetually by nightingales,
+which sing "in the green glades and in the dark ivy,
+and in the thousand-fruited, sunless, and windless thickets of
+the god" (Bacchus); the idea of the complete shelter from wind
+and sun being here, as with Ulysses, the uppermost one. After
+this come the usual staples of landscape,&mdash;narcissus, crocus,
+plenty of rain, olive trees; and last, and the greatest boast of
+all,&mdash;"it is a good country for horses, and conveniently by the
+sea;" but the prominence and pleasantness of the thick wood
+in the thoughts of the writer are very notable; whereas to Dante
+the idea of a forest is exceedingly repulsive, so that, as just
+noticed, in the opening of his poem, he cannot express a general
+despair about life more strongly than by saying he was lost in a
+wood so savage and terrible, that "even to think or speak of it
+is distress,&mdash;it was so bitter,&mdash;it was something next door to
+death;" and one of the saddest scenes in all the Inferno is in a
+forest, of which the trees are haunted by lost souls; while (with
+only one exception,) whenever the country is to be beautiful, we
+find ourselves coming out into open air and open meadows.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite true that this is partly a characteristic, not merely
+of Dante, or of mediæval writers, but of <i>southern</i> writers;
+for the simple reason that the forest, being with them higher
+upon the hills, and more out of the way than in the north was
+generally a type of lonely and savage places; while in England,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span>
+the "greenwood," coming up to the very walls of the towns, it
+was possible to be "merry in the good greenwood," in a sense
+which an Italian could not have understood. Hence Chaucer,
+Spenser, and Shakspere send their favorites perpetually to the
+woods for pleasure or meditation; and trust their tender
+Canace, or Rosalind, or Helena, or Silvia, or Belphoebe, where
+Dante would have sent no one but a condemned spirit. Nevertheless,
+there is always traceable in the mediæval mind a dread
+of thick foliage, which was not present to that of a Greek; so
+that, even in the north, we have our sorrowful "children in the
+wood," and black huntsmen of the Hartz forests, and such other
+wood terrors; the principal reason for the difference being that
+a Greek, being by no means given to travelling, regarded his
+woods as so much valuable property; and if he ever went into
+them for pleasure expected to meet one or two gods in the course
+of his walk, but no banditti; while a mediæval, much more of
+a solitary traveller, and expecting to meet with no gods in the
+thickets, but only with thieves, or a hostile ambush, or a bear,
+besides a great deal of troublesome ground for his horse, and a
+very serious chance, next to a certainty, of losing his way, naturally
+kept in the open ground as long as he could, and regarded
+the forests, in general, with anything but an eye of favor.</p>
+
+<p>§ 34. These, I think, are the principal points which must
+strike us, when we first broadly think of the poem as compared
+with classical work. Let us now go a little more into detail.</p>
+
+<p>As Homer gave us an ideal landscape, which even a god
+might have been pleased to behold, so Dante gives us, fortunately,
+an ideal landscape, which is specially intended for the
+terrestrial paradise. And it will doubtless be with some surprise,
+after our reflections above on the general tone of Dante's
+feelings, that we find ourselves here first entering a <i>forest</i>, and
+that even a <i>thick</i> forest. But there is a peculiar meaning in
+this. With any other poet than Dante, it might have been regarded
+as a wanton inconsistency. Not so with him: by glancing
+back to the two lines which explain the nature of Paradise,
+we shall see what he means by it. Virgil tells him, as he enters
+it, "Henceforward, take thine own pleasure for guide; thou art
+beyond the steep ways, and beyond all Art;"&mdash;meaning, that
+the perfectly purified and noble human creature, having no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span>
+pleasure but in right, is past all effort, and past all <i>rule</i>. Art
+has no existence for such a being. Hence, the first aim of
+Dante, in his landscape imagery, is to show evidence of this
+perfect liberty, and of the purity and sinlessness of the new
+nature, converting pathless ways into happy ones. So that all
+those fences and formalisms which had been needed for him in
+imperfection, are removed in this paradise; and even the pathlessness
+of the wood, the most dreadful thing possible to him in
+his days of sin and shortcoming, is now a joy to him in his days
+of purity. And as the fencelessness and thicket of sin led to the
+fettered and fearful order of eternal punishment, so the fencelessness
+and thicket of the free virtue lead to the loving and
+constellated order of eternal happiness.</p>
+
+<p>§ 35. This forest, then, is very like that of Colonos in several
+respects&mdash;in its peace and sweetness, and number of birds;
+it differs from it only in letting a light breeze through it, being
+therefore somewhat thinner than the Greek wood; the tender
+lines which tell of the voices of the birds mingling with the
+wind, and of the leaves all turning one way before it, have been
+more or less copied by every poet since Dante's time. They are,
+so far as I know, the sweetest passage of wood description which
+exists in literature.</p>
+
+<p>Before, however, Dante has gone far in this wood,&mdash;that is
+to say, only so far as to have lost sight of the place where he
+entered it, or rather, I suppose, of the light under the boughs of
+the outside trees, and it must have been a very thin wood indeed
+if he did not do this in some quarter of a mile's walk,&mdash;he comes
+to a little river, three paces over, which bends the blades of grass
+to the left, with a meadow on the other side of it; and in this
+meadow</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"A lady, graced with solitude, who went</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Singing, and setting flower by flower apart,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">By which the path she walked on was besprent.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">'Ah, lady beautiful, that basking art</span><br />
+<span class="i1">In beams of love, if I may trust thy face,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Which useth to bear witness of the heart,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Let liking come on thee,' said I, 'to trace</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Thy path a little closer to the shore,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Where I may reap the hearing of thy lays.</span><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou mindest me, how Proserpine of yore</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Appeared in such a place, what time her mother</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Lost her, and she the spring, for evermore.'</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As, pointing downwards and to one another</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Her feet, a lady bendeth in the dance,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And barely setteth one before the other,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thus, on the scarlet and the saffron glance</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Of flowers, with motion maidenlike she bent</span><br />
+<span class="i0">(Her modest eyelids drooping and askance);</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And there she gave my wishes their content,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Approaching, so that her sweet melodies</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Arrived upon mine ear with what they meant.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">When first she came amongst the blades, that rise,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Already wetted, from the goodly river,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">She graced me by the lifting of her eyes."</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><span class="smcap">Cayley.</span></span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>§ 36. I have given this passage at length, because, for our
+purposes, it is by much the most important, not only in Dante,
+but in the whole circle of poetry. This lady, observe, stands on
+the opposite side of the little stream, which, presently, she explains
+to Dante is Lethe, having power to cause forgetfulness of
+all evil, and she stands just among the bent blades of grass at its
+edge. She is first seen gathering flower from flower, then "passing
+continually the multitudinous flowers through her hands,"
+smiling at the same time so brightly, that her first address to
+Dante is to prevent him from wondering at her, saying, "if he
+will remember the verse of the ninety-second Psalm, beginning.
+'Delectasti,' he will know why she is so happy."</p>
+
+<p>And turning to the verse of the Psalm, we find it written,
+"Thou, Lord, hast made me glad <i>through Thy works</i>. I will
+triumph <i>in the works of Thy hands</i>;" or, in the very words in
+which Dante would read it,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Quia delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Et in operibus manuum Tuarum exultabo."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 37. Now we could not for an instant have had any difficulty
+in understanding this, but that, some way farther on in the poem,
+this lady is called Matilda, and it is with reason supposed by the
+commentators to be the great Countess Matilda of the eleventh
+century; notable equally for her ceaseless activity, her brilliant
+political genius, her perfect piety, and her deep reverence for the
+see of Rome. This Countess Matilda is therefore Dante's guide<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span>
+in the terrestrial paradise, as Beatrice is afterwards in the celestial;
+each of them having a spiritual and symbolic character in
+their glorified state, yet retaining their definite personality.</p>
+
+<p>The question is, then, what is the symbolic character of the
+Countess Matilda, as the guiding spirit of the terrestrial paradise?
+Before Dante had entered this paradise he had rested on
+a step of shelving rock, and as he watched the stars he slept, and
+dreamed, and thus tells us what he saw:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"A lady, young and beautiful, I dreamed,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Was passing o'er a lea; and, as she came,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Methought I saw her ever and anon</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Bending to cull the flowers; and thus she sang:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">'Know ye, whoever of my name would ask,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That I am Leah; for my brow to weave</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To please me at the crystal mirror, here</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I deck me. But my sister Rachel, she</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Before her glass abides the livelong day,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Her radiant eyes beholding, charmed no less</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Than I with this delightful task. Her joy</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In contemplation, as in labor mine.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This vision of Rachel and Leah has been always, and with
+unquestionable truth, received as a type of the Active and Contemplative
+life, and as an introduction to the two divisions of
+the paradise which Dante is about to enter. Therefore the unwearied
+spirit of the Countess Matilda is understood to represent
+the Active life, which forms the felicity of Earth; and the spirit
+of Beatrice the Contemplative life, which forms the felicity of
+Heaven. This interpretation appears at first straightforward
+and certain; but it has missed count of exactly the most important
+fact in the two passages which we have to explain. Observe:
+Leah gathers the flowers to decorate <i>herself</i>, and delights
+in <i>Her Own</i> Labor. Rachel sits silent, contemplating herself,
+and delights in <i>Her Own</i> Image. These are the types of the
+Unglorified Active and Contemplative powers of Man. But
+Beatrice and Matilda are the same powers, Glorified. And how
+are they Glorified? Leah took delight in her own labor; but
+Matilda&mdash;"in operibus <i>manuum Tuarum</i>"&mdash;<i>in God's labor</i>:
+Rachel in the sight of her own face; Beatrice in the sight of
+<i>God's face</i>.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span>
+
+<p>§ 38. And thus, when afterwards Dante sees Beatrice on her
+throne, and prays her that, when he himself shall die, she would
+receive him with kindness, Beatrice merely looks down for an
+instant, and answers with a single smile, then "towards the
+eternal fountain turns."</p>
+
+<p>Therefore it is evident that Dante distinguishes in both
+cases, not between earth and heaven, but between perfect and
+imperfect happiness, whether in earth or heaven. The active
+life which has only the service of man for its end, and therefore
+gathers flowers, with Leah, for its own decoration, is indeed
+happy, but not perfectly so; it has only the happiness of the
+dream, belonging essentially to the dream of human life, and
+passing away with it. But the active life which labors for the
+more and more discovery of God's work, is perfectly happy, and
+is the life of the terrestrial paradise, being a true foretaste of
+heaven, and beginning in earth, as heaven's vestibule. So also
+the contemplative life which is concerned with human feeling
+and thought and beauty&mdash;the life which is in earthly poetry and
+imagery of noble earthly emotion&mdash;is happy, but it is the happiness
+of the dream; the contemplative life which has God's
+person and love in Christ for its object, has the happiness of
+eternity. But because this higher happiness is also begun here
+on earth, Beatrice descends to earth; and when revealed to
+Dante first, he sees the image of the twofold personality of
+Christ reflected in her <i>eyes</i>; as the flowers, which are, to the
+mediæval heart, the chief work of God, are for ever passing
+through Matilda's <i>hands</i>.</p>
+
+<p>§ 39. Now, therefore, we see that Dante, as the great prophetic
+exponent of the heart of the Middle Ages, has, by the
+lips of the spirit of Matilda, declared the mediæval faith,&mdash;that
+all perfect active life was "the expression of man's delight <i>in
+God's work</i>;" and that all their political and warlike energy, as
+fully shown in the mortal life of Matilda, was yet inferior and
+impure,&mdash;the energy of the dream,&mdash;compared with that which
+on the opposite bank of Lethe stood "choosing flower from
+flower." And what joy and peace there were in this work is
+marked by Matilda's being the person who draws Dante through
+the stream of Lethe, so as to make him forget all sin, and all
+sorrow: throwing her arms round him, she plunges his head<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span>
+under the waves of it; then draws him through, crying to him,
+"<i>hold me, hold me</i>" (tiemmi, tiemmi), and so presents him,
+thus bathed, free from all painful memory, at the feet of the
+spirit of the more heavenly contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>§ 40. The reader will, I think, now see, with sufficient distinctness,
+why I called this passage the most important, for our
+present purposes, in the whole circle of poetry. For it contains
+the first great confession of the discovery by the human race (I
+mean as a matter of experience, not of revelation), that their
+happiness was not in themselves, and that their labor was not to
+have their own service as its chief end. It embodies in a few
+syllables the <i>sealing</i> difference between the Greek and the mediæval,
+in that the former sought the flower and herb for his own
+uses, the latter for God's honor; the former, primarily and on
+principle, contemplated his own beauty and the workings of his
+own mind, and the latter, primarily and on principle, contemplated
+Christ's beauty and the workings of the mind of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>§ 41. I will not at present follow up this subject any farther;
+it being enough that we have thus got to the root of it,
+and have a great declaration of the central mediæval purpose,
+whereto we may return for solution of all future questions. I
+would only, therefore, desire the reader now to compare the
+Stones of Venice, vol. i. chap. xx. §§ 15. 16.; the Seven Lamps
+of Architecture, chap. iv. § 3.; and the second volume of this
+work, Chap. II. §§ 9. 10., and Chap. III. § 10.; that he may, in
+these several places, observe how gradually our conclusions are
+knitting themselves together as we are able to determine more
+and more of the successive questions that come before us: and,
+finally, to compare the two interesting passages in Wordsworth,
+which, without any memory of Dante, nevertheless, as if by
+some special ordaining, describe in matters of modern life exactly
+the soothing or felicitous powers of the two active spirits of
+Dante&mdash;Leah and Matilda, Excursion, book v. line 608. to 625.,
+and book vi. line 102. to 214.</p>
+
+<p>§ 42. Having thus received from Dante this great lesson, as
+to the spirit in which mediæval landscape is to be understood,
+what else we have to note respecting it, as seen in his poem, will
+be comparatively straightforward and easy. And first, we have
+to observe the place occupied in his mind by <i>color</i>. It has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>
+already been shown, in the Stones of Venice, vol. ii. chap. v.
+§§ 30&mdash;34, that color is the most <i>sacred</i> element of all visible
+things. Hence, as the mediæval mind contemplated them first
+for their sacredness, we should, beforehand, expect that the first
+thing it would seize would be the color; and that we should find
+its expressions and renderings of color infinitely more loving and
+accurate than among the Greeks.</p>
+
+<p>§ 43. Accordingly, the Greek sense of color seems to have
+been so comparatively dim and uncertain, that it is almost impossible
+to ascertain what the real idea was which they attached
+to any word alluding to hue: and above all, color, though pleasant
+to their eyes, as to those of all human beings, seems never to
+have been impressive to their feelings. They liked purple, on
+the whole, the best; but there was no sense of cheerfulness or
+pleasantness in one color, and gloom in another, such as the
+mediævals had.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, when Achilles goes, in great anger and sorrow,
+to complain to Thetis of the scorn done him by Agamemnon,
+the sea appears to him "wine-colored." One might think this
+meant that the sea looked dark and reddish-purple to him, in a
+kind of sympathy with his anger. But we turn to the passage
+of Sophocles, which has been above quoted&mdash;a passage peculiarly
+intended to express peace and rest&mdash;and we find that the birds
+sing among "wine-colored" ivy. The uncertainty of conception
+of the hue itself, and entire absence of expressive character
+in the word, could hardly be more clearly manifested.</p>
+
+<p>§ 44. Again: I said the Greek liked purple, as a general
+source of enjoyment, better than any other color. So he did,
+and so all healthy persons who have eye for color, and are unprejudiced
+about it, do; and will to the end of time, for a
+reason presently to be noted. But so far was this instinctive
+preference for purple from giving, in the Greek mind, any consistently
+cheerful or sacred association to the color, that Homer
+constantly calls death "purple death."</p>
+
+<p>§ 45. Again: in the passage of Sophocles, so often spoken
+of, I said there was some difficulty respecting a word often
+translated "thickets." I believe, myself, it means glades;
+literally, "going places" in the woods,&mdash;that is to say, places
+where, either naturally or by force, the trees separate, so as to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>
+give some accessible avenue. Now, Sophocles tells us the birds
+sang in these "<i>green</i> going places;" and we take up the expression
+gratefully, thinking the old Greek perceived and enjoyed,
+as we do, the sweet fall of the eminently <i>green</i> light through the
+leaves when they are a little thinner than in the heart of the
+wood. But we turn to the tragedy of Ajax, and are much
+shaken in our conclusion about the meaning of the word, when
+we are told that the body of Ajax is to lie unburied, and be eaten
+by sea-birds on the "<i>green</i> sand." The formation, geologically
+distinguished by that title, was certainly not known to Sophocles;
+and the only conclusion which, it seems to me, we can
+come to under the circumstances,&mdash;assuming Ariel's<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a>
+authority
+as to the color of pretty sand, and the ancient mariner's (or,
+rather, his hearer's<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a>)
+as to the color of ugly sand, to be conclusive,&mdash;is
+that Sophocles really did not know green from yellow
+or brown.</p>
+
+<p>§ 46. Now, without going out of the terrestrial paradise, in
+which Dante last left us, we shall be able at once to compare
+with this Greek incertitude the precision of the mediæval eye
+for color. Some three arrowflights further up into the wood we
+come to a tall tree, which is at first barren, but, after some little
+time, visibly opens into flowers, of a color "less than that of
+roses, but more than that of violets."</p>
+
+<p>It certainly would not be possible, in words, to come nearer
+to the <i>definition</i> of the exact hue which Dante meant&mdash;that of
+the apple-blossom. Had he employed any simple color-phrase,
+as a "pale pink," or "violet-pink," or any other such combined
+expression, he still could not have completely got at the
+delicacy of the hue; he might perhaps have indicated its kind,
+but not its tenderness; but by taking the rose-leaf as the type
+of the delicate red, and then enfeebling this with the violet
+grey, he gets, as closely as language can carry him, to the complete
+rendering of the vision, though it is evidently felt by him
+to be in its perfect beauty ineffable; and rightly so felt, for of all
+lovely things which grace the spring time in our fair temperate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span>
+zone, I am not sure but this blossoming of the apple-tree is the
+fairest. At all events, I find it associated in my mind with four
+other kinds of color, certainly principal among the gifts of the
+northern earth, namely:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1st. Bell gentians growing close together, mixed with lilies of
+the valley, on the Jura pastures.</p>
+
+<p>2nd. Alpine roses with dew upon them, under low rays of morning
+sunshine, touching the tops of the flowers.</p>
+
+<p>3rd. Bell heather in mass, in full light, at sunset.</p>
+
+<p>4th. White narcissus (red-centred) in mass, on the Vevay pastures,
+in sunshine, after rain.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And I know not where in the group to place the wreaths of
+apple-blossoms, in the Vevay orchards, with the far-off blue of
+the lake of Geneva seen between the flowers.</p>
+
+<p>A Greek, however, would have regarded this blossom simply
+with the eyes of a Devonshire farmer, as bearing on the probable
+price of cider, and would have called it red, cerulean, purple,
+white, hyacinthine, or generally "aglaos," agreeable, as happened
+to suit his verse.</p>
+
+<p>§ 47. Again: we have seen how fond the Greek was of composing
+his paradises of rather damp grass; but that in this
+fondness for grass there was always an undercurrent of consideration
+for his horses; and the characters in it which pleased
+him most were its depth and freshness; not its color. Now, if
+we remember carefully the general expressions, respecting grass,
+used in modern literature, I think nearly the commonest that
+occurs to us will be that of "enamelled" turf or sward. This
+phrase is usually employed by our pseudo-poets, like all their
+other phrases, without knowing what it means, because it has
+been used by other writers before them, and because they do
+not know what else to say of grass. If we were to ask them
+what enamel was, they could not tell us; and if we asked why
+grass was like enamel, they could not tell us. The expression
+<i>has</i> a meaning, however, and one peculiarly characteristic of
+mediæval and modern temper.</p>
+
+<p>§ 48. The first instance I know of its right use, though very
+probably it had been so employed before, is in Dante. The righteous
+spirits of the pre-Christian ages are seen by him, though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>
+in the Inferno, yet in a place open, luminous, and high, walking
+upon the "green enamel."</p>
+
+<p>I am very sure that Dante did not use this phrase as we use
+it. He knew well what enamel was; and his readers, in order
+to understand him thoroughly, must remember what it is,&mdash;a
+vitreous paste, dissolved in water, mixed with metallic oxides, to
+give it the opacity and the color required, spread in a moist
+state on metal, and afterwards hardened by fire, so as never to
+change. And Dante means, in using this metaphor of the
+grass of the Inferno, to mark that it is laid as a tempering and
+cooling substance over the dark, metallic, gloomy ground; but
+yet so hardened by the fire, that it is not any more fresh or
+living grass, but a smooth, silent, lifeless bed of eternal green.
+And we know how <i>hard</i> Dante's idea of it was; because afterwards,
+in what is perhaps the most awful passage of the whole
+Inferno, when the three furies rise at the top of the burning
+tower, and catching sight of Dante, and not being able to get
+at him, shriek wildly for the Gorgon to come up too, that they
+may turn him into stone,&mdash;the word <i>stone</i> is not hard enough
+for them. Stone might crumble away after it was made, or
+something with life might grow upon it; no, it shall not be
+stone; they will make enamel of him; nothing can grow out of
+that; it is dead for ever.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a></p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Venga Medusa, si lo farem di <i>Smalto</i>."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>§ 49. Now, almost in the opening of the Purgatory, as there
+at the entrance of the Inferno, we find a company of great ones
+resting in a grassy place. But the idea of the grass now is very
+different. The word now used is not "enamel," but "herb,"
+and instead of being merely green, it is covered with flowers of
+many colors. With the usual mediæval accuracy, Dante insists
+on telling us precisely what these colors were, and how bright;
+which he does by naming the actual pigments used in illumination,&mdash;"Gold,
+and fine silver, and cochineal, and white lead,
+and Indian wood, serene and lucid, and fresh emerald, just
+broken, would have been excelled, as less is by greater, by the
+flowers and grass of the place." It is evident that the "emerald"
+here means the emerald green of the illuminators; for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span>
+a fresh emerald is no brighter than one which is not fresh, and
+Dante was not one to throw away his words thus. Observe,
+then, we have here the idea of the growth, life, and variegation
+of the "green herb," as opposed to the smalto of the Inferno;
+but the colors of the variegation are illustrated and defined by
+the reference to actual pigments; and, observe, because the
+other colors are rather bright, the blue ground (Indian wood,
+indigo?) is sober; lucid, but serene; and presently two angels
+enter, who are dressed in green drapery, but of a paler green
+than the grass, which Dante marks, by telling us that it was
+"the green of leaves just budded."</p>
+
+<p>§ 50. In all this, I wish the reader to observe two things:
+first, the general carefulness of the poet in defining color, distinguishing
+it precisely as a painter would (opposed to the
+Greek carelessness about it); and, secondly, his regarding the
+grass for its greenness and variegation, rather than, as a Greek
+would have done, for its depth and freshness. This greenness or
+brightness, and variegation, are taken up by later and modern
+poets, as the things intended to be chiefly expressed by the word
+"enamelled;" and, gradually, the term is taken to indicate any
+kind of bright and interchangeable coloring; there being always
+this much of propriety about it, when used of greensward, that
+such sward is indeed, like enamel, a coat of bright color on a
+comparatively dark ground; and is thus a sort of natural jewelry
+and painter's work, different from loose and large vegetation.
+The word is often awkwardly and falsely used, by the
+later poets, of all kinds of growth and color; as by Milton of
+the flowers of Paradise showing themselves over its wall; but it
+retains, nevertheless, through all its jaded inanity, some half-unconscious
+vestige of the old sense, even to the present day.</p>
+
+<p>§ 51. There are, it seems to me, several important deductions
+to be made from these facts. The Greek, we have seen, delighted
+in the grass for its usefulness; the mediæval, as also we
+moderns, for its color and beauty. But both dwell on it as the
+<i>first</i> element of the lovely landscape; we saw its use in Homer,
+we see also that Dante thinks the righteous spirits of the heathen
+enough comforted in Hades by having even the <i>image</i> of green
+grass put beneath their feet; the happy resting-place in Purgatory
+has no other delight than its grass and flowers; and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span>
+finally, in the terrestrial paradise, the feet of Matilda pause
+where the Lethe stream first bends the blades of grass. Consider
+a little what a depth there is in this great instinct of the
+human race. Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a
+minute, quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green.
+Nothing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or beauty. A
+very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate
+long lines meeting in a point,&mdash;not a perfect point neither, but
+blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or apparently
+much cared for example of Nature's workmanship; made, as it
+seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast
+into the oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and
+flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And
+yet, think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous
+flowers that beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly
+trees, pleasant to the eyes and good for food,&mdash;stately palm and
+pine, strong ash and oak, scented citron, burdened vine,&mdash;there
+be any by man so deeply loved, by God so highly graced,
+as that narrow point of feeble green. It seems to me not to have
+been without a peculiar significance, that our Lord, when about
+to work the miracle which, of all that He showed, appears to
+have been felt by the multitude as the most impressive,&mdash;the
+miracle of the loaves,&mdash;commanded the people to sit down by
+companies "upon the green grass." He was about to feed them
+with the principal produce of earth and the sea, the simplest representations
+of the food of mankind. He gave them the seed of
+the herb; He bade them sit down upon the herb itself, which was
+as great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest, as its perfect
+fruit, for their sustenance; thus, in this single order and act,
+when rightly understood, indicating for evermore how the
+Creator had entrusted the comfort, consolation, and sustenance
+of man, to the simplest and most despised of all the leafy
+families of the earth. And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider
+what we owe merely to the meadow grass, to the covering
+of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies
+of those soft, and countless, and peaceful spears. The fields!
+Follow but forth for a little time the thoughts of all that we
+ought to recognise in those words. All spring and summer is
+in them,&mdash;the walks by silent, scented paths,&mdash;the rests in noon-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span>day
+heat,&mdash;the joy of herds and flocks,&mdash;the power of all shepherd
+life and meditation,&mdash;the life of sunlight upon the world,
+falling in emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows,
+where else it would have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching
+dust,&mdash;pastures beside the pacing brooks,&mdash;soft banks and
+knolls of lowly hills,&mdash;thymy slopes of down overlooked by the
+blue line of lifted sea,&mdash;crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or
+smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy
+feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices: all
+these are summed in those simple words; and these are not all.
+We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift,
+in our own land; though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite
+of that meadow sweetness, Shakspere's peculiar joy, would open
+on us more and more, yet we have it but in part. Go out, in
+the spring time, among the meadows that slope from the shores
+of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There,
+mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the
+grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain
+paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with
+blossom,&mdash;paths that for ever droop and rise over the green
+banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep
+to the blue water, studded here and there with new mown
+heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness,&mdash;look up towards
+the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll
+silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines;
+and we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet
+words of the 147th Psalm, "He maketh grass to grow upon the
+mountains."</p>
+
+<p>§ 52. There are also several lessons symbolically connected
+with this subject, which we must not allow to escape us. Observe,
+the peculiar characters of the grass, which adapt it especially
+for the service of man, are its apparent <i>humility</i>, and
+<i>cheerfulness</i>. Its humility, in that it seems created only for
+lowest service,&mdash;appointed to be trodden on, and fed upon. Its
+cheerfulness, in that it seems to exult under all kinds of violence
+and suffering. You roll it, and it is stronger the next day;
+you mow it, and it multiplies its shoots, as if it were grateful;
+you tread upon it, and it only sends up richer perfume. Spring
+comes, and it rejoices with all the earth,&mdash;glowing with varie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>gated
+flame of flowers,&mdash;waving in soft depth of fruitful strength.
+Winter comes, and though it will not mock its fellow plants by
+growing then, it will not pine and mourn, and turn colorless
+or leafless as they. It is always green; and is only the brighter
+and gayer for the hoar-frost.</p>
+
+<p>§ 53. Now, these two characters&mdash;of humility, and joy under
+trial&mdash;are exactly those which most definitely distinguish the
+Christian from the Pagan spirit. Whatever virtue the pagan
+possessed was rooted in pride, and fruited with sorrow. It
+began in the elevation of his own nature; it ended but in the
+"verde smalto"&mdash;the hopeless green&mdash;of the Elysian fields. But
+the Christian virtue is rooted in self-debasement, and strengthened
+under suffering by gladness of hope. And remembering
+this, it is curious to observe how utterly without gladness the
+Greek heart appears to be in watching the flowering grass, and
+what strange discords of expression arise sometimes in consequence.
+There is one, recurring once or twice in Homer, which
+has always pained me. He says, "the Greek army was on the
+fields, as thick as flowers in the spring." It might be so; but
+flowers in spring time are not the image by which Dante would
+have numbered soldiers on their path of battle. Dante could
+not have thought of the flowering of the grass but as associated
+with happiness. There is a still deeper significance in the passage
+quoted, a little while ago, from Homer, describing Ulysses
+casting himself down on the <i>rushes</i> and the corn-giving land at
+the river shore,&mdash;the rushes and corn being to him only good
+for rest and sustenance,&mdash;when we compare it with that in which
+Dante tells us he was ordered to descend to the shore of the
+lake as he entered Purgatory, to gather a <i>rush</i>, and gird himself
+with it, it being to him the emblem not only of rest, but of humility
+under chastisement, the rush (or reed) being the only
+plant which can grow there;&mdash;"no plant which bears leaves, or
+hardens its bark, can live on that shore, because it does not yield
+to the chastisement of its waves." It cannot but strike the reader
+singularly how deep and harmonious a significance runs through
+all these words of Dante&mdash;how every syllable of them, the more
+we penetrate it, becomes a seed of farther thought! For, follow
+up this image of the girding with the reed, under trial, and see to
+whose feet it will lead us. As the grass of the earth, thought of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span>
+as the herb yielding seed, leads us to the place where our Lord
+commanded the multitude to sit down by companies upon the
+green grass; so the grass of the waters, thought of as sustaining
+itself among the waters of affliction, leads us to the place where
+a stem of it was put into our Lord's hand for his sceptre; and
+in the crown of thorns, and the rod of reed, was foreshown the
+everlasting truth of the Christian ages&mdash;that all glory was to
+be begun in suffering, and all power in humility.</p>
+
+<p>Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest
+of all, from Isaiah xl. 6., we find, the grass and flowers are
+types, in their passing, of the passing of human life, and, in
+their excellence, of the excellence of human life; and this in a
+twofold way; first, by their Beneficence, and then, by their
+endurance:&mdash;the grass of the earth, in giving the seed of corn,
+and in its beauty under tread of foot and stroke of scythe; and
+the grass of the waters, in giving its freshness for our rest,
+and in its bending before the wave.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a>
+But understood in the
+broad human and Divine sense, the "<i>herb</i> yielding seed" (as
+opposed to the fruit-tree yielding fruit) includes a third family
+of plants, and fulfils a third office to the human race. It includes
+the great family of the lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus
+the <i>three</i> offices of giving food, raiment, and rest. Follow out
+this fulfilment; consider the association of the linen garment
+and the linen embroidery, with the priestly office, and the furniture
+of the tabernacle: and consider how the rush has been,
+in all time, the first natural carpet thrown under the human
+foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely set forth
+by the three families of plants; not arbitrarily or fancifully associated
+with them, but in all the three cases marked for us by
+Scriptural words:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the grass for food
+and beauty.&mdash;"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
+they toil not, neither do they spin."</p>
+
+<p>2nd. Humility; in the grass for rest.&mdash;"A bruised reed shall
+He not break."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span></p>
+
+<p>3rd. Love; in the grass for clothing (because of its swift
+kindling),&mdash;"The smoking flax shall He not quench."</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>And then, finally, observe the confirmation of these last two
+images in, I suppose, the most important prophecy, relating to
+the future state of the Christian Church, which occurs in the
+Old Testament, namely, that contained in the closing chapters
+of Ezekiel. The measures of the Temple of God are to be taken;
+and because it is only by charity and humility that those measures
+ever can be taken, the angel has "a line of <i>flax</i> in his
+hand, and a measuring <i>reed</i>." The use of the line was to measure
+the land, and of the reed to take the dimensions of the
+buildings; so the buildings of the church, or its labors, are to
+be measured by <i>humility</i>, and its territory or land, by <i>love</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The limits of the Church have, indeed, in later days, been
+measured, to the world's sorrow, by another kind of flaxen line,
+burning with the fire of unholy zeal, not with that of Christian
+charity; and perhaps the best lesson which we can finally take
+to ourselves, in leaving these sweet fields of the mediæval landscape,
+is the memory that, in spite of all the fettered habits of
+thought of his age, this great Dante, this inspired exponent of
+what lay deepest at the heart of the early Church, placed his terrestrial
+paradise where there had ceased to be fence or division,
+and where the grass of the earth was bowed down, in unity of
+direction, only by the soft waves that bore with them the forgetfulness
+of evil.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a>
+The peculiar dislike felt by the mediævals for the <i>sea</i>, is so interesting
+a subject of inquiry, that I have reserved it for separate discussion in
+another work, in present preparation, "Harbors of England."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a>
+Married to Philip, younger son of the King of Navarre, in 1352. She
+died in 1394.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a>
+"Three times the length of a human body."&mdash;Purg. x. 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a>
+Purg. xii. 102.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a>
+"Come unto these <i>yellow</i> sands."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a></p>
+
+	<div class="poem">
+		<span class="i0">"And thou art long, and lank, and <i>brown</i>,</span><br />
+		<span class="i1">As is the ribbed sea sand."</span><br />
+	</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a>
+Compare parallel passage, making Dante hard or changeless in good
+Purg. viii. 114.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a>
+So also in Isa. xxxv. 7., the prevalence of righteousness and peace
+over all evil is thus foretold:</p>
+<p>
+"In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be <i>grass</i>, with <i>reeds</i>
+and <i>rushes</i>."</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF MEDIÆVAL LANDSCAPE:&mdash;SECONDLY, THE ROCKS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. I closed the last chapter, not because our subject was
+exhausted, but to give the reader breathing time, and because I
+supposed he would hardly care to turn back suddenly from the
+subjects of thought last suggested, to the less pregnant matters
+of inquiry connected with mediæval landscape. Nor was the
+pause mistimed even as respects the order of our subjects; for
+hitherto we have been arrested chiefly by the beauty of the pastures
+and fields, and have followed the mediæval mind in its
+fond regard of leaf and flower. But now we have some hard
+hill-climbing to do; and the remainder of our investigation
+must be carried on, for the most part, on hands and knees, so
+that it is not ill done of us first to take breath.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. It will be remembered that in the last chapter, § 14., we
+supposed it probable that there would be considerable inaccuracies
+in the mediæval mode of regarding nature. Hitherto,
+however, we have found none; but, on the contrary, intense
+accuracy, precision, and affection. The reason of this is, that
+all floral and foliaged beauty might be perfectly represented, as
+far as its form went, in the sculpture and ornamental painting
+of the period; hence the attention of men was thoroughly
+awakened to that beauty. But as mountains and clouds and
+large features of natural scenery could not be accurately represented,
+we must be prepared to find them not so carefully contemplated,&mdash;
+more carefully, indeed, than by the Greeks, but
+still in no wise as the things themselves deserve.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. It was besides noticed that mountains, though regarded
+with reverence by the mediæval, were also the subjects of a certain
+dislike and dread. And we have seen already that in fact
+the place of the soul's purification, though a mountain, is yet
+by Dante subdued, whenever there is any pleasantness to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>
+found upon it, from all mountainous character into grassy recesses,
+or slopes to rushy shore; and, in his general conception of
+it, resembles much more a castle mound, surrounded by terraced
+walks,&mdash;in the manner, for instance, of one of Turner's favorite
+scenes, the bank under Richmond Castle (Yorkshire); or, still
+more, one of the hill slopes divided by terraces, above the Rhine,
+in which the picturesqueness of the ground has been reduced to
+the form best calculated for the growing of costly wine, than
+any scene to which we moderns should naturally attach the term
+"Mountainous." On the other hand, although the Inferno is
+just as accurately measured and divided as the Purgatory, it is
+nevertheless cleft into rocky chasms which possess something
+of true mountain nature&mdash;nature which we moderns of the
+north should most of us seek with delight, but which, to the
+great Florentine, appeared adapted only for the punishment of
+lost spirits, and which, on the mind of nearly all his countrymen,
+would to this day produce a very closely correspondent
+effect; so that their graceful language, dying away on the
+north side of the Alps, gives its departing accents to proclaim
+its detestation of hardness and ruggedness; and is heard for the
+last time, as it bestows on the noblest defile in all the Grisons,
+if not in all the Alpine chain, the name of the "<i>evil</i> way"&mdash;"la
+Via Mala."</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. This "evil way," though much deeper and more sublime,
+corresponds closely in general character to Dante's "Evil-pits,"
+just as the banks of Richmond do to his mountain of
+Purgatory; and it is notable that Turner has been led to illustrate,
+with his whole strength, the character of both; having
+founded, as it seems to me, his early dreams of mountain form
+altogether on the sweet banks of the Yorkshire streams, and
+rooted his hardier thoughts of it in the rugged clefts of the Via
+Mala.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. Nor of the Via Mala only: a correspondent defile on the
+St. Gothard,&mdash;so terrible in one part of it, that it can, indeed,
+suggest no ideas but those of horror to minds either of northern
+or southern temper, and whose wild bridge, cast from rock to
+rock over a chasm as utterly hopeless and escapeless as any into
+which Dante gazed from the arches of Malebolge, has been,
+therefore, ascribed both by northern and southern lips to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span>
+master-building of the great spirit of evil&mdash;supplied to Turner
+the element of his most terrible thoughts in mountain vision,
+even to the close of his life. The noblest plate in the series of
+the Liber Studiorum,<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a>
+one engraved by his own hand, is of that
+bridge; the last mountain journey he ever took was up the
+defile; and a rocky bank and arch, in the last mountain drawing
+which he ever executed with his perfect power, are remembrances
+of the path by which he had traversed in his youth this
+Malebolge of the St. Gothard.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. It is therefore with peculiar interest, as bearing on our
+own proper subject, that we must examine Dante's conception
+of the rocks of the eighth circle. And first, as to general tone
+of color: from what we have seen of the love of the mediæval for
+bright and variegated color, we might guess that his chief cause
+of dislike to rocks would be, in Italy, their comparative colorlessness.
+With hardly an exception, the range of the Apennines is
+composed of a stone of which some special account is given hereafter
+in the chapters on Materials of Mountains, and of which
+one peculiarity, there noticed, is its monotony of hue. Our
+slates and granites are often of very lovely colors; but the
+Apennine limestone is so grey and toneless, that I know not any
+mountain district so utterly melancholy as those which are composed
+of this rock, when unwooded. Now, as far as I can discover
+from the internal evidence in his poem, nearly all Dante's
+mountain wanderings had been upon this ground. He had
+journeyed once or twice among the Alps, indeed, but seems to
+have been impressed chiefly by the road from Garda to Trent,
+and that along the Corniche, both of which are either upon
+those limestones, or a dark serpentine, which shows hardly any
+color till it is polished. It is not ascertainable that he had ever
+seen rocky scenery of the finely colored kind, aided by the Alpine
+mosses: I do not know the fall at Forli (Inferno, xvi. 99.), but
+every other scene to which he alludes is among these Apennine
+limestones; and when he wishes to give the idea of enormous
+mountain size, he names Tabernicch and Pietra-pana,&mdash;the one
+clearly chosen only for the sake of the last syllable of its name,
+in order to make a sound as of cracking ice, with the two se<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span>quent
+rhymes of the stanza,&mdash;and the other is an Apennine
+near Lucca.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. His idea, therefore, of rock color, founded on these experiences,
+is that of a dull or ashen grey, more or less stained
+by the brown of iron ochre, precisely as the Apennine limestones
+nearly always are; the grey being peculiarly cold and
+disagreeable. As we go down the very hill which stretches out
+from Pietra-pana towards Lucca, the stones laid by the road-side
+to mend it are of this ashen grey, with efflorescences of
+manganese and iron in the fissures. The whole of Malebolge is
+made of this rock, "All wrought in stone of iron-colored
+grain."<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a></p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the iron color may be meant to predominate in
+Evil-pits; but the definite grey limestone color is stated higher
+up, the river Styx flowing at the base of "malignant <i>grey</i>
+cliffs"<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a>
+(the word malignant being given to the iron-colored
+Malebolge also); and the same whitish-grey idea is given again
+definitely in describing the robe of the purgatorial or penance
+angel, which is "of the color of ashes, or earth dug dry."
+Ashes necessarily mean <i>wood</i>-ashes in an Italian mind, so that
+we get the tone very pale; and there can be no doubt whatever
+about the hue meant, because it is constantly seen on the sunny
+sides of the Italian hills, produced by the scorching of the
+ground, a dusty and lifeless whitish grey, utterly painful and
+oppressive; and I have no doubt that this color, assumed eminently
+also by limestone crags in the sun, is the quality which
+Homer means to express by a term he applies often to bare
+rocks, and which is usually translated "craggy," or "rocky."
+Now Homer is indeed quite capable of talking of "rocky
+rocks," just as he talks sometimes of "wet water;" but I
+think he means more by this word: it sounds as if it were derived
+from another, meaning "meal," or "flour," and I have
+little doubt it means "mealy white;" the Greek limestones being
+for the most part brighter in effect than the Apennine
+ones.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. And the fact is, that the great and preeminent fault
+of southern, as compared with northern scenery, is this rock-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span>whiteness,
+which gives to distant mountain ranges, lighted by
+the sun, sometimes a faint and monotonous glow, hardly detaching
+itself from the whiter parts of the sky, and sometimes a
+speckled confusion of white light with blue shadow, breaking
+up the whole mass of the hills, and making them look near and
+small; the whiteness being still distinct at the distance of
+twenty or twenty-five miles. The inferiority and meagreness
+of such effects of hill, compared with the massive purple and
+blue of our own heaps of crags and morass, or the solemn grass-green
+and pine-purples of the Alps, have always struck me most
+painfully; and they have rendered it impossible for any poet or
+painter studying in the south, to enter with joy into hill scenery.
+Imagine the difference to Walter Scott, if instead of the
+single lovely color which, named by itself alone, was enough to
+describe his hills,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Their southern rapine to renew,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Far in the distant Cheviot's <i>blue</i>,"&mdash;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>a dusty whiteness had been the image that first associated itself
+with a hill range, and he had been obliged, instead of "blue"
+Cheviots, to say, "barley-meal-colored" Cheviots.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. But although this would cause a somewhat painful
+shock even to a modern mind, it would be as nothing when
+compared with the pain occasioned by absence of color to a mediæval
+one. We have been trained, by our ingenious principles
+of Renaissance architecture, to think that meal-color and ash-color
+are the properest colors of all; and that the most aristocratic
+harmonies are to be deduced out of grey mortar and
+creamy stucco. Any of our modern classical architects would
+delightedly "face" a heathery hill with Roman cement; and
+any Italian sacristan would, but for the cost of it, at once
+whitewash the Cheviots. But the mediævals had not arrived at
+these abstract principles of taste. They liked fresco better
+than whitewash; and, on the whole, thought that Nature was
+in the right in painting her flowers yellow, pink, and blue;&mdash;not
+grey. Accordingly, this absence of color from rocks, as
+compared with meadows and trees, was in their eyes an unredeemable
+defect; nor did it matter to them whether its place
+was supplied by the grey neutral tint, or the iron-colored stain;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>
+for both colors, grey and brown, were, to them, hues of distress,
+despair, and mortification, hence adopted always for the
+dresses of monks; only the word "brown" bore, in their color
+vocabulary, a still gloomier sense than with us. I was for some
+time embarrassed by Dante's use of it with respect to dark skies
+and water. Thus, in describing a simple twilight&mdash;not a Hades
+twilight, but an ordinarily fair evening&mdash;(Inf. ii. 1.) he says,
+the "brown" air took the animals of earth away from their
+fatigues;&mdash;the waves under Charon's boat are "brown" (Inf.
+iii. 117.); and Lethe, which is perfectly clear and yet dark, as
+with oblivion, is "bruna-bruna," "brown, <i>exceeding</i> brown."
+Now, clearly in all these cases no <i>warmth</i> is meant to be mingled
+in the color. Dante had never seen one of our bog-streams,
+with its porter-colored foam; and there can be no
+doubt that, in calling Lethe brown, he means that it was dark
+slate grey, inclining to black; as, for instance, our clear Cumberland
+lakes, which, looked straight down upon where they are
+deep, seem to be lakes of ink. I am sure this is the color he
+means; because no clear stream or lake on the Continent ever
+looks brown, but blue or green; and Dante, by merely taking
+away the pleasant color, would get at once to this idea of grave
+clear grey. So, when he was talking of twilight, his eye for
+color was far too good to let him call it <i>brown</i> in our sense.
+Twilight is not brown, but purple, golden, or dark grey; and
+this last was what Dante meant. Farther, I find that this negation
+of color is always the means by which Dante subdues his
+tones. Thus the fatal inscription on the Hades gate is written
+in "obscure color," and the air which torments the passionate
+spirits is "aer nero" <i>black</i> air (Inf. v. 51.), called presently
+afterwards (line 81.) malignant air, just as the grey cliffs are
+called malignant cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. I was not, therefore, at a loss to find out what Dante
+meant by the word; but I was at a loss to account for his not,
+as it seemed, acknowledging the existence of the color of <i>brown</i>
+at all; for if he called dark neutral tint "brown," it remained
+a question what term he would use for things of the color of
+burnt umber. But, one day, just when I was puzzling myself
+about this, I happened to be sitting by one of our best living
+modern colorists, watching him at his work, when he said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>
+suddenly, and by mere accident, after we had been talking of
+other things, "Do you know I have found that there is no
+<i>brown</i> in Nature? What we call brown is always a variety
+either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by
+umber, unless altered by contrast."</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. It is curious how far the significance of this remark
+extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediæval
+sense of hue;&mdash;how far, on the other hand, it cuts into the
+heart of the old umber idolatries of Sir George Beaumont and
+his colleagues, the "where do you put your <i>brown</i> tree" system;
+the code of Cremona-violin-colored foregrounds, of brown
+varnish and asphaltum; and all the old night-owl science,
+which, like Young's pencil of sorrow,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"In melancholy dipped, <i>embrowns</i> the whole."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Nay, I do Young an injustice by associating his words with the
+asphalt schools; for his eye for color was true, and like Dante's;
+and I doubt not that he means dark grey, as Byron purple-grey
+in that night piece in the Siege of Corinth, beginning</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"'Tis midnight; on the mountains <i>brown</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0">The cold, round moon looks deeply down;"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>and, by the way, Byron's best piece of evening color farther
+certifies the hues of Dante's twilight,&mdash;it</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Dies like the dolphin, when it gasps away&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The last still loveliest; till 'tis gone, and all is <i>grey</i>."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 12. Let not, however, the reader confuse the use of brown,
+as an expression of a natural tint, with its use as a means of
+<i>getting other tints</i>. Brown is often an admirable ground, just
+because it is the only tint which is <i>not</i> to be in the finished picture,
+and because it is the best basis of many silver greys and
+purples, utterly opposite to it in their nature. But there is infinite
+difference between laying a brown ground as a representation
+of shadow,&mdash;and as a base for light; and also an infinite
+difference between using brown shadows, associated with colored
+lights&mdash;always the characteristic of false schools of color&mdash;and
+using brown as a warm neutral tint for general study. I shall
+have to pursue this subject farther hereafter, in noticing how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span>
+brown is used by great colorists in their studies, not as color,
+but as the pleasantest negation of color, possessing more transparency
+than black, and having more pleasant and sunlike
+warmth. Hence Turner, in his early studies, used blue for distant
+neutral tint, and brown for foreground neutral tint; while,
+as he advanced in color science, he gradually introduced, in the
+place of brown, strange purples, altogether peculiar to himself,
+founded, apparently, on Indian red and vermilion, and passing
+into various tones of russet and orange.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a>
+But, in the meantime,
+we must go back to Dante and his mountains.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. We find, then, that his general type of rock color was
+meant, whether pale or dark, to be a colorless grey&mdash;the most
+melancholy hue which he supposed to exist in Nature (hence the
+synonym for it, subsisting even till late times, in mediæval appellatives
+of dress, "<i>sad</i>-colored")&mdash;with some rusty stain from
+iron; or perhaps the "color ferrigno" of the Inferno does not
+involve even so much of orange, but ought to be translated
+"iron grey."</p>
+
+<p>This being his idea of the color of rocks, we have next to observe
+his conception of their substance. And I believe it will
+be found that the character on which he fixes first in them is
+<i>frangibility</i>&mdash;breakableness to bits, as opposed to wood, which
+can be sawn or rent, but not shattered with a hammer, and to
+metal, which is tough and malleable.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, at the top of the abyss of the seventh circle, appointed
+for the "violent," or souls who had done evil by force, we are
+told, first, that the edge of it was composed of "great broken
+stones in a circle;" then, that the place was "Alpine;" and,
+becoming hereupon attentive, in order to hear what an Alpine
+place is like, we find that it was "like the place beyond Trent,
+where the rock, either by earthquake, or failure of support, has
+broken down to the plain, so that it gives any one at the top
+some means of getting down to the bottom." This is not a
+very elevated or enthusiastic description of an Alpine scene;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>
+and it is far from mended by the following verses, in which we
+are told that Dante "began to go down by this great <i>unloading</i>
+of stones," and that they moved often under his feet by reason
+of the new weight. The fact is that Dante, by many expressions
+throughout the poem, shows himself to have been a notably
+bad climber; and being fond of sitting in the sun, looking
+at his fair Baptistery, or walking in a dignified manner on flat
+pavement in a long robe, it puts him seriously out of his way
+when he has to take to his hands and knees, or look to his feet;
+so that the first strong impression made upon him by any Alpine
+scene whatever, is, clearly, that it is bad walking. When
+he is in a fright and hurry, and has a very steep place to go
+down, Virgil has to carry him altogether, and is obliged to encourage
+him, again and again, when they have a steep slope to
+go up,&mdash;the first ascent of the purgatorial mountain. The
+similes by which he illustrates the steepness of that ascent are
+all taken from the Riviera of Genoa, now traversed by a good
+carriage road under the name of the Corniche; but as this road
+did not exist in Dante's time, and the steep precipices and promontories
+were then probably traversed by footpaths, which, as
+they necessarily passed in many places over crumbling and slippery
+limestone, were doubtless not a little dangerous, and as in
+the manner they commanded the bays of sea below, and lay exposed
+to the full blaze of the south-eastern sun, they corresponded
+precisely to the situation of the path by which he ascends
+above the purgatorial sea, the image could not possibly have been
+taken from a better source for the fully conveying his idea to the
+reader: nor, by the way, is there reason to discredit, in <i>this</i>
+place, his powers of climbing; for, with his usual accuracy, he
+has taken the angle of the path for us, saying it was considerably
+more than forty-five. Now a continuous mountain slope of
+forty-five degrees is already quite unsafe either for ascent or descent,
+except by zigzag paths; and a greater slope than this
+could not be climbed, straightforward, but by help of crevices
+or jags in the rock, and great physical exertion besides.</p>
+
+<p>§ 14. Throughout these passages, however, Dante's thoughts
+are clearly fixed altogether on the question of mere accessibility
+or inaccessibility. He does not show the smallest interest in the
+rocks, except as things to be conquered; and his description of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span>
+their appearance is utterly meagre, involving no other epithets
+than "erto" (steep or upright), Inf. xix. 131., Purg. iii. 48.
+&amp;c.; "sconcio" (monstrous), Inf. xix. 131.; "stagliata"
+(cut), Inf. xvii. 134.; "maligno" (malignant), Inf. vii. 108;
+"duro" (hard), xx. 25.; with "large" and "broken" (rotto) in
+various places. No idea of roundness, massiveness, or pleasant
+form of any kind appears for a moment to enter his mind;
+and the different names which are given to the rocks in various
+places seem merely to refer to variations in size: thus a
+"rocco" is a part of a "scoglio," Inf. xx. 25. and xxvi. 27.; a
+"scheggio" (xxi. 69. and xxvi. 17.) is a less fragment yet; a
+"petrone," or "sasso," is a large stone or boulder (Purg. iv.
+101. 104.), and "pietra," a less stone,&mdash;both of these last
+terms, especially "sasso," being used for any large mountainous
+mass, as in Purg. xxi. 106.; and the vagueness of the word
+"monte" itself, like that of the French "montagne," applicable
+either to a hill on a post-road requiring the drag to be put
+on,&mdash;or to the Mont Blanc, marks a peculiar carelessness in both
+nations, at the time of the formation of their languages, as to
+the sublimity of the higher hills; so that the effect produced on
+an English ear by the word "mountain," signifying always a
+mass of a certain large size, cannot be conveyed either in
+French or Italian.</p>
+
+<p>§ 15. In all these modes of regarding rocks we find (rocks
+being in themselves, as we shall see presently, by no means monstrous
+or frightful things) exactly that inaccuracy in the mediæval
+mind which we had been led to expect, in its bearings on
+things contrary to the spirit of that symmetrical and perfect
+humanity which had formed its ideal; and it is very curious to
+observe how closely in the terms he uses, and the feelings they
+indicate, Dante here agrees with Homer. For the word stagliata
+(cut) corresponds very nearly to a favorite term of Homer's
+respecting rocks "sculptured," used by him also of ships' sides;
+and the frescoes and illuminations of the Middle Ages enable us
+to ascertain exactly what this idea of "cut" rock was.</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. In Plate 10. I have assembled some examples, which
+will give the reader a sufficient knowledge of mediæval rock-drawing,
+by men whose names are known. They are chiefly
+taken from engravings, with which the reader has it in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>
+power to compare them,<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a>
+and if, therefore, any injustice is
+done to the original paintings the fault is not mine; but the
+general impression conveyed is quite accurate, and it would not
+have been worth while, where work is so deficient in first conception,
+to lose time in insuring accuracy of facsimile. Some of
+the crags may be taller here, or broader there, than in the original
+paintings; but the character of the work is perfectly preserved,
+and that is all with which we are at present concerned.</p>
+<!--** figure numbers are almost invisible -->
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_10" id="PLATE_10"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus275b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus275w.jpg" height="500"  alt="PLATE 10" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		 10. Geology of the Middle Ages.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Figs. 1. and 5. are by Ghirlandajo; 2. by Filippo Pesellino;
+4. by Leonardo da Vinci; and 6. by Andrea del Castagno. All
+these are indeed workmen of a much later period than Dante,
+but the system of rock-drawing remains entirely unchanged
+from Giotto's time to Ghirlandajo's;&mdash;is then altered only by
+an introduction of stratification indicative of a little closer observance
+of nature, and so remains until Titian's time. Fig 1.
+is exactly representative of one of Giotto's rocks, though actually
+by Ghirlandajo; and Fig. 2. is rather less skilful than Giotto's
+ordinary work. Both these figures indicate precisely what
+Homer and Dante meant by "cut" rocks. They had observed
+the concave smoothness of certain rock fractures as eminently
+distinctive of rock from earth, and use the term "cut" or
+"sculptured" to distinguish the smooth surface from the
+knotty or sandy one, having observed nothing more respecting
+its real contours than is represented in Figs. 1. and 2., which
+look as if they had been hewn out with an adze. Lorenzo Ghiberti
+preserves the same type, even in his finest work.</p>
+
+<p>Fig. 3., from an interesting sixteenth century MS. in the
+British Museum (Cotton, Augustus, <span class="smcap">A.</span> 5.), is characteristic of
+the best later illuminators' work; and Fig. 5., from Ghirlandajo,
+is pretty illustrative of Dante's idea of terraces on the purgatorial
+mountain. It is the road by which the Magi descend
+in his picture of their Adoration, in the Academy of Florence.
+Of the other examples I shall have more to say in the chapter on
+Precipices; meanwhile we have to return to the landscape of
+the poem.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. Inaccurate as this conception of rock was, it seems to
+have been the only one which, in mediæval art had place as re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>presentative
+of mountain scenery. To Dante, mountains are inconceivable
+except as great broken stones or crags; all their
+broad contours and undulations seem to have escaped his eye.
+It is, indeed, with his usual undertone of symbolic meaning that
+he describes the great broken stones, and the fall of the shattered
+mountain, as the entrance to the circle appointed for the
+punishment of the violent; meaning that the violent and cruel,
+notwithstanding all their iron hardness of heart, have no true
+strength, but, either by earthquake, or want of support, fall at
+last into desolate ruin, naked, loose, and shaking under the
+tread. But in no part of the poem do we find allusion to mountains
+in any other than a stern light; nor the slightest evidence
+that Dante cared to look at them. From that hill of San Miniato,
+whose steps he knew so well, the eye commands, at the farther
+extremity of the Val d'Arno, the whole purple range of the
+mountains of Carrara, peaked and mighty, seen always against
+the sunset light in silent outline, the chief forms that rule the
+scene as twilight fades away. By this vision Dante seems to
+have been wholly unmoved, and, but for Lucan's mention of
+Aruns at Luna, would seemingly not have spoken of the Carrara
+hills in the whole course of his poem: when he does allude to
+them, he speaks of their white marble, and their command of
+stars and sea, but has evidently no regard for the hills themselves.
+There is not a single phrase or syllable throughout the
+poem which indicates such a regard. Ugolino, in his dream,
+seemed to himself to be in the mountains, "by cause of which
+the Pisan cannot see Lucca;" and it is impossible to look up
+from Pisa to that hoary slope without remembering the awe that
+there is in the passage; nevertheless, it was as a hunting-ground
+only that he remembered those hills. Adam of Brescia,
+tormented with eternal thirst, remembers the hills of Romena,
+but only for the sake of their sweet waters:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"The rills that glitter down the grassy slopes</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of Casentino, making fresh and soft</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The banks whereby they glide to Arno's stream,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Stand ever in my view."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And, whenever hills are spoken of as having any influence on
+character, the repugnance to them is still manifest; they are
+always causes of rudeness or cruelty:</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"But that ungrateful and malignant race,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Who in old times came down from Fesole,</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>Ay, and still smack of their rough mountain flint</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Will, for thy good deeds, show thee enmity.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Take heed thou cleanse thee of their ways."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>So again&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i3">"As one <i>mountain-bred</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Rugged, and clownish, if some city's walls</span><br />
+<span class="i0">He chance to enter, round him stares agape."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 18. Finally, although the Carrara mountains are named as
+having command of the stars and sea, the <i>Alps</i> are never specially
+mentioned but in bad weather, or snow. On the sand of
+the circle of the blasphemers&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i3">"Fell slowly wafting down</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow</span><br />
+<span class="i0">On Alpine summit, when the wind is hushed."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>So the Paduans have to defend their town and castles against inundation,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i3">"Ere the genial warmth be felt,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">On Chiarentana's top."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The clouds of anger, in Purgatory, can only be figured to the
+reader who has</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"On an Alpine height been ta'en by cloud,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Through which thou sawest no better than the mole</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Doth through opacous membrane."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And in approaching the second branch of Lethe, the seven
+ladies pause,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i4">"Arriving at the verge</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of a dim umbrage hoar, such as is seen</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Beneath green leaves and gloomy branches oft</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To overbrow a bleak and Alpine cliff."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 19. Truly, it is unfair of Dante, that when he is going to
+use snow for a lovely image, and speak of it as melting away
+under heavenly sunshine, he must needs put it on the Apennines,
+not on the Alps:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i2">"As snow that lies</span><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Amidst the living rafters, on the back</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of Italy, congealed, when drifted high</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And closely piled by rough Sclavonian blasts,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Breathe but the land whereon no shadow falls,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And straightway melting, it distils away,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Like a fire-washed taper; thus was I,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Without a sigh, or tear, consumed in heart."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The reader will thank me for reminding him, though out of
+its proper order, of the exquisite passage of Scott which we have
+to compare with this:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"As snow upon the mountain's breast</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Slides from the rock that gave it rest,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Sweet Ellen glided from her stay,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And at the monarch's feet she lay."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Examine the context of this last passage, and its beauty is
+quite beyond praise; but note the northern love of rocks in the
+very first words I have to quote from Scott, "The rocks that
+gave it rest." Dante could not have thought of his "cut
+rocks" as giving rest even to snow. He must put it on the
+pine branches, if it is to be at peace.</p>
+
+<p>§ 20. There is only one more point to be noticed in the Dantesque
+landscape; namely, the feeling entertained by the poet
+towards the sky. And the love of mountains is so closely connected
+with the love of clouds, the sublimity of both depending
+much on their association, that having found Dante regardless
+of the Carrara mountains as seen from San Miniato, we may
+well expect to find him equally regardless of the clouds in which
+the sun sank behind them. Accordingly, we find that his only
+pleasure in the sky depends on its "white clearness,"&mdash;that
+turning into "bianca aspette di celestro" which is so peculiarly
+characteristic of fine days in Italy. His pieces of pure pale
+light are always exquisite. In the dawn on the purgatorial
+mountain, first, in its pale white, he sees the "tremola della
+marina"&mdash;trembling of the sea; then it becomes vermilion;
+and at last, near sunrise, orange. These are precisely the
+changes of a calm and perfect dawn. The scenery of Paradise
+begins with "Day added to day," the light of the sun so flooding
+the heavens, that "never rain nor river made lake so wide;"
+and throughout the Paradise all the beauty depends on spheres
+of light, or stars, never on clouds. But the pit of the Inferno<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>
+is at first sight obscure, deep, and so <i>cloudy</i> that at its bottom
+nothing could be seen. When Dante and Virgil reach the
+marsh in which the souls of those who have been angry and sad
+in their lives are for ever plunged, they find it covered with
+thick fog; and the condemned souls say to them,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i5">"We once were sad,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In the <i>sweet air, made gladsome by the sun</i>.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Now in these murky settlings are we sad."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Even the angel crossing the marsh to help them is annoyed by
+this bitter marsh smoke, "fummo acerbo," and continually
+sweeps it with his hand from before his face.</p>
+
+<p>Anger, on the purgatorial mountain, is in like manner
+imaged, because of its blindness and wildness, by the Alpine
+clouds. As they emerge from its mist they see the white light
+radiated through the fading folds of it; and, except this appointed
+cloud, no other can touch the mountain of purification.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i2">"Tempest none, shower, hail, or snow,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Hoar-frost, or dewy moistness, higher falls,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Than that brief scale of threefold steps. Thick clouds,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Nor scudding rack, are ever seen, swift glance</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Ne'er lightens, nor Thaumantian iris gleams."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Dwell for a little while on this intense love of Dante for
+light,&mdash;taught, as he is at last by Beatrice, to gaze on the sun
+itself like an eagle,&mdash;and endeavor to enter into his equally intense
+detestation of all mist, rack of cloud, or dimness of rain;
+and then consider with what kind of temper he would have regarded
+a landscape of Copley Fielding's or passed a day in the
+Highlands. He has, in fact, assigned to the souls of the gluttonous
+no other punishment in the Inferno than perpetuity of
+Highland weather:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">"Showers</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Ceaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchanged</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For ever, both in kind and in degree,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Large hail, discolored water, sleety flaw,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Through the dim midnight air streamed down amain."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 21. However, in this immitigable dislike of clouds, Dante
+goes somewhat beyond the general temper of his age. For
+although the calm sky was alone loved, and storm and rain were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span>
+dreaded by all men, yet the white horizontal clouds of serene
+summer were regarded with great affection by all early painters,
+and considered as one of the accompaniments of the manifestation
+of spiritual power; sometimes, for theological reasons
+which we shall soon have to examine, being received, even without
+any other sign, as the types of blessing or Divine acceptance:
+and in almost every representation of the heavenly paradise,
+these level clouds are set by the early painters for its floor,
+or for thrones of its angels; whereas Dante retains steadily,
+through circle after circle, his cloudless thought, and concludes
+his painting of heaven, as he began it upon the purgatorial
+mountain, with the image of shadowless morning:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"I raised my eyes, and as at morn is seen</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The horizon's eastern quarter to excel,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">So likewise, that pacific Oriflamb</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Glowed in the midmost, and toward every part,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With like gradation paled away its flame."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>But the best way of regarding this feeling of Dante's is as
+the ultimate and most intense expression of the love of light,
+color, and clearness, which, as we saw above, distinguished the
+mediæval from the Greek on one side, and, as we shall presently
+see, distinguished him from the modern on the other. For
+it is evident that precisely in the degree in which the Greek was
+agriculturally inclined, in that degree the sight of clouds would
+become to him more acceptable than to the mediæval knight,
+who only looked for the fine afternoons in which he might
+gather the flowers in his garden, and in no wise shared or imagined
+the previous anxieties of his gardener. Thus, when we
+find Ulysses comforted about Ithaca, by being told it had
+"plenty of rain," and the maids of Colonos boasting of their
+country for the same reason, we may be sure that they had some
+regard for clouds; and accordingly, except Aristophanes, of
+whom more presently, all the Greek poets speak fondly of the
+clouds, and consider them the fitting resting-places of the gods;
+including in their idea of clouds not merely the thin clear cirrus,
+but the rolling and changing volume of the thunder-cloud;
+nor even these only, but also the dusty whirlwind cloud of the
+earth, as in that noble chapter of Herodotus which tells us of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span>
+the cloud, full of mystic voices, that rose out of the dust of
+Eleusis, and went down to Salamis. Clouds and rain were of
+course regarded with a like gratitude by the eastern and southern
+nations&mdash;Jews and Egyptians; and it is only among the
+northern mediævals, with whom fine weather was rarely so prolonged
+as to occasion painful drought, or dangerous famine, and
+over whom the clouds broke coldly and fiercely when they came,
+that the love of serene light assumes its intense character, and
+the fear of tempest is gloomiest; so that the powers of the
+clouds which to the Greek foretold his conquest at Salamis, and
+with whom he fought in alliance, side by side with their lightnings,
+under the crest of Parnassus, seemed, in the heart of the
+Middle Ages, to be only under the dominion of the spirit of
+evil. I have reserved, for our last example of the landscape of
+Dante, the passage in which this conviction is expressed; a passage
+not less notable for its close description of what the writer
+feared and disliked, than for the ineffable tenderness, in which
+Dante is always raised as much above all other poets, as in softness
+the rose above all other flowers. It is the spirit of Buonconte
+da Montefeltro who speaks:</p>
+<!-- ** may need attention on the ellip. -->
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Then said another: 'Ah, so may thy wish,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That takes thee o'er the mountain, be fulfilled,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of Montefeltro I; Buonconte I:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Giovanna, nor none else, have care for me;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Sorrowing with these I therefore go.' I thus:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">From Campaldino's field what force or chance</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Drew thee, that ne'er thy sepulchre was known?'</span><br />
+<span class="i0">'Oh!' answered he, 'at Casentino's foot</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A stream there courseth, named Archiano, sprung</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In Apennine, above the hermit's seat.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">E'en where its name is cancelled, there came I,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Pierced in the throat, fleeing away on foot,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speech</span><br />
+<span class="i0">failed me; and finishing with Mary's name,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">...</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>That evil will, which in his intellect</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>Still follows evil, came;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">... the valley, soon</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As day was spent, <i>he covered o'er with cloud</i>.</span><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span>
+<span class="i0">From Pratomagno to the mountain range,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And stretched the sky above; so that the air,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Impregnate, changed to water. Fell the rain;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And to the fosses came all that the land</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Contained not; and as mightiest streams are wont.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To the great river, with such headlong sweep,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Rushed, that nought stayed its course. My stiffened frame,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Laid at his mouth, the fell Archiano found,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And dashed it into Arno; from my breast</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Loosening the cross, that of myself I made</span><br />
+<span class="i0">When overcome with pain. He hurled me on,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Along the banks and bottom of his course;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Observe, Buonconte, as he dies, crosses his arms over his
+breast, pressing them together, partly in his pain, partly in
+prayer. His body thus lies by the river shore, as on a sepulchral
+monument, the arms folded into a cross. The rage of the river,
+under the influence of the evil demon, <i>unlooses this cross</i>, dashing
+the body supinely away, and rolling it over and over by bank
+and bottom. Nothing can be truer to the action of a stream in
+fury than these lines. And how desolate is it all! The lonely
+flight,&mdash;the grisly wound, "pierced in the throat,"&mdash;the death,
+without help or pity,&mdash;only the name of Mary on the lips,-and
+the cross folded over the heart. Then the rage of the demon
+and the river,&mdash;the noteless grave,&mdash;and, at last, even she who
+had been most trusted forgetting him,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Giovanna, none else have care for me."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There is, I feel assured, nothing else like it in all the range of
+poetry; a faint and harsh echo of it, only, exists in one Scottish
+ballad, "The Twa Corbies."</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, I think, we may close our inquiry into the
+nature of the mediæval landscape; not but that many details
+yet require to be worked out; but these will be best observed by
+recurrence to them, for comparison with similar details in modern
+landscape,&mdash;our principal purpose, the getting at the governing
+tones and temper of conception, being, I believe, now sufficiently
+accomplished. And I think that our subject may be
+best pursued by immediately turning from the mediæval to the
+perfectly modern landscape; for although I have much to say
+respecting the transitional state of mind exhibited in the six<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span>teenth
+and seventeenth centuries, I believe the transitions may
+be more easily explained after we have got clear sight of the extremes;
+and that by getting perfect and separate hold of the
+three great phases of art,&mdash;Greek, mediæval, and modern,&mdash;we
+shall be enabled to trace, with least chance of error, those curious
+vacillations which brought us to the modern temper while
+vainly endeavoring to resuscitate the Greek. I propose, therefore,
+in the next chapter, to examine the spirit of modern landscape,
+as seen generally in modern painting, and especially in
+the poetry of Scott.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a>
+It is an unpublished plate. I know only two impressions of it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a>
+(Cayley.) "Tutto di pietra, e di color ferrigno"&mdash;Inf. xviii. 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a>
+"Maligne piagge grige."&mdash;Inf. vii. 108.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a>
+It is in these subtle purples that even the more elaborate passages of
+the earlier drawings are worked; as, for instance, the Highland streams,
+spoken of in Pre-Raphaelitism. Also, Turner could, by opposition, get
+what color he liked out of a brown. I have seen cases in which he had
+made it stand for the purest <i>rose</i> light.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a>
+The references are in Appendix I.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF MODERN LANDSCAPE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. We turn our eyes, therefore, as boldly and as quickly as
+may be, from these serene fields and skies of mediæval art, to
+the most characteristic examples of modern landscape. And, I
+believe, the first thing that will strike us, or that ought to strike
+us, is their <i>cloudiness</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Out of perfect light and motionless air, we find ourselves on
+a sudden brought under sombre skies, and into drifting wind;
+and, with fickle sunbeams flashing in our face, or utterly
+drenched with sweep of rain, we are reduced to track the
+changes of the shadows on the grass, or watch the rents of twilight
+through angry cloud. And we find that whereas all the
+pleasure of the mediæval was in <i>stability</i>, <i>definiteness</i>, and <i>luminousness</i>,
+we are expected to rejoice in darkness, and triumph in
+mutability; to lay the foundation of happiness in things which
+momentarily change or fade; and to expect the utmost satisfaction
+and instruction from what is impossible to arrest, and difficult
+to comprehend.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. We find, however, together with this general delight in
+breeze and darkness, much attention to the real form of clouds,
+and careful drawing of effects of mist: so that the appearance
+of objects, as seen through it, becomes a subject of science with
+us: and the faithful representation of that appearance is made
+of primal importance, under the name of aerial perspective.
+The aspects of sunset and sunrise, with all their attendant phenomena
+of cloud and mist, are watchfully delineated; and in
+ordinary daylight landscape, the sky is considered of so much
+importance, that a principal mass of foliage, or a whole foreground,
+is unhesitatingly thrown into shade merely to bring out
+the form of a white cloud. So that, if a general and characteristic
+name were needed for modern landscape art, none better
+could be invented than "the service of clouds."</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span>
+
+<p>§ 3. And this name would, unfortunately, be characteristic
+of our art in more ways than one. In the last chapter, I said
+that all the Greeks spoke kindly about the clouds, except Aristophanes;
+and he, I am sorry to say (since his report is so
+unfavorable), is the only Greek who had studied them attentively.
+He tells us, first, that they are "great goddesses to idle
+men;" then, that they are "mistresses of disputings, and logic,
+and monstrosities, and noisy chattering;" declares that whoso
+believes in their divinity must first disbelieve in Jupiter, and
+place supreme power in the hands of an unknown god "Whirlwind;"
+and, finally, he displays their influence over the mind
+of one of their disciples, in his sudden desire "to speak ingeniously
+concerning smoke."</p>
+
+<p>There is, I fear, an infinite truth in this Aristophanic judgment
+applied to our modern cloud-worship. Assuredly, much
+of the love of mystery in our romances, our poetry, our art, and,
+above all, in our metaphysics, must come under that definition
+so long ago given by the great Greek, "speaking ingeniously
+concerning smoke." And much of the instinct, which, partially
+developed in painting, may be now seen throughout every
+mode of exertion of mind,&mdash;the easily encouraged doubt, easily
+excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and delight in the changing
+and the marvellous, as opposed to the old quiet serenity of social
+custom and religious faith,&mdash;is again deeply defined in those
+few words, the "dethroning of Jupiter," the "coronation of
+the whirlwind."</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. Nor of whirlwind merely, but also of darkness or ignorance
+respecting all stable facts. That darkening of the foreground
+to bring out the white cloud, is, in one aspect of it, a
+type of the subjection of all plain and positive fact, to what is
+uncertain and unintelligible. And as we examine farther into
+the matter, we shall be struck by another great difference
+between the old and modern landscape, namely, that in the old
+no one ever thought of drawing anything but as well <i>as he
+could</i>. That might not be <i>well</i>, as we have seen in the case of
+rocks; but it was as well as he <i>could</i>, and always distinctly.
+Leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was equally drawn with
+care and clearness, and its essential characters shown. If it
+was an oak tree, the acorns were drawn; if a flint pebble, its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>
+veins were drawn; if an arm of the sea, its fish were drawn; if
+a group of figures, their faces and dresses were drawn&mdash;to the
+very last subtlety of expression and end of thread that could be
+got into the space, far off or near. But now our ingenuity is
+all "concerning smoke." Nothing is truly drawn but that; all
+else is vague, slight, imperfect; got with as little pains as possible.
+You examine your closest foreground, and find no
+leaves; your largest oak, and find no acorns; your human
+figure, and find a spot of red paint instead of a face; and in all
+this, again and again, the Aristophanic words come true, and
+the clouds seem to be "great goddesses to idle men."</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. The next thing that will strike us, after this love of
+clouds, is the love of liberty. Whereas the mediæval was
+always shutting himself into castles, and behind fosses, and
+drawing brickwork neatly, and beds of flowers primly, our
+painters delight in getting to the open fields and moors; abhor
+all hedges and moats; never paint anything but free-growing
+trees, and rivers gliding "at their own sweet will;" eschew formality
+down to the smallest detail; break and displace the
+brickwork which the mediæval would have carefully cemented;
+leave unpruned the thickets he would have delicately trimmed;
+and, carrying the love of liberty even to license, and the love of
+wildness even to ruin, take pleasure at last in every aspect of
+age and desolation which emancipates the objects of nature from
+the government of men;&mdash;on the castle wall displacing its tapestry
+with ivy, and spreading, through the garden, the bramble
+for the rose.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. Connected with this love of liberty we find a singular
+manifestation of love of mountains, and see our painters traversing
+the wildest places of the globe in order to obtain subjects
+with craggy foregrounds and purple distances. Some few of
+them remain content with pollards and flat land; but these are
+always men of third-rate order; and the leading masters, while
+they do not reject the beauty of the low grounds, reserve their
+highest powers to paint Alpine peaks or Italian promontories.
+And it is eminently noticeable, also, that this pleasure in the
+mountains is never mingled with fear, or tempered by a spirit of
+meditation, as with the mediæval; but it is always free and
+fearless, brightly exhilarating, and wholly unreflective; so that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span>
+the painter feels that his mountain foreground may be more
+consistently animated by a sportsman than a hermit; and our
+modern society in general goes to the mountains, not to fast,
+but to feast, and leaves their glaciers covered with chicken-bones
+and egg-shells.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. Connected with this want of any sense of solemnity in
+mountain scenery, is a general profanity of temper in regarding
+all the rest of nature; that is to say, a total absence of faith in
+the presence of any deity therein. Whereas the mediæval never
+painted a cloud, but with the purpose of placing an angel in it;
+and a Greek never entered a wood without expecting to meet a
+god in it; <i>we</i> should think the appearance of an angel in the
+cloud wholly unnatural, and should be seriously surprised by
+meeting a god anywhere. Our chief ideas about the wood are
+connected with poaching. We have no belief that the clouds
+contain more than so many inches of rain or hail, and from our
+ponds and ditches expect nothing more divine than ducks and
+watercresses.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. Finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a
+strong tendency to deny the sacred element of color, and make
+our boast in blackness. For though occasionally glaring, or
+violent, modern color is on the whole eminently sombre, tending
+continually to grey or brown, and by many of our best
+painters consistently falsified, with a confessed pride in what
+they call chaste or subdued tints; so that, whereas a mediæval
+paints his sky bright blue, and his foreground bright green,
+gilds the towers of his castles, and clothes his figures with purple
+and white, we paint our sky grey, our foreground black, and
+our foliage brown, and think that enough is sacrificed to the
+sun in admitting the dangerous brightness of a scarlet cloak or
+a blue jacket.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. These, I believe, are the principal points which would
+strike us instantly, if we were to be brought suddenly into an
+exhibition of modern landscapes out of a room filled with mediæval
+work. It is evident that there are both evil and good in
+this change; but how much evil, or how much good, we can
+only estimate by considering, as in the former divisions of our
+inquiry, what are the real roots of the habits of mind which
+have caused them.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Distinctive characters of the modern mind:</div>
+
+<p>And first, it is evident that the title "Dark Ages," given to
+the mediæval centuries, is, respecting art, wholly inapplicable.
+They were, on the contrary, the bright ages;
+ours are the dark ones. I do not mean metaphysically,
+but literally. They were the ages of gold:
+ours are the ages of umber.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">1. Despondency arising from faithlessness.</div>
+
+<p>This is partly mere mistake in us; we build brown brick
+walls, and wear brown coats, because we have been blunderingly
+taught to do so, and go on doing so mechanically. There is,
+however, also some cause for the change in our
+own tempers. On the whole, these are much <i>sadder</i>
+ages than the early ones; not sadder in a
+noble and deep way, but in a dim, wearied way,&mdash;the way of
+ennui, and jaded intellect, and uncomfortableness of soul and
+body. The Middle Ages had their wars and agonies, but also
+intense delights. Their gold was dashed with blood; but ours
+is sprinkled with dust. Their life was interwoven with white
+and purple; ours is one seamless stuff of brown. Not that
+we are without apparent festivity, but festivity more or less
+forced, mistaken, embittered, incomplete&mdash;not of the heart.
+How wonderfully, since Shakspere's time, have we lost the
+power of laughing at bad jests! The very finish of our wit
+belies our gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, I
+believe, our want of faith. There never yet was a generation
+of men (savage or civilized) who, taken as a body, so wofully
+fulfilled the words, "having no hope, and without God in the
+world," as the present civilized European race. A Red Indian
+or Otaheitan savage has more sense of a Divine existence round
+him, or government over him, than the plurality of refined Londoners
+and Parisians; and those among us who may in some
+sense be said to believe, are divided almost without exception
+into two broad classes, Romanist and Puritan; who, but for the
+interference of the unbelieving portions of society, would,
+either of them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to
+ashes; the Romanist having always done so whenever he could,
+from the beginning of their separation, and the Puritan at this
+time holding himself in complacent expectation of the destruction
+of Rome by volcanic fire. Such division as this between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span>
+persons nominally of one religion, that is to say, believing in the
+same God, and the same Revelation, cannot but become a stumbling-block
+of the gravest kind to all thoughtful and far-sighted
+men,&mdash;a stumbling-block which they can only surmount under
+the most favorable circumstances of early education. Hence,
+nearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers;
+the best of them in doubt and misery; the worst in
+reckless defiance; the plurality in plodding hesitation, doing, as
+well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands.
+Most of our scientific men are in this last class; our popular
+authors either set themselves definitely against all religious
+form, pleading for simple truth and benevolence (Thackeray,
+Dickens), or give themselves up to bitter and fruitless statement
+of facts (De Balzac), or surface-painting (Scott), or careless
+blasphemy, sad or smiling (Byron, Beranger). Our earnest
+poets, and deepest thinkers, are doubtful and indignant (Tennyson,
+Carlyle); one or two, anchored, indeed, but anxious, or
+weeping (Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning); and of these two, the
+first is not so sure of his anchor, but that now and then it
+drags with him, even to make him cry out,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6">"Great God, I had rather be</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn:</span><br />
+<span class="i1">So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>In politics, religion is now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or
+affectation. Over German religious pictures the inscription,
+"See how Pious I am," can be read at a glance by any clear-sighted
+person. Over French and English religious pictures,
+the inscription, "See how Impious I am," is equally legible.
+All sincere and modest art is, among us, profane.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 11. 2. Levity from the same cause.</div>
+
+<p>This faithlessness operates among us according to our tempers,
+producing either sadness or levity, and being the ultimate
+root alike of our discontents and of our wantonnesses. It is
+marvellous how full of contradiction it makes us;
+we are first dull, and seek for wild and lonely
+places because we have no heart for the garden;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span>
+presently we recover our spirits, and build an assembly room
+among the mountains, because we have no reverence for the
+desert. I do not know if there be game on Sinai, but I am
+always expecting to hear of some one's shooting over it.</p>
+
+<p>§ 12. There is, however, another, and a more innocent root
+of our delight in wild scenery.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">3. Reactionary love of inanimate beauty.</div>
+
+<p>All the Renaissance principles of art tended, as I have before
+often explained, to the setting Beauty above Truth, and
+seeking for it always at the expense of truth. And the proper
+punishment of such pursuit&mdash;the punishment
+which all the laws of the universe rendered inevitable&mdash;was,
+that those who thus pursued beauty
+should wholly lose sight of beauty. All the thinkers of the age,
+as we saw previously, declared that it did not exist. The age
+seconded their efforts, and banished beauty, so far as human
+effort could succeed in doing so, from the face of the earth, and
+the form of man. To powder the hair, to patch the cheek, to
+hoop the body, to buckle the foot, were all part and parcel of the
+same system which reduced streets to brick walls, and pictures
+to brown stains. One desert of Ugliness was extended before the
+eyes of mankind; and their pursuit of the beautiful, so recklessly
+continued, received unexpected consummation in high-heeled
+shoes and periwigs,&mdash;Gower Street, and Gaspar Poussin.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. Reaction from this state was inevitable, if any true
+life was left in the races of mankind; and, accordingly, though
+still forced, by rule and fashion, to the producing and wearing
+all that is ugly, men steal out, half-ashamed of themselves for
+doing so, to the fields and mountains; and, finding among
+these the color, and liberty, and variety, and power, which are
+for ever grateful to them, delight in these to an extent never before
+known; rejoice in all the wildest shattering of the mountain
+side, as an opposition to Gower Street; gaze in a rapt manner
+at sunsets and sunrises, to see there the blue, and gold, and
+purple, which glow for them no longer on knight's armor or
+temple porch; and gather with care out of the fields, into their
+blotted herbaria, the flowers which the five orders of architecture
+have banished from their doors and casements.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 14. 4. Disdain of beauty in man.</div>
+
+<p>The absence of care for personal beauty, which is another
+great characteristic of the age, adds to this feeling in a twofold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span>
+way: first, by turning all reverent thoughts away from human
+nature; and making us think of men as ridiculous
+or ugly creatures, getting through the world as
+well as they can, and spoiling it in doing so; not ruling it in
+a kingly way and crowning all its loveliness. In the Middle
+Ages hardly anything but vice could be caricatured, because
+virtue was always visibly and personally noble; now virtue itself
+is apt to inhabit such poor human bodies, that no aspect of it is
+invulnerable to jest; and for all fairness we have to seek to the
+flowers, for all sublimity, to the hills.</p>
+
+<p>The same want of care operates, in another way, by lowering
+the standard of health, increasing the susceptibility to nervous
+or sentimental impressions, and thus adding to the other
+powers of nature over us whatever charm may be felt in her fostering
+the melancholy fancies of brooding idleness.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 15. 5. Romantic imagination of the past.</div>
+
+<p>It is not, however, only to existing inanimate nature that
+our want of beauty in person and dress has driven us. The imagination
+of it, as it was seen in our ancestors, haunts us continually;
+and while we yield to the present fashions,
+or act in accordance with the dullest modern principles
+of economy and utility, we look fondly back
+to the manners of the ages of chivalry, and delight in painting,
+to the fancy, the fashions we pretend to despise, and the splendors
+we think it wise to abandon. The furniture and personages
+of our romance are sought, when the writer desires to please most
+easily, in the centuries which we profess to have surpassed in
+everything; the art which takes us into the present times is
+considered as both daring and degraded; and while the
+weakest words please us, and are regarded as poetry, which
+recall the manners of our forefathers, or of strangers, it is only
+as familiar and vulgar that we accept the description of our
+own.</p>
+
+<p>In this we are wholly different from all the races that preceded
+us. All other nations have regarded their ancestors with
+reverence as saints or heroes; but have nevertheless thought
+their own deeds and ways of life the fitting subjects for their
+arts of painting or of verse. We, on the contrary, regard our
+ancestors as foolish and wicked, but yet find our chief artistic
+pleasures in descriptions of their ways of life.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span>
+
+<p>The Greeks and mediævals honored, but did not imitate,
+their forefathers; we imitate, but do not honor.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">§ 16. 6. Interest in science.</div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">7. Fear of war.</div>
+
+<p>With this romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in history,
+and in external nature, the satisfaction it cannot find in ordinary
+life, we mingle a more rational passion, the due and just
+result of newly awakened powers of attention.
+Whatever may first lead us to the scrutiny of
+natural objects, that scrutiny never fails of its reward. Unquestionably
+they are intended to be regarded by us with both reverence
+and delight; and every hour we give to them renders their
+beauty more apparent, and their interest more engrossing. Natural
+science&mdash;which can hardly be considered to have existed
+before modern times&mdash;rendering our knowledge fruitful in accumulation
+and exquisite in accuracy, has acted for good or
+evil, according to the temper of the mind which received it;
+and though it has hardened the faithlessness of the dull and
+proud, has shown new grounds for reverence to
+hearts which were thoughtful and humble. The
+neglect of the art of war, while it has somewhat weakened and
+deformed the body,<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a>
+has given us leisure and opportunity for
+studies to which, before, time and space were equally wanting;
+lives which once were early wasted on the battle field are now
+passed usefully in the study; nations which exhausted themselves
+in annual warfare now dispute with each other the discovery
+of new planets; and the serene philosopher dissects the
+plants, and analyzes the dust, of lands which were of old only
+traversed by the knight in hasty march, or by the borderer in
+heedless rapine.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. The elements of progress and decline being thus
+strangely mingled in the modern mind, we might beforehand
+anticipate that one of the notable characters of our art would be
+its inconsistency; that efforts would be made in every direction,
+and arrested by every conceivable cause and manner of failure;
+that in all we did, it would become next to impossible to distin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span>guish
+accurately the grounds for praise or for regret; that all
+previous canons of practice and methods of thought would be
+gradually overthrown, and criticism continually defied by successes
+which no one had expected, and sentiments which no one
+could define.</p>
+
+<p>§ 18. Accordingly, while, in our inquiries into Greek and
+mediæval art, I was able to describe, in general terms, what all
+men did or felt, I find now many characters in many men;
+some, it seems to me, founded on the inferior and evanescent
+principles of modernism, on its recklessness, impatience, or
+faithlessness; others founded on its science, its new affection
+for nature, its love of openness and liberty. And among all
+these characters, good or evil, I see that some, remaining to us
+from old or transitional periods, do not properly belong to us,
+and will soon fade away; and others, though not yet distinctly
+developed, are yet properly our own, and likely to grow forward
+into greater strength.</p>
+
+<p>For instance: our reprobation of bright color is, I think,
+for the most part, mere affectation, and must soon be done away
+with. Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety, will indeed always express
+themselves through art in brown and grey, as in Rembrandt,
+Caravaggio, and Salvator; but we are not wholly vulgar,
+dull, or impious; nor, as moderns, are we necessarily
+obliged to continue so in any wise. Our greatest men, whether
+sad or gay, still delight, like the great men of all ages, in brilliant
+hues. The coloring of Scott and Byron is full and pure;
+that of Keats and Tennyson rich even to excess. Our practical
+failures in coloring are merely the necessary consequences of
+our prolonged want of practice during the periods of Renaissance
+affectation and ignorance; and the only durable difference
+between old and modern coloring, is the acceptance of certain
+hues, by the modern, which please him by expressing that
+melancholy peculiar to his more reflective or sentimental character,
+and the greater variety of them necessary to express his
+greater science.</p>
+
+<p>§ 19. Again: if we ever become wise enough to dress consistently
+and gracefully, to make health a principal object in education,
+and to render our streets beautiful with art, the external
+charm of past history will in great measure disappear.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span>
+There is no essential reason, because we live after the fatal seventeenth
+century, that we should never again be able to confess
+interest in sculpture, or see brightness in embroidery; nor, because
+now we choose to make the night deadly with our pleasures,
+and the day with our labors, prolonging the dance till
+dawn, and the toil to twilight, that we should never again learn
+how rightly to employ the sacred trusts of strength, beauty, and
+time. Whatever external charm attaches itself to the past,
+would then be seen in proper subordination to the brightness of
+present life; and the elements of romance would exist, in the
+earlier ages, only in the attraction which must generally belong
+to whatever is unfamiliar; in the reverence which a noble nation
+always pays to its ancestors; and in the enchanted light
+which races, like individuals, must perceive in looking back to
+the days of their childhood.</p>
+
+<p>§ 20. Again: the peculiar levity with which natural scenery
+is regarded by a large number of modern minds cannot be considered
+as entirely characteristic of the age, inasmuch as it
+never can belong to its greatest intellects. Men of any high
+mental power must be serious, whether in ancient or modern
+days: a certain degree of reverence for fair scenery is found in
+all our great writers without exception,&mdash;even the one who has
+made us laugh oftenest, taking us to the valley of Chamouni,
+and to the sea beach, there to give peace after suffering, and
+change revenge into pity.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a>
+It is only the dull, the uneducated,
+or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet on the hill sides;
+and levity, as a ruling character, cannot be ascribed to the whole
+nation, but only to its holiday-making apprentices, and its
+House of Commons.</p>
+
+<p>§ 21. We need not, therefore, expect to find any single poet
+or painter representing the entire group of powers, weaknesses,
+and inconsistent instincts which govern or confuse our modern
+life. But we may expect that in the man who seems to be
+given by Providence as the type of the age (as Homer and Dante
+were given, as the types of classical and mediæval mind), we
+shall find whatever is fruitful and substantial to be completely
+present, together with those of our weaknesses, which are in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span>deed
+nationally characteristic, and compatible with general
+greatness of mind; just as the weak love of fences, and dislike
+of mountains, were found compatible with Dante's greatness in
+other respects.</p>
+
+<p>§ 22. Farther: as the admiration of mankind is found, in
+our times, to have in great part passed from men to mountains,
+and from human emotion to natural phenomena, we may anticipate
+that the great strength of art will also be warped in this
+direction; with this notable result for us, that whereas the
+greatest painters or painter of classical and mediæval periods,
+being wholly devoted to the representation of humanity, furnished
+us with but little to examine in landscape, the greatest
+painters or painter of modern times will in all probability be devoted
+to landscape principally; and farther, because in representing
+human emotion words surpass painting, but in representing
+natural scenery painting surpasses words, we may anticipate
+also that the painter and poet (for convenience' sake I
+here use the words in opposition) will somewhat change their relations
+of rank in illustrating the mind of the age; that the
+painter will become of more importance, the poet of less; and
+that the relations between the men who are the types and firstfruits
+of the age in word and work,&mdash;namely, Scott and Turner,&mdash;will
+be, in many curious respects, different from those between
+Homer and Phidias, or Dante and Giotto.</p>
+
+<p>It is this relation which we have now to examine.</p>
+
+<p>§ 23. And, first, I think it probable that many readers may
+be surprised at my calling Scott the great representative of the
+mind of the age in literature. Those who can perceive the intense
+penetrative depth of Wordsworth, and the exquisite finish
+and melodious power of Tennyson, may be offended at my placing
+in higher rank that poetry of careless glance, and reckless
+rhyme, in which Scott poured out the fancies of his youth; and
+those who are familiar with the subtle analysis of the French
+novelists, or who have in any wise submitted themselves to the
+influence of German philosophy, may be equally indignant at
+my ascribing a principality to Scott among the literary men of
+Europe, in an age which has produced De Balzac and Goethe.</p>
+
+<p>So also in painting, those who are acquainted with the sentimental
+efforts made at present by the German religious and his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>torical
+schools, and with the disciplined power and learning of
+the French, will think it beyond all explanation absurd to call
+a painter of light water-color landscapes, eighteen inches by
+twelve, the first representative of the arts of the age. I can
+only crave the reader's patience, and his due consideration of
+the following reasons for my doing so, together with those advanced
+in the farther course of the work.</p>
+
+<p>§ 24. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility.
+I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his own power,
+or hesitation in speaking of his opinions; but a right understanding
+of the relation between what <i>he</i> can do and say, and
+the rest of the world's sayings and doings. All great men not
+only know their business, but usually know that they know it;
+and are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually
+know that they are right in them; only, they do not think
+much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can
+build a good dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly
+to one who had found fault with his work, "It cannot be better
+done;" Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem
+or two that would have puzzled anybody else;&mdash;only they
+do not expect their fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship
+them; they have a curious under-sense of powerlessness,
+feeling that the greatness is not <i>in</i> them, but <i>through</i> them;
+that they could not do or be anything else than God-made
+them. And they see something divine and God-made in every
+other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly
+merciful.</p>
+
+<p>§ 25. Now, I find among the men of the present age, as far as
+I know them, this character in Scott and Turner preeminently;
+I am not sure if it is not in them alone. I do not find Scott
+talking about the dignity of literature, nor Turner about the
+dignity of painting. They do their work, feeling that they
+cannot well help it; the story must be told, and the effect put
+down; and if people like it, well and good; and if not, the
+world will not be much the worse.</p>
+
+<p>I believe a very different impression of their estimate of
+themselves and their doings will be received by any one who
+reads the conversations of Wordsworth or Goethe. The <i>slightest</i>
+manifestation of jealousy or self-complacency is enough to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>
+mark a second-rate character of the intellect; and I fear that
+especially in Goethe, such manifestations are neither few nor
+slight.</p>
+
+<p>§ 26. Connected with this general humility is the total absence
+of affectation in these men,&mdash;that is to say, of any assumption
+of manner or behavior in their work, in order to attract
+attention. Not but that they are mannerists both. Scott's
+verse is strongly mannered, and Turner's oil painting; but the
+manner of it is necessitated by the feelings of the men, entirely
+natural to both, never exaggerated for the sake of show. I
+hardly know any other literary or pictorial work of the day
+which is not in some degree affected. I am afraid Wordsworth
+was often affected in his simplicity, and De Balzac in his finish.
+Many fine French writers are affected in their reserve, and full
+of stage tricks in placing of sentences. It is lucky if in German
+writers we ever find so much as a sentence without affectation.
+I know no painters without it, except one or two Pre-Raphaelites
+(chiefly Holman Hunt), and some simple water-color
+painters, as William Hunt, William Turner of Oxford,
+and the late George Robson; but these last have no invention,
+and therefore by our fourth canon, Chap. III. sec. 21., are excluded
+from the first rank of artists; and of the Pre-Raphaelites
+there is here no question, as they in no wise represent the
+modern school.</p>
+
+<p>§ 27. Again: another very important, though not infallible,
+test of greatness is, as we have often said, the appearance of
+Ease with which the thing is done. It may be that, as with
+Dante and Leonardo, the finish given to the work effaces the
+evidence of ease; but where the ease is manifest, as in Scott,
+Turner, and Tintoret; and the thing done is very noble, it is a
+strong reason for placing the men above those who confessedly
+work with great pains. Scott writing his chapter or two before
+breakfast&mdash;not retouching, Turner finishing a whole drawing in
+a forenoon before he goes out to shoot (providing always the
+chapter and drawing be good), are instantly to be set above men
+who confessedly have spent the day over the work, and think
+the hours well spent if it has been a little mended between
+sunrise and sunset. Indeed, it is no use for men to think to appear
+great by working fast, dashing, and scrawling; the thing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span>
+they do must be good and great, cost what time it may; but if
+it <i>be</i> so, and they have honestly and unaffectedly done it with
+<i>no effort</i>, it is probably a greater and better thing than the result
+of the hardest efforts of others.</p>
+
+<p>§ 28. Then, as touching the kind of work done by these
+two men, the more I think of it I find this conclusion more
+impressed upon me,&mdash;that the greatest thing a human soul ever
+does in this world is to <i>see</i> something, and tell what it <i>saw</i> in a
+plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think,
+but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is
+poetry, prophecy, and religion,&mdash;all in one.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, finding the world of Literature more or less
+divided into Thinkers and Seers, I believe we shall find also that
+the Seers are wholly the greater race of the two. A true Thinker,
+who has practical purpose in his thinking, and is sincere, as
+Plato, or Carlyle, or Helps, becomes in some sort a seer, and
+must be always of infinite use in his generation; but an affected
+Thinker, who supposes his thinking of any other importance
+than as it tends to work, is about the vainest kind of person
+that can be found in the occupied classes. Nay, I believe that
+metaphysicians and philosophers are, on the whole, the greatest
+troubles the world has got to deal with; and that while a tyrant
+or bad man is of some use in teaching people submission or
+indignation, and a thoroughly idle man is only harmful in setting
+an idle example, and communicating to other lazy people
+his own lazy misunderstandings, busy metaphysicians are always
+entangling <i>good</i> and <i>active</i> people, and weaving cobwebs among
+the finest wheels of the world's business; and are as much as
+possible, by all prudent persons, to be brushed out of their way,
+like spiders, and the meshed weed that has got into the Cambridgeshire
+canals, and other such impediments to barges and
+business. And if we thus clear the metaphysical element out of
+modern literature, we shall find its bulk amazingly diminished,
+and the claims of the remaining writers, or of those whom we
+have thinned by this abstraction of their straw stuffing, much
+more easily adjusted.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></p>
+									<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>
+<p>§ 29. Again: the mass of sentimental literature, concerned
+with the analysis and description of emotion, headed by the
+poetry of Byron, is altogether of lower rank than the literature
+which merely describes what it saw. The true Seer always feels
+as intensely as any one else; but he does not much describe
+his feelings. He tells you whom he met, and what they said;
+leaves you to make out, from that, what they feel, and what
+he feels, but goes into little detail. And, generally speaking,
+pathetic writing and careful explanation of passion are quite
+easy, compared with this plain recording of what people said or
+did, or with the right invention of what they are likely to say
+and do; for this reason, that to invent a story, or admirably
+and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp
+the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know
+precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which
+to do requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a separate
+emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it
+oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or
+that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the
+feelings of somebody sitting on the other side of the table.
+Even, therefore, when this sentimental literature is first rate, as
+in passages of Byron, Tennyson, and Keats, it ought not to be
+ranked so high as the Creative; and though perfection, even in
+narrow fields, is perhaps as rare as in the wider, and it may be
+as long before we have another In Memoriam as another Guy
+Mannering, I unhesitatingly receive as a greater manifestation
+of power the right invention of a few sentences spoken by Pleydell
+and Mannering across their supper-table, than the most
+tender and passionate melodies of the self-examining verse.</p>
+
+<p>§ 30. Having, therefore, cast metaphysical writers out of our
+way, and sentimental writers into the second rank, I do not
+think Scott's supremacy among those who remain will any more
+be doubtful; nor would it, perhaps, have been doubtful before,
+had it not been encumbered by innumerable faults and weaknesses.
+But it is preeminently in these faults and weaknesses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>
+that Scott is representative of the mind of his age: and because
+he is the greatest man born amongst us, and intended for the
+enduring type of us, all our principal faults must be laid on his
+shoulders, and he must bear down the dark marks to the latest
+ages; while the smaller men, who have some special work to
+do, perhaps not so much belonging to this age as leading out of
+it to the next, are often kept providentially quit of the encumbrances
+which they had not strength to sustain, and are much
+smoother and pleasanter to look at, in their way; only that is a
+smaller way.</p>
+
+<p>§ 31. Thus, the most startling fault of the age being its
+faithlessness, it is necessary that its greatest man should be
+faithless. Nothing is more notable or sorrowful in Scott's
+mind than its incapacity of steady belief in anything. He cannot
+even resolve hardily to believe in a ghost, or a water-spirit;
+always explains them away in an apologetic manner, not believing,
+all the while, even his own explanation. He never
+can clearly ascertain whether there is anything behind the arras
+but rats; never draws sword, and thrusts at it for life or death;
+but goes on looking at it timidly, and saying, "it must be the
+wind." He is educated a Presbyterian, and remains one,
+because it is the most sensible thing he can do if he is to live in
+Edinburgh; but he thinks Romanism more picturesque, and
+profaneness more gentlemanly: does not see that anything
+affects human life but love, courage, and destiny; which are,
+indeed, not matters of faith at all, but of sight. Any gods but
+those are very misty in outline to him; and when the love is
+laid ghastly in poor Charlotte's coffin; and the courage is no
+more of use,&mdash;the pen having fallen from between the fingers;
+and destiny is sealing the scroll,&mdash;the God-light is dim in the
+tears that fall on it.</p>
+
+<p>He is in all this the epitome of his epoch.</p>
+
+<p>§ 32. Again: as another notable weakness of the age is its
+habit of looking back, in a romantic and passionate idleness, to
+the past ages, not understanding them all the while, nor really
+desiring to understand them, so Scott gives up nearly the half
+of his intellectual power to a fond, yet purposeless, dreaming
+over the past, and spends half his literary labors in endeavors
+to revive it, not in reality, but on the stage of fiction; endeav<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>ors
+which were the best of the kind that modernism made, but
+still successful only so far as Scott put, under the old armor, the
+everlasting human nature which he knew; and totally unsuccessful,
+so far as concerned the painting of the armor itself,
+which he knew <i>not</i>. The excellence of Scott's work is precisely
+in proportion to the degree in which it is sketched from present
+nature. His familiar life is inimitable; his quiet scenes of
+introductory conversation, as the beginning of Rob Roy and
+Redgauntlet, and all his living Scotch characters, mean or
+noble, from Andrew Fairservice to Jeanie Deans, are simply
+right, and can never be bettered. But his romance and antiquarianism,
+his knighthood and monkery, are all false, and he
+knows them to be false; does not care to make them earnest;
+enjoys them for their strangeness, but laughs at his own antiquarianism,
+all through his own third novel,&mdash;with exquisite
+modesty indeed, but with total misunderstanding of the function
+of an Antiquary. He does not see how anything is to be
+got out of the past but confusion, old iron on drawingroom
+chairs, and serious inconvenience to Dr. Heavysterne.</p>
+
+<p>§ 33. Again: more than any age that had preceded it, ours
+had been ignorant of the meaning of the word "Art." It had
+not a single fixed principle, and what unfixed principles it
+worked upon were all wrong. It was necessary that Scott
+should know nothing of art. He neither cared for painting nor
+sculpture, and was totally incapable of forming a judgment
+about them. He had some confused love of Gothic architecture,
+because it was dark, picturesque, old, and like nature;
+but could not tell the worst from the best, and built for himself
+perhaps the most incongruous and ugly pile that gentlemanly
+modernism ever designed; marking, in the most curious and
+subtle way, that mingling of reverence with irreverence which
+is so striking in the age; he reverences Melrose, yet casts one of
+its piscinas, puts a modern steel grate into it, and makes it his
+fireplace. Like all pure moderns, he supposes the Gothic barbarous,
+notwithstanding his love of it; admires, in an equally
+ignorant way, totally opposite styles; is delighted with the new
+town of Edinburgh; mistakes its dulness for purity of taste,
+and actually compares it, in its deathful formality of street, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>
+contrasted with the rudeness of the old town, to Britomart taking
+off her armor.</p>
+
+<p>§ 34. Again: as in reverence and irreverence, so in levity
+and melancholy, we saw that the spirit of the age was strangely
+interwoven. Therefore, also, it is necessary that Scott should
+be light, careless, unearnest, and yet eminently sorrowful.
+Throughout all his work there is no evidence of any purpose but
+to while away the hour. His life had no other object than the
+pleasure of the instant, and the establishing of a family name.
+All his thoughts were, in their outcome and end, less than
+nothing, and vanity. And yet, of all poetry that I know, none
+is so sorrowful as Scott's. Other great masters are pathetic in
+a resolute and predetermined way, when they choose; but, in
+their own minds, are evidently stern, or hopeful, or serene;
+never really melancholy. Even Byron is rather sulky and desperate
+than melancholy; Keats is sad because he is sickly;
+Shelley because he is impious; but Scott is inherently and consistently
+sad. Around all his power, and brightness, and enjoyment
+of eye and heart, the far-away Æolian knell is for ever
+sounding; there is not one of those loving or laughing glances
+of his but it is brighter for the film of tears; his mind is like
+one of his own hill rivers,&mdash;it is white, and flashes in the sun
+fairly, careless, as it seems, and hasty in its going, but</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Far beneath, where slow they creep</span><br />
+<span class="i0">From pool to eddy, dark and deep,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Where alders moist, and willows weep,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">You hear her streams repine."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Life begins to pass from him very early; and while Homer
+sings cheerfully in his blindness, and Dante retains his courage,
+and rejoices in hope of Paradise, through all his exile, Scott,
+yet hardly past his youth, lies pensive in the sweet sunshine and
+among the harvest of his native hills.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Blackford, on whose uncultured breast,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Among the broom, and thorn, and whin,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A truant boy, I sought the nest,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Or listed as I lay at rest,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">While rose on breezes thin</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The murmur of the city crowd,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And, from his steeple jangling loud,</span><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>
+<span class="i1">St. Giles's mingling din!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Now, from the summit to the plain,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Waves all the hill with yellow grain;</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And on the landscape as I look,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Nought do I see unchanged remain,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To me they make a heavy moan</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of early friendships past and gone."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 35. Such, then, being the weaknesses which it was necessary
+that Scott should share with his age, in order that he might
+sufficiently represent it, and such the grounds for supposing
+him, in spite of all these weaknesses, the greatest literary man
+whom that age produced, let us glance at the principal points in
+which his view of landscape differs from that of the mediævals.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not endeavor now, as I did with Homer and Dante,
+to give a complete analysis of all the feelings which appear to be
+traceable in Scott's allusions to landscape scenery,&mdash;for this
+would require a volume,&mdash;but only to indicate the main points
+of differing character between his temper and Dante's. Then
+we will examine in detail, not the landscape of literature, but
+that of painting, which must, of course, be equally, or even in a
+higher degree, characteristic of the age.</p>
+
+<p>§ 36. And, first, observe Scott's habit of looking at nature
+neither as dead, or merely material, in the way that Homer
+regards it, nor as altered by his own feelings, in the way that
+Keats and Tennyson regard it, but as having an animation and
+pathos of <i>its own</i>, wholly irrespective of human presence or passion,&mdash;an
+animation which Scott loves and sympathizes with, as
+he would with a fellow creature, forgetting himself altogether,
+and subduing his own humanity before what seems to him the
+power of the landscape.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Yon lonely thorn,&mdash;would he could tell</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The changes of his parent dell,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Since he, so grey and stubborn now,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Waved in each breeze a sapling bough!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Would he could tell, how deep the shade</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A thousand mingled branches made,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How broad the shadows of the oak,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How clung the rowan to the rock,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And through the foliage showed his head,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With narrow leaves and berries red!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>
+
+<p>Scott does not dwell on the grey stubbornness of the thorn,
+because he himself is at that moment disposed to be dull, or
+stubborn; neither on the cheerful peeping forth of the rowan,
+because he himself is that moment cheerful or curious: but he
+perceives them both with the kind of interest that he would take
+in an old man, or a climbing boy; forgetting himself, in sympathy
+with either age or youth.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"And from the grassy slope he sees</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The Greta flow to meet the Tees,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Where issuing from her darksome bed,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">She caught the morning's eastern red,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And through the softening vale below</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Rolled her bright waves in rosy glow,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">All blushing to her bridal bed,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Like some shy maid, in convent bred;</span><br />
+<span class="i2">While linnet, lark, and blackbird gay</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Sing forth her nuptial roundelay."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Is Scott, or are the persons of his story, gay at this moment?
+Far from it. Neither Scott nor Risingham are happy, but the
+Greta is; and all Scott's sympathy is ready for the Greta, on
+the instant.</p>
+
+<p>§ 37. Observe, therefore, this is not <i>pathetic</i> fallacy; for
+there is no passion in <i>Scott</i> which alters nature. It is not the
+lover's passion, making him think the larkspurs are listening
+for his lady's foot; it is not the miser's passion, making him
+think that dead leaves are falling coins; but it is an inherent
+and continual habit of thought, which Scott shares with the
+moderns in general, being, in fact, nothing else than the
+instinctive sense which men must have of the Divine presence,
+not formed into distinct belief. In the Greek it created, as we
+saw, the faithfully believed gods of the elements: in Dante and
+the mediævals, it formed the faithfully believed angelic presence;
+in the modern, it creates no perfect form, does not
+apprehend distinctly any Divine being or operation; but only a
+dim, slightly credited animation in the natural object, accompanied
+with great interest and affection for it. This feeling is
+quite universal with us, only varying in depth according to the
+greatness of the heart that holds it; and in Scott, being more
+than usually intense, and accompanied with infinite affection<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span>
+and quickness of sympathy, it enables him to conquer all tendencies
+to the pathetic fallacy, and, instead of making Nature
+anywise subordinate to himself, he makes himself subordinate to
+<i>her</i>&mdash;follows her lead simply&mdash;does not venture to bring his own
+cares and thoughts into her pure and quiet presence&mdash;paints her
+in her simple and universal truth, adding no result of momentary
+passion or fancy, and appears, therefore, at first shallower than
+other poets, being in reality wider and healthier. "What am
+I?" he says continually, "that I should trouble this sincere
+nature with my thoughts. I happen to be feverish and depressed,
+and I could see a great many sad and strange things in
+those waves and flowers; but I have no business to see such
+things. Gay Greta! sweet harebells! <i>you</i> are not sad nor
+strange to most people; you are but bright water and blue blossoms;
+you shall not be anything else to me, except that I cannot
+help thinking you are a little alive,&mdash;no one can help thinking
+that." And thus, as Nature is bright, serene, or gloomy, Scott
+takes her temper, and paints her as she is; nothing of himself
+being ever intruded, except that far-away Eolian tone, of which
+he is unconscious; and sometimes a stray syllable or two, like
+that about Blackford Hill, distinctly stating personal feeling,
+but all the more modestly for that distinctness and for the clear
+consciousness that it is not the chiming brook, nor the cornfields,
+that are sad, but only the boy that rests by them; so returning
+on the instant to reflect, in all honesty, the image of
+Nature as she is meant by all to be received; nor that in fine
+words, but in the first that come; nor with comment of far-fetched
+thoughts, but with easy thoughts, such as all sensible
+men ought to have in such places, only spoken sweetly; and
+evidently also with an undercurrent of more profound reflection,
+which here and there murmurs for a moment, and which I
+think, if we choose, we may continually pierce down to, and
+drink deeply from, but which Scott leaves us to seek, or shun,
+at our pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>§ 38. And in consequence of this unselfishness and humility,
+Scott's enjoyment of Nature is incomparably greater than
+that of any other poet I know. All the rest carry their cares
+to her, and begin maundering in her ears about their own
+affairs. Tennyson goes out on a furzy common, and sees it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span>
+calm autumn sunshine, but it gives him no pleasure. He only
+remembers that it is</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i2">"Dead calm in that noble breast</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Which heaves but with the heaving deep."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>He sees a thunder-cloud in the evening, and <i>would</i> have
+"doted and pored" on it, but cannot, for fear it should bring
+the ship bad weather. Keats drinks the beauty of Nature violently;
+but has no more real sympathy with her than he has
+with a bottle of claret. His palate is fine; but he "bursts joy's
+grape against it," gets nothing but misery, and a bitter taste of
+dregs out of his desperate draught.</p>
+
+<p>Byron and Shelley are nearly the same, only with less truth
+of perception, and even more troublesome selfishness. Wordsworth
+is more like Scott, and understands how to be happy, but
+yet cannot altogether rid himself of the sense that he is a philosopher,
+and ought always to be saying something wise. He
+has also a vague notion that Nature would not be able to get on
+well without Wordsworth; and finds a considerable part of his
+pleasure in looking at himself as well as at her. But with Scott
+the love is entirely humble and unselfish. "I, Scott, am nothing,
+and less than nothing; but these crags, and heaths, and
+clouds, how great they are, how lovely, how for ever to be beloved,
+only for their own silent, thoughtless sake!"</p>
+
+<p>§ 39. This pure passion for nature in its abstract being, is
+still increased in its intensity by the two elements above taken
+notice of,&mdash;the love of antiquity, and the love of color and
+beautiful form, mortified in our streets, and seeking for food in
+the wilderness and the ruin: both feelings, observe, instinctive
+in Scott from his childhood, as everything that makes a man
+great is always.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"And well the lonely infant knew</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Recesses where the wallflower grew,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And honeysuckle loved to crawl</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Up the long crag and ruined wall.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The sun in all its round surveyed."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Not that these could have been instinctive in a child in the
+Middle Ages. The sentiments of a people increase or diminish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span>
+in intensity from generation to generation,&mdash;every disposition
+of the parents affecting the frame of the mind in their offspring:
+the soldier's child is born to be yet more a soldier, and
+the politician's to be still more a politician; even the slightest
+colors of sentiment and affection are transmitted to the heirs of
+life; and the crowning expression of the mind of a people is
+given when some infant of highest capacity, and sealed with the
+impress of this national character, is born where providential
+circumstances permit the full development of the powers it has
+received straight from Heaven, and the passions which it has inherited
+from its fathers.</p>
+
+<p>§ 40. This love of ancientness, and that of natural beauty,
+associate themselves also in Scott with the love of liberty, which
+was indeed at the root even of all his Jacobite tendencies in
+politics. For, putting aside certain predilections about landed
+property, and family name, and "gentlemanliness" in the club
+sense of the word,&mdash;respecting which I do not now inquire
+whether they were weak or wise,&mdash;the main element which
+makes Scott like Cavaliers better than Puritans is, that he
+thinks the former <i>free</i> and <i>masterful</i> as well as loyal; and the
+latter <i>formal</i> and <i>slavish</i>. He is loyal, not so much in respect
+for law, as in unselfish love for the king; and his sympathy is
+quite as ready for any active borderer who breaks the law, or
+fights the king, in what Scott thinks a generous way, as for the
+king himself. Rebellion of a rough, free, and bold kind he is always
+delighted by; he only objects to rebellion on principle and in
+form: bare-headed and open-throated treason he will abet to any
+extent, but shrinks from it in a peaked hat and starched collar:
+nay, politically, he only delights in kingship itself, because he
+looks upon it as the head and centre of liberty; and thinks
+that, keeping hold of a king's hand, one may get rid of the
+cramps and fences of law; and that the people may be governed
+by the whistle, as a Highland clan on the open hill-side, instead
+of being shut up into hurdled folds or hedged fields, as sheep or
+cattle left masterless.</p>
+
+<p>§ 41. And thus nature becomes dear to Scott in a threefold
+way: dear to him, first, as containing those remains or memories
+of the past, which he cannot find in cities, and giving hope of
+Prætorian mound or knight's grave, in every green slope and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span>
+shade of its desolate places;&mdash;dear, secondly, in its moorland
+liberty, which has for him just as high a charm as the fenced
+garden had for the mediæval:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"For I was wayward, bold, and wild,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A self-willed imp&mdash;a grandame's child;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But, half a plague, and half a jest,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Was still endured, beloved, caressed.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The classic poet's well-conned task?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Nay, Erskine, nay. On the wild hill</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Let the wild heathbell flourish still;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Cherish the tulip, prune the vine;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But freely let the woodbine twine,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And leave untrimmed the eglantine;"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>&mdash;and dear to him, finally, in that perfect beauty, denied alike
+in cities and in men, for which every modern heart had begun
+at last to thirst, and Scott's, in its freshness and power, of all
+men's, most earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>§ 42. And in this love of beauty, observe, that (as I said we
+might except) the love of <i>color</i> is a leading element, his healthy
+mind being incapable of losing, under any modern false teaching,
+its joy in brilliancy of hue. Though not so subtle a colorist
+as Dante, which, under the circumstances of the age, he
+could not be, he depends quite as much upon color for his power
+or pleasure. And, in general, if he does not mean to say much
+about things, the <i>one</i> character which he will give is color, using
+it with the most perfect mastery and faithfulness, up to the point
+of possible modern perception. For instance, if he has a sea-storm
+to paint in a single line, he does not, as a feebler poet
+would probably have done, use any expression about the temper
+or form of the waves; does not call them angry or mountainous.
+He is content to strike them out with two dashes of Tintoret's
+favorite colors:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"<i>The blackening wave edged with white</i>;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To inch and rock the seamews fly."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>There is no form in this. Nay, the main virtue of it is, that it
+gets rid of all form. The dark raging of the sea&mdash;what form
+has that? But out of the cloud of its darkness those lightning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span>
+flashes of the foam, coming at their terrible intervals&mdash;you need
+no more.</p>
+
+<p>Again: where he has to describe tents mingled among oaks,
+he says nothing about the form of either tent or tree, but only
+gives the two strokes of color:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Thousand pavilions, <i>white as snow</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>Chequered</i> the borough moor below,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Oft giving way, where still there stood</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Some relics of the old oak wood,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That darkly huge did intervene,</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>And tamed the glaring white with green</i>."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Again: of tents at Flodden:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Next morn the Baron climbed the tower,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To view, afar, the Scottish power,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Encamped on Flodden edge.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The white pavilions made a show,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Like remnants of the winter snow,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Along the dusky ridge."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Again: of trees mingled with dark rocks:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Until, where Teith's young waters roll</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Betwixt him and a wooded knoll,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That graced the <i>sable</i> strath with <i>green</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The chapel of St. Bride was seen."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Again: there is hardly any form, only smoke and color, in
+his celebrated description of Edinburgh:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"The wandering eye could o'er it go,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And mark the distant city glow</span><br />
+<span class="i1">With gloomy splendor red;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That round her sable turrets flow,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">The morning beams were shed,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And tinged them with a lustre proud,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Where the huge castle holds its state,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And all the steep slope down,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Piled deep and massy, close and high,</span><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span>
+<span class="i1">Mine own romantic town!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But northward far with purer blaze,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">On Ochil mountains fell the rays,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And as each heathy top they kissed,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">It gleamed a purple amethyst.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law:</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And, broad between them rolled,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The gallant Frith the eye might note,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Whose islands on its bosom float,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Like emeralds chased in gold."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I do not like to spoil a fine passage by italicizing it; but
+observe, the only hints at form, given throughout, are in the
+somewhat vague words, "ridgy," "massy," "close," and
+"high;" the whole being still more obscured by modern mystery,
+in its most tangible form of smoke. But the <i>colors</i> are all
+definite; note the rainbow band of them&mdash;gloomy or dusky red,
+sable (pure black), amethyst (pure purple), green, and gold&mdash;a
+noble chord throughout; and then, moved doubtless less by the
+smoky than the amethystine part of the group,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Fitz Eustace' heart felt closely pent,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The spur he to his charger lent,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And raised his bridle hand.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And making demivolte in air,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Cried, 'Where's the coward would not dare</span><br />
+<span class="i1">To fight for such a laud?'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I need not multiply examples: the reader can easily trace for
+himself, through verse familiar to us all, the force of these color
+instincts. I will therefore add only two passages, not so completely
+known by heart as most of the poems in which they occur.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"'Twas silence all. He laid him down</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Where purple heath profusely strown,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And throatwort, with its azure bell,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And moss and thyme his cushion swell.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">There, spent with toil, he listless eyed</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The course of Greta's playful tide;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Beneath her banks, now eddying dun,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Now brightly gleaming to the sun,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As, dancing over rock and stone,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In yellow light her currents shone,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Matching in hue the favorite gem</span><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Albin's mountain diadem.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Then tired to watch the current play,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">He turned his weary eyes away</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To where the bank opposing showed</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Its huge square cliffs through shaggy wood.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">One, prominent above the rest,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Reared to the sun its pale grey breast;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Around its broken summit grew</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The hazel rude, and sable yew;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A thousand varied lichens dyed</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Its waste and weather-beaten side;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And round its rugged basis lay,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">By time or thunder rent away,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Fragments, that, from its frontlet torn,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Were mantled now by verdant thorn."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 43. Note, first, what an exquisite chord of color is given in
+the succession of this passage. It begins with purple and blue;
+then passes to gold, or cairngorm color (topaz color); then to
+<i>pale grey</i>, through which the yellow passes into black; and the
+black, through broken dyes of lichen, into green. Note,
+secondly,&mdash;what is indeed so manifest throughout Scott's landscape
+as hardly to need pointing out,&mdash;the love of rocks, and
+true understanding of their colors and characters, opposed as it
+is in every conceivable way to Dante's hatred and misunderstanding
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>I have already traced, in various places, most of the causes of
+this great difference: namely, first, the ruggedness of northern
+temper (compare § 8. of the chapter on the Nature of Gothic
+in the Stones of Venice); then the really greater beauty of the
+northern rocks, as noted when we were speaking of the Apennine
+limestone; then the need of finding beauty among them,
+if it were to be found anywhere,&mdash;no well-arranged colors being
+any more to be seen in dress, but only in rock lichens; and,
+finally, the love of irregularity, liberty, and power, springing
+up in glorious opposition to laws of prosody, fashion, and the
+five orders.</p>
+
+<p>§ 44. The other passage I have to quote is still more interesting;
+because it has <i>no form</i> in it <i>at all</i> except in one word
+(chalice), but wholly composes its imagery either of color, or of
+that delicate half-believed life which we have seen to be so important
+an element in modern landscape.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"The summer dawn's reflected hue</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>To purple changed Loch Katrine blue</i>;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Mildly and soft the western breeze</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Just kissed the lake; just stirred the trees;</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>And the pleased lake, like maiden coy</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>Trembled, but dimpled not, for joy</i>;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The mountain-shadows on her breast</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Were neither broken nor at rest;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In bright uncertainty they lie,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Like future joys to Fancy's eye.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The water-lily to the light</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Her chalice reared of silver bright:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The doe awoke, and to the lawn,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The grey mist left the mountain side;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The torrent showed its glistening pride;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Invisible in fleckëd sky,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The lark sent down her revelry;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The blackbird and the speckled thrush</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Good-morrow gave from brake and bush;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In answer cooed the cushat dove</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Her notes of peace, and rest, and love."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Two more considerations are, however, suggested by the
+above passage. The first, that the love of natural history,
+excited by the continual attention now given to all wild landscape,
+heightens reciprocally the interest of that landscape, and
+becomes an important element in Scott's description, leading
+him to finish, down to the minutest speckling of breast, and
+slightest shade of attributed emotion, the portraiture of birds
+and animals; in strange opposition to Homer's slightly named
+"sea-crows, who have care of the works of the sea," and Dante's
+singing-birds, of undefined species. Compare carefully a passage,
+too long to be quoted,&mdash;the 2nd and 3rd stanzas of canto
+VI. of Rokeby.</p>
+
+<p>§ 45. The second, and the last point I have to note, is Scott's
+habit of drawing a slight <i>moral</i> from every scene, just enough
+to excuse to his conscience his want of definite religious feeling;
+and that this slight moral is almost always melancholy. Here
+he has stopped short without entirely expressing it&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"The mountain shadows ...</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">... lie</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Like future joys to Fancy's eye."</span><br />
+</div>
+											<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span>
+
+<p>His completed thought would be, that those future joys, like
+the mountain shadows, were never to be attained. It occurs
+fully uttered in many other places. He seems to have been
+constantly rebuking his own worldly pride and vanity, but never
+purposefully:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"The foam-globes on her eddies ride,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thick as the schemes of human pride</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That down life's current drive amain,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As frail, as frothy, and as vain."</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">"Foxglove, and nightshade, side by side,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Emblems of punishment and pride."</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">"Her dark eye flashed; she paused and sighed;&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">'Ah, what have I to do with pride!'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And hear the thought he gathers from the sunset (noting
+first the Turnerian color,&mdash;as usual, its principal element):</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"The sultry summer day is done.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The western hills have hid the sun,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But mountain peak and village spire</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Retain reflection of his fire.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Old Barnard's towers are purple still,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To those that gaze from Toller Hill;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Distant and high the tower of Bowes</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Like steel upon the anvil glows;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And Stanmore's ridge, behind that lay,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Rich with the spoils of parting day,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In crimson and in gold arrayed,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Streaks yet awhile the closing shade;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Then slow resigns to darkening heaven</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The tints which brighter hours had given</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thus, aged men, full loth and slow,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The vanities of life forego,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And count their youthful follies o'er</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Till Memory lends her light no more."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>That is, as far as I remember, one of the most finished pieces of
+sunset he has given; and it has a woful moral; yet one which,
+with Scott, is inseparable from the scene.</p>
+
+<p>Hark, again:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"'Twere sweet to mark the setting day</span><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span>
+<span class="i0">On Bourhope's lonely top decay;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And, as it faint and feeble died</span><br />
+<span class="i0">On the broad lake and mountain's side,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To say, 'Thus pleasures fade away;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Youth, talents, beauty, thus decay,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And leave us dark, forlorn, and grey.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And again, hear Bertram:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Mine be the eve of tropic sun:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With disk like battle target red,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">He rushes to his burning bed,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Dyes the wide wave with bloody light,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Then sinks at once; and all is night."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>In all places of this kind, where a passing thought is suggested
+by some external scene, that thought is at once a slight
+and sad one. Scott's deeper moral sense is marked in the <i>conduct</i>
+of his stories, and in casual reflections or exclamations
+arising out of their plot, and therefore sincerely uttered; as
+that of Marmion:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, what a tangled web we weave,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">When first we practise to deceive!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>But the reflections which are founded, not on events, but on
+scenes, are, for the most part, shallow, partly insincere, and, as
+far as sincere, sorrowful. This habit of ineffective dreaming
+and moralizing over passing scenes, of which the earliest type I
+know is given in Jaques, is, as aforesaid, usually the satisfaction
+made to our modern consciences for the want of a sincere
+acknowledgment of God in nature: and Shakspere has
+marked it as the characteristic of a mind "compact of jars"
+(Act II. Sc. VII., As You Like It). That description attaches
+but too accurately to all the moods which we have traced in the
+moderns generally, and in Scott as the first representative of
+them; and the question now is, what this love of landscape, so
+composed, is likely to lead us to, and what use can be made of it.</p>
+
+<p>We began our investigation, it will be remembered, in order
+to determine whether landscape-painting was worth studying or
+not. We have now reviewed the three principal phases of temper
+in the civilized human race, and we find that landscape has
+been mostly disregarded by great men, or cast into a second
+place, until now; and that now it seems dear to us, partly in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>
+consequence of our faults, and partly owing to accidental circumstances,
+soon, in all likelihood, to pass away: and there
+seems great room for question still, whether our love of it is a
+permanent and healthy feeling, or only a healthy crisis in a generally
+diseased state of mind. If the former, society will for
+ever hereafter be affected by its results; and Turner, the first
+great landscape painter, must take a place in the history of nations
+corresponding in art accurately to that of Bacon in philosophy;&mdash;Bacon
+having first opened the study of the laws of
+material nature, when, formerly, men had thought only of the
+laws of human mind; and Turner having first opened the
+study of the aspect of material nature, when, before, men had
+thought only of the aspect of the human form. Whether,
+therefore, the love of landscape be trivial and transient, or important
+and permanent, it now becomes necessary to consider.
+We have, I think, data enough before us for the solution of the
+question, and we will enter upon it, accordingly, in the following
+chapter.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a>
+Pre-Raphaelitism, of course, excepted, which is a new phase of art, in
+no wise considered in this chapter. Blake was sincere, but full of wild
+creeds, and somewhat diseased in brain.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a>
+Of course this is only meant of the modern citizen or country gentleman,
+as compared with a citizen of Sparta or old Florence. I leave it to
+others to say whether the "neglect of the <i>art</i> of war" may or may not, in a
+yet more fatal sense, be predicated of the English nation. War, <i>without</i> art,
+we seem, with God's help, able still to wage nobly.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a>
+See David Copperfield, chap. lv. and lviii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a>
+Observe, I do not speak thus of metaphysics because I have no pleasure
+in them. When I speak contemptuously of philology, it may be
+answered me, that I am a bad scholar; but I cannot be so answered touching
+metaphysics, for every one conversant with such subjects may see that
+I have strong inclination that way, which would, indeed, have led me far
+astray long ago, if I had not learned also some use of my hands, eyes, and
+feet.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. SUPPOSING then the preceding conclusions correct, respecting
+the grounds and component <i>elements</i> of the pleasure
+which the moderns take in landscape, we have here to consider
+what are the probable or usual <i>effects</i> of this pleasure. Is it a
+safe or a seductive one? May we wisely boast of it, and unhesitatingly
+indulge it? or is it rather a sentiment to be despised
+when it is slight, and condemned when it is intense; a
+feeling which disinclines us to labor, and confuses us in thought;
+a joy only to the inactive and the visionary, incompatible with
+the duties of life, and the accuracies of reflection?</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. It seems to me that, as matters stand at present, there
+is considerable ground for the latter opinion. We saw, in the
+preceding chapter, that our love of nature had been partly
+forced upon us by mistakes in our social economy, and led to
+no distinct issues of action or thought. And when we look to
+Scott&mdash;the man who feels it most deeply&mdash;for some explanation
+of its effect upon him, we find a curious tone of apology (as if
+for involuntary folly) running through his confessions of such
+sentiment, and a still more curious inability to define, beyond a
+certain point, the character of this emotion. He has lost the
+company of his friends among the hills, and turns to these last
+for comfort. He says, "there is a pleasure in the pain" consisting
+in such thoughts</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i6">"As oft awake</span><br />
+<span class="i0">By lone St. Mary's silent lake;"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>but, when we look for some definition of these thoughts, all that
+we are told is, that they compose</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i1">"A mingled sentiment</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of resignation and content!"<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></span><br />
+</div>
+											<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span>
+<p>a sentiment which, I suppose, many people can attain to on the
+loss of their friends, without the help of lakes or mountains;
+while Wordsworth definitely and positively affirms that <i>thought</i>
+has nothing whatever to do with the matter, and that though,
+in his youth, the cataract and wood "haunted him like a passion,"
+it was without the help of any "remoter charm, by
+thought supplied."</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. There is not, however, any question, but that both
+Scott and Wordsworth are here mistaken in their analysis
+of their feelings. Their delight, so far from being without
+thought, is more than half made up of thought, but of thought
+in so curiously languid and neutralized a condition that they
+cannot trace it. The thoughts are beaten to a powder so small
+that they know not what they are; they know only that in such
+a state they are not good for much, and disdain to call them
+thoughts. But the way in which thought, even thus broken,
+acts in producing the delight will be understood by glancing
+back to §§ 9. and 10. of the tenth chapter, in which we observed
+the power of the imagination in exalting any visible object, by
+gathering round it, in farther vision, all the facts properly connected
+with it; this being, as it were, a spiritual or second
+sight, multiplying the power of enjoyment according to the fulness
+of the vision. For, indeed, although in all lovely nature
+there is, first, an excellent degree of simple beauty, addressed to
+the eye alone, yet often what impresses us most will form but a
+very small portion of that visible beauty. That beauty may, for
+instance, be composed of lovely flowers and glittering streams,
+and blue sky, and white clouds; and yet the thing that impresses
+us most, and which we should be sorriest to lose, may be a
+thin grey film on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the space of
+the scene it occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near at hand
+bush, nor in any wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer;
+but, because the gossamer is known by us for a little bit of
+spider's work, and the other grey film is known to mean a
+mountain ten thousand feet high, inhabited by a race of noble
+mountaineers, we are solemnly impressed by the aspect of it;
+and yet, all the while the thoughts and knowledge which cause
+us to receive this impression are so obscure that we are not conscious
+of them; we think we are only enjoying the visible scene;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span>
+and the very men whose minds are fullest of such thoughts absolutely
+deny, as we have just heard, that they owe their pleasure
+to anything but the eye, or that the pleasure consists in anything
+else than "Tranquillity."</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. And observe, farther, that this comparative Dimness
+and Untraceableness of the thoughts which are the sources of
+our admiration, is not a <i>fault</i> in the thoughts, at such a time.
+It is, on the contrary, a necessary condition of their subordination
+to the pleasure of Sight. If the thoughts were more distinct
+we should not <i>see</i> so well; and beginning definitely to
+think, we must comparatively cease to see. In the instance just
+supposed, as long as we look at the film of mountain or Alp,
+with only an obscure consciousness of its being the source
+of mighty rivers, that consciousness adds to our sense of its sublimity;
+and if we have ever seen the Rhine or the Rhone near
+their mouths, our knowledge, so long as it is only obscurely suggested,
+adds to our admiration of the Alp; but once let the idea
+define itself,&mdash;once let us begin to consider seriously <i>what</i> rivers
+flow from that mountain, to trace their course, and to recall
+determinately our memories of their distant aspects,&mdash;and we
+cease to behold the Alp; or, if we still behold it, it is only as a
+point in a map which we are painfully designing, or as a subordinate
+object which we strive to thrust aside, in order to make
+room for our remembrances of Avignon or Rotterdam.</p>
+
+<p>Again: so long as our idea of the multitudes who inhabit the
+ravines at its foot remains indistinct, that idea comes to the aid
+of all the other associations which increase our delight. But let it
+once arrest us, and entice us to follow out some clear course of
+thought respecting the causes of the prosperity or misfortune of
+the Alpine villagers, and the snowy peak again ceases to be visible,
+or holds its place only as a white spot upon the retina, while
+we pursue our meditations upon the religion or the political
+economy of the mountaineers.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. It is thus evident that a curiously balanced condition of
+the powers of mind is necessary to induce full admiration of any
+natural scene. Let those powers be themselves inert, and the
+mind vacant of knowledge, and destitute of sensibility, and the
+external object becomes little more to us than it is to birds or
+insects; we fall into the temper of the clown. On the other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span>
+hand, let the reasoning powers be shrewd in excess, the knowledge
+vast, or sensibility intense, and it will go hard but that the
+visible object will suggest so much that it shall be soon itself
+forgotten, or become, at the utmost, merely a kind of key-note
+to the course of purposeful thought. Newton, probably, did
+not perceive whether the apple which suggested his meditations
+on gravity was withered or rosy; nor could Howard be affected
+by the picturesqueness of the architecture which held the sufferers
+it was his occupation to relieve.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. This wandering away in thought from the thing seen to
+the business of life, is not, however, peculiar to men of the
+highest reasoning powers, or most active benevolence. It takes
+place more or less in nearly all persons of average mental endowment.
+They see and love what is beautiful, but forget their
+admiration of it in following some train of thought which it
+suggested, and which is of more personal interest to them.
+Suppose that three or four persons come in sight of a group of
+pine-trees, not having seen pines for some time. One, perhaps
+an engineer, is struck by the manner in which their roots hold
+the ground, and sets himself to examine their fibres, in a few
+minutes retaining little more consciousness of the beauty of the
+trees than if he were a rope-maker untwisting the strands of a
+cable: to another, the sight of the trees calls up some happy
+association, and presently he forgets them, and pursues the memories
+they summoned: a third is struck by certain groupings
+of their colors, useful to him as an artist, which he proceeds immediately
+to note mechanically for future use, with as little feeling
+as a cook setting down the constituents of a newly discovered
+dish; and a fourth, impressed by the wild coiling of boughs and
+roots, will begin to change them in his fancy into dragons and
+monsters, and lose his grasp of the scene in fantastic metamorphosis:
+while, in the mind of the man who has most the power
+of contemplating the thing itself, all these perceptions and
+trains of idea are partially present, not distinctly, but in a
+mingled and perfect harmony. He will not see the colors of the
+tree so well as the artist, nor its fibres so well as the engineer;
+he will not altogether share the emotion of the sentimentalist,
+nor the trance of the idealist; but fancy, and feeling, and perception,
+and imagination, will all obscurely meet and balance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span>
+themselves in him, and he will see the pine-trees somewhat in
+this manner:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i5">"Worthier still of note</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of intertwisted fibres serpentine</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Nor uniformed with Phantasy, and looks</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That threaten the profane; a pillared shade,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Perennially,&mdash;beneath whose sable roof</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With unrejoicing berries, ghostly Shapes</span><br />
+<span class="i0">May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As in a natural temple scattered o'er</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">United worship."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 7. The power, therefore, of thus fully <i>perceiving</i> any natural
+object depends on our being able to group and fasten all our
+fancies about it as a centre, making a garland of thoughts for
+it, in which each separate thought is subdued and shortened of
+its own strength, in order to fit it for harmony with others; the
+intensity of our enjoyment of the object depending, first, on its
+own beauty, and then on the richness of the garland. And men
+who have this habit of clustering and harmonizing their
+thoughts are a little too apt to look scornfully upon the harder
+workers who tear the bouquet to pieces to examine the stems.
+This was the chief narrowness of Wordsworth's mind; he could
+not understand that to break a rock with a hammer in search of
+crystal may sometimes be an act not disgraceful to human
+nature, and that to dissect a flower may sometimes be as proper
+as to dream over it; whereas all experience goes to teach us,
+that among men of average intellect the most useful members of
+society are the dissectors, not the dreamers. It is not that they
+love nature or beauty less, but that they love result, effect, and
+progress more; and when we glance broadly along the starry
+crowd of benefactors to the human race, and guides of human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>
+thought, we shall find that this dreaming love of natural beauty&mdash;or
+at least its expression&mdash;has been more or less checked by
+them all, and subordinated either to hard work or watching of
+<i>human</i> nature. Thus in all the classical and mediæval periods,
+it was, as we have seen, subordinate to agriculture, war, and
+religion; and in the modern period, in which it has become far
+more powerful, observe in what persons it is chiefly manifested.</p>
+
+<table summary="Subordinate and Intense examples">
+
+<tr><td>(1.)</td><td class="tdl">It is subordinate in
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+</td>     <td>(2.)</td><td class="tdl">It is intense in</td></tr>
+<tr><td>    </td><td class="tdl">Bacon.</td>      <td>    </td><td class="tdl">Mrs. Radclyffe.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>    </td><td class="tdl">Milton.</td>     <td>    </td><td class="tdl">St. Pierre.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>    </td><td class="tdl">Johnson.</td>    <td>    </td><td class="tdl">Shenstone.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>    </td><td class="tdl">Richardson.</td> <td>    </td><td class="tdl">Byron.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>    </td><td class="tdl">Goldsmith.</td>  <td>    </td><td class="tdl">Shelley.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>    </td><td class="tdl">Young.</td>      <td>    </td><td class="tdl">Keats.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>    </td><td class="tdl">Newton.</td>     <td>    </td><td class="tdl">Burns.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>    </td><td class="tdl">Howard.</td>     <td>    </td><td class="tdl">Eugene Sue.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>    </td><td class="tdl">Fenelon.</td>    <td>    </td><td class="tdl">George Sand.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>    </td><td class="tdl">Pascal.</td>     <td>    </td><td class="tdl">Dumas.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>§ 8. I have purposely omitted the names of Wordsworth,
+Tennyson, and Scott, in the second list, because, glancing at the
+two columns as they now stand, we may, I think, draw some
+useful conclusions from the high honorableness and dignity of
+the names on one side, and the comparative slightness of those
+on the other,&mdash;conclusions which may help us to a better understanding
+of Scott and Tennyson themselves. Glancing, I say,
+down those columns in their present form, we shall at once perceive
+that the intense love of nature is, in modern times, characteristic
+of persons not of the first order of intellect, but of
+brilliant imagination, quick sympathy, and undefined religious
+principle, suffering also usually under strong and ill-governed
+passions: while in the same individual it will be found to vary
+at different periods, being, for the most part, strongest in youth,
+and associated with force of emotion, and with indefinite and
+feeble powers of thought; also, throughout life, perhaps developing
+itself most at times when the mind is slightly unhinged
+by love, grief, or some other of the passions.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. But, on the other hand, while these feelings of delight
+in natural objects cannot be construed into signs of the highest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span>
+mental powers, or purest moral principles, we see that they are
+assuredly indicative of minds above the usual standard of power,
+and endowed with sensibilities of great preciousness to humanity;
+so that those who find themselves entirely destitute of them,
+must make this want a subject of humiliation, not of pride.
+The apathy which cannot perceive beauty is very different from
+the stern energy which disdains it; and the coldness of heart
+which receives no emotion from external nature, is not to be
+confounded with the wisdom of purpose which represses emotion
+in action. In the case of most men, it is neither acuteness of
+the reason, nor breadth of humanity, which shields them from
+the impressions of natural scenery, but rather low anxieties, vain
+discontents, and mean pleasures; and for one who is blinded to
+the works of God by profound abstraction or lofty purpose, tens
+of thousands have their eyes sealed by vulgar selfishness, and
+their intelligence crushed by impious care.</p>
+
+<p>Observe, then: we have, among mankind in general, the
+three orders of being;&mdash;the lowest, sordid and selfish, which
+neither sees nor feels; the second, noble and sympathetic, but
+which sees and feels without concluding or acting; the third
+and highest, which loses sight in resolution, and feeling in
+work.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p>
+
+											<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span>
+<p>Thus, even in Scott and Wordsworth themselves, the love of
+nature is more or less associated with their weaknesses. Scott
+shows it most in the cruder compositions of his youth, his perfect
+powers of mind being displayed only in dialogues with
+which description has nothing whatever to do. Wordsworth's
+distinctive work was a war with pomp and pretence, and a display
+of the majesty of simple feelings and humble hearts,
+together with high reflective truth in his analysis of the courses
+of politics and ways of men; without these, his love of nature
+would have been comparatively worthless.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. "If this be so, it is not well to encourage the observance
+of landscape, any more than other ways of dreamily and
+ineffectually spending time?"</p>
+
+<p>Stay a moment. We have hitherto observed this love of
+natural beauty only as it distinguishes one man from another,
+not as it acts for good or evil on those minds to which it necessarily
+belongs. It may, on the whole, distinguish weaker men
+from stronger men, and yet in those weaker men may be of some
+notable use. It may distinguish Byron from St. Bernard, and
+Shelley from Sir Isaac Newton, and yet may, perhaps, be the
+best thing that Byron and Shelley possess&mdash;a saving element
+in them; just as a rush may be distinguished from an oak by
+its bending, and yet the bending may be the saving element<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span>
+in the rush, and an admirable gift in its place and way. So
+that, although St. Bernard journeys all day by the Lake of
+Geneva, and asks at evening "where it is," and Byron learns
+by it "to love earth only for its earthly sake,"<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a>
+it does not follow
+that Byron, hating men, was the worse for loving the earth,
+nor that St. Bernard, loving men, was the better or wiser for
+being blind to it. And this will become still more manifest if
+we examine somewhat farther into the nature of this instinct, as
+characteristic especially of youth.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. We saw above that Wordsworth described the feeling
+as independent of thought, and, in the particular place then
+quoted, he <i>therefore</i> speaks of it depreciatingly. But in other
+places he does not speak of it depreciatingly, but seems to think
+the absence of thought involves a certain nobleness:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i2">"In such high hour</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of visitation from the living God</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>Thought</i> was not."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>And he refers to the intense delight which he himself felt, and
+which he supposes other men feel, in nature, during their
+thoughtless youth, as an intimation of their immortality, and a
+joy which indicates their having come fresh from the hand of
+God.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if Wordsworth be right in supposing this feeling to be
+in some degree common to all men, and most vivid in youth,
+we may question if it can be <i>entirely</i> explained as I have now
+tried to explain it. For if it entirely depended on multitudes
+of ideas, clustering about a beautiful object, it might seem that
+the youth could not feel it so strongly as the man, because the
+man knows more, and must have more ideas to make the garland
+of. Still less can we suppose the pleasure to be of that melancholy
+and languid kind, which Scott defines as "Resignation"
+and "Content;" boys being not distinguished for either of
+those characters, but for eager effort and delightsome discontent.
+If Wordsworth is at all right in this matter, therefore,
+there must surely be some other element in the feeling not yet
+detected.</p>
+
+<p>§ 12. Now, in a question of this subtle kind, relating to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span>
+period of life when self-examination is rare, and expression imperfect,
+it becomes exceedingly difficult to trace, with any certainty,
+the movements of the minds of others, nor always easy to
+remember those of our own. I cannot, from observation, form
+any decided opinion as to the extent in which this strange
+delight in nature influences the hearts of young persons in general;
+and, in stating what has passed in my own mind, I do not
+mean to draw any positive conclusion as to the nature of the
+feeling in other children; but the inquiry is clearly one in which
+personal experience is the only safe ground to go upon, though a
+narrow one; and I will make no excuse for talking about myself
+with reference to this subject, because, though there is much
+egotism in the world, it is often the last thing a man thinks
+of doing,&mdash;and, though there is much work to be done in the
+world, it is often the best thing a man can do,&mdash;to tell the exact
+truth about the movements of his own mind; and there is this
+farther reason, that, whatever other faculties I may or may not
+possess, this gift of taking pleasure in landscape I assuredly possess
+in a greater degree than most men; it having been the ruling
+passion of my life, and the reason for the choice of its field
+of labor.</p>
+
+<p>§ 13. The first thing which I remember as an event in life,
+was being taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar's Crag on
+Derwentwater; the intense joy, mingled with awe, that I had
+in looking through the hollows in the mossy roots, over the
+crag, into the dark lake, has associated itself more or less with
+all twining roots of trees ever since. Two other things I remember,
+as, in a sort, beginnings of life;&mdash;crossing Shapfells (being
+let out of the chaise to run up the hills), and going through Glenfarg,
+near Kinross, in a winter's morning, when the rocks where
+hung with icicles; these being culminating points in an early
+life of more travelling than is usually indulged to a child. In
+such journeyings, whenever they brought me near hills, and in
+all mountain ground and scenery, I had a pleasure, as early as
+I can remember, and continuing till I was eighteen or twenty,
+infinitely greater than any which has been since possible to me
+in anything; comparable for intensity only to the joy of a lover
+in being near a noble and kind mistress, but no more explicable
+or definable than that feeling of love itself. Only thus much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>
+I can remember, respecting it, which is important to our present
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>§ 14. First: it was never independent of associated thought.
+Almost as soon as I could see or hear, I had got reading enough
+to give me associations with all kinds of scenery; and mountains,
+in particular, were always partly confused with those of
+my favorite book, Scott's Monastery; so that Glenfarg and all
+other glens were more or less enchanted to me, filled with forms
+of hesitating creed about Christie of the Clint Hill, and the
+monk Eustace; and with a general presence of White Lady
+everywhere. I also generally knew, or was told by my father
+and mother, such simple facts of history as were necessary to
+give more definite and justifiable association to other scenes
+which chiefly interested me, such as the ruins of Lochleven and
+Kenilworth; and thus my pleasure in mountains or ruins was
+never, even in earliest childhood, free from a certain awe and
+melancholy, and general sense of the meaning of death, though
+in its principal influence, entirely exhilarating and gladdening.</p>
+
+<p>§ 15. Secondly: it was partly dependent on contrast with a
+very simple and unamused mode of general life; I was born in
+London, and accustomed, for two or three years, to no other
+prospect than that of the brick walls over the way; had no
+brothers, nor sisters, nor companions; and though I could
+always make myself happy in a quiet way, the beauty of the
+mountains had an additional charm of change and adventure
+which a country-bred child would not have felt.</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. Thirdly: there was no definite religious feeling
+mingled with it. I partly believed in ghosts and fairies; but
+supposed that angels belonged entirely to the Mosaic dispensation,
+and cannot remember any single thought or feeling connected
+with them. I believed that God was in heaven, and
+could hear me and see me; but this gave me neither pleasure
+nor pain, and I seldom thought of it at all. I never thought of
+nature as God's work, but as a separate fact or existence.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. Fourthly: it was entirely unaccompanied by powers of
+reflection or invention. Every fancy that I had about nature
+was put into my head by some book; and I never reflected about
+anything till I grew older; and then, the more I reflected, the
+less nature was precious to me: I could then make myself hap<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span>py,
+by thinking, in the dark, or in the dullest scenery; and the
+beautiful scenery became less essential to my pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>§ 18. Fifthly: it was, according to its strength, inconsistent
+with every evil feeling, with spite, anger, covetousness, discontent,
+and every other hateful passion; but would associate itself
+deeply with every just and noble sorrow, joy, or affection. It
+had not, however, always the power to repress what was inconsistent
+with it; and, though only after stout contention, might
+at last be crushed by what it had partly repressed. And as it
+only acted by setting one impulse against another, though it had
+much power in moulding the character, it had hardly any in
+strengthening it; it formed temperament, but never instilled
+principle; it kept me generally good-humored and kindly, but
+could not teach me perseverance or self-denial: what firmness
+or principle I had was quite independent of it; and it came
+itself nearly as often in the form of a temptation as of a safeguard,
+leading me to ramble over hills when I should have been
+learning lessons, and lose days in reveries which I might have
+spent in doing kindnesses.</p>
+
+<p>§ 19. Lastly: although there was no definite religious sentiment
+mingled with it, there was a continual perception of Sanctity
+in the whole of nature, from the slightest thing to the vastest:&mdash;an
+instinctive awe, mixed with delight; an indefinable
+thrill, such as we sometimes imagine to indicate the presence of
+a disembodied spirit. I could only feel this perfectly when I
+was alone; and then it would often make me shiver from head
+to foot with the joy and fear of it, when after being some time
+away from the hills, I first got to the shore of a mountain river,
+where the brown water circled among the pebbles, or when I saw
+the first swell of distant land against the sunset, or the first low
+broken wall, covered with mountain moss. I cannot in the least
+<i>describe</i> the feeling; but I do not think this is my fault, nor
+that of the English language, for, I am afraid, no feeling <i>is</i>
+describable. If we had to explain even the sense of bodily
+hunger to a person who had never felt it, we should be hard put
+to it for words; and this joy in nature seemed to me to come of
+a sort of heart-hunger, satisfied with the presence of a Great and
+Holy Spirit. These feelings remained in their full intensity till
+I was eighteen or twenty, and then, as the reflective and practi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span>cal
+power increased, and the "cares of this world" gained upon
+me, faded gradually away, in the manner described by Wordsworth
+in his Intimations of Immortality.</p>
+
+<p>§ 20. I cannot, of course, tell how far I am justified in supposing
+that these sensations may be reasoned upon as common
+to children in general. In the same degree they are not of
+course common, otherwise children would be, most of them,
+very different from what they are in their choice of pleasures.
+But, as far as such feelings exist, I apprehend they are more or
+less similar in their nature and influence; only producing different
+characters according to the elements with which they are
+mingled. Thus, a very religious child may give up many pleasures
+to which its instincts lead it, for the sake of irksome duties;
+and an inventive child would mingle its love of nature with
+watchfulness of human sayings and doings: but I believe the
+feelings I have endeavored to describe are the pure landscape-instinct;
+and the likelihoods of good or evil resulting from
+them may be reasoned upon as generally indicating the usefulness
+or danger of the modern love and study of landscape.</p>
+
+<p>§ 21. And, first, observe that the charm of romantic association
+(§ 14.) can be felt only by the modern European child. It
+rises eminently out of the contrast of the beautiful past with the
+frightful and monotonous present; and it depends for its force
+on the existence of ruins and traditions, on the remains of
+architecture, the traces of battlefields, and the precursorship of
+eventful history. The instinct to which it appeals can hardly
+be felt in America, and every day that either beautifies our present
+architecture and dress, or overthrows a stone of mediæval
+monument, contributes to weaken it in Europe. Of its influence
+on the mind of Turner and Prout, and the permanent
+results which, through them, it is likely to effect, I shall have to
+speak presently.</p>
+
+<p>§ 22. Again: the influence of surprise in producing the
+delight, is to be noted as a suspicious or evanescent element in
+it. Observe, my pleasure was chiefly (§ 19.) when I <i>first</i> got
+into beautiful scenery, out of London. The enormous influence
+of novelty&mdash;the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens
+sensation, and exalts sentiment&mdash;is not half enough taken note of
+by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. I think that what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span>
+Wordsworth speaks of as a glory in the child, because it has
+come fresh from God's hands, is in reality nothing more than
+the freshness of all things to its newly opened sight. I find
+that by keeping long away from hills, I can in great part still
+restore the old childish feeling about them; and the more I live
+and work among them, the more it vanishes.</p>
+
+<p>§ 23. This evil is evidently common to all minds; Wordsworth
+himself mourning over it in the same poem:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span class="i0">"Custom hangs upon us, with a weight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life."<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And if we grow impatient under it, and seek to recover the
+mental energy by more quickly repeated and brighter novelty,
+it is all over with our enjoyment. There is no cure for this evil,
+any more than for the weariness of the imagination already described,
+but in patience and rest: if we try to obtain perpetual
+change, change itself will become monotonous; and then we are
+reduced to that old despair, "If water chokes, what will you
+drink after it?" And the two points of practical wisdom in
+this matter are, first, to be content with as little novelty as possible
+at a time; and, secondly, to preserve, as much as possible
+in the world, the sources of novelty.</p>
+
+<p>§ 24. I say, first, to be content with as little change as possible.
+If the attention is awake, and the feelings in proper train,
+a turn of a country road, with a cottage beside it, which we have
+not seen before, is as much as we need for refreshment; if we
+hurry past it, and take two cottages at a time, it is already too
+much: hence, to any person who has all his senses about him, a
+quiet walk along not more than ten or twelve miles of road a
+day, is the most amusing of all travelling; and all travelling
+becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity. Going by railroad
+I do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely "being
+sent" to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel;
+the next step to it would of course be telegraphic transport,
+of which, however, I suppose it has been truly said by Octave
+Feuillet,</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>
+"<i>Il y aurait des gens assez bêtes</i> pour trouver ça amusant."<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a></p>
+</blockquote>										<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span>
+
+<p>If we walk more than ten or twelve miles, it breaks up the day
+too much; leaving no time for stopping at the stream sides or
+shady banks, or for any work at the end of the day; besides
+that the last few miles are apt to be done in a hurry, and may
+then be considered as lost ground. But if, advancing thus
+slowly, after some days we approach any more interesting scenery,
+every yard of the changeful ground becomes precious and
+piquant; and the continual increase of hope, and of surrounding
+beauty, affords one of the most exquisite enjoyments possible
+to the healthy mind; besides that real knowledge is acquired
+of whatever it is the object of travelling to learn, and a certain
+sublimity given to all places, so attained, by the true sense of the
+spaces of earth that separate them. A man who really loves
+travelling would as soon consent to pack a day of such happiness
+into an hour of railroad, as one who loved eating would agree, if
+it were possible, to concentrate his dinner into a pill.</p>
+
+<p>§ 25. And, secondly, I say that it is wisdom to preserve as
+much as possible the innocent <i>sources</i> of novelty;&mdash;not definite
+inferiorities of one place to another, if such can be done away;
+but differences of manners and customs, of language and architecture.
+The greatest effort ought especially to be made by all
+wise and far-sighted persons, in the present crisis of civilization,
+to enforce the distinction between wholesome reform, and heartless
+abandonment of ancestral custom; between kindly fellowship
+of nation with nation, and ape-like adoption, by one, of the
+habits of another. It is ludicrously awful to see the luxurious
+inhabitants of London and Paris rushing over the Continent (as
+they say, to <i>see</i> it), and transposing every place, as far as lies in
+their power, instantly into a likeness of Regent Street and the
+Rue de la Paix, which they need not certainly have come so far
+to see. Of this evil I shall have more to say hereafter; meantime
+I return to our main subject.</p>
+
+<p>§ 26. The next character we have to note in the landscape-instinct
+(and on this much stress is to be laid), is its total inconsistency
+with all evil passion; its absolute contrariety
+(whether in the contest it were crushed or not) to all care,
+hatred, envy, anxiety, and moroseness. A feeling of this kind
+is assuredly not one to be lightly repressed, or treated with contempt.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span>
+
+<p>But how, if it be so, the reader asks, can it be characteristic
+of passionate and unprincipled men, like Byron, Shelley, and
+such others, and not characteristic of the noblest and most
+highly principled men?</p>
+
+<p>First, because it is itself a passion, and therefore likely to
+be characteristic of passionate men. Secondly, because it is
+(§ 18) wholly a separate thing from moral principle, and may
+or may not be joined to strength of will, or rectitude of purpose<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a>;
+only, this much is always observable in the men whom
+it characterizes, that, whatever their faults or failings, they
+always understand and love noble qualities of character; they
+can conceive (if not certain phases of piety), at all events, self-devotion
+of the highest kind; they delight in all that is good,
+gracious, and noble; and though warped often to take delight
+also in what is dark or degraded, that delight is mixed with bitter
+self-reproach; or else is wanton, careless, or affected, while
+their delight in noble things is constant and sincere.</p>
+
+<p>§ 27. Look back to the two lists given above, § 7. I have
+not lately read anything by Mrs. Radclyffe or George Sand, and
+cannot, therefore, take instances from them; Keats hardly
+introduced human character into his work; but glance over the
+others, and note the general tone of their conceptions. Take
+St. Pierre's Virginia, Byron's Myrrha, Angiolina, and Marina,
+and Eugene Sue's Fleur de Marie; and out of the other lists
+you will only be able to find Pamela, Clementina, and, I suppose,
+Clarissa,<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a>
+to put beside them; and these will not more
+than match Myrrha and Marina; leaving Fleur de Marie and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span>
+Virginia rivalless. Then meditate a little, with all justice and
+mercy, over the two groups of names; and I think you will, at
+last, feel that there is a pathos and tenderness of heart among
+the lovers of nature in the second list, of which it is nearly impossible
+to estimate either the value or the danger; that the
+sterner consistency of the men in the first may, in great part,
+have arisen only from the, to them, most merciful, appointment
+of having had religious teaching or disciplined education in
+their youth; while their want of love for nature, whether that
+love be originally absent, or artificially repressed, is to none of
+them an advantage. Johnson's indolence, Goldsmith's improvidence,
+Young's worldliness, Milton's severity, and Bacon's
+servility, might all have been less, if they could in any wise have
+sympathized with Byron's lonely joy in a Jura storm,<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a>
+or with
+Shelley's interest in floating paper boats down the Serchio.</p>
+
+<p>§ 28. And then observe, farther, as I kept the names of
+Wordsworth and Scott out of the second list, I withdrew, also,
+certain names from the first; and for this reason, that in all
+the men who are named in that list, there is evidently <i>some</i> degree
+of love for nature, which may have been originally of more
+power than we suppose, and may have had an infinitely hallowing
+and protective influence upon them. But there also lived
+certain men of high intellect in that age who had <i>no</i> love of
+nature whatever. They do not appear ever to have received the
+smallest sensation of ocular delight from any natural scene, but
+would have lived happily all their lives in drawingrooms or
+studies. And, therefore, in these men we shall be able to determine,
+with the greatest chance of accuracy, what the real
+influence of natural beauty is, and what the character of a mind
+destitute of its love. Take, as conspicuous instances, Le Sage
+and Smollett, and you will find, in meditating over their
+works, that they are utterly incapable of conceiving a human
+soul as endowed with any nobleness whatever; their heroes are
+simply beasts endowed with some degree of human intellect;&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span>
+cunning, false, passionate, reckless, ungrateful, and abominable,
+incapable of noble joy, of noble sorrow, of any spiritual perception
+or hope. I said, "beasts with human intellect;" but
+neither Gil Blas nor Roderick Random reach, morally, anything
+near the level of dogs; while the delight which the writers
+themselves feel in mere filth and pain, with an unmitigated
+foulness and cruelty of heart, is just as manifest in every sentence
+as the distress and indignation which with pain and injustice
+are seen by Shelley and Byron.</p>
+
+<p>§ 29. Distinguished from these men by <i>some</i> evidence of
+love for nature, yet an evidence much less clear than that for
+any of those named even in the first list, stand Cervantes, Pope,
+and Molière. It is not easy to say how much the character of
+these last depended on their epoch and education; but it is
+noticeable that the first two agree thus far in temper with Le
+Sage and Smollett,&mdash;that they delight in dwelling upon vice,
+misfortune, or folly, as subjects of amusement; while yet they
+are distinguished from Le Sage and Smollett by capacity of
+conceiving nobleness of character, only in a humiliating and
+hopeless way; the one representing all chivalry as insanity, the
+other placing the wisdom of man in a serene and sneering reconciliation
+of good with evil. Of Molière I think very differently.
+Living in the blindest period of the world's history,
+in the most luxurious city, and the most corrupted court, of the
+time, he yet manifests through all his writings an exquisite
+natural wisdom; a capacity for the most simple enjoyment; a
+high sense of all nobleness, honor, and purity, variously marked
+throughout his slighter work, but distinctly made the theme
+of his two perfect plays&mdash;the Tartuffe and Misanthrope; and
+in all that he says of art or science he has an unerring instinct
+for what is useful and sincere, and uses his whole power
+to defend it, with as keen a hatred of everything affected and
+vain. And, singular as it may seem, the first definite lesson
+read to Europe, in that school of simplicity of which Wordsworth
+was the supposed originator among the mountains of
+Cumberland, was, in fact, given in the midst of the court of
+Louis XIV., and by Molière. The little canzonet "J'aime
+mieux ma mie," is, I believe, the first Wordsworthian poem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span>
+brought forward on philosophical principles to oppose the
+schools of art and affectation.</p>
+
+<p>§ 30. I do not know if, by a careful analysis, I could point
+out any evidences of a capacity for the love of natural scenery
+in Molière stealing forth through the slightness of his pastorals;
+but, if not, we must simply set him aside as exceptional,
+as a man uniting Wordsworth's philosophy with Le
+Sage's wit, turned by circumstances from the observance of natural
+beauty to that of human frailty. And thus putting him
+aside for the moment, I think we cannot doubt of our main
+conclusion, that, though the absence of the love of nature is not
+an assured condemnation, its presence is an invariable sign of
+goodness of heart and justness of moral <i>perception</i>, though by
+no means of moral <i>practice</i>; that in proportion to the degree
+in which it is felt, will <i>probably</i> be the degree in which all nobleness
+and beauty of character will also be felt; that when it
+is originally absent from any mind, that mind is in many other
+respects hard, worldly, and degraded; that where, having been
+originally present, it is repressed by art or education, that repression
+appears to have been detrimental to the person suffering
+it; and that wherever the feeling exists, it acts for good on
+the character to which it belongs, though, as it may often belong
+to characters weak in other respects, it may carelessly be
+mistaken for a source of evil in them.</p>
+
+<p>§ 31. And having arrived at this conclusion by a review of
+facts, which I hope it will be admitted, whether accurate or
+not, has at least been candid, these farther considerations may
+confirm our belief in its truth. Observe: the whole force of
+education, until very lately, has been directed in every possible
+way to the destruction of the love of nature. The only knowledge
+which has been considered essential among us is that of
+words, and, next after it, of the abstract sciences; while every
+liking shown by children for simple natural history has been
+either violently checked, (if it took an inconvenient form for the
+housemaids,) or else scrupulously limited to hours of play: so
+that it has really been impossible for any child earnestly to
+study the works of God but against its conscience; and the
+love of nature has become inherently the characteristic of truants
+and idlers. While also the art of drawing, which is of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span>
+more real importance to the human race than that of writing
+(because people can hardly draw anything without being of
+some use both to themselves and others, and can hardly write
+anything without wasting their own time and that of others),&mdash;this
+art of drawing, I say, which on plain and stern system
+should be taught to every child, just as writing is,&mdash;has been
+so neglected and abused, that there is not one man in a thousand,
+even of its professed teachers, who knows its first principles:
+and thus it needs much ill-fortune or obstinacy&mdash;much
+neglect on the part of his teachers, or rebellion on his own&mdash;before
+a boy can get leave to use his eyes or his fingers; so that
+those who <i>can</i> use them are for the most part neglected or rebellious
+lads&mdash;runaways and bad scholars&mdash;passionate, erratic,
+self-willed, and restive against all forms of education; while
+your well-behaved and amiable scholars are disciplined into
+blindness and palsy of half their faculties. Wherein there is at
+once a notable ground for what difference we have observed between
+the lovers of nature and its despisers; between the somewhat
+immoral and unrespectable watchfulness of the one, and
+the moral and respectable blindness of the other.</p>
+
+<p>§ 32. One more argument remains, and that, I believe, an
+unanswerable one. As, by the accident of education, the love
+of nature has been, among us, associated with <i>wilfulness</i>, so,
+by the accident of time, it has been associated with <i>faithlessness</i>.
+I traced, above, the peculiar mode in which this faithlessness
+was indicated; but I never intended to imply, therefore, that
+it was an invariable concomitant of the love. Because it happens
+that, by various concurrent operations of evil, we have
+been led, according to those words of the Greek poet already
+quoted, "to dethrone the gods, and crown the whirlwind," it
+is no reason that we should forget there was once a time
+when "the Lord answered Job <i>out of</i> the whirlwind." And if
+we now take final and full view of the matter, we shall find that
+the love of nature, wherever it has existed, has been a faithful
+and sacred element of human feeling; that is to say, supposing
+all circumstances otherwise the same with respect to two individuals,
+the one who loves nature most will be <i>always</i> found to
+have more <i>faith in God</i> than the other. It is intensely difficult,
+owing to the confusing and counter influences which always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span>
+mingle in the data of the problem, to make this abstraction fairly;
+but so far as we can do it, so far, I boldly assert, the result is
+constantly the same: the nature-worship will be found to bring
+with it such a sense of the presence and power of a Great Spirit
+as no mere reasoning can either induce or controvert; and
+where that nature-worship is innocently pursued,&mdash;i.e. with due
+respect to other claims on time, feeling, and exertion, and associated
+with the higher principles of religion,&mdash;it becomes the
+channel of certain sacred truths, which by no other means can
+be conveyed.</p>
+
+<p>§ 33. This is not a statement which any investigation is
+needed to prove. It comes to us at once from the highest of all
+authority. The greater number of the words which are recorded
+in Scripture, as directly spoken to men by the lips of the Deity,
+are either simple revelations of His law, or special threatenings,
+commands, and promises relating to special events. But two
+passages of God's speaking, one in the Old and one in the New
+Testament, possess, it seems to me, a different character from
+any of the rest, having been uttered, the one to effect the last
+necessary change in the mind of a man whose piety was in other
+respects perfect; and the other, as the first statement to all men
+of the principles of Christianity by Christ Himself&mdash;I mean the
+38th to 41st chapters of the book of Job, and the Sermon on
+the Mount. Now the first of these passages is, from beginning
+to end, nothing else than a direction of the mind which was to
+be perfected to humble observance of the works of God in nature.
+And the other consists only in the inculcation of <i>three</i>
+things: 1st, right conduct; 2nd, looking for eternal life; 3rd,
+trusting God, through watchfulness of His dealings with His
+creation: and the entire contents of the book of Job, and of
+the Sermon on the Mount, will be found resolvable simply into
+these three requirements from all men,&mdash;that they should act
+rightly, hope for heaven, and watch God's wonders and work
+in the earth; the right conduct being always summed up under
+the three heads of <i>justice</i>, <i>mercy</i>, and <i>truth</i>, and no mention of
+any doctrinal point whatsoever occurring in either piece of divine
+teaching.</p>
+
+<p>§ 34. As far as I can judge of the ways of men, it seems to
+me that the simplest and most necessary truths are always the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span>
+last believed; and I suppose that well-meaning people in general
+would rather regulate their conduct and creed by almost
+any other portion of Scripture whatsoever, than by that Sermon
+on the Mount, which contains the things that Christ thought
+it first necessary for all men to understand. Nevertheless, I believe
+the time will soon come for the full force of these two passages
+of Scripture to be accepted. Instead of supposing the
+love of nature necessarily connected with the faithlessness of
+the age, I believe it is connected properly with the benevolence
+and liberty of the age; that it is precisely the most healthy element
+which distinctively belongs to us; and that out of it, cultivated
+no longer in levity or ignorance, but in earnestness and as
+a duty, results will spring of an importance at present inconceivable;
+and lights arise, which, for the first time in man's
+history, will reveal to him the true nature of his life, the true
+field for his energies, and the true relations between him and
+his Maker.</p>
+
+<p>§ 35. I will not endeavor here to trace the various modes in
+which these results are likely to be effected, for this would involve
+an essay on education, on the uses of natural history, and
+the probable future destiny of nations. Somewhat on these
+subjects I have spoken in other places; and I hope to find time,
+and proper place, to say more. But one or two observations
+maybe made merely to suggest the directions in which the reader
+may follow out the subject for himself.</p>
+
+<p>The great mechanical impulses of the age, of which most of
+us are so proud, are a mere passing fever, half-speculative, half-childish.
+People will discover at last that royal roads to anything
+can no more be laid in iron than they can in dust; that
+there are, in fact, no royal roads to anywhere worth going to;
+that if there were, it would that instant cease to be worth going
+to,&mdash;I mean so far as the things to be obtained are in any way
+estimable in terms of <i>price</i>. For there are two classes of
+precious things in the world: those that God gives us for nothing&mdash;sun,
+air, and life (both mortal life and immortal); and the
+secondarily precious things which he gives us for a price: these
+secondarily precious things, worldly wine and milk, can only be
+bought for definite money; they never can be cheapened. No
+cheating nor bargaining will ever get a single thing out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span>
+nature's "establishment" at half-price. Do we want to be
+strong?&mdash;we must work. To be hungry?&mdash;we must starve.
+To be happy?&mdash;we must be kind. To be wise?&mdash;we must look
+and think. No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour,
+nor making of stuffs a thousand yards a minute, will make us
+one whit stronger, happier, or wiser. There was always more in
+the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they
+will see it no better for going fast. And they will at last, and
+soon too, find out that their grand inventions for conquering
+(as they think) space and time, do, in reality, conquer nothing;
+for space and time are, in their own essence, unconquerable,
+and besides did not want any sort of conquering; they wanted
+<i>using</i>. A fool always wants to shorten space and time: a wise
+man wants to lengthen both. A fool wants to kill space and
+kill time: a wise man, first to gain them, then to animate them.
+Your railroad, when you come to understand it, is only a device
+for making the world smaller: and as for being able to talk
+from place to place, that is, indeed, well and convenient; but
+suppose you have, originally, nothing to say.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a>
+We shall be
+obliged at last to confess, what we should long ago have known,
+that the really precious things are thought and sight, not pace.
+It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a
+man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going,
+but in being.</p>
+
+<p>§ 36. "Well; but railroads and telegraphs are so useful for
+communicating knowledge to savage nations." Yes, if you have
+any to give them. If you know nothing <i>but</i> railroads, and can
+communicate nothing but aqueous vapor and gunpowder,&mdash;what
+then? But if you have any other thing than those to
+give, then the railroad is of use only because it communicates
+that other thing and the question is&mdash;what that other thing
+may be. Is it religion? I believe if we had really wanted to
+communicate that, we could have done it in less than 1800 years,
+without steam. Most of the good religious communication
+that I remember has been done on foot; and it cannot be easily
+done faster than at foot pace. Is it science? But what sci<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span>
+ence&mdash;of motion, meat, and medicine? Well; when you have
+moved your savage, and dressed your savage, fed him with
+white bread, and shown him how to set a limb,&mdash;what next?
+Follow out that question. Suppose every obstacle overcome;
+give your savage every advantage of civilization to the full: suppose
+that you have put the Red Indian in tight shoes; taught
+the Chinese how to make Wedgwood's ware, and to paint it with
+colors that will rub off; and persuaded all Hindoo women that
+it is more pious to torment their husbands into graves than to
+burn themselves at the burial,&mdash;what next? Gradually, thinking
+on from point to point, we shall come to perceive that all
+true happiness and nobleness are near us, and yet neglected by
+us; and that till we have learned how to be happy and noble,
+we have not much to tell, even to Red Indians. The delights
+of horse-racing and hunting, of assemblies in the night instead
+of the day, of costly and wearisome music, of costly and
+burdensome dress, of chagrined contention for place or power,
+or wealth, or the eyes of the multitude; and all the endless occupation
+without purpose, and idleness without rest, of our
+vulgar world, are not, it seems to me, enjoyments we need be
+ambitious to communicate. And all real and wholesome enjoyments
+possible to man have been just as possible to him,
+since first he was made of the earth, as they are now; and they
+are possible to him chiefly in peace. To watch the corn grow,
+and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or
+spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray,&mdash;these are
+the things that make men happy; they have always had the
+power of doing these, they never <i>will</i> have power to do more.
+The world's prosperity or adversity depends upon our knowing
+and teaching these few things: but upon iron, or glass, or electricity,
+or steam, in no wise.</p>
+
+<p>§ 37. And I am Utopian and enthusiastic enough to believe,
+that the time will come when the world will discover this. It
+has now made its experiments in every possible direction but
+the right one; and it seems that it must, at last, try the right
+one, in a mathematical necessity. It has tried fighting, and
+preaching, and fasting, buying and selling, pomp and parsimony,
+pride and humiliation,&mdash;every possible manner of existence
+in which it could conjecture there was any happiness or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span>
+dignity; and all the while, as it bought, sold, and fought, and
+fasted, and wearied itself with policies, and ambitions, and self-denials,
+God had placed its real happiness in the keeping of the
+little mosses of the wayside, and of the clouds of the firmament.
+Now and then a weary king, or a tormented slave, found out
+where the true kingdoms of the world were, and possessed himself,
+in a furrow or two of garden ground, of a truly infinite
+dominion. But the world would not believe their report, and
+went on trampling down the mosses, and forgetting the clouds,
+and seeking happiness in its own way, until, at last, blundering
+and late, came natural science; and in natural science not only
+the observation of things, but the finding out of new uses for
+them. Of course the world, having a choice left to it, went
+wrong as usual, and thought that these mere material uses were
+to be the sources of its happiness. It got the clouds packed into
+iron cylinders, and made it carry its wise self at their own cloud
+pace. It got weavable fibres out of the mosses, and made
+clothes for itself, cheap and fine,&mdash;here was happiness at last.
+To go as fast as the clouds, and manufacture everything out of
+anything,&mdash;here was paradise, indeed!</p>
+
+<p>§ 38. And now, when, in a little while, it is unparadised
+again, if there were any other mistake that the world could
+make, it would of course make it. But I see not that there is
+any other; and, standing fairly at its wits' end, having found
+that going fast, when it is used to it, is no more paradisiacal
+than going slow; and that all the prints and cottons in Manchester
+cannot make it comfortable in its mind, I do verily believe
+it will come, finally, to understand that God paints the
+clouds and shapes the moss-fibres, that men may be happy in
+seeing Him at His work, and that in resting quietly beside Him,
+and watching His working, and&mdash;according to the power He
+has communicated to ourselves, and the guidance He grants,&mdash;in
+carrying out His purposes of peace and charity among all
+His creatures, are the only real happinesses that ever were, or
+will be, possible to mankind.</p>
+
+<p>§ 39. How far art is capable of helping us in such happiness
+we hardly yet know; but I hope to be able, in the subsequent
+parts of this work, to give some data for arriving at a conclusion
+in the matter. Enough has been advanced to relieve the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>
+reader from any lurking suspicion of unworthiness in our subject,
+and to induce him to take interest in the mind and work
+of the great painter who has headed the landscape school among
+us. What farther considerations may, within any reasonable
+limits, be put before him, respecting the effect of natural scenery
+on the human heart, I will introduce in their proper places
+either as we examine, under Turner's guidance, the different
+classes of scenery, or at the close of the whole work; and therefore
+I have only one point more to notice here, namely, the exact
+relation between landscape-painting and natural science,
+properly so-called.</p>
+
+<p>§ 40. For it may be thought that I have rashly assumed that
+the Scriptural authorities above quoted apply to that partly superficial
+view of nature which is taken by the landscape-painter,
+instead of to the accurate view taken by the man of science. So
+far from there being rashness in such an assumption, the whole
+language, both of the book of Job and the Sermon on the
+Mount, gives precisely the view of nature which is taken by
+the uninvestigating affection of a humble, but powerful mind.
+There is no dissection of muscles or counting of elements, but
+the boldest and broadest glance at the apparent facts, and the
+most magnificent metaphor in expressing them. "His eyes are
+like the eyelids of the morning. In his neck remaineth strength,
+and sorrow is turned into joy before him." And in the often
+repeated, never obeyed, command, "Consider the lilies of the
+field," observe there is precisely the delicate attribution of life
+which we have seen to be the characteristic of the modern view
+of landscape,&mdash;"They toil not," There is no science, or hint
+of science; no counting of petals, nor display of provisions for
+sustenance: nothing but the expression of sympathy, at once
+the most childish, and the most profound,&mdash;"They toil not."</p>
+
+<p>§ 41. And we see in this, therefore, that the instinct which
+leads us thus to attribute life to the lowest forms of organic nature,
+does not necessarily spring from faithlessness, nor the deducing
+a moral out of them from an irregular and languid conscientiousness.
+In this, as in almost all things connected with moral
+discipline, the same results may follow from contrary causes;
+and as there are a good and evil contentment, a good and evil
+discontent, a good and evil care, fear, ambition, and so on,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span>
+there are also good and evil forms of this sympathy with nature,
+and disposition to moralize over it.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a>
+In general, active men, of
+strong sense and stern principle, do not care to see anything in
+a leaf, but vegetable tissue, and are so well convinced of useful
+moral truth, that it does not strike them as a new or notable
+thing when they find it in any way symbolized by material nature;
+hence there is a strong presumption, when first we perceive
+a tendency in any one to regard trees as living, and
+enunciate moral aphorisms over every pebble they stumble
+against, that such tendency proceeds from a morbid temperament,
+like Shelley's, or an inconsistent one, like Jaques's.
+But when the active life is nobly fulfilled, and the mind is then
+raised beyond it into clear and calm beholding of the world
+around us, the same tendency again manifests itself in the most
+sacred way: the simplest forms of nature are strangely animated
+by the sense of the Divine presence; the trees and flowers seem
+all, in a sort, children of God; and we ourselves, their fellows,
+made out of the same dust, and greater than they only in having
+a greater portion of the Divine power exerted on our frame, and
+all the common uses and palpably visible forms of things, become
+subordinate in our minds to their inner glory,&mdash;to the
+mysterious voices in which they talk to us about God, and the
+changeful and typical aspects by which they witness to us of holy
+truth, and fill us with obedient, joyful, and thankful emotion.</p>
+
+<p>§ 42. It is in raising us from the first state of inactive reverie
+to the second of useful thought, that scientific pursuits are to be
+chiefly praised. But in restraining us at this second stage, and
+checking the impulses towards higher contemplation, they are
+to be feared or blamed. They may in certain minds be consistent
+with such contemplation; but only by an effort: in their
+nature they are always adverse to it, having a tendency to chill
+and subdue the feelings, and to resolve all things into atoms and
+numbers. For most men, an ignorant enjoyment is better than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span>
+an informed one; it is better to conceive the sky as a blue dome
+than a dark cavity, and the cloud as a golden throne than a
+sleety mist. I much question whether any one who knows optics,
+however religious he may be, can feel in equal degree the
+pleasure or reverence which an unlettered peasant may feel at
+the sight of a rainbow. And it is mercifully thus ordained,
+since the law of life, for a finite being, with respect to the
+works of an infinite one, must be always an infinite ignorance.
+We cannot fathom the mystery of a single flower, nor is it
+intended that we should; but that the pursuit of science should
+constantly be stayed by the love of beauty, and accuracy of
+knowledge by tenderness of emotion.</p>
+
+<p>§ 43. Nor is it even just to speak of the love of beauty as in
+all respects unscientific; for there is a science of the aspects of
+things as well as of their nature; and it is as much a fact to be
+noted in their constitution, that they produce such and such an
+effect upon the eye or heart (as, for instance, that minor scales
+of sound cause melancholy), as that they are made up of certain
+atoms or vibrations of matter.</p>
+
+<p>It is as the master of this science of <i>Aspects</i>, that I said,
+some time ago, Turner must eventually be named always with
+Bacon, the master of the science of <i>Essence</i>. As the first poet
+who has, in all their range, understood the grounds of noble
+emotion which exist in Landscape, his future influence will be
+of a still more subtle and important character. The rest of this
+work will therefore be dedicated to the explanation of the principles
+on which he composed, and of the aspects of nature which
+he was the first to discern.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a>
+Marmion, Introduction to canto II.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a>
+The investigation of this subject becomes, therefore, difficult beyond
+all other parts of our inquiry, since precisely the same sentiments may
+arise in different minds from totally opposite causes; and the extreme of
+frivolity may sometimes for a moment desire the same things as the extreme
+of moral power and dignity. In the following extract from "Marriage," the
+sentiment expressed by Lady Juliana (the ineffably foolish and frivolous
+heroine of the story) is as nearly as possible what Dante would have felt,
+under the same circumstances:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The air was soft and genial; not a cloud stained the bright azure of
+the heavens; and the sun shone out in all his splendor, shedding life and
+beauty even over the desolate heath-clad hills of Glenfern. But, after they
+had journeyed a few miles, suddenly emerging from the valley, a scene of
+matchless beauty burst at once upon the eye. Before them lay the dark blue
+waters of Lochmarlie, reflecting, as in a mirror, every surrounding object,
+and bearing on its placid, transparent bosom a fleet of herring-boats, the
+drapery of whose black, suspended nets contrasted, with picturesque effect,
+the white sails of the larger vessels, which were vainly spread to catch a
+breeze. All around, rocks, meadows, woods, and hills mingled in wild and
+lovely irregularity.
+</p><p>
+"Not a breath was stirring, not a sound was heard, save the rushing of a
+waterfall, the tinkling of some silver rivulet, or the calm rippling of the tranquil
+lake; now and then, at intervals, the fisherman's Gaelic ditty, chanted
+as he lay stretched on the sand in some sunny nook; or the shrill, distant
+sound of childish glee. How delicious to the feeling heart to behold so fair
+a scene of unsophisticated nature, and to listen to her voice alone, breathing
+the accents of innocence and joy! But none of the party who now
+gazed on it had minds capable of being touched with the emotions it was
+calculated to inspire.
+</p><p>
+"Henry, indeed, was rapturous in his expressions of admiration; but
+he concluded his panegyrics by wondering his brother did not keep a cutter,
+and resolving to pass a night on board one of the herring-boats, that he
+might eat the fish in perfection.
+</p><p>
+"Lady Juliana thought it might be very pretty, if, instead of those
+frightful rocks and shabby cottages, there could be villas, and gardens, and
+lawns, and conservatories, and summer-houses, and statues.
+</p><p>
+"Miss Bella observed, if it was hers she would cut down the woods, and
+level the hills, and have races."</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a>
+ Childe Harold, canto iii. st. 71.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a>
+Scènes et Proverbes. La Crise; (Scène en calèche, hors Paris.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a>
+Compare the characters of Fleur de Marie and Rigolette, in the Mystères
+de Paris. I know no other instance in which the two tempers are so
+exquisitely delineated and opposed. Read carefully the beautiful pastoral,
+in the eighth chapter of the first Part, where Fleur de Marie is first taken
+into the fields under Montmartre, and compare it with the sixth of the
+second Part, its accurately traced companion sketch, noting carefully Rigolette's
+"Non, <i>je déteste la campagne</i>." She does not, however, dislike
+flowers or birds: "Cette caisse de bois, que Rigolette appellait le jardin de
+ses oiseaux, était remplie de terre recouverte de mousse, pendant l'hiver.
+Elle travaillait auprès de la fenêtre ouverte, à-demi-voilée par un verdoyant
+rideau de pois de senteur roses, de capucines oranges, de volubilis bleus et
+blancs."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a>
+I have not read Clarissa.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a>
+It might be thought that Young <i>could</i> have sympathized with it. He
+would have made better use of it, but he would not have had the same delight
+in it. He turns his solitude to good account; but this is because, to
+him, solitude is sorrow, and his real enjoyment would have been of amiable
+society, and a place at court.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a></p>
+
+	<div class="poem">
+		<span class="i0">"The light-outspeeding telegraph</span><br />
+		<span class="i0">Bears nothing on its beam."</span><br />
+		<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Emerson.</span></span><br />
+	</div>
+	<p>See Appendix III., Plagiarism.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a>
+ Compare what is said before in various places of good and bad finish,
+good and bad mystery, &amp;c. If a man were disposed to system-making, he
+could easily throw together a counter-system to Aristotle's, showing that in
+all things there were two extremes which exactly resembled each other, but
+of which one was bad, the other good; and a mean, resembling neither, but
+better than the one, and worse than the other.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE TEACHERS OF TURNER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>§ 1. The first step to the understanding either the mind or
+position of a great man ought, I think, to be an inquiry into the
+elements of his early instruction, and the mode in which he was
+affected by the circumstances of surrounding life. In making
+this inquiry, with respect to Turner, we shall be necessarily led
+to take note of the causes which had brought landscape-painting
+into the state in which he found it; and, therefore, of those
+transitions of style which, it will be remembered, we overleaped
+(hoping for a future opportunity of examining them) at the close
+of the fifteenth chapter.</p>
+
+<p>§ 2. And first, I said, it will be remembered, some way back,
+that the relations between Scott and Turner would probably be
+found to differ very curiously from those between Dante and
+Giotto. They differ primarily in this,&mdash;that Dante and Giotto,
+living in a consistent age, were subjected to one and the same
+influence, and maybe reasoned about almost in similar terms.
+But Scott and Turner, living in an inconsistent age, became
+subjected to inconsistent influences; and are at once distinguished
+by notable contrarieties, requiring separate examination
+in each.</p>
+
+<p>§ 3. Of these, the chief was that Scott, having had the blessing
+of a totally neglected education, was able early to follow
+most of his noble instincts; but Turner, having suffered under
+the instruction of the Royal Academy, had to pass nearly thirty
+years of his life in recovering from its consequences;<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a>
+this permanent
+result following for both,&mdash;that Scott never was led into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span>
+any fault foreign to his nature, but spoke what was in him, in
+rugged or idle simplicity; erring only where it was natural to
+err, and failing only where it was impossible to succeed. But
+Turner, from the beginning, was led into constrained and unnatural
+error; diligently debarred from every ordinary help to success.
+The one thing which the Academy <i>ought</i> to have taught
+him (namely, the simple and safe use of oil color), it never
+taught him; but it carefully repressed his perceptions of truth,
+his capacities of invention, and his tendencies of choice. For
+him it was impossible to do right but in the spirit of defiance;
+and the first condition of his progress in learning, was the power
+to forget.</p>
+
+<p>§ 4. One most important distinction in their feelings
+throughout life was necessitated by this difference in early training.
+Scott gathered what little knowledge of architecture
+he possessed, in wanderings among the rocky walls of Crichtoun,
+Lochleven, and Linlithgow, and among the delicate pillars
+of Holyrood, Roslin, and Melrose. Turner acquired his
+knowledge of architecture at the desk, from academical elevations
+of the Parthenon and St. Paul's; and spent a large portion
+of his early years in taking views of gentlemen's seats, temples
+of the Muses, and other productions of modern taste and
+imagination; being at the same time directed exclusively to
+classical sources for information as to the proper subjects of art.
+Hence, while Scott was at once directed to the history of his
+native land, and to the Gothic fields of imagination; and his
+mind was fed in a consistent, natural, and felicitous way from
+his youth up, poor Turner for a long time knew no inspiration
+but that of Twickenham; no sublimity but that of Virginia
+Water. All the history and poetry presented to him at the age
+when the mind receives its dearest associations, were those of
+the gods and nations of long ago; and his models of sentiment
+and style were the worst and last wrecks of the Renaissance
+affectations.</p>
+
+<p>§ 5. Therefore (though utterly free from affectation), his
+early works are full of an <i>enforced</i> artificialness, and of things
+ill-done and ill-conceived, because foreign to his own instincts;
+and, throughout life, whatever he did, because he thought he
+<i>ought</i> to do it, was wrong; all that he planned on any principle,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span>
+or in supposed obedience to canons of taste, was false and abortive:
+he only did right when he ceased to reflect; was powerful
+only when he made no effort, and successful only when he had
+taken no aim.</p>
+
+<p>§ 6. And it is one of the most interesting things connected
+with the study of his art, to watch the way in which his own
+strength of English instinct breaks gradually through fetter and
+formalism; how from Egerian wells he steals away to Yorkshire
+streamlets; how from Homeric rocks, with laurels at the top
+and caves in the bottom, he climbs, at last, to Alpine precipices
+fringed with pine, and fortified with the slopes of their own
+ruins; and how from Temples of Jupiter and Gardens of the
+Hesperides, a spirit in his feet guides him, at last, to the lonely
+arches of Whitby, and bleak sands of Holy Isle.</p>
+
+<p>§ 7. As, however, is the case with almost all inevitable evil,
+in its effect on great minds, a certain good rose even out of this
+warped education; namely, his power of more completely
+expressing all the tendencies of his epoch, and sympathizing
+with many feelings and many scenes which must otherwise have
+been entirely profitless to him. Scott's mind was just as large
+and full of sympathy as Turner's; but having been permitted
+always to take his own choice among sources of enjoyment, Scott
+was entirely incapable of entering into the spirit of any classical
+scene. He was strictly a Goth and a Scot, and his sphere of
+sensation may be almost exactly limited by the growth of heather.
+But Turner had been forced to pay early attention to
+whatever of good and right there was even in things naturally
+distasteful to him. The charm of early association had been
+cast around much that to other men would have been tame:
+while making drawings of flower-gardens and Palladian mansions,
+he had been taught sympathy with whatever grace or refinement
+the garden or mansion could display, and to the close
+of life could enjoy the delicacy of trellis and parterre, as well as
+the wildness of the wood and the moorland; and watch the staying
+of the silver fountain at its appointed height in the sky,
+with an interest as earnest, if not as intense, as that with which
+he followed the crash of the Alpine cataract into its clouds of
+wayward rage.</p>
+
+<p>§ 8. The distinct losses to be weighed against this gain are,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span>
+first, the waste of time during youth in painting subjects of no
+interest whatsoever,&mdash;parks, villas, and ugly architecture in
+general: secondly, the devotion of its utmost strength in later
+years to meaningless classical compositions, such as the Fall and
+Rise of Carthage, Bay of Baiæ, Daphne and Leucippus, and
+such others, which, with infinite accumulation of material, are
+yet utterly heartless and emotionless, dead to the very root of
+thought, and incapable of producing wholesome or useful effect
+on any human mind, except only as exhibitions of technical skill
+and graceful arrangement: and, lastly, his incapacity, to the
+close of life, of entering heartily into the spirit of any elevated
+architecture; for those Palladian and classical buildings which
+he had been taught that it was right to admire, being wholly
+devoid of interest, and in their own formality and barrenness
+quite unmanageable, he was obliged to make them manageable
+in his pictures by disguising them, and to use all kinds of playing
+shadows and glittering lights to obscure their ugly details;
+and as in their best state such buildings are white and colorless,
+he associated the idea of whiteness with perfect architecture
+generally, and was confused and puzzled when he found it grey.
+Hence he never got thoroughly into the feeling of Gothic; its
+darkness and complexity embarrassed him; he was very apt to
+whiten by way of idealizing it, and to cast aside its details in
+order to get breadth of delicate light. In Venice, and the towns
+of Italy generally, he fastened on the wrong buildings, and used
+those which he chose merely as kind of white clouds, to set off
+his brilliant groups of boats, or burning spaces of lagoon. In
+various other minor ways, which we shall trace in their proper
+place, his classical education hindered or hurt him; but I feel it
+very difficult to say how far the loss was balanced by the general
+grasp it gave his mind; nor am I able to conceive what would
+have been the result, if his aims had been made at once narrower
+and more natural, and he had been led in his youth to delight
+in Gothic legends instead of classical mythology; and, instead
+of the porticos of the Parthenon, had studied in the aisles of
+Notre Dame.</p>
+
+<p>§ 9. It is still more difficult to conjecture whether he gathered
+most good or evil from the pictorial art which surrounded
+him in his youth. What that art was, and how the European<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span>
+schools had arrived at it, it now becomes necessary briefly to
+inquire.</p>
+
+<p>It will be remembered that, in the 14th chapter, we left our
+mediæval landscape (§ 18.) in a state of severe formality, and
+perfect subordination to the interest of figure subject. I will
+now rapidly trace the mode and progress of its emancipation.</p>
+
+<p>§ 10. The formalized conception of scenery remained little
+altered until the time of Raphael, being only better executed as
+the knowledge of art advanced; that is to say, though the trees
+were still stiff, and often set one on each side of the principal
+figures, their color and relief on the sky were exquisitely imitated,
+and all groups of near leaves and flowers drawn with the
+most tender care, and studious botanical accuracy. The better
+the subjects were painted, however, the more logically absurd
+they became: a background wrought in Chinese confusion of
+towers and rivers, was in early times passed over carelessly, and
+forgiven for the sake of its pleasant color; but it appealed somewhat
+too far to imaginative indulgence when Ghirlandajo drew
+an exquisite perspective view of Venice and her lagoons behind
+an Adoration of the Magi;<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a>
+and the impossibly small boats
+which might be pardoned in a mere illumination, representing
+the miraculous draught of fishes, became, whatever may be said
+to the contrary, inexcusably absurd in Raphael's fully realized
+landscape; so as at once to destroy the credibility of every circumstance
+of the event.</p>
+
+<p>§ 11. A certain charm, however, attached itself to many
+forms of this landscape, owing to their very unnaturalness, as I
+have endeavored to explain already in the last chapter of the
+second volume, §§ 9. to 12.; noting, however, there, that it was
+in no wise to be made a subject of imitation; a conclusion
+which I have since seen more and more ground for holding
+finally. The longer I think over the subject, the more I perceive
+that the pleasure we take in such unnatural landscapes is
+intimately connected with our habit of regarding the New Testament
+as a beautiful poem, instead of a statement of plain facts.
+He who believes thoroughly that the events are true will expect,
+and ought to expect, real olive copse behind real Madonna, and
+no sentimental absurdities in either.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_11" id="PLATE_11"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus352b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus352w.jpg" height="500"  alt="PLATE 11" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		11. Latest Purism.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+													<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span>
+
+<p>§ 12. Nor am I at all sure how far the delight which we
+take (when I say <i>we</i>, I mean, in general, lovers of old sacred art)
+in such quaint landscape, arises from its peculiar <i>falsehood</i>, and
+how far from its peculiar <i>truth</i>. For as it falls into certain
+errors more boldly, so, also, what truth it states, it states more
+firmly than subsequent work. No engravings, that I know,
+render the backgrounds of sacred pictures with sufficient care to
+enable the reader to judge of this matter unless before the works
+themselves. I have, therefore, engraved, on the opposite page,
+a bit of the background of Raphael's Holy Family, in the Tribune
+of the Uffizii, at Florence. I copied the trees leaf for leaf,
+and the rest of the work with the best care I could; the engraver,
+Mr. Armytage, has admirably rendered the delicate atmosphere
+which partly veils the distance. Now I do not know how
+far it is necessary to such pleasure as we receive from this landscape,
+that the trees should be both so straight and formal in
+stem, and should have branches no thicker than threads; or
+that the outlines of the distant hills should approximate so
+closely to those on any ordinary Wedgewood's china pattern. I
+know that, on the contrary, a great part of the pleasure arises
+from the sweet expression of air and sunshine; from the traceable
+resemblance of the city and tower to Florence and Fésole;
+from the fact that, though the boughs are too thin, the lines of
+ramification are true and beautiful; and from the expression
+of continually varied form in the clusters of leafage. And
+although all lovers of sacred art would shrink in horror from
+the idea of substituting for such a landscape a bit of Cuyp or
+Rubens, I do not think that the horror they feel is because Cuyp
+and Rubens's landscape is <i>truer</i>, but because it is <i>coarser</i> and
+more vulgar in associated idea than Raphael's; and I think it
+possible that the true forms of hills, and true thicknesses of
+boughs, might be tenderly stolen into this background of
+Raphael's without giving offence to any one.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft">
+	<a name="FIG_5" id="FIG_5"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus354b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus354w.jpg" width="200"  alt="FIG 5" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		<span class="smcap">Fig.</span> 5.
+	</span>
+</div>
+<p>§ 13. Take a somewhat more definite instance. The rock in
+Fig. 5., at the side, is one put by Ghirlandajo into the background
+of his Baptism of Christ. I have no doubt Ghirlandajo's
+own rocks and trees are better, in several respects, than
+those here represented, since I have copied them from one of
+Lasinio's execrable engravings; still, the harsh outline, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span>
+generally stiff and uninventful blankness of the design are true
+enough, and characteristic of all rock-painting of the period. In
+the plate below I have etched<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a>
+the outline of a fragment of
+one of Turner's cliffs, out of
+his drawing of Bolton Abbey;
+and it does not seem to me
+that, supposing them properly
+introduced in the composition,
+the substitution of the
+soft natural lines for the hard
+unnatural ones would make
+Ghirlandajo's background
+one whit less sacred.</p>
+
+<p>§ 14. But be this as it
+may, the fact is, as ill luck
+would have it, that profanity
+of feeling, and skill in art,
+increased together; so that
+we do not find the backgrounds
+rightly painted till
+the figures become irreligious
+and feelingless; and hence
+we associate necessarily the
+perfect landscape with want
+of feeling. The first great
+innovator was either Masaccio
+or Filippino Lippi: their
+works are so confused together
+in the Chapel of the Carmine,
+that I know not to
+whom I may attribute,&mdash;or
+whether, without being immediately
+quarrelled with,
+and contradicted, I may attribute
+to anybody,&mdash;the landscape background of the fresco
+of the Tribute Money. But that background, with one or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span>
+two other fragments in the same chapel, is far in advance
+of all other work I have seen of the period, in expression
+of the rounded contours and large slopes of hills, and the
+association of their summits with the clouds. The opposite
+engraving will give some better idea of its character than can be
+gained from the outlines commonly published; though the dark
+spaces, which in the original are deep blue, come necessarily
+somewhat too harshly on the eye when translated into light and
+shade. I shall have occasion to speak with greater speciality of
+this background in examining the forms of hills; meantime, it
+is only as an isolated work that it can be named in the history
+of pictorial progress, for Masaccio died too young to carry out
+his purposes; and the men around him were too ignorant of
+landscape to understand or take advantage of the little he had
+done. Raphael, though he borrowed from him in the human
+figure, never seems to have been influenced by his landscape, and
+retains either, as in Plate 11., the upright formalities of Perugino;
+or, by way of being natural, expands his distances into
+flattish flakes of hill, nearly formless, as in the backgrounds of
+the Charge to Peter and Draught of Fishes; and thenceforward
+the Tuscan and Roman schools grew more and more artificial,
+and lost themselves finally under round-headed niches and Corinthian
+porticos.</p>
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_12" id="PLATE_12"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus355b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus355w.jpg" height="500"  alt="PLATE 12" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		12. The Shores of Wharfe.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_13" id="PLATE_13"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus358b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus358w.jpg" width="500"  alt="PLATE 13" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		13. First Mountain Naturalism.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_14" id="PLATE_14"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus360b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus360w.jpg" width="500"  alt="PLATE 14" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		14. The Lombard Apennine.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_15" id="PLATE_15"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus362b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus362w.jpg" width="500"  alt="PLATE 15" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		15. St. George of the Seaweed.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>§ 15. It needed, therefore, the air of the northern mountains
+and of the sea to brace the hearts of men to the development of
+the true landscape schools. I sketched by chance one evening
+the line of the Apennines from the ramparts of Parma, and I
+have put the rough note of it, and the sky that was over it, in
+Plate 14., and next to this (Plate 15.) a moment of sunset,
+behind the Euganean hills at Venice. I shall have occasion to
+refer to both hereafter; but they have some interest here as
+types of the kind of scenes which were daily set before the eyes
+of Correggio and Titian, and of the sweet free spaces of sky
+through which rose and fell, to them, the colored rays of the
+morning and evening.</p>
+
+<p>§ 16. And they are connected, also, with the forms of landscape
+adopted by the Lombardic masters, in a very curious way.
+We noticed that the Flemings, educated entirely in flat land,
+seemed to be always contented with the scenery it supplied; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span>
+we should naturally have expected that Titian and Correggio,
+living in the midst of the levels of the lagoons, and of the plain
+of Lombardy, would also have expressed, in their backgrounds,
+some pleasure in such level scenery, associated, of course, with
+the sublimity of the far-away Apennine, Euganean, or Alp.
+But not a whit. The plains of mulberry and maize, of sea and
+shoal, by which they were surrounded, never occur in their
+backgrounds but in cases of necessity; and both of them, in all
+their important landscapes, bury themselves in wild wood; Correggio
+delighting to relieve with green darkness of oak and ivy
+the golden hair and snowy flesh of his figures; and Titian,
+whenever the choice of a scene was in his power, retiring to the
+narrow glens and forests of Cadore.</p>
+
+<p>§ 17. Of the vegetation introduced by both, I shall have to
+speak at length in the course of the chapters on Foliage; meantime,
+I give in Plate 16. one of Titian's slightest bits of background,
+from one of the frescoes in the little chapel behind St.
+Antonio, at Padua, which may be compared more conveniently
+than any of his more elaborate landscapes with the purist work
+from Raphael. For in both these examples the trees are equally
+slender and delicate, only the formality of mediæval art is, by
+Titian, entirely abandoned, and the old conception of the aspen
+grove and meadow done away with for ever. We are now far
+from cities: the painter takes true delight in the desert; the
+trees grow wild and free; the sky also has lost its peace, and is
+writhed into folds of motion, closely impendent upon earth, and
+somewhat threatening, through its solemn light.</p>
+
+<p>§ 18. Although, however, this example is characteristic of
+Titian in its wildness, it is not so in its <i>looseness</i>. It is only in
+the distant backgrounds of the slightest work, or when he is in
+a hurry, that Titian is vague: in all his near and studied work
+he completes every detail with scrupulous care. The next
+Plate, 17., a background of Tintoret's, from his picture of the
+Entombment at Parma, is more entirely characteristic of the
+Venetians. Some mistakes made in the reduction of my drawing
+during the course of engraving have cramped the curves of
+the boughs and leaves, of which I will give the true outline farther
+on; meantime the subject, which is that described in § 16.
+of the chapter on Penetrative Imagination, Vol. II., will just as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span>
+well answer the purpose of exemplifying the Venetian love of
+gloom and wildness, united with perfect definition of detail.
+Every leaf and separate blade of grass is drawn; but observe
+how the blades of grass are broken, how completely the aim at
+expression of faultlessness and felicity has been withdrawn, as
+contrary to the laws of the existent world.</p>
+
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_16" id="PLATE_16"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus365b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus365w.jpg" height="500"  alt="PLATE 16" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		16. Early Naturalism.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="PLATE_17" id="PLATE_17"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus367b.jpg" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus367w.jpg" width="500"  alt="PLATE 17" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		17. Advanced Naturalism.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>§ 19. From this great Venetian school of landscape Turner
+received much important teaching,&mdash;almost the only healthy
+teaching which he owed to preceding art. The designs of the
+Liber Studiorum are founded first on nature, but in many cases
+modified by <i>forced</i> imitation of Claude, and <i>fond</i> imitation of
+Titian. All the worst and feeblest studies in the book&mdash;as the
+pastoral with the nymph playing the tambourine, that with the
+long bridge seen through trees, and with the flock of goats on
+the walled road&mdash;owe the principal part of their imbecilities to
+Claude; another group (Solway Moss, Peat Bog, Lauffenbourg,
+&amp;c.) is taken with hardly any modification by pictorial influence,
+straight from nature; and the finest works in the book&mdash;the
+Grande Chartreuse, Rizpah, Jason, Cephalus, and one or
+two more&mdash;are strongly under the influence of Titian.</p>
+
+<p>§ 20. The Venetian school of landscape expired with Tintoret,
+in the year 1594; and the sixteenth century closed, like a
+grave, over the great art of the world. There is <i>no</i> entirely sincere
+or great art in the seventeenth century. Rubens and Rembrandt
+are its two greatest men, both deeply stained by the
+errors and affectations of their age. The influence of the Venetians
+hardly extended to them; the tower of the Titianesque art
+fell southwards; and on the dust of its ruins grew various art-weeds,
+such as Domenichino and the Carraccis. Their landscape,
+which may in few words be accurately defined as "Scum
+of Titian," possesses no single merit, nor any ground for the
+forgiveness of demerit; they are to be named only as a link
+through which the Venetian influence came dimly down to
+Claude and Salvator.</p>
+
+<p>§ 21. Salvator possessed real genius, but was crushed by
+misery in his youth, and by fashionable society in his age. He
+had vigorous animal life, and considerable invention, but no
+depth either of thought or perception. He took some hints
+directly from nature, and expressed some conditions of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span>
+grotesque of terror with original power; but his baseness of
+thought, and bluntness of sight, were unconquerable; and his
+works possess no value whatsoever for any person versed in the
+walks of noble art. They had little, if any, influence on Turner;
+if any, it was in blinding him for some time to the grace
+of tree trunks, and making him tear them too much into splinters.</p>
+
+<p>§ 22. Not so Claude, who may be considered as Turner's
+principal master. Claude's capacities were of the most limited
+kind; but he had tenderness of perception, and sincerity of purpose,
+and he effected a revolution in art. This revolution consisted
+mainly in setting the sun in heaven.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a>
+Till Claude's time
+no one had seriously thought of painting the sun but conventionally;
+that is to say, as a red or yellow star, (often) with a
+face in it, under which type it was constantly represented in
+illumination; else it was kept out of the picture, or introduced
+in fragmentary distances, breaking through clouds with almost
+definite rays. Perhaps the honor of having first tried to represent
+the real effect of the sun in landscape belongs to Bonifazio,
+in his pictures of the camps of Israel.<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a>
+Rubens followed in a
+kind of bravado, sometimes making the rays issue from anything
+but the orb of the sun;&mdash;here, for instance, Fig. 6., is an outline
+of the position of the sun (at <i>s</i>) with respect to his own
+rays, in a sunset behind a tournament in the Louvre: and various
+interesting effects of sunlight issuing from the conventional
+face-filled orb occur in contemporary missal-painting; for
+instance, very richly in the Harleian MS. Brit. Mus. 3469. But
+all this was merely indicative of the tendency to transition
+which may always be traced in any age before the man comes
+who is to <i>accomplish</i> the transition. Claude took up the new
+idea seriously, made the sun his subject, and painted the effects
+of misty shadows cast by his rays over the landscape, and other
+delicate aerial transitions, as no one had ever done before, and,
+in some respects, as no one has done in oil color since.</p>	<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span>
+
+<p>§ 23. "But, how, if this were so, could his capacities be of
+the meanest order?" Because doing <i>one</i> thing well, or better
+than others have done it, does not necessarily imply large capacity.
+Capacity means breadth of glance, understanding of the
+relations of things, and invention, and these are rare and precious;
+but there are very few men who have not done <i>something</i>,
+in the course of their lives, better than other people. I
+could point out many engravers, draughtsmen, and artists, who
+have each a particular merit in their manner, or particular field
+of perception, that nobody else has, or ever had. But this does
+not make them great men, it only indicates a small special capacity
+of some kind: and all the smaller if the gift be very peculiar
+and single; for a great man never so limits himself to one
+thing, as that we shall be able to say, "That's all he can do."
+If Claude had been a great man he would not have been so steadfastly
+set on painting effects of sun; he would have looked at
+all nature, and at all art, and would have painted sun effects
+somewhat worse, and nature universally much better.</p>
+
+<div class="illo">
+	<a name="FIG_6" id="FIG_6"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus371.png" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img src="images/illus371.png" width="400"  alt="FIG 6" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		<span class="smcap">Fig.</span> 6.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 24. Such as he was, however, his discovery of the way to
+make pictures look warm was very delightful to the shallow connoisseurs
+of the age. Not that they cared for sunshine; but
+they liked seeing jugglery. They could not feel Titian's noble
+color, nor Veronese's noble composition; but they thought it
+highly amusing to see the sun brought into a picture: and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span>
+Claude's works were bought and delighted in by vulgar people
+then, for their real-looking suns, as pictures are now by vulgar
+people for having real timepieces in their church towers.</p>
+
+<p>§ 25. But when Turner arose, with an earnest desire to paint
+the whole of nature, he found that the existence of the sun was an
+important fact, and by no means an easily manageable one. <i>He</i>
+loved sunshine for its own sake; but he could not at first paint
+it. Most things else, he would more or less manage without
+much technical difficulty; but the burning orb and the golden
+haze could not, somehow, be got out of the oil paint. Naturally
+he went to Claude, who really had got them out of oil
+paint; approached him with great reverence, as having done
+that which seemed to Turner most difficult of all technical matters,
+and he became his faithful disciple. How much he learned
+from him of manipulation, I cannot tell; but one thing is certain,
+that he never quite equalled him in that particular forte of
+his. I imagine that Claude's way of laying on oil color was so
+methodical that it could not possibly be imitated by a man
+whose mechanism was interfered with by hundreds of thoughts
+and aims totally different from Claude's; and, besides, I suppose
+that certain useful principles in the management of paint,
+of which our schools are now wholly ignorant, had come down
+as far as Claude, from the Venetians. Turner at last gave up
+the attempt, and adopted a manipulation of his own, which
+indeed effected certain objects attainable in no other way, but
+which still was in many respects unsatisfactory, dangerous, and
+deeply to be regretted.</p>
+
+<div class="figright">
+	<a name="FIG_7" id="FIG_7"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus373.png" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img style="margin-bottom: -1em;" src="images/illus373.png" width="300"  alt="FIG 7" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		<span class="smcap">Fig.</span> 7.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 26. But meantime his mind had been strongly warped by
+Claude's futilities of conception. It was impossible to dwell on
+such works for any length of time without being grievously
+harmed by them; and the style of Turner's compositions was
+for ever afterwards weakened or corrupted. For, truly, it is
+almost beyond belief into what depth of absurdity Claude
+plunges continually in his most admired designs. For instance;
+undertaking to paint Moses at the Burning Bush, he represents
+a graceful landscape with a city, a river, and a bridge, and
+plenty of tall trees, and the sea, and numbers of people going
+about their business and pleasure in every direction; and the
+bush burning quietly upon a bank in the corner; rather in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span>
+dark, and not to be seen without close inspection. It would
+take some pages of close writing to point out, one by one, the
+inanities of heart, soul, and brain which such a conception
+involves; the ineffable ignorance of the nature of the event, and
+of the scene of it; the incapacity of conceiving anything even
+<i>in</i> ignorance, which should be impressive; the dim, stupid,
+serene, leguminous enjoyment of his sunny afternoon&mdash;burn the
+bushes as much as they liked&mdash;these I leave the reader to think
+over at his leisure, either before the picture in Lord Ellesmere's
+gallery, or the sketch of it in the Liber Veritatis. But all these
+kinds of fallacy sprung more or less out of the vices of the time
+in which Claude lived; his own peculiar character reaches
+beyond these, to an incapacity of understanding the <i>main point</i>
+in anything he had to represent, down to the minutest detail,
+which is quite unequalled, as far as I know, in human nugatoriness.
+For instance; here, in Fig. 7., is the head, with half
+the body, of Eneas drawing his
+Bow, from No. 180. of the Liber
+Veritatis. Observe, the string is too
+long by half; for if the bow were
+unbent, it would be two feet longer
+than the whole bow. Then the arrow
+is too long by half, has too
+heavy a head by half; and finally, it actually is <i>under</i> the bow-hand,
+instead of above it. Of the ideal and heroic refinement
+of the head and drapery I will say nothing; but look only at the
+wretched archery, and consider if it would be possible for any
+child to draw the thing with less understanding, or to make
+more mistakes in the given compass.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p>
+
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span>
+
+<div class="figleft">
+	<a name="FIG_8" id="FIG_8"></a>
+	<a href="images/illus374b.png" style="color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;">
+		<img style="margin-bottom: -1em;" src="images/illus374w.jpg" width="250"  alt="FIG_8" />
+	</a>
+
+	<span class="caption"><br />
+		<span class="smcap">Fig.</span> 8.
+	</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>§ 27. And yet, exquisite as is Claude's instinct for blunder,
+he has not strength of mind enough to blunder in a wholly
+original manner, but he must needs falter out of his way to pick
+up other people's puerilities, and be absurd at second-hand. I
+have been obliged to laugh
+a little&mdash;though I hope reverently&mdash;at
+Ghirlandajo's
+landscapes, which yet we saw
+had a certain charm of
+quaintness in them when
+contrasted with his grand
+figures; but could any one
+have believed that Claude,
+with all the noble landscapes
+of Titian set before him, and
+all nature round about him,
+should yet go back to Ghirlandajo
+for types of form.
+Yet such is the case. I said
+that the Venetian influence
+came dimly down to Claude;
+but the old Florentine influence
+came clearly. The
+Claudesque landscape is not,
+as so commonly supposed,
+an idealized abstract of the
+nature about Rome. It is
+an ultimate condition of
+the Florentine conventional
+landscape, more or less softened
+by reference to nature.
+Fig. 8., from No. 145. of
+the Liber Veritatis, is sufficiently
+characteristic of
+Claude's rock-drawing; and
+compared with Fig. 5. (p. 314), will show exactly the kind of
+modification he made on old and received types. We shall see
+other instances of it hereafter.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span>
+<p>Imagine this kind of reproduction of whatever other people
+had done worst, and this kind of misunderstanding of all that
+he saw himself in nature, carried out in Claude's trees, rocks,
+ships&mdash;in everything that he touched,&mdash;and then consider what
+kind of school this work was for a young and reverent disciple.
+As I said, Turner never recovered the effects of it; his compositions
+were always mannered, lifeless, and even foolish; and he
+only did noble things when the immediate presence of nature
+had overpowered the reminiscences of his master.</p>
+
+<p>§ 28. Of the influence of Gaspar and Nicolo Poussin on
+Turner, there is hardly anything to be said, nor much respecting
+that which they had on landscape generally. Nicolo Poussin
+had noble powers of design, and might have been a thoroughly
+great painter had he been trained in Venice; but his
+Roman education kept him tame; his trenchant severity was
+contrary to the tendencies of the age, and had few imitators
+compared to the dashing of Salvator, and the mist of Claude.
+Those few imitators adopted his manner without possessing
+either his science or invention; and the Italian school of landscape
+soon expired. Reminiscences of him occur sometimes in
+Turner's compositions of sculptured stones for foreground;
+and the beautiful Triumph of Flora, in the Louvre, probably
+first showed Turner the use of definite flower, or blossom-painting,
+in landscape. I doubt if he took anything from Gaspar;
+whatever he might have learned from him respecting masses
+of foliage and golden distances, could have been learned better,
+and, I believe, <i>was</i> learned, from Titian.</p>
+
+<p>§ 29. Meantime, a lower, but more living school had developed
+itself in the north; Cuyp had painted sunshine as truly
+as Claude, gilding with it a more homely, but far more honestly
+conceived landscape; and the effects of light of De Hooghe and
+Rembrandt presented examples of treatment to which southern
+art could show no parallel. Turner evidently studied these with
+the greatest care, and with great benefit in every way; especially
+this, that they neutralized the idealisms of Claude, and showed
+the young painter what power might be in plain truth, even of
+the most familiar kind. He painted several pictures in imitation
+of these masters; and those in which he tried to rival
+Cuyp are healthy and noble works, being, in fact, just what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span>
+most of Cuyp's own pictures are&mdash;faithful studies of Dutch
+boats in calm weather, on smooth water. De Hooghe was too
+precise, and Rembrandt too dark, to be successfully or affectionately
+followed by him; but he evidently learned much from
+both.</p>
+
+<p>§ 30. Finally, he painted many pictures in the manner of
+Vandevelde (who was the accepted authority of his time in sea
+painting), and received much injury from him. To the close
+of his life, Turner always painted the sea too grey, and too
+opaque, in consequence of his early study of Vandevelde. He
+never seemed to perceive color so truly in the sea as he saw it
+elsewhere. But he soon discovered the poorness of Vandevelde's
+forms of waves, and raised their meanly divided surfaces into
+massive surge, effecting rapidly other changes, of which more
+in another place.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the art to which Turner, in early years, devoted
+his most earnest thoughts. More or less respectful contemplation
+of Reynolds, Loutherbourg, Wilson, Gainsborough, Morland,
+and Wilkie, was incidentally mingled with his graver
+study; and he maintained a questioning watchfulness of even
+the smallest successes of his brother artists of the modern landscape
+school. It remains for us only to note the position of
+that living school when Turner, helped or misled, as the case
+may be, by the study of the older artists, began to consider what
+remained for him to do, or design.</p>
+
+<p>§ 31. The dead schools of landscape, composed of the works
+we have just been examining, were broadly divisible into northern
+and southern: the Dutch schools, more or less natural, but
+vulgar; the Italian, more or less elevated, but absurd. There
+was a certain foolish elegance in Claude, and a dull dignity in
+Gaspar; but then their work resembled nothing that ever existed
+in the world. On the contrary, a canal or cattle piece of
+Cuyp's had many veracities about it; but they were, at best,
+truths of the ditch and dairy. The grace of nature, or her
+gloom, her tender and sacred seclusions, or her reach of power
+and wrath, had never been painted; nor had <i>anything</i> been
+painted yet in true <i>love</i> of it; for both Dutch and Italians agreed
+in this, that they always painted for the <i>picture's</i> sake, to show
+how well they could imitate sunshine, arrange masses, or articu<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span>late
+straws,&mdash;never because they loved the scene, or wanted to
+carry away some memory of it.</p>
+
+<p>And thus, all that landscape of the old masters is to be considered
+merely as a struggle of expiring skill to discover some
+new direction in which to display itself. There was no love of
+nature in the age; only a desire for something new. Therefore
+those schools expired at last, leaving the chasm of nearly utter
+emptiness between them and the true moderns, out of which
+chasm the new school rises, not engrafted on that old one, but,
+from the very base of all things, beginning with mere washes
+of Indian ink, touched upon with yellow and brown; and gradually
+feeling its way to color.</p>
+
+<p>But this infant school differed inherently from that ancienter
+one, in that its motive was love. However feeble its efforts
+might be, they were <i>for the sake of the nature</i>, not of the picture,
+and therefore, having this germ of true life, it grew and
+throve. Robson did not paint purple hills because he wanted
+to show how he could lay on purple; but because he truly loved
+their dark peaks. Fielding did not paint downs to show how
+dexterously he could sponge out mists; but because he loved
+downs.</p>
+
+<p>This modern school, therefore, became the only true school
+of landscape which had yet existed; the artificial Claude and
+Gaspar work may be cast aside out of our way,&mdash;as I have said
+in my Edinburgh lectures, under the general title of "pastoralism,"&mdash;and
+from the last landscape of Tintoret, if we look for
+<i>life</i>, we must pass at once to the first of Turner.</p>
+
+<p>§ 32. What help Turner received from this or that companion
+of his youth is of no importance to any one now. Of
+course every great man is always being helped by everybody,<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a>
+for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons; and
+also there were two men associated with him in early study, who
+showed high promise in the same field, Cousen and Girtin (especially
+the former), and there is no saying what these men might
+have done had they lived; there might, perhaps, have been a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span>
+struggle between one or other of them and Turner, as between
+Giorgione and Titian. But they lived not; and Turner is the
+only great man whom the school has yet produced,&mdash;quite great
+enough, as we shall see, for all that needed to be done. To him,
+therefore, we now finally turn, as the sole object of our inquiry. I
+shall first reinforce, with such additions as they need, those statements
+of his general principles which I made in the first volume,
+but could not then demonstrate fully, for want of time to prepare
+pictorial illustration; and then proceed to examine, piece
+by piece, his representations of the facts of nature, comparing
+them, as it may seem expedient, with what had been accomplished
+by others.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>I cannot close this volume without alluding briefly to a subject
+of different interest from any that have occupied us in its
+pages. For it may, perhaps, seem to a general reader heartless
+and vain to enter zealously into questions about our arts and
+pleasures in a time of so great public anxiety as this.</p>
+
+<p>But he will find, if he looks back to the sixth paragraph of
+the opening chapter of the last volume, some statement of feelings,
+which, as they made me despondent in a time of apparent
+national prosperity, now cheer me in one which, though of
+stern trial, I will not be so much a coward as to call one of adversity.
+And I derive this encouragement first from the belief
+that the War itself, with all its bitterness, is, in the present state
+of the European nations, productive of more good than evil;
+and, secondly, because I have more confidence than others generally
+entertain, in the justice of its cause.</p>
+
+<p>I say, first, because I believe the war is at present productive
+of good more than of evil. I will not argue this hardly and
+coldly, as I might, by tracing in past history some of the abundant
+evidence that nations have always reached their highest virtue,
+and wrought their most accomplished works, in times of
+straitening and battle; as, on the other hand, no nation ever
+yet enjoyed a protracted and triumphant peace without receiving
+in its own bosom ineradicable seeds of future decline. I
+will not so argue this matter; but I will appeal at once to the
+testimony of those whom the war has cost the dearest. I know
+what would be told me, by those who have suffered nothing;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span>
+whose domestic happiness has been unbroken; whose daily
+comfort undisturbed; whose experience of calamity consists, at
+its utmost, in the incertitude of a speculation, the dearness of a
+luxury, or the increase of demands upon their fortune which
+they could meet fourfold without inconvenience. From these, I
+can well believe, be they prudent economists, or careless pleasure-seekers,
+the cry for peace will rise alike vociferously, whether
+in street or senate. But I ask <i>their</i> witness, to whom the war
+has changed the aspect of the earth, and imagery of heaven,
+whose hopes it has cut off like a spider's web, whose treasure it
+has placed, in a moment, under the seals of clay. Those who
+can never more see sunrise, nor watch the climbing light gild
+the Eastern clouds, without thinking what graves it has gilded,
+first, far down behind the dark earth-line,&mdash;who never more
+shall see the crocus bloom in spring, without thinking what
+dust it is that feeds the wild flowers of Balaclava. Ask <i>their</i>
+witness, and see if they will not reply that it is well with them,
+and with theirs; that they would have it no otherwise; would
+not, if they might, receive back their gifts of love and life, nor
+take again the purple of their blood out of the cross on the
+breastplate of England. Ask them: and though they should
+answer only with a sob, listen if it does not gather upon their
+lips into the sound of the old Seyton war-cry&mdash;"Set on."</p>
+
+<p>And this not for pride&mdash;not because the names of their lost
+ones will be recorded to all time, as of those who held the
+breach and kept the gate of Europe against the North, as the
+Spartans did against the East; and lay down in the place they
+had to guard, with the like home message, "Oh, stranger, go
+and tell the English that we are lying here, having obeyed their
+words;"&mdash;not for this, but because, also, they have felt that
+the spirit which has discerned them for eminence in sorrow&mdash;the
+helmed and sworded skeleton that rakes with its white
+fingers the sands of the Black Sea beach into grave-heap after
+grave-heap, washed by everlasting surf of tears&mdash;has been to
+them an angel of other things than agony; that they have
+learned, with those hollow, undeceivable eyes of his, to see all
+the earth by the sunlight of deathbeds;&mdash;no inch-high stage for
+foolish griefs and feigned pleasures; no dream, neither, as its
+dull moralists told them;&mdash;<i>Any</i>thing but that: a place of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span>
+true, marvellous, inextricable sorrow and power; a question-chamber
+of trial by rack and fire, irrevocable decision recording
+continually; and no sleep, nor folding of hands, among the
+demon-questioners; none among the angel-watchers, none
+among the men who stand or fall beside those hosts of God.
+They know now the strength of sacrifice, and that its flames can
+illumine as well as consume; they are bound by new fidelities to
+all that they have saved,&mdash;by new love to all for whom they
+have suffered; every affection which seemed to sink with those
+dim life-stains into the dust, has been delegated, by those who
+need it no more, to the cause for which they have expired; and
+every mouldering arm, which will never more embrace the beloved
+ones, has bequeathed to them its strength and its faithfulness.</p>
+
+<p>For the cause of this quarrel is no dim, half-avoidable involution
+of mean interests and errors, as some would have us
+believe. There never was a great war caused by such things.
+There never can be. The historian may trace it, with ingenious
+trifling, to a courtier's jest or a woman's glance; but he does
+not ask&mdash;(and it is the sum of questions)&mdash;how the warring nations
+had come to found their destinies on the course of the
+sneer, or the smile. If they have so based them, it is time for
+them to learn, through suffering, how to build on other foundations&mdash;for
+great, accumulated, and most righteous cause, their
+foot slides in due time; and against the torpor, or the turpitude,
+of their myriads, there is loosed the haste of the devouring
+sword and the thirsty arrow. But if they have set their fortunes
+on other than such ground, then the war must be owing
+to some deep conviction or passion in their own hearts,&mdash;a conviction
+which, in resistless flow, or reckless ebb, or consistent
+stay, is the ultimate arbiter of battle, disgrace, or conquest.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever there is war, there <i>must</i> be injustice on one side
+or the other, or on both. There have been wars which were
+little more than trials of strength between friendly nations, and
+in which the injustice was not to each other, but to the God
+who gave them life. But in a malignant war of these present
+ages there is injustice of ignobler kind, at once to God and man,
+which <i>must</i> be stemmed for both their sakes. It may, indeed,
+be so involved with national prejudices, or ignorances, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span>
+neither of the contending nations can conceive it as attaching
+to their cause; nay, the constitution of their governments, and
+the clumsy crookedness of their political dealings with each
+other, may be such as to prevent either of them from knowing
+the actual cause for which they have gone to war. Assuredly
+this is, in a great degree, the state of things with <i>us</i>; for I
+noticed that there never came news by telegraph of the explosion
+of a powder-barrel, or of the loss of thirty men by a sortie,
+but the Parliament lost confidence immediately in the justice of
+the war; reopened the question whether we ever should have
+engaged in it, and remained in a doubtful and repentant state of
+mind until one of the enemy's powder-barrels blew up also; upon
+which they were immediately satisfied again that the war was a
+wise and necessary one. How far, therefore, the calamity may
+have been brought upon us by men whose political principles
+shoot annually like the leaves, and change color at every autumn
+frost:&mdash;how loudly the blood that has been poured out
+round the walls of that city, up to the horse-bridles, may now
+be crying from the ground against men who did not know, when
+they first bade shed it, exactly what war was, or what blood
+was, or what life was, or truth, or what anything else was upon
+the earth; and whose tone of opinions touching the destinies of
+mankind depended entirely upon whether they were sitting on
+the right or left side of the House of Commons;&mdash;this, I repeat,
+I know not, nor (in all solemnity I say it) do I care to know.
+For if it be so, and the English nation could at the present
+period of its history be betrayed into a war such as this by the
+slipping of a wrong word into a protocol, or bewitched into unexpected
+battle under the budding hallucinations of its sapling
+senators, truly it is time for us to bear the penalty of our baseness,
+and learn, as the sleepless steel glares close upon us, how
+to choose our governors more wisely, and our ways more warily.
+For that which brings swift punishment in war, must have
+brought slow ruin in peace; and those who have now laid down
+their lives for England, have doubly saved her; they have humbled
+at once her enemies and herself; and have done less for
+her, in the conquest they achieve, than in the sorrow that they
+claim.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not altogether thus: we have not been cast into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span>
+this war by mere political misapprehensions, or popular ignorances.
+It is quite possible that neither we nor our rulers may
+clearly understand the nature of the conflict; and that we may
+be dealing blows in the dark, confusedly, and as a soldier suddenly
+awakened from slumber by an unknown adversary. But
+I believe the struggle was inevitable, and that the sooner it
+came, the more easily it was to be met, and the more nobly concluded.
+France and England are both of them, from shore to
+shore, in a state of intense progression, change, and experimental
+life. They are each of them beginning to examine, more distinctly
+than ever nations did yet in the history of the world,
+the dangerous question respecting the rights of governed, and
+the responsibilities of governing, bodies; not, as heretofore;
+foaming over them in red frenzy, with intervals of fetter and
+straw crown, but in health, quietness, and daylight, with the
+help of a good Queen and a great Emperor; and to determine
+them in a way which, by just so much as it is more effective
+and rational, is likely to produce more permanent results than
+ever before on the policy of neighboring States, and to force,
+gradually, the discussion of similar questions into their places
+of silence. To force it,&mdash;for true liberty, like true religion, is
+always aggressive or persecuted; but the attack is <i>generally</i>
+made upon it by the nation which is to be crushed,&mdash;by Persian
+on Athenian, Tuscan on Roman, Austrian on Swiss; or, as now,
+by Russia upon us and our allies: her attack appointed, it
+seems to me, for confirmation of all our greatness, trial of our
+strength, purging and punishment of our futilities, and establishment
+for ever, in our hands, of the leadership in the political
+progress of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Whether this its providential purpose be accomplished, must
+depend on its enabling France and England to love one another,
+and teaching these, the two noblest foes that ever stood breast
+to breast among the nations, first to decipher the law of international
+charities; first to discern that races, like individuals,
+can only reach their true strength, dignity, or joy, in seeking
+each the welfare, and exulting each in the glory, of the other.
+It is strange how far we still seem from fully perceiving this.
+We know that two men, cast on a desert island, could not
+thrive in dispeace; we can understand that four, or twelve,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span>
+might still find their account in unity; but that a multitude
+should thrive otherwise than by the contentions of its classes, or
+<i>two</i> multitudes hold themselves in anywise bound by brotherly
+law to serve, support, rebuke, rejoice in one another, this seems
+still as far beyond our conception, as the clearest of commandments,
+"Let no man seek his own, but every man another's
+wealth," is beyond our habitual practice. Yet, if once we
+comprehend that precept in its breadth, and feel that what we
+now call jealousy for our country's honor, is, so far as it tends
+to other countries' <i>dis</i>honor, merely one of the worst, because
+most complacent and self-gratulatory, forms of irreligion,&mdash;a
+newly breathed strength will, with the newly interpreted patriotism,
+animate and sanctify the efforts of men. Learning,
+unchecked by envy, will be accepted more frankly, throned
+more firmly, guided more swiftly; charity, unchilled by fear,
+will dispose the laws of each State without reluctance to advantage
+its neighbor by justice to itself; and admiration, unwarped
+by prejudice, possess itself continually of new treasure
+in the arts and the thoughts of the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>If France and England fail of this, if again petty jealousies
+or selfish interests prevail to unknit their hands from the
+armored grasp, then, indeed, their faithful children will have
+fallen in vain; there will be a sound as of renewed lamentation
+along those Euxine waves, and a shaking among the bones that
+bleach by the mounds of Sebastopol. But if they fail not of
+this,&mdash;if we, in our love of our queens and kings, remember how
+France gave to the cause of early civilization, first the greatest,
+then the holiest, of monarchs;<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a>
+and France, in her love of liberty,
+remembers how <i>we</i> first raised the standard of Commonwealth,
+trusted to the grasp of one good and strong hand, witnessed
+for by victory; and so join in perpetual compact of our
+different strengths, to contend for justice, mercy, and truth
+throughout the world,&mdash;who dares say that one soldier has died
+in vain? The scarlet of the blood that has sealed this covenant
+will be poured along the clouds of a new aurora, glorious in that
+Eastern heaven; for every sob of wreck-fed breaker round<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span>
+those Pontic precipices, the floods shall clap their hands between
+the guarded mounts of the Prince-Angel; and the spirits
+of those lost multitudes, crowned with the olive and rose among
+the laurel, shall haunt, satisfied, the willowy brooks and peaceful
+vales of England, and glide, triumphant, by the poplar
+groves and sunned coteaux of Seine.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a>
+The education here spoken of is, of course, that bearing on the main
+work of life. In other respects, Turner's education was more neglected
+than Scott's, and that not beneficently. See the close of the third of my
+Edinburgh Lectures.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a>
+The picture is in the Uffizii of Florence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a>
+This etching is prepared for receiving mezzotint in the next volume;
+it is therefore much heavier in line, especially in the water, than I should
+have made it, if intended to be complete as it is.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a>
+Compare Vol. I. Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. I repeat here some things
+that were then said; but it is necessary now to review them in connection
+with Turner's education, as well as for the sake of enforcing them by illustration.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a>
+Now in the old library of Venice.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a>
+My old friend Blackwood complains bitterly, in his last number, of my
+having given this illustration at one of my late lectures, saying, that I "have
+a disagreeable knack of finding out the joints in my opponent's armor,"
+and that "I never fight for love." I never do. I fight for truth, earnestly,
+and in no wise for jest; and against all lies, earnestly, and in no wise for
+love. They complain that "a noble adversary is not in Mr. Ruskin's way."
+No; a noble adversary never was, never will be. With all that is noble I
+have been, and shall be, in perpetual peace, with all that is ignoble and false
+everlastingly at war. And as for these Scotch <i>bourgeois gentilshommes</i> with
+their "Tu n'as pas la patience que je pare," let them look to their fence.
+But truly, if they will tell me where Claude's strong points are, I will strike
+there, and be thankful.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a>
+His first drawing master was, I believe, that Mr. Lowe, whose daughters,
+now aged and poor, have, it seems to me, some claim on public regard,
+being connected distantly with the memory of Johnson, and closely with
+that of Turner.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a>
+Charlemagne and St. Louis.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span>
+
+<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX.</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="A_I" id="A_I"></a>I. <span class="smcap">Claude's Tree-drawing.</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The reader may not improbably hear it said, by persons who
+are incapable of maintaining an honest argument, and therefore
+incapable of understanding or believing the honesty of an adversary,
+that I have caricatured, or unfairly chosen, the examples
+I give of the masters I depreciate. It is evident, in the first
+place, that I could not, if I were even cunningly disposed, adopt
+a worse policy than in so doing; for the discovery of caricature
+or falsity in my representations, would not only invalidate the
+immediate statement, but the whole book; and invalidate it in
+the most fatal way, by showing that all I had ever said about
+"truth" was hypocrisy, and that in my own affairs I expected
+to prevail by help of lies. Nevertheless it necessarily happens,
+that in endeavors to facsimile any work whatsoever, bad or
+good, some changes are induced from the exact aspect of the
+original. These changes are, of course, sometimes harmful,
+sometimes advantageous; the bad thing generally gains; the
+good thing <i>always</i> loses: so that I am continually tormented
+by finding, in my plates of contrasts, the virtue and vice I exactly
+wanted to talk about, eliminated from <i>both</i> examples. In
+some cases, however, the bad thing will lose also, and then I
+must either cancel the plate, or increase the cost of the work by
+preparing another (at a similar risk), or run the chance of incurring
+the charge of dishonest representation. I desire, therefore,
+very earnestly, and once for all, to have it understood that whatever
+I say in the text, bearing on questions of comparison, refers
+<i>always</i> to the <i>original</i> works; and that, if the reader has it in
+his power, I would far rather he should look at those works than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span>
+at my plates of them; I only give the plates for his immediate
+help and convenience: and I mention this, with respect to my
+plate of Claude's ramification, because, if I have such a thing as
+a prejudice at all, (and, although I do not myself think I have,
+people certainly say so,) it is against Claude; and I might,
+therefore, be sooner suspected of some malice in this plate than
+in others. But I simply gave the original engravings from the
+Liber Veritatis to Mr. Le Keux, earnestly requesting that the
+portions selected might be faithfully copied; and I think he is
+much to be thanked for so carefully and successfully accomplishing
+the task. The figures are from the following plates:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table style="margin-left: 2em;" summary="Engraving instructions">
+<tr><td class="tdr"> &nbsp; No.</td><td class="tdr">1.</td><td class="tdl">Part of the central tree in</td> <td class="tdc">No.</td><td class="tdr">134.</td><td class="tdl">of the Liber Veritatis.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr"> &nbsp;    </td><td class="tdr">2.</td><td class="tdl">From the largest tree</td>       <td class="tdc">"</td>  <td class="tdr">158.</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr"> &nbsp;    </td><td class="tdr">3.</td><td class="tdl">Bushes at root of tree</td>      <td class="tdc">"</td>  <td class="tdr">134.</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr"> &nbsp;    </td><td class="tdr">4.</td><td class="tdl">Tree on the left</td>            <td class="tdc">"</td>  <td class="tdr">183.</td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr"> &nbsp;    </td><td class="tdr">5.</td><td class="tdl">Tree on the left</td>            <td class="tdc">"</td>  <td class="tdr">95. </td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr"> &nbsp;    </td><td class="tdr">6.</td><td class="tdl">Tree on the left</td>            <td class="tdc">"</td>  <td class="tdr">72. </td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr"> &nbsp;    </td><td class="tdr">7.</td><td class="tdl">Principal tree</td>              <td class="tdc">"</td>  <td class="tdr">92. </td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr"> &nbsp;    </td><td class="tdr">8.</td><td class="tdl">Tree on the right</td>           <td class="tdc">"</td>  <td class="tdr">32. </td><td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>If, in fact, any change be effected in the examples in this plate,
+it is for the better; for, thus detached, they all look like small
+boughs, in which the faults are of little consequence; in the
+original works they are seen to be intended for large trunks of
+trees, and the errors are therefore pronounced on a much larger
+scale.</p>
+
+<p>The plate of mediæval rocks (10.) has been executed with
+much less attention in transcript, because the points there to be
+illustrated were quite indisputable, and the instances were needed
+merely to show the <i>kind</i> of <i>thing</i> spoken of, not the skill of
+particular masters. The example from Leonardo was, however,
+somewhat carefully treated. Mr. Cuff copied it accurately from
+the only engraving of the picture which I believe exists, and
+with which, therefore, I suppose the world is generally content.
+That engraving, however, in no respect seems to me to give the
+look of the light behind Leonardo's rocks; so I afterwards
+darkened the rocks, and put some light into the sky and lily;
+and the effect is certainly more like that of the picture than it
+is in the same portion of the old engraving.</p>
+
+<p>Of the other masters represented in the plates of this vol<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span>ume,
+the noblest, Tintoret, has assuredly suffered the most
+(Plate 17.); first, in my too hasty drawing from the original,
+picture; and, secondly, through some accidental errors of outline
+which occurred in the reduction to the size of the page;
+lastly, and chiefly, in the withdrawal of the heads of the four
+figures underneath, in the shadow, on which the composition
+entirely depends. This last evil is unavoidable. It is quite impossible
+to make <i>extracts</i> from the great masters without partly
+spoiling every separated feature; the very essence of a noble
+composition being, that none should bear separation from the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>The plate from Raphael (11) is, I think, on the whole, satisfactory.
+It cost me much pains, as I had to facsimile the irregular
+form of every leaf; each being, in the original picture,
+executed with a somewhat wayward pencil-stroke of vivid brown
+on the clear sky.</p>
+
+<p>Of the other plates it would be tedious to speak in detail.
+Generally, it will be found that I have taken most pains to do
+justice to the masters of whom I have to speak depreciatingly;
+and that, if there be calumny at all, it is always of Turner, rather
+than of Claude.</p>
+
+<p>The reader might, however, perhaps suspect me of ill-will
+towards Constable, owing to my continually introducing him
+for depreciatory comparison. So far from this being the case, I
+had, as will be seen in various passages of the first volume, considerable
+respect for the feeling with which he worked; but I
+was compelled to do harsh justice upon him now, because Mr.
+Leslie, in his unadvised and unfortunate <i>réchauffé</i> of the fallacious
+art-maxims of the last century, has suffered his personal
+regard for Constable so far to prevail over his judgment as to
+bring him forward as a great artist, comparable in some kind
+with Turner. As Constable's reputation was, even before this,
+most mischievous, in giving countenance to the blotting and
+blundering of Modernism, I saw myself obliged, though unwillingly,
+to carry the suggested comparison thoroughly out.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span>
+
+<br />
+<h3><a name="A_II" id="A_II"></a>II. <span class="smcap">German Philosophy</span>.</h3>
+
+<p>The reader must have noticed that I never speak of German
+art, or German philosophy, but in depreciation. This, however,
+is not because I cannot feel, or would not acknowledge, the
+value and power, within certain limits, of both; but because I
+also feel that the immediate tendency of the English mind is to
+rate them too highly; and, therefore, it becomes a necessary
+task, at present, to mark what evil and weakness there are in
+them, rather than what good. I also am brought continually
+into collision with certain extravagances of the German mind,
+by my own steady pursuit of Naturalism as opposed to Idealism;
+and, therefore, I become unfortunately cognizant of the evil,
+rather than of the good; which evil, so far as I feel it, I am
+bound to declare. And it is not to the point to protest, as the
+Chevalier Bunsen and other German writers have done, against
+the expression of opinions respecting their philosophy by persons
+who have not profoundly or carefully studied it; for the
+very resolution to study any system of metaphysics profoundly,
+must be based, in any prudent man's mind, on some preconceived
+opinion of its worthiness to be studied; which opinion
+of German metaphysics the naturalistic English cannot be led to
+form. This is not to be murmured against,&mdash;it is in the simple
+necessity of things. Men who have other business on their
+hands must be content to choose what philosophy they have occasion
+for, by the sample; and when, glancing into the second
+volume of "Hippolytus," we find the Chevalier Bunsen himself
+talking of a "finite realization of the infinite" (a phrase considerably
+less rational than "a black realization of white"), and of
+a triad composed of God, Man, and Humanity<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a>
+(which is a parallel
+thing to talking of a triad composed of man, dog, and
+canineness), knowing those expressions to be pure, definite, and
+highly finished nonsense, we do not in general trouble ourselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span>
+to look any farther. Some one will perhaps answer that if one
+always judged thus by the sample,&mdash;as, for instance, if one
+judged of Turner's pictures by the head of a figure cut out of
+one of them,&mdash;very precious things might often be despised.
+Not, I think, often. If any one went to Turner, expecting to
+learn figure-drawing from him, the sample of his figure-drawing
+would accurately and justly inform him that he had come to the
+wrong master. But if he came to be taught landscape, the
+smallest fragment of Turner's work would justly exemplify his
+power. It may sometimes unluckily happen that, in such short
+trial, we strike upon an accidentally failing part of the thing to
+be tried, and then we may be unjust; but there is, nevertheless,
+in multitudes of cases, no other way of judging or acting; and
+the necessity of occasionally being unjust is a law of life,&mdash;like
+that of sometimes stumbling, or being sick. It will not do to
+walk at snail's pace all our lives for fear of stumbling, nor to
+spend years in the investigation of everything which, by specimen,
+we must condemn. He who seizes all that he plainly discerns
+to be valuable, and never is unjust but when he honestly
+cannot help it, will soon be enviable in his possessions, and venerable
+in his equity.</p>
+
+<p>Nor can I think that the risk of loss is great in the matter
+under discussion. I have often been told that any one who will
+read Kant, Strauss, and the rest of the German metaphysicians
+and divines, resolutely through, and give his whole strength to
+the study of them, will, after ten or twelve years' labor, discover
+that there is very little harm in them; and this I can well
+believe; but I believe also that the ten or twelve years may be
+better spent; and that any man who honestly wants philosophy
+not for show, but for <i>use</i>, and knowing the Proverbs of Solomon,
+can, by way of Commentary, afford to buy, in convenient
+editions, Plato, Bacon, Wordsworth, Carlyle, and Helps, will
+find that he has got as much as will be sufficient for him and his
+household during life, and of as good quality as need be.</p>
+
+<p>It is also often declared necessary to study the German controversialists,
+because the grounds of religion "must be inquired
+into." I am sorry to hear they have not been inquired into
+yet; but if it be so, there are two ways of pursuing that inquiry:
+one for scholarly men, who have leisure on their hands, by read<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span>ing
+all that they have time to read, for and against, and arming
+themselves at all points for controversy with all persons; the
+other,&mdash;a shorter and simpler way,&mdash;for busy and practical men,
+who want merely to find out how to live and die. Now for the
+learned and leisurely men I am not writing; they know what
+and how to read better than I can tell them. For simple and
+busy men, concerned much with art, which is eminently a practical
+matter, and fatigues the eyes, so as to render much reading
+inexpedient, I <i>am</i> writing; and such men I do, to the utmost of
+my power, dissuade from meddling with German books; not
+because I fear inquiry into the grounds of religion, but because
+the only inquiry which is <i>possible</i> to them must be conducted in
+a totally different way. They have been brought up as Christians,
+and doubt if they should remain Christians. They cannot
+ascertain, by investigation, if the Bible be true; but <i>if it be</i>,
+and Christ ever existed, and was God, then, certainly, the Sermon
+which He has permitted for 1800 years to stand recorded as
+first of all His own teaching in the New Testament, must be
+true. Let them take that Sermon and give it fair practical
+trial: act out every verse of it, with no quibbling or explaining
+away, except the reduction of such <i>evidently</i> metaphorical expressions
+as "cut off thy foot," "pluck the beam out of thine
+eye," to their effectively practical sense. Let them act out, or
+obey, every verse literally for a whole year, so far as they can,&mdash;a
+year being little enough time to give to an inquiry into religion;
+and if, at the end of the year, they are not satisfied, and still
+need to prosecute the inquiry, let them try the German system
+if they choose.</p>
+
+<br />
+<h3><a name="A_III" id="A_III"></a>III. <span class="smcap">Plagiarism</span>.</h3>
+
+<p>Some time after I had written the concluding chapter of this
+work, the interesting and powerful poems of Emerson were
+brought under my notice by one of the members of my class at
+the Working Men's College. There is much in some of these
+poems so like parts of the chapter in question, even in turn of
+expression, that though I do not usually care to justify myself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span>
+from the charge of plagiarism, I felt that a few words were
+necessary in this instance.</p>
+
+<p>I do not, as aforesaid, justify myself, in general, because I
+know there is internal evidence in my work of its originality, if
+people care to examine it; and if they do not, or have not skill
+enough to know genuine from borrowed work, my simple assertion
+would not convince them, especially as the charge of plagiarism
+is hardly ever made but by plagiarists, and persons of the
+unhappy class who do not believe in honesty but on evidence.
+Nevertheless, as my work is so much out of doors, and among
+pictures, that I have time to read few modern books, and am
+therefore in more danger than most people of repeating, as if it
+were new, what others have said, it may be well to note, once
+for all, that any such apparent plagiarism results in fact from
+my writings being more original than I wish them to be, from
+my having worked out my whole subject in unavoidable, but to
+myself hurtful, ignorance of the labors of others. On the other
+hand, I should be very sorry if I had <i>not</i> been continually taught
+and influenced by the writers whom I love; and am quite unable
+to say to what extent my thoughts have been guided by
+Wordsworth, Carlyle, and Helps; to whom (with Dante and
+George Herbert, in olden time) I owe more than to any other
+writers;&mdash;most of all, perhaps, to Carlyle, whom I read so constantly,
+that, without wilfully setting myself to imitate him, I
+find myself perpetually falling into his modes of expression, and
+saying many things in a "quite other," and, I hope, stronger,
+way, than I should have adopted some years ago; as also there
+are things which I hope are said more clearly and simply than
+before, owing to the influence upon me of the beautiful <i>quiet</i>
+English of Helps. It would be both foolish and wrong to
+struggle to cast off influences of this kind; for they consist
+mainly in a real and healthy help;&mdash;the master, in writing as in
+painting, showing certain methods of language which it would
+be ridiculous, and even affected, not to employ, when once
+shown; just as it would have been ridiculous in Bonifacio to refuse
+to employ Titian's way of laying on color, if he felt it the
+best, because he had not himself discovered it. There is all the
+difference in the world between this receiving of guidance, or
+allowing of influence, and wilful imitation, much more, plagia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">340</a></span>rism;
+nay, the guidance may even innocently reach into local
+tones of thought, and must do so to some extent; so that I find
+Carlyle's stronger thinking coloring mine continually; and
+should be very sorry if I did not; otherwise I should have read
+him to little purpose. But what I have of my own is still all
+there, and, I believe, better brought out, by far, than it would
+have been otherwise. Thus, if we glance over the wit and satire
+of the popular writers of the day, we shall find that the <i>manner</i>
+of it, so far as it is distinctive, is always owing to Dickens; and
+that out of his first exquisite ironies branched innumerable other
+forms of wit, varying with the disposition of the writers; original
+in the matter and substance of them, yet never to have been
+expressed as they now are, but for Dickens.</p>
+
+<p>Many people will suppose that for several ideas in the chapters
+on Landscape I was indebted to Humboldt's Kosmos, and
+Howitt's Rural Scenery. I am indebted to Mr. Howitt's book
+for much pleasure, but for no suggestion, as it was not put into
+my hands till the chapters in question were in type. I wish it
+had been; as I should have been glad to have taken farther note
+on the landscape of Theocritus, on which Mr. Howitt dwells
+with just delight. Other parts of the book will be found very
+suggestive and helpful to the reader who cares to pursue the
+subject. Of Humboldt's Kosmos I heard much talk when it
+first came out, and looked through it cursorily; but thinking it
+contained no material (connected with my subject)<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a>
+which I had
+not already possessed myself of, I have never since referred to
+the work. I may be mistaken in my estimate of it, but certainly
+owe it absolutely nothing.</p>
+
+<p>It is also often said that I borrow from Pugin. I glanced at
+Pugin's Contrasts once, in the Oxford architectural reading-room,
+during an idle forenoon. His "Remarks on Articles in
+the Rambler" were brought under my notice by some of the reviews.
+I never read a word of any other of his works, not feeling,
+from the style of his architecture, the smallest interest in
+his opinions.</p>
+
+<p>I have so often spoken, in the preceding pages, of Holman
+Hunt's picture of the Light of the World, that I may as well, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">341</a></span>
+this place, glance at the envious charge against it, of being plagiarized
+from a German print.</p>
+
+<p>It is indeed true that there was a painting of the subject
+before; and there were, of course, no paintings of the Nativity
+before Raphael's time, nor of the Last Supper before Leonardo's,
+else those masters could have laid no claim to originality.
+But what was still more singular (the verse to be illustrated
+being, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock"), the principal
+figure in the antecedent picture was knocking at a door, knocked
+with its right hand, and had its face turned to the spectator!
+Nay, it was even robed in a long robe, down to its feet. All these
+circumstances were the same in Mr. Hunt's picture; and as the
+chances evidently were a hundred to one that if he had not been
+helped to the ideas by the German artist, he would have represented
+the figure as <i>not</i> knocking at any door, as turning its
+back to the spectator, and as dressed in a short robe, the plagiarism
+was considered as demonstrated. Of course no defence is
+possible in such a case. All I can say is, that I shall be sincerely
+grateful to any unconscientious persons who will adapt a few
+more German prints in the same manner.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, touching plagiarism in general, it is to be remembered
+that all men who have sense and feeling are being continually
+helped: they are taught by every person whom they meet,
+and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest
+is he who has been oftenest aided; and, if the attainments
+of all human minds could be traced to their real sources, it would
+be found that the world had been laid most under contribution
+by the men of most original power, and that every day of their
+existence deepened their debt to their race, while it enlarged
+their gifts to it. The labor devoted to trace the origin of any
+thought, or any invention, will usually issue in the blank conclusion
+that there is nothing new under the sun; yet nothing
+that is truly great can ever be altogether borrowed; and he is
+commonly the wisest, and is always the happiest, who receives
+simply, and without envious question, whatever good is offered
+him, with thanks to its immediate giver.</p>
+
+<hr class="fn" />
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a>
+I am truly sorry to have introduced such words in an apparently irreverent
+way. But it would be a guilty reverence which prevented us from
+exposing fallacy, precisely where fallacy was most dangerous, and shrank
+from unveiling an error, just because that error existed in parlance respecting
+the most solemn subjects to which it could possibly be attached.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a>
+See the Fourth Volume.</p></div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<hr class="chap" />
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+
+<div class="transnote" style="margin: auto; max-width: 35em;">
+
+<p>Typographical changes to the original work are as follows:<br />
+<br />
+Minor punctuation (.,;'") changes have been made without annotation.<br />
+<br />
+
+pg 242 paus/pause: Matilda pause where ...<br />
+pg 277 charater/character: the character of this ...<br />
+pg 330 cloads/clouds: clouds of rage ...<br />
+<br />
+Plate 10 Added missing reference numbers (4, 5, 6).<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Modern Painters Vol. III., by John Ruskin
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern Painters Vol. III., 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: Modern Painters Vol. III.
+       Containing Part IV., of many things
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+Release Date: February 19, 2012 [EBook #38923]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN PAINTERS VOL. III. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, RSPIII and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+                        Transcriber's Notes:
+
+
+  The original spelling and minor inconsistencies in the spelling and
+  formatting have been retained. Unusual and alternative spellings have
+  been retained as they appear on the original publication. Hyphenated
+  words have been standardized.
+
+  Contractions in the stylized Latin script on page 125 have been
+  expanded and included in curly brackets {} by the transcriber:
+  "jahes" has been shown as "jah{ann}es" and "scpsi" as "sc{ri}psi".
+
+  Minor typographical changes are listed at the bottom of this text.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+                          Library Edition
+
+                         THE COMPLETE WORKS
+                                 OF
+                             JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+                           MODERN PAINTERS
+
+             VOLUME II--OF TRUTH AND THEORETIC FACULTIES
+                      VOLUME III--OF MANY THINGS
+
+
+                    NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
+                    NEW YORK             CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+                           MODERN PAINTERS.
+
+                              VOL. III.,
+
+                              CONTAINING
+
+                               PART IV.,
+
+                           OF MANY THINGS.
+
+
+
+
+                          TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+                       PART IV. OF MANY THINGS.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+  CHAPTER  I.--Of the received Opinions touching the "Grand Style"     1
+     "    II.--Of Realization                                         16
+     "   III.--Of the Real Nature of Greatness of Style               23
+     "    IV.--Of the False Ideal:--First, Religious                  44
+     "     V.--Of the False Ideal:--Secondly, Profane                 61
+     "    VI.--Of the True Ideal:--First, Purist                      70
+     "   VII.--Of the True Ideal:--Secondly, Naturalist               77
+     "  VIII.--Of the True Ideal:--Thirdly, Grotesque                 92
+     "    IX.--Of Finish                                             108
+     "     X.--Of the Use of Pictures                                124
+     "    XI.--Of the Novelty of Landscape                           144
+     "   XII.--Of the Pathetic Fallacy                               152
+     "  XIII.--Of Classical Landscape                                168
+     "   XIV.--Of Mediaeval Landscape:--First, the Fields             191
+     "    XV.--Of Mediaeval Landscape:--Secondly, the Rocks           229
+     "   XVI.--Of Modern Landscape                                   248
+     "  XVII.--The Moral of Landscape                                280
+     " XVIII.--Of the Teachers of Turner                             308
+
+
+                              APPENDIX.
+
+
+    I.--Claude's Tree-drawing                                        333
+   II.--German Philosophy                                            336
+  III.--Plagiarism                                                   338
+
+
+
+
+                     LIST OF PLATES TO VOL. III.
+
+
+                                  Drawn by            Engraved by
+  Frontispiece. Lake, Land,     _The Author_        J. C. ARMYTAGE.
+    and Cloud.
+                                                                  Facing
+   Plate                                                            page
+
+   1. True and False Griffins    _The Author_       R. P. CUFF       106
+
+   2. Drawing of Tree-bark       _Various_          J. H. LE KEUX    114
+
+   3. Strength of old Pine       _The Author_       J. H. LE KEUX    116
+
+   4. Ramification according     _Claude_           J. H. LE KEUX    117
+      to Claude
+
+   5. Good and Bad               _Turner and        J. COUSEN        118
+      Tree-drawing               Constable_
+
+   6. Foreground Leafage         _The Author_       J. C. ARMYTAGE   121
+
+   7. Botany of the Thirteenth   _Missal-Painters_  HENRY SHAW       203
+      Century
+
+   8. The Growth of Leaves       _The Author_       R. P. CUFF       204
+
+   9. Botany of the Fourteenth   _Missal-Painters_  CUFF; H. SWAN    207
+      Century
+
+  10. Geology of the Middle      _Leonardo, etc._   R. P. CUFF       238
+      Ages
+
+  11. Latest Purism              _Raphael_          J. C. ARMYTAGE   313
+
+  12. The Shores of Wharfe       _J. W. M. Turner_  THE AUTHOR       314
+
+  13. First Mountain-Naturalism  _Masaccio_         J. H. LE KEUX    315
+
+  14. The Lombard Apennine       _The Author_       THOS. LUPTON     315
+
+  15. St. George of the Seaweed  _The Author_       THOS. LUPTON     315
+
+  16. Early Naturalism           _Titian_           J. C. ARMYTAGE   316
+
+  17. Advanced Naturalism        _Tintoret_         J. C. ARMYTAGE   316
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+As this preface is nearly all about myself, no one need take the trouble
+of reading it, unless he happens to be desirous of knowing-- what I, at
+least, am bound to state,--the circumstances which have caused the long
+delay of the work, as well as the alterations which will be noticed in
+its form.
+
+The first and second volumes were written to check, as far as I
+could, the attacks upon Turner which prevented the public from
+honoring his genius, at the time when his power was greatest. The
+check was partially given, but too late; Turner was seized by
+painful illness not long after the second volume appeared; his
+works, towards the close of the year 1845, showed a conclusive
+failure of power; and I saw that nothing remained for me to write,
+but his epitaph.
+
+The critics had done their proper and appointed work; they had
+embittered, more than those who did not know Turner intimately could
+have believed possible, the closing years of his life; and had
+blinded the world in general (as it appears ordained by Fate that
+the world always _shall_ be blinded) to the presence of a great
+spirit among them, till the hour of its departure. With them, and
+their successful work, I had nothing more to do; the account of gain
+and loss, of gifts and gratitude, between Turner and his countrymen,
+was for ever closed. _He_ could only be left to his quiet death at
+Chelsea,--the sun upon his face; _they_ to dispose a length of
+funeral through Ludgate, and bury, with threefold honor, his body in
+St. Paul's, his pictures at Charing Cross, and his purposes in
+Chancery. But with respect to the illustration and preservation of
+those of his works which remained unburied, I felt that much might
+yet be done, if I could at all succeed in proving that these works
+had some nobleness in them, and were worth preservation. I pursued
+my task, therefore, as I had at first proposed, with this only
+difference in method,--that instead of writing in continued haste,
+such as I had been forced into at first by the urgency of the
+occasion, I set myself to do the work as well as I could, and to
+collect materials for the complete examination of the canons of art
+received among us.
+
+I have now given ten years of my life to the single purpose of
+enabling myself to judge rightly of art, and spent them in labor as
+earnest and continuous as men usually undertake to gain position, or
+accumulate fortune. It is true, that the public still call me an
+"amateur;" nor have I ever been able to persuade them that it was
+possible to work steadily and hard with any other motive than that
+of gaining bread, or to give up a fixed number of hours every day to
+the furtherance of an object unconnected with personal interests. I
+have, however, given up so much of life to this object; earnestly
+desiring to ascertain, and be able to teach, the truth respecting
+art; and also knowing that this truth was, by time and labor,
+definitely ascertainable.
+
+It is an idea too frequently entertained, by persons who are not much
+interested in art, that there are no laws of right or wrong concerning
+it; and that the best art is that which pleases most widely. Hence the
+constant allegation of "dogmatism" against any one who states
+unhesitatingly either preference or principle, respecting pictures.
+There are, however, laws of truth and right in painting, just as fixed
+as those of harmony in music, or of affinity in chemistry. Those laws
+are perfectly ascertainable by labor, and ascertainable no other way.
+It is as ridiculous for any one to speak positively about painting who
+has not given a great part of his life to its study, as it would be for
+a person who had never studied chemistry to give a lecture on
+affinities of elements; but it is also as ridiculous for a person to
+speak hesitatingly about laws of painting who has conscientiously given
+his time to their ascertainment, as it would be for Mr. Faraday to
+announce in a dubious manner that iron had an affinity for oxygen, and
+to put the question to the vote of his audience whether it had or not.
+Of course there are many things, in all stages of knowledge, which
+cannot be dogmatically stated; and it will be found, by any candid
+reader, either of what I have before written, or of this book, that in
+many cases, I am _not_ dogmatic. The phrase, "I think so," or, "it
+seems so to me," will be met with continually; and I pray the reader to
+believe that I use such expression always in seriousness, never as
+matter of form.
+
+It may perhaps be thought that, considering the not very elaborate
+structure of the following volumes, they might have been finished
+sooner. But it will be found, on reflection, that the ranges of
+inquiry engaged in demanded, even for their slight investigation,
+time and pains which are quite unrepresented in the result. It often
+required a week or two's hard walking to determine some geological
+problem, now dismissed in an unnoticed sentence; and it constantly
+needed examination and thought, prolonged during many days in the
+picture gallery, to form opinions which the reader may suppose to be
+dictated by caprice, and will hear only to dispute.
+
+A more serious disadvantage, resulting from the necessary breadth of
+subject, was the chance of making mistakes in minor and accessory
+points. For the labor of a critic who sincerely desires to be just,
+extends into more fields than it is possible for any single hand to
+furrow straightly. He has to take _some_ note of many physical
+sciences; of optics, geometry, geology, botany, and anatomy; he must
+acquaint himself with the works of all great artists, and with the
+temper and history of the times in which they lived; he must be a fair
+metaphysician, and a careful observer of the phenomena of natural
+scenery. It is not possible to extend the range of work thus widely,
+without running the chance of occasionally making mistakes; and if I
+carefully guarded against that chance, I should be compelled both to
+shorten my powers of usefulness in many directions, and to lose much
+time over what work I undertook. All that I can secure, therefore, is
+rightness in main points and main tendencies; for it is perfectly
+possible to protect oneself against small errors, and yet to make
+great and final error in the sum of work: on the other hand, it is
+equally possible to fall into many small errors, and yet be right in
+tendency all the while, and entirely right in the end. In this
+respect, some men may be compared to careful travellers, who neither
+stumble at stones, nor slip in sloughs, but have, from the beginning
+of their journey to its close, chosen the wrong road; and others to
+those who, however slipping or stumbling at the wayside, have yet
+their eyes fixed on the true gate and goal (stumbling, perhaps, even
+the more because they have), and will not fail of reaching them. Such
+are assuredly the safer guides: he who follows them may avoid their
+slips, and be their companion in attainment.
+
+Although, therefore, it is not possible but that, in the discussion
+of so many subjects as are necessarily introduced in the following
+pages, here and there a chance should arise of minor mistake or
+misconception, the reader need not be disturbed by the detection of
+any such. He will find always that they do not affect the matter
+mainly in hand.
+
+I refer especially in these remarks to the chapters on Classical and
+Mediaeval Landscape. It is certain, that in many respects, the views
+there stated must be inaccurate or incomplete; for how should it be
+otherwise when the subject is one whose proper discussion would
+require knowledge of the entire history of two great ages of the
+world? But I am well assured that the suggestions in those chapters
+are useful; and that even if, after farther study of the subject,
+the reader should find cause to differ with me in this or the other
+speciality, he will yet thank me for helping him to a certain length
+in the investigation, and confess, perhaps, that he could not at
+last have been right, if I had not first ventured to be wrong.
+
+And of one thing he may be certified, that any error I fall into will
+not be in an illogical deduction: I may mistake the meaning of a
+symbol, or the angle of a rock-cleavage, but not draw an inconsequent
+conclusion. I state this, because it has often been said that I am not
+logical, by persons who do not so much as know what logic means. Next
+to imagination, the power of perceiving logical relation is one of the
+rarest among men; certainly, of those with whom I have conversed, I
+have found always ten who had deep feeling, quick wit, or extended
+knowledge, for one who could set down a syllogism without a flaw; and
+for ten who could set down a syllogism, only one who could _entirely_
+understand that a square has four sides. Even as I am sending these
+sheets to press, a work is put into my hand, written to prove (I would,
+from the depth of my heart, it could prove) that there was no ground
+for what I said in the Stones of Venice respecting the logical
+probability of the continuity of evil. It seems learned, temperate,
+thoughtful, everything in feeling and aim that a book should be, and
+yet it begins with this sentence:
+
+    "The question cited in our preface, 'Why not infinite good out
+    of infinite evil?' must be taken to imply--for it else can
+    have no weight,--that in order to the production of infinite
+    good, the existence of infinite evil is indispensable."
+
+So, if I had said that there was no reason why honey should not be
+sucked out of a rock, and oil out of a flinty rock, the writer would
+have told me this sentence must be taken to imply--for it else could
+have no weight,--that in order to the production of honey, the
+existence of rocks is indispensable. No less intense and marvellous are
+the logical errors into which our best writers are continually falling,
+owing to the notion that laws of logic will help them better than
+common sense. Whereas any man who can reason at all, does it
+instinctively, and takes leaps over intermediate syllogisms by the
+score, yet never misses his footing at the end of the leap; but he who
+cannot instinctively argue, might as well, with the gout in both feet,
+try to follow a chamois hunter by the help of crutches, as to follow,
+by the help of syllogism, a person who has the right use of his reason.
+I should not, however, have thought it necessary to allude to this
+common charge against my writings, but that it happens to confirm some
+views I have long entertained, and which the reader will find glanced
+at in their proper place, respecting the necessity of a more
+_practically_ logical education for our youth. Of other various charges
+I need take no note, because they are always answered the one by the
+other. The complaint made against me to-day for being narrow and
+exclusive, is met to-morrow by indignation that I should admire schools
+whose characters cannot be reconciled; and the assertion of one critic,
+that I am always contradicting myself, is balanced by the vexation of
+another, at my ten years' obstinacies in error.
+
+I once intended the illustrations to these volumes to be more numerous
+and elaborate, but the art of photography now enables any reader to
+obtain as many memoranda of the facts of nature as he needs; and, in
+the course of my ten years' pause, I have formed plans for the
+representation of some of the works of Turner on their own scale; so
+that it would have been quite useless to spend time in reducing
+drawings to the size of this page, which were afterwards to be
+engraved of their own size.[1] I have therefore here only given
+illustrations enough to enable the reader, who has not access to the
+works of Turner, to understand the principles laid down in the text,
+and apply them to such art as may be within his reach. And I owe
+sincere thanks to the various engravers who have worked with me, for
+the zeal and care with which they have carried out the requirements in
+each case, and overcome difficulties of a nature often widely
+differing from those involved by their habitual practice. I would not
+make invidious distinction, where all have done well; but may perhaps
+be permitted to point, as examples of what I mean, to the 3rd and 6th
+Plates in this volume (the 6th being left unlettered in order not to
+injure the effect of its ground), in which Mr. Le Keux and Mr.
+Armytage have exactly facsimiled, in line engraving, drawings of mine
+made on a grey ground touched with white, and have given even the
+_loaded_ look of the body color. The power of thus imitating actual
+touches of color with pure lines will be, I believe, of great future
+importance in rendering Turner's work on a large scale. As for the
+merit or demerit of these or other drawings of my own, which I am
+obliged now for the sake of illustration often to engrave, I believe I
+could speak of it impartially, and should unreluctantly do so; but I
+leave, as most readers will think I ought, such judgment to them,
+merely begging them to remember that there are two general principles
+to be kept in mind in examining the drawings of any writer on art: the
+first, that they ought at least to show such ordinary skill in
+draughtsmanship, as to prove that the writer knows _what_ the good
+qualities of drawing _are_; the second, that they are never to be
+expected to equal, in either execution or conception, the work of
+accomplished artists,--for the simple reason, that in order to do
+_any_thing thoroughly well, the whole mind, and the whole available
+time, must be given to that single art. It is probable, for reasons
+which will be noted in the following pages, that the critical and
+executive faculties are in great part independent of each other; so
+that it is nearly as great an absurdity to require of any critic that
+he should equal in execution even the work which he condemns, as to
+require of the audience which hisses a piece of vocal music that they
+should instantly chant it in truer harmony themselves. But whether
+this be true or not (it is at least untrue to this extent, that a
+certain power of drawing is _indispensable_ to the critic of art), and
+supposing that the executive and critical powers always exist in some
+correspondent degree in the same person, still they cannot be
+cultivated to the same extent. The attention required for the
+development of a theory is necessarily withdrawn from the design of a
+drawing, and the time devoted to the realization of a form is lost to
+the solution of a problem. Choice _must_ at last be made between one
+and the other power, as the principal aim of life; and if the painter
+should find it necessary sometimes to explain one of his pictures in
+words, or the writer to illustrate his meaning with a drawing, the
+skill of the one need not be doubted because his logic is feeble, nor
+the sense of the other because his pencil is listless.
+
+As, however, it is sometimes alleged by the opponents of my
+principles, that I have never _done_ _any_thing, it is proper that the
+reader should know exactly the amount of work for which I am
+answerable in these illustrations. When an example is given from any
+of the works of Turner, it is either etched by myself from the
+original drawing, or engraved from a drawing of mine, translating
+Turner's work out of color into black and white, as for instance, the
+frontispiece to the fourth volume. When a plate is inscribed as
+"_after_" such and such a master, I have always myself made the
+drawing, in black and white, from the original picture; as, for
+instance, Plate 11, in this volume. If it has been made from a
+previously existing engraving, it is inscribed with the name of the
+first engraver at the left-hand lowest corner; as, for instance, Plate
+18, in Vol. IV. Outline etchings are either by my own hand on the
+steel, as Plate 12, here, and 20, 21, in Vol. IV.; or copies from my
+pen drawings, etched by Mr. Boys, with a fidelity for which I
+sincerely thank him; one, Plate 22, Vol. IV., is both drawn and etched
+by Mr. Boys from an old engraving. Most of the other illustrations are
+engraved from my own studies from nature. The colored Plate (7, in
+this volume) is from a drawing executed with great skill by my
+assistant, Mr. J. J. Laing, from MSS. in the British Museum; and the
+lithography of it has been kindly superintended by Mr. Henry Shaw,
+whose renderings of mediaeval ornaments stand, as far as I know, quite
+unrivalled in modern art. The two woodcuts of mediaeval design, Figs. 1
+and 3, are also from drawings by Mr. Laing, admirably cut by Miss
+Byfield. I use this word "admirably," not with reference to mere
+delicacy of execution, which can usually be had for money, but to the
+perfect fidelity of facsimile, which is in general _not_ to be had for
+money, and by which Miss Byfield has saved me all trouble with respect
+to the numerous woodcuts in the fourth volume; first, by her excellent
+renderings of various portions of Albert Durer's woodcuts; and,
+secondly, by reproducing, to their last dot or scratch, my own pen
+diagrams, drawn in general so roughly that few wood-engravers would
+have condescended to cut them with care, and yet always involving some
+points in which care was indispensable. One or two changes have been
+permitted in the arrangement of the book, which make the text in
+these volumes not altogether a symmetrical continuation of that in
+former ones. Thus, I thought it better to put the numbers of
+paragraphs always at the left-hand side of the page; and as the
+summaries, in small type, appeared to me for the most part cumbrous
+and useless, I have banished them, except where there were complicated
+divisions of subject which it seemed convenient to indicate at the
+margin. I am not sorry thus to carry out my own principle of the
+sacrifice of architectural or constructive symmetry to practical
+service. The plates are, in a somewhat unusual way, numbered
+consecutively through the two volumes, as I intend them to be also
+through the fifth. This plan saves much trouble in references.
+
+I have only to express, in conclusion, my regret that it has been
+impossible to finish the work within the limits first proposed.
+Having, of late, found my designs always requiring enlargement in
+process of execution, I will take care, in future, to set no limits
+whatsoever to any good intentions. In the present instance I trust
+the reader will pardon me, as the later efforts of our schools of
+art have necessarily introduced many new topics of discussion.
+
+And so I wish him heartily a happy New Year.
+
+Denmark Hill, Jan. 1856.
+
+  [1] I should be very grateful to the proprietors of pictures or
+      drawings by Turner, if they would send me lists of the works
+      in their possession; as I am desirous of forming a systematic
+      catalogue of all his works.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Lake, Land, and Cloud. (near Como.)]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           MODERN PAINTERS.
+
+                               PART IV.
+
+                           OF MANY THINGS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+OF THE RECEIVED OPINIONS TOUCHING THE "GRAND STYLE."
+
+
+Sec. 1. In taking up the clue of an inquiry, now intermitted for nearly
+ten years, it may be well to do as a traveller would, who had to
+recommence an interrupted journey in a guideless country; and,
+ascending, as it were, some little hill beside our road, note how
+far we have already advanced, and what pleasantest ways we may
+choose for farther progress.
+
+I endeavored, in the beginning of the first volume, to divide the
+sources of pleasure open to us in Art into certain groups, which
+might conveniently be studied in succession. After some preliminary
+discussion, it was concluded (Part I. Chap. III. Sec. 86), that these
+groups were, in the main, three; consisting, first, of the pleasures
+taken in perceiving simple resemblance to Nature (Ideas of Truth);
+secondly, of the pleasures taken in the beauty of the things chosen
+to be painted (Ideas of Beauty); and, lastly, of pleasures taken in
+the meanings and relations of these things (Ideas of Relation).
+
+The first volume, treating of the ideas of Truth, was chiefly occupied
+with an inquiry into the various success with which different artists
+had represented the facts of Nature,--an inquiry necessarily conducted
+very imperfectly, owing to the want of pictorial illustration.
+
+The second volume nearly opened the inquiry into the nature of ideas
+of Beauty and Relation, by analysing (as far as I was able to do so)
+the two faculties of the human mind which mainly seized such ideas;
+namely, the contemplative and imaginative faculties.
+
+It remains for us to examine the various success of artists, especially
+of the great landscape-painter whose works have been throughout our
+principal subject, in addressing these faculties of the human mind, and
+to consider who among them has conveyed the noblest ideas of beauty,
+and touched the deepest sources of thought.
+
+Sec. 2. I do not intend, however, now to pursue the inquiry in a method
+so laboriously systematic; for the subject may, it seems to me, be
+more usefully treated by pursuing the different questions which rise
+out of it just as they occur to us, without too great scrupulousness
+in marking connections, or insisting on sequences. Much time is
+wasted by human beings, in general, on establishment of systems; and
+it often takes more labor to master the intricacies of an artificial
+connection, than to remember the separate facts which are so
+carefully connected. I suspect that system-makers, in general, are
+not of much more use, each in his own domain, than, in that of
+Pomona, the old women who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more
+convenient portableness of the same. To cultivate well, and choose
+well, your cherries, is of some importance; but if they can be had
+in their own wild way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, it is
+a better connection for them than any other; and, if they cannot,
+then, so that they be not bruised, it makes to a boy of a practical
+disposition, not much difference whether he gets them by handfuls,
+or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick. I purpose, therefore,
+henceforward to trouble myself little with sticks or twine, but to
+arrange my chapters with a view to convenient reference, rather than
+to any careful division of subjects, and to follow out, in any
+by-ways that may open, on right hand or left, whatever question it
+seems useful at any moment to settle.
+
+Sec. 3. And, in the outset, I find myself met by one which I ought to
+have touched upon before--one of especial interest in the present
+state of the Arts. I have said that the art is greatest which
+includes the greatest ideas; but I have not endeavored to define the
+nature of this greatness in the ideas themselves. We speak of great
+truths, of great beauties, great thoughts. What is it which makes
+one truth greater than another, one thought greater than another?
+This question is, I repeat, of peculiar importance at the present
+time; for, during a period now of some hundred and fifty years, all
+writers on Art who have pretended to eminence, have insisted much on
+a supposed distinction between what they call the Great and the Low
+Schools; using the terms "High Art," "Great or Ideal Style," and
+other such, as descriptive of a certain noble manner of painting,
+which it was desirable that all students of Art should be early led
+to reverence and adopt; and characterising as "vulgar," or "low," or
+"realist," another manner of painting and conceiving, which it was
+equally necessary that all students should be taught to avoid.
+
+But lately this established teaching, never very intelligible, has
+been gravely called in question. The advocates and self-supposed
+practisers of "High Art" are beginning to be looked upon with doubt,
+and their peculiar phraseology to be treated with even a certain
+degree of ridicule. And other forms of Art are partly developed
+among us, which do not pretend to be high, but rather to be strong,
+healthy, and humble. This matter of "highness" in Art, therefore
+deserves our most careful consideration. Has it been, or is it, a
+true highness, a true princeliness, or only a show of it, consisting
+in courtly manners and robes of state? Is it rocky height or cloudy
+height, adamant or vapor, on which the sun of praise so long has
+risen and set? It will be well at once to consider this.
+
+Sec. 4. And first, let us get, as quickly as may be, at the exact
+meaning with which the advocates of "High Art" use that somewhat
+obscure and figurative term.
+
+I do not know that the principles in question are anywhere more
+distinctly expressed than in two papers in the Idler, written by Sir
+Joshua Reynolds, of course under the immediate sanction of Johnson;
+and which may thus be considered as the utterance of the views then
+held upon the subject by the artists of chief skill, and critics of
+most sense, arranged in a form so brief and clear, as to admit of
+their being brought before the public for a morning's entertainment.
+I cannot, therefore, it seems to me, do better than quote these two
+letters, or at least the important parts of them, examining the exact
+meaning of each passage as it occurs. There are, in all, in the Idler
+three letters on painting, Nos. 76, 79, and 82; of these, the first is
+directed only against the impertinences of pretended connoisseurs, and
+is as notable for its faithfulness, as for its wit, in the description
+of the several modes of criticism in an artificial and ignorant state
+of society; it is only, therefore, in the two last papers that we find
+the expression of the doctrines which it is our business to examine.
+
+No. 79 (Saturday, Oct. 20th, 1759) begins, after a short preamble,
+with the following passage:--
+
+    "Amongst the painters, and the writers on painting, there is one
+    maxim universally admitted and continually inculcated. Imitate
+    nature is the invariable rule; but I know none who have
+    explained in what manner this rule is to be understood; the
+    sequence of which is, that every one takes it in the most
+    obvious sense, that objects are represented naturally when they
+    have such relief that they seem real. It may appear strange,
+    perhaps, to hear this sense of the rule disputed; but it must be
+    considered, that, if the excellency of a painter consisted only
+    in this kind of imitation, Painting must lose its rank, and be
+    no longer considered as a liberal art, and sister to Poetry,
+    this imitation being nearly mechanical, in which the slowest
+    intellect is always sure to succeed best; for the painter of
+    genius cannot stoop to drudgery, in which the understanding has
+    no part; and what pretence has the art to claim kindred with
+    poetry but by its power over the imagination? To this power the
+    painter of genius directs him; in this sense he studies nature,
+    and often arrives at his end, even by being unnatural in the
+    confined sense of the word."
+
+    "The grand style of painting requires this minute attention to be
+    carefully avoided, and must be kept as separate from it as the
+    style of poetry from that of history. (Poetical ornaments destroy
+    that air of truth and plainness which ought to characterise
+    history; but the very being of poetry consists in departing from
+    this plain narrative, and adopting every ornament that will warm
+    the imagination.[2]) To desire to see the excellencies of each
+    style united--to mingle the Dutch with the Italian school, is to
+    join contrarieties, which cannot subsist together, and which
+    destroy the efficacy of each other."
+
+Sec. 5. We find, first, from this interesting passage, that the writer
+considers the Dutch and Italian masters as severally representative
+of the low and high schools; next, that he considers the Dutch
+painters as excelling in a mechanical imitation, "in which the
+slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best;" and, thirdly,
+that he considers the Italian painters as excelling in a style which
+corresponds to that of imaginative poetry in literature, and which
+has an exclusive right to be called the grand style.
+
+I wish that it were in my power entirely to concur with the writer,
+and to enforce this opinion thus distinctly stated. I have never
+been a zealous partisan of the Dutch School, and should rejoice in
+claiming Reynolds's authority for the assertion, that their manner
+was one "in which the slowest intellect was always sure to succeed
+best." But before his authority can be so claimed, we must observe
+exactly the meaning of the assertion itself, and separate it from
+the company of some others not perhaps so admissible. First, I say,
+we must observe Reynolds's exact meaning, for (though the assertion
+may at first appear singular) a man who uses accurate language is
+always more liable to misinterpretation than one who is careless in
+his expressions. We may assume that the latter means very nearly
+what we at first suppose him to mean, for words which have been
+uttered without thought may be received without examination. But
+when a writer or speaker may be fairly supposed to have considered
+his expressions carefully, and, after having revolved a number of
+terms in his mind, to have chosen the one which _exactly_ means the
+thing he intends to say, we may be assured that what costs him time
+to select, will require from us time to understand, and that we
+shall do him wrong, unless we pause to reflect how the word which he
+has actually employed differs from other words which it seems he
+_might_ have employed. It thus constantly happens that persons
+themselves unaccustomed to think clearly, or speak correctly,
+misunderstand a logical and careful writer, and are actually in more
+danger of being misled by language which is measured and precise,
+than by that which is loose and inaccurate.
+
+Sec. 6. Now, in the instance before us, a person not accustomed to good
+writing might very rashly conclude, that when Reynolds spoke of the
+Dutch School as one "in which the slowest intellect was sure to succeed
+best," he meant to say that every successful Dutch painter was a fool.
+We have no right to take his assertion in that sense. He says, the
+_slowest_ intellect. We have no right to assume that he meant the
+_weakest_. For it is true, that in order to succeed in the Dutch style,
+a man has need of qualities of mind eminently deliberate and sustained.
+He must be possessed of patience rather than of power; and must feel no
+weariness in contemplating the expression of a single thought for
+several months together. As opposed to the changeful energies of the
+imagination, these mental characters may be properly spoken of as under
+the general term--slowness of intellect. But it by no means follows
+that they are necessarily those of weak or foolish men.
+
+We observe however, farther, that the imitation which Reynolds
+supposes to be characteristic of the Dutch School is that which
+gives to objects such relief that they seem real, and that he then
+speaks of this art of realistic imitation as corresponding to
+_history_ in literature.
+
+Sec. 7. Reynolds, therefore, seems to class these dull works of the
+Dutch School under a general head, to which they are not commonly
+referred--that of _Historical_ painting; while he speaks of the
+works of the Italian School not as historical, but as _poetical_
+painting. His next sentence will farther manifest his meaning.
+
+    "The Italian attends only to the invariable, the great and
+    general ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal
+    nature; the Dutch, on the contrary, to literal truth and
+    minute exactness in the detail, as I may say, of nature
+    modified by accident. The attention to these petty
+    peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness so much
+    admired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a
+    beauty, is certainly of a lower order, which ought to give
+    place to a beauty of a superior kind, since one cannot be
+    obtained but by departing from the other.
+
+    "If my opinion was asked concerning the works of Michael
+    Angelo, whether they would receive any advantage from
+    possessing this mechanical merit, I should not scruple to say,
+    they would not only receive no advantage, but would lose, in a
+    great measure, the effect which they now have on every mind
+    susceptible of great and noble ideas. His works may be said to
+    be all genius and soul; and why should they be loaded with
+    heavy matter, which can only counteract his purpose by
+    retarding the progress of the imagination?"
+
+Examining carefully this and the preceding passage, we find the
+author's unmistakable meaning to be, that Dutch painting is _history_;
+attending to literal truth and "minute exactness in the details of
+nature modified by accident." That Italian painting is _poetry_,
+attending only to the invariable; and that works which attend only to
+the invariable are full of genius and soul; but that literal truth and
+exact detail are "heavy matter which retards the progress of the
+imagination."
+
+Sec. 8. This being then indisputably what Reynolds means to tell us,
+let us think a little whether he is in all respects right. And
+first, as he compares his two kinds of painting to history and
+poetry, let us see how poetry and history themselves differ, in
+their use of _variable_ and _invariable_ details. I am writing at a
+window which commands a view of the head of the Lake of Geneva; and
+as I look up from my paper, to consider this point, I see, beyond
+it, a blue breadth of softly moving water, and the outline of the
+mountains above Chillon, bathed in morning mist. The first verses
+which naturally come into my mind are--
+
+      "A thousand feet in depth below
+      The massy waters meet and flow;
+      So far the fathom line was sent
+      From Chillon's snow-white battlement."
+
+Let us see in what manner this poetical statement is distinguished
+from a historical one.
+
+It is distinguished from a truly historical statement, first, in being
+simply false. The water under the castle of Chillon is not a thousand
+feet deep, nor anything like it.[3] Herein, certainly, these lines
+fulfil Reynolds's first requirement in poetry, "that it should be
+inattentive to literal truth and minute exactness in detail." In
+order, however, to make our comparison more closely in other points,
+let us assume that what is stated is indeed a fact, and that it was to
+be recorded, first historically, and then poetically.
+
+Historically stating it, then, we should say: "The lake was sounded
+from the walls of the castle of Chillon, and found to be a thousand
+feet deep."
+
+Now, if Reynolds be right in his idea of the difference between
+history and poetry, we shall find that Byron leaves out of this
+statement certain _un_necessary details, and retains only the
+invariable,--that is to say, the points which the Lake of Geneva and
+castle of Chillon have in common with all other lakes and castles.
+
+Let us hear, therefore.
+
+      "A thousand feet in depth below."
+
+"Below?" Here is, at all events, a word added (instead of anything
+being taken away); invariable, certainly in the case of lakes, but
+not absolutely necessary.
+
+      "The massy waters meet and flow."
+
+"Massy!" why massy? Because deep water is heavy. The word is a good
+word, but it is assuredly an added detail, and expresses a character,
+not which the Lake of Geneva has in common with all other lakes, but
+which it has in distinction from those which are narrow or shallow.
+
+Sec. 9. "Meet and flow." Why meet and flow? Partly to make up a rhyme;
+partly to tell us that the waters are forceful as well as massy, and
+changeful as well as deep. Observe, a farther addition of details,
+and of details more or less peculiar to the spot, or, according to
+Reynolds's definition, of "heavy matter, retarding the progress of
+the imagination."
+
+      "So far the fathom line was sent."
+
+Why fathom line? All lines for sounding are not fathom lines. If the
+lake was ever sounded from Chillon, it was probably sounded in
+metres, not fathoms. This is an addition of another particular
+detail, in which the only compliance with Reynolds's requirement is,
+that there is some chance of its being an inaccurate one.
+
+      "From Chillon's snow-white battlement."
+
+Why snow-white? Because castle battlements are not usually
+snow-white. This is another added detail, and a detail quite
+peculiar to Chillon, and therefore exactly the most striking word in
+the whole passage.
+
+"Battlement!" why battlement? Because all walls have not
+battlements, and the addition of the term marks the castle to be not
+merely a prison, but a fortress.
+
+This is a curious result. Instead of finding, as we expected, the
+poetry distinguished from the history by the omission of details, we
+find it consist entirely in the _addition_ of details; and instead
+of being characterized by regard only of the invariable, we find its
+whole power to consist in the clear expression of what is singular
+and particular!
+
+Sec. 10. The reader may pursue the investigation for himself in other
+instances. He will find in every case that a poetical is distinguished
+from a merely historical statement, not by being more vague, but more
+specific, and it might, therefore, at first appear that our author's
+comparison should be simply reversed, and that the Dutch School should
+be called poetical, and the Italian historical. But the term poetical
+does not appear very applicable to the generality of Dutch painting;
+and a little reflection will show us, that if the Italians represent
+only the invariable, they cannot be properly compared even to
+historians. For that which is incapable of change has no history, and
+records which state only the invariable need not be written, and could
+not be read.
+
+Sec. 11. It is evident, therefore, that our author has entangled himself
+in some grave fallacy, by introducing this idea of invariableness as
+forming a distinction between poetical and historical art. What the
+fallacy is, we shall discover as we proceed; but as an invading army
+should not leave an untaken fortress in its rear, we must not go on
+with our inquiry into the views of Reynolds until we have settled
+satisfactorily the question already suggested to us, in what the
+essence of poetical treatment really consists. For though, as we have
+seen, it certainly involves the addition of specific details, it
+cannot be simply that addition which turns the history into poetry.
+For it is perfectly possible to add any number of details to a
+historical statement, and to make it more prosaic with every added
+word. As, for instance, "The lake was sounded out of a flat-bottomed
+boat, near the crab tree at the corner of the kitchen-garden, and was
+found to be a thousand feet nine inches deep, with a muddy bottom." It
+thus appears that it is not the multiplication of details which
+constitutes poetry; nor their subtraction which constitutes history;
+but that there must be something either in the nature of the details
+themselves, or the method of using them, which invests them with
+poetical power or historical propriety.
+
+Sec. 12. It seems to me, and may seem to the reader, strange that we
+should need to ask the question, "What is poetry?" Here is a word we
+have been using all our lives, and, I suppose, with a very distinct
+idea attached to it; and when I am now called upon to give a
+definition of this idea, I find myself at a pause. What is more
+singular, I do not at present recollect hearing the question often
+asked, though surely it is a very natural one; and I never recollect
+hearing it answered, or even attempted to be answered. In general,
+people shelter themselves under metaphors, and while we hear poetry
+described as an utterance of the soul, an effusion of Divinity, or
+voice of nature, or in other terms equally elevated and obscure, we
+never attain anything like a definite explanation of the character
+which actually distinguishes it from prose.
+
+Sec. 13. I come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion, that poetry
+is "the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble
+emotions." I mean, by the noble emotions, those four principal sacred
+passions--Love, Veneration, Admiration, and Joy (this latter
+especially, if unselfish); and their opposites--Hatred, Indignation (or
+Scorn), Horror, and Grief,--this last, when unselfish, becoming
+Compassion. These passions in their various combinations constitute
+what is called "poetical feeling," when they are felt on noble grounds,
+that is, on great and true grounds. Indignation, for instance, is a
+poetical feeling, if excited by serious injury; but it is not a
+poetical feeling if entertained on being cheated out of a small sum of
+money. It is very possible the manner of the cheat may have been such
+as to justify considerable indignation; but the feeling is nevertheless
+not poetical unless the grounds of it be large as well as just. In like
+manner, energetic admiration may be excited in certain minds by a
+display of fireworks, or a street of handsome shops; but the feeling is
+not poetical, because the grounds of it are false, and therefore
+ignoble. There is in reality nothing to deserve admiration either in
+the firing of packets of gunpowder, or in the display of the stocks of
+ware-houses. But admiration excited by the budding of a flower is a
+poetical feeling, because it is impossible that this manifestation of
+spiritual power and vital beauty can ever be enough admired.
+
+Sec. 14. Farther, it is necessary to the existence of poetry that the
+grounds of these feelings should be _furnished by the imagination_.
+Poetical feeling, that is to say, mere noble emotion, is not poetry.
+It is happily inherent in all human nature deserving the name, and
+is found often to be purest in the least sophisticated. But the
+power of assembling, by the _help of the imagination_, such images
+as will excite these feelings, is the power of the poet or literally
+of the "Maker."[4]
+
+Now this power of exciting the emotions depends of course on the
+richness of the imagination, and on its choice of those images which,
+in combination, will be most effective, or, for the particular work to
+be done, most fit. And it is altogether impossible for a writer not
+endowed with invention to conceive what tools a true poet will make
+use of, or in what way he will apply them, or what unexpected results
+he will bring out by them; so that it is vain to say that the details
+of poetry ought to possess, or ever do possess, any _definite_
+character. Generally speaking, poetry runs into finer and more
+delicate details than prose; but the details are not poetical because
+they are more delicate, but because they are employed so as to bring
+out an affecting result. For instance, no one but a true poet would
+have thought of exciting our pity for a bereaved father by describing
+his way of locking the door of his house:
+
+      "Perhaps to himself, at that moment he said,
+      The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead;
+      But of this in my ears not a word did he speak,
+      And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek."
+
+In like manner, in painting, it is altogether impossible to say
+beforehand what details a great painter may make poetical by his use
+of them to excite noble emotions: and we shall, therefore, find
+presently that a painting is to be classed in the great or inferior
+schools, not according to the kind of details which it represents,
+but according to the uses for which it employs them.
+
+Sec. 15. It is only farther to be noticed, that infinite confusion has
+been introduced into this subject by the careless and illogical
+custom of opposing painting to poetry, instead of regarding poetry
+as consisting in a noble use, whether of colors or words. Painting
+is properly to be opposed to _speaking_ or _writing_, but not to
+_poetry_. Both painting and speaking are methods of expression.
+Poetry is the employment of either for the noblest purposes.
+
+Sec. 16. This question being thus far determined, we may proceed with
+our paper in the Idler.
+
+    "It is very difficult to determine the exact degree of
+    enthusiasm that the arts of painting and poetry may admit.
+    There may, perhaps, be too great indulgence as well as too
+    great a restraint of imagination; if the one produces
+    incoherent monsters, the other produces what is full as bad,
+    lifeless insipidity. An intimate knowledge of the passions,
+    and good sense, but not common sense, must at last determine
+    its limits. It has been thought, and I believe with reason,
+    that Michael Angelo sometimes transgressed those limits; and,
+    I think, I have seen figures of him of which it was very
+    difficult to determine whether they were in the highest degree
+    sublime or extremely ridiculous. Such faults may be said to be
+    the ebullitions of genius; but at least he had this merit,
+    that he never was insipid, and whatever passion his works may
+    excite, they will always escape contempt.
+
+    "What I have had under consideration is the sublimest style,
+    particularly that of Michael Angelo, the Homer of painting.
+    Other kinds may admit of this naturalness, which of the lowest
+    kind is the chief merit; but in painting, as in poetry, the
+    highest style has the least of common nature."
+
+From this passage we gather three important indications of the
+supposed nature of the Great Style. That it is the work of men in a
+state of enthusiasm. That it is like the writing of Homer; and that
+it has as little as possible of "common nature" in it.
+
+Sec. 17. First, it is produced by men in a state of enthusiasm. That
+is, by men who feel _strongly_ and _nobly_; for we do not call a
+strong feeling of envy, jealousy, or ambition, enthusiasm. That is,
+therefore, by men who feel poetically. This much we may admit, I
+think, with perfect safety. Great art is produced by men who feel
+acutely and nobly; and it is in some sort an expression of this
+personal feeling. We can easily conceive that there may be a
+sufficiently marked distinction between such art, and that which is
+produced by men who do not feel at all, but who reproduce, though
+ever so accurately, yet coldly, like human mirrors, the scenes which
+pass before their eyes.
+
+Sec. 18. Secondly, Great Art is like the writing of Homer, and this
+chiefly because it has little of "common nature" in it. We are not
+clearly informed what is meant by common nature in this passage. Homer
+seems to describe a great deal of what is common;--cookery, for
+instance, very carefully in all its processes. I suppose the passage
+in the Iliad which, on the whole, has excited most admiration, is that
+which describes a wife's sorrow at parting from her husband, and a
+child's fright at its father's helmet; and I hope, at least, the
+former feeling may be considered "common nature." But the true
+greatness of Homer's style is, doubtless, held by our author to
+consist in his imaginations of things not only uncommon but impossible
+(such as spirits in brazen armor, or monsters with heads of men and
+bodies of beasts), and in his occasional delineations of the human
+character and form in their utmost, or heroic, strength and beauty. We
+gather then on the whole, that a painter in the Great Style must be
+enthusiastic, or full of emotion, and must paint the human form in its
+utmost strength and beauty, and perhaps certain impossible forms
+besides, liable by persons not in an equally enthusiastic state of
+mind to be looked upon as in some degree absurd. This I presume to be
+Reynolds's meaning, and to be all that he intends us to gather from
+his comparison of the Great Style with the writings of Homer. But if
+that comparison be a just one in all respects, surely two other
+corollaries ought to be drawn from it, namely,--first, that these
+Heroic or Impossible images are to be mingled with others very
+unheroic and very possible; and, secondly, that in the representation
+of the Heroic or Impossible forms, the greatest care must be taken in
+_finishing the details_, so that a painter must not be satisfied with
+painting well the countenance and the body of his hero, but ought to
+spend the greatest part of his time (as Homer the greatest number of
+verses) in elaborating the sculptured pattern on his shield.
+
+Sec. 19. Let us, however, proceed with our paper.
+
+    "One may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm to the
+    modern painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the
+    present age. The Italians seem to have been continually
+    declining in this respect, from the time of Michael Angelo to
+    that of Carlo Maratti, and from thence to the very bathos of
+    insipidity to which they are now sunk, so that there is no
+    need of remarking, that where I mentioned the Italian painters
+    in opposition to the Dutch, I mean not the moderns, but the
+    heads of the old Roman and Bolognian schools; nor did I mean
+    to include, in my idea of an Italian painter, the Venetian
+    school, _which may be said to be the Dutch part of the Italian
+    genius_. I have only to add a word of advice to the painters,
+    that, however excellent they may be in painting naturally,
+    they would not flatter themselves very much upon it; and to
+    the connoisseurs, that when they see a cat or a fiddle painted
+    so finely, that, as the phrase is, it looks as if you could
+    take it up, they would not for that reason immediately compare
+    the painter to Raffaelle and Michael Angelo."
+
+In this passage there are four points chiefly to be remarked. The
+first, that in the year 1759, the Italian painters were, in our
+author's opinion, sunk in the very bathos of insipidity. The second,
+that the Venetian painters, i.e. Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese,
+are, in our author's opinion, to be classed with the Dutch; that is
+to say, are painters in a style "in which the slowest intellect is
+always sure to succeed best." Thirdly, that painting naturally is
+not a difficult thing, nor one on which a painter should pride
+himself. And, finally, that connoisseurs, seeing a cat or a fiddle
+successfully painted, ought not therefore immediately to compare the
+painter to Raphael or Michael Angelo.
+
+Yet Raphael painted fiddles very carefully in the foreground of his
+St. Cecilia,--so carefully, that they quite look as if they might be
+taken up. So carefully, that I never yet looked at the picture
+without wishing that somebody _would_ take them up, and out of the
+way. And I am under a very strong persuasion that Raphael did not
+think painting "naturally" an easy thing. It will be well to examine
+into this point a little; and for the present, with the reader's
+permission, we will pass over the first two statements in this
+passage (touching the character of Italian art in 1759, and of
+Venetian art in general), and immediately examine some of the
+evidence existing as to the real dignity of "natural" painting--that
+is to say, of painting carried to the point at which it reaches a
+deceptive appearance of reality.
+
+  [2] I have put this sentence in a parenthesis, because it is
+      inconsistent with the rest of the statement, and with the
+      general teaching of the paper; since that which "attends only
+      to the invariable" cannot certainly adopt "every ornament that
+      will warm the imagination."
+
+  [3] "MM. Mallet et Pictet, se trouvant sur le lac aupres du
+      chateau de Chillon, le 6 Aout, 1774, plongerent a la
+      profondeur de 312 pieds de un thermometre," &c.--SAUSSURE,
+      _Voyages dans les Alpes_, chap. ii. Sec. 33. It appears from the
+      next paragraph, that the thermometer was "au fond du lac."
+
+  [4] Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the "Affliction of
+      Margaret:"
+
+          "I look for ghosts, but none will force
+            Their way to me. 'Tis falsely said
+          That ever there was intercourse
+            Between the living and the dead;
+          For, surely then, I should have sight
+          Of him I wait for, day and night,
+          With love and longing infinite."
+
+      This we call Poetry, because it is invented _or made_ by the
+      writer, entering into the mind of a supposed person. Next,
+      take an instance of the actual feeling truly experienced and
+      simply expressed by a real person.
+
+      "Nothing surprised me more than a woman of Argentiere, whose
+      cottage I went into to ask for milk, as I came down from the
+      glacier of Argentiere, in the month of March, 1764. An epidemic
+      dysentery had prevailed in the village, and, a few months
+      before, had taken away from her, her father, her husband, and
+      her brothers, so that she was left alone, with three children in
+      the cradle. Her face had something noble in it, and its
+      expression bore the seal of a calm and profound sorrow. After
+      having given me milk, she asked me whence I came, and what I
+      came there to do, so early in the year. When she knew that I was
+      of Geneva, she said to me, 'she could not believe that all
+      Protestants were lost souls; that there were many honest people
+      among us, and that God was too good and too great to condemn all
+      without distinction.' Then, after a moment of reflection, she
+      added, in shaking her head, 'But, that which is very strange, is
+      that of so many who have gone away, none have ever returned. I,'
+      she added, with an expression of grief, 'who have so mourned my
+      husband and my brothers, who have never ceased to think of them,
+      who every night conjure them with beseechings to tell me where
+      they are, and in what state they are! Ah, surely, if they lived
+      anywhere, they would not leave me thus! But, perhaps,' she
+      added, 'I am not worthy of this kindness, perhaps the pure and
+      innocent spirits of these children,' and she looked at the
+      cradle, 'may have their presence, and the joy which is denied to
+      _me_.'"--SAUSSURE, _Voyages dans les Alpes_, chap. xxiv.
+
+      This we do not call Poetry, merely because it is not invented,
+      but the true utterance of a real person.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+OF REALIZATION.
+
+
+Sec. 1. In the outset of this inquiry, the reader must thoroughly
+understand that we are not now considering _what_ is to be painted,
+but _how far_ it is to be painted. Not whether Raphael does right in
+representing angels playing upon violins, or whether Veronese does
+right in allowing cats and monkeys to join the company of kings: but
+whether, supposing the subjects rightly chosen, they ought on the
+canvas to look like real angels with real violins, and substantial
+cats looking at veritable kings; or only like imaginary angels with
+soundless violins, ideal cats, and unsubstantial kings.
+
+Now, from the first moment when painting began to be a subject of
+literary inquiry and general criticism, I cannot remember any
+writer, not professedly artistical, who has not, more or less, in
+one part of his book or another, countenanced the idea that the
+great end of art is to produce a deceptive resemblance of reality.
+It may be, indeed, that we shall find the writers, through many
+pages, explaining principles of ideal beauty, and professing great
+delight in the evidences of imagination. But whenever a picture is
+to be definitely described,--whenever the writer desires to convey
+to others some impression of an extraordinary excellence, all praise
+is wound up with some such statements as these: "It was so
+exquisitely painted that you expected the figures to move and speak;
+you approached the flowers to enjoy their smell, and stretched your
+hand towards the fruit which had fallen from the branches. You
+shrunk back lest the sword of the warrior should indeed descend, and
+turned away your head that you might not witness the agonies of the
+expiring martyr!"
+
+Sec. 2. In a large number of instances, language such as this will be
+found to be merely a clumsy effort to convey to others a sense of the
+admiration, of which the writer does not understand the real cause in
+himself. A person is attracted to a picture by the beauty of its color,
+interested by the liveliness of its story, and touched by certain
+countenances or details which remind him of friends whom he loved, for
+scenes in which he delighted. He naturally supposes that what gives him
+so much pleasure must be a notable example of the painter's skill; but
+he is ashamed to confess, or perhaps does not know, that he is so much
+a child as to be fond of bright colors and amusing incidents; and he is
+quite unconscious of the associations which have so secret and
+inevitable a power over his heart. He casts about for the cause of his
+delight, and can discover no other than that he thought the picture
+like reality.
+
+Sec. 3. In another, perhaps a still larger number of cases, such
+language will be found to be that of simple ignorance--the ignorance
+of persons whose position in life compels them to speak of art,
+without having any real enjoyment of it. It is inexcusably required
+from people of the world, that they should see merit in Claudes and
+Titians; and the only merit which many persons can either see or
+conceive in them is, that they must be "like nature."
+
+Sec. 4. In other cases, the deceptive power of the art is really felt
+to be a source of interest and amusement. This is the case with a
+large number of the collectors of Dutch pictures. They enjoy seeing
+what is flat made to look round, exactly as a child enjoys a trick
+of legerdemain; they rejoice in flies which the spectator vainly
+attempts to brush away, and in dew which he endeavors to dry by
+putting the picture in the sun. They take it for the greatest
+compliment to their treasures that they should be mistaken for
+windows; and think the parting of Abraham and Hagar adequately
+represented, if Hagar seems to be really crying.
+
+It is against critics and connoisseurs of this latter stamp (of
+whom, in the year 1759, the juries of art were for the most part
+composed) that the essay of Reynolds, which we have been examining,
+was justly directed. But Reynolds had not sufficiently considered
+that neither the men of this class, nor of the two other classes
+above described, constitute the entire body of those who praise Art
+for its realization; and that the holding of this apparently
+shallow and vulgar opinion cannot, in all cases, be attributed to
+the want either of penetration, sincerity, or sense. The collectors
+of Gerard Dows and Hobbimas may be passed by with a smile; and the
+affectations of Walpole and simplicities of Vasari dismissed with
+contempt or with compassion. But very different men from these have
+held precisely the same language; and, one amongst the rest, whose
+authority is absolutely, and in all points, overwhelming.
+
+Sec. 5. There was probably never a period in which the influence of art
+over the minds of men seemed to depend less on its merely _imitative_
+power, than the close of the thirteenth century. No painting or
+sculpture at that time reached more than a rude resemblance of reality.
+Its despised perspective, imperfect chiaroscuro, and unrestrained
+flights of fantastic imagination, separated the artist's work from
+nature by an interval which there was no attempt to disguise, and
+little to diminish. And yet, at this very period, the greatest poet of
+that, or perhaps of any other age, and the attached friend of its
+greatest painter, who must over and over again have held full and free
+conversation with him respecting the objects of his art, speaks in the
+following terms of painting, supposed to be carried to its highest
+perfection:--
+
+      "Qual di pennel fu maestro, e di stile
+        Che ritraesse l' ombre, e i tratti, ch' ivi
+        Mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile.
+      Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi:
+        Non vide me' di me, chi vide il vero,
+        Quant' io calcai, fin che chinato givi."
+                                 DANTE, _Purgatorio_, canto xii. 1. 64
+
+      'What master of the pencil, or the style,
+      Had traced the shades and lines that might have made
+      The subtlest workman wonder? _Dead, the dead,
+      The living seemed alive; with clearer view
+      His eye beheld not, who beheld the truth._
+      Than mine what I did tread on, while I went,
+      Low bending.'                            CAREY.
+
+Dante has here clearly no other idea of the highest art than that it
+should bring back, as in a mirror or vision, the aspect of things
+passed or absent. The scenes of which he speaks are, on the pavement,
+for ever represented by angelic power, so that the souls which traverse
+this circle of the rock may see them, as if the years of the world had
+been rolled back, and they again stood beside the actors in the moment
+of action. Nor do I think that Dante's authority is absolutely
+necessary to compel us to admit that such art as this _might_ indeed be
+the highest possible. Whatever delight we may have been in the habit of
+taking in pictures, if it were but truly offered to us, to remove at
+our will the canvas from the frame, and in lieu of it to behold, fixed
+for ever, the image of some of those mighty scenes which it has been
+our way to make mere themes for the artist's fancy; if, for instance,
+we could again behold the Magdalene receiving her pardon at Christ's
+feet, or the disciples sitting with Him at the table of Emmaus; and
+this not feebly nor fancifully, but as if some silver mirror, that had
+leaned against the wall of the chamber, had been miraculously commanded
+to retain for ever the colors that had flashed upon it for an
+instant,--would we not part with our picture--Titian's or Veronese's
+though it might be?
+
+Sec. 6. Yes, the reader answers, in the instance of such scenes as
+these, but not if the scene represented were uninteresting. Not,
+indeed, if it were utterly vulgar or painful; but we are not yet
+certain that the art which represents what is vulgar or painful is
+itself of much value; and with respect to the art whose aim is
+beauty, even of an inferior order, it seems that Dante's idea of its
+perfection has still much evidence in its favor. For among persons
+of native good sense, and courage enough to speak their minds, we
+shall often find a considerable degree of doubt as to the use of
+art, in consequence of their habitual comparison of it with reality.
+"What is the use, to me, of the painted landscape?" they will ask:
+"I see more beautiful and perfect landscapes every day of my life in
+my forenoon walk." "What is the use, to me, of the painted effigy of
+hero or beauty? I can see a stamp of higher heroism, and light of
+purer beauty, on the faces around me, utterly inexpressible by the
+highest human skill." Now, it is evident that to persons of this
+temper the only valuable pictures would indeed be _mirrors_,
+reflecting permanently the images of the things in which they took
+delight, and of the faces that they loved. "Nay," but the reader
+interrupts, (if he is of the Idealist school) "I deny that more
+beautiful things are to be seen in nature than in art; on the
+contrary, everything in nature is faulty, and art represents nature
+as perfected." Be it so. Must, therefore, this perfected nature be
+imperfectly represented? Is it absolutely required of the painter,
+who has conceived perfection, that he should so paint it as to look
+only like a picture? Or is not Dante's view of the matter right even
+here, and would it not be well that the perfect conception of Pallas
+should be so given as to look like Pallas herself, rather than
+merely like the picture of Pallas?
+
+Sec. 7. It is not easy for us to answer this question rightly, owing to
+the difficulty of imagining any art which should reach the perfection
+supposed. Our actual powers of imitation are so feeble that wherever
+deception is attempted, a subject of a comparatively low or confined
+order must be chosen. I do not enter at present into the inquiry how
+far the powers of imitation extend; but assuredly up to the present
+period they have been so limited that it is hardly possible for us to
+conceive a deceptive art embracing a high range of subject. But let
+the reader make the effort, and consider seriously what he would give
+at any moment to have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those
+which so often rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in
+its fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their
+changing; to bid the fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and the
+ripples be everlasting upon the lake; and then to bear away with him
+no darkened or feeble sun-stain (though even that is beautiful), but a
+counterfeit which should seem no counterfeit--the true and perfect
+image of life indeed. Or rather (for the full majesty of such a power
+is not thus sufficiently expressed) let him consider that it would be
+in effect nothing else than a capacity of transporting himself at any
+moment into any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by a
+disembodied spirit': and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not
+only the present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into
+the very bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to
+behold them in act as they lived, but--with greater privilege than
+ever was granted to the companions of those transient acts of
+life,--to see them fastened at our will in the gesture and expression
+of an instant, and stayed, on the eve of some great deed, in
+immortality of burning purpose. Conceive, so far as it is possible,
+such power as this, and then say whether the art which conferred it is
+to be spoken lightly of, or whether we should not rather reverence, as
+half divine, a gift which would go so far as to raise us into the
+rank, and invest us with the felicities, of angels?
+
+Yet such would imitative art be in its perfection. Not by any means
+an easy thing, as Reynolds supposes it. Far from being easy, it is
+so utterly beyond all human power that we have difficulty even in
+conceiving its nature or results--the best art we as yet possess
+comes so far short of it.
+
+Sec. 8. But we must not rashly come to the conclusion that such art would,
+indeed, be the highest possible. There is much to be considered
+hereafter on the other side; the only conclusion we are as yet
+warranted in forming is, that Reynolds had no right to speak lightly or
+contemptuously of imitative art; that in fact, when he did so, he had
+not conceived its entire nature, but was thinking of some vulgar
+conditions of it, which were the only ones known to him, and that,
+therefore, his whole endeavor to explain the difference between great
+and mean art has been disappointed; that he has involved himself in a
+crowd of theories, whose issue he had not foreseen, and committed
+himself to conclusions which he never intended. There is an instinctive
+consciousness in his own mind of the difference between high and low
+art; but he is utterly incapable of explaining it, and every effort
+which he makes to do so involves him in unexpected fallacy and
+absurdity. It is _not_ true that Poetry does not concern herself with
+minute details. It is _not_ true that high art seeks only the
+Invariable. It is _not_ true that imitative art is an easy thing. It is
+_not_ true that the faithful rendering of nature is an employment in
+which "the slowest intellect is likely to succeed best." All these
+successive assertions are utterly false and untenable, while the plain
+truth, a truth lying at the very door, has all the while escaped
+him,--that which was incidentally stated in the preceding
+chapter,--namely, that the difference between great and mean art lies,
+not in definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, or
+choices of subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to which
+the effort of the painter is addressed. We cannot say that a painter is
+great because he paints boldly, or paints delicately; because he
+generalizes or particularizes; because he loves detail, or because he
+disdains it. He is great if, by any of these means, he has laid open
+noble truths, or aroused noble emotions. It does not matter whether he
+paint the petal of a rose, or the chasms of a precipice, so that Love
+and Admiration attend him as he labors, and wait for ever upon his
+work. It does not matter whether he toil for months upon a few inches
+of his canvas, or cover a palace front with color in a day, so only
+that it be with a solemn purpose that he has filled his heart with
+patience, or urged his hand to haste. And it does not matter whether he
+seek for his subjects among peasants or nobles, among the heroic or the
+simple, in courts or in fields, so only that he behold all things with
+a thirst for beauty, and a hatred of meanness and vice. There are,
+indeed, certain methods of representation which are usually adopted by
+the most active minds, and certain characters of subject usually
+delighted in by the noblest hearts; but it is quite possible, quite
+easy, to adopt the manner of painting without sharing the activity of
+mind, and to imitate the choice of subject without possessing the
+nobility of spirit; while, on the other hand, it is altogether
+impossible to foretell on what strange objects the strength of a great
+man will sometimes be concentrated, or by what strange means he will
+sometimes express himself. So that true criticism of art never can
+consist in the mere application of rules; it can be just only when it
+is founded on quick sympathy with the innumerable instincts and
+changeful efforts of human nature, chastened and guided by unchanging
+love of all things that God has created to be beautiful, and pronounced
+to be good.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+OF THE REAL NATURE OF GREATNESS OF STYLE.
+
+
+Sec. 1. I doubt not that the reader was ill-satisfied with the conclusion
+arrived at in the last chapter. That "great art" is art which
+represents what is beautiful and good, may not seem a very profound
+discovery; and the main question may be thought to have been all the
+time lost sight of, namely, "What is beautiful, and what is good?" No;
+those are not the main, at least not the first questions; on the
+contrary, our subject becomes at once opened and simplified as soon as
+we have left those the _only_ questions. For observe, our present task,
+according to our old plan, is merely to investigate the relative
+degrees of the _beautiful_ in the art of different masters; and it is
+an encouragement to be convinced, first of all, that what is lovely
+will also be great, and what is pleasing, noble. Nor is the conclusion
+so much a matter of course as it at first appears, for, surprising as
+the statement may seem, all the confusion into which Reynolds has
+plunged both himself and his readers, in the essay we have been
+examining, results primarily from a doubt in his own mind _as to the
+existence of beauty at all_. In the next paper I alluded to, No. 82
+(which needs not, however, to be examined at so great length), he
+calmly attributes the whole influence of beauty to custom, saying, that
+"he has no doubt, if we were more used to deformity than to beauty,
+deformity would then lose the idea now annexed to it, and take that of
+beauty; as if the whole world shall agree that Yes and No should change
+their meanings. Yes would then deny, and No would affirm!"
+
+Sec. 2. The world does, indeed, succeed--oftener than is, perhaps,
+altogether well for the world--in making Yes mean No, and No mean
+Yes.[5] But the world has never succeeded, nor ever will, in making
+itself delight in black clouds more than in blue sky, or love the dark
+earth better than the rose that grows from it. Happily for mankind,
+beauty and ugliness are as positive in their nature as physical pain
+and pleasure, as light and darkness, or as life and death; and, though
+they may be denied or misunderstood in many fantastic ways, the most
+subtle reasoner will at last find that color and sweetness are still
+attractive to him, and that no logic will enable him to think the
+rainbow sombre, or the violet scentless. But the theory that beauty was
+merely a result of custom was very common in Johnson's time. Goldsmith
+has, I think, expressed it with more force and wit than any other
+writer, in various passages of the Citizen of the World. And it was,
+indeed, a curious retribution of the folly of the world of art, which
+for some three centuries had given itself recklessly to the pursuit of
+beauty, that at last it should be led to deny the very existence of
+what it had so morbidly and passionately sought. It was as if a child
+should leave its home to pursue the rainbow, and then, breathless and
+hopeless, declare that it did not exist. Nor is the lesson less useful
+which may be gained in observing the adoption of such a theory by
+Reynolds himself. It shows how completely an artist may be unconscious
+of the principles of his own work, and how he may be led by instinct to
+_do_ all that is right, while he is misled by false logic to _say_ all
+that is wrong. For nearly every word that Reynolds wrote was contrary
+to his own practice; he seems to have been born to teach all error by
+his precept, and all excellence by his example; he enforced with his
+lips generalization and idealism, while with his pencil he was tracing
+the patterns of the dresses of the belles of his day; he exhorted his
+pupils to attend only to the invariable, while he himself was occupied
+in distinguishing every variation of womanly temper; and he denied the
+existence of the beautiful, at the same instant that he arrested it as
+it passed, and perpetuated it for ever.
+
+Sec. 3. But we must not quit the subject here. However inconsistently or
+dimly expressed, there is, indeed, some truth in that commonly
+accepted distinction between high and low art. That a thing should be
+beautiful is not enough; there is, as we said in the outset, a higher
+and lower range of beauty, and some ground for separating into various
+and unequal ranks painters who have, nevertheless, each in his
+several way, represented something that was beautiful or good.
+
+Nor, if we would, can we get rid of this conviction. We have at all
+times some instinctive sense that the function of one painter is
+greater than that of another, even supposing each equally successful
+in his own way; and we feel that, if it were possible to conquer
+prejudice, and do away with the iniquities of personal feeling, and
+the insufficiencies of limited knowledge, we should all agree in this
+estimate, and be able to place each painter in his right rank,
+measuring them by a true scale of nobleness. We feel that the men in
+the higher classes of the scale would be, in the full sense of the
+word, Great--men whom one would give much to see the faces of but for
+an instant; and that those in the lower classes of the scale (though
+none were admitted but who had true merit of some kind) would be very
+small men, not greatly exciting either reverence or curiosity. And
+with this fixed instinct in our minds, we permit our teachers daily to
+exhort their pupils to the cultivation of "great art"--neither they
+nor we having any very clear notion as to what the greatness consists
+in: but sometimes inclining to think it must depend on the space of
+the canvas, and that art on a scale of 6 feet by 10 is something
+spiritually separated from that on a scale of 3 feet by 5;--sometimes
+holding it to consist in painting the nude body, rather than the body
+decently clothed;--sometimes being convinced that it is connected with
+the study of past history, and that the art is only great which
+represents what the painter never saw, and about which he knows
+nothing;-and sometimes being firmly persuaded that it consists in
+generally finding fault with, and endeavoring to mend, whatsoever the
+Divine Wisdom has made. All which various errors, having yet some
+motes and atoms of truth in the make of each of them, deserve some
+attentive analysis, for they come under that general law,--that "the
+corruption of the best is the worst." There are not _worse_ errors
+going than these four; and yet the truth they contain, and the
+instinct which urges many to preach them, are at the root of all
+healthy growth in art. We ruin one young painter after another by
+telling him to follow great art, without knowing, ourselves, what
+greatness is; and yet the feeling that it verily _is_ something, and
+that there are depths and breadths, shallows and narrows, in the
+matter, is all that we have to look to, if we would ever make our art
+serviceable to ourselves or others. To follow art for the sake of
+being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some
+means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest
+way of ending in total extinction. And yet it is only by honest
+reverence for art itself, and by great self-respect in the practice of
+it, that it can be rescued from dilettantism, raised to approved
+honorableness, and brought to the proper work it has to accomplish in
+the service of man.
+
+Sec. 4. Let us therefore look into the facts of the thing, not with any
+metaphysical, or otherwise vain and troublesome effort at acuteness,
+but in a plain way; for the facts themselves are plain enough, and
+may be plainly stated, only the difficulty is that out of these
+facts, right and left, the different forms of misapprehension branch
+into grievous complexity, and branch so far and wide, that if once
+we try to follow them, they will lead us quite from our mark into
+other separate, though not less interesting discussions. The best
+way will be, therefore, I think, to sketch out at once in this
+chapter, the different characters which really constitute
+"greatness" of style, and to indicate the principal directions of
+the outbranching misapprehensions of them; then, in the succeeding
+chapters, to take up in succession those which need more talk about
+them, and follow out at leisure whatever inquiries they may suggest.
+
+Sec. 5. I. CHOICE OF NOBLE SUBJECT.--Greatness of style consists, then:
+first, in the habitual choice of subjects of thought which involve wide
+interests and profound passions, as opposed to those which involve
+narrow interests and slight passions. The style is greater or less in
+exact proportion to the nobleness of the interests and passions
+involved in the subject. The habitual choice of sacred subjects, such
+as the Nativity, Transfiguration, Crucifixion (if the choice be
+sincere), implies that the painter has a natural disposition to dwell
+on the highest thoughts of which humanity is capable; it constitutes
+him so far forth a painter of the highest order, as, for instance,
+Leonardo, in his painting of the Last Supper: he who delights in
+representing the acts or meditations of great men, as, for instance,
+Raphael painting the School of Athens, is, so far forth, a painter of
+the second order: he who represents the passions and events of ordinary
+life, of the third. And in this ordinary life, he who represents deep
+thoughts and sorrows, as, for instance, Hunt, in his Claudio and
+Isabella, and such other works, is of the highest rank in his sphere;
+and he who represents the slight malignities and passions of the
+drawingroom, as, for instance, Leslie, of the second rank: he who
+represents the sports of boys or simplicities of clowns, as Webster or
+Teniers, of the third rank; and he who represents brutalities and vices
+(for delight in them, and not for rebuke of them), of no rank at all,
+or rather of a negative rank, holding a certain order in the abyss.
+
+Sec. 6. The reader will, I hope, understand how much importance is to be
+attached to the sentence in the first parenthesis, "if the choice be
+sincere;" for choice of subject is, of course, only available as a
+criterion of the rank of the painter, when it is made from the heart.
+Indeed, in the lower orders of painting, the choice is always made
+from such heart as the painter has; for his selection of the brawls of
+peasants or sports of children can, of course, proceed only from the
+fact that he has more sympathy with such brawls or pastimes than with
+nobler subjects. But the choice of the higher kind of subjects is
+often insincere; and may, therefore, afford no real criterion of the
+painter's rank. The greater number of men who have lately painted
+religious or heroic subjects have done so in mere ambition, because
+they had been taught that it was a good thing to be a "high art"
+painter; and the fact is that, in nine cases out of ten, the so-called
+historical or "high-art" painter is a person infinitely inferior to
+the painter of flowers or still life. He is, in modern times, nearly
+always a man who has great vanity without pictorial capacity, and
+differs from the landscape or fruit painter merely in misunderstanding
+and over-estimating his own powers. He mistakes his vanity for
+inspiration, his ambition for greatness of soul, and takes pleasure in
+what he calls "the ideal," merely because he has neither humility nor
+capacity enough to comprehend the real.
+
+Sec. 7. But also observe, it is not enough even that the choice be
+sincere. It must also be wise. It happens very often that a man of weak
+intellect, sincerely desiring to do what is good and useful, will
+devote himself to high art subjects because he thinks them the only
+ones on which time and toil can be usefully spent, or, sometimes,
+because they are really the only ones he has pleasure in contemplating.
+But not having intellect enough to enter into the minds of truly great
+men, or to imagine great events as they really happened, he cannot
+become a great painter; he degrades the subjects he intended to honor,
+and his work is more utterly thrown away, and his rank as an artist in
+reality lower, than if he had devoted himself to the imitation of the
+simplest objects of natural history. The works of Overbeck are a most
+notable instance of this form of error.
+
+Sec. 8. It must also be remembered, that in nearly all the great periods
+of art the choice of subject has not been left to the painter. His
+employer,--abbot, baron, or monarch,--determined for him whether he
+should earn his bread by making cloisters bright with choirs of
+saints, painting coats of arms on leaves of romances, or decorating
+presence-chambers with complimentary mythology; and his own personal
+feelings are ascertainable only by watching, in the themes assigned to
+him, what are the points in which he seems to take most pleasure.
+Thus, in the prolonged ranges of varied subjects with which Benozzo
+Gozzoli decorated the cloisters of Pisa, it is easy to see that love
+of simple domestic incident, sweet landscape, and glittering ornament,
+prevails slightly over the solemn elements of religious feeling,
+which, nevertheless, the spirit of the age instilled into him in such
+measure as to form a very lovely and noble mind, though still one of
+the second order. In the work of Orcagna, an intense solemnity and
+energy in the sublimest groups of his figures, fading away as he
+touches inferior subjects, indicates that his home was among the
+archangels, and his rank among the first of the sons of men: while
+Correggio, in the sidelong grace, artificial smiles, and purple
+languors of his saints, indicates the inferior instinct which would
+have guided his choice in quite other directions, had it not been for
+the fashion of the age, and the need of the day.
+
+Sec. 9. It will follow, of course, from the above considerations, that
+the choice which characterises the school of high art is seen as
+much in the treatment of a subject as in its selection, and that the
+expression of the thoughts of the persons represented will always
+be the first thing considered by the painter who worthily enters
+that highest school. For the artist who sincerely chooses the
+noblest subject will also choose chiefly to represent what makes
+that subject noble, namely, the various heroism or other noble
+emotions of the persons represented. If, instead of this, the artist
+seeks only to make his picture agreeable by the composition of its
+masses and colors, or by any other merely pictorial merit, as fine
+drawing of limbs, it is evident, not only that any other subject
+would have answered his purpose as well, but that he is unfit to
+approach the subject he has chosen, because he cannot enter into its
+deepest meaning, and therefore cannot in reality have chosen it for
+that meaning. Nevertheless, while the expression is always to be the
+first thing considered, all other merits must be added to the utmost
+of the painter's power: for until he can both color and draw
+beautifully he has no business to consider himself a painter at all,
+far less to attempt the noblest subjects of painting; and, when he
+has once possessed himself of these powers, he will naturally and
+fitly employ them to deepen and perfect the impression made by the
+sentiment of his subject.
+
+The perfect unison of expression, as the painter's main purpose,
+with the full and natural exertion of his pictorial power in the
+details of the work, is found only in the old Pre-Raphaelite
+periods, and in the modern Pre-Raphaelite school. In the works of
+Giotto, Angelico, Orcagna, John Bellini, and one or two more, these
+two conditions of high art are entirely fulfilled, so far as the
+knowledge of those days enabled them to be fulfilled; and in the
+modern Pre-Raphaelite school they are fulfilled nearly to the
+uttermost. Hunt's Light of the World is, I believe, the most perfect
+instance of expressional purpose with technical power, which the
+world has yet produced.
+
+Sec. 10. Now in the Post Raphaelite period of ancient art, and in the
+spurious high art of modern times, two broad forms of error divide
+the schools; the one consisting in (A) the superseding of expression
+by technical excellence, and the other in (B) the superseding of
+technical excellence by expression.
+
+(A). Superseding expression by technical excellence.--This takes place
+most frankly, and therefore most innocently, in the work of the
+Venetians. They very nearly ignore expression altogether, directing
+their aim exclusively to the rendering of external truths of color and
+form. Paul Veronese will make the Magdalene wash the feet of Christ
+with a countenance as absolutely unmoved as that of any ordinary
+servant bringing a ewer to her master, and will introduce the supper
+at Emmaus as a background to the portraits of two children playing
+with a dog. Of the wrongness or rightness of such a proceeding we
+shall reason in another place; at present we have to note it merely as
+displacing the Venetian work from the highest or expressional rank of
+art. But the error is generally made in a more subtle and dangerous
+way. The artist deceives himself into the idea that he is doing all he
+can to elevate his subject by treating it under rules of art,
+introducing into it accurate science, and collecting for it the
+beauties of (so-called) ideal form; whereas he may, in reality, be all
+the while sacrificing his subject to his own vanity or pleasure, and
+losing truth, nobleness, and impressiveness for the sake of delightful
+lines or creditable pedantries.
+
+Sec. 11. (B). Superseding technical excellence by expression.--This is
+usually done under the influence of another kind of vanity. The
+artist desires that men should think he has an elevated soul,
+affects to despise the ordinary excellence of art, contemplates with
+separated egotism the course of his own imaginations or sensations,
+and refuses to look at the real facts round about him, in order that
+he may adore at leisure the shadow of himself. He lives in an
+element of what he calls tender emotions and lofty aspirations;
+which are, in fact, nothing more than very ordinary weaknesses or
+instincts, contemplated through a mist of pride. A large range of
+modern German art comes under this head.
+
+A more interesting and respectable form of this error is fallen into by
+some truly earnest men, who, finding their powers not adequate to the
+attainment of great artistical excellence, but adequate to rendering,
+up to a certain point, the expression of the human countenance, devote
+themselves to that object alone, abandoning effort in other directions,
+and executing the accessaries of their pictures feebly or carelessly.
+With these are associated another group of philosophical painters, who
+suppose the artistical merits of other parts _adverse_ to the
+expression, as drawing the spectator's attention away from it, and who
+paint in grey color, and imperfect light and shade, by way of enforcing
+the purity of their conceptions. Both these classes of conscientious
+but narrow-minded artists labor under the same grievous mistake of
+imagining that wilful fallacy can ever be either pardonable or helpful.
+They forget that color, if used at all, must be either true or false,
+and that what _they_ call chastity, dignity, and reserve, is, to the
+eye of any person accustomed to nature, pure, bold, and impertinent
+falsehood. It does not, in the eyes of any soundly minded man, exalt
+the expression of a female face that the cheeks should be painted of
+the color of clay, nor does it in the least enhance his reverence for a
+saint to find the scenery around him deprived, by his presence, of
+sunshine. It is an important consolation, however, to reflect that no
+artist ever fell into any of these last three errors (under head B.)
+who had really the capacity of becoming a great painter. No man ever
+despised color who could produce it; and the error of these
+sentimentalists and philosophers is not so much in the choice of their
+manner of painting, as in supposing themselves capable of painting at
+all. Some of them might have made efficient sculptors, but the greater
+number had their mission in some other sphere than that of art, and
+would have found, in works of practical charity, better employment for
+their gentleness and sentimentalism, than in denying to human beauty
+its color, and to natural scenery its light; in depriving heaven of its
+blue, and earth of its bloom, valor of its glow, and modesty of its
+blush.
+
+Sec. 12. II. LOVE OF BEAUTY.--The second characteristic of the great
+school of art is, that it introduces in the conception of its
+subject as much beauty as is possible, consistently with truth.[6]
+
+For instance, in any subject consisting of a number of figures, it
+will make as many of those figures beautiful as the faithful
+representation of humanity will admit. It will not deny the facts of
+ugliness or decrepitude, or relative inferiority and superiority of
+feature as necessarily manifested in a crowd, but it will, so far as
+it is in its power, seek for and dwell upon the fairest forms, and
+in all things insist on the beauty that is in them, not on the
+ugliness. In this respect, schools of art become higher in exact
+proportion to the degree in which they apprehend and love the
+beautiful. Thus, Angelico, intensely loving all spiritual beauty,
+will be of the highest rank; and Paul Veronese and Correggio,
+intensely loving physical and corporeal beauty, of the second rank;
+and Albert Durer, Rubens, and in general the Northern artists,
+apparently insensible to beauty, and caring only for truth, whether
+shapely or not, of the third rank; and Teniers and Salvator,
+Caravaggio, and other such worshippers of the depraved, of no rank,
+or, as we said before, of a certain order in the abyss.
+
+Sec. 13. The corruption of the schools of high art, so far as this
+particular quality is concerned, consists in the sacrifice of truth
+to beauty. Great art dwells on all that is beautiful; but false art
+omits or changes all that is ugly. Great art accepts Nature as she
+is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is most perfect in
+her; false art saves itself the trouble of direction by removing or
+altering whatever it thinks objectionable. The evil results of which
+proceeding are twofold.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 14. Evil first,--that we lose the true _force_ of beauty.]
+
+First. That beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases
+to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadow ceases
+to be enjoyed as light. A white canvas cannot produce an effect of
+sunshine; the painter must darken it in some places before he can
+make it look luminous in others; nor can an uninterrupted succession
+of beauty produce the true effect of beauty; it must be foiled by
+inferiority before its own power can be developed. Nature has for
+the most part mingled her inferior and nobler elements as she
+mingles sunshine with shade, giving due use and influence to both,
+and the painter who chooses to remove the shadow, perishes in the
+burning desert he has created. The truly high and beautiful art of
+Angelico is continually refreshed and strengthened by his frank
+portraiture of the most ordinary features of his brother monks, and
+of the recorded peculiarities of ungainly sanctity; but the modern
+German and Raphaelesque schools lose all honor and nobleness in
+barber-like admiration of handsome faces, and have, in fact, no real
+faith except in straight noses and curled hair. Paul Veronese
+opposes the dwarf to the soldier, and the negress to the queen;
+Shakspere places Caliban beside Miranda, and Autolycus beside
+Perdita; but the vulgar idealist withdraws his beauty to the safety
+of the saloon, and his innocence to the seclusion of the cloister;
+he pretends that he does this in delicacy of choice and purity of
+sentiment, while in truth he has neither courage to front the
+monster, nor wit enough to furnish the knave.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 15. Evil second,--we lose the true _quantity_ of beauty.]
+
+It is only by the habit of representing faithfully all things, that
+we can truly learn what is beautiful and what is not. The ugliest
+objects contain some element of beauty; and in all, it is an element
+peculiar to themselves, which cannot be separated from their
+ugliness, but must either be enjoyed together with it, or not at
+all. The more a painter accepts nature as he finds it, the more
+unexpected beauty he discovers in what he at first despised; but
+once let him arrogate the right of rejection, and he will gradually
+contract his circle of enjoyment, until what he supposed to be
+nobleness of selection ends in narrowness of perception. Dwelling
+perpetually upon one class of ideas, his art becomes at once
+monstrous and morbid; until at last he cannot faithfully represent
+even what he chooses to retain; his discrimination contracts into
+darkness, and his fastidiousness fades into fatuity.
+
+High art, therefore, consists neither in altering, nor in improving
+nature; but in seeking throughout nature for "whatsoever things are
+lovely, and whatsoever things are pure;" in loving these, in
+displaying to the utmost of the painter's power such loveliness as
+is in them, and directing the thoughts of others to them by winning
+art, or gentle emphasis. Of the degree in which this can be done,
+and in which it may be permitted to gather together, without
+falsifying, the finest forms or thoughts, so as to create a sort of
+perfect vision, we shall have to speak hereafter: at present, it is
+enough to remember that art (_caeteris paribus_) is great in exact
+proportion to the love of beauty shown by the painter, provided that
+love of beauty forfeit no atom of truth.
+
+Sec. 16. III. SINCERITY.--The next[7] characteristic of great art is that
+it includes the largest possible quantity of Truth in the most perfect
+possible harmony. If it were possible for art to give all the truths of
+nature, it ought to do it. But this is not possible. Choice must always
+be made of some facts which _can_ be represented, from among others
+which must be passed by in silence, or even, in some respects,
+misrepresented. The inferior artist chooses unimportant and scattered
+truths; the great artist chooses the most necessary first, and
+afterwards the most consistent with these, so as to obtain the greatest
+possible and most harmonious _sum_. For instance, Rembrandt always
+chooses to represent the exact force with which the light on the most
+illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. In
+order to obtain this, in most cases, not very important truth, he
+sacrifices the light and color of five sixths of his picture; and the
+expression of every character of objects which depends on tenderness of
+shape or tint. But he obtains his single truth, and what picturesque
+and forcible expression is dependent upon it, with magnificent skill
+and subtlety. Veronese, on the contrary, chooses to represent the great
+relations of visible things to each other, to the heaven above, and to
+the earth beneath them. He holds it more important to show how a figure
+stands relieved from delicate air, or marble wall; how as a red, or
+purple, or white figure, it separates itself, in clear discernibility,
+from things not red, nor purple, nor white; how infinite daylight
+shines round it; how innumerable veils of faint shadow invest it; how
+its blackness and darkness are, in the excess of their nature, just as
+limited and local as its intensity of light: all this, I say, he feels
+to be more important than showing merely the exact _measure_ of the
+spark of sunshine that gleams on a dagger-hilt, or glows on a jewel.
+All this, moreover, he feels to be harmonious,--capable of being joined
+in one great system of spacious truth. And with inevitable
+watchfulness, inestimable subtlety, he unites all this in tenderest
+balance, noting in each hair's-breadth of color, not merely what its
+rightness or wrongness is in itself, but what its relation is to every
+other on his canvas; restraining, for truth's sake, his exhaustless
+energy, reining back, for truth's sake, his fiery strength; veiling,
+before truth, the vanity of brightness; penetrating, for truth, the
+discouragement of gloom; ruling his restless invention with a rod of
+iron; pardoning no error, no thoughtlessness, no forgetfulness; and
+subduing all his powers, impulses, and imaginations, to the arbitrament
+of a merciless justice, and the obedience of an incorruptible verity.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 17. Corollary 1st: great art is generally distinct.]
+
+I give this instance with respect to color and shade; but, in the whole
+field of art, the difference between the great and inferior artists is
+of the same kind, and may be determined at once by the question, which
+of them conveys the largest sum of truth? It follows from this
+principle, that in general all _great_ drawing is _distinct_ drawing;
+for truths which are rendered indistinctly might, for the most part, as
+well not be rendered at all. There are, indeed, certain facts of
+mystery, and facts of indistinctness, in all objects, which must have
+their proper place in the general harmony, and the reader will
+presently find me, when we come to that part of our investigation,
+telling him that all good drawing must in some sort be _in_distinct. We
+may, however, understand this apparent contradiction, by reflecting
+that the highest knowledge always involves a more advanced perception
+of the fields of the unknown; and, therefore, it may most truly be
+said, that to know anything well involves a profound sensation of
+ignorance, while yet it is equally true that good and noble knowledge
+is distinguished from vain and useless knowledge chiefly by its
+clearness and distinctness, and by the vigorous consciousness of what
+is known and what is not.
+
+So in art. The best drawing involves a wonderful perception and
+expression of indistinctness; and yet all noble drawing is separated
+from the ignoble by its distinctness, by its fine expression and
+firm assertion of _Something_; whereas the bad drawing, without
+either firmness or fineness, expresses and asserts _Nothing_. The
+first thing, therefore, to be looked for as a sign of noble art, is
+a clear consciousness of what is drawn and what is not; the bold
+statement, and frank confession--"_This_ I know," "_that_ I know
+not;" and, generally speaking, all haste, slurring, obscurity,
+indecision, are signs of low art, and all calmness, distinctness,
+luminousness, and positiveness, of high art.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 18. Corollary 2d: Great art is generally large in masses
+and in scale.]
+
+It follows, secondly, from this principle, that as the great painter
+is always attending to the sum and harmony of his truths rather than
+to one or the other of any group, a quality of Grasp is visible in his
+work, like the power of a great reasoner over his subject, or a great
+poet over his conception, manifesting itself very often in missing out
+certain details or less truths (which, though good in themselves, he
+finds are in the way of others), and in a sweeping manner of getting
+the beginnings and ends of things shown at once, and the squares and
+depths rather than the surfaces: hence, on the whole, a habit of
+looking at large masses rather than small ones; and even a physical
+largeness of handling, and love of working, if possible, on a large
+scale; and various other qualities, more or less imperfectly expressed
+by such technical terms as breadth, massing, unity, boldness, &c., all
+of which are, indeed, great qualities when they mean breadth of truth,
+weight of truth, unity of truth, and courageous assertion of truth;
+but which have all their correlative errors and mockeries, almost
+universally mistaken for them,--the breadth which has no contents, the
+weight which has no value, the unity which plots deception, and the
+boldness which faces out fallacy.
+
+Sec. 19. And it is to be noted especially respecting largeness of
+scale, that though for the most part it is characteristic of the
+more powerful masters, they having both more invention wherewith to
+fill space (as Ghirlandajo wished that he might paint all the walls
+of Florence), and, often, an impetuosity of mind which makes them
+like free play for hand and arm (besides that they usually desire to
+paint everything in the foreground of their picture of the natural
+size), yet, as this largeness of scale involves the placing of the
+picture at a considerable distance from the eye, and this distance
+involves the loss of many delicate details, and especially of the
+subtle lines of expression in features, it follows that the masters
+of refined detail and human expression are apt to prefer a small
+scale to work upon; so that the chief masterpieces of expression
+which the world possesses are small pictures by Angelico, in which
+the figures are rarely more than six or seven inches high; in the
+best works of Raphael and Leonardo the figures are almost always
+less than life, and the best works of Turner do not exceed the size
+of 18 inches by 12.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 20. Corollary 3d: Great art is always delicate.]
+
+As its greatness depends on the sum of truth, and this sum of truth
+can always be increased by delicacy of handling, it follows that all
+great art must have this delicacy to the utmost possible degree.
+This rule is infallible and inflexible. All coarse work is the sign
+of low art. Only, it is to be remembered, that coarseness must be
+estimated by the distance from the eye; it being necessary to
+consult this distance, when great, by laying on touches which appear
+coarse when seen near; but which, so far from being coarse, are, in
+reality, more delicate in a master's work than the finest close
+handling, for they involve a calculation of result, and are laid on
+with a subtlety of sense precisely correspondent to that with which
+a good archer draws his bow; the spectator seeing in the action
+nothing but the strain of the strong arm, while there is, in
+reality, in the finger and eye, an ineffably delicate estimate of
+distance, and touch on the arrow plume. And, indeed, this delicacy
+is generally quite perceptible to those who know what the truth is,
+for strokes by Tintoret or Paul Veronese, which were done in an
+instant, and look to an ignorant spectator merely like a violent
+dash of loaded color, (and are, as such, imitated by blundering
+artists,) are, in fact, modulated by the brush and finger to that
+degree of delicacy that no single grain of the color could be taken
+from the touch without injury; and little golden particles of it,
+not the size of a gnat's head, have important share and function in
+the balances of light in a picture perhaps fifty feet long. Nearly
+_every_ other rule applicable to art has some exception but this.
+This has absolutely none. All great art is delicate art, and all
+coarse art is bad art. Nay, even to a certain extent, all _bold_ art
+is bad art; for boldness is not the proper word to apply to the
+courage and swiftness of a great master, based on knowledge, and
+coupled with fear and love. There is as much difference between the
+boldness of the true and the false masters, as there is between the
+courage of a pure woman and the shamelessness of a lost one.
+
+Sec. 21. IV. INVENTION.--The last characteristic of great art is that
+it must be inventive, that is, be produced by the imagination. In
+this respect, it must precisely fulfil the definition already given
+of poetry; and not only present grounds for noble emotion, but
+furnish these grounds by _imaginative power_. Hence there is at once
+a great bar fixed between the two schools of Lower and Higher Art.
+The lower merely copies what is set before it, whether in portrait,
+landscape, or still-life; the higher either entirely imagines its
+subject, or arranges the materials presented to it, so as to
+manifest the imaginative power in all the three phases which have
+been already explained in the second volume.
+
+And this was the truth which was confusedly present in Reynolds's
+mind when he spoke, as above quoted, of the difference between
+Historical and Poetical Painting. _Every relation of the plain facts
+which the painter saw_ is proper _historical_ painting.[8] If those
+facts are unimportant (as that he saw a gambler quarrel with another
+gambler, or a sot enjoying himself with another sot), then the
+history is trivial; if the facts are important (as that he saw such
+and such a great man look thus, or act thus, at such a time), then
+the history is noble: in each case perfect truth of narrative being
+supposed, otherwise the whole thing is worthless, being neither
+history nor poetry, but plain falsehood. And farther, as greater or
+less elegance and precision are manifested in the relation or
+painting of the incidents, the merit of the work varies; so that,
+what with difference of subject, and what with difference of
+treatment, historical painting falls or rises in changeful eminence,
+from Dutch trivialities to a Velasquez portrait, just as historical
+talking or writing varies in eminence, from an old woman's
+story-telling up to Herodotus. Besides which, certain operations of
+the imagination come into play inevitably, here and there, so as to
+touch the history with some light of poetry, that is, with some
+light shot forth of the narrator's mind, or brought out by the way
+he has put the accidents together; and wherever the imagination has
+thus had anything to do with the matter at all (and it must be
+somewhat cold work where it has not), then, the confines of the
+lower and higher schools touching each other, the work is colored by
+both; but there is no reason why, therefore, we should in the least
+confuse the historical and poetical characters, any more than that
+we should confuse blue with crimson, because they may overlap each
+other, and produce purple.
+
+Sec. 22. Now, historical or simply narrative art is very precious in its
+proper place and way, but it is never _great_ art until the poetical
+or imaginative power touches it; and in proportion to the stronger
+manifestation of this power, it becomes greater and greater, while the
+highest art is purely imaginative, all its materials being wrought
+into their form by invention; and it differs, therefore, from the
+simple historical painting, exactly as Wordsworth's stanza, above
+quoted, differs from Saussure's plain narrative of the parallel fact;
+and the imaginative painter differs from the historical painter in the
+manner that Wordsworth differs from Saussure.
+
+Sec. 23. Farther, imaginative art always _includes_ historical art; so
+that, strictly speaking, according to the analogy above used, we meet
+with the pure blue, and with the crimson ruling the blue and changing
+it into kingly purple, but not with the pure crimson: for all
+imagination must deal with the knowledge it has before accumulated; it
+never produces anything but by combination or contemplation. Creation,
+in the full sense, is impossible to it. And the mode in which the
+historical faculties are included by it is often quite simple, and
+easily seen. Thus, in Hunt's great poetical picture of the Light of the
+World, the whole thought and arrangement of the picture being
+imaginative, the several details of it are wrought out with simple
+portraiture; the ivy, the jewels, the creeping plants, and the
+moonlight being calmly studied or remembered from the things
+themselves. But of all these special ways in which the invention works
+with plain facts, we shall have to treat farther afterwards.
+
+Sec. 24. And now, finally, since this poetical power includes the
+historical, if we glance back to the other qualities required in great
+art, and put all together, we find that the sum of them is simply the
+sum of all the powers of man. For as (1) the choice of the high subject
+involves all conditions of right moral choice, and as (2) the love of
+beauty involves all conditions of right admiration, and as (3) the
+grasp of truth involves all strength of sense, evenness of judgment,
+and honesty of purpose, and as (4) the poetical power involves all
+swiftness of invention, and accuracy of historical memory, the sum of
+all these powers is the sum of the human soul. Hence we see why the
+word "Great" is used of this art. It is literally great. It compasses
+and calls forth the entire human spirit, whereas any other kind of art,
+being more or less small or narrow, compasses and calls forth only
+_part_ of the human spirit. Hence the idea of its magnitude is a
+literal and just one, the art being simply less or greater in
+proportion to the number of faculties it exercises and addresses.[9]
+And this is the ultimate meaning of the definition I gave of it long
+ago, as containing the "greatest number of the greatest ideas."
+
+Sec. 25. Such, then, being the characters required in order to
+constitute high art, if the reader will think over them a little,
+and over the various ways in which they may be falsely assumed, he
+will easily perceive how spacious and dangerous a field of
+discussion they open to the ambitious critic, and of error to the
+ambitious artist; he will see how difficult it must be, either to
+distinguish what is truly great art from the mockeries of it, or to
+rank the real artists in any thing like a progressive system of
+greater and less. For it will have been observed that the various
+qualities which form greatness are partly inconsistent with each
+other (as some virtues are, docility and firmness for instance), and
+partly independent of each other; and the fact is, that artists
+differ not more by mere capacity, than by the component _elements_
+of their capacity, each possessing in very different proportions the
+several attributes of greatness; so that, classed by one kind of
+merit, as, for instance, purity of expression, Angelico will stand
+highest; classed by another, sincerity of manner, Veronese will
+stand highest; classed by another, love of beauty, Leonardo will
+stand highest; and so on; hence arise continual disputes and
+misunderstandings among those who think that high art must always be
+one and the same, and that great artists ought to unite all great
+attributes in an equal degree.
+
+Sec. 26. In one of the exquisitely finished tales of Marmontel, a
+company of critics are received at dinner by the hero of the story,
+an old gentleman, somewhat vain of his _acquired_ taste, and his
+niece, by whose incorrigible _natural_ taste, he is seriously
+disturbed and tormented. During the entertainment, "On parcourut
+tous les genres de litterature, et pour donner plus d'essor a
+l'erudition et a la critique, on mit sur le tapis cette question
+toute neuve, scavoir, lequel meritoit le preference de Corneille ou
+de Racine. L'on disoit meme la-dessus les plus belles choses du
+monde, lorsque la petite niece, qui n'avoit pas dit un mot, s'avisa
+de demander naivement lequel des deux fruits, de l'orange ou de la
+peche, avoit le gout les plus exquis et meritoit le plus d'eloges.
+Son oncle rougit de sa simplicite, et les convives baisserent tous
+les yeux sans daigner repondre a cette betise. Ma niece, dit Fintac,
+a votre age, il faut scavoir ecouter, et se taire."
+
+I cannot close this chapter with shorter or better advice to the
+reader, than merely, whenever he hears discussions about the
+relative merits of great masters, to remember the young lady's
+question. It is, indeed, true that there _is_ a relative merit, that
+a peach is nobler than a hawthorn berry, and still more a hawthorn
+berry than a bead of the nightshade; but in each rank of fruits, as
+in each rank of masters, one is endowed with one virtue, and another
+with another; their glory is their dissimilarity, and they who
+propose to themselves in the training of an artist that he should
+unite the coloring of Tintoret, the finish of Albert Durer, and the
+tenderness of Correggio, are no wiser than a horticulturist would
+be, who made it the object of his labor to produce a fruit which
+should unite in itself the lusciousness of the grape, the crispness
+of the nut, and the fragrance of the pine.
+
+Sec. 27. And from these considerations one most important practical
+corollary is to be deduced, with the good help of Mademoiselle's
+Agathe's simile, namely, that the greatness or smallness of a man is,
+in the most conclusive sense, determined for him at his birth, as
+strictly as it is determined for a fruit whether it is to be a currant
+or an apricot. Education, favorable circumstances, resolution, and
+industry can do much; in a certain sense they do _everything_; that is
+to say, they determine whether the poor apricot shall fall in the form
+of a green bead, blighted by an east wind, shall be trodden under foot,
+or whether it shall expand into tender pride, and sweet brightness of
+golden velvet. But apricot out of currant,--great man out of
+small,--did never yet art or effort make; and, in a general way, men
+have their excellence nearly fixed for them when they are born; a
+little cramped and frost-bitten on one side, a little sun-burnt and
+fortune-spotted on the other, they reach, between good and evil
+chances, such size and taste as generally belong to the men of their
+calibre, and the small in their serviceable bunches, the great in their
+golden isolation, have, these no cause for regret, nor those for
+disdain.
+
+Sec. 28. Therefore it is, that every system of teaching is false which
+holds forth "great art" as in any wise to be taught to students, or
+even to be aimed at by them. Great art is precisely that which never
+was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the
+expression of the spirits of great men; so that the only wholesome
+teaching is that which simply endeavors to fix those characters of
+nobleness in the pupil's mind, of which it seems easily susceptible;
+and without holding out to him, as a possible or even probable
+result, that he should ever paint like Titian, or carve like Michael
+Angelo, enforces upon him the manifest possibility, and assured
+duty, of endeavoring to draw in a manner at least honest and
+intelligible; and cultivates in him those general charities of
+heart, sincerities of thought, and graces of habit which are likely
+to lead him, throughout life, to prefer openness to affectation,
+realities to shadows, and beauty to corruption.
+
+  [5] Del "no," per li danar, vi "si" far ita.
+
+  [6] As here, for the first time, I am obliged to use the terms
+      Truth and Beauty in a kind of opposition, I must therefore
+      stop for a moment to state clearly the relation of these two
+      qualities of art; and to protest against the vulgar and
+      foolish habit of confusing truth and beauty with each other.
+      People with shallow powers of thought, desiring to flatter
+      themselves with the sensation of having attained profundity,
+      are continually doing the most serious mischief by introducing
+      confusion into plain matters, and then valuing themselves on
+      being confounded. Nothing is more common than to hear people
+      who desire to be thought philosophical, declare that "beauty
+      is truth," and "truth is beauty." I would most earnestly beg
+      every sensible person who hears such an assertion made, to nip
+      the germinating philosopher in his ambiguous bud; and beg him,
+      if he really believes his own assertion, never thenceforward
+      to use two words for the same thing. The fact is, truth and
+      beauty are entirely distinct, though often related, things.
+      One is a property of statements, the other of objects. The
+      statement that "two and two make four" is true, but it is
+      neither beautiful nor ugly, for it is invisible; a rose is
+      lovely, but it is neither true nor false, for it is silent.
+      That which shows nothing cannot be fair, and that which
+      asserts nothing cannot be false. Even the ordinary use of the
+      words false and true as applied to artificial and real things,
+      is inaccurate. An artificial rose is not a "false" rose, it is
+      not a rose at all. The falseness is in the person who states,
+      or induces the belief, that it is a rose.
+
+      Now, therefore, in things concerning art, the words true and
+      false are only to be rightly used while the picture is
+      considered as a statement of facts. The painter asserts that
+      this which he has painted is the form of a dog, a man, or a
+      tree. If it be _not_ the form of a dog, a man, or a tree, the
+      painter's statement is false; and therefore we justly speak of
+      a false line, or false color; not that any line or color can
+      in themselves be false, but they become so when they convey a
+      statement that they resemble something which they do _not_
+      resemble. But the beauty of the lines or colors is wholly
+      independent of any such statement. They may be beautiful
+      lines, though quite inaccurate, and ugly lines though quite
+      faithful. A picture may be frightfully ugly, which represents
+      with fidelity some base circumstance of daily life; and a
+      painted window may be exquisitely beautiful, which represents
+      men with eagles' faces, and dogs with blue heads and crimson
+      tails (though, by the way, this is not in the strict sense
+      _false_ art, as we shall see hereafter, inasmuch as it means
+      no assertion that men ever _had_ eagles' faces). If this were
+      not so, it would be impossible to sacrifice truth to beauty;
+      for to attain the one would always be to attain the other.
+      But, unfortunately, this sacrifice is exceedingly possible,
+      and it is chiefly this which characterizes the false schools
+      of high art, so far as high art consists in the pursuit of
+      beauty. For although truth and beauty are independent of each
+      other, it does not follow that we are at liberty to pursue
+      whichever we please. They are indeed separable, but it is
+      wrong to separate them; they are to be sought together in the
+      order of their worthiness; that is to say, truth first, and
+      beauty afterwards. High art differs from low art in possessing
+      an excess of beauty in addition to its truth, not in
+      possessing an excess of beauty inconsistent with truth.
+
+  [7] I name them in order of _in_creasing not decreasing
+      importance.
+
+  [8] Compare my Edinburgh Lectures, lecture iv. p. 218, et seq.
+      (2nd edition)
+
+  [9] Compare Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. iv. Sec. 7, and Sec. 21.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+OF THE FALSE IDEAL:--FIRST, RELIGIOUS.
+
+
+Sec. 1. Having now gained some general notion of the meaning of "great
+art," we may, without risk of confusing ourselves, take up the
+questions suggested incidentally in the preceding chapter, and pursue
+them at leisure. Of these, two principal ones are closely connected
+with each other, to wit, that put in the 12th paragraph--How may beauty
+be sought in defiance of truth? and that in the 23rd paragraph--How
+does the imagination show itself in dealing with truth? These two,
+therefore, which are, besides, the most important of all, and, if well
+answered, will answer many others inclusively, we shall find it most
+convenient to deal with at once.
+
+Sec. 2. The pursuit, by the imagination, of beautiful and strange
+thoughts or subjects, to the exclusion of painful or common ones, is
+called among us, in these modern days, the pursuit of "_the ideal_;"
+nor does any subject deserve more attentive examination than the
+manner in which this pursuit is entered upon by the modern mind. The
+reader must pardon me for making in the outset one or two statements
+which may appear to him somewhat wide of the matter, but which, (if
+he admits their truth,) he will, I think, presently perceive to
+reach to the root of it. Namely,
+
+That men's proper business in this world falls mainly into three
+divisions:
+
+First, to know themselves, and the existing state of the things they
+have to do with.
+
+Secondly, to be happy in themselves, and in the existing state of
+things.
+
+Thirdly, to mend themselves, and the existing state of things, as
+far as either are marred or mendable.
+
+These, I say, are the three plain divisions of proper human
+business on this earth. For these three, the following are usually
+substituted and adopted by human creatures:
+
+First, to be totally ignorant of themselves, and the existing state
+of things.
+
+Secondly, to be miserable in themselves, and in the existing state
+of things.
+
+Thirdly, to let themselves, and the existing state of things, alone
+(at least in the way of correction).
+
+Sec. 3. The dispositions which induce us to manage, thus wisely, the
+affairs of this life seem to be:
+
+First, a fear of disagreeable facts, and conscious shrinking from
+clearness of light, which keep us from examining ourselves, and
+increase gradually into a species of instinctive terror at all truth,
+and love of glosses, veils, and decorative lies of every sort.
+
+Secondly, a general readiness to take delight in anything past, future,
+far off, or somewhere else, rather than in things now, near, and here;
+leading us gradually to place our pleasure principally in the exercise
+of the imagination, and to build all our satisfaction on things as they
+are _not_. Which power being one not accorded to the lower animals, and
+having indeed, when disciplined, a very noble use, we pride ourselves
+upon it, whether disciplined or not, and pass our lives complacently,
+in substantial discontent, and visionary satisfaction.
+
+Sec. 4. Now _nearly_ all artistical and poetical seeking after the
+ideal is only one branch of this base habit--the abuse of the
+imagination, in allowing it to find its whole delight in the
+impossible and untrue; while the faithful pursuit of the ideal is an
+honest use of the imagination, giving full power and presence to the
+possible and true.
+
+It is the difference between these two uses of it which we have to
+examine.
+
+Sec. 5. And, first, consider what are the legitimate uses of the
+imagination, that is to say, of the power of perceiving, or
+conceiving with the mind, things which cannot be perceived by the
+senses.
+
+Its first and noblest use is, to enable us to bring sensibly to our
+sight the things which are recorded as belonging to our future
+state, or as invisibly surrounding us in this. It is given us, that
+we may imagine the cloud of witnesses in heaven and earth, and see,
+as if they were now present, the souls of the righteous waiting for
+us; that we may conceive the great army of the inhabitants of
+heaven, and discover among them those whom we most desire to be with
+for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the ministry of angels
+beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the mountains that gird
+us round; but above all, to call up the scenes and facts in which we
+are commanded to believe, and be present, as if in the body, at
+every recorded event of the history of the Redeemer. Its second and
+ordinary use is to empower us to traverse the scenes of all other
+history, and force the facts to become again visible, so as to make
+upon us the same impression which they would have made if we had
+witnessed them; and in the minor necessities of life, to enable us,
+out of any present good, to gather the utmost measure of enjoyment
+by investing it with happy associations, and, in any present evil,
+to lighten it, by summoning back the images of other hours; and,
+also, to give to all mental truths some visible type in allegory,
+simile, or personification, which shall more deeply enforce them;
+and, finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it
+with such innocent play as shall be most in harmony with the
+suggestive voices of natural things, permitting it to possess living
+companionship instead of silent beauty, and create for itself
+fairies in the grass and naiads in the wave.
+
+Sec. 6. These being the uses of imagination, its abuses are either in
+creating, for mere pleasure, false images, where it is its _duty_ to
+create true ones; or in turning what was intended for the mere
+refreshment of the heart into its daily food, and changing the innocent
+pastimes of an hour into the guilty occupation of a life.
+
+Let us examine the principal forms of this misuse, one by one.
+
+Sec. 7. First, then, the imagination is chiefly warped and dishonored
+by being allowed to create false images, where it is its duty to
+create true ones. And this most dangerously in matters of religion.
+For a long time, when art was in its infancy, it remained unexposed
+to this danger, because it could not, with any power, realize or
+create _any_ thing. It consisted merely in simple outlines and
+pleasant colors; which were understood to be nothing more than
+signs of the thing thought of, a sort of pictorial letter for it, no
+more pretending to represent it than the written characters of its
+name. Such art excited the imagination, while it pleased the eye.
+But it _asserted_ nothing, for it could realize nothing. The reader
+glanced at it as a glittering symbol, and went on to form truer
+images for himself. This act of the mind may be still seen in daily
+operation in children, as they look at brightly colored pictures in
+their story-books. Such pictures neither deceive them nor satisfy
+them; they only set their own inventive powers to work in the
+directions required.
+
+Sec. 8. But as soon as art obtained the power of realization, it
+obtained also that of _assertion_. As fast as the painter advanced
+in skill he gained also in credibility, and that which he perfectly
+represented was perfectly believed, or could be disbelieved only by
+an actual effort of the beholder to escape from the fascinating
+deception. What had been faintly declared, might be painlessly
+denied; but it was difficult to discredit things forcibly alleged;
+and representations, which had been innocent in discrepancy, became
+guilty in consistency.
+
+Sec. 9. For instance, when in the thirteenth century, the nativity was
+habitually represented by such a symbol as that on the next page,
+fig. 1, there was not the smallest possibility that such a picture
+could disturb, in the mind of the reader of the New Testament, the
+simple meaning of the words "wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid
+him in a manger." That this manger was typified by a trefoiled arch[10]
+would no more prevent his distinct understanding of the narrative, than
+the grotesque heads introduced above it would interfere with his firm
+comprehension of the words "ox" or "ass;" while if there were anything
+in the action of the principal figures suggestive of real feeling, that
+suggestion he would accept, together with the general pleasantness of
+the lines and colors in the decorative letter; but without having his
+faith in the unrepresented and actual scene obscured for a moment. But
+it was far otherwise, when Francia or Perugino, with exquisite power of
+representing the human form, and high knowledge of the mysteries of
+art, devoted all their skill to the delineation of an impossible scene;
+and painted, for their subjects of the Nativity, a beautiful and
+queenly lady, her dress embroidered with gold, and with a crown of
+jewels upon her hair, kneeling, on a floor of inlaid and precious
+marble, before a crowned child, laid under a portico of Lombardic[11]
+architecture; with a sweet, verdurous, and vivid landscape in the
+distance, full of winding rivers, village spires, and baronial
+towers.[12] It is quite true that the frank absurdity of the thought
+prevented its being received as a deliberate contradiction of the
+truths of Scripture; but it is no less certain, that the continual
+presentment to the mind of this beautiful and fully realized imagery
+more and more chilled its power of apprehending the real truth; and
+that when pictures of this description met the eye in every corner of
+every chapel, it was physically impossible to dwell distinctly upon
+facts the direct reverse of those represented. The word "Virgin" or
+"Madonna," instead of calling up the vision of a simple Jewish girl,
+bearing the calamities of poverty, and the dishonors of inferior
+station, summoned instantly the idea of a graceful princess, crowned
+with gems, and surrounded by obsequious ministry of kings and saints.
+The fallacy which was presented to the imagination was indeed
+discredited, but also the fact which was _not_ presented to the
+imagination was forgotten; all true grounds of faith were gradually
+undermined, and the beholder was either enticed into mere luxury of
+fanciful enjoyment, believing nothing; or left, in his confusion of
+mind, the prey of vain tales and traditions; while in his best feelings
+he was unconsciously subject to the power of the fallacious picture,
+and with no sense of the real cause of his error, bowed himself, in
+prayer or adoration, to the lovely lady on her golden throne, when he
+would never have dreamed of doing so to the Jewish girl in her outcast
+poverty, or, in her simple household, to the carpenter's wife.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1.]
+
+Sec. 10. But a shadow of increasing darkness fell upon the human mind as
+art proceeded to still more perfect realization. These fantasies of
+the earlier painters, though they darkened faith, never hardened
+_feeling_; on the contrary, the frankness of their unlikelihood
+proceeded mainly from the endeavor on the part of the painter to
+express, not the actual fact, but the enthusiastic state of his own
+feelings about the fact; he covers the Virgin's dress with gold, not
+with any idea of representing the Virgin as she ever was, or ever will
+be seen, but with a burning desire to show what his love and reverence
+would think fittest for her. He erects for the stable a Lombardic
+portico, not because he supposes the Lombardi to have built stables in
+Palestine in the days of Tiberius, but to show that the manger in
+which Christ was laid is, in his eyes, nobler than the greatest
+architecture in the world. He fills his landscape with church spires
+and silver streams, not because he supposes that either were in sight
+of Bethlehem, but to remind the beholder of the peaceful course and
+succeeding power of Christianity. And, regarded with due sympathy and
+clear understanding of these thoughts of the artist, such pictures
+remain most impressive and touching, even to this day. I shall refer
+to them in future, in general terms, as the pictures of the "Angelican
+Ideal"--Angelico being the central master of the school.
+
+Sec. 11. It was far otherwise in the next step of the Realistic progress.
+The greater his powers became, the more the mind of the painter was
+absorbed in their attainment, and complacent in their display. The
+early arts of laying on bright colors smoothly, of burnishing golden
+ornaments, or tracing, leaf by leaf, the outlines of flowers, were not
+so difficult as that they should materially occupy the thoughts of the
+artist, or furnish foundation for his conceit; he learned these
+rudiments of his work without pain, and employed them without pride,
+his spirit being left free to express, so far as it was capable of
+them, the reaches of higher thought. But when accurate shade, and
+subtle color, and perfect anatomy, and complicated perspective, became
+necessary to the work, the artist's whole energy was employed in
+learning the laws of these, and his whole pleasure consisted in
+exhibiting them. His life was devoted, not to the objects of art, but
+to the cunning of it; and the sciences of composition and light and
+shade were pursued as if there were abstract good in them;--as if,
+like astronomy or mathematics, they were ends in themselves,
+irrespective of anything to be effected by them. And without
+perception, on the part of any one, of the abyss to which all were
+hastening, a fatal change of aim took place throughout the whole world
+of art. In early times _art was employed for the display of religious
+facts_; now, _religious facts were employed for the display of art_.
+The transition, though imperceptible, was consummate; it involved the
+entire destiny of painting. It was passing from the paths of life to
+the paths of death.
+
+Sec. 12. And this change was all the more fatal, because at first veiled
+by an appearance of greater dignity and sincerity than were possessed
+by the older art. One of the earliest results of the new knowledge was
+the putting away the greater part of the _unlikelihoods_ and fineries
+of the ancient pictures, and an apparently closer following of nature
+and probability. All the fantasy which I have just been blaming as
+disturbant of the simplicity of faith, was first subdued,--then
+despised and cast aside. The appearances of nature were more closely
+followed in everything; and the crowned Queen-Virgin of Perugino sank
+into a simple Italian mother in Raphael's Madonna of the Chair.
+
+Sec. 13. Was not this, then, a healthy change? No. It _would_ have been
+healthy if it had been effected with a pure motive, and the new
+truths would have been precious if they had been sought for truth's
+sake. But they were not sought for truth's sake, but for pride's;
+and truth which is sought for display may be just as harmful as
+truth which is spoken in malice. The glittering childishness of the
+old art was rejected, not because it was false, but because it was
+easy; and, still more, because the painter had no longer any
+religious passion to express. He could think of the Madonna now very
+calmly, with no desire to pour out the treasures of earth at her
+feet, or crown her brows with the golden shafts of heaven. He could
+think of her as an available subject for the display of transparent
+shadows, skilful tints, and scientific foreshortenings,--as a fair
+woman, forming, if well painted, a pleasant piece of furniture for
+the corner of a boudoir, and best imagined by combination of the
+beauties of the prettiest contadinas. He could think of her, in her
+last maternal agony, with academical discrimination; sketch in first
+her skeleton, invest her, in serene science, with the muscles of
+misery and the fibres of sorrow; then cast the grace of antique
+drapery over the nakedness of her desolation, and fulfil, with
+studious lustre of tears and delicately painted pallor, the perfect
+type of the "Mater Dolorosa."
+
+Sec. 14. It was thus that Raphael thought of the Madonna.[13]
+
+Now observe, when the subject was thus scientifically completed, it
+became necessary, as we have just said, to the full display of all the
+power of the artist, that it should in many respects be more faithfully
+imagined than it had been hitherto, "Keeping," "Expression,"
+"Historical Unity," and such other requirements, were enforced on the
+painter, in the same tone, and with the same purpose, as the purity of
+his oil and the accuracy of his perspective. He was told that the
+figure of Christ should be "dignified," those of the Apostles
+"expressive," that of the Virgin "modest," and those of children
+"innocent." All this was perfectly true; and in obedience to such
+directions, the painter proceeded to manufacture certain arrangements
+of apostolic sublimity, virginal mildness, and infantine innocence,
+which, being free from the quaint imperfection and contradictoriness of
+the early art, were looked upon by the European public as true things,
+and trustworthy representations of the events of religious history. The
+pictures of Francia and Bellini had been received as pleasant visions.
+But the cartoons of Raphael were received as representations of
+historical fact.
+
+Sec. 15. Now, neither they, nor any other work of the period, were
+representations either of historical or possible fact. They were, in
+the strictest sense of the word, "compositions"--cold arrangements
+of propriety and agreeableness, according to academical formulas;
+the painter never in any case making the slightest effort to
+conceive the thing as it must have happened, but only to gather
+together graceful lines and beautiful faces, in such compliance with
+commonplace ideas of the subject as might obtain for the whole an
+"epic unity," or some such other form of scholastic perfectness.
+
+Sec. 16. Take a very important instance.
+
+I suppose there is no event in the whole life of Christ to which, in
+hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious thirst to knew the
+close facts of it, or with more earnest and passionate dwelling upon
+every syllable of its recorded narrative, than Christ's showing Himself
+to his disciples at the lake of Galilee. There is something
+preeminently open, natural, full fronting our disbelief in this
+manifestation. The others, recorded after the resurrection, were
+sudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in profound sorrow and wearied
+agitation of heart; not, it might seem, safe judges of what they saw.
+But the agitation was now over. They had gone back to their daily work,
+thinking still their business lay net-wards, unmeshed from the literal
+rope and drag. "Simon Peter saith unto them, 'I go a fishing,' They say
+unto him, 'We also go with thee,'" True words enough, and having far
+echo beyond those Galilean hills. That night they caught nothing; but
+when the morning came, in the clear light of it, behold a figure stood
+on the shore. They were not thinking of anything but their fruitless
+hauls. They had no guess who it was. It asked them simply if they had
+caught anything. They said no. And it tells them to cast yet again. And
+John shades his eyes from the morning sun with his hand, to look who it
+is; and though the glinting of the sea, too, dazzles him, he makes out
+who it is, at last; and poor Simon, not to be outrun this time,
+tightens, his fisher's coat about him, and dashes in, over the nets.
+One would have liked to see him swim those hundred yards, and stagger
+to his knees on the beach.
+
+Well, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow way as
+men in general do get, in this world, to its true shore, much
+impeded by that wonderful "dragging the net with fishes;" but they
+get there--seven of them in all;--first the Denier, and then the
+slowest believer, and then the quickest believer, and then the two
+throne-seekers, and two more, we know not who.
+
+They sit down on the shore face to face with Him, and eat their
+broiled fish as He bids. And then, to Peter, all dripping still,
+shivering, and amazed, staring at Christ in the sun, on the other
+side of the coal fire,--thinking a little, perhaps, of what happened
+by another coal fire, when it was colder, and having had no word
+once changed with him by his Master since that look of His,--to him,
+so amazed, comes the question, "Simon, lovest thou me?" Try to feel
+that a little, and think of it till it is true to you; and then,
+take up that infinite monstrosity and hypocrisy--Raphael's cartoon
+of the Charge to Peter. Note, first, the bold fallacy--the putting
+_all_ the Apostles there, a mere lie to serve the Papal heresy of
+the Petric supremacy, by putting them all in the background while
+Peter receives the charge, and making them all witnesses to it. Note
+the handsomely curled hair and neatly tied sandals of the men who
+had been out all night in the sea-mists and on the slimy decks. Note
+their convenient dresses for going a-fishing, with trains that lie a
+yard along the ground, and goodly fringes,--all made to match, an
+apostolic fishing costume.[14] Note how Peter especially (whose
+chief glory was in his wet coat _girt_ about him and naked limbs)
+is enveloped in folds and fringes, so as to kneel and hold his keys
+with grace. No fire of coals at all, nor lonely mountain shore, but
+a pleasant Italian landscape, full of villas and churches, and a
+flock of sheep to be pointed at; and the whole group of Apostles,
+not round Christ, as they would have been naturally, but straggling
+away in a line, that they may all be shown.
+
+The simple truth is, that the moment we look at the picture we feel
+our belief of the whole thing taken away. There is, visibly, no
+possibility of that group ever having existed, in any place, or on any
+occasion. It is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded concoction of
+fringes, muscular arms, and curly heads of Greek philosophers.
+
+Sec. 17. Now, the evil consequences of the acceptance of this kind of
+religious idealism for true, were instant and manifold. So far as it
+was received and trusted in by thoughtful persons, it only served to
+chill all the conceptions of sacred history which they might otherwise
+have obtained. Whatever they could have fancied for themselves about
+the wild, strange, infinitely stern, infinitely tender, infinitely
+varied veracities of the life of Christ, was blotted out by the vapid
+fineries of Raphael; the rough Galilean pilot, the orderly custom
+receiver, and all the questioning wonder and fire of uneducated
+apostleship, were obscured under an antique mask of philosophical
+faces and long robes. The feeble, subtle, suffering, ceaseless energy
+and humiliation of St. Paul were confused with an idea of a meditative
+Hercules leaning on a sweeping sword;[15] and the mighty presences of
+Moses and Elias were softened by introductions of delicate grace,
+adopted from dancing nymphs and rising Auroras,[16]
+
+Now, no vigorously minded religious person could possibly receive
+pleasure or help from such art as this; and the necessary result was
+the instant rejection of it by the healthy religion of the world.
+Raphael ministered, with applause, to the impious luxury of the
+Vatican, but was trampled under foot at once by every believing and
+advancing Christian of his own and subsequent times; and
+thenceforward pure Christianity and "high art" took separate roads,
+and fared on, as best they might, independently of each other.
+
+Sec. 18. But although Calvin, and Knox, and Luther, and their flocks,
+with all the hardest-headed and truest-hearted faithful left in
+Christendom, thus spurned away the spurious art, and all art with it,
+(not without harm to themselves, such as a man must needs sustain in
+cutting off a decayed limb[17]) certain conditions of weaker
+Christianity suffered the false system to retain influence over them;
+and to this day, the clear and tasteless poison of the art of Raphael
+infects with sleep of infidelity the hearts of millions of Christians.
+It is the first cause of all that pre-eminent _dulness_ which
+characterizes what Protestants call sacred art; a dulness not merely
+baneful in making religion distasteful to the young, but in sickening,
+as we have seen, all vital belief of religion in the old. A dim sense
+of impossibility attaches itself always to the graceful emptiness of
+the representation; we feel instinctively that the painted Christ and
+painted apostle are not beings that ever did or could exist; and this
+fatal sense of fair fabulousness, and well-composed impossibility,
+steals gradually from the picture into the history, until we find
+ourselves reading St. Mark or St. Luke with the same admiring, but
+uninterested, incredulity, with which we contemplate Raphael.
+
+Sec. 19. On a certain class of minds, however, these Raphaelesque and
+other sacred paintings of high order, have had, of late years,
+another kind of influence, much resembling that which they had at
+first on the most pious Romanists. They are used to excite certain
+conditions of religious dream or reverie; being again, as in
+earliest times, regarded not as representations of fact, but as
+expressions of sentiment respecting the fact. In this way the best
+of them have unquestionably much purifying and enchanting power; and
+they are helpful opponents to sinful passion and weakness of every
+kind. A fit of unjust anger, petty malice, unreasonable vexation, or
+dark passion, cannot certainly, in a mind of ordinary sensibility,
+hold its own in the presence of a good engraving from any work of
+Angelico, Memling, or Perugino. But I nevertheless believe, that he
+who trusts much to such helps will find them fail him at his need;
+and that the dependence, in any great degree, on the presence or
+power of a picture, indicates a wonderfully feeble sense of the
+presence and power of God. I do not think that any man, who is
+thoroughly certain that Christ is in the room, will care what sort
+of pictures of Christ he has on its walls; and, in the plurality of
+cases, the delight taken in art of this kind is, in reality, nothing
+more than a form of graceful indulgence of those sensibilities which
+the habits of a disciplined life restrain in other directions. Such
+art is, in a word, the opera and drama of the monk. Sometimes it is
+worse than this, and the love of it is the mask under which a
+general thirst for morbid excitement will pass itself for religion.
+The young lady who rises in the middle of the day, jaded by her last
+night's ball, and utterly incapable of any simple or wholesome
+religious exercise, can still gaze into the dark eyes of the Madonna
+di San Sisto, or dream over the whiteness of an ivory crucifix, and
+returns to the course of her daily life in full persuasion that her
+morning's feverishness has atoned for her evening's folly. And all
+the while, the art which possesses these very doubtful advantages is
+acting for undoubtful detriment, in the various ways above examined,
+on the inmost fastnesses of faith; it is throwing subtle endearments
+round foolish traditions, confusing sweet fancies with sound
+doctrines, obscuring real events with unlikely semblances, and
+enforcing false assertions with pleasant circumstantiality, until,
+to the usual, and assuredly sufficient, difficulties standing in the
+way of belief, its votaries have added a habit of sentimentally
+changing what they know to be true, and of dearly loving what they
+confess to be false.
+
+Sec. 20. Has there, then (the reader asks emphatically), been _no_ true
+religious ideal? Has religious art never been of any service to
+mankind? I fear, on the whole, not. Of true religious ideal,
+representing events historically recorded, with solemn effort at a
+sincere and unartificial conception, there exist, as yet, hardly any
+examples. Nearly all good religious pictures fall into one or other
+branch of the false ideal already examined, either into the Angelican
+(passionate ideal) or the Raphaelesque (philosophical ideal). But there
+is one true form of religious art, nevertheless, in the pictures of the
+passionate ideal which represent imaginary beings of another world.
+Since it is evidently right that we should try to imagine the glories
+of the next world, and as this imagination must be, in each separate
+mind, more or less different, and unconfined by any laws of material
+fact, the passionate ideal has not only full scope here, but it becomes
+our duty to urge its powers to its utmost, so that every condition of
+beautiful form and color may be employed to invest these scenes with
+greater delightfulness (the whole being, of course, received as an
+assertion of possibility, not of absolute fact). All the paradises
+imagined by the religious painters--the choirs of glorified saints,
+angels, and spiritual powers, when painted with full belief in this
+possibility of their existence, are true ideals; and so far from our
+having dwelt on these too much, I believe, rather, we have not trusted
+them enough, nor accepted them enough, as possible statements of most
+precious truth. Nothing but unmixed good can accrue to any mind from
+the contemplation of Orcagna's Last Judgment or his triumph of death,
+of Angelico's Last Judgment and Paradise, or any of the scenes laid in
+heaven by the other faithful religious masters; and the more they are
+considered, not as works of art, but as real visions of real things,
+more or less imperfectly set down, the more good will be got by
+dwelling upon them. The same is true of all representations of Christ
+as a living presence among us now, as in Hunt's Light of the World.
+
+Sec. 21. For the rest, there is a reality of conception in some of the
+works of Benozzo Gozzoli, Ghirlandajo, and Giotto, which approaches
+to a true ideal, even of recorded facts. But the examination of the
+various degrees in which sacred art has reached its proper power is
+not to our present purpose; still less, to investigate the
+infinitely difficult question of its past operation on the Christian
+mind. I hope to prosecute my inquiry into this subject in another
+work; it being enough here to mark the forms of ideal error,
+without historically tracing their extent, and to state generally
+that my impression is, up to the present moment, that the best
+religious art has been _hitherto_ rather a fruit, and attendant
+sign, of sincere Christianity than a promoter of or help to it.
+More, I think, has always been done for God by few words than many
+pictures, and more by few acts than many words.
+
+Sec. 22. I must not, however, quit the subject without insisting on the
+chief practical consequence of what we have observed, namely, that
+sacred art, so far from being exhausted, has yet to attain the
+development of its highest branches; and the task, or privilege, yet
+remains for mankind, to produce an art which shall be at once entirely
+skilful and entirely _sincere_. All the histories of the Bible are, in
+my judgment, yet waiting to be painted. Moses has never been painted;
+Elijah never; David never (except as a mere ruddy stripling); Deborah
+never; Gideon never; Isaiah never. What single example does the reader
+remember of painting which suggested so much as the faintest shadow of
+these people, or of their deeds? Strong men in armor, or aged men with
+flowing beards, he _may_ remember, who, when he looked at his Louvre
+or Uffizii catalogue, he found were intended to stand for David or for
+Moses. But does he suppose that, if these pictures had suggested to
+him the feeblest image of the presence of such men, he would have
+passed on, as he assuredly did, to the next picture,--representing,
+doubtless, Diana and Actaeon, or Cupid and the Graces, or a gambling
+quarrel in a pothouse,--with no sense of pain, or surprise? Let him
+meditate over the matter, and he will find ultimately that what I say
+is true, and that religious art, at once complete and sincere, never
+yet has existed.
+
+Sec. 23. It will exist: nay, I believe the era of its birth has come,
+and that those bright Turnerian imageries, which the European public
+declared to be "dotage," and those calm Pre-Raphaelite studies
+which, in like manner, it pronounced "puerility," form the first
+foundation that has been ever laid for true sacred art. Of this we
+shall presently reason farther. But, be it as it may, if we would
+cherish the hope that sacred art may, indeed, arise for _us_, two
+separate cautions are to be addressed to the two opposed classes of
+religionists whose influence will chiefly retard that hope's
+accomplishment. The group calling themselves Evangelical ought no
+longer to render their religion an offence to men of the world by
+associating it only with the most vulgar forms of art. It is not
+necessary that they should admit either music or painting into
+religious service; but, if they admit either the one or the other,
+let it not be bad music nor bad painting: it is certainly in nowise
+more for Christ's honor that His praise should be sung discordantly,
+or His miracles painted discreditably, than that His word should be
+preached ungrammatically. Some Evangelicals, however, seem to take a
+morbid pride in the triple degradation.[18]
+
+Sec. 24. The opposite class of men, whose natural instincts lead them to
+mingle the refinements of art with all the offices and practices of
+religion, are to be warned, on the contrary, how they mistake their
+enjoyments for their duties, or confound poetry with faith. I admit
+that it is impossible for one man to judge another in this matter, and
+that it can never be said with certainty how far what seems frivolity
+may be force, and what seems the indulgence of the heart may be,
+indeed, its dedication. I am ready to believe that Metastasio, expiring
+in a canzonet, may have died better than if his prayer had been in
+unmeasured syllables.[19] But, for the most part, it is assuredly much
+to be feared lest we mistake a surrender to the charms of art for one
+to the service of God; and, in the art which we permit, lest we
+substitute sentiment for sense, grace for utility. And for us all there
+is in this matter even a deeper danger than that of indulgence. There
+is the danger of Artistical Pharisaism. Of all the forms of pride and
+vanity, as there are none more subtle, so I believe there are none more
+sinful, than those which are manifested by the Pharisees of art. To be
+proud of birth, of place, of wit, of bodily beauty, is comparatively
+innocent, just because such pride is more natural, and more easily
+detected. But to be proud of our sanctities; to pour contempt upon our
+fellows, because, forsooth, we like to look at Madonnas in bowers of
+roses, better than at plain pictures of plain things; and to make this
+religious art of ours the expression of our own perpetual
+self-complacency,--congratulating ourselves, day by day, on our
+purities, proprieties, elevations, and inspirations, as above the reach
+of common mortals,--this I believe to be one of the wickedest and
+foolishest forms of human egotism; and, truly, I had rather, with
+great, thoughtless, humble Paul Veronese, make the Supper at Emmaus a
+background for two children playing with a dog (as, God knows, men do
+usually put it in the background to everything, if not out of sight
+altogether), than join that school of modern Germanism which wears its
+pieties for decoration as women wear their diamonds, and flaunts the
+dry fleeces of its phylacteries between its dust and the dew of heaven.
+
+  [10] The curious inequality of this little trefoil is not a
+       mistake; it is faithfully copied by the draughtsman from the
+       MS. Perhaps the actual date of the illumination may be a year
+       or two past the thirteenth century, i.e., 1300--1310: but it
+       is quite characteristic of the thirteenth century treatment in
+       the figures.
+
+  [11] Lombardic, i.e. in the style of Pietro and Tullio Lombardo,
+       in the fifteenth century (not _Lombard_).
+
+  [12] All this, it will be observed, is that seeking for beauty at
+       the cost of truth which we have generally noted in the last
+       chapter.
+
+  [13] This is one form of the sacrifice of expression to technical
+       merit, generally noted at the end of the 10th paragraph of the
+       last chapter.
+
+  [14] I suppose Raphael intended a reference to Numbers xv. 38; but
+       if he did, the _blue_ riband, or "vitta," as it is in the
+       Vulgate, should have been on the borders too.
+
+  [15] In the St. Cecilia of Bologna.
+
+  [16] In the Transfiguration. Do but try to believe that Moses and
+       Elias are really there talking with Christ. Moses in the
+       loveliest heart and midst of the land which once it had been
+       denied him to behold,--Elijah treading the earth again, from
+       which he had been swept to heaven in fire; both now with a
+       mightier message than ever they had given in life,--mightier,
+       in closing their own mission,--mightier, in speaking to
+       Christ "of His decease, which He should accomplish at
+       Jerusalem." They, men of like passions once with us,
+       appointed to speak to the Redeemer of His death.
+
+       And, then, look at Raphael's kicking gracefulnesses.
+
+  [17] Luther had no dislike of religious art on principle. Even the
+       stove in his chamber was wrought with sacred subjects. See
+       Mrs. Stowe's Sunny Memories.
+
+  [18] I do not know anything more humiliating to a man of common
+       sense, than to open what is called an "illustrated Bible" of
+       modern days. See, for instance, the plates in Brown's Bible
+       (octavo: Edinburgh, 1840), a standard evangelical edition.
+       Our habit of reducing the psalms to doggerel before we will
+       condescend to sing them, is a parallel abuse. It is
+       marvellous to think that human creatures with tongues and
+       souls should refuse to chant the verse: "Before Ephraim,
+       Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up thy strength, and come and
+       help us;" preferring this:--
+
+           "Behold, how Benjamin expects,
+             With Ephraim and Manasseh joined,
+           In their deliverance, the effects
+             Of thy resistless strength to find!"
+
+  [19] "En 1780, age de quatre-vingt-deux ans, au moment de recevoir
+       le viatique, il rassembla ses forces, et chanta, a son Createur:
+
+           'Eterno Genitor
+           Io t' offro il proprio figlio
+           Che in pegno del tuo amor
+           Si vuole a me donar.
+
+           A lui rivolgi il ciglio,
+           Mira chi t' offro; e poi,
+           Niega, Signor, se puoi,
+           Niega di perdonar.'"--
+                      --DE STENDHAL, _Via de Metastasio_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+OF THE FALSE IDEAL:--SECONDLY, PROFANE.
+
+
+Sec. 1. Such having been the effects of the pursuit of ideal beauty on
+the religious mind of Europe, we might be tempted next to consider
+in what way the same movement affected the art which concerned
+itself with profane subject, and, through that art, the whole temper
+of modern civilization.
+
+I shall, however, merely glance at this question. It is a very
+painful and a very wide one. Its discussion cannot come properly
+within the limits, or even within the aim, of a work like this; it
+ought to be made the subject of a separate essay, and that essay
+should be written by some one who had passed less of his life than I
+have among the mountains, and more of it among men. But one or two
+points may be suggested for the reader to reflect upon at his
+leisure.
+
+Sec. 2. I said just now that we might be tempted to consider how this
+pursuit of the ideal _affected_ profane art. Strictly speaking, it
+brought that art into existence. As long as men sought for truth
+first, and beauty secondarily, they cared chiefly, of course, for
+the _chief_ truth, and all art was instinctively religious. But as
+soon as they sought for beauty first, and truth secondarily, they
+were punished by losing sight of spiritual truth altogether, and the
+profane (properly so called) schools of art were instantly
+developed.
+
+The perfect human beauty, which, to a large part of the community,
+was by far the most interesting feature in the work of the rising
+school, might indeed be in some degree consistent with the agony of
+Madonnas, and the repentance of Magdalenes; but could not be
+exhibited in fulness, when the subjects, however irreverently
+treated, nevertheless demanded some decency in the artist, and some
+gravity in the spectator. The newly acquired powers of rounding
+limbs, and tinting lips, had too little scope in the sanctities
+even of the softest womanhood; and the newly acquired conceptions of
+the nobility of nakedness could in no wise be expressed beneath the
+robes of the prelate or the sackcloth of the recluse. But the source
+from which these ideas had been received afforded also full field
+for their expression; the heathen mythology, which had furnished the
+examples of these heights of art, might again become the subject of
+the inspirations it had kindled;--with the additional advantage that
+it could now be delighted in, without being believed; that its
+errors might be indulged, unrepressed by its awe; and those of its
+deities whose function was temptation might be worshipped, in scorn
+of those whose hands were charged with chastisement.
+
+So, at least, men dreamed in their foolishness,--to find, as the
+ages wore on, that the returning Apollo bore not only his lyre, but
+his arrows; and that at the instant of Cytherea's resurrection to
+the sunshine, Persephone had reascended her throne in the deep.
+
+Sec. 3. Little thinking this, they gave themselves up fearlessly to the
+chase of the new delight, and exhausted themselves in the pursuit of
+an ideal now doubly false. Formerly, though they attempted to reach
+an unnatural beauty, it was yet in representing historical facts and
+real persons; _now_ they sought for the same unnatural beauty in
+representing tales which they knew to be fictitious, and personages
+who they knew had never existed. Such a state of things had never
+before been found in any nation. Every people till then had painted
+the acts of their kings, the triumphs of their armies, the beauty of
+their race, or the glory of their gods. They showed the things they
+had seen or done; the beings they truly loved or faithfully adored.
+But the ideal art of modern Europe was the shadow of a shadow; and
+with mechanism substituted for perception, and bodily beauty for
+spiritual life, it set itself to represent men it had never seen,
+customs it had never practised, and gods in whom it had never
+believed.
+
+Sec. 4. Such art could of course have no help from the virtues, nor
+claim on the energies of men. It necessarily rooted itself in their
+vices and their idleness; and of their vices principally in two,
+pride and sensuality. To the pride, was attached eminently the art
+of architecture; to the sensuality, those of painting and sculpture.
+Of the fall of architecture, as resultant from the formalist pride
+of its patrons and designers, I have spoken elsewhere. The
+sensualist ideal, as seen in painting and sculpture, remains to be
+examined here. But one interesting circumstance is to be observed
+with respect to the manner of the separation of these arts. Pride,
+being wholly a vice, and in every phase inexcusable, wholly betrayed
+and destroyed the art which was founded on it. But passion, having
+some root and use in healthy nature, and only becoming guilty in
+excess, did not altogether destroy the art founded upon it. The
+architecture of Palladio is wholly virtueless and despicable. Not so
+the Venus of Titian, nor the Antiope of Correggio.
+
+Sec. 5. We find, then, at the close of the sixteenth century, the arts
+of painting and sculpture wholly devoted to entertain the indolent
+and satiate the luxurious. To effect these noble ends, they took a
+thousand different forms; painting, however, of course being the
+most complying, aiming sometimes at mere amusement by deception in
+landscapes, or minute imitation of natural objects; sometimes giving
+more piquant excitement in battle-pieces full of slaughter, or
+revels deep in drunkenness; sometimes entering upon serious
+subjects, for the sake of grotesque fiends and picturesque infernos,
+or that it might introduce pretty children as cherubs, and handsome
+women as Magdalenes and Maries of Egypt, or portraits of patrons in
+the character of the more decorous saints: but more frequently, for
+direct flatteries of this kind, recurring to Pagan mythology, and
+painting frail ladies as goddesses or graces, and foolish kings in
+radiant apotheosis; while, for the earthly delight of the persons
+whom it honored as divine, it ransacked the records of luscious
+fable, and brought back, in fullest depth of dye and flame of fancy,
+the impurest dreams of the un-Christian ages.
+
+Sec. 6. Meanwhile, the art of sculpture, less capable of ministering to
+mere amusement, was more or less reserved for the affectations of
+taste; and the study of the classical statues introduced various ideas
+on the subjects of "purity," "chastity," and "dignity," such as it was
+possible for people to entertain who were themselves impure, luxurious,
+and ridiculous. It is a matter of extreme difficulty to explain the
+exact character of this modern sculpturesque ideal; but its relation
+to the true ideal may be best understood by considering it as in exact
+parallelism with the relation of the word "taste" to the word "love."
+Wherever the word "taste" is used with respect to matters of art, it
+indicates either that the thing spoken of belongs to some inferior
+class of objects, or that the person speaking has a false conception of
+its nature. For, consider the exact sense in which a work of art is
+said to be "in good or bad taste." It does not mean that it is true, or
+false; that it is beautiful, or ugly; but that it does or does not
+comply either with the laws of choice, which are enforced by certain
+modes of life; or the habits of mind produced by a particular sort of
+education. It does not mean merely fashionable, that is, complying with
+a momentary caprice of the upper classes; but it means agreeing with
+the habitual sense which the most refined education, common to those
+upper classes at the period, gives to their whole mind. Now, therefore,
+so far as that education does indeed tend to make the senses delicate,
+and the perceptions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased
+with quiet instead of gaudy color, and with graceful instead of coarse
+form; and, by long acquaintance with the best things, to discern
+quickly what is fine from what is common;--so far, acquired taste is an
+honorable faculty, and it is true praise of anything to say it is "in
+good taste." But so far as this higher education has a tendency to
+narrow the sympathies and harden the heart, diminishing the interest of
+all beautiful things by familiarity, until even what is best can hardly
+please, and what is brightest hardly entertain;--so far as it fosters
+pride, and leads men to found the pleasure they take in anything, not
+on the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in which it indicates
+some greatness of their own (as people build marble porticos, and inlay
+marble floors, not so much because they like the colors of marble, or
+find it pleasant to the foot, as because such porches and floors are
+costly, and separated in all human eyes from plain entrances of stone
+and timber);--so far as it leads people to prefer gracefulness of
+dress, manner, and aspect, to value of substance and heart, liking a
+well said thing better than a true thing, and a well trained manner
+better than a sincere one, and a delicately formed face better than a
+good-natured one, and in all other ways and things setting custom and
+semblance above everlasting truth;--so far, finally, as it induces a
+sense of inherent distinction between class and class, and causes
+everything to be more or less despised which has no social rank, so
+that the affection, pleasure, or grief of a clown are looked upon as of
+no interest compared with the affection and grief of a well-bred
+man;--just so far, in all these several ways, the feeling induced by
+what is called a "liberal education" is utterly adverse to the
+understanding of noble art; and the name which is given to the
+feeling,--Taste, Gout, Gusto,--in all languages, indicates the baseness
+of it, for it implies that art gives only a kind of pleasure analogous
+to that derived from eating by the palate.
+
+Sec. 7. Modern education, not in art only, but in all other things
+referable to the same standard, has invariably given taste in this bad
+sense; it has given fastidiousness of choice without judgment,
+superciliousness of manner without dignity, refinement of habit without
+purity, grace of expression without sincerity, and desire of loveliness
+without love; and the modern "Ideal" of high art is a curious mingling
+of the gracefulness and reserve of the drawingroom with a certain
+measure of classical sensuality. Of this last element, and the singular
+artifices by which vice succeeds in combining it with what appears to
+be pure and severe, it would take us long to reason fully; I would
+rather leave the reader to follow out for himself the consideration of
+the influence, in this direction, of statues, bronzes, and paintings,
+as at present employed by the upper circles of London, and (especially)
+Paris; and this not so much in the works which are really fine, as in
+the multiplied coarse copies of them; taking the widest range, from
+Dannaeker's Ariadne down to the amorous shepherd and shepherdess in
+china on the drawingroom time-piece, rigidly questioning, in each case,
+how far the charm of the art does indeed depend on some appeal to the
+inferior passions. Let it be considered, for instance, exactly how far
+the value of a picture of a girl's head by Greuze would be lowered in
+the market, if the dress, which now leaves the bosom bare, were raised
+to the neck; and how far, in the commonest lithograph of some utterly
+popular subject,--for instance, the teaching of Uncle Tom by Eva,--the
+sentiment which is supposed to be excited by the exhibition of
+Christianity in youth is complicated with that which depends upon Eva's
+having a dainty foot and a well-made satin slipper;--and then, having
+completely determined for himself how far the element exists, consider
+farther, whether, when art is thus frequent (for frequent he will
+assuredly find it to be) in its appeal to the lower passions, it is
+likely to attain the highest order of merit, or be judged by the truest
+standards of judgment. For, of all the causes which have combined, in
+modern times, to lower the rank of art, I believe this to be one of the
+most fatal; while, reciprocally, it may be questioned how far society
+suffers, in its turn, from the influences possessed over it by the arts
+it has degraded. It seems to me a subject of the very deepest interest
+to determine what has been the effect upon the European nations of the
+great change by which art became again capable of ministering
+delicately to the lower passions, as it had in the worst days of Rome;
+how far, indeed, in all ages, the fall of nations may be attributed to
+art's arriving at this particular stage among them. I do not mean that,
+in any of its stages, it is incapable of being employed for evil, but
+that assuredly an Egyptian, Spartan, or Norman was unexposed to the
+kind of temptation which is continually offered by the delicate
+painting and sculpture of modern days; and, although the diseased
+imagination might complete the imperfect image of beauty from the
+colored image on the wall,[20] or the most revolting thoughts be
+suggested by the mocking barbarism of the Gothic sculpture, their hard
+outline and rude execution were free from all the subtle treachery
+which now fills the flushed canvas and the rounded marble.
+
+Sec. 8. I cannot, however, pursue this inquiry here. For our present
+purpose it is enough to note that the feeling, in itself so debased,
+branches upwards into that of which, while no one has cause to be
+ashamed, no one, on the other hand, has cause to be proud, namely, the
+admiration of physical beauty in the human form, as distinguished from
+expression of character. Every one can easily appreciate the merit of
+regular features and well-formed limbs, but it requires some attention,
+sympathy, and sense, to detect the charm of passing expression, or
+life-disciplined character. The beauty of the Apollo Belvidere, or
+Venus de Medicis, is perfectly palpable to any shallow fine lady or
+fine gentleman, though they would have perceived none in the face of an
+old weather-beaten St. Peter, or a grey-haired "Grandmother Lois." The
+knowledge that long study is necessary to produce these regular types
+of the human form renders the facile admiration matter of eager
+self-complacency; the shallow spectator, delighted that he can really,
+and without hypocrisy, admire what required much thought to produce,
+supposes himself endowed with the highest critical faculties, and
+easily lets himself be carried into rhapsodies about the "ideal,"
+which, when all is said, if they be accurately examined, will be found
+literally to mean nothing more than that the figure has got handsome
+calves to its legs, and a straight nose.
+
+Sec. 9. That they do mean, in reality, nothing more than this may be
+easily ascertained by watching the taste of the same persons in other
+things. The fashionable lady who will write five or six pages in her
+diary respecting the effect upon her mind of such and such an "ideal"
+in marble, will have her drawing room table covered with Books of
+Beauty, in which the engravings represent the human form in every
+possible aspect of distortion and affectation; and the connoisseur who,
+in the morning, pretends to the most exquisite taste in the antique,
+will be seen, in the evening, in his opera-stall, applauding the least
+graceful gestures of the least modest figurante.
+
+Sec. 10. But even this vulgar pursuit of physical beauty (vulgar in the
+profoundest sense, for there is no vulgarity like the vulgarity of
+education) would be less contemptible if it really succeeded in its
+object; but, like all pursuits carried to inordinate length, it
+defeats itself. Physical beauty _is_ a noble thing when it is seen
+in perfectness; but the manner in which the moderns pursue their
+ideal prevents their ever really seeing what they are always
+seeking; for, requiring that all forms should be regular and
+faultless, they permit, or even compel, their painters and sculptors
+to work chiefly by rule, altering their models to fit their
+preconceived notions of what is right. When such artists look at a
+face, they do not give it the attention necessary to discern what
+beauty is already in its peculiar features; but only to see how
+best it may be altered into something for which they have themselves
+laid down the laws. Nature never unveils her beauty to such a gaze.
+She keeps whatever she has done best, close sealed, until it is
+regarded with reverence. To the painter who honors her, she will
+open a revelation in the face of a street mendicant; but in the work
+of the painter who alters her, she will make Portia become ignoble
+and Perdita graceless.
+
+Sec. 11. Nor is the effect less for evil on the mind of the general
+observer. The lover of ideal beauty, with all his conceptions
+narrowed by rule, never looks carefully enough upon the features
+which do not come under his law (or any others), to discern the
+inner beauty in them. The strange intricacies about the lines of the
+lips, and marvellous shadows and watch-fires of the eye, and
+wavering traceries of the eyelash, and infinite modulations of the
+brow, wherein high humanity is embodied, are all invisible to him.
+He finds himself driven back at last, with all his idealism, to the
+lionne of the ball-room, whom youth and passion can as easily
+distinguish as his utmost critical science; whereas, the observer
+who has accustomed himself to take human faces as God made them,
+will often find as much beauty on a village green as in the proudest
+room of state, and as much in the free seats of a church aisle, as
+in all the sacred paintings of the Vatican or the Pitti.
+
+Sec. 12. Then, farther, the habit of disdaining ordinary truth, and
+seeking to alter it so as to fit the fancy of the beholder,
+gradually infects the mind in all its other operation; so that it
+begins to propose to itself an ideal in history, an ideal in general
+narration, an ideal in portraiture and description, and in every
+thing else where truth may be painful or uninteresting; with the
+necessary result of more or less weakness, wickedness, and
+uselessness in all that is done or said, with the desire of
+concealing this painful truth. And, finally, even when truth is not
+intentionally concealed, the pursuer of idealism will pass his days
+in false and useless trains of thought, pluming himself, all the
+while, upon his superiority therein to the rest of mankind. A modern
+German, without either invention or sense, seeing a rapid in a
+river, will immediately devote the remainder of the day to the
+composition of dialogues between amorous water nymphs and unhappy
+mariners; while the man of true invention, power, and sense will,
+instead, set himself to consider whether the rocks in the river
+could have their points knocked off, or the boats upon it be made
+with stronger bottoms.
+
+Sec. 13. Of this final baseness of the false ideal, its miserable waste of
+time, strength, and available intellect of man, by turning, as I have
+said above, innocence of pastime into seriousness of occupation, it is,
+of course, hardly possible to sketch out even so much as the leading
+manifestations. The vain and haughty projects of youth for future life;
+the giddy reveries of insatiable self exaltation; the discontented
+dreams of what might have been or should be, instead of the thankful
+understanding of what is; the casting about for sources of interest in
+senseless fiction, instead of the real human histories of the people
+round us; the prolongation from age to age of romantic historical
+deceptions instead of sifted truth; the pleasures taken in fanciful
+portraits of rural or romantic life in poetry and on the stage, without
+the smallest effort to rescue the living rural population of the world
+from its ignorance or misery; the excitement of the feelings by labored
+imagination of spirits, fairies, monsters, and demons, issuing in total
+blindness of heart and sight to the true presences of beneficent or
+destructive spiritual powers around us; in fine, the constant
+abandonment of all the straightforward paths of sense and duty, for
+fear of losing some of the enticement of ghostly joys, or trampling
+somewhat "sopra lor vanita, che par persona;" all these various forms
+of false idealism have so entangled the modern mind, often called, I
+suppose ironically, practical, that truly I believe there never yet was
+idolatry of stock or staff so utterly unholy as this our idolatry of
+shadows; nor can I think that, of those who burnt incense under oaks,
+and poplars, and elms, because "the shadow thereof was good," it could
+in any wise be more justly or sternly declared than of us--"The wind
+hath bound them up in her wings, and they shall be ashamed because of
+their sacrifices."[21]
+
+  [20] Ezek. xxiii. 14.
+
+  [21] Hosea, chap. iv. 12, 13, and 19.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+OF THE TRUE IDEAL:--FIRST, PURIST.
+
+
+Sec. 1. Having thus glanced at the principal modes in which the
+imagination works for evil, we must rapidly note also the principal
+directions in which its operation is admissible, even in changing or
+strangely combining what is brought within its sphere.
+
+For hitherto we have spoken as if every change wilfully wrought by
+the imagination was an error; apparently implying that its only
+proper work was to summon up the memories of past events, and the
+anticipations of future ones, under aspects which would bear the
+sternest tests of historical investigation, or abstract reasoning.
+And in general this is, indeed, its noblest work. Nevertheless, it
+has also permissible functions peculiarly its own, and certain
+rights of feigning, and adorning, and fancifully arranging,
+inalienable from its nature. Everything that is natural is, within
+certain limits, right; and we must take care not, in over-severity,
+to deprive ourselves of any refreshing or animating power ordained
+to be in us for our help.
+
+Sec. 2. (A). It was noted in speaking above of the Angelican or
+passionate ideal, that there was a certain virtue in it dependent on
+the expression of its loving enthusiasm. (Chap. IV. Sec. 10.)
+
+(B). In speaking of the pursuit of beauty as one of the
+characteristics of the highest art, it was also said that there were
+certain ways of showing this beauty by gathering together, without
+altering, the finest forms, and marking them by gentle emphasis.
+(Chap. III. Sec. 15.)
+
+(C). And in speaking of the true uses of imagination it was said, that
+we might be allowed to create for ourselves, in innocent play, fairies
+and naiads, and other such fictitious creatures. (Chap. IV. Sec. 5.)
+
+Now this loving enthusiasm, which seeks for a beauty fit to be the
+object of eternal love; this inventive skill, which kindly displays
+what exists around us in the world; and this playful energy of
+thought which delights in various conditions of the impossible, are
+three forms of idealism more or less connected with the three
+tendencies of the artistical mind which I had occasion to explain in
+the chapter on the Nature of Gothic, in the Stones of Venice. It was
+there pointed out, that, the things around us containing mixed good
+and evil, certain men chose the good and left the evil (thence
+properly called Purists); others received both good and evil
+together (thence properly called Naturalists); and others had a
+tendency to choose the evil and leave the good, whom, for
+convenience' sake, I termed Sensualists. I do not mean to say that
+painters of fairies and naiads must belong to this last and lowest
+class, or habitually choose the evil and leave the good; but there
+is, nevertheless, a strange connection between the reinless play of
+the imagination, and a sense of the presence of evil, which is
+usually more or less developed in those creations of the imagination
+to which we properly attach the word _Grotesque_.
+
+For this reason, we shall find it convenient to arrange what we have
+to note respecting true idealism under the three heads--
+
+  A. Purist Idealism.
+  B. Naturalist Idealism.
+  C. Grotesque Idealism.
+
+Sec. 3. A. Purist Idealism.--It results from the unwillingness of men
+whose dispositions are more than ordinarily tender and holy, to
+contemplate the various forms of definite evil which necessarily
+occur in the daily aspects of the world around them. They shrink
+from them as from pollution, and endeavor to create for themselves
+an imaginary state, in which pain and imperfection either do not
+exist, or exist in some edgeless and enfeebled condition.
+
+As, however, pain and imperfection are, by eternal laws, bound up
+with existence, so far as it is visible to us, the endeavor to cast
+them away invariably indicates a comparative childishness of mind,
+and produces a childish form of art. In general, the effort is most
+successful when it is most naive, and when the ignorance of the
+draughtsman is in some frank proportion to his innocence. For
+instance, one of the modes of treatment, the most conducive to this
+ideal expression, is simply drawing everything without shadows, as
+if the sun were everywhere at once. This, in the present state of
+our knowledge, we could not do with grace, because we could not do
+it without fear or shame. But an artist of the thirteenth century
+did it with no disturbance of conscience,--knowing no better, or
+rather, in some sense, we might say, knowing no worse. It is,
+however, evident, at first thought, that all representations of
+nature without evil must either be ideals of a future world, or be
+false ideals, if they are understood to be representations of facts.
+They can only be classed among the branches of the true ideal, in so
+far as they are understood to be nothing more than expressions of
+the painter's personal affections or hopes.
+
+Sec. 4. Let us take one or two instances in order clearly to explain
+our meaning.
+
+The life of Angelico was almost entirely spent in the endeavor to
+imagine the beings belonging to another world. By purity of life,
+habitual elevation of thought, and natural sweetness of disposition,
+he was enabled to express the sacred affections upon the human
+countenance as no one ever did before or since. In order to effect
+clearer distinction between heavenly beings and those of this world,
+he represents the former as clothed in draperies of the purest
+color, crowned with glories of burnished gold, and entirely
+shadowless. With exquisite choice of gesture, and disposition of
+folds of drapery, this mode of treatment gives perhaps the best idea
+of spiritual beings which the human mind is capable of forming. It
+is, therefore, a true ideal;[22] but the mode in which it is arrived
+at (being so far mechanical and contradictory of the appearances of
+nature) necessarily precludes those who practise it from being
+complete masters of their art. It is always childish, but beautiful
+in its childishness.
+
+Sec. 5. The works of our own Stothard are examples of the operation of
+another mind, singular in gentleness and purity, upon mere worldly
+subject. It seems as if Stothard could not conceive wickedness,
+coarseness, or baseness; every one of his figures looks as if it had
+been copied from some creature who had never harbored an unkind
+thought, or permitted itself in an ignoble action. With this immense
+love of mental purity is joined, in Stothard, a love of mere
+physical smoothness and softness, so that he lived in a universe of
+soft grass and stainless fountains, tender trees, and stones at
+which no foot could stumble.
+
+All this is very beautiful, and may sometimes urge us to an endeavor
+to make the world itself more like the conception of the painter. At
+least, in the midst of its malice, misery, and baseness, it is often a
+relief to glance at the graceful shadows, and take, for momentary
+companionship, creatures full only of love, gladness, and honor. But
+the perfect truth will at last vindicate itself against the partial
+truth; the help which we can gain from the unsubstantial vision will
+be only like that which we may sometimes receive, in weariness, from
+the scent of a flower or the passing of a breeze. For all firm aid and
+steady use, we must look to harder realities; and, as far as the
+painter himself is regarded, we can only receive such work as the sign
+of an amiable imbecility. It is indeed ideal; but ideal as a fair
+dream is in the dawn of morning, before the faculties are astir. The
+apparent completeness of grace can never be attained without much
+definite falsification as well as omission; stones, over which we
+cannot stumble, must be ill-drawn stones; trees, which are all
+gentleness and softness, cannot be trees of wood; nor companies
+without evil in them, companies of flesh and blood. The habit of
+falsification (with whatever aim) begins always in dulness and ends
+always in incapacity; nothing can be more pitiable than any endeavor
+by Stothard to express facts beyond his own sphere of soft pathos or
+graceful mirth, and nothing more unwise than the aim at a similar
+ideality by any painter who has power to render a sincerer truth.
+
+Sec. 6. I remember another interesting example of ideality on this same
+root, but belonging to another branch of it, in the works of a young
+German painter, which I saw some time ago in a London drawingroom.
+He had been travelling in Italy, and had brought home a portfolio of
+sketches remarkable alike for their fidelity and purity. Every one
+was a laborious and accurate study of some particular spot. Every
+cottage, every cliff, every tree, at the site chosen, had been
+drawn; and drawn with palpable sincerity of portraiture, and yet in
+such a spirit that it was impossible to conceive that any sin or
+misery had ever entered into one of the scenes he had represented;
+and the volcanic horrors of Radicofani, the pestilent gloom of the
+Pontines, and the boundless despondency of the Campagna became under
+his hand, only various appearances of Paradise.
+
+It was very interesting to observe the minute emendations or
+omissions by which this was effected. To set the tiles the slightest
+degree more in order upon a cottage roof; to insist upon the
+vine-leaves at the window, and let the shadow which fell from them
+naturally conceal the rent in the wall; to draw all the flowers in
+the foreground, and miss the weeds; to draw all the folds of the
+white clouds, and miss those of the black ones; to mark the graceful
+branches of the trees, and, in one way or another, beguile the eye
+from those which were ungainly; to give every peasant-girl whose
+face was visible the expression of an angel, and every one whose
+back was turned the bearing of a princess; finally, to give a
+general look of light, clear organization, and serene vitality to
+every feature in the landscape;--such were his artifices, and such
+his delights. It was impossible not to sympathize deeply with the
+spirit of such a painter; and it was just cause for gratitude to be
+permitted to travel, as it were, through Italy with such a friend.
+But his work had, nevertheless, its stern limitations and marks of
+everlasting inferiority. Always soothing and pathetic, it could
+never be sublime, never perfectly nor entrancingly beautiful; for
+the narrow spirit of correction could not cast itself fully into any
+scene; the calm cheerfulness which shrank from the shadow of the
+cypress, and the distortion of the olive, could not enter into the
+brightness of the sky that they pierced, nor the softness of the
+bloom that they bore: for every sorrow that his heart turned from,
+he lost a consolation; for every fear which he dared not confront,
+he lost a portion of his hardiness; the unsceptred sweep of the
+storm-clouds, the fair freedom of glancing shower and flickering
+sunbeam, sank into sweet rectitudes and decent formalisms; and,
+before eyes that refused to be dazzled or darkened, the hours of
+sunset wreathed their rays unheeded, and the mists of the Apennines
+spread their blue veils in vain.
+
+Sec. 7. To this inherent shortcoming and narrowness of reach the farther
+defect was added, that this work gave no useful representation of the
+state of facts in the country which it pretended to contemplate. It was
+not only wanting in all the higher elements of beauty, but wholly
+unavailable for instruction of any kind beyond that which exists in
+pleasurableness of pure emotion. And considering what cost of labor was
+devoted to the series of drawings, it could not but be matter for grave
+blame, as well as for partial contempt, that a man of amiable feeling
+and considerable intellectual power should thus expend his life in the
+declaration of his own petty pieties and pleasant reveries, leaving the
+burden of human sorrow unwitnessed; and the power of God's judgments
+unconfessed; and, while poor Italy lay wounded and moaning at his feet,
+pass by, in priestly calm, lest the whiteness of his decent vesture
+should be spotted with unhallowed blood.
+
+Sec. 8. Of several other forms of Purism I shall have to speak
+hereafter, more especially of that exhibited in the landscapes of
+the early religious painters; but these examples are enough, for the
+present, to show the general principle that the purest ideal, though
+in some measure true, in so far as it springs from the true longings
+of an earnest mind, is yet necessarily in many things deficient or
+blamable, and _always_ an indication of some degree of weakness in
+the mind pursuing it. But, on the other hand, it is to be noted that
+entire scorn of this purist ideal is the sign of a far greater
+weakness. Multitudes of petty artists, incapable of any noble
+sensation whatever, but acquainted, in a dim way, with the
+technicalities of the schools, mock at the art whose depths they
+cannot fathom, and whose motives they cannot comprehend, but of
+which they can easily detect the imperfections, and deride the
+simplicities. Thus poor fumigatory Fuseli, with an art composed of
+the tinsel of the stage and the panics of the nursery, speaks
+contemptuously of the name of Angelico as "dearer to sanctity than
+to art." And a large portion of the resistance to the noble
+Pre-Raphaelite movement of our own days has been offered by men who
+suppose the entire function of the artist in this world to consist
+in laying on color with a large brush, and surrounding dashes of
+flake white with bituminous brown; men whose entire capacities of
+brain, soul, and sympathy, applied industriously to the end of their
+lives, would not enable them, at last, to paint so much as one of
+the leaves of the nettles at the bottom of Hunt's picture of the
+Light of the World.[23]
+
+Sec. 9. It is finally to be remembered, therefore, that Purism is always
+noble when it is _instinctive_. It is not the greatest thing that can
+be done, but it is probably the greatest thing that the man who does
+it can do, provided it comes from his heart. True, it is a sign of
+weakness, but it is not in our choice whether we will be weak or
+strong; and there is a certain strength which can only be made perfect
+in weakness. If he is working in humility, fear of evil, desire of
+beauty, and sincere purity of purpose and thought, he will produce
+good and helpful things; but he must be much on his guard against
+supposing himself to be greater than his fellows, because he has shut
+himself into this calm and cloistered sphere. His only safety lies in
+knowing himself to be, on the contrary, _less_ than his fellows, and
+in always striving, so far as he can find it in his heart, to extend
+his delicate narrowness towards the great naturalist ideal. The whole
+group of modern German purists have lost themselves, because they
+founded their work not on humility, nor on religion, but on small
+self-conceit. Incapable of understanding the great Venetians, or any
+other masters of true imaginative power, and having fed what mind they
+had with weak poetry and false philosophy, they thought themselves the
+best and greatest of artistic mankind, and expected to found a new
+school of painting in pious plagiarism and delicate pride. It is
+difficult at first to decide which is the more worthless, the
+spiritual affectation of the petty German, or the composition and
+chiaroscuro of the petty Englishman; on the whole, however, the latter
+have lightest weight, for the pseudo-religious painter must, at all
+events, pass much of his time in meditation upon solemn subjects, and
+in examining venerable models; and may sometimes even cast a little
+useful reflected light, or touch the heart with a pleasant echo.
+
+  [22] As noted above in Chap. IV Sec. 20.
+
+  [23] Not that the Pre-Raphaelite is a purist movement, it is stern
+       naturalist; but its unfortunate opposers, who neither know
+       what nature is, nor what purism is, have mistaken the simple
+       nature for morbid purism, and therefore cried out against it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+OF THE TRUE IDEAL:--SECONDLY, NATURALIST.
+
+
+Sec. 1. We now enter on the consideration of that central and highest
+branch of ideal art which concerns itself simply with things as they
+ARE, and accepts, in all of them, alike the evil and the good. The
+question is, therefore, how the art which represents things simply as
+they are, can be called ideal at all. How does it meet that
+requirement stated in Chap. III. Sec. 4, as imperative on all great art,
+that it shall be inventive, and a product of the imagination? It meets
+it preeminently by that power of arrangement which I have endeavored,
+at great length and with great pains, to define accurately in the
+chapter on Imagination associative in the second volume. That is to
+say, accepting the weaknesses, faults, and wrongnesses in all things
+that it sees, it so places and harmonizes them that they form a noble
+whole, in which the imperfection of each several part is not only
+harmless, but absolutely essential, and yet in which whatever is good
+in each several part shall be completely displayed.
+
+Sec. 2. This operation of true idealism holds, from the least things to
+the greatest. For instance, in the arrangement of the smallest masses
+of color, the false idealist, or even the purist, depends upon
+perfecting each separate hue, and raises them all, as far as he can,
+into costly brilliancy; but the naturalist takes the coarsest and
+feeblest colors of the things around him, and so interweaves and
+opposes them that they become more lovely than if they had all been
+bright. So in the treatment of the human form. The naturalist will
+take it as he finds it; but, with such examples as his picture may
+rationally admit of more or less exalted beauty, he will associate
+inferior forms, so as not only to set off those which are most
+beautiful, but to bring out clearly what good there is in the inferior
+forms themselves; finally using such measure of absolute evil as
+there is commonly in nature, both for teaching and for contrast.
+
+In Tintoret's Adoration of the Magi, the Madonna is not an enthroned
+queen, but a fair girl, full of simplicity and almost childish
+sweetness. To her are opposed (as Magi) two of the noblest and most
+thoughtful of the Venetian senators in extreme old age,--the utmost
+manly dignity, in its decline, being set beside the utmost feminine
+simplicity, in its dawn. The steep foreheads and refined features of
+the nobles are, again, opposed to the head of a negro servant, and
+of an Indian, both, however, noble of their kind. On the other side
+of the picture, the delicacy of the Madonna is farther enhanced by
+contrast with a largely made farm-servant, leaning on a basket. All
+these figures are in repose: outside, the troop of the attendants of
+the Magi is seen coming up at the gallop.
+
+Sec. 3. I bring forward this picture, observe, not as an example of the
+ideal in conception of religious subject, but of the general ideal
+treatment of the human form; in which the peculiarity is, that the
+beauty of each figure is displayed to the utmost, while yet, taken
+separately the Madonna is an unaltered portrait of a Venetian girl,
+the Magi are unaltered Venetian Senators, and the figure with the
+basket, an unaltered market-woman of Mestre.
+
+And the greater the master of the ideal, the more perfectly true in
+_portraiture_ will his individual figures be always found, the more
+subtle and bold his arts of harmony and contrast. This is a universal
+principle, common to all great art. Consider, in Shakspere, how Prince
+Henry is opposed to Falstaff, Falstaff to Shallow, Titania to Bottom,
+Cordelia to Regan, Imogen to Cloten, and so on; while all the meaner
+idealists disdain the naturalism, and are shocked at the contrasts.
+The fact is, a man who can see truth at all, sees it wholly, and
+neither desires nor dares to mutilate it.
+
+Sec. 4. It is evident that _within_ this faithful idealism, and as one
+branch of it only, will arrange itself the representation of the
+human form and mind in perfection, when this perfection is
+rationally to be supposed or introduced,--that is to say, in the
+highest personages of the story. The careless habit of confining the
+term "ideal" to such representations, and not understanding the
+imperfect ones to be _equally_ ideal in their place, has greatly
+added to the embarrassment and multiplied the errors of artists.[24]
+Thersites is just as ideal as Achilles, and Alecto as Helen; and,
+what is more, all the nobleness of the beautiful ideal depends upon
+its being just as probable and natural as the ugly one, and having
+in itself, occasionally or partially, both faults and familiarities.
+If the next painter who desires to illustrate the character of
+Homer's Achilles, would represent him cutting pork chops for
+Ulysses,[25] he would enable the public to understand the Homeric
+ideal better than they have done for several centuries. For it is to
+be kept in mind that the _naturalist ideal_ has always in it, to the
+full, the power expressed by those two words. It is naturalist,
+because studied from nature, and ideal, because it is mentally
+arranged in a certain manner. Achilles must be represented cutting
+pork chops, because that was one of the things which the nature of
+Achilles involved his doing: he could not be shown wholly as
+Achilles, if he were not shown doing that. But he shall do it at
+such time and place as Homer chooses.
+
+Sec. 5. Now, therefore, observe the main conclusions which follow from
+these two conditions, attached always to art of this kind. First, it
+is to be taken straight from nature; it is to be the plain narration
+of something the painter or writer saw. Herein is the chief practical
+difference between the higher and lower artists; a difference which I
+feel more and more every day that I give to the study of art. All the
+great men see what they paint before they paint it,--see it in a
+perfectly passive manner,--cannot help seeing it if they would;
+whether in their mind's eye, or in bodily fact, does not matter; very
+often the mental vision is, I believe, in men of imagination, clearer
+than the bodily one; but vision it is, of one kind or another,--the
+whole scene, character, or incident passing before them as in second
+sight, whether they will or no, and requiring them to paint it as they
+see it; they not daring, under the might of its presence, to
+alter[26] one jot or tittle of it as they write it down or paint it
+down; it being to them in its own kind and degree always a true vision
+or Apocalypse, and invariably accompanied in their hearts by a feeling
+correspondent to the words,--"Write the things _which thou hast seen_,
+and the things which _are_."
+
+And the whole power, whether of painter or poet, to describe rightly
+what we call an ideal thing, depends upon its being thus, to him, not
+an ideal, but a _real_ thing. No man ever did or ever will work well,
+but either from actual sight or sight of faith; and all that we call
+ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and
+visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent. The heroes of
+Phidias are simply representations of such noble human persons as he
+every day saw, and the gods of Phidias simply representations of such
+noble divine persons as he thoroughly believed to exist, and did in
+mental vision truly behold. Hence I said in the second preface to the
+Seven Lamps of Architecture: "All great art represents something that
+it sees or believes in; nothing unseen or uncredited."
+
+Sec. 6. And just because it is always something that it sees or
+believes in, there is the peculiar character above noted, almost
+unmistakable, in all high and true ideals, of having been as it were
+studied from the life, and involving pieces of sudden familiarity,
+and close _specific_ painting which never would have been admitted
+or even thought of, had not the painter drawn either from the bodily
+life or from the life of faith. For instance, Dante's centaur,
+Chiron, dividing his beard with his arrow before he can speak, is a
+thing that no mortal would ever have thought of, if he had not
+actually seen the centaur do it. They might have composed handsome
+bodies of men and horses in all possible ways, through a whole life
+of pseudo-idealism, and yet never dreamed of any such thing. But the
+real living centaur actually trotted across Dante's brain, and he
+saw him do it.
+
+Sec. 7. And on account of this reality it is, that the great idealists
+venture into all kinds of what, to the pseudo-idealists, are
+"vulgarities." Nay, _venturing_ is the wrong word; the great men
+have no choice in the matter; they do not know or care whether the
+things they describe are vulgarities or not. They _saw_ them: they
+are the facts of the case. If they had merely composed what they
+describe, they would have had it at their will to refuse this
+circumstance or add that. But they did not compose it. It came to
+them ready fashioned; they were too much impressed by it to think
+what was vulgar or not vulgar in it. It might be a very wrong thing
+in a centaur to have so much beard; but so it was. And, therefore,
+among the various ready tests of true greatness there is not any
+more certain than this daring reference to, or use of, mean and
+little things--mean and little, that is, to mean and little minds;
+but, when used by the great men, evidently part of the noble whole
+which is authoritatively present before them. Thus, in the highest
+poetry, as partly above noted in the first chapter, there is no word
+so familiar but a great man will bring good out of it, or rather, it
+will bring good to him, and answer some end for which no other word
+would have done equally well.
+
+Sec. 8. A common person, for instance, would be mightily puzzled to apply
+the word "whelp" to any one with a view of flattering him. There is a
+certain freshness and energy in the term, which gives it
+agreeableness; but it seems difficult, at first hearing, to use it
+complimentarily. If the person spoken of be a prince, the difficulty
+seems increased; and when, farther, he is at one and the same moment
+to be called a "whelp" and contemplated as a hero, it seems that a
+common idealist might well be brought to a pause. But hear Shakspere
+do it:--
+
+                           "Invoke his warlike spirit,
+      And your great uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,
+      Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy,
+      Making defeat on the full power of France,
+      While his most mighty father on a hill
+      Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp
+      Forage in blood of French nobility."
+
+So a common idealist would have been rather alarmed at the thought
+of introducing the name of a street in Paris--Straw Street--Rue de
+Fouarre--into the midst of a description of the highest heavens. Not
+so Dante,--
+
+      "Beyond, thou mayst the flaming lustre scan
+        Of Isidore, of Bede, and that Richart
+      Who was in contemplation more than man.
+      And he, from whom thy looks returning are
+        To me, a spirit was, that in austere
+      Deep musings often thought death kept too far.
+      That is the light eternal of Sigier,
+        Who while in Rue de Fouarre his days he wore,
+      Has argued hateful truths in haughtiest ear."    CAYLEY.
+
+What did it matter to Dante, up in heaven there, whether the mob
+below thought him vulgar or not! Sigier _had_ read in Straw Street;
+that was the fact, and he had to say so, and there an end.
+
+Sec. 9. There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate and _real_
+vulgarity of mind or defective education than the want of power to
+understand the universality of the ideal truth; the absence of
+sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects, which have in
+them so much of divine, that nothing is small to them, and nothing
+large; but with equal and unoffended vision they take in the sum of
+the world,--Straw Street and the seventh heavens,--in the same
+instant. A certain portion of this divine spirit is visible even in
+the lower examples of all the true men; it is, indeed, perhaps, the
+clearest test of their belonging to the true and great group, that
+they are continually touching what to the multitude appear
+vulgarities. The higher a man stands, the more the word "vulgar"
+becomes unintelligible to him. Vulgar? what, that poor farmer's girl
+of William Hunt's, bred in the stable, putting on her Sunday gown,
+and pinning her best cap out of the green and red pin-cushion! Not
+so; she may be straight on the road to those high heavens, and may
+shine hereafter as one of the stars in the firmament for ever. Nay,
+even that lady in the satin bodice with her arm laid over a
+balustrade to show it, and her eyes turned up to heaven to show
+them; and the sportsman waving his rifle for the terror of beasts,
+and displaying his perfect dress for the delight of men, are kept,
+by the very misery and vanity of them, in the thoughts of a great
+painter, at a sorrowful level, somewhat above vulgarity. It is only
+when the minor painter takes them on his easel, that they become
+things for the universe to be ashamed of.
+
+We may dismiss this matter of vulgarity in plain and few words, at
+least as far as regards art. There is never vulgarity in a _whole_
+truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It
+cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in
+affectation.
+
+Sec. 10. "Well, but," (at this point the reader asks doubtfully,) "if
+then your great central idealist is to show all truth, low as well
+as lovely, receiving it in this passive way, what becomes of all
+your principles of selection, and of setting in the right place,
+which you were talking about up to the end of your fourth paragraph?
+How is Homer to enforce upon Achilles the cutting of the pork chops
+'only at such time as Homer chooses,' if Homer is to have _no_
+choice, but merely to see the thing done, and sing it as he sees
+it?" Why, the choice, as well as the vision, is _manifested_ to
+Homer. The vision comes to him in its chosen order. Chosen _for_
+him, not _by_ him, but yet full of visible and exquisite choice,
+just as a sweet and perfect dream will come to a sweet and perfect
+person, so that, in some sense, they may be said to have chosen
+their dream, or composed it; and yet they could not help dreaming it
+so, and in no other wise. Thus, exactly thus, in all results of true
+inventive power, the whole harmony of the thing done seems as if it
+had been wrought by the most exquisite rules. But to him who did it,
+it presented itself so, and his will, and knowledge, and
+personality, for the moment went for nothing; he became simply a
+scribe, and wrote what he heard and saw.
+
+And all efforts to do things of a similar kind by rule or by
+thought, and all efforts to mend or rearrange the first order of the
+vision, are not inventive; on the contrary, they ignore and deny
+invention. If any man, seeing certain forms laid on the canvas, does
+by his reasoning power determine that certain changes wrought in
+them would mend or enforce them, that is not only uninventive, but
+contrary to invention, which must be the involuntary occurrence of
+certain forms or fancies to the mind in the order they are to be
+portrayed. Thus the knowing of rules and the exertion of judgment
+have a tendency to check and confuse the fancy in its flow; so that
+it will follow, that, in exact proportion as a master knows anything
+about rules of right and wrong, he is likely to be uninventive; and
+in exact proportion as he holds higher rank and has nobler
+inventive power, he will know less of rules; not despising them, but
+simply feeling that between him and them there is nothing in
+common,--that dreams cannot be ruled--that as they come, so they
+must be caught, and they cannot be caught in any other shape than
+that they come in; and that he might as well attempt to rule a
+rainbow into rectitude, or cut notches in a moth's wings to hold it
+by, as in any wise attempt to modify, by rule, the forms of the
+involuntary vision.
+
+Sec. 11. And this, which by reason we have thus anticipated, is in
+reality universally so. There is no exception. The great men never
+know how or why they do things. They have no rules; cannot
+comprehend the nature of rules;--do not, usually, even know, in what
+they do, what is best or what is worst: to them it is all the same;
+something they cannot help saying or doing,--one piece of it as good
+as another, and none of it (it seems to _them_) worth much. The
+moment any man begins to talk about rules, in whatsoever art, you
+may know him for a second-rate man; and, if he talks about them
+_much_, he is a third-rate, or not an artist at all. To _this_ rule
+there is no exception in any art; but it is perhaps better to be
+illustrated in the art of music than in that of painting. I fell by
+chance the other day upon a work of De Stendhal's, "Vies de Haydn,
+de Mozart, et de Metastase," fuller of common sense than any book I
+ever read on the arts; though I see, by the slight references made
+occasionally to painting, that the author's knowledge therein is
+warped and limited by the elements of general teaching in the
+schools around him; and I have not yet, therefore, looked at what he
+has separately written on painting. But one or two passages out of
+this book on music are closely to our present purpose.
+
+"Counterpoint is related to mathematics: a fool, with patience,
+becomes a respectable savant in that; but for the part of genius,
+melody, it has no rules. No art is so utterly deprived of precepts
+for the production of the beautiful. So much the better for it and
+for us. Cimarosa, when first at Prague his air was executed, Pria
+che spunti in ciel l'Aurora, never heard the pedants say to him,
+'Your air is fine, because you have followed such and such a rule
+established by Pergolese in such an one of his airs; but it would
+be finer still if you had conformed yourself to such another rule
+from which Galluppi never deviated.'"
+
+Yes: "so much the better for it, and for us;" but I trust the time
+will soon come when melody in painting will be understood, no less
+than in music, and when people will find that, there also, the great
+melodists have no rules, and cannot have any, and that there are in
+this, as in sound, "no precepts for the production of the beautiful."
+
+Sec. 12. Again. "Behold, my friend, an example of that simple way of
+answering which embarrasses much. One asked him (Haydn) the _reason_
+for a harmony--for a passage's being assigned to one instrument
+rather than another; but all he ever answered was, 'I have done it,
+because it does well.'" Farther on, De Stendhal relates an anecdote
+of Haydn; I believe one well known, but so much to our purpose that
+I repeat it. Haydn had agreed to give some lessons in counterpoint
+to an English nobleman. "'For our first lesson,' said the pupil,
+already learned in the art--drawing at the same time a quatuor of
+Haydn's from his pocket, 'for our first lesson may we examine this
+quatuor; and will you tell me the reasons of certain modulations,
+which I cannot entirely approve because they are contrary to the
+principles?' Haydn, a little surprised, declared himself ready to
+answer. The nobleman began; and at the very first measures found
+matter for objection. Haydn, _who invented habitually_, and who was
+the contrary of a pedant, found himself much embarrassed, and
+answered always, 'I have done that because it has a good effect. I
+have put that passage there because it does well.' The Englishman,
+who judged that these answers proved nothing, recommenced his
+proofs, and demonstrated to him, by very good reasons, that his
+quatuor was good for nothing. 'But, my lord, arrange this quatuor
+then to your fancy,--play it so, and you will see which of the two
+ways is the best.' 'But why is yours the best which is contrary to
+the rules?' 'Because it is the pleasantest.' The nobleman replied.
+Haydn at last lost patience, and said, 'I see, my lord, it is you
+who have the goodness to give lessons to me, and truly I am forced
+to confess to you that I do not deserve the honor.' The partizan of
+the rules departed, still astonished that in following the rules to
+the letter one cannot infallibly produce a 'Matrimonio Segreto.'"
+
+This anecdote, whether in all points true or not, is in its tendency
+most instructive, except only in that it makes _one_ false inference
+or admission, namely, that a good composition can be _contrary_ to
+the rules. It may be contrary to certain principles, supposed in
+ignorance to be general; but every great composition is in perfect
+harmony with all true rules, and involves thousands too delicate for
+ear, or eye, or thought, to trace; still it is possible to reason,
+with infinite pleasure and profit, about these principles, when the
+thing is once done; only, all our reasoning will not enable any one
+to do another thing like it, because all reasoning falls infinitely
+short of the divine instinct. Thus we may reason wisely over the way
+a bee builds its comb, and be profited by finding out certain things
+about the angles of it. But the bee knows nothing about those
+matters. It builds its comb in a far more inevitable way. And, from
+a bee to Paul Veronese, all master-workers work with this awful,
+this inspired unconsciousness.
+
+Sec. 13. I said just now that there was no exception to _this_ law,
+that the great men never knew how or why they did things. It is, of
+course, only with caution that such a broad statement should be
+made; but I have seen much of different kinds of artists, and I have
+always found the knowledge of, and attention to, rules so
+_accurately_ in the inverse ratio to the power of the painter, that
+I have myself no doubt that the law is constant, and that men's
+smallness may be trigonometrically estimated by the attention which,
+in their work, they pay to principles, especially principles of
+composition. The general way in which the great men speak is of
+"_trying_ to do" this or that, just as a child would tell of
+something he had seen and could not utter. Thus, in speaking of the
+drawing of which I have given an etching farther on (a scene on the
+St. Gothard[27]), Turner asked if I had been to see "that litter of
+stones which I _endeavored_ to represent;" and William Hunt, when I
+asked him one day as he was painting, why he put on such and such a
+color, answered, "I don't know; I am just _aiming_ at it;" and
+Turner, and he, and all the other men I have known who could paint,
+always spoke and speak in the same way; not in any selfish restraint
+of their knowledge, but in pure simplicity. While all the men whom I
+know, who _cannot_ paint, are ready with admirable reasons for
+everything they have done; and can show, in the most conclusive way,
+that Turner is wrong, and how he might be improved.
+
+Sec. 14. And this is the reason for the somewhat singular, but very
+palpable truth that the Chinese, and Indians, and other semi-civilized
+nations, can color better than we do, and that an Indian shawl or
+Chinese vase are still, in invention of color, inimitable by us. It is
+their glorious ignorance of all rules that does it; the pure and true
+instincts have play, and do their work,--instincts so subtle, that the
+least warping or compression breaks or blunts them; and the moment we
+begin teaching people any rules about color, and make them do this or
+that, we crush the instinct generally for ever. Hence, hitherto, it has
+been an actual necessity, in order to obtain power of coloring, that a
+nation should be half-savage: everybody could color in the twelfth and
+thirteenth centuries; but we were ruled and legalized into grey in the
+fifteenth;--only a little salt simplicity of their sea natures at
+Venice still keeping their precious, shellfishy purpleness and power;
+and now that is gone; and nobody can color anywhere, except the Hindoos
+and Chinese; but that need not be so, and will not be so long; for, in
+a little while, people will find out their mistake, and give up talking
+about rules of color, and then everybody will color again, as easily as
+they now talk.
+
+Sec. 15. Such, then, being the generally passive or instinctive character
+of right invention, it may be asked how these unmanageable instincts
+are to be rendered practically serviceable in historical or poetical
+painting,--especially historical, in which given facts are to be
+represented. Simply by the sense and self-control of the whole man;
+not by control of the particular fancy or vision. He who habituates
+himself, in his daily life, to seek for the stern facts in whatever he
+hears or sees, will have these facts again brought before him by the
+involuntary imaginative power in their noblest associations; and he
+who seeks for frivolities and fallacies, will have frivolities and
+fallacies again presented to him in his dreams. Thus if, in reading
+history for the purpose of painting from it, the painter severely
+seeks for the accurate circumstances of every event; as, for instance,
+determining the exact spot of ground on which his hero fell, the way
+he must have been looking at the moment, the height the sun was at (by
+the hour of the day), and the way in which the light must have fallen
+upon his face, the actual number and individuality of the persons by
+him at the moment, and such other veritable details, ascertaining and
+dwelling upon them without the slightest care for any desirableness or
+poetic propriety in them, but for their own truth's sake; then these
+truths will afterwards rise up and form the body of his imaginative
+vision, perfected and united as his inspiration may teach. But if, in
+reading the history, he does not regard these facts, but thinks only
+how it might all most prettily, and properly, and impressively have
+happened, then there is nothing but prettiness and propriety to form
+the body of his future imagination, and his whole ideal becomes false.
+So, in the higher or expressive part of the work, the whole virtue of
+it depends on his being able to quit his own personality, and enter
+successively into the hearts and thoughts of each person; and in all
+this he is still passive: in gathering the truth he is passive, not
+determining what the truth to be gathered shall be; and in the after
+vision he is passive, not determining, but as his dreams will have it,
+what the truth to be represented shall be; only according to his own
+nobleness is his power of entering into the hearts of noble persons,
+and the general character of his dream of them.[28]
+
+Sec. 16. It follows from all this, evidently, that a great idealist
+never can be egotistic. The whole of his power depends upon his
+losing sight and feeling of his own existence, and becoming a mere
+witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of visions,--always
+passive in sight, passive in utterance,--lamenting continually that
+he cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he has seen. Not
+by any means a proud state for a man to be in. But the man who has
+no invention is always setting things in order, and putting the
+world to rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming himself
+on his doings as supreme in all ways.
+
+Sec. 17. There is still the question open, What are the principal
+directions in which this ideal faculty is to exercise itself most
+usefully for mankind?
+
+This question, however, is not to the purpose of our present work,
+which respects landscape-painting only; it must be one of those left
+open to the reader's thoughts, and for future inquiry in another
+place. One or two essential points I briefly notice.
+
+In Chap. IV. Sec. 5. it was said, that one of the first functions of
+imagination was traversing the scenes of history, and forcing the
+facts to become again visible. But there is so little of such force
+in written history, that it is no marvel there should be none
+hitherto in painting. There does not exist, as far as I know, in the
+world a single example of a good historical picture (that is to say,
+of one which, allowing for necessary dimness in art as compared with
+nature, yet answers nearly the same ends in our minds as the sight
+of the real event would have answered); the reason being, the
+universal endeavor to get _effects_ instead of facts, already shown
+as the root of false idealism. True historical ideal, founded on
+sense, correctness of knowledge, and purpose of usefulness, does not
+yet exist; the production of it is a task which the closing
+nineteenth century may propose to itself.
+
+Sec. 18. Another point is to be observed. I do not, as the reader may
+have lately perceived, insist on the distinction between historical
+and poetical painting, because, as noted in the 22nd paragraph of
+the third chapter, all great painting must be both.
+
+Nevertheless, a certain distinction must generally exist between men
+who, like Horace Vernet, David, or Domenico Tintoret, would employ
+themselves in painting, more or less graphically, the outward
+verities of passing events--battles, councils, &c.--of their day
+(who, supposing them to work worthily of their mission, would
+become, properly so called, historical or narrative painters); and
+men who sought, in scenes of perhaps less outward importance, "noble
+grounds for noble emotion;"--who would be, in a certain separate
+sense, _poetical_ painters, some of them taking for subjects events
+which had actually happened, and others themes from the poets; or,
+better still, becoming poets themselves in the entire sense, and
+inventing the story as they painted it. Painting seems to me only
+just to be beginning, in this sense also, to take its proper
+position beside literature, and the pictures of the "Awakening
+Conscience," "Huguenot," and such others, to be the first fruits of
+its new effort.
+
+Sec. 19. Finally, as far as I can observe, it is a constant law that
+the greatest men, whether poets or historians, live entirely in
+their own age, and that the greatest fruits of their work are
+gathered out of their own age. Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth
+century; Chaucer, England in the fourteenth; Masaccio, Florence in
+the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice in the sixteenth;--all of them
+utterly regardless of anachronism and minor error of every kind, but
+getting always vital truth out of the vital present.
+
+Sec. 20. If it be said that Shakspere wrote perfect historical plays on
+subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer, that they
+_are_ perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries in
+them, but a life which all men recognise for the human life of all
+time; and this it is, not because Shakspere sought to give universal
+truth, but because, painting honestly and completely from the men
+about him, he painted that human nature which is, indeed, constant
+enough,--a rogue in the fifteenth century being, _at heart_, what a
+rogue is in the nineteenth and was in the twelfth; and an honest or
+a knightly man being, in like manner, very similar to other such at
+any other time. And the work of these great idealists is, therefore,
+always universal; not because it is _not portrait_, but because it
+is _complete_ portrait down to the heart, which is the same in all
+ages: and the work of the mean idealists is _not_ universal, not
+because it is portrait, but because it is _half_ portrait,--of the
+outside, the manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret
+and Shakspere paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English
+nature as they saw it in their time, down to the root; and it does
+for _all_ time; but as for any care to cast themselves into the
+particular ways and tones of thought, or custom, of past time in
+their historical work, you will find it in neither of them, nor in
+any other perfectly great man that I know of.
+
+Sec. 21. If there had been no vital truth in their present, it is hard to
+say what these men could have done. I suppose, primarily, they would
+not have existed; that they, and the matter they have to treat of, are
+given together, and that the strength of the nation and its historians
+correlatively rise and fall--Herodotus springing out of the dust of
+Marathon. It is also hard to say how far our better general
+acquaintance with minor details of past history may make us able to
+turn the shadow on the imaginative dial backwards, and naturally to
+live, and even live strongly if we choose, in past periods; but this
+main truth will always be unshaken, that the only historical painting
+deserving the name is portraiture of our own living men and our own
+passing times,[29] and that all efforts to summon up the events of
+bygone periods, though often useful and touching, must come under an
+inferior class of poetical painting; nor will it, I believe, ever be
+much followed as their main work by the strongest men, but only by the
+weaker and comparatively sentimental (rather than imaginative) groups.
+This marvellous first half of the nineteenth century has in this
+matter, as in nearly all others, been making a double blunder. It has,
+under the name of improvement, done all it could to EFFACE THE RECORDS
+which departed ages have left of themselves, while it has declared the
+FORGERY OF FALSE RECORDS of these same ages to be the great work of
+its historical painters! I trust that in a few years more we shall
+come somewhat to our senses in the matter, and begin to perceive that
+our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and
+to say for ourselves also what shall be true for the future. Let us
+strive, with just veneration for that future, first to do what is
+worthy to be spoken, and then to speak it faithfully; and, with
+veneration for the past, recognize that it is indeed in the power of
+love to preserve the monument, but not of incantation to raise the
+dead.
+
+  [24] The word "ideal" is used in this limited sense in the chapter
+       on Generic Beauty in the second volume, but under protest.
+       See Sec. 4 in that chapter.
+
+  [25] II. ix. 209.
+
+  [26] "And yet you have just said it shall be at such time and
+       place as Homer chooses. Is not this _altering_?" No; wait a
+       little, and read on.
+
+  [27] See Plate XXI. in Chap. III. Vol. IV.
+
+  [28] The reader should, of course, refer for further details on
+       this subject to the chapters on Imagination in Vol. II., of
+       which I am only glancing now at the practical results.
+
+  [29] See Edinburgh Lectures, p. 217.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+OF THE TRUE IDEAL: THIRDLY, GROTESQUE.
+
+
+Sec. 1. I have already, in the Stones of Venice, had occasion to
+analyze, as far as I was able, the noble nature and power of
+grotesque conception; I am not sorry occasionally to refer the
+reader to that work, the fact being that it and this are parts of
+one whole, divided merely as I had occasion to follow out one or
+other of its branches; for I have always considered architecture as
+an essential part of landscape; and I think the study of its best
+styles and real meaning one of the necessary functions of the
+landscape-painter; as, in like manner, the architect cannot be a
+master-workman until all his designs are guided by understanding of
+the wilder beauty of pure nature. But, be this as it may, the
+discussion of the grotesque element belonged most properly to the
+essay on architecture, in which that element must always find its
+fullest development.
+
+Sec. 2. The Grotesque is in that chapter[30] divided principally into
+three kinds:
+
+(A). Art arising from healthful but irrational play of the
+imagination in times of rest.
+
+(B). Art arising from irregular and accidental contemplation of
+terrible things; or evil in general.
+
+(C). Art arising from the confusion of the imagination by the
+presence of truths which it cannot wholly grasp.
+
+It is the central form of this art, arising from contemplation of
+evil, which forms the link of connection between it and the
+sensualist ideals, as pointed out above in the second paragraph of
+the sixth chapter, the fact being that the imagination, when at
+play, is curiously like bad children, and likes to play with fire;
+in its entirely serious moods it dwells by preference on beautiful
+and sacred images, but in its mocking or playful moods it is apt to
+jest, sometimes bitterly, with undercurrent of sternest pathos,
+sometimes waywardly, sometimes slightly and wickedly, with death and
+sin; hence an enormous mass of grotesque art, some most noble and
+useful, as Holbein's Dance of Death, and Albert Durer's Knight and
+Death,[31] going down gradually through various conditions of less
+and less seriousness into an art whose only end is that of mere
+excitement, or amusement by terror, like a child making mouths at
+another, more or less redeemed by the degree of wit or fancy in the
+grimace it makes, as in the demons of Teniers and such others; and,
+lower still, in the demonology of the stage.
+
+Sec. 3. The form arising from an entirely healthful and open play of
+the imagination, as in Shakspere's Ariel and Titania, and in Scott's
+White Lady, is comparatively rare. It hardly ever is free from some
+slight taint of the inclination to evil; still more rarely is it,
+when so free, natural to the mind; for the moment we begin to
+contemplate sinless beauty we are apt to get serious; and moral
+fairy tales, and such other innocent work, are hardly ever truly,
+that is to say, naturally imaginative; but for the most part
+laborious inductions and compositions. The moment any real vitality
+enters them, they are nearly sure to become satirical, or slightly
+gloomy, and so connect themselves with the evil-enjoying branch.
+
+Sec. 4. The third form of the Grotesque is a thoroughly noble one. It
+is that which arises out of the use or fancy of tangible signs to
+set forth an otherwise less expressible truth; including nearly the
+whole range of symbolical and allegorical art and poetry. Its
+nobleness has been sufficiently insisted upon in the place before
+referred to. (Chapter on Grotesque Renaissance, Sec.Sec. LXIII. LXIV. &c.)
+Of its practical use, especially in painting, deeply despised among
+us, because grossly misunderstood, a few words must be added here.
+
+A fine grotesque is the expression, in a moment, by a series of
+symbols thrown together in bold and fearless connection, of truths
+which it would have taken a long time to express in any verbal way,
+and of which the connection is left for the beholder to work out
+for himself; the gaps, left or overleaped by the haste of the
+imagination, forming the grotesque character.
+
+Sec. 5. For instance, Spenser desires to tell us, (1.) that envy is the
+most untamable and unappeasable of the passions, not to be soothed
+by any kindness; (2.) that with continual labor it invents evil
+thoughts out of its own heart; (3.) that even in this, its power of
+doing harm is partly hindered by the decaying and corrupting nature
+of the evil it lives in; (4.) that it looks every way, and that
+whatever it sees is altered and discolored by its own nature; (5.)
+which discoloring, however, is to it a veil, or disgraceful dress,
+in the sight of others; (6.) and that it never is free from the most
+bitter suffering, (7.) which cramps all its acts and movements,
+enfolding and crushing it while it torments. All this it has
+required a somewhat long and languid sentence for me to say in
+unsymbolical terms,--not, by the way, that they _are_ unsymbolical
+altogether, for I have been forced, whether I would or not, to use
+_some_ figurative words; but even with this help the sentence is
+long and tiresome, and does not with any vigor represent the truth.
+It would take some prolonged enforcement of each sentence to make it
+felt, in ordinary ways of talking. But Spenser puts it all into a
+grotesque, and it is done shortly and at once, so that we feel it
+fully, and see it, and never forget it. I have numbered above the
+statements which had to be made. I now number them with the same
+numbers, as they occur in the several pieces of the grotesque:--
+
+              "And next to him malicious Envy rode
+         (1.) Upon a ravenous wolfe, and (2. 3.) still did chaw
+              Between his cankred[32] teeth a venemous tode
+              That all the poison ran about his jaw.
+      (4. 5.) All in a kirtle of discolourd say
+              He clothed was, y-paynted full of eies;
+         (6.) And in his bosome secretly there lay
+              An hatefull snake, the which his tail uptyes
+         (7.) In many folds, and mortall sting implyes."
+
+There is the whole thing in nine lines; or, rather, in one image,
+which will hardly occupy any room at all on the mind's shelves, but
+can be lifted out, whole, whenever we want it. All noble grotesques
+are concentrations of this kind, and the noblest convey truths
+which nothing else could convey; and not only so, but convey them,
+in minor cases with a delightfulness,--in the higher instances with
+an awfulness,--which no mere utterance of the symbolised truth would
+have possessed, but which belongs to the effort of the mind to
+unweave the riddle, or to the sense it has of there being an
+infinite power and meaning in the thing seen, beyond all that is
+apparent therein, giving the highest sublimity even to the most
+trivial object so presented and so contemplated.
+
+      "'Jeremiah, what seest thou?'
+      'I see a seething pot, and the face thereof is toward the north,
+      'Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the
+         inhabitants of the land.'"
+
+And thus in all ages and among all nations, grotesque idealism has
+been the element through which the most appalling and eventful truth
+has been wisely conveyed, from the most sublime words of true
+Revelation, to the [Greek: "all' hot' an Hemionos basileus,"] &c., of
+the oracles, and the more or less doubtful teaching of dreams; and so
+down to ordinary poetry. No element of imagination has a wider range,
+a more magnificent use, or so colossal a grasp of sacred truth.
+
+Sec. 6. How, then, is this noble power best to be employed in the art
+of painting?
+
+We hear it not unfrequently asserted that symbolism or
+personification should not be introduced in painting at all. Such
+assertions are in their grounds unintelligible, and in their
+substance absurd. Whatever is in words described as visible, may
+with all logical fitness[33] be rendered so by colors, and not only
+is this a legitimate branch of ideal art, but I believe there is
+hardly any other so widely useful and instructive; and I heartily
+wish that every great allegory which the poets ever invented were
+powerfully put on canvas, and easily accessible by all men, and that
+our artists were perpetually exciting themselves to invent more. And
+as far as authority bears on the question, the simple fact is that
+allegorical painting has been the delight of the greatest men and of
+the wisest multitudes, from the beginning of art, and will be till
+art expires. Orcagua's Triumph of Death; Simon Memmi's frescoes in
+the Spanish Chapel; Giotto's principal works at Assisi, and partly
+at the Arena; Michael Angelo's two best statues, the Night and Day;
+Albert Durer's noble Melancholy, and hundreds more of his best
+works; a full third, I should think, of the works of Tintoret and
+Veronese, and nearly as large a portion of those of Raphael and
+Rubens, are entirely symbolical or personifiant; and, except in the
+case of the last-named painter, are always among the most
+interesting works the painters executed. The greater and more
+thoughtful the artists, the more they delight in symbolism, and the
+more fearlessly they employ it. Dead symbolism, second-hand
+symbolism, pointless symbolism, are indeed objectionable enough; but
+so are most other things that are dead, second-hand, and pointless.
+It is also true that both symbolism and personification are somewhat
+more apt than most things to have their edges taken off by too much
+handling; and what with our modern Fames, Justices, and various
+metaphorical ideals, largely used for signs and other such purposes,
+there is some excuse for our not well knowing what the real power of
+personification is. But that power is gigantic and inexhaustible,
+and ever to be grasped with peculiar joy by the painter, because it
+permits him to introduce picturesque elements and flights of fancy
+into his work, which otherwise would be utterly inadmissible; to
+bring the wild beasts of the desert into the room of state, fill the
+air with inhabitants as well as the earth, and render the least
+(visibly) interesting incidents themes for the most thrilling drama.
+Even Tintoret might sometimes have been hard put to it, when he had
+to fill a large panel in the Ducal Palace with the portrait of a
+nowise interesting Doge, unless he had been able to lay a winged
+lion beside him, ten feet long from the nose to the tail, asleep
+upon the Turkey carpet; and Rubens could certainly have made his
+flatteries of Mary of Medicis palatable to no one but herself,
+without the help of rosy-cheeked goddesses of abundance, and
+seven-headed hydras of rebellion.
+
+Sec. 7. For observe, not only does the introduction of these imaginary
+beings permit greater fantasticism of _incident_, but also infinite
+fantasticism of _treatment_; and, I believe, so far from the pursuit
+of the false ideal having in any wise exhausted the realms of
+fantastic imagination, those realms have hardly yet been entered, and
+that a universe of noble dream-land lies before us, yet to be
+conquered. For, hitherto, when fantastic creatures have been
+introduced, either the masters have been so realistic in temper that
+they made the spirits as substantial as their figures of flesh and
+blood,--as Rubens, and, for the most part, Tintoret; or else they have
+been weak and unpractised in realization, and have painted transparent
+or cloudy spirits because they had no power of painting grand ones.
+But if a really great painter, thoroughly capable of giving
+substantial truth, and master of the elements of pictorial effect
+which have been developed by modern art, would solemnly, and yet
+fearlessly, cast his fancy free in the spiritual world, and faithfully
+follow out such masters of that world as Dante and Spenser, there
+seems no limit to the splendor of thought which painting might
+express. Consider, for instance, how the ordinary personifications of
+Charity oscillate between the mere nurse of many children, of
+Reynolds, and the somewhat painfully conceived figure with flames
+issuing from the heart, of Giotto; and how much more significance
+might be given to the representation of Love, by amplifying with
+tenderness the thought of Dante, "Tanta rossa, che a pena fora dentro
+al foco nota,"[34] that is to say, by representing the loveliness of
+her face and form as all flushed with glow of crimson light, and, as
+she descended through heaven, all its clouds colored by her presence
+as they are by sunset. In the hands of a feeble painter, such an
+attempt would end in mere caricature; but suppose it taken up by
+Correggio, adding to his power of flesh-painting the (not
+inconsistent) feeling of Angelico in design, and a portion of Turner's
+knowledge of the clouds. There is nothing impossible in such a
+conjunction as this. Correggio, trained in another school, might have
+even himself shown some such extent of grasp; and in Turner's picture
+of the dragon of the Hesperides, Jason, vignette to Voyage of Columbus
+("Slowly along the evening sky they went"), and such others, as well
+as in many of the works of Watts and Rosetti, is already visible, as I
+trust, the dawn of a new era of art, in a true unison of the grotesque
+with the realistic power.
+
+Sec. 8. There is, however, unquestionably, a severe limit, in the case
+of all inferior masters, to the degree in which they may venture to
+realize grotesque conception, and partly, also, a limit in the
+nature of the thing itself, there being many grotesque ideas which
+may be with safety suggested dimly by words or slight lines, but
+which will hardly bear being painted into perfect definiteness. It
+is very difficult, in reasoning on this matter, to divest ourselves
+of the prejudices which have been forced upon us by the base
+grotesque of men like Bronzino, who, having no true imagination, are
+apt, more than others, to try by startling realism to enforce the
+monstrosity that has no terror in itself. But it is nevertheless
+true, that, unless in the hands of the very greatest men, the
+grotesque seems better to be expressed merely in line, or light and
+shade, or mere abstract color, so as to mark it for a thought rather
+than a substantial fact. Even if Albert Durer had perfectly painted
+his Knight and Death, I question if we should feel it so great a
+thought as we do in the dark engraving. Blake, perfectly powerful in
+the etched grotesque of the book of Job, fails always more or less
+as soon as he adds color; not merely for want of power (his eye for
+color being naturally good), but because his subjects seem, in a
+sort, insusceptible of completion; and the two inexpressibly noble
+and pathetic woodcut grotesques of Alfred Rethel's, Death the
+Avenger, and Death the Friend, could not, I think, but with
+disadvantage, be advanced into pictorial color.
+
+And what is thus doubtfully true of the pathetic grotesque, is
+assuredly and always true of the jesting grotesque. So far as it
+expresses any transient flash of wit or satire, the less labor of
+line, or color, given to its expression the better; elaborate
+jesting being always intensely painful.
+
+Sec. 9. For these several reasons, it seems not only permissible, but
+even desirable, that the art by which the grotesque is expressed
+should be more or less imperfect, and this seems a most beneficial
+ordinance as respects the human race in general. For the grotesque
+being not only a most forceful instrument of teaching, but a most
+natural manner of expression, springing as it does at once from any
+tendency to playfulness in minds highly comprehensive of truth; and
+being also one of the readiest ways in which such satire or wit as
+may be possessed by men of any inferior rank of mind can be for
+perpetuity expressed, it becomes on all grounds desirable that what
+is suggested in times of play should be rightly sayable without
+toil; and what occurs to men of inferior power or knowledge, sayable
+without any high degree of skill. Hence it is an infinite good to
+mankind when there is full acceptance of the grotesque, slightly
+sketched or expressed; and, if field for such expression be frankly
+granted, an enormous mass of intellectual power is turned to
+everlasting use, which, in this present century of ours, evaporates
+in street gibing or vain revelling; all the good wit and satire
+expiring in daily talk, (like foam on wine,) which in the thirteenth
+and fourteenth centuries had a permitted and useful expression in
+the arts of sculpture and illumination, like foam fixed into
+chalcedony. It is with a view (not the least important among many
+others bearing upon art) to the reopening of this great field of
+human intelligence, long entirely closed, that I am striving to
+introduce Gothic architecture into daily domestic use; and to revive
+the art of illumination, properly so called; not the art of
+miniature-painting in books, or on vellum, which has ridiculously
+been confused with it; but of making _writing_, simple writing,
+beautiful to the eye, by investing it with the great chord of
+perfect color, blue, purple, scarlet, white, and gold, and in that
+chord of color, permitting the continual play of the fancy of the
+writer in every species of grotesque imagination, carefully
+excluding shadow; the distinctive difference between illumination
+and painting proper, being, that illumination admits _no_ shadows,
+but only gradations of pure color. And it is in this respect that
+illumination is specially fitted for grotesque expression; for, when
+I used the term "_pictorial_ color," just now, in speaking of the
+completion of the grotesque of Death the Avenger, I meant to
+distinguish such color from the abstract, shadeless hues which are
+eminently fitted for grotesque thought. The requirement, respecting
+the slighter grotesque, is only that it shall be _incompletely_
+expressed. It may have light and shade without color (as in etching
+and sculpture), or color without light and shade (illumination), but
+must not, except in the hands of the greatest masters, have both.
+And for some conditions of the playful grotesque, the abstract
+color is a much more delightful element of expression than the
+abstract light and shade.
+
+Sec. 10. Such being the manifold and precious uses of the true
+grotesque, it only remains for us to note carefully how it is to be
+distinguished from the false and vicious grotesque which results
+from idleness, instead of noble rest; from malice, instead of the
+solemn contemplation of necessary evil; and from general degradation
+of the human spirit, instead of its subjection, or confusion, by
+thoughts too high for it. It is easy for the reader to conceive how
+different the fruits of two such different states of mind _must_ be;
+and yet how like in many respects, and apt to be mistaken, one for
+the other;--how the jest which springs from mere fatuity, and vacant
+want of penetration or purpose, is everlastingly, infinitely,
+separated from, and yet may sometimes be mistaken for, the bright,
+playful, fond, far-sighted jest of Plato, or the bitter, purposeful,
+sorrowing jest of Aristophanes; how, again, the horror which springs
+from guilty love of foulness and sin, may be often mistaken for the
+inevitable horror which a great mind must sometimes feel in the full
+and penetrative sense of their presence;--how, finally, the vague
+and foolish inconsistencies of undisciplined dream or reverie may be
+mistaken for the compelled inconsistencies of thoughts too great to
+be well sustained, or clearly uttered. It is easy, I say, to
+understand what a difference there must indeed be between these; and
+yet how difficult it may be always to define it, or lay down laws
+for the discovery of it, except by the just instinct of minds set
+habitually in all things to discern right from wrong.
+
+Sec. 11. Nevertheless, one good and characteristic instance may be of
+service in marking the leading directions in which the contrast is
+discernible. On the opposite page, Plate I., I have put, beside each
+other, a piece of true grotesque, from the Lombard-Gothic, and of
+false grotesque from classical (Roman) architecture. They are both
+griffins; the one on the left carries on his back one of the main
+pillars of the porch of the cathedral of Verona; the one on the
+right is on the frieze of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina at
+Rome, much celebrated by Renaissance and bad modern architects.
+
+In some respects, however, this classical griffin deserves its
+reputation. It is exceedingly fine in lines of composition, and, I
+believe (I have not examined the original closely), very exquisite
+in execution. For these reasons, it is all the better for our
+purpose. I do not want to compare the worst false grotesque with the
+best true, but rather, on the contrary, the best false with the
+simplest true, in order to see how the delicately wrought lie fails
+in the presence of the rough truth; for rough truth in the present
+case it is, the Lombard sculpture being altogether untoward and
+imperfect in execution.[35]
+
+Sec. 12. "Well, but," the reader says, "what do you mean by calling
+_either_ of them true? There never were such beasts in the world as
+either of these?"
+
+No, never: but the difference is, that the Lombard workman did
+really see a griffin in his imagination, and carved it from the
+life, meaning to declare to all ages that he had verily seen with
+his immortal eyes such a griffin as that; but the classical workman
+never saw a griffin at all, nor anything else; but put the whole
+thing together by line and rule.
+
+Sec. 13. "How do you know that?"
+
+Very easily. Look at the two, and think over them. You know a
+griffin is a beast composed of lion and eagle. The classical workman
+set himself to fit these together in the most ornamental way
+possible. He accordingly carves a sufficiently satisfactory lion's
+body, then attaches very gracefully cut wings to the sides: then,
+because he cannot get the eagle's head on the broad lion's
+shoulders, fits the two together by something like a horse's neck
+(some griffins being wholly composed of a horse and eagle), then,
+finding the horse's neck look weak and unformidable, he strengthens
+it by a series of bosses, like vertebrae, in front, and by a series
+of spiny cusps, instead of a mane, on the ridge; next, not to lose
+the whole leonine character about the neck, he gives a remnant of
+the lion's beard, turned into a sort of griffin's whisker, and
+nicely curled and pointed; then an eye, probably meant to look grand
+and abstracted, and therefore neither lion's nor eagle's; and,
+finally, an eagle's beak, very sufficiently studied from a real
+one. The whole head being, it seems to him, still somewhat wanting
+in weight and power, he brings forward the right wing behind it, so
+as to enclose it with a broad line. This is the finest thing in the
+composition, and very masterly, both in thought, and in choice of
+the exactly right point where the lines of wing and beak should
+intersect (and it may be noticed in passing, that all men, who can
+compose at all, have this habit of encompassing or governing broken
+lines with broad ones, wherever it is possible, of which we shall
+see many instances hereafter). The whole griffin, thus gracefully
+composed, being, nevertheless, when all is done, a very composed
+griffin, is set to very quiet work, and raising his left foot, to
+balance his right wing, sets it on the tendril of a flower so
+lightly as not even to bend it down, though, in order to reach it,
+his left leg is made half as long again as his right.
+
+Sec. 14. We may be pretty sure, if the carver had ever seen a griffin,
+he would have reported of him as doing something else than _that_
+with his feet. Let us see what the Lombardic workman saw him doing.
+
+Remember, first, the griffin, though part lion and part eagle, has
+the united _power of both_. He is not merely a bit of lion and a bit
+of eagle, but whole lion, incorporate with whole eagle. So when we
+really see one, we may be quite sure we shall not find him wanting
+in anything necessary to the might either of beast or bird.
+
+Well, among things essential to the might of a lion, perhaps, on the
+whole, the most essential are his _teeth_. He could get on pretty
+well even without his claws, usually striking his prey down with a
+blow, woundless; but he could by no means get on without his teeth.
+Accordingly, we see that the real or Lombardic griffin has the
+carnivorous teeth bare to the root, and the peculiar hanging of the
+jaw at the back, which marks the flexible and gaping mouth of the
+devouring tribes.
+
+Again; among things essential to the might of an eagle, next to his
+wings (which are of course prominent in both examples), are his
+_claws_. It is no use his being able to tear anything with his beak,
+if he cannot first hold it in his claws; he has comparatively no
+leonine power of striking with his feet, but a magnificent power of
+grip with them. Accordingly, we see that the real griffin, while his
+feet are heavy enough to strike like a lion's, has them also
+extended far enough to give them the eagle's grip with the back
+claw; and has, moreover, some of the bird-like wrinkled skin over
+the whole foot, marking this binding power the more; and that he has
+besides verily got something to hold with his feet, other than a
+flower, of which more presently.
+
+Sec. 15. Now observe, the Lombardic workman did not do all this because
+he had thought it out, as you and I are doing together; he never
+thought a bit about it. He simply saw the beast; saw it as plainly
+as you see the writing on this page, and of course could not be
+wrong in anything he told us of it.
+
+Well, what more does he tell us? Another thing, remember, essential
+to an eagle is that it should fly _fast_. It is no use its having
+wings at all if it is to be impeded in the use of them. Now it would
+be difficult to impede him more thoroughly than by giving him two
+cocked ears to catch the wind.
+
+Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false griffin _has_ them
+so set, and, consequently, as he flew, there would be a continual
+humming of the wind on each side of his head, and he would have an
+infallible earache when he got home. But the real griffin has his
+ears flat to his head, and all the hair of them blown back, even to
+a point, by his fast flying, and the aperture is downwards, that he
+may hear anything going on upon the earth, where his prey is. In the
+false griffin the aperture is upwards.
+
+Sec. 16. Well, what more? As he is made up of the natures of lion and
+eagle, we may be very certain that a real griffin is, on the whole,
+fond of eating, and that his throat will look as if he occasionally
+took rather large pieces, besides being flexible enough to let him
+bend and stretch his head in every direction as he flies.
+
+Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false one has got those
+bosses upon his neck like vertebrae, which must be infinitely in his
+way when he is swallowing, and which are evidently inseparable, so
+that he cannot _stretch_ his neck any more than a horse. But the
+real griffin is all loose about the neck, evidently being able to
+make it almost as much longer as he likes; to stretch and bend it
+anywhere, and swallow anything, besides having some of the grand
+strength of the bull's dewlap in it when at rest.
+
+Sec. 17. What more? Having both lion and eagle in him, it is probable
+that the real griffin will have an infinite look of repose as well
+as power of activity. One of the notablest things about a lion is
+his magnificent _indolence_, his look of utter disdain of trouble
+when there is no occasion for it; as, also, one of the notablest
+things about an eagle is his look of inevitable vigilance, even when
+quietest. Look, again, at the two beasts. You see the false griffin
+is quite sleepy and dead in the eye, thus contradicting his eagle's
+nature, but is putting himself to a great deal of unnecessary
+trouble with his paws, holding one in a most painful position merely
+to touch a flower, and bearing the whole weight of his body on the
+other, thus contradicting his lion's nature.
+
+But the real griffin is primarily, with his eagle's nature, wide
+awake; evidently quite ready for whatever may happen; and with his
+lion's nature, laid all his length on his belly, prone and
+ponderous; his two paws as simply put out before him as a drowsy
+puppy's on a drawingroom hearth-rug; not but that he has got
+something to do with them, worthy of such paws; but he takes not one
+whit more trouble about it than is absolutely necessary. He has
+merely got a poisonous winged dragon to hold, and for such a little
+matter as that, he may as well do it lying down and at his ease,
+looking out at the same time for any other piece of work in his way.
+He takes the dragon by the middle, one paw under the wing, another
+above, gathers him up into a knot, puts two or three of his claws
+well into his back, crashing through the scales of it and wrinkling
+all the flesh up from the wound, flattens him down against the
+ground, and so lets him do what he likes. The dragon tries to bite
+him, but can only bring his head round far enough to get hold of his
+own wing, which he bites in agony instead; flapping the griffin's
+dewlap with it, and wriggling his tail up against the griffin's
+throat; the griffin being, as to these minor proceedings, entirely
+indifferent, sure that the dragon's body cannot drag itself one
+hair's breadth off those ghastly claws, and that its head can do no
+harm but to itself.
+
+Sec. 18. Now observe how in all this, through every separate part and
+action of the creature, the imagination is _always_ right. It
+evidently _cannot_ err; it meets every one of our requirements
+respecting the griffin as simply as if it were gathering up the
+bones of the real creature out of some ancient rock. It does not
+itself know or care, any more than the peasant laboring with his
+spade and axe, what is wanted to meet our theories or fancies. It
+knows simply what is there, and brings out the positive creature,
+errorless, unquestionable. So it is throughout art, and in all that
+the imagination does; if anything be wrong it is not the
+imagination's fault, but some inferior faculty's, which would have
+its foolish say in the matter, and meddled with the imagination, and
+said, the bones ought to be put together tail first, or upside down.
+
+Sec. 19. This, however, we need not be amazed at, because the very
+essence of the imagination is already defined to be the seeing to
+the heart; and it is not therefore wonderful that it should never
+err; but it is wonderful, on the other hand, how the composing
+legalism does _nothing else_ than err. One would have thought that,
+by mere chance, in this or the other element of griffin, the
+griffin-composer might have struck out a truth; that he might have
+had the luck to set the ears back, or to give some grasp to the
+claw. But, no; from beginning to end it is evidently impossible for
+him to be anything but wrong; his whole soul is instinct with lies;
+no veracity can come within hail of him; to him, all regions of
+right and life are for ever closed.
+
+Sec. 20. And another notable point is, that while the imagination
+receives truth in this simple way, it is all the while receiving
+statutes of composition also, far more noble than those for the sake
+of which the truth was lost by the legalist. The ornamental lines in
+the classical griffin appear at first finer than in the other; but
+they only appear so because they are more commonplace and more
+palpable. The subtlety of the sweeping and rolling curves in the
+real griffin, the way they waver and change and fold, down the neck,
+and along the wing, and in and out among the serpent coils, is
+incomparably grander, merely as grouping of ornamental line, than
+anything in the other; nor is it fine as ornamental only, but as
+massively useful, giving weight of stone enough to answer the
+entire purpose of pedestal sculpture. Note, especially, the
+insertion of the three plumes of the dragon's broken wing in the
+outer angle, just under the large coil of his body; this filling of
+the gap being one of the necessities, not of the pedestal block
+merely, but a means of getting mass and breadth, which all composers
+desire more or less, but which they seldom so perfectly accomplish.
+
+So that taking the truth first, the honest imagination gains
+everything; it has its griffinism, and grace, and usefulness, all at
+once: but the false composer, caring for nothing but himself and his
+rules, loses everything,--griffinism, grace, and all.
+
+Sec. 21. I believe the reader will now sufficiently see how the terms
+"true" and "false" are in the most accurate sense attachable to the
+opposite branches of what might appear at first, in both cases, the
+merest wildness of inconsistent reverie. But they are even to be
+attached, in a deeper sense than that in which we have hitherto used
+them, to these two compositions. For the imagination hardly ever
+works in this intense way, unencumbered by the inferior faculties,
+unless it be under the influence of some solemn purpose or
+sentiment. And to all the falseness and all the verity of these two
+ideal creatures this farther falsehood and verity have yet to be
+added, that the classical griffin has, at least in this place, no
+other intent than that of covering a level surface with entertaining
+form; but the Lombardic griffin is a profound expression of the most
+passionate symbolism. Under its eagle's wings are two wheels,[36]
+which mark it as connected, in the mind of him who wrought it, with
+the living creatures of the vision of Ezekiel: "When they went, the
+wheels went by them, and whithersoever the spirit was to go, they
+went, and the wheels were lifted up over against them, for the
+spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels." Thus signed, the
+winged shape becomes at once one of the acknowledged symbols of the
+Divine power; and, in its unity of lion and eagle, the workman of
+the middle ages always means to set forth the unity of the human and
+divine natures,[37] In this unity it bears up the pillars of the
+Church, set for ever as the corner stone. And the faithful and
+true imagination beholds it, in this unity, with everlasting
+vigilance and calm omnipotence, restrain the seed of the serpent
+crushed upon the earth; leaving the head of it free, only for a
+time, that it may inflict in its fury profounder destruction upon
+itself,--in this also full of deep meaning. The Divine power does
+not slay the evil creature. It wounds and restrains it only. Its
+final and _deadly_ wound is inflicted by itself.
+
+[Illustration: 1. True and False Griffins. Mediaeval. Classical.]
+
+  [30] On the Grotesque Renaissance, vol. iii.
+
+  [31] See Appendix I. Vol. IV. "Modern Grotesque."
+
+  [32] Cankred--because he cannot then bite hard.
+
+  [33] Though, perhaps, only in a subordinate degree. See farther
+       on, Sec. 8.
+
+  [34] "So red, that in the midst of the fire she could hardly have
+       been seen."
+
+  [35] If there be any inaccuracy in the right-hand griffin, I am
+       sorry, but am not answerable for it, as the plate has been
+       faithfully reduced from a large French lithograph, the best I
+       could find. The other is from a sketch of my own.
+
+  [36] At the extremities of the wings,--not seen in the plate.
+
+  [37] Compare the Purgatorio, canto xxix. &c.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+OF FINISH.
+
+
+Sec. 1. I am afraid the reader must be, by this time, almost tired of
+hearing about truth. But I cannot help this; the more I have
+examined the various forms of art, and exercised myself in receiving
+their differently intended impressions, the more I have found this
+truthfulness a final test, the only test of lasting power; and,
+although our concern in this part of our inquiry is, professedly,
+with the beauty which blossoms out of truth, still I find myself
+compelled always to gather it by the stalk, not by the petals. I
+cannot hold the beauty, nor be sure of it for a moment, but by
+feeling for that strong stem.
+
+We have, in the preceding chapters, glanced through the various
+operations of the imaginative power of man; with this almost
+painfully monotonous result, that its greatness and honor were
+always simply in proportion to the quantity of truth it grasped. And
+now the question, left undetermined some hundred pages back (Chap.
+II. Sec. 6), recurs to us in a simpler form than it could before. How
+far is this true imagination to be truly represented? How far should
+the perfect conception of Pallas be so given as to look like Pallas
+herself, rather than like the picture of Pallas?
+
+Sec. 2. A question, this, at present of notable interest, and demanding
+instant attention. For it seemed to us, in reasoning about Dante's
+views of art, that he was, or might be, right in desiring realistic
+completeness; and yet, in what we have just seen of the grotesque
+ideal, it seemed there was a certain desirableness in incompleteness.
+And the schools of art in Europe are, at this moment, set in two
+hostile ranks,--not nobly hostile, but spitefully and scornfully,
+having for one of the main grounds of their dispute the apparently
+simple question, how far a picture may be carried forward in detail,
+or how soon it may be considered as finished.
+
+I propose, therefore, in the present chapter, to examine, as
+thoroughly as I can, the real signification of this word, Finish, as
+applied to art, and to see if in this, as in other matters, our
+almost tiresome test is not the only right one; whether there be not
+a _fallacious_ finish and a _faithful_ finish, and whether the
+dispute, which seems to be only about completion and incompletion,
+has not therefore, at the bottom of it, the old and deep grounds of
+fallacy and fidelity.
+
+Sec. 3. Observe, first, there are two great and separate senses in
+which we call a thing finished, or well finished. One, which refers
+to the mere neatness and completeness of the actual work, as we
+speak of a well-finished knife-handle or ivory toy (as opposed to
+ill-cut ones); and, secondly, a sense which refers to the effect
+produced by the thing done, as we call a picture well-finished if it
+is so full in its details, as to produce the effect of reality on
+the spectator. And, in England, we seem at present to value highly
+the first sort of finish which belongs to work_manship_, in our
+manufactures and general doings of any kind, but to despise totally
+the impressive finish which belongs to the _work_; and therefore we
+like smooth ivories better than rough ones,--but careless scrawls or
+daubs better than the most complete paintings. Now, I believe that
+we exactly reverse the fitness of judgment in this matter, and that
+we ought, on the contrary, to despise the finish of work_manship_,
+which is done for vanity's sake, and to love the finish of _work_,
+which is done for truth's sake,--that we ought, in a word, to finish
+our ivory toys more roughly, and our pictures more delicately.
+
+Let us think over this matter.
+
+Sec. 4. Perhaps one of the most remarkable points of difference between
+the English and Continental nations is in the degree of finish given to
+their ordinary work. It is enough to cross from Dover to Calais to feel
+this difference; and to travel farther only increases the sense of it.
+English windows for the most part fit their sashes, and their woodwork
+is neatly planed and smoothed; French windows are larger, heavier, and
+framed with wood that looks as if it had been cut to its shape with a
+hatchet; they have curious and cumbrous fastenings, and can only be
+forced asunder or together by some ingenuity and effort, and even then
+not properly. So with everything else--French, Italian, and German,
+and, as far as I know, Continental. Foreign drawers do not slide as
+well as ours: foreign knives do not cut so well; foreign wheels do not
+turn so well, and we commonly plume ourselves much upon this, believing
+that generally the English people do their work better and more
+thoroughly, or as they say, "turn it out of their hands in better
+style," than foreigners. I do not know how far this is really the case.
+There may be a flimsy neatness, as well as a substantial roughness; it
+does not necessarily follow that the window which shuts easiest will
+last the longest, or that the harness which glitters the most is
+assuredly made of the toughest leather. I am afraid, that if this
+peculiar character of finish in our workmanship ever arose from a
+greater heartiness and thoroughness in our ways of doing things, it
+does so only now in the case of our best manufacturers; and that a
+great deal of the work done in England, however good in appearance, is
+but treacherous and rotten in substance. Still, I think that there is
+really in the English mind, for the most part, a stronger desire to do
+things as well as they can be done, and less inclination to put up with
+inferiorities or insufficiencies, than in general characterise the
+temper of foreigners. There is in this conclusion no ground for
+national vanity; for though the desire to do things as well as they can
+be done at first appears like a virtue, it is certainly not so in all
+its forms. On the contrary, it proceeds in nine cases out of ten more
+from vanity than conscientiousness; and that, moreover, often a weak
+vanity. I suppose that as much finish is displayed in the fittings of
+the private carriages of our young rich men as in any other department
+of English manufacture; and that our St. James's Street cabs, dogcarts,
+and liveries are singularly perfect in their way. But the feeling with
+which this perfection is insisted upon (however desirable as a sign of
+energy of purpose) is not in itself a peculiarly amiable or noble
+feeling; neither is it an ignoble disposition which would induce a
+country gentleman to put up with certain deficiencies in the appearance
+of his country-made carriage. It is true that such philosophy may
+degenerate into negligence, and that much thought and long discussion
+would be needed before we could determine satisfactorily the limiting
+lines between virtuous contentment and faultful carelessness; but at
+all events we have no right at once to pronounce ourselves the wisest
+people because we like to do all things in the best way. There are many
+little things which to do admirably is to waste both time and cost; and
+the real question is not so much whether we have done a given thing as
+well as possible, as whether we have turned a given quantity of labor
+to the best account.
+
+Sec. 5. Now, so far from the labor's being turned to good account which is
+given to our English "finishing," I believe it to be usually
+destructive of the best powers of our workmen's minds. For it is
+evident, in the first place, that there is almost always a useful and a
+useless finish; the hammering and welding which are necessary to
+produce a sword plate of the best quality, are useful finishing; the
+polishing of its surface, useless.[38] In nearly all work this
+distinction will, more or less, take place between substantial finish
+and apparent finish, or what may be briefly characterized as "Make" and
+"Polish." And so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "make," I
+have nothing to say against it. Even the vanity which displays itself
+in giving strength to our work is rather a virtue than a vice. But so
+far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "polish," there is much to be
+said against it; this first, and very strongly, that the qualities
+aimed at in common finishing, namely, smoothness, delicacy, or
+fineness, _cannot_ in reality _exist_, in a degree worth admiring, in
+anything done by human hands. Our best finishing is but coarse and
+blundering work after all We may smooth, and soften, and sharpen till
+we are sick at heart; but take a good magnifying glass to our miracle
+of skill, and the invisible edge is a jagged saw, and the silky thread
+a rugged cable, and the soft surface a granite desert. Let all the
+ingenuity and all the art of the human race be brought to bear upon the
+attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what is
+done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can
+finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the more the
+infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine work in this
+respect. So then it is not a little absurd to weary ourselves in
+struggling towards a point which we never can reach, and to exhaust our
+strength in vain endeavors to produce qualities which exist inimitably
+and inexhaustibly in the commonest things around us.
+
+Sec. 6. But more than this: the fact is that in multitudes of instances,
+instead of gaining greater fineness of finish by our work, we are only
+destroying the fine finish of nature, and substituting coarseness and
+imperfection. For instance, when a rock of any kind has lain for some
+time exposed to the weather, Nature finishes it in her own way; first,
+she takes wonderful pains about its forms, sculpturing it into
+exquisite variety of dint and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it
+into contours, which for fineness no human hand can follow; then she
+colors it; and every one of her touches of color, instead of being a
+powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living trees, glorious in
+strength and beauty, and concealing wonders of structure, which in all
+probability are mysteries even to the eyes of angels. Man comes and
+digs up this finished and marvellous piece of work, which in his
+ignorance he calls a "rough stone." He proceeds to finish it in _his_
+fashion, that is, to split it in two, rend it into ragged blocks, and,
+finally, to chisel its surface into a large number of lumps and knobs,
+all equally shapeless, colorless, deathful, and frightful.[39] And the
+block, thus disfigured, he calls "finished," and proceeds to build
+therewith, and thinks himself great, forsooth, and an intelligent
+animal. Whereas, all that he has really done is, to destroy with utter
+ravage a piece of divine art, which, under the laws appointed by the
+Deity to regulate his work in this world, it must take good twenty
+years to produce the like of again. This he has destroyed, and has
+himself given in its place a piece of work which needs no more
+intelligence to do than a pholas has, or a worm, or the spirit which
+throughout the world has authority over rending, rottenness, and
+decay. I do not say that stone must not be cut; it needs to be cut for
+certain uses; only I say that the cutting it is not "finishing," but
+_un_finishing it; and that so far as the mere fact of chiselling goes,
+the stone is ruined by the human touch. It is with it as with the
+stones of the Jewish altar: "If thou lift up thy tool upon it thou
+hast polluted it." In like manner a tree is a finished thing. But a
+plank, though ever so polished, is not. We need stones and planks, as
+we need food; but we no more bestow an additional admirableness upon
+stone in hewing it, or upon a tree in sawing it, than upon an animal
+in killing it.
+
+Sec. 7. Well, but it will be said, there is certainly a kind of finish in
+stone-cutting, and in every other art, which is meritorious, and which
+consists in smoothing and refining as much as possible. Yes, assuredly
+there is a meritorious finish. First, as it has just been said, that
+which fits a thing for its uses,--as a stone to lie well in its place,
+or the cog of an engine wheel to play well on another; and, secondly,
+a finish belonging properly to the arts; but _that_ finish does not
+consist in smoothing or polishing, but in the _completeness of the
+expression of ideas_. For in painting, there is precisely the same
+difference between the ends proposed in finishing that there is in
+manufacture. Some artists finish for the finish' sake; dot their
+pictures all over, as in some kinds of miniature-painting (when a wash
+of color would have produced as good an effect); or polish their
+pictures all over, making the execution so delicate that the touch of
+the brush cannot be seen, for the sake of the smoothness merely, and
+of the credit they may thus get for great labor; which kind of
+execution, seen in great perfection in many works of the Dutch school,
+and in those of Carlo Dolce, is that polished "language" against which
+I have spoken at length in various portions of the first volume; nor
+is it possible to speak of it with too great severity or contempt,
+where it has been made an ultimate end.
+
+But other artists finish for the impression's sake, not to show
+their skill, nor to produce a smooth piece of work, but that they
+may, with each stroke, render clearer the expression of knowledge.
+And this sort of finish is not, properly speaking, so much
+_completing_ the picture as _adding_ to it. It is not that what is
+painted is more delicately done, but that infinitely _more_ is
+painted. This finish is always noble, and, like all other noblest
+things, hardly ever understood or appreciated. I must here endeavor,
+more especially with respect to the state of quarrel between the
+schools of living painters, to illustrate it thoroughly.
+
+Sec. 8. In sketching the outline, suppose of the trunk of a tree, as in
+Plate 2. (opposite) fig. 1., it matters comparatively little whether
+the outline be given with a bold, or delicate line, so long as it is
+_outline only_. The work is not more "finished" in one case than in
+the other; it is only prepared for being seen at a greater or less
+distance. The real refinement or finish of the line depends, not on
+its thinness, but on its truly following the contours of the tree,
+which it conventionally represents; conventionally, I say, because
+there is no such line round the tree, in reality; and it is set down
+not as an _imit_ation, but a _limit_ation of the form. But if we are
+to add shade to it as in fig. 2., the outline must instantly be made
+proportionally delicate, not for the sake of delicacy as such, but
+because the outline will now, in many parts, stand not for
+limitation of form merely, but for a portion of the _shadow_ within
+that form. Now, as a limitation it was true, but as a shadow it
+would be false, for there is no line of black shadow at the edge of
+the stem. It must, therefore, be made so delicate as not to detach
+itself from the rest of the shadow where shadow exists, and only to
+be seen in the light where limitation is still necessary.
+
+Observe, then, the "finish" of fig. 2. as compared with fig. 1.
+consists, not in its greater delicacy, but in the addition of a
+truth (shadow), a removal, in a great degree, of a conventionalism
+(outline). All true finish consists in one or other of these things.
+Now, therefore, if we are to "finish" farther we must _know_ more or
+_see_ more about the tree. And as the plurality of persons who draw
+trees know nothing of them, and will not look at them, it results
+necessarily that the effort to finish is not only vain, but
+unfinishes--does mischief. In the lower part of the plate, figs. 3,
+4, 5, and 6. are facsimiles of pieces of line engraving, meant to
+represent trunks of trees; 3. and 4. are the commonly accredited
+types of tree-drawing among engravers in the eighteenth century; 5.
+and 6. are quite modern; 3. is from a large and important plate by
+Boydell, from Claude's Molten Calf, dated 1781; 4. by Boydell in
+1776, from Rubens's Waggoner; 5. from a bombastic engraving,
+published about twenty years ago by Meulemeester of Brussels, from
+Raphael's Moses at the Burning Bush; and 6. from the foreground
+of Miller's Modern Italy, after Turner.[40]
+
+[Illustration: 2. Drawing of Tree-Stems.]
+
+All these represent, as far as the engraving goes, simply _nothing_.
+They are not "finished" in any sense but this,--that the paper has
+been covered with lines. 4. is the best, because, in the original work
+of Rubens, the lines of the boughs, and their manner of insertion in
+the trunk, have been so strongly marked, that no engraving could quite
+efface them; and, inasmuch as it represents these facts in the boughs,
+that piece of engraving is more finished than the other examples,
+while its own networked texture is still false and absurd; for there
+is no texture of this knitted-stocking-like description on boughs; and
+if there were, it would not be seen in the shadow, but in the light.
+Miller's is spirited, and looks lustrous, but has no resemblance to
+the original bough of Turner's, which is pale, and does not glitter.
+The Netherlands work is, on the whole, the worst; because, in its
+ridiculous double lines, it adds affectation and conceit to its
+incapacity. But in all these cases the engravers have worked in total
+ignorance both of what is meant by "drawing," and of the form of a
+tree, covering their paper with certain lines, which they have been
+taught to plough in copper, as a husbandman ploughs in clay.
+
+Sec. 9. In the next three examples we have instances of endeavors at
+finish by the hands of artists themselves, marking three stages of
+knowledge or insight, and three relative stages of finish. Fig. 7.
+is Claude's (Liber Veritatis, No. 140., facsimile by Boydell). It
+still displays an appalling ignorance of the forms of trees, but yet
+is, in mode of execution, better--that is, more finished--than the
+engravings, because not _altogether_ mechanical, and showing some
+dim, far-away, blundering memory of a few facts in stems, such as
+their variations of texture and roundness, and bits of young shoots
+of leaves. 8. is Salvator's, facsimiled from part of his original
+etching of the Finding of Oedipus. It displays considerable power
+of handling--not mechanical, but free and firm, and is just so much
+more finished than any of the others as it displays more
+intelligence about the way in which boughs gather themselves out of
+the stem, and about the varying character of their curves. Finally,
+fig. 9. is good work. It is the root of the apple-tree in Albert
+Durer's Adam and Eve, and fairly represents the wrinkles of the
+bark, the smooth portions emergent beneath, and the general anatomy
+of growth. All the lines used conduce to the representation of these
+facts; and the work is therefore highly finished. It still, however,
+leaves out, as not to be represented by such kind of lines, the more
+delicate gradations of light and shade. I shall now "finish" a
+little farther, in the next plate (3.), the mere _insertion of the
+two boughs_ outlined in fig. 1. I do this simply by adding
+assertions of more facts. First, I say that the whole trunk is dark,
+as compared with the distant sky. Secondly, I say that it is rounded
+by gradations of shadow, in the various forms shown. And, lastly, I
+say that (this being a bit of old pine stripped by storm of its
+bark) the wood is fissured in certain directions, showing its grain,
+or _muscle_, seen in complicated contortions at the insertion of the
+arm and elsewhere.
+
+Sec. 10. Now this piece of work, though yet far from complete (we will
+better it presently), is yet more finished than any of the others,
+not because it is more delicate or more skilful, but simply because
+it tells more truth, and admits fewer fallacies. That which conveys
+most information, with least inaccuracy, is always the highest
+finish; and the question whether we prefer art so finished, to art
+unfinished, is not one of taste at all. It is simply a question
+whether we like to know much or little; to see accurately or see
+falsely; and those whose _taste_ in art (if they choose so to call
+it) leads them to like blindness better than sight, and fallacy
+better than fact, would do well to set themselves to some other
+pursuit than that of art.
+
+Sec. 11. In the above plate we have examined chiefly the grain and
+surface of the boughs; we have not yet noticed the finish of their
+curvature. If the reader will look back to the No. 7. (Plate 2.),
+which, in this respect, is the worst of all the set, he will
+immediately observe the exemplification it gives of Claude's principal
+theory about trees; namely, that the boughs always parted from each
+other, two at a time, in the manner of the prongs of an ill-made
+table-fork. It may, perhaps, not be at once believed that this is
+indeed Claude's theory respecting tree-structure, without some
+farther examples of his practice. I have, therefore, assembled on the
+next page, Plate 4., some of the most characteristic passages of
+ramification in the Liber Veritatis; the plates themselves are
+sufficiently cheap (as they should be) and accessible to nearly every
+one, so that the accuracy of the facsimiles may be easily tested. I
+have given in Appendix I. the numbers of the plates from which the
+examples are taken, and it will be found that they have been rather
+improved than libelled, only omitting, of course, the surrounding
+leafage, in order to show accurately the branch-outlines, with which
+alone we are at present concerned. And it would be difficult to bring
+together a series more totally futile and foolish, more singularly
+wrong (as the false griffin was), every way at once; they are stiff,
+and yet have no strength; curved, and yet have no flexibility;
+monotonous, and yet disorderly; unnatural, and yet uninventive. They
+are, in fact, of that commonest kind of tree bough which a child or
+beginner first draws experimentally; nay, I am well assured, that if
+this set of branches had been drawn by a schoolboy, "out of his own
+head," his master would hardly have cared to show them as signs of any
+promise in him.
+
+[Illustration: 3. Strength of Old Pine.]
+
+[Illustration: 4. Ramification, according to Claude.]
+
+Sec. 12. "Well, but do not the trunks of trees fork, and fork mostly
+into two arms at a time?"
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
+
+Yes; but under as stern anatomical law as the limbs of an animal;
+and those hooked junctions in Plate 4. are just as accurately
+representative of the branching of wood as this (fig. 2.) is of a
+neck and shoulders. We should object to such a representation of
+shoulders, because we have some interest in, and knowledge of, human
+form; we do not object to Claude's trees, because we have no
+interest in, nor knowledge of, trees. And if it be still alleged
+that such work is nevertheless enough to give any one an "idea" of a
+tree, I answer that it never gave, nor ever will give, an idea of a
+tree to any one who loves trees; and that, moreover, no idea,
+whatever its pleasantness, is of the smallest value, which is not
+founded on simple facts. What pleasantness may be in _wrong_ ideas
+we do not here inquire; the only question for us has always been,
+and must always be, What are the facts?
+
+Sec. 13. And assuredly those boughs of Claude's are not facts: and
+every one of their contours is, in the worst sense, unfinished,
+without even the expectation or faint hope of possible refinement
+ever coming into them. I do not mean to enter here into the
+discussion of the characters of ramification; that must be in our
+separate inquiry into tree-structure generally; but I will merely
+give one piece of Turner's tree-drawing as an example of what
+finished work really is, even in outline. In plate 5. opposite,
+fig. 1. is the contour (stripped, like Claude's, of its foliage) of
+one of the distant tree-stems in the drawing of Bolton Abbey. In
+order to show its perfectness better by contrast with bad work (as
+we have had, I imagine, enough of Claude), I will take a bit of
+Constable; fig. 2. is the principal tree out of the engraving of the
+Lock on the Stour (Leslie's Life of Constable). It differs from the
+Claude outlines merely in being the kind of work which is produced
+by an uninventive person dashing about idly, with a brush, instead
+of drawing determinately wrong, with a pen: on the one hand worse
+than Claude's, in being lazier; on the other a little better in
+being more free, but, as representative of tree-form, of course
+still wholly barbarous. It is worth while to turn back to the
+description of the uninventive painter at work on a tree (Vol. II.
+chapter on Imaginative Association, Sec. 11), for this trunk of
+Constable's is curiously illustrative of it. One can almost see him,
+first bending it to the right; then, having gone long enough to the
+right, turning to the left; then, having gone long enough to the
+left, away to the right again; then dividing it; and "because there
+is another tree in the picture with two long branches (in this case
+there really is), he knows that this ought to have three or four,
+which must undulate or go backwards and forwards," &c., &c.
+
+Sec. 14. Then study the bit of Turner work: note first its quietness,
+unattractiveness, apparent carelessness whether you look at it or
+not; next note the subtle curvatures within the narrowest limits,
+and, when it branches, the unexpected, out of the way things it
+does, just what nobody could have thought of its doing; shooting out
+like a letter Y, with a nearly straight branch, and then
+correcting its stiffness with a zigzag behind, so that the boughs,
+ugly individually, are beautiful in unison. (In what I have
+hereafter to say about trees, I shall need to dwell much on this
+character of _unexpectedness_. A bough is never drawn rightly if it
+is not wayward, so that although, as just now said, quiet at first,
+not caring to be looked at, the moment it is looked at, it seems
+bent on astonishing you, and doing the last things you expect it to
+do.) But our present purpose is only to note the _finish_ of the
+Turner _curves_, which, though they seem straight and stiff at
+first, are, when you look long, seen to be all tremulous,
+perpetually wavering along every edge into endless melody of change.
+This is finish in line, in exactly the same sense that a fine melody
+is finished in the association of its notes.
+
+[Illustration: 5. Good and Bad Tree-Drawing.]
+
+Sec. 15. And now, farther, let us take a little bit of the Turnerian tree
+in light and shade. I said above I would better the drawing of that
+pine trunk, which, though it has incipient shade, and muscular action,
+has no texture, nor local color. Now, I take about an inch and a half
+of Turner's ash trunks (one of the nearer ones) in this same drawing
+of Bolton Abbey (fig. 3. Plate 5.), and _this_ I cannot better; this
+is perfectly finished; it is not possible to add more truth to it on
+that scale. Texture of bark, anatomy of muscle beneath, reflected
+lights in recessed hollows, stains of dark moss, and flickering
+shadows from the foliage above, all are there, as clearly as the human
+hand can mark them. I place a bit of trunk by Constable (fig. 5.),[41]
+from another plate in Leslie's Life of him (a dell in Helmingham Park,
+Suffolk), for the sake of the same comparison in shade that we have
+above in contour. You see Constable does not know whether he is
+drawing moss or shadow: those dark touches in the middle are confused
+in his mind between the dark stains on the trunk and its dark side;
+there is no anatomy, no cast shadow, nothing but idle sweeps of the
+brush, vaguely circular. The thing is much darker than Turner's, but
+it is not, therefore, finished; it is only blackened. And "to blacken"
+is indeed the proper word for all attempts at finish without
+knowledge. All true finish is _added fact_; and Turner's word for
+finishing a picture was always this significant one, "carry forward."
+But labor without added knowledge can only blacken or stain a picture,
+it cannot finish it.
+
+Sec. 16. And this is especially to be remembered as we pass from
+comparatively large and distant objects, such as this single trunk, to
+the more divided and nearer features of foreground. Some degree of
+ignorance may be hidden, in completing what is far away; but there is
+no concealment possible in close work, and darkening instead of
+finishing becomes then the engraver's only possible resource. It has
+always been a wonderful thing to me to hear people talk of making
+foregrounds "vigorous," "marked," "forcible," and so on. If you will
+lie down on your breast on the next bank you come to (which is
+bringing it _close_ enough, I should think, to give it all the force
+it is capable of), you will see, in the cluster of leaves and grass
+close to your face, something as delicate as this, which I have
+actually so drawn, on the opposite page, a mystery of soft shadow in
+the depths of the grass, with indefinite forms of leaves, which you
+cannot trace or count, within it, and out of that, the nearer leaves
+coming in every subtle gradation of tender light and flickering form,
+quite beyond all delicacy of pencilling to follow; and yet you will
+rise up from that bank (certainly not making it appear coarser by
+drawing a little back from it), and profess to represent it by a few
+blots of "forcible" foreground color. "Well, but I cannot draw every
+leaf that I see on the bank." No, for as we saw, at the beginning of
+this chapter, that no human work could be finished so as to express
+the _delicacy_ of nature, so neither can it be finished so as to
+express the _redundance_ of nature. Accept that necessity; but do not
+deny it; do not call your work finished, when you have, in engraving,
+substituted a confusion of coarse black scratches, or in water-color a
+few edgy blots, for ineffable organic beauty. Follow that beauty as
+far as you can, remembering that just as far as you see, know, and
+represent it, just so far your work is finished; as far as you fall
+short of it, your work is _un_finished; and as far as you substitute
+any other thing for it, your work is spoiled.
+
+[Illustration: 6. Foreground Leafage.]
+
+Sec. 17. How far Turner followed it, is not easily shown; for his
+finish is so delicate as to be nearly uncopiable. I have just said
+it was not possible to finish that ash trunk of his, farther, on
+such a scale.[42] By using a magnifying-glass, and giving the same
+help to the spectator, it might perhaps be possible to add and
+exhibit a few more details; but even as it is, I cannot by line
+engraving express all that there is in that piece of tree-trunk, on
+the same scale. I _have_ therefore magnified the upper part of it in
+fig 4. (Plate 5.), so that the reader may better see the beautiful
+lines of curvature into which even its slightest shades and spots
+are cast. Every quarter of an inch in Turner's drawings will bear
+magnifying in the same way; much of the finer work in them can
+hardly be traced, except by the keenest sight, until it is
+magnified. In his painting of Ivy Bridge,[43] the veins are drawn on
+the wings of a butterfly, not above three lines in diameter; and in
+one of his smaller drawings of Scarborough, in my own possession,
+the muscle-shells on the beach are rounded, and some shown as shut,
+some as open, though none are as large as one of the letters of this
+type; and yet this is the man who was thought to belong to the
+"dashing" school, literally because most people had not patience or
+delicacy of sight enough to trace his endless detail.
+
+Sec. 18. "Suppose it was so," perhaps the reader replies; "still I do
+not like detail so delicate that it can hardly be seen." Then you
+like nothing in Nature (for you will find she always carries her
+detail too far to be traced). This point, however, we shall examine
+hereafter; it is not the question now whether we _like_ finish or
+not; our only inquiry here is, what finish _means_; and I trust the
+reader is beginning to be satisfied that it does indeed mean nothing
+but consummate and accumulated truth, and that our old monotonous
+test must still serve us here as elsewhere. And it will become us to
+consider seriously why (if indeed it be so) we dislike this kind of
+finish--dislike an accumulation of truth. For assuredly all
+authority is against us, and _no truly great man can be named in the
+arts--but it is that of one who finished to his utmost_. Take
+Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Raphael for a triad, to begin with.
+_They_ all completed their detail with such subtlety of touch and
+gradation, that, in a careful drawing by any of the three, you
+cannot see where the pencil ceased to touch the paper; the stroke of
+it is so tender, that, when you look close to the drawing you can
+see nothing; you only see the effect of it a little way back! Thus
+tender in execution,--and so complete in detail, that Leonardo must
+needs draw _every several vein in the little agates_ and pebbles of
+the gravel under the feet of the St. Anne in the Louvre. Take a
+quartett after the triad--Titian, Tintoret, Bellini, and Veronese.
+Examine the vine-leaves of the Bacchus and Ariadne, (Titian's) in
+the National Gallery; examine the borage blossoms, painted petal by
+petal, though lying loose on the table, in Titian's Supper at
+Emmaus, in the Louvre, or the snail-shells on the ground in his
+Entombment;[44] examine the separately designed patterns on every
+drapery of Veronese, in his Marriage in Cana; go to Venice and see
+how Tintoret paints the strips of black bark on the birch trunk that
+sustains the platform in his Adoration of the Magi: how Bellini
+fills the rents of his ruined walls with the most exquisite clusters
+of the erba della Madonna.[45] You will find them all in a tale.
+Take a quintett after the quartett--Francia, Angelico, Durer,
+Hemling, Perugino,--and still the witness is one, still the same
+striving in all to such utmost perfection as their knowledge and
+hand could reach.
+
+Who shall gainsay these men? Above all, who shall gainsay them when
+they and Nature say precisely the same thing? For where does Nature
+pause in _her_ finishing--that finishing which consists not in the
+smoothing of surface, but the filling of space, and the
+multiplication of life and thought?
+
+Who shall gainsay them? I, for one, dare not; but accept their
+teaching, with Nature's, in all humbleness.
+
+"But is there, then, no good in any work which does not pretend to
+perfectness? Is there no saving clause from this terrible
+requirement of completion? And if there be none, what is the meaning
+of all you have said elsewhere about rudeness as the glory of Gothic
+work, and, even a few pages back, about the danger of finishing, for
+our modern workmen?"
+
+Indeed there are many saving clauses, and there is much good in
+imperfect work. But we had better cast the consideration of these
+drawbacks and exceptions into another chapter, and close this one,
+without obscuring, in any wise, our broad conclusion that "finishing"
+means in art simply "telling more truth;" and that whatever we have in
+any sort begun wisely, it is good to finish thoroughly.
+
+  [38] "With his Yemen sword for aid;
+         Ornament it carried none,
+       But the notches on the blade."
+
+  [39] See the base of the new Army and Navy Clubhouse.
+
+  [40] I take this example from Miller, because, on the whole, he is
+       the best engraver of Turner whom we have.
+
+  [41] Fig. 5. is not, however, so _lustrous_ as Constable's; I
+       cannot help this, having given the original plate to my good
+       friend Mr. Cousen, with strict charge to facsimile it
+       faithfully: but the figure is all the fairer, as a
+       representation of Constable's art, for those mezzotints in
+       Leslie's life of him have many qualities of drawing which are
+       quite wanting in Constable's blots of color. The comparison
+       shall be made elaborately, between picture and picture, in
+       the section on Vegetation.
+
+  [42] It is of the exact size of the original, the whole drawing
+       being about 15-1/2 inches by 11 in.
+
+  [43] An oil painting (about 3 ft. by 4 ft. 6 in.), and very broad
+       in its masses. In the possession of E. Bicknell, Esq.
+
+  [44] These snail-shells are very notable, occurring as they do in,
+       perhaps, the very grandest and broadest of all Titian's
+       compositions.
+
+  [45] Linaria Cymbalaria, the ivy-leaved toadflax of English
+       gardens.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+OF THE USE OF PICTURES.
+
+
+Sec. 1. I am afraid this will be a difficult chapter; one of drawbacks,
+qualifications, and exceptions. But the more I see of useful truths,
+the more I find that, like human beings, they are eminently biped;
+and, although, as far as apprehended by human intelligence, they are
+usually seen in a crane-like posture, standing on one leg, whenever
+they are to be stated so as to maintain themselves against all
+attack it is quite necessary they should stand on two, and have
+their complete balance on opposite fulcra.
+
+Sec. 2. I doubt not that one objection, with which as well as with
+another we may begin, has struck the reader very forcibly, after
+comparing the illustrations above given from Turner, Constable, and
+Claude. He will wonder how it was that Turner, finishing in this
+exquisite way, and giving truths by the thousand, where other
+painters gave only one or two, yet, of all painters, seemed to
+obtain least acknowledgeable resemblance to nature, so that the
+world cried out upon him for a madman, at the moment when he was
+giving exactly the highest and most consummate truth that had ever
+been seen in landscape.
+
+And he will wonder why still there seems reason for this outcry.
+Still, after what analysis and proof of his being right have as yet
+been given, the reader may perhaps be saying to himself: "All this
+reasoning is of no use to me. Turner does _not_ give me the idea of
+nature; I do not feel before one of his pictures as I should in the
+real scene. Constable takes me out into the shower, and Claude into
+the sun; and De Wint makes me feel as if I were walking in the
+fields; but Turner keeps me in the house, and I know always that I
+am looking at a picture."
+
+I might answer to this; Well, what else _should_ he do? If you want
+to feel as if you were in a shower, cannot you go and get wet without
+help from Constable? If you want to feel as if you were walking in the
+fields, cannot you go and walk in them without help from De Wint? But
+if you want to sit in your room and look at a beautiful picture, why
+should you blame the artist for giving you one? This _was_ the answer
+actually made to me by various journalists, when first I showed that
+Turner was truer than other painters: "Nay," said they, "we do not
+want truth, we want something else than truth; we would not have
+nature, but something better than nature."
+
+Sec. 3. I do not mean to accept that answer, although it seems at this
+moment to make for me: I have never accepted it. As I raise my eyes
+from the paper, to think over the curious mingling in it, of direct
+error, and far away truth, I see upon the room-walls, first,
+Turner's drawing of the chain of the Alps from the Superga above
+Turin; then a study of a block of gneiss at Chamouni, with the
+purple Aiguilles-Rouges behind it; another, of the towers of the
+Swiss Fribourg, with a cluster of pine forest behind them; then
+another Turner, Isola Bella, with the blue opening of the St.
+Gothard in the distance; and then a fair bit of thirteenth century
+illumination, depicting, at the top of the page, the Salutation; and
+beneath, the painter who painted it, sitting in his little convent
+cell, with a legend above him to this effect--
+
+      "ego jah{ann}es sc{ri}psi hunc librum."
+             I, John, wrote this book.
+
+None of these things are bad pieces of art; and yet,--if it were
+offered to me to have, instead of them, so many windows, out of
+which I should see, first, the real chain of the Alps from the
+Superga; then the real block of gneiss, and Aiguilles-Rouges; then
+the real towers of Fribourg, and pine forest; the real Isola Bella;
+and, finally, the true Mary and Elizabeth; and beneath them, the
+actual old monk at work in his cell,--I would very unhesitatingly
+change my five pictures for the five windows; and so, I apprehend,
+would most people, not, it seems to me, unwisely.
+
+"Well, then," the reader goes on to question me, "the more closely
+the picture resembles such a window the better it must be?"
+
+Yes.
+
+"Then if Turner does not give me the impression of such a window,
+that is of Nature, there must be something wrong in Turner?"
+
+Yes.
+
+"And if Constable and De Wint give me the impression of such a
+window, there must be something right in Constable and De Wint?"
+
+Yes.
+
+"And something more right than in Turner?"
+
+No.
+
+"Will you explain yourself?"
+
+I _have_ explained myself, long ago, and that fully; perhaps too
+fully for the simple sum of the explanation to be remembered. If the
+reader will glance back to, and in the present state of our inquiry,
+reconsider in the first volume, Part I. Sec. I. Chap. V., and Part
+II. Sec. _I._ Chap. VII., he will find our present difficulties
+anticipated. There are some truths, easily obtained, which give a
+deceptive resemblance to Nature; others only to be obtained with
+difficulty, which cause no deception, but give inner and deep
+resemblance. These two classes of truths cannot be obtained
+together; choice must be made between them. The bad painter gives
+the cheap deceptive resemblance. The good painter gives the precious
+non-deceptive resemblance. Constable perceives in a landscape that
+the grass is wet, the meadows flat, and the boughs shady; that is to
+say, about as much as, I suppose, might in general be apprehended,
+between them, by an intelligent fawn and a skylark. Turner perceives
+at a glance the whole sum of visible truth open to human
+intelligence. So Berghem perceives nothing in a figure, beyond the
+flashes of light on the folds of its dress; but Michael Angelo
+perceives every flash of thought that is passing through its spirit;
+and Constable and Berghem may imitate windows; Turner and Michael
+Angelo can by no means imitate windows. But Turner and Michael
+Angelo are nevertheless the best.
+
+Sec. 4. "Well but," the reader persists, "you admitted just now that
+because Turner did not get his work to look like a window there was
+something wrong in him."
+
+I did so; if he were quite right he would have _all_ truth, low as
+well as high; that is, he would be Nature and not Turner; but that
+is impossible to man. There is much that is wrong in him; much that
+is infinitely wrong in all human effort. But, nevertheless, in some
+an infinity of Betterness above other human effort.
+
+"Well, but you said you would change your Turners for windows, why
+not, therefore, for Constables?"
+
+Nay, I did not say that I would change them for windows _merely_,
+but for windows which commanded the chain of the Alps and Isola
+Bella. That is to say, for all the truth that there is in Turner,
+and all the truth besides which is not in him; but I would not
+change them for Constables, to have a small piece of truth which is
+not in Turner, and none of the mighty truth which there is.
+
+Sec. 5. Thus far, then, though the subject is one requiring somewhat
+lengthy explanation, it involves no real difficulty. There is not
+the slightest inconsistency in the mode in which throughout this
+work I have desired the relative merits of painters to be judged. I
+have always said, he who is closest to Nature is best. All rules are
+useless, all genius is useless, all labor is useless, if you do not
+give facts; the more facts you give the greater you are; and there
+is no fact so unimportant as to be prudently despised, if it be
+possible to represent it. Nor, but that I have long known the truth
+of Herbert's lines,
+
+                                "Some men are
+      Full of themselves, and answer their own notion,"
+
+would it have been without intense surprise that I heard querulous
+readers asking, "how it was possible" that I could praise
+Pre-Raphaelitism and Turner also. For, from the beginning of this
+book to this page of it, I have never praised Turner highly for any
+other cause than that he _gave facts_ more _delicately_, more
+Pre-Raphaelitically, than other men. Careless readers, who dashed at
+the descriptions and missed the arguments, took up their own
+conceptions of the cause of my liking Turner, and said to
+themselves: "Turner cannot draw, Turner is generalizing, vague,
+visionary; and the Pre-Raphaelites are hard and distinct. How can
+any one like both?"[46] But _I_ never said that Turner could not
+draw. _I_ never said that he was vague or visionary. What _I_ said
+was, that nobody had ever drawn so well: that nobody was so certain,
+so _un_-visionary; that nobody had ever given so many hard and
+downright facts. Glance back to the first volume, and note the
+expressions now. "He is the only painter who ever drew a mountain or
+a stone;[47] the only painter who can draw the stem of a tree; the
+only painter who has ever drawn the sky, previous artists having
+only drawn it typically or partially, but he absolutely and
+universally." Note how he is praised in his rock drawing for "not
+selecting a pretty or interesting morsel here or there, but giving
+the whole truth, with all the relations of its parts."[48] Observe
+how the _great virtue_ of the landscape of Cima da Conegliano and
+the early sacred painters is said to be giving "entire, exquisite,
+humble, realization--a strawberry-plant in the foreground with a
+blossom, _and a berry just set_, _and one half ripe, and one ripe_,
+all patiently and innocently painted from the _real thing, and_
+_therefore most divine_." Then re-read the following paragraph (Sec.
+10.), carefully, and note its conclusion, that the thoroughly great
+men are those who have done everything thoroughly, and who have
+never despised anything, however small, of God's making; with the
+instance given of Wordsworth's daisy casting its shadow on a stone;
+and the following sentence, "Our painters must come to this before
+they have done their duty." And yet, when our painters _did_ come to
+this, did do their duty, and did paint the daisy with its shadow
+(this passage having been written years before Pre-Raphaelitism was
+thought of), people wondered how I could possibly like what was
+neither more nor less than the precise fulfilment of my own most
+earnest exhortations and highest hopes.
+
+Sec. 6. Thus far, then, all I have been saying is absolutely
+consistent, and tending to one simple end. Turner is praised for his
+truth and finish; that truth of which I am beginning to give
+examples. Pre-Raphaelitism is praised for its truth and finish; and
+the whole duty inculcated upon the artist is that of being in all
+respects as like Nature as possible.
+
+And yet this is not all I have to do. There is more than this to be
+inculcated upon the student, more than this to be admitted or
+established before the foundations of just judgment can be laid.
+
+For, observe, although I believe any sensible person would exchange
+his pictures, however good, for windows, he would not feel, and
+ought not to feel, that the arrangement was _entirely_ gainful to
+him. He would feel it was an exchange of a less good of one kind,
+for a greater of another kind, but that it was definitely
+_exchange_, not pure gain, not merely getting more truth instead of
+less. The picture would be a serious loss; something gone which the
+actual landscape could never restore, though it might give something
+better in its place, as age may give to the heart something better
+than its youthful delusion, but cannot give again the sweetness of
+that delusion.
+
+Sec. 7. What is this in the picture which is precious to us, and yet is
+not natural? Hitherto our arguments have tended, on the whole,
+somewhat to the depreciation of art; and the reader may every now and
+then, so far as he has been convinced by them, have been inclined to
+say, "Why not give up this whole science of Mockery at once, since
+its only virtue is in representing facts, and it cannot, at best,
+represent them completely, besides being liable to all manner of
+shortcomings and dishonesties,--why not keep to the facts, to real
+fields, and hills, and men, and let this dangerous painting alone?"
+
+No, it would not be well to do this. Painting has its peculiar
+virtues, not only consistent with but even resulting from, its
+shortcomings and weaknesses. Let us see what these virtues are.
+
+Sec. 8. I must ask permission, as I have sometimes done before, to
+begin apparently a long way from the point.
+
+Not long ago, as I was leaving one of the towns of Switzerland early
+in the morning, I saw in the clouds behind the houses an Alp which I
+did not know, a grander Alp than any I knew, nobler than the
+Schreckhorn or the Moench; terminated, as it seemed, on one side by a
+precipice of almost unimaginable height; on the other, sloping away
+for leagues in one field of lustrous ice, clear and fair and blue,
+flashing here and there into silver under the morning sun. For a
+moment I received a sensation of as much sublimity as any natural
+object could possibly excite; the next moment, I saw that my unknown
+Alp was the glass roof of one of the workshops of the town, rising
+above its nearer houses, and rendered aerial and indistinct by some
+pure blue wood smoke which rose from intervening chimneys.
+
+It is evident, that so far as the mere delight of the eye was
+concerned, the glass roof was here equal, or at least equal for a
+moment, to the Alp. Whether the power of the object over the heart
+was to be small or great, depended altogether upon what it was
+understood for, upon its being taken possession of and apprehended
+in its full nature, either as a granite mountain or a group of panes
+of glass; and thus, always, the real majesty of the appearance of
+the thing to us, depends upon the degree in which we ourselves
+possess the power of understanding it,--that penetrating, possession
+taking power of the imagination, which has been long ago defined[49]
+as the very life of the man, considered as a _seeing_ creature. For
+though the casement had indeed been an Alp, there are many persons
+on whose minds it would have produced no more effect than the glass
+roof. It would have been to them a glittering object of a certain
+apparent length and breadth, and whether of glass or ice, whether
+twenty feet in length, or twenty leagues, would have made no
+difference to them; or, rather, would not have been in any wise
+conceived or considered by them. Examine the nature of your own
+emotion (if you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you find all
+the brightness of that emotion hanging, like dew on gossamer, on a
+curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. First, you have
+a vague idea of its size, coupled with wonder at the work of the
+great Builder of its walls and foundations, then an apprehension of
+its eternity, a pathetic sense of its perpetualness, and your own
+transientness, as of the grass upon its sides; then, and in this
+very sadness, a sense of strange companionship with past generations
+in seeing what they saw. They did not see the clouds that are
+floating over your head; nor the cottage wall on the other side of
+the field; nor the road by which you are travelling. But they saw
+_that_. The wall of granite in the heavens was the same to them as
+to you. They have ceased to look upon it; you will soon cease to
+look also, and the granite wall will be for others. Then, mingled
+with these more solemn imaginations, come the understandings of the
+gifts and glories of the Alps, the fancying forth of all the
+fountains that well from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are
+born out of its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind
+between its cliffs, and all the chalets that gleam among its clouds,
+and happy farmsteads couched upon its pastures; while together with
+the thoughts of these, rise strange sympathies with all the unknown
+of human life, and happiness, and death, signified by that narrow
+white flame of the everlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky.
+
+These images, and far more than these, lie at the root of the emotion
+which you feel at the sight of the Alp. You may not trace them in your
+heart, for there is a great deal more in your heart, of evil and good,
+than you ever can trace; but they stir you and quicken you for all
+that. Assuredly, so far as you feel more at beholding the snowy
+mountain than any other object of the same sweet silvery grey, these
+are the kind of images which cause you to do so; and, observe, these
+are nothing more than a greater apprehension of the _facts_ of the
+thing. We call the power "Imagination," because it imagines or
+conceives; but it is only noble imagination if it imagines or
+conceives _the truth_. And, according to the degree of knowledge
+possessed, and of sensibility to the pathetic or impressive character
+of the things known, will be the degree of this imaginative delight.
+
+Sec. 9. But the main point to be noted at present is, that if the
+imagination can be excited to this its peculiar work, it matters
+comparatively little what it is excited by. If the smoke had not
+cleared partially away, the glass roof might have pleased me as well
+as an alp, until I had quite lost sight of it; and if, in a picture,
+the imagination can be once caught, and, without absolute affront
+from some glaring fallacy, set to work in its own field, the
+imperfection of the historical details themselves is, to the
+spectator's enjoyment, of small consequence.
+
+Hence it is, that poets and men of strong feeling in general, are
+apt to be among the very worst judges of painting. The slightest
+hint is enough for them. Tell them that a white stroke means a ship,
+and a black stain, a thunderstorm, and they will be perfectly
+satisfied with both, and immediately proceed to remember all that
+they ever felt about ships and thunderstorms, attributing the whole
+current and fulness of their own feelings to the painter's work;
+while probably, if the picture be really good, and full of stern
+fact, the poet, or man of feeling, will find some of its fact _in
+his way_, out of the particular course of his own thoughts,--be
+offended at it, take to criticising and wondering at it, detect, at
+last, some imperfection in it,--such as must be inherent in all
+human work,--and so finally quarrel with, and reject the whole
+thing. Thus, Wordsworth writes many sonnets to Sir George Beaumont
+and Haydon, none to Sir Joshua or to Turner.
+
+Sec. 10. Hence also the error into which many superficial artists fall,
+in speaking of "addressing the imagination" as the only end of art.
+It is quite true that the imagination must be addressed; but it may
+be very sufficiently addressed by the stain left by an ink-bottle
+thrown at the wall. The thrower has little credit, though an
+imaginative observer may find, perhaps, more to amuse him in the
+erratic nigrescence than in many a labored picture. And thus, in a
+slovenly or ill-finished picture, it is no credit to the artist that
+he has "addressed the imagination;" nor is the success of such an
+appeal any criterion whatever of the merit of the work. The duty of
+an artist is not only to address and awaken, but to _guide_ the
+imagination; and there is no safe guidance but that of simple
+concurrence with fact. It is no matter that the picture takes the
+fancy of A. or B., that C. writes sonnets to it, and D. feels it to
+be divine. This is still the only question for the artist, or for
+us:--"Is it a fact? Are things really so? Is the picture an Alp
+among pictures, full, firm, eternal; or only a glass house, frail,
+hollow, contemptible, demolishable; calling, at all honest hands,
+for detection and demolition?"
+
+Sec. 11. Hence it is also that so much grievous difficulty stands in
+the way of obtaining _real opinion_ about pictures at all. Tell any
+man, of the slightest imaginative power, that such and such a
+picture is good, and means this or that: tell him, for instance,
+that a Claude is good, and that it means trees, and grass, and
+water; and forthwith, whatever faith, virtue, humility, and
+imagination there are in the man, rise up to help Claude, and to
+declare that indeed it is all "excellent good, i'faith;" and
+whatever in the course of his life he has felt of pleasure in trees
+and grass, he will begin to reflect upon and enjoy anew, supposing
+all the while it is the picture he is enjoying. Hence, when once a
+painter's reputation is accredited, it must be a stubborn kind of
+person indeed whom he will not please, or seem to please; for all
+the vain and weak people pretend to be pleased with him, for their
+own credit's sake, and all the humble and imaginative people
+seriously and honestly fancy they _are_ pleased with him, deriving
+indeed, very certainly, delight from his work, but a delight which,
+if they were kept in the same temper, they would equally derive
+(and, indeed, constantly do derive) from the grossest daub that can
+be manufactured in imitation by the pawnbroker. Is, therefore, the
+pawnbroker's imitation as good as the original? Not so. There is the
+certain test of goodness and badness, which I am always striving to
+get people to use. As long as they are satisfied if they find their
+feelings pleasantly stirred and their fancy gaily occupied, so long
+there is for them no good, no bad. Anything may please, or anything
+displease, them; and their entire manner of thought and talking
+about art is mockery, and all their judgments are laborious
+injustices. But let them, in the teeth of their pleasure or
+displeasure, simply put the calm question,--Is it so? Is that the
+way a stone is shaped, the way a cloud is wreathed, the way a leaf
+is veined? and they are safe. They will do no more injustice to
+themselves nor to other men; they will learn to whose guidance they
+may trust their imagination, and from whom they must for ever
+withhold its reins.
+
+Sec. 12. "Well, but why have you dragged in this poor spectator's
+imagination at all, if you have nothing more to say for it than
+this; if you are merely going to abuse it, and go back to your
+tiresome facts?"
+
+Nay; I am not going to abuse it. On the contrary, I have to assert,
+in a temper profoundly venerant of it, that though we must not
+suppose everything is right when this is aroused, we may be sure
+that something is wrong when this is _not_ aroused. The something
+wrong may be in the spectator or in the picture; and if the picture
+be demonstrably in accordance with truth, the odds are, that it is
+in the spectator; but there is wrong somewhere; for the work of the
+picture is indeed eminently to get at this imaginative power in the
+beholder, and all its facts are of no use whatever if it does not.
+No matter how much truth it tells if the hearer be asleep. Its first
+work is to wake him, then to teach him.
+
+Sec. 13. Now, observe, while, as it penetrates into the nature of
+things, the imagination is preeminently a beholder of things _as_
+they _are_, it is, in its creative function, an eminent beholder of
+things _when_ and _where_ they are NOT; a seer, that is, in the
+prophetic sense, calling "the things that are not as though they
+were," and for ever delighting to dwell on that which is not
+tangibly present. And its great function being the calling forth, or
+back, that which is not visible to bodily sense, it has of course
+been made to take delight in the fulfilment of its proper function,
+and preeminently to enjoy, and spend its energy, on things past and
+future, or out of sight, rather than things present, or in sight. So
+that if the imagination is to be called to take delight in any
+object, it will not be always well, if we can help it, to put the
+_real_ object there, before it. The imagination would on the whole
+rather have it _not_ there;--the reality and substance are rather in
+the imagination's way; it would think a good deal more of the thing
+if it could not see it. Hence, that strange and sometimes fatal
+charm, which there is in all things as long as we wait for them, and
+the moment we have lost them; but which fades while we possess
+them;--that sweet bloom of all that is far away, which perishes
+under our touch. Yet the feeling of this is not a weakness; it is
+one of the most glorious gifts of the human mind, making the whole
+infinite future, and imperishable past, a richer inheritance, if
+faithfully inherited, than the changeful, frail, fleeting present;
+it is also one of the many witnesses in us to the truth that these
+present and tangible things are not meant to satisfy us. The
+instinct becomes a weakness only when it is weakly indulged, and
+when the faculty which was intended by God to give back to us what
+we have lost, and gild for us what is to come, is so perverted as
+only to darken what we possess. But, perverted or pure, the instinct
+itself is everlasting, and the substantial presence even of the
+things which we love the best, will inevitably and for ever be found
+wanting in _one_ strange and tender charm, which belonged to the
+dreams of them.
+
+Sec. 14. Another character of the imagination is equally constant, and,
+to our present inquiry, of yet greater importance. It is eminently a
+_weariable_ faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing
+fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ
+itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails
+under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily
+fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has
+had rest. And this is the real nature of the weariness which is so
+often felt in travelling, from seeing too much. It is not that the
+monotony and number of the beautiful things seen have made them
+valueless, but that the imaginative power has been overtaxed; and,
+instead of letting it rest, the traveller, wondering to find himself
+dull, and incapable of admiration, seeks for something more
+admirable, excites, and torments, and drags the poor fainting
+imagination up by the shoulders: "Look at this, and look at that,
+and this more wonderful still!"--until the imaginative faculty
+faints utterly away, beyond all farther torment or pleasure, dead
+for many a day to come; and the despairing prodigal takes to
+horse-racing in the Campagna, good now for nothing else than that;
+whereas, if the imagination had only been laid down on the grass,
+among simple things, and left quiet for a little while, it would
+have come to itself gradually, recovered its strength and color, and
+soon been fit for work again. So that, whenever the imagination is
+tired, it is necessary to find for it something, not _more_
+admirable but _less_ admirable; such as in that weak state it can
+deal with; then give it peace, and it will recover.
+
+Sec. 15. I well recollect the walk on which I first found out this; it
+was on the winding road from Sallenche, sloping up the hills towards
+St. Gervais, one cloudless Sunday afternoon. The road circles softly
+between bits of rocky bank and mounded pasture; little cottages and
+chapels gleaming out from among the trees at every turn. Behind me,
+some leagues in length, rose the jagged range of the mountains of the
+Reposoir; on the other side of the valley, the mass of the Aiguille de
+Varens, heaving its seven thousand feet of cliff into the air at a
+single effort, its gentle gift of waterfall, the Nant d'Arpenaz, like
+a pillar of cloud at its feet; Mont Blanc and all its aiguilles, one
+silver flame, in front of me; marvellous blocks of mossy granite and
+dark glades of pine around me; but I could enjoy nothing, and could
+not for a long while make out what was the matter with me, until at
+last I discovered that if I confined myself to one thing,--and that a
+little thing,--a tuft of moss, or a single crag at the top of the
+Varens, or a wreath or two of foam at the bottom of the Nant
+d'Arpenaz, I began to enjoy it directly, because then I had mind
+enough to put into the thing, and the enjoyment arose from the
+quantity of the imaginative energy I could bring to bear upon it; but
+when I looked at or thought of all together, moss, stones, Varens,
+Nant d'Arpenaz, and Mont Blanc, I had not mind enough to give to all,
+and none were of any value. The conclusion which would have been
+formed, upon this, by a German philosopher, would have been that the
+Mont Blanc _was_ of no value; that he and his imagination only were of
+value; that the Mont Blanc, in fact, except so far as he was able to
+look at it, could not be considered as having any existence. But the
+only conclusion which occurred to me as reasonable under the
+circumstances (I have seen no ground for altering it since) was, that
+I was an exceedingly small creature, much tired, and, at the moment,
+not a little stupid, for whom a blade of grass, or a wreath of foam,
+was quite food enough and to spare, and that if I tried to take any
+more, I should make myself ill. Whereupon, associating myself
+fraternally with some ants, who were deeply interested in the
+conveyance of some small sticks over the road, and rather, as I think
+they generally are, in too great a hurry about it, I returned home in
+a little while with great contentment, thinking how well it was
+ordered that, as Mont Blanc and his pine forests could not be
+everywhere, nor all the world come to see them, the human mind, on the
+whole, should enjoy itself most surely in an ant-like manner, and be
+happy and busy with the bits of stick and grains of crystal that fall
+in its way to be handled, in daily duty.
+
+Sec. 16. It follows evidently from the first of these characters of the
+imagination, its dislike of substance and presence, that a picture has
+in some measure even an advantage with us in not being real. The
+imagination rejoices in having something to do, springs up with all
+its willing power, flattered and happy; and ready with its fairest
+colors and most tender pencilling, to prove itself worthy of the
+trust, and exalt into sweet supremacy the shadow that has been
+confided to its fondness. And thus, so far from its being at all an
+object to the painter to make his work look real, he ought to dread
+such a consummation as the loss of one of its most precious claims
+upon the heart. So far from striving to convince the beholder that
+what he sees is substance, his mind should be to what he paints as the
+fire to the body on the pile, burning away the ashes, leaving the
+unconquerable shade--an immortal dream. So certain is this, that the
+slightest local success in giving the deceptive appearance of
+reality--the imitation, for instance, of the texture of a bit of wood,
+with its grain in relief--will instantly destroy the charm of a whole
+picture; the imagination feels itself insulted and injured, and passes
+by with cold contempt; nay, however beautiful the whole scene may be,
+as of late in much of our highly wrought painting for the stage, the
+mere fact of its being deceptively real is enough to make us tire of
+it; we may be surprised and pleased for a moment, but the imagination
+will not on those terms be persuaded to give any of its help, and, in
+a quarter of an hour, we wish the scene would change.
+
+Sec. 17. "Well, but then, what becomes of all these long dogmatic
+chapters of yours about giving nothing but the truth, and as much
+truth as possible?"
+
+The chapters are all quite right. "Nothing but the Truth," I say
+still. "As much Truth as possible," I say still. But truth so
+presented, that it will need the help of the imagination to make it
+real. Between the painter and the beholder, each doing his proper
+part, the reality should be sustained; and after the beholding
+imagination has come forward and done its best, then, with its help,
+and in the full action of it, the beholder should be able to say, I
+feel as if I were at the real place, or seeing the real incident.
+But not without that help.
+
+Sec. 18. Farther, in consequence of that other character of the
+imagination, fatiguableness, it is a great advantage to the picture
+that it need not present too much at once, and that what it does
+present may be so chosen and ordered as not only to be more easily
+seized, but to give the imagination rest, and, as it were, places to
+lie down and stretch its limbs in; kindly vacancies, beguiling it
+back into action, with pleasant and cautious sequence of incident;
+all jarring thoughts being excluded, all vain redundance denied, and
+all just and sweet transition permitted.
+
+And thus it is that, for the most part, imperfect sketches,
+engravings, outlines, rude sculptures, and other forms of abstraction,
+possess a charm which the most finished picture frequently wants. For
+not only does the finished picture excite the imagination less, but,
+like nature itself, it _taxes_ it more. None of it can be enjoyed till
+the imagination is brought to bear upon it; and the details of the
+completed picture are so numerous, that it needs greater strength and
+willingness in the beholder to follow them all out; the redundance,
+perhaps, being not too great for the mind of a careful observer, but
+too great for a casual or careless observer. So that although the
+perfection of art will always consist in the utmost _acceptable_
+completion, yet, as every added idea will increase the difficulty of
+apprehension, and every added touch advance the dangerous realism
+which makes the imagination languid, the difference between a noble
+and ignoble painter is in nothing more sharply defined than in
+this,--that the first wishes to put into his work as much truth as
+possible, and yet to keep it looking _un_-real; the second wishes to
+get through his work lazily, with as little truth as possible, and yet
+to make it look real; and, so far as they add color to their abstract
+sketch, the first realizes for the sake of the color, and the second
+colors for the sake of the realization.[50]
+
+Sec. 19. And then, lastly, it is another infinite advantage possessed
+by the picture, that in these various differences from reality it
+becomes the expression of the power and intelligence of a
+companionable human soul. In all this choice, arrangement,
+penetrative sight, and kindly guidance, we recognize a supernatural
+operation, and perceive, not merely the landscape or incident as in
+a mirror, but, besides, the presence of what, after all, may perhaps
+be the most wonderful piece of divine work in the whole matter--the
+great human spirit through which it is manifested to us. So that,
+although with respect to many important scenes, it might, as we saw
+above, be one of the most precious gifts that could be given us to
+see them with _our own eyes_, yet also in many things it is more
+desirable to be permitted to see them with the eyes of others; and
+although, to the small, conceited, and affected painter displaying
+his narrow knowledge and tiny dexterities, our only word may be,
+"Stand aside from between that nature and me," yet to the great
+imaginative painter--greater a million times in every faculty of
+soul than we--our word may wisely be, "Come between this nature and
+me--this nature which is too great and too wonderful for me; temper
+it for me, interpret it to me; let me see with your eyes, and hear
+with your ears, and have help and strength from your great spirit."
+
+All the noblest pictures have this character. They are true or
+inspired ideals, seen in a moment to _be_ ideal; that is to say, the
+result of all the highest powers of the imagination, engaged in the
+discovery and apprehension of the purest truths, and having so
+arranged them as best to show their preciousness and exalt their
+clearness. They are always orderly, always one, ruled by one great
+purpose throughout, in the fulfilment of which every atom of the
+detail is called to help, and would be missed if removed; this
+peculiar oneness being the result, not of obedience to any teachable
+law, but of the magnificence of tone in the perfect mind, which
+accepts only what is good for its great purposes, rejects whatever is
+foreign or redundant, and instinctively and instantaneously ranges
+whatever it accepts, in sublime subordination and helpful brotherhood.
+
+Sec. 20. Then, this being the greatest art, the lowest art is the
+mimicry of it,--the subordination of nothing to nothing; the
+elaborate arrangement of sightlessness and emptiness; the order
+which has no object; the unity which has no life, and the law which
+has no love; the light which has nothing to illumine, and shadow
+which has nothing to relieve.[51]
+
+Sec. 21. And then, between these two, comes the wholesome, happy, and
+noble--though not noblest--art of simple transcript from nature;
+into which, so far as our modern Pre-Raphaelitism falls, it will
+indeed do sacred service in ridding us of the old fallacies and
+componencies, but cannot itself rise above the level of simple and
+happy usefulness. So far as it is to be great, it must add,--and so
+far as it _is_ great, has already added,--the great imaginative
+element to all its faithfulness in transcript. And for this reason,
+I said in the close of my Edinburgh Lectures, that Pre-Raphaelitism,
+as long as it confined itself to the simple copying of nature, could
+not take the character of the highest class of art. But it has
+already, almost unconsciously, supplied the defect, and taken that
+character, in all its best results; and, so far as it ought,
+hereafter, it will assuredly do so, as soon as it is permitted to
+maintain itself in any other position than that of stern antagonism
+to the composition teachers around it. I say "so far as it ought,"
+because, as already noticed in that same place, we have enough, and
+to spare, of noble _inventful_ pictures; so many have we, that we
+let them moulder away on the walls and roofs of Italy without one
+regretful thought about them. But of simple transcripts from nature,
+till now we have had none; even Van Eyck and Albert Durer having
+been strongly filled with the spirit of grotesque idealism; so that
+the Pre-Raphaelites have, to the letter, fulfilled Steele's
+description of the author, who "determined to write in an entirely
+new manner, and describe things exactly as they took place."
+
+Sec. 22. We have now, I believe, in some sort answered most of the
+questions which were suggested to us during our statement of the
+nature of great art. I could recapitulate the answers; but perhaps
+the reader is already sufficiently wearied of the recurrence of the
+terms "Ideal," "Nature," "Imagination," "Invention," and will hardly
+care to see them again interchanged among each other, in the
+formalities of a summary. What difficulties may yet occur to him
+will, I think, disappear as he either re-reads the passages which
+suggested them, or follows out the consideration of the subject for
+himself:--this very simple, but very precious, conclusion being
+continually remembered by him as the sum of all; that greatness in
+art (as assuredly in all other things, but more distinctly in this
+than in most of them,) is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but
+_the expression of the mind of a God-made great man_; that teach, or
+preach, or labor as you will, everlasting difference is set between
+one man's capacity and another's; and that this God-given supremacy
+is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the world at one time
+as another. What you can manufacture, or communicate, you can lower
+the price of, but this mental supremacy is incommunicable; you will
+never multiply its quantity, nor lower its price; and nearly the
+best thing that men can generally do is to set themselves, not to
+the attainment, but the discovery of this; learning to know gold,
+when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamonds from flint-sand,
+being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to
+make diamonds out of our own charcoal. And for this God-made
+supremacy, I generally have used, and shall continue to use, the
+word Inspiration, not carelessly nor lightly, but in all logical
+calmness and perfect reverence. We English have many false ideas
+about reverence: we should be shocked, for instance, to see a
+market-woman come into church with a basket of eggs on her arm: we
+think it more reverent to lock her out till Sunday; and to surround
+the church with respectability of iron railings, and defend it with
+pacing inhabitation of beadles. I believe this to be _ir_reverence;
+and that it is more truly reverent, when the market-woman, hot and
+hurried, at six in the morning, her head much confused with
+calculations of the probable price of eggs, can nevertheless get
+within church porch, and church aisle, and church chancel, lay the
+basket down on the very steps of the altar, and receive thereat so
+much of help and hope as may serve her for the day's work. In like
+manner we are solemnly, but I think not wisely, shocked at any one
+who comes hurriedly into church, in any figurative way, with his
+basket on his arm; and perhaps, so long as we feel it so, it is
+better to keep the basket out. But, as for this one commodity of
+high mental supremacy, it cannot be kept out, for the very fountain
+of it is in the church wall, and there is no other right word for it
+but this of Inspiration; a word, indeed, often ridiculously
+perverted, and irreverently used of fledgling poets and pompous
+orators--no one being offended then, and yet cavilled at when
+quietly used of the spirit that it is in a truly great man; cavilled
+at, chiefly, it seems to me, because we expect to know inspiration
+by the look of it. Let a man have shaggy hair, dark eyes, a rolling
+voice, plenty of animal energy, and a facility of rhyming or
+sentencing, and--improvisatore or sentimentalist--we call him
+"inspired" willingly enough; but let him be a rough, quiet worker,
+not proclaiming himself melodiously in any wise, but familiar with
+us, unpretending, and letting all his littlenesses and feeblenesses
+be seen, unhindered,--wearing an ill-cut coat withal, and, though he
+be such a man as is only sent upon the earth once in five hundred
+years, for some special human teaching, it is irreverent to call him
+"inspired." But, be it irreverent or not, this word I must always
+use; and the rest of what work I have here before me, is simply to
+prove the truth of it, with respect to the one among these mighty
+spirits whom we have just lost; who divided his hearers, as many an
+inspired speaker has done before now, into two great sects--a large
+and a narrow; these searching the Nature-scripture calmly, "whether
+those things were so," and those standing haughtily on their Mars
+hill, asking, "what will this babbler say?"
+
+  [46] People of any sense, however, confined themselves to wonder.
+       I think it was only in the Art Journal of September 1st,
+       1854, that any writer had the meanness to charge me with
+       insincerity. "The pictures of Turner and the works of the
+       Pre-Raphaelites are the very antipodes of each other; it is,
+       therefore, impossible that one and the same individual can
+       with any _show of sincerity_ [Note, by the way, the Art-Union
+       has no idea that _real_ sincerity is a thing existent or
+       possible at all. All that it expects or hopes of human nature
+       is, that it should have _show_ of sincerity,] stand forth as
+       the thick and thin [I perceive the writer intends to teach me
+       English, as well as honesty,] eulogist of both. With a
+       certain knowledge of art, such as may be possessed by the
+       author of English Painters, [Note, farther, that the eminent
+       critic does not so much as know the title of the book he is
+       criticising,] it is not difficult to praise any bad or
+       mediocre picture that may be qualified with extravagance or
+       mysticism. This author owes the public a heavy debt of
+       explanation, which a lifetime spent in ingenious
+       reconciliations would not suffice to discharge. A fervent
+       admiration of certain pictures by Turner, and, at the same
+       time, of some of the severest productions of the
+       Pre-Raphaelites, presents an insuperable problem to persons
+       whose taste in art is regulated by definite principles."
+
+  [47] Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. Sec. 46.
+
+  [48] Part II. Sec. IV. Chap. IV. Sec. 23., and Part II. Sec. I. Chap.
+       VII. Sec. 9. The whole of the Preface to the Second Edition is
+       written to maintain this one point of specific detail against
+       the advocates of generalization.
+
+  [49] Vol. II. Chapter on Penetrative Imagination.
+
+  [50] Several other points connected with this subject have already
+       been noticed in the last chapter of the Stones of Venice, Sec.
+       21. &c.
+
+  [51] "Though my pictures should have nothing else, they shall have
+       Chiaroscuro."--CONSTABLE (in Leslie's Life of him). It is
+       singular to reflect what that fatal Chiaroscuro has done in
+       art, in the full extent of its influence. It has been not
+       only shadow, but shadow of Death: passing over the face of
+       the ancient art, as death itself might over a fair human
+       countenance; whispering, as it reduced it to the white
+       projections and lightless orbits of the skull, "Thy face
+       shall have nothing else, but it shall have Chiaroscuro."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE.
+
+
+Sec. 1. Having now obtained, I trust, clear ideas, up to a certain
+point, of what is generally right and wrong in all art, both in
+conception and in workmanship, we have to apply these laws of right
+to the particular branch of art which is the subject of our present
+inquiry, namely, landscape-painting. Respecting which, after the
+various meditations into which we have been led on the high duties
+and ideals of art, it may not improbably occur to us first to
+ask,--whether it be worth inquiring about at all.
+
+That question, perhaps the reader thinks, should have been asked and
+answered before I had written, or he read, two volumes and a half
+about it. So I _had_ answered it, in my own mind; but it seems time
+now to give the grounds for this answer. If, indeed, the reader has
+never suspected that landscape-painting was anything but good,
+right, and healthy work, I should be sorry to put any doubt of its
+being so into his mind; but if, as seems to me more likely, he,
+living in this busy and perhaps somewhat calamitous age, has some
+suspicion that landscape-painting is but an idle and empty business,
+not worth all our long talk about it, then, perhaps, he will be
+pleased to have such suspicion done away, before troubling himself
+farther with these disquisitions.
+
+Sec. 2. I should rather be glad, than otherwise, that he _had_ formed
+some suspicion on this matter. If he has at all admitted the truth
+of anything hitherto said respecting great art, and its choices of
+subject, it seems to me he ought, by this time, to be questioning
+with himself whether road-side weeds, old cottages, broken stones,
+and such other materials, be worthy matters for grave men to busy
+themselves in the imitation of. And I should like him to probe this
+doubt to the deep of it, and bring all his misgivings out to the
+broad light, that we may see how we are to deal with them, or
+ascertain if indeed they are too well founded to be dealt with.
+
+Sec. 3. And to this end I would ask him now to imagine himself
+entering, for the first time in his life, the room of the Old
+Water-Color Society; and to suppose that he has entered it, not for
+the sake of a quiet examination of the paintings one by one, but in
+order to seize such ideas as it may generally suggest respecting the
+state and meaning of modern as compared with elder, art. I suppose
+him, of course, that he may be capable of such a comparison, to be
+in some degree familiar with the different forms in which art has
+developed itself within the periods historically known to us; but
+never, till that moment, to have seen any completely modern work. So
+prepared, and so unprepared, he would, as his ideas began to arrange
+themselves, be first struck by the number of paintings representing
+blue mountains, clear lakes, and ruined castles or cathedrals, and
+he would say to himself: "There is something strange in the mind of
+these modern people! Nobody ever cared about blue mountains before,
+or tried to paint the broken stones of old walls." And the more he
+considered the subject, the more he would feel the peculiarity; and,
+as he thought over the art of Greeks and Romans, he would still
+repeat, with increasing certainty of conviction: "Mountains! I
+remember none. The Greeks did not seem, as artists, to know that
+such things were in the world. They carved, or variously
+represented, men, and horses, and beasts, and birds, and all kinds
+of living creatures,--yes, even down to cuttle-fish; and trees, in a
+sort of way; but not so much as the outline of a mountain; and as
+for lakes, they merely showed they knew the difference between salt
+and fresh water by the fish they put into each." Then he would pass
+on to mediaeval art: and still he would be obliged to repeat:
+"Mountains! I remember none. Some careless and jagged arrangements
+of blue spires or spikes on the horizon, and, here and there, an
+attempt at representing an overhanging rock with a hole through it;
+but merely in order to divide the light behind some human figure.
+Lakes! No, nothing of the kind,--only blue bays of sea put in to
+fill up the background when the painter could not think of anything
+else. Broken-down buildings! No; for the most part very complete
+and well-appointed buildings, if any; and never buildings at all,
+but to give place or explanation to some circumstance of human
+conduct." And then he would look up again to the modern pictures,
+observing, with an increasing astonishment, that here the human
+interest had, in many cases, altogether disappeared. That mountains,
+instead of being used only as a blue ground for the relief of the
+heads of saints, were themselves the exclusive subjects of reverent
+contemplation; that their ravines, and peaks, and forests, were all
+painted with an appearance of as much enthusiasm as had formerly
+been devoted to the dimple of beauty, or the frowns of asceticism;
+and that all the living interest which was still supposed necessary
+to the scene, might be supplied by a traveller in a slouched hat, a
+beggar in a scarlet cloak, or, in default of these, even by a heron
+or a wild duck.
+
+And if he could entirely divest himself of his own modern habits of
+thought, and regard the subjects in question with the feelings of a
+knight or monk of the middle ages, it might be a question whether
+those feelings would not rapidly verge towards contempt. "What!" he
+might perhaps mutter to himself, "here are human beings spending the
+whole of their lives in making pictures of bits of stone and runlets
+of water, withered sticks and flying frogs, and actually not a
+picture of the gods or the heroes! none of the saints or the
+martyrs! none of the angels and demons! none of councils or battles,
+or any other single thing worth the thought of a man! Trees and
+clouds indeed! as if I should not see as many trees as I cared to
+see, and more, in the first half of my day's journey to-morrow, or
+as if it mattered to any man whether the sky were clear or cloudy,
+so long as his armor did not get too hot in the sun!"
+
+Sec. 5. There can be no question that this would have been somewhat the
+tone of thought with which either a Lacedaemonian, a soldier of Rome in
+her strength, or a knight of the thirteenth century, would have been
+apt to regard these particular forms of our present art. Nor can there
+be any question that, in many respects, their judgment would have been
+just. It is true that the indignation of the Spartan or Roman would
+have been equally excited against any appearance of luxurious
+industry; but the mediaeval knight would, to the full, have admitted
+the nobleness of art; only he would have had it employed in decorating
+his church or his prayer-book, nor in imitating moors and clouds. And
+the feelings of all the three would have agreed in this,--that their
+main ground of offence must have been the want of _seriousness_ and
+_purpose_ in what they saw. They would all have admitted the nobleness
+of whatever conduced to the honor of the gods, or the power of the
+nation; but they would not have understood how the skill of human life
+could be wisely spent in that which did no honor either to Jupiter or
+to the Virgin; and which in no wise tended, apparently, either to the
+accumulation of wealth, the excitement of patriotism, or the
+advancement of morality.
+
+Sec. 6. And exactly so far forth their judgment would be just, as the
+landscape-painting could indeed be shown, for others as well as for
+them, to be art of this nugatory kind; and so far forth unjust, as
+that painting could be shown to depend upon, or cultivate, certain
+sensibilities which neither the Greek nor mediaeval knight possessed,
+and which have resulted from some extraordinary change in human nature
+since their time. We have no right to assume, without very accurate
+examination of it, that this change has been an ennobling one. The
+simple fact, that we are, in some strange way, different from all the
+great races that have existed before us, cannot at once be received as
+the proof of our own greatness; nor can it be granted, without any
+question, that we have a legitimate subject of complacency in being
+under the influence of feelings, with which neither Miltiades nor the
+Black Prince, neither Homer nor Dante, neither Socrates nor St.
+Francis, could for an instant have sympathized.
+
+Sec. 7. Whether, however, this fact be one to excite our pride or not,
+it is assuredly one to excite our deepest interest. The fact itself
+is certain. For nearly six thousand years the energies of man have
+pursued certain beaten paths, manifesting some constancy of feeling
+throughout all that period, and involving some fellowship at heart,
+among the various nations who by turns succeeded or surpassed each
+other in the several aims of art or policy. So that, for these
+thousands of years, the whole human race might be to some extent
+described in general terms. Man was a creature separated from all
+others by his instinctive sense of an Existence superior to his own,
+invariably manifesting this sense of the being of a God more
+strongly in proportion to his own perfectness of mind and body; and
+making enormous and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some
+persuasion of the immediate presence or approval of the Divinity. So
+that, on the whole, the best things he did were done as in the
+presence, or for the honor, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to
+help him to imagine them, or temples raised to their honor, or acts
+of self-sacrifice done in the hope of their love, he brought
+whatever was best and skilfullest in him into their service, and
+lived in a perpetual subjection to their unseen power. Also, he was
+always anxious to know something definite about them; and his chief
+books, songs, and pictures were filled with legends about them, or
+especially devoted to illustration of their lives and nature.
+
+Sec. 8. Next to these gods he was always anxious to know something
+about his human ancestors; fond of exalting the memory, and telling
+or painting the history of old rulers and benefactors; yet full of
+an enthusiastic confidence in himself, as having in many ways
+advanced beyond the best efforts of past time; and eager to record
+his own doings for future fame. He was a creature eminently warlike,
+placing his principal pride in dominion; eminently beautiful, and
+having great delight in his own beauty: setting forth this beauty by
+every species of invention in dress, and rendering his arms and
+accoutrements superbly decorative of his form. He took, however,
+very little interest in anything but what belonged to humanity;
+caring in no wise for the external world, except as it influenced
+his own destiny; honoring the lightning because it could strike him,
+the sea because it could drown him, the fountains because they gave
+him drink, and the grass because it yielded him seed; but utterly
+incapable of feeling any special happiness in the love of such
+things, or any earnest emotion about them, considered as separate
+from man; therefore giving no time to the study of them;--knowing
+little of herbs, except only which were hurtful, and which healing;
+of stones, only which would glitter brightest in a crown, or last
+the longest in a wall; of the wild beasts, which were best for food,
+and which the stoutest quarry for the hunter;--thus spending only
+on the lower creatures and inanimate things his waste energy, his
+dullest thoughts, his most languid emotions, and reserving all his
+acuter intellect for researches into his own nature and that of the
+gods; all his strength of will for the acquirement of political or
+moral power; all his sense of beauty for things immediately
+connected with his own person and life; and all his deep affections
+for domestic or divine companionship.
+
+Such, in broad light and brief terms, was man for five thousand
+years. Such he is no longer. Let us consider what he is now,
+comparing the descriptions clause by clause.
+
+Sec. 9. I. He _was_ invariably sensible of the existence of gods, and
+went about all his speculations or works holding this as an
+acknowledged fact, making his best efforts in their service. _Now_
+he is capable of going through life with hardly any positive idea on
+this subject,--doubting, fearing, suspecting, analyzing,--doing
+everything, in fact, _but_ believing; hardly ever getting quite up
+to that point which hitherto was wont to be the starting point for
+all generations. And human work has accordingly hardly any reference
+to spiritual beings, but is done either from a patriotic or personal
+interest,--either to benefit mankind, or reach some selfish end, not
+(I speak of human work in the broad sense) to please the gods.
+
+II. He _was_ a beautiful creature, setting forth this beauty by all
+means in his power, and depending upon it for much of his authority
+over his fellows. So that the ruddy cheek of David, and the ivory
+skin of Atrides, and the towering presence of Saul, and the blue
+eyes of Coeur de Lion, were among the chief reasons why they
+should be kings; and it was one of the aims of all education, and of
+all dress, to make the presence of the human form stately and
+lovely. _Now_ it has become the task of grave philosophy partly to
+depreciate or conceal this bodily beauty; and even by those who
+esteem it in their hearts, it is not made one of the great ends of
+education: man has become, upon the whole, an ugly animal, and is
+not ashamed of his ugliness.
+
+III. He _was_ eminently warlike. He is _now_ gradually becoming more
+and more ashamed of all the arts and aims of battle. So that the
+desire of dominion, which was once frankly confessed or boasted of as
+a heroic passion, is now sternly reprobated or cunningly disclaimed.
+
+IV. He _used_ to take no interest in anything but what immediately
+concerned himself. _Now_, he has deep interest in the abstract
+natures of things, inquires as eagerly into the laws which regulate
+the economy of the material world, as into those of his own being,
+and manifests a passionate admiration of inanimate objects, closely
+resembling, in its elevation and tenderness, the affection which he
+bears to those living souls with which he is brought into the
+nearest fellowship.
+
+Sec. 10. It is this last change only which is to be the subject of our
+present inquiry; but it cannot be doubted that it is closely
+connected with all the others, and that we can only thoroughly
+understand its nature by considering it in this connection. For,
+regarded by itself, we might, perhaps, too rashly assume it to be a
+natural consequence of the progress of the race. There appears to be
+a diminution of selfishness in it, and a more extended and heartfelt
+desire of understanding the manner of God's working; and this the
+more, because one of the permanent characters of this change is a
+greater accuracy in the statement of external facts. When the eyes
+of men were fixed first upon themselves, and upon nature solely and
+secondarily as bearing upon their interests, it was of less
+consequence to them what the ultimate laws of nature were, than what
+their immediate effects were upon human beings. Hence they could
+rest satisfied with phenomena instead of principles, and accepted
+without scrutiny every fable which seemed sufficiently or gracefully
+to account for those phenomena. But so far as the eyes of men are
+now withdrawn from themselves, and turned upon the inanimate things
+about them, the results cease to be of importance, and the laws
+become essential.
+
+Sec. 11. In these respects, it might easily appear to us that this
+change was assuredly one of steady and natural advance. But when we
+contemplate the others above noted, of which it is clearly one of
+the branches or consequences, we may suspect ourselves of
+over-rashness in our self-congratulation, and admit the necessity of
+a scrupulous analysis both of the feeling itself and of its
+tendencies.
+
+Of course a complete analysis, or anything like it, would involve a
+treatise on the whole history of the world. I shall merely endeavor
+to note some of the leading and more interesting circumstances
+bearing on the subject, and to show sufficient practical ground for
+the conclusion, that landscape painting is indeed a noble and useful
+art, though one not long known by man. I shall therefore examine, as
+best I can, the effect of landscape, 1st, on the Classical mind;
+2ndly, on the Mediaeval mind; and lastly, on the Modern mind. But
+there is one point of some interest respecting the effect of it on
+_any_ mind, which must be settled first, and this I will endeavor to
+do in the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY.
+
+
+Sec. 1. German dulness and English affectation, have of late much
+multiplied among us the use of two of the most objectionable words
+that were ever coined by the troublesomeness of metaphysicians,
+--namely, "Objective" and "Subjective."
+
+No words can be more exquisitely, and in all points, useless; and I
+merely speak of them that I may, at once and for ever, get them out
+of my way and out of my reader's. But to get that done, they must be
+explained.
+
+The word "Blue," say certain philosophers, means the sensation of
+color which the human eye receives in looking at the open sky, or at
+a bell gentian.
+
+Now, say they farther, as this sensation can only be felt when the
+eye is turned to the object, and as, therefore, no such sensation is
+produced by the object when nobody looks at it, therefore the thing,
+when it is not looked at, is not blue; and thus (say they) there are
+many qualities of things which depend as much on something else as
+on themselves. To be sweet, a thing must have a taster; it is only
+sweet while it is being tasted, and if the tongue had not the
+capacity of taste, then the sugar would not have the quality of
+sweetness.
+
+And then they agree that the qualities of things which thus depend
+upon our perception of them, and upon our human nature as affected
+by them, shall be called Subjective; and the qualities of things
+which they always have, irrespective of any other nature, as
+roundness or squareness, shall be called Objective.
+
+From these ingenious views the step is very easy to a farther
+opinion, that it does not much matter what things are in themselves,
+but only what they are to us; and that the only real truth of them
+is their appearance to, or effect upon, us. From which position,
+with a hearty desire for mystification, and much egotism,
+selfishness, shallowness, and impertinence, a philosopher may easily
+go so far as to believe, and say, that everything in the world
+depends upon his seeing or thinking of it, and that nothing,
+therefore, exists, but what he sees or thinks of.
+
+Sec. 2. Now, to get rid of all these ambiguities and troublesome words
+at once, be it observed that the word "Blue" does _not_ mean the
+_sensation_ caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the
+_power_ of producing that sensation; and this power is always there,
+in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and
+would remain there though there were not left a man on the face of
+the earth. Precisely in the same way gunpowder has a power of
+exploding. It will not explode if you put no match to it. But it has
+always the power of so exploding, and is therefore called an
+explosive compound, which it very positively and assuredly is,
+whatever philosophy may say to the contrary.
+
+In like manner, a gentian does not produce the sensation of blueness
+if you don't look at it. But it has always the power of doing so;
+its particles being everlastingly so arranged by its Maker. And,
+therefore, the gentian and the sky are always verily blue, whatever
+philosophy may say to the contrary; and if you do not see them blue
+when you look at them, it is not their fault but yours.[52]
+
+Sec. 3. Hence I would say to these philosophers: If, instead of using
+the sonorous phrase, "It is objectively so," you will use the plain
+old phrase, "It _is_ so;" and if instead of the sonorous phrase, "It
+is subjectively so," you will say, in plain old English, "It does
+so," or "It seems so to me;" you will, on the whole, be more
+intelligible to your fellow-creatures: and besides, if you find
+that a thing which generally "does so" to other people (as a gentian
+looks blue to most men) does _not_ so to you, on any particular
+occasion, you will not fall into the impertinence of saying that the
+thing is not so, or did not so, but you will say simply (what you
+will be all the better for speedily finding out) that something is
+the matter with you. If you find that you cannot explode the
+gunpowder, you will not declare that all gunpowder is subjective,
+and all explosion imaginary, but you will simply suspect and declare
+yourself to be an ill-made match. Which, on the whole, though there
+may be a distant chance of a mistake about it, is, nevertheless, the
+wisest conclusion you can come to until farther experiment.[53]
+
+Sec. 4. Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words quite
+out of our way, we may go on at our ease to examine the point in
+question,--namely, the difference between the ordinary, proper, and
+true appearances of things to us; and the extraordinary, or false
+appearances, when we are under the influence of emotion, or
+contemplative fancy;[54] false appearances, I say, as being entirely
+unconnected with any real power or character in the object, and only
+imputed to it by us.
+
+For instance--
+
+      "The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould
+      Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold."[55]
+
+This is very beautiful and yet very untrue. The crocus is not a
+spendthrift, but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold, but saffron.
+How is it that we enjoy so much the having it put into our heads
+that it is anything else than a plain crocus?
+
+It is an important question. For, throughout our past reasonings
+about art, we have always found that nothing could be good or
+useful, or ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is
+something pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless
+_un_true. And what is more, if we think over our favorite poetry, we
+shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all
+the more for being so.
+
+Sec. 5. It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this
+fallacy is of two principal kinds. Either, as in this case of the
+crocus, it is the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no real
+expectation that it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy caused
+by an excited state of the feelings, making us, for the time, more
+or less irrational. Of the cheating of the fancy we shall have to
+speak presently; but, in this chapter, I want to examine the nature
+of the other error, that which the mind admits, when affected
+strongly by emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke,--
+
+      "They rowed her in across the rolling foam--
+      The cruel, crawling foam."
+
+The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind
+which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one
+in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have
+the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our
+impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize
+as the "Pathetic fallacy."
+
+Sec. 6. Now we are in the habit of considering this fallacy as
+eminently a character of poetical description, and the temper of
+mind in which we allow it, as one eminently poetical, because
+passionate. But, I believe, if we look well into the matter, that
+we shall find the greatest poets do not often admit this kind of
+falseness,--that it is only the second order of poets who much
+delight in it.[56]
+
+Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of
+Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough," he gives the most
+perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness,
+passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for
+an instant losing his own clear perception that _these_ are souls,
+and _those_ are leaves: he makes no confusion of one with the other.
+But when Coleridge speaks of
+
+      "The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
+      That dances as often as dance it can,"
+
+he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea about the
+leaf: he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not;
+confuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with
+merriment, and the wind that shakes it with music. Here, however,
+there is some beauty, even in the morbid passage; but take an
+instance in Homer and Pope. Without the knowledge of Ulysses,
+Elpenor, his youngest follower, has fallen from an upper chamber in
+the Circean palace, and has been left dead, unmissed by his leader,
+or companions, in the haste of their departure. They cross the sea
+to the Cimmerian land; and Ulysses summons the shades from Tartarus.
+The first which appears is that of the lost Elpenor. Ulysses,
+amazed, and in exactly the spirit of bitter and terrified lightness
+which is seen in Hamlet,[57] addresses the spirit with the simple,
+startled words:--
+
+    "Elpenor? How camest thou under the Shadowy darkness? Hast
+    thou come faster on foot than I in my black ship?"
+
+Which Pope renders thus:--
+
+      "O, say, what angry power Elpenor led
+      To glide in shades, and wander with the dead?
+      How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined,
+      Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?"
+
+I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in the
+nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind! And yet how is
+it that these conceits are so painful now, when they have been
+pleasant to us in the other instances?
+
+Sec. 7. For a very simple reason. They are not a _pathetic_ fallacy at
+all, for they are put into the mouth of the wrong passion--a passion
+which never could possibly have spoken them--agonized curiosity.
+Ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter; and the very last
+thing his mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest
+in any wise what was _not_ a fact. The delay in the first three
+lines, and conceit in the last, jar upon us instantly, like the most
+frightful discord in music. No poet of true imaginative power could
+possibly have written the passage. It is worth while comparing the
+way a similar question is put by the exquisite sincerity of Keats:--
+
+                  "He wept, and his bright tears
+        Went trickling down the golden bow he held.
+        Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood;
+        While from beneath some cumb'rous boughs hard by,
+        With solemn step, an awful goddess came.
+        And there was purport in her looks for him,
+        Which he with eager guess began to read:
+        Perplexed the while, melodiously he said,
+        '_How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?_'"
+
+Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some
+sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Coleridge's fallacy has no
+discord in it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge. Without farther
+questioning, I will endeavor to state the main bearings of this
+matter.
+
+Sec. 8. The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, is, as I
+said above, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal
+fully with what is before them or upon them; borne away, or
+over-clouded, or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a more or less
+noble state, according to the force of the emotion which has induced
+it. For it is no credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate
+in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them;
+and it is in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in the
+ranks of being, that the emotions should be strong enough to
+vanquish, partly, the intellect, and make it believe what they
+choose. But it is still a grander condition when the intellect also
+rises, till it is strong enough to assert its rule against, or
+together with, the utmost efforts of the passions; and the whole man
+stands in an iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in
+no wise evaporating; even if he melts, losing none of his weight.
+
+So, then, we have the three ranks: the man who perceives rightly,
+because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very
+accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then,
+secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to
+whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a star, or a
+sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly,
+there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and
+to whom the primrose is for ever nothing else than itself--a little
+flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever
+and how many soever the associations and passions may be, that crowd
+around it. And, in general, these three classes may be rated in
+comparative order, as the men who are not poets at all, and the
+poets of the second order, and the poets of the first; only however
+great a man may be, there are always some subjects which _ought_ to
+throw him off his balance; some, by which his poor human capacity of
+thought should be conquered, and brought into the inaccurate and
+vague state of perception, so that the language of the highest
+inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild in metaphor,
+resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker things.
+
+Sec. 9. And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel
+nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think
+weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel
+strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and
+the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to
+influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because
+what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual
+condition of prophetic inspiration.
+
+Sec. 10. I separate these classes, in order that their character may be
+clearly understood; but of course they are united each to the other
+by imperceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to the
+influences to which it is subjected, passes at different times into
+the various states. Still, the difference between the great and less
+man is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of _alterability_. That
+is to say, the one knows too much, and perceives and feels too much
+of the past and future, and of all things beside and around that
+which immediately affects him, to be in any wise shaken by it. His
+mind is made up; his thoughts have an accustomed current; his ways
+are steadfast; it is not this or that new sight which will at once
+unbalance him. He is tender to impression at the surface, like a
+rock with deep moss upon it; but there is too much mass of him to be
+moved. The smaller man, with the same degree of sensibility, is at
+once carried off his feet; he wants to do something he did not want
+to do before; he views all the universe in a new light through his
+tears; he is gay or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as
+things come and go to him. Therefore the high creative poet might
+even be thought, to a great extent, impassive (as shallow people
+think Dante stern), receiving indeed all feelings to the full, but
+having a great centre of reflection and knowledge in which he stands
+serene, and watches the feeling, as it were, from far off.
+
+Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire command of himself, and
+can look around calmly, at all moments, for the image or the word that
+will best tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. But Keats and
+Tennyson, and the poets of the second order, are generally themselves
+subdued by the feelings under which they write, or, at least, write as
+choosing to be so, and therefore admit certain expressions and modes
+of thought which are in some sort diseased or false.
+
+Sec. 11. Now so long as we see that the _feeling_ is true, we pardon,
+or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which it
+induces: we are pleased, for instance, with those lines of
+Kingsley's, above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe
+foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow. But the moment
+the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment every such
+expression becomes untrue, as being for ever untrue in the external
+facts. And there is no greater baseness in literature than the habit
+of using these metaphorical expressions in cool blood. An inspired
+writer, in full impetuosity of passion, may speak wisely and truly
+of "raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame;" but it is
+only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking
+of "raging waves," "remorseless floods," "ravenous billows," &c.;
+and it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check
+all such habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the
+_pure fact_, out of which if any feeling comes to him or his reader,
+he knows it must be a true one.
+
+To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who represents a man in
+despair, desiring that his body may be cast into the sea,
+
+      "_Whose changing mound, and foam that passed away_,
+      Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay."
+
+Observe, there is not a single false, or even overcharged,
+expression. "Mound" of the sea wave is perfectly simple and true;
+"changing" is as familiar as may be; "foam that passed away,"
+strictly literal; and the whole line descriptive of the reality with
+a degree of accuracy which I know not any other verse, in the range
+of poetry, that altogether equals. For most people have not a
+distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave. The
+word "wave" is used too generally of ripples and breakers, and
+bendings in light drapery or grass: it does not by itself convey a
+perfect image. But the word "mound" is heavy, large, dark, definite;
+there is no mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor missing the sight
+of it. Then the term "changing" has a peculiar force also. Most
+people think of waves as rising and falling. But if they look at the
+sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves do not rise and
+fall. They change. Change both place and form, but they do not fall;
+one wave goes on, and on, and still on; now lower, now higher, now
+tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself together like a
+wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the same wave, till at last
+it seems struck by something, and changes, one knows not
+how,--becomes another wave.
+
+The close of the line insists on this image, and paints it still
+more perfectly,--"foam that passed away." Not merely melting,
+disappearing, but passing on, out of sight, on the career of the
+wave. Then, having put the absolute ocean fact as far as he may
+before our eyes, the poet leaves us to feel about it as we may, and
+to trace for ourselves the opposite fact,--the image of the green
+mounds that do not change, and the white and written stones that do
+not pass away; and thence to follow out also the associated images
+of the calm life with the quiet grave, and the despairing life with
+the fading foam:--
+
+                   "Let no man move his bones."
+    "As for Samaria, her king is cut off like the foam upon the water."
+
+But nothing of this is actually told or pointed out, and the
+expressions, as they stand, are perfectly severe and accurate, utterly
+uninfluenced by the firmly governed emotion of the writer. Even the
+word "mock" is hardly an exception, as it may stand merely for
+"deceive" or "defeat," without implying any impersonation of the
+waves.
+
+Sec. 12. It may be well, perhaps, to give one or two more instances to
+show the peculiar dignity possessed by all passages which thus limit
+their expression to the pure fact, and leave the hearer to gather
+what he can from it. Here is a notable one from the Iliad. Helen,
+looking from the Scaean gate of Troy over the Grecian host, and
+telling Priam the names of its captains, says at last:--
+
+    "I see all the other dark-eyed Greeks; but two I cannot
+    see,--Castor and Pollux,--whom one mother bore with me. Have
+    they not followed from fair Lacedaemon, or have they indeed
+    come in their sea-wandering ships, but now will not enter into
+    the battle of men, fearing the shame and the scorn that is in
+    me?"
+
+Then Homer:--
+
+    "So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth
+    possessed, there in Lacedaemon, in the dear fatherland."
+
+Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the extreme. The poet
+has to speak of the earth in sadness, but he will not let that
+sadness affect or change his thoughts of it. No; though Castor and
+Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our mother still, fruitful,
+life-giving. These are the facts of the thing. I see nothing else
+than these. Make what you will of them.
+
+Sec. 13. Take another very notable instance from Casimir de la Vigne's
+terrible ballad, "La Toilette de Constance." I must quote a few
+lines out of it here and there, to enable the reader who has not the
+book by him, to understand its close.
+
+            "Vite, Anna, vite; au miroir
+              Plus vite, Anna. L'heure s'avance,
+            Et je vais au bal ce soir
+              Chez l'ambassadeur de France.
+
+      Y pensez vous, ils sont fanes, ces noeuds,
+        Ils sont d'hier, mon Dieu, comme tout passe!
+      Que du reseau qui retient mes cheveux
+        Les glands d'azur retombent avec grace.
+      Plus haut! Plus bas! Vous ne comprenez rien!
+        Que sur mon front ce saphir etincelle:
+      Vous me piquez, mal-adroite. Ah, c'est bien,
+        Bien,--chere Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle.
+
+      Celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier
+        (Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espere.
+      (Ah, fi, profane, est-ce la mon collier?
+        Quoi! ces grains d'or benits par le Saint Pere!)
+      Il y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main
+        En y pensant, a peine je respire;
+      Pere Anselmo doit m'entendre demain,
+        Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire?
+
+            Vite un coup d'oeil au miroir,
+              Le dernier.----J'ai l'assurance
+            Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir
+              Chez l'ambassadeur de France.
+
+      Pres du foyer, Constance s'admirait.
+        Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une etincelle!
+      Au feu. Courez; Quand l'espoir l'enivrait
+        Tout perdre ainsi! Quoi! Mourir,--et si belle!
+      L'horrible feu ronge avec volupte
+        Ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'eleve,
+      Et sans pitie devore sa beaute,
+        Ses dixhuit ans, helas, et son doux reve!
+
+            Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour!
+              On disait, Pauvre Constance!
+            Et on dansait, jusqu'au jour,
+              Chez l'ambassadeur de France."
+
+Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the poet does not say.
+What you may think about it, he does not know. He has nothing to do
+with that. There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber.
+There they danced, till the morning, at the Ambassador's of France.
+Make what you will of it.
+
+If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I have quoted
+only about the third part, he will find that there is not, from
+beginning to end of it, a single poetical (so called) expression,
+except in one stanza. The girl speaks as simple prose as may be; there
+is not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing.
+The poet stands by, impassive as a statue, recording her words just as
+they come. At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of
+death, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him. He records no
+longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. The fire
+gnaws with _voluptuousness--without pity_. It is soon past. The fate
+is fixed for ever; and he retires into his pale and crystalline
+atmosphere of truth. He closes all with the calm veracity,
+
+      "They said, 'Poor Constance!'"
+
+Sec. 14. Now in this there is the exact type of the consummate poetical
+temperament. For, be it clearly and constantly remembered, that the
+greatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness of
+feeling, and command of it. A poet is great, first in proportion to
+the strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted,
+in proportion to his government of it; there being, however, always
+a point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed
+this government, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and
+wild fancy becomes just and true. Thus the destruction of the
+kingdom of Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of
+Israel. The fact is too great, too wonderful. It overthrows him,
+dashes him into a confused element of dreams. All the world is, to
+his stunned thought, full of strange voices. "Yea, the fir-trees
+rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, 'Since thou art
+gone down to the grave, no feller is come up against us.'" So, still
+more, the thought of the presence of Deity cannot be borne without
+this great astonishment. "The mountains and the hills shall break
+forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the fields shall
+clap their hands."
+
+Sec. 15. But by how much this feeling is noble when it is justified by
+the strength of its cause, by so much it is ignoble when there is not
+cause enough for it; and beyond all other ignobleness is the mere
+affectation of it, in hardness of heart. Simply bad writing may almost
+always, as above noticed, be known by its adoption of these fanciful
+metaphorical expressions, as a sort of current coin; yet there is even
+a worse, at least a more harmful, condition of writing than this, in
+which such expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up,
+but, by some master, skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberately
+wrought out with chill and studied fancy; as if we should try to make
+an old lava stream look red-hot again, by covering it with dead
+leaves, or white-hot, with hoar-frost.
+
+When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the character of a
+truly good and holy man, he permits himself for a moment to be
+overborne by the feeling so far as to exclaim--
+
+      "Where shall I find him? angels, tell me where.
+      You know him; he is near you; point him out.
+      Shall I see glories beaming from his brow,
+      Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?"
+
+This emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true and right. But now
+hear the cold-hearted Pope say to a shepherd girl--
+
+      "Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade!
+      Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade;
+      Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove,
+      And winds shall waft it to the powers above.
+      But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain,
+      The wondering forests soon should dance again;
+      The moving mountains hear the powerful call,
+      And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall."
+
+This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken for, the language
+of passion. It is simple falsehood, uttered by hypocrisy; definite
+absurdity, rooted in affectation, and coldly asserted in the teeth
+of nature and fact. Passion will indeed go far in deceiving itself;
+but it must be a strong passion, not the simple wish of a lover to
+tempt his mistress to sing. Compare a very closely parallel passage
+in Wordsworth, in which the lover has lost his mistress:
+
+      "Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid,
+      When thus his moan he made:--
+
+      'Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak,
+        Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie,
+      That in some other way yon smoke
+        May mount into the sky.
+
+      If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough,
+        Headlong, the waterfall must come,
+        Oh, let it, then, be dumb--
+      Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now.'"
+
+Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a waterfall
+to be silent, if it is not to hang listening; but with what
+different relation to the mind that contemplates them! Here, in the
+extremity of its agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which
+at the same moment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly
+believes possible, in a vague impression that a miracle _might_ be
+wrought to give relief even to a less sore distress,--that nature is
+kind, and God is kind, and that grief is strong; it knows not well
+what _is_ possible to such grief. To silence a stream, to move a
+cottage wall,--one might think it could do as much as that!
+
+Sec. 16. I believe these instances are enough to illustrate the main
+point I insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy,--that so far
+as it _is_ a fallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of
+mind, and comparatively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired
+prophet it is a sign of the incapacity of his human sight or thought
+to bear what has been revealed to it. In ordinary poetry, if it is
+found in the thoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign of
+his belonging to the inferior school; if in the thoughts of the
+characters imagined by him, it is right or wrong according to the
+genuineness of the emotion from which it springs; always, however,
+implying necessarily _some_ degree of weakness in the character.
+
+Take two most exquisite instances from master hands. The Jessy of
+Shenstone, and the Ellen of Wordsworth, have both been betrayed and
+deserted. Jessy, in the course of her most touching complaint, says:
+
+      "If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray,
+        Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure,
+      'Hope not to find delight in us,' they say,
+        'For we are spotless, Jessy; we are pure.'"
+
+Compare with this some of the words of Ellen:
+
+      "'Ah, why,' said Ellen, sighing to herself,
+      'Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge,
+      And nature, that is kind in woman's breast,
+      And reason, that in man is wise and good,
+      And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,--
+      Why do not these prevail for human life,
+      To keep two hearts together, that began
+      Their springtime with one love, and that have need
+      Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet
+      To grant, or be received; while that poor bird--
+      O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me
+      Been faithless, hear him;--though a lowly creature,
+      One of God's simple children, that yet know not
+      The Universal Parent, _how_ he sings!
+      As if he wished the firmament of heaven
+      Should listen, and give back to him the voice
+      Of his triumphant constancy and love.
+      The proclamation that he makes, how far
+      His darkness doth transcend our fickle light.'"
+
+The perfection of both these passages, as far as regards truth and
+tenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insuperable.
+But, of the two characters imagined, Jessy is weaker than Ellen,
+exactly in so far as something appears to her to be in nature which is
+not. The flowers do not really reproach her. God meant them to comfort
+her, not to taunt her; they would do so if she saw them rightly.
+
+Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring
+emotion. There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her
+thoughts. She reasons as calmly as if she did not feel. And,
+although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its
+desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant admit
+any veracity in the thought. "As if," she says,--"I know he means
+nothing of the kind; but it does verily seem as if." The reader will
+find, by examining the rest of the poem, that Ellen's character is
+throughout consistent in this clear though passionate strength.
+
+It then being, I hope, now made clear to the reader in all respects
+that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic,
+feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion
+of Truth is entire, over this, as over every other natural and just
+state of the human mind, we may go on to the subject for the dealing
+with which this prefatory inquiry became necessary; and why
+necessary, we shall see forthwith.[58]
+
+  [52] It is quite true, that in all qualities involving sensation,
+       there may be a doubt whether different people receive the
+       same sensation from the same thing (compare Part II. Sec. I.
+       Chap. V. Sec. 6.); but, though this makes such facts not
+       distinctly explicable, it does not alter the facts
+       themselves. I derive a certain sensation, which I call
+       sweetness, from sugar. That is a fact. Another person feels a
+       sensation, which _he_ also calls sweetness, from sugar. That
+       is also a fact. The sugar's power to produce these two
+       sensations, which we suppose to be, and which are, in all
+       probability, very nearly the same in both of us, and, on the
+       whole, in the human race, is its sweetness.
+
+  [53] In fact (for I may as well, for once, meet our German friends
+       in their own style), all that has been subjected to us on
+       this subject seems object to this great objection; that the
+       subjection of all things (subject to no exceptions) to senses
+       which are, in us, both subject and abject, and objects of
+       perpetual contempt, cannot but make it our ultimate object to
+       subject ourselves to the senses, and to remove whatever
+       objections existed to such subjection. So that, finally, that
+       which is the subject of examination or object of attention,
+       uniting thus in itself the characters of subness and obness
+       (so that, that which has no obness in it should be called
+       sub-subjective, or a sub-subject, and that which has no
+       subness in it should be called upper or ober-objective, or an
+       ob-object); and we also, who suppose ourselves the objects of
+       every arrangement, and are certainly the subjects of every
+       sensual impression, thus uniting in ourselves, in an obverse
+       or adverse manner, the characters of obness and subness, must
+       both become metaphysically dejected or rejected, nothing
+       remaining in _us_ objective, but subjectivity, and the very
+       objectivity of the object being lost in the abyss of this
+       subjectivity of the Human.
+
+       There is, however, some meaning in the above sentence, if the
+       reader cares to make it out; but in a pure German sentence of
+       the highest style there is often none whatever. See Appendix
+       II. "German Philosophy."
+
+  [54] Contemplative, in the sense explained in Part III. Sec. II.
+       Chap. IV.
+
+  [55] Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her
+       Recollections of a Literary Life.
+
+  [56] I admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two
+       orders I mean the Creative (Shakspere, Homer, Dante), and
+       Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson). But
+       both of these must be _first_-rate in their range, though
+       their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in
+       _quality_ no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind.
+       There is quite enough of the best,--much more than we can
+       ever read or enjoy in the length of a life; and it is a
+       literal wrong or sin in any person to encumber us with
+       inferior work. I have no patience with apologies made by
+       young pseudo-poets, "that they believe there is _some_ good
+       in what they have written: that they hope to do better in
+       time," etc. _Some_ good! If there is not _all_ good, there is
+       no good. If they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble
+       us now? Let them rather courageously burn all they have done,
+       and wait for the better days. There are few men, ordinarily
+       educated, who in moments of strong feeling could not strike
+       out a poetical thought, and afterwards polish it so as to be
+       presentable. But men of sense know better than so to waste
+       their time; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the
+       touch of the master's hand on the chords too well to fumble
+       among them after him. Nay, more than this; all inferior
+       poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away
+       the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched
+       commonalty to good thoughts; and, in general, adds to the
+       weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable
+       manner. There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary
+       men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in
+       the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more
+       noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than
+       to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the
+       world.
+
+  [57] "Well said, Old mole! can'st work i' the ground so fast?"
+
+  [58] I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances,
+       both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just
+       come upon, in Maude:
+
+                                 "For a great speculation had fail'd;
+          And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with
+                despair;
+        And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling
+                wail'd,
+          And the _flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro'
+                the air_."
+
+            "There has fallen a splendid tear
+              From the passion-flower at the gate.
+            _The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near!'_
+              _And the white rose weeps, 'She is late.'_
+            _The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear!'_
+              _And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE.
+
+
+Sec. 1. My reason for asking the reader to give so much of his time to
+the examination of the pathetic fallacy was, that, whether in
+literature or in art, he will find it eminently characteristic of
+the modern mind; and in the landscape, whether of literature or art,
+he will also find the modern painter endeavoring to express
+something which he, as a living creature, imagines in the lifeless
+object, while the classical and mediaeval painters were content with
+expressing the unimaginary and actual qualities of the object
+itself. It will be observed that, according to the principle stated
+long ago, I use the words painter and poet quite indifferently,
+including in our inquiry the landscape of literature, as well as
+that of painting; and this the more because the spirit of classical
+landscape has hardly been expressed in any other way than by words.
+
+Sec. 2. Taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely a very notable
+circumstance, to begin with, that this pathetic fallacy is eminently
+characteristic of modern painting. For instance, Keats, describing a
+wave, breaking, out at sea, says of it--
+
+      "Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar,
+      Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence."
+
+That is quite perfect, as an example of the modern manner. The idea
+of the peculiar action with which foam rolls down a long, large wave
+could not have been given by any other words so well as by this
+"wayward indolence." But Homer would never have written, never
+thought of, such words. He could not by any possibility have lost
+sight of the great fact that the wave, from the beginning to the end
+of it, do what it might, was still nothing else than salt water; and
+that salt water could not be either wayward or indolent. He will
+call the waves "over-roofed," "full-charged," "monstrous,"
+"compact-black," "dark-clear," "violet-colored," "wine-colored," and
+so on. But every one of these epithets is descriptive of pure
+physical nature. "Over-roofed" is the term he invariably uses of
+anything--rock, house, or wave--that nods over at the brow; the
+other terms need no explanation; they are as accurate and intense in
+truth as words can be, but they never show the slightest feeling of
+anything animated in the ocean. Black or clear, monstrous or
+violet-colored, cold salt water it is always, and nothing but that.
+
+Sec. 3. "Well, but the modern writer, by his admission of the tinge of
+fallacy, has given an idea of something in the action of the wave
+which Homer could not, and surely, therefore, has made a step in
+advance? Also there appears to be a degree of sympathy and feeling
+in the one writer, which there is not in the other; and as it has
+been received for a first principle that writers are great in
+proportion to the intensity of their feelings, and Homer seems to
+have no feelings about the sea but that it is black and deep, surely
+in this respect also the modern writer is the greater?"
+
+Stay a moment. Homer _had_ some feeling about the sea; a faith in
+the animation of it much stronger than Keats's. But all this sense
+of something living in it, he separates in his mind into a great
+abstract image of a Sea Power. He never says the waves rage, or the
+waves are idle. But he says there is somewhat in, and greater than,
+the waves, which rages, and is idle, and _that_ he calls a god.
+
+Sec. 4. I do not think we ever enough endeavor to enter into what a
+Greek's real notion of a god was. We are so accustomed to the modern
+mockeries of the classical religion, so accustomed to hear and see
+the Greek gods introduced as living personages, or invoked for help,
+by men who believe neither in them nor in any other gods, that we
+seem to have infected the Greek ages themselves with the breath, and
+dimmed them with the shade, of our hypocrisy; and are apt to think
+that Homer, as we know that Pope, was merely an ingenious fabulist;
+nay, more than this, that all the nations of past time were
+ingenious fabulists also, to whom the universe was a lyrical drama,
+and by whom whatsoever was said about it was merely a witty
+allegory, or a graceful lie, of which the entire upshot and
+consummation was a pretty statue in the middle of the court, or at
+the end of the garden.
+
+This, at least, is one of our forms of opinion about Greek faith; not,
+indeed, possible altogether to any man of honesty or ordinary powers
+of thought; but still so venomously inherent in the modern philosophy
+that all the pure lightning of Carlyle cannot as yet quite burn it out
+of any of us. And then, side by side with this mere infidel folly,
+stands the bitter short-sightedness of Puritanism, holding the
+classical god to be either simply an idol,--a block of stone
+ignorantly, though sincerely, worshipped,--or else an actual diabolic
+or betraying power, usurping the place of god.
+
+Sec. 5. Both these Puritanical estimates of Greek deity are of course
+to some extent true. The corruption of classical worship is barren
+idolatry; and that corruption was deepened, and variously directed
+to their own purposes, by the evil angels. But this was neither the
+whole, nor the principal part, of Pagan worship. Pallas was not, in
+the pure Greek mind, merely a powerful piece of ivory in a temple at
+Athens; neither was the choice of Leonidas between the alternatives
+granted him by the oracle, of personal death, or ruin to his
+country, altogether a work of the Devil's prompting.
+
+Sec. 6. What, then, was actually the Greek god? In what way were these
+two ideas of human form, and divine power, credibly associated in
+the ancient heart, so as to become a subject of true faith,
+irrespective equally of fable, allegory, superstitious trust in
+stone, and demoniacal influence?
+
+It seems to me that the Greek had exactly the same instinctive
+feeling about the elements that we have ourselves; that to Homer, as
+much as to Casimir de la Vigne, fire seemed ravenous and pitiless;
+to Homer, as much as to Keats, the sea-wave appeared wayward or
+idle, or whatever else it may be to the poetical passion. But then
+the Greek reasoned upon this sensation, saying to himself: "I can
+light the fire, and put it out; I can dry this water up, or drink
+it. It cannot be the fire or the water that rages, or that is
+wayward. But it must be something _in_ this fire and _in_ the water,
+which I cannot destroy by extinguishing the one, or evaporating the
+other, any more than I destroy myself by cutting off my finger; _I_
+was _in_ my finger,--something of me at least was; I had a power
+over it, and felt pain in it, though I am still as much myself when
+it is gone. So there may be a power in the water which is not water,
+but to which the water is as a body;--which can strike with it, move
+in it, suffer in it, yet not be destroyed in it. This something,
+this great Water Spirit, I must not confuse with the waves, which
+are only its body. _They_ may flow hither and thither, increase or
+diminish. _That_ must be indivisible--imperishable--a god. So of
+fire also; those rays which I can stop, and in the midst of which I
+cast a shadow, cannot be divine, nor greater than I. They cannot
+feel, but there may be something in them that feels,--a glorious
+intelligence, as much nobler and more swift than mine, as these
+rays, which are its body, are nobler and swifter than my flesh;--the
+spirit of all light, and truth, and melody, and revolving hours."
+
+Sec. 7. It was easy to conceive, farther, that such spirits should be
+able to assume at will a human form, in order to hold intercourse
+with men, or to perform any act for which their proper body, whether
+fire, earth, or air, was unfitted. And it would have been to place
+them beneath, instead of above, humanity, if, assuming the form of
+man, they could not also have tasted his pleasures. Hence the easy
+step to the more or less material ideas of deities, which are apt at
+first to shock us, but which are indeed only dishonorable so far as
+they represent the gods as false and unholy. It is not the
+materialism, but the vice, which degrades the conception; for the
+materialism itself is never positive or complete. There is always
+some sense of exaltation in the spiritual and immortal body; and of
+a power proceeding from the visible form through all the infinity of
+the element ruled by the particular god. The precise nature of the
+idea is well seen in the passage of the Iliad which describes the
+river Scamander defending the Trojans against Achilles. In order to
+remonstrate with the hero, the god assumes a human form, which
+nevertheless is in some way or other instantly recognized by
+Achilles as that of the river-god: it is addressed at once as a
+river, not as a man; and its voice is the voice of a river, "out of
+the deep whirlpools."[59] Achilles refuses to obey its commands; and
+from the human form it returns instantly into its natural or divine
+one, and endeavors to overwhelm him with waves. Vulcan defends
+Achilles, and sends fire against the river, which suffers in its
+water-body, till it is able to bear no more. At last even the "nerve
+of the river," or "strength of the river" (note the expression),
+feels the fire, and this "strength of the river" addresses Vulcan in
+supplications for respite. There is in this precisely the idea of a
+vital part of the river-body, which acted and felt, and which, if
+the fire reached it, was death, just as would be the case if it
+touched a vital part of the human body. Throughout the passage the
+manner of conception is perfectly clear and consistent; and if, in
+other places, the exact connection between the ruling spirit and the
+thing ruled is not so manifest, it is only because it is almost
+impossible for the human mind to dwell long upon such subjects
+without falling into inconsistencies, and gradually slackening its
+effort to grasp the entire truth; until the more spiritual part of
+it slips from its hold, and only the human form of the god is left,
+to be conceived and described as subject to all the errors of
+humanity. But I do not believe that the idea ever weakens itself
+down to mere allegory. When Pallas is said to attack and strike down
+Mars, it does not mean merely that Wisdom at that moment prevailed
+against Wrath. It means that there are indeed two great spirits, one
+entrusted to guide the human soul to wisdom and chastity, the other
+to kindle wrath and prompt to battle. It means that these two
+spirits, on the spot where, and at the moment when, a great contest
+was to be decided between all that they each governed in man, then
+and there assumed human form, and human weapons, and did verily and
+materially strike at each other, until the Spirit of Wrath was
+crushed. And when Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the
+woods, it does not mean merely as Wordsworth puts it, that the poet
+or shepherd saw the moon and stars glancing between the branches of
+the trees, and wished to say so figuratively. It means that there
+is a living spirit, to which the light of the moon is a body; which
+takes delight in glancing between the clouds and following the wild
+beasts as they wander through the night; and that this spirit
+sometimes assumes a perfect human form, and in this form, with real
+arrows, pursues and slays the wild beasts, which with its mere
+arrows of moonlight it could not slay; retaining, nevertheless, all
+the while, its power, and being in the moonlight, and in all else
+that it rules.
+
+Sec. 8. There is not the smallest inconsistency or unspirituality in
+this conception. If there were, it would attach equally to the
+appearance of the angels to Jacob, Abraham, Joshua, or Manoah. In
+all those instances the highest authority which governs our own
+faith requires us to conceive divine power clothed with a human form
+(a form so real that it is recognized for superhuman only by its
+"doing wondrously"), and retaining, nevertheless, sovereignty and
+omnipresence in all the world. This is precisely, as I understand
+it, the heathen idea of a God; and it is impossible to comprehend
+any single part of the Greek mind until we grasp this faithfully,
+not endeavoring to explain it away in any wise, but accepting, with
+frank decision and definition, the tangible existence of its
+deities;--blue-eyed--white-fleshed--human-hearted,--capable at their
+choice of meeting man absolutely in his own nature--feasting with
+him--talking with him--fighting with him, eye to eye, or breast to
+breast, as Mars with Diomed; or else, dealing with him in a more
+retired spirituality, as Apollo sending the plague upon the Greeks,
+when his quiver rattles at his shoulders as he moves, and yet the
+darts sent forth of it strike not as arrows, but as plague; or,
+finally, retiring completely into the material universe which they
+properly inhabit, and dealing with man through that, as Scamander
+with Achilles through his waves.
+
+Sec. 9. Nor is there anything whatever in the various actions recorded of
+the gods, however apparently ignoble, to indicate weakness of belief
+in them. Very frequently things which appear to us ignoble are merely
+the simplicities of a pure and truthful age. When Juno beats Diana
+about the ears with her own quiver, for instance, we start at first,
+as if Homer could not have believed that they were both real
+goddesses. But what should Juno have done? Killed Diana with a look?
+Nay, she neither wished to do so, nor could she have done so, by the
+very faith of Diana's goddess-ship. Diana is as immortal as herself.
+Frowned Diana into submission? But Diana has come expressly to try
+conclusions with her, and will by no means be frowned into submission.
+Wounded her with a celestial lance? That sounds more poetical, but it
+is in reality partly more savage, and partly more absurd, than Homer.
+More savage, for it makes Juno more cruel, therefore less divine; and
+more absurd, for it only seems elevated in tone, because we use the
+word "celestial," which means nothing. What sort of a thing is a
+"celestial" lance? Not a wooden one. Of what then? Of moonbeams, or
+clouds, or mist. Well, therefore, Diana's arrows were of mist too; and
+her quiver, and herself, and Juno, with her lance, and all, vanish
+into mist. Why not have said at once, if that is all you mean, that
+two mists met, and one drove the other back? That would have been
+rational and intelligible, but not to talk of celestial lances. Homer
+had no such misty fancy; he believed the two goddesses were there in
+true bodies, with true weapons, on the true earth; and still I ask,
+what should Juno have done? Not beaten Diana? No; for it is
+un-lady-like. Un-English-lady-like, yes; but by no means
+un-Greek-lady-like, nor even un-natural-lady-like. If a modern lady
+does _not_ beat her servant or her rival about the ears, it is oftener
+because she is too weak, or too proud, than because she is of purer
+mind than Homer's Juno. She will not strike them; but she will
+overwork the one or slander the other without pity; and Homer would
+not have thought that one whit more goddess-like than striking them
+with her open hand.
+
+Sec. 10. If, however, the reader likes to suppose that while the two
+goddesses in personal presence thus fought with arrow and quiver,
+there was also a broader and vaster contest supposed by Homer
+between the elements they ruled; and that the goddess of the
+heavens, as she struck the goddess of the moon on the flushing
+cheek, was at the same instant exercising omnipresent power in the
+heavens themselves, and gathering clouds, with which, filled with
+the moon's own arrows or beams, she was encumbering and concealing
+the moon; he is welcome to this out-carrying of the idea, provided
+that he does not pretend to make it an interpretation instead of a
+mere extension, nor think to explain away my real, running,
+beautiful beaten Diana, into a moon behind clouds.[60]
+
+Sec. 11. It is only farther to be noted, that the Greek conception of
+Godhead, as it was much more real than we usually suppose, so it was
+much more bold and familiar than to a modern mind would be possible.
+I shall have something more to observe, in a little while, of the
+danger of our modern habit of endeavoring to raise ourselves to
+something like comprehension of the truth of divinity, instead of
+simply believing the words in which the Deity reveals Himself to us.
+The Greek erred rather on the other side, making hardly any effort
+to conceive divine mind as above the human; and no more shrinking
+from frank intercourse with a divine being, or dreading its
+immediate presence, than that of the simplest of mortals. Thus
+Atrides, enraged at his sword's breaking in his hand upon the helmet
+of Paris, after he had expressly invoked the assistance of Jupiter,
+exclaims aloud, as he would to a king who had betrayed him, "Jove,
+Father, there is not another god more evil-minded than thou!" and
+Helen, provoked at Paris's defeat, and oppressed with pouting shame
+both for him and for herself, when Venus appears at her side, and
+would lead her back to the delivered Paris, impatiently tells the
+goddess to "go and take care of Paris herself."
+
+Sec. 12. The modern mind is naturally, but vulgarly and unjustly,
+shocked by this kind of familiarity. Rightly understood, it is not
+so much a sign of misunderstanding of the divine nature as of good
+understanding of the human. The Greek lived, in all things, a
+healthy, and, in a certain degree, a perfect life. He had no morbid
+or sickly feeling of any kind. He was accustomed to face death
+without the slightest shrinking, to undergo all kinds of bodily
+hardship without complaint, and to do what he supposed right and
+honorable, in most cases, as a matter of course. Confident of his
+own immortality, and of the power of abstract justice, he expected
+to be dealt with in the next world as was right, and left the
+matter much in his gods' hands; but being thus immortal, and finding
+in his own soul something which it seemed quite as difficult to
+master, as to rule the elements, he did not feel that it was an
+appalling superiority in those gods to have bodies of water, or
+fire, instead of flesh, and to have various work to do among the
+clouds and waves, out of his human way; or sometimes, even, in a
+sort of service to himself. Was not the nourishment of herbs and
+flowers a kind of ministering to his wants? were not the gods in
+some sort his husbandmen, and spirit-servants? Their mere strength
+or omnipresence did not seem to him a distinction absolutely
+terrific. It might be the nature of one being to be in two places at
+once, and of another to be only in one; but that did not seem of
+itself to infer any absolute lordliness of one nature above the
+other, any more than an insect must be a nobler creature than a man,
+because it can see on four sides of its head, and the man only in
+front. They could kill him or torture him, it was true; but even
+that not unjustly, or not for ever. There was a fate, and a Divine
+Justice, greater than they; so that if they did wrong, and he right,
+he might fight it out with them, and have the better of them at
+last. In a general way, they were wiser, stronger, and better than
+he; and to ask counsel of them, to obey them, to sacrifice to them,
+to thank them for all good, this was well; but to be utterly
+downcast before them, or not to tell them his mind in plain Greek if
+they seemed to him to be conducting themselves in an ungodly
+manner,--this would not be well.
+
+Sec. 13. Such being their general idea of the gods, we can now easily
+understand the habitual tone of their feelings towards what was
+beautiful in nature. With us, observe, the idea of the Divinity is
+apt to get separated from the life of nature; and imagining our God
+upon a cloudy throne, far above the earth, and not in the flowers or
+waters, we approach those visible things with a theory that they are
+dead, governed by physical laws, and so forth. But coming to them,
+we find the theory fail; that they are not dead; that, say what we
+choose about them, the instinctive sense of their being alive is too
+strong for us; and in scorn of all physical law, the wilful fountain
+sings, and the kindly flowers rejoice. And then, puzzled, and yet
+happy; pleased, and yet ashamed of being so; accepting sympathy
+from nature, which we do not believe it gives, and giving sympathy
+to nature, which we do not believe it receives,--mixing, besides,
+all manner of purposeful play and conceit with these involuntary
+fellowships,--we fall necessarily into the curious web of hesitating
+sentiment, pathetic fallacy, and wandering fancy, which form a great
+part of our modern view of nature. But the Greek never removed his
+god out of nature at all; never attempted for a moment to contradict
+his instinctive sense that God was everywhere. "The tree _is_ glad,"
+said he, "I know it is; I can cut it down; no matter, there was a
+nymph in it. The water _does_ sing," said he; "I can dry it up; but
+no matter, there was a naiad in it." But in thus clearly defining
+his belief, observe, he threw it entirely into a human form, and
+gave his faith to nothing but the image of his own humanity. What
+sympathy and fellowship he had, were always for the spirit _in_ the
+stream, not for the stream; always for the dryad _in_ the wood, not
+for the wood. Content with this human sympathy, he approached the
+actual waves and woody fibres with no sympathy at all. The spirit
+that ruled them, he received as a plain fact. Them, also, ruled and
+material, he received as plain facts; they, without their spirit,
+were dead enough. A rose was good for scent, and a stream for sound
+and coolness; for the rest, one was no more than leaves, the other
+no more than water; he could not make anything else of them; and the
+divine power, which was involved in their existence, having been all
+distilled away by him into an independent Flora or Thetis, the poor
+leaves or waves were left, in mere cold corporealness, to make the
+most of their being discernibly red and soft, clear and wet, and
+unacknowledged in any other power whatsoever.
+
+Sec. 14. Then, observe farther, the Greeks lived in the midst of the
+most beautiful nature, and were as familiar with blue sea, clear
+air, and sweet outlines of mountain, as we are with brick walls,
+black smoke, and level fields. This perfect familiarity rendered all
+such scenes of natural beauty unexciting, if not indifferent, to
+them, by lulling and overwearying the imagination as far as it was
+concerned with such things; but there was another kind of beauty
+which they found it required effort to obtain, and which, when
+thoroughly obtained, seemed more glorious than any of this wild
+loveliness--the beauty of the human countenance and form. This, they
+perceived, could only be reached by continual exercise of virtue;
+and it was in Heaven's sight, and theirs, all the more beautiful
+because it needed this self-denial to obtain it. So they set
+themselves to reach this, and having gained it, gave it their
+principal thoughts, and set it off with beautiful dress as best they
+might. But making this their object, they were obliged to pass their
+lives in simple exercise and disciplined employments. Living
+wholesomely, giving themselves no fever fits, either by fasting or
+over-eating, constantly in the open air, and full of animal spirit
+and physical power, they became incapable of every morbid condition
+of mental emotion. Unhappy love, disappointed ambition, spiritual
+despondency, or any other disturbing sensation, had little power
+over the well-braced nerves, and healthy flow of the blood; and what
+bitterness might yet fasten on them was soon boxed or raced out of a
+boy, and spun or woven out of a girl, or danced out of both. They
+had indeed their sorrows, true and deep, but still, more like
+children's sorrows than ours, whether bursting into open cry of
+pain, or hid with shuddering under the veil, still passing over the
+soul as clouds do over heaven, not sullying it, not mingling with
+it;--darkening it perhaps long or utterly, but still not becoming
+one with it, and for the most part passing away in dashing rain of
+tears, and leaving the man unchanged; in nowise affecting, as our
+sorrow does, the whole tone of his thought and imagination
+thenceforward.
+
+How far our melancholy may be deeper and wider than theirs, in its
+roots and view, and therefore nobler, we shall consider presently;
+but at all events, they had the advantage of us in being entirety
+free from all those dim and feverish sensations which result from
+unhealthy state of the body. I believe that a large amount of the
+dreamy and sentimental sadness, tendency to reverie, and general
+patheticalness of modern life results merely from derangement of
+stomach; holding to the Greek life the same relation that the
+feverish night of an adult does to a child's sleep.
+
+Sec. 15. Farther. The human beauty, which, whether in its bodily being
+or in imagined divinity, had become, for the reasons we have seen,
+the principal object of culture and sympathy to these Greeks, was,
+in its perfection, eminently orderly, symmetrical, and tender.
+Hence, contemplating it constantly in this state, they could not but
+feel a proportionate fear of all that was disorderly, unbalanced,
+and rugged. Having trained their stoutest soldiers into a strength
+so delicate and lovely, that their white flesh, with their blood
+upon it, should look like ivory stained with purple;[61] and having
+always around them, in the motion and majesty of this beauty, enough
+for the full employment of their imagination, they shrank with dread
+or hatred from all the ruggedness of lower nature,--from the
+wrinkled forest bark, the jagged hill-crest, and irregular,
+inorganic storm of sky; looking to these for the most part as
+adverse powers, and taking pleasure only in such portions of the
+lower world as were at once conducive to the rest and health of the
+human frame, and in harmony with the laws of its gentler beauty.
+
+Sec. 16. Thus, as far as I recollect, without a single exception, every
+Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a
+fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove. This ideal is very
+interestingly marked, as intended for a perfect one, in the fifth
+book of the Odyssey; when Mercury himself stops for a moment, though
+on a message, to look at a landscape "which even an immortal might
+be gladdened to behold." This landscape consists of a cave covered
+with a running vine, all blooming into grapes, and surrounded by a
+grove of alder, poplar, and sweet-smelling cypress. Four fountains
+of white (foaming) water, springing _in succession_ (mark the
+orderliness), and close to one another, flow away in different
+directions, through a meadow full of violets and parsley (parsley,
+to mark its moisture, being elsewhere called "marsh-nourished," and
+associated with the lotus);[62] the air is perfumed not only by
+these violets and by the sweet cypress, but by Calypso's fire of
+finely chopped cedar wood, which sends a smoke as of incense,
+through the island; Calypso herself is singing; and finally, upon
+the trees are resting, or roosting, owls, hawks, and "long-tongued
+sea-crows." Whether these last are considered as a part of the
+ideal landscape, as marine singing-birds, I know not; but the
+approval of Mercury appears to be elicited chiefly by the fountains
+and violet meadow.
+
+Sec. 17. Now the notable things in this description are, first, the
+evident subservience of the whole landscape to human comfort, to the
+foot, the taste, or the smell; and, secondly, that throughout the
+passage there is not a single figurative word expressive of the
+things being in any wise other than plain grass, fruit or flower. I
+have used the term "spring" of the fountains, because, without
+doubt, Homer means that they sprang forth brightly, having their
+source at the foot of the rocks (as copious fountains nearly always
+have); but Homer does not say "spring," he says simply flow, and
+uses only one word for "growing softly," or "richly," of the tall
+trees, the vine, and the violets. There is, however, some expression
+of sympathy with the sea-birds; he speaks of them in precisely the
+same terms, as in other places of naval nations, saying they "have
+care of the works of the sea."
+
+Sec. 18. If we glance through the references to pleasant landscape which
+occur in other parts of the Odyssey, we shall always be struck by this
+quiet subjection of their every feature to human service, and by the
+excessive similarity in the scenes. Perhaps the spot intended, after
+this, to be most perfect, may be the garden of Alcinous, where the
+principal ideas are, still more definitely, order, symmetry, and
+fruitfulness; the beds being duly ranged between rows of vines, which,
+as well as the pear, apple, and fig-trees, bear fruit continually,
+some grapes being yet sour, while others are getting black; there are
+plenty of "_orderly_ square beds of herbs," chiefly leeks, and two
+fountains, one running through the garden, and one under the pavement
+of the palace to a reservoir for the citizens. Ulysses, pausing to
+contemplate this scene, is described nearly in the same terms as
+Mercury pausing to contemplate the wilder meadow; and it is
+interesting to observe, that, in spite of all Homer's love of
+symmetry, the god's admiration is excited by the free fountains, wild
+violets, and wandering vine; but the mortal's, by the vines in rows,
+the leeks in beds, and the fountains in pipes.
+
+Ulysses has, however, one touching reason for loving vines in rows.
+His father had given him fifty rows for himself, when he was a boy,
+with corn between them (just as it now grows in Italy). Proving his
+identity afterwards to his father, whom he finds at work in his
+garden, "with thick gloves on, to keep his hands from the thorns,"
+he reminds him of these fifty rows of vines, and of the "thirteen
+pear-trees and ten apple-trees" which he had given him; and Laertes
+faints upon his neck.
+
+Sec. 19. If Ulysses had not been so much of a gardener, it might have
+been received as a sign of considerable feeling for landscape
+beauty, that, intending to pay the very highest possible compliment
+to the Princess Nausicaa (and having indeed, the moment before,
+gravely asked her whether she was a goddess or not), he says that he
+feels, at seeing her, exactly as he did when he saw the young
+palm-tree growing at Apollo's shrine at Delos. But I think the taste
+for trim hedges and upright trunks has its usual influence over him
+here also, and that he merely means to tell the princess that she is
+delightfully tall and straight.
+
+Sec. 20. The princess is, however, pleased by his address, and tells
+him to wait outside the town, till she can speak to her father about
+him. The spot to which she directs him is another ideal piece of
+landscape, composed of a "beautiful grove of aspen poplars, a
+fountain, and a meadow," near the road-side; in fact, as nearly as
+possible such a scene as meets the eye of the traveller every
+instant on the much-despised lines of road through lowland France;
+for instance, on the railway between Arras and Amiens;--scenes, to
+my mind, quite exquisite in the various grouping and grace of their
+innumerable poplar avenues, casting sweet, tremulous shadows over
+their level meadows and labyrinthine streams. We know that the
+princess means aspen poplars, because soon afterwards we find her
+fifty maid-servants at the palace, all spinning, and in perpetual
+motion, compared to the "leaves of the tall poplar;" and it is with
+exquisite feeling that it is made afterwards[63] the chief tree in
+the groves of Proserpine; its light and quivering leafage having
+exactly the melancholy expression of fragility, faintness, and
+inconstancy which the ancients attributed to the disembodied
+spirit.[64] The likeness to the poplars by the streams of Amiens is
+more marked still in the Iliad, where the young Simois, struck by
+Ajax, falls to the earth "like an aspen that has grown in an
+irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots springing from its
+top, which some coach-making man has cut down with his keen iron,
+that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and it lies
+parching by the side of the stream." It is sufficiently notable that
+Homer, living in mountainous and rocky countries, dwells thus
+delightedly on all the _flat_ bits; and so I think invariably the
+inhabitants of mountain countries do, but the inhabitants of the
+plains do not, in any similar way, dwell delightedly on mountains.
+The Dutch painters are perfectly contented with their flat fields
+and pollards: Rubens, though he had seen the Alps, usually composes
+his landscapes of a hayfield or two, plenty of pollards and willows,
+a distant spire, a Dutch house with a moat about it, a windmill, and
+a ditch. The Flemish sacred painters are the only ones who introduce
+mountains in the distance, as we shall see presently; but rather in
+a formal way than with any appearance of enjoyment. So Shakspere
+never speaks of mountains with the slightest joy, but only of
+lowland flowers, flat fields, and Warwickshire streams. And if we
+talk to the mountaineer, he will usually characterize his own
+country to us as a "pays affreux," or in some equivalent, perhaps
+even more violent, German term: but the lowland peasant does not
+think his country frightful; he either will have no ideas beyond it,
+or about it; or will think it a very perfect country, and be apt to
+regard any deviation from its general principle of flatness with
+extreme disfavor; as the Lincolnshire farmer in Alton Locke: "I'll
+shaw 'ee some'at like a field o' beans, I wool--none o' this here
+darned ups and downs o' hills, to shake a body's victuals out of his
+inwards--all so vlat as a barn door, for vorty mile on end--there's
+the country to live in!"
+
+I do not say whether this be altogether right (though certainly not
+wholly wrong), but it seems to me that there must be in the simple
+freshness and fruitfulness of level land, in its pale upright
+trees, and gentle lapse of silent streams, enough for the
+satisfaction of the human mind in general; and I so far agree with
+Homer, that if I had to educate an artist to the full perception of
+the meaning of the word "gracefulness" in landscape, I should send
+him neither to Italy nor to Greece, but simply to those poplar
+groves between Arras and Amiens.
+
+Sec. 21. But to return more definitely to our Homeric landscape. When
+it is perfect, we have, as in the above instances, the foliage and
+meadows together; when imperfect, it is always either the foliage or
+the meadow; preeminently the meadow, or arable field. Thus, meadows
+of asphodel are prepared for the happier dead; and even Orion, a
+hunter among the mountains in his lifetime, pursues the ghosts of
+beasts in these asphodel meadows after death.[65] So the sirens sing
+in a meadow; and throughout the Odyssey there is a general tendency
+to the depreciation of poor Ithaca, because it is rocky, and only
+fit for goats, and has "no meadows;" for which reason Telemachus
+refuses Atrides's present of horses, congratulating the Spartan king
+at the same time on ruling over a plain which has "plenty of lotus
+in it, and rushes," with corn and barley. Note this constant
+dwelling on the marsh plants, or, at least, those which grow in flat
+and well-irrigated land, or beside streams: when Scamander, for
+instance, is restrained by Vulcan, Homer says, very sorrowfully,
+that "all his lotus, and reeds, and rushes were burnt;" and thus
+Ulysses, after being shipwrecked and nearly drowned, and beaten
+about the sea for many days and nights, on raft and mast, at last
+getting ashore at the mouth of a large river, casts himself down
+first upon its _rushes_, and then, in thankfulness, kisses the
+"corn-giving land," as most opposed, in his heart, to the fruitless
+and devouring sea.[66]
+
+Sec. 22. In this same passage, also, we find some peculiar expressions of
+the delight which the Greeks had in trees, for, when Ulysses first
+comes in sight of land, which gladdens him, "as the reviving of a
+father from his sickness gladdens his children," it is not merely the
+sight of the land itself which gives him such pleasure, but of the
+"land and _wood_." Homer never throws away any words, at least in such
+a place as this; and what in another poet would have been merely the
+filling up of the deficient line with an otherwise useless word, is in
+him the expression of the general Greek sense, that land of any kind
+was in nowise grateful or acceptable till there was _wood_ upon it (or
+corn; but the corn, in the flats, could not be seen so far as the
+black masses of forest on the hill sides), and that, as in being rushy
+and corn-giving, the low land, so in being woody, the high land, was
+most grateful to the mind of the man who for days and nights had been
+wearied on the engulphing sea. And this general idea of wood and corn,
+as the types of the fatness of the whole earth, is beautifully marked
+in another place of the Odyssey,[67] where the sailors in a desert
+island, having no flour or corn to offer as a meat offering with their
+sacrifices, take the leaves of the trees, and scatter them over the
+burnt offering instead.
+
+Sec. 23. But still, every expression of the pleasure which Ulysses has in
+this landing and resting, contains uninterruptedly the reference to
+the utility and sensible pleasantness of all things, not to their
+beauty. After his first grateful kiss given to the corn-growing land,
+he considers immediately how he is to pass the night: for some minutes
+hesitating whether it will be best to expose himself to the misty
+chill from the river, or run the risk of wild beasts in the wood. He
+decides for the wood, and finds in it a bower formed by a sweet and a
+wild olive tree, interlacing their branches, or--perhaps more
+accurately translating Homer's intensely graphic expression--"changing
+their branches with each other" (it is very curious how often, in an
+entanglement of wood, one supposes the branches to belong to the wrong
+trees), and forming a roof penetrated by neither rain, sun, nor wind.
+Under this bower Ulysses collects the "_vain_ (or _frustrate_)
+outpouring of the dead leaves"--another exquisite expression, used
+elsewhere of useless grief or shedding of tears;--and, having got
+enough together, makes his bed of them, and goes to sleep, having
+covered himself up with them, "as embers are covered up with ashes."
+
+Nothing can possibly be more intensely possessive of the _facts_
+than this whole passage; the sense of utter deadness and emptiness,
+and frustrate fall in the leaves; of dormant life in the human
+body,--the fire, and heroism, and strength of it, lulled under the
+dead brown heap, as embers under ashes, and the knitting of
+interchanged and close strength of living boughs above. But there is
+not the smallest apparent sense of there being _beauty_ elsewhere
+than in the human being. The wreathed wood is admired simply as
+being a perfect roof for it; the fallen leaves only as being a
+perfect bed for it; and there is literally no more excitement of
+emotion in Homer, as he describes them, nor does he expect us to be
+more excited or touched by hearing about them, than if he had been
+telling us how the chamber-maid at the Bull aired the four-poster,
+and put on two extra blankets.
+
+Sec. 24. Now, exactly this same contemplation of subservience to human
+use makes the Greek take some pleasure in _rocks_, when they assume
+one particular form, but one only--that of a _cave_. They are
+evidently quite frightful things to him under any other condition,
+and most of all if they are rough and jagged; but if smooth, looking
+"sculptured," like the sides of a ship, and forming a cave or
+shelter for him, he begins to think them endurable. Hence,
+associating the ideas of rich and sheltering wood, sea, becalmed and
+made useful as a port by projecting promontories of rock, and
+smoothed caves or grottoes in the rocks themselves, we get the
+pleasantest idea which the Greek could form of a landscape, next to
+a marsh with poplars in it; not, indeed, if possible, ever to be
+without these last: thus, in commending the Cyclops' country as one
+possessed of every perfection, Homer first says: "They have soft
+_marshy_ meadows near the sea, and good, rich, crumbling,
+ploughing-land, giving fine deep crops, and vines always giving
+fruit;" then, "a port so quiet, that they have no need of cables in
+it; and at the head of the port, a beautiful clear spring just
+_under a cave_, and _aspen poplars all round it_."[68]
+
+Sec. 25. This, it will be seen, is very nearly Homer's usual "ideal;"
+but, going into the middle of the island, Ulysses comes on a rougher
+and less agreeable bit, though still fulfilling certain required
+conditions of endurableness; a "cave shaded with laurels," which,
+having no poplars about it, is, however, meant to be somewhat
+frightful, and only fit to be inhabited by a Cyclops. So in the
+country of the Laestrygons, Homer, preparing his reader gradually for
+something very disagreeable, represents the rocks as bare and
+"exposed to the sun;" only with some smooth and slippery roads over
+them, by which the trucks bring down wood from the higher hills. Any
+one familiar with Swiss slopes of hills must remember how often he
+has descended, sometimes faster than was altogether intentional, by
+these same slippery woodman's track roads.
+
+And thus, in general, whenever the landscape is intended to be
+lovely, it verges towards the ploughed land and poplars; or, at
+worst, to _woody_ rocks; but, if intended to be painful, the rocks
+are bare and "sharp." This last epithet, constantly used by Homer
+for mountains, does not altogether correspond, in Greek, to the
+English term, nor is it intended merely to characterize the sharp
+mountain summits; for it never would be applied simply to the edge
+or point of a sword, but signifies rather "harsh," "bitter," or
+"painful," being applied habitually to fate, death, and in Od. ii.
+333. to a halter; and, as expressive of general objectionableness
+and unpleasantness, to all high, dangerous, or peaked mountains, as
+the Maleian promontory (a much dreaded one), the crest of Parnassus,
+the Tereian mountain, and a grim or untoward, though, by keeping off
+the force of the sea, protective, rock at the mouth of the Jardanus;
+as well as habitually to inaccessible or impregnable fortresses
+built on heights.
+
+Sec. 26. In all this I cannot too strongly mark the utter absence of
+any trace of the feeling for what we call the picturesque, and the
+constant dwelling of the writer's mind on what was available,
+pleasant, or useful; his ideas respecting all landscape being not
+uncharacteristically summed, finally, by Pallas herself; when,
+meeting Ulysses, who after his long wandering does not recognize his
+own country, and meaning to describe it as politely and soothingly
+as possible, she says:[69]--"This Ithaca of ours is, indeed, a rough
+country enough, and not good for driving in; but, still, things
+might be worse: it has plenty of corn, and good wine, and _always
+rain_, and soft nourishing dew; and it has good feeding for goats
+and oxen, and all manner of wood, and springs fit to drink at all
+the year round."
+
+We shall see presently how the blundering, pseudo-picturesque,
+pseudo-classical minds of Claude and the Renaissance landscape
+painters, wholly missing Homer's practical common sense, and equally
+incapable of feeling the quiet natural grace and sweetness of his
+asphodel meadows, tender aspen poplars, or running vines,--fastened
+on his _ports_ and _caves_, as the only available features of his
+scenery; and appointed the type of "classical landscape"
+thenceforward to consist in a bay of insipid sea, and a rock with a
+hole through it.[70]
+
+Sec. 27. It may indeed be thought that I am assuming too hastily that
+this was the general view of the Greeks respecting landscape, because
+it was Homer's. But I believe the true mind of a nation, at any
+period, is always best ascertainable by examining that of its greatest
+men; and that simpler and truer results will be attainable for us by
+simply comparing Homer, Dante, and Walter Scott, than by attempting
+(what my limits must have rendered absurdly inadequate, and in which,
+also, both my time and knowledge must have failed me) an analysis of
+the landscape in the range of contemporary literature. All that I can
+do, is to state the general impression which has been made upon me by
+my desultory reading, and to mark accurately the grounds for this
+impression, in the works of the greatest men. Now it is quite true
+that in others of the Greeks, especially in AEschylus and Aristophanes,
+there is infinitely more of modern feeling, of pathetic fallacy, love
+of picturesque or beautiful form, and other such elements, than there
+is in Homer; but then these appear to me just the parts of them which
+were not Greek, the elements of their minds by which (as one division
+of the human race always must be with subsequent ones) they are
+connected with the mediaevals and moderns. And without doubt, in his
+influence over future mankind, Homer is eminently the Greek of Greeks;
+if I were to associate any one with him it would be Herodotus, and I
+believe all I have said of the Homeric landscape will be found equally
+true of the Herodotean, as assuredly it will be of the Platonic; the
+contempt, which Plato sometimes expresses by the mouth of Socrates,
+for the country in general, except so far as it is shady, and has
+cicadas and running streams to make pleasant noises in it, being
+almost ludicrous. But Homer is the great type, and the more notable
+one because of his influence on Virgil, and, through him, on Dante,
+and all the after ages: and in like manner, if we can get the abstract
+of mediaeval landscape out of Dante, it will serve us as well as if we
+had read all the songs of the troubadours, and help us to the farther
+changes in derivative temper, down to all modern time.
+
+Sec. 28. I think, therefore, the reader may safely accept the
+conclusions about Greek landscape which I have got for him out of
+Homer; and in these he will certainly perceive something very
+different from the usual imaginations we form of Greek feelings. We
+think of the Greeks as poetical, ideal, imaginative, in the way that
+a modern poet or novelist is; supposing that their thoughts about
+their mythology and world were as visionary and artificial as ours
+are: but I think the passages I have quoted show that it was not so,
+although it may be difficult for us to apprehend the strange
+minglings in them of the elements of faith, which, in our days, have
+been blended with other parts of human nature in a totally different
+guise. Perhaps the Greek mind may be best imagined by taking, as its
+groundwork, that of a good, conscientious, but illiterate, Scotch
+Presbyterian Border farmer of a century or two back, having perfect
+faith in the bodily appearances of Satan and his imps; and in all
+kelpies, brownies, and fairies. Substitute for the indignant terrors
+in this man's mind, a general persuasion of the _Divinity_, more or
+less beneficent, yet faultful, of all these beings; that is to say,
+take away his belief in the demoniacal malignity of the fallen
+spiritual world, and lower, in the same degree, his conceptions of
+the angelical, retaining for him the same firm faith in both; keep
+his ideas about flowers and beautiful scenery much as they
+are,--his delight in regular ploughed land and meadows, and a neat
+garden (only with rows of gooseberry bushes instead of vines,)
+being, in all probability, about accurately representative of the
+feelings of Ulysses; then, let the military spirit that is in him,
+glowing against the Border forager, or the foe of old Flodden and
+Chevy-Chase, be made more principal, with a higher sense of
+nobleness in soldiership, not as a careless excitement, but a
+knightly duty; and increased by high cultivation of every personal
+quality, not of mere shaggy strength, but graceful strength, aided
+by a softer climate, and educated in all proper harmony of sight and
+sound: finally, instead of an informed Christian, suppose him to
+have only the patriarchal Jewish knowledge of the Deity, and even
+this obscured by tradition, but still thoroughly solemn and
+faithful, requiring his continual service as a priest of burnt
+sacrifice and meat offering; and I think we shall get a pretty close
+approximation to the vital being of a true old Greek; some slight
+difference still existing in a feeling which the Scotch farmer would
+have of a pleasantness in blue hills and running streams, wholly
+wanting in the Greek mind; and perhaps also some difference of views
+on the subjects of truth and honesty. But the main points, the easy,
+athletic, strongly logical and argumentative, yet fanciful and
+credulous, characters of mind, would be very similar in both; and
+the most serious change in the substance of the stuff among the
+modifications above suggested as necessary to turn the Scot into the
+Greek, is that effect of softer climate and surrounding luxury,
+inducing the practice of various forms of polished art,--the more
+polished, because the practical and realistic tendency of the
+Hellenic mind (if my interpretation of it be right) would quite
+prevent it from taking pleasure in any irregularities of form, or
+imitations of the weeds and wildnesses of that mountain nature with
+which it thought itself born to contend. In its utmost refinement of
+work, it sought eminently for orderliness; carried the principle of
+the leeks in squares, and fountains in pipes, perfectly out in its
+streets and temples; formalized whatever decoration it put into its
+minor architectural mouldings, and reserved its whole heart and
+power to represent the action of living men, or gods, though not
+unconscious meanwhile, of
+
+      "The simple, the sincere delight;
+      The habitual scene of hill and dale
+      The rural herds, the vernal gale;
+      The tangled vetches' purple bloom;
+      The fragrance of the bean's perfume,--
+      Theirs, theirs alone, who cultivate the soil,
+      And drink the cup of thirst, and eat the bread of toil."
+
+  [59] Compare Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto i. stanza 15., and
+       canto v. stanza 2. In the first instance, the river-spirit is
+       accurately the Homeric god, only Homer would have believed in
+       it,--Scott did not; at least not altogether.
+
+  [60] Compare the exquisite lines of Longfellow on the sunset in
+       the Golden Legend:--
+
+           "The day is done, and slowly from the scene
+           The stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts,
+           And puts them back into his golden quiver."
+
+
+  [61] Iliad iv. 141.
+
+  [62] Iliad ii. 776.
+
+  [63] Odyssey, x. 510.
+
+  [64] Compare the passage in Dante referred to above, Chap. XII. Sec. 6.
+
+  [65] Odyssey, xi. 571. xxiv. 13. The couch of Ceres, with Homer's
+       usual faithfulness, is made of a _ploughed_ field, v. 127.
+
+  [66] Odyssey, v. 398.
+
+  [67] Odyssey, xii. 357.
+
+  [68] Odyssey, ix. 132. &c. Hence Milton's
+
+           "From haunted spring, and dale,
+           Edged with poplar pale."
+
+  [69] Odyssey, xiii. 236. &c.
+
+  [70] Educated, as we shall see hereafter, first in this school,
+       Turner gave the hackneyed composition a strange power and
+       freshness, in his Glaucus and Scylla.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE:--FIRST, THE FIELDS.
+
+
+Sec. 1. IN our examination of the spirit of classical landscape, we
+were obliged to confine ourselves to what is left to us in written
+description. Some interesting results might indeed have been
+obtained by examining the Egyptian and Ninevite landscape sculpture,
+but in nowise conclusive enough to be worth the pains of the
+inquiry; for the landscape of sculpture is necessarily confined in
+range, and usually inexpressive of the complete feelings of the
+workman, being introduced rather to explain the place and
+circumstances of events, than for its own sake. In the Middle Ages,
+however, the case is widely different. We have written landscape,
+sculptured landscape, and painted landscape, all bearing united
+testimony to the tone of the national mind in almost every
+remarkable locality of Europe.
+
+Sec. 2. That testimony, taken in its breadth, is very curiously
+conclusive. It marks the mediaeval mind as agreeing altogether with
+the ancients, in holding that flat land, brooks, and groves of
+aspens, compose the pleasant places of the earth, and that rocks and
+mountains are, for inhabitation, altogether to be reprobated and
+detested; but as disagreeing with the classical mind totally in this
+other most important respect, that the pleasant flat land is never a
+ploughed field, nor a rich lotus meadow good for pasture, but
+_garden_ ground covered with flowers, and divided by fragrant
+hedges, with a castle in the middle of it. The aspens are delighted
+in, not because they are good for "coach-making men" to make
+cart-wheels of, but because they are shady and graceful; and the
+fruit-trees, covered with delicious fruit, especially apple and
+orange, occupy still more important positions in the scenery.
+Singing-birds--not "sea-crows," but nightingales[71]--perch on every
+bough; and the ideal occupation of mankind is not to cultivate
+either the garden or the meadow, but to gather roses and eat oranges
+in the one, and ride out hawking over the other.
+
+Finally, mountain scenery, though considered as disagreeable for
+general inhabitation, is always introduced as being proper to
+meditate in, or to encourage communion with higher beings; and in
+the ideal landscape of daily life, mountains are considered
+agreeable things enough, so that they be far enough away.
+
+In this great change there are three vital points to be noticed.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 3. Three essential characters: 1. Pride in idleness.]
+
+The first, the disdain of agricultural pursuits by the nobility; a
+fatal change, and one gradually bringing about the ruin of that
+nobility. It is expressed in the mediaeval landscape by the eminently
+pleasurable and horticultural character of everything; by the
+fences, hedges, castle walls, and masses of useless, but lovely
+flowers, especially roses. The knights and ladies are represented
+always as singing, or making love, in these pleasant places. The
+idea of setting an old knight, like Laertes (whatever his state of
+fallen fortune), "with thick gloves on to keep his hands from the
+thorns," to prune a row of vines, would have been regarded as the
+most monstrous violation of the decencies of life; and a senator,
+once detected in the home employments of Cincinnatus, could, I
+suppose, thenceforward hardly have appeared in society.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 4. 2. Poetical observance of nature.]
+
+The second vital point is the evidence of a more sentimental
+enjoyment of external nature. A Greek, wishing really to enjoy
+himself, shut himself into a beautiful atrium, with an excellent
+dinner, and a society of philosophical or musical friends. But a
+mediaeval knight went into his pleasance, to gather roses and hear
+the birds sing; or rode out hunting or hawking. His evening feast,
+though riotous enough sometimes, was not the height of his day's
+enjoyment; and if the attractions of the world are to be shown
+typically to him, as opposed to the horrors of death, they are never
+represented by a full feast in a chamber, but by a delicate dessert
+in an orange grove, with musicians under the trees; or a ride on a
+May morning, hawk on fist.
+
+This change is evidently a healthy, and a very interesting one.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 5. 3. Disturbed conscience.]
+
+The third vital point is the marked sense that this hawking and
+apple-eating are not altogether right; that there is something else
+to be done in the world than that; and that the mountains, as
+opposed to the pleasant garden-ground, are places where that other
+something may best be learned;--which is evidently a piece of
+infinite and new respect for the mountains, and another healthy
+change in the tone of the human heart.
+
+Let us glance at the signs and various results of these changes, one
+by one.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 6. Derivative characters: 1. Love of flowers.]
+
+The two first named, evil and good as they are, are very closely
+connected. The more poetical delight in external nature proceeds
+just from the fact that it is no longer looked upon with the eye of
+the farmer; and in proportion as the herbs and flowers cease to be
+regarded as useful, they are felt to be charming. Leeks are not now
+the most important objects in the garden, but lilies and roses; the
+herbage which a Greek would have looked at only with a view to the
+number of horses it would feed, is regarded by the mediaeval knight
+as a green carpet for fair feet to dance upon, and the beauty of its
+softness and color is proportionally felt by him; while the brook,
+which the Greek rejoiced to dismiss into a reservoir under the
+palace threshold, would be, by the mediaeval, distributed into
+pleasant pools, or forced into fountains; and regarded alternately
+as a mirror for fair faces, and a witchery to ensnare the sunbeams
+and the rainbow.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 7. 2. Less definite gratitude to God.]
+
+And this change of feeling involves two others, very important. When
+the flowers and grass were regarded as means of life, and therefore
+(as the thoughtful laborer of the soil must always regard them) with
+the reverence due to those gifts of God which were most necessary to
+his existence; although their own beauty was less felt, their
+proceeding from the Divine hand was more seriously acknowledged, and
+the herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree yielding fruit, though in
+themselves less admired, were yet solemnly connected in the heart
+with the reverence of Ceres, Pomona, or Pan. But when the sense of
+these necessary uses was more or less lost, among the upper classes,
+by the delegation of the art of husbandry to the hands of the
+peasant, the flower and fruit, whose bloom or richness thus became
+a mere source of pleasure, were regarded with less solemn sense of
+the Divine gift in them; and were converted rather into toys than
+treasures, chance gifts for gaiety, rather than promised rewards of
+labor; so that while the Greek could hardly have trodden the formal
+furrow, or plucked the clusters from the trellised vine, without
+reverent thoughts of the deities of field and leaf, who gave the
+seed to fructify, and the bloom to darken, the mediaeval knight
+plucked the violet to wreathe in his lady's hair, or strewed the
+idle rose on the turf at her feet, with little sense of anything in
+the nature that gave them, but a frail, accidental, involuntary
+exuberance; while also the Jewish sacrificial system being now done
+away, as well as the Pagan mythology, and, with it, the whole
+conception of meat offering or firstfruits offering, the chiefest
+seriousness of all the thoughts connected with the gifts of nature
+faded from the minds of the classes of men concerned with art and
+literature; while the peasant, reduced to serf level, was incapable
+of imaginative thought, owing to his want of general cultivation.
+But on the other hand, exactly in proportion as the idea of definite
+spiritual presence in material nature was lost, the mysterious sense
+of _unaccountable_ life in the things themselves would be increased,
+and the mind would instantly be laid open to all those currents of
+fallacious, but pensive and pathetic sympathy, which we have seen to
+be characteristic of modern times.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 3. Gloom caused by enforced solitude.]
+
+Farther: a singular difference would necessarily result from the far
+greater loneliness of baronial life, deprived as it was of all
+interest in agricultural pursuits. The palace of a Greek leader in
+early times might have gardens, fields, and farms around it, but was
+sure to be near some busy city or sea-port: in later times, the city
+itself became the principal dwelling-place, and the country was
+visited only to see how the farm went on, or traversed in a line of
+march. Far other was the life of the mediaeval baron, nested on his
+solitary jut of crag; entering into cities only occasionally for some
+grave political or warrior's purpose, and, for the most part, passing
+the years of his life in lion-like isolation; the village inhabited by
+his retainers straggling indeed about the slopes of the rocks at his
+feet, but his own dwelling standing gloomily apart, between them and
+the uncompanionable clouds, commanding, from sunset to sunrise, the
+flowing flame of some calm unvoyaged river, and the endless undulation
+of the untraversable hills. How different must the thoughts about
+nature have been, of the noble who lived among the bright marble
+porticos of the Greek groups of temple or palace,--in the midst of a
+plain covered with corn and olives, and by the shore of a sparkling
+and freighted sea,--from those of the master of some mountain
+promontory in the green recesses of Northern Europe, watching night by
+night, from amongst his heaps of storm-broken stone, rounded into
+towers, the lightning of the lonely sea flash round the sands of
+Harlech, or the mists changing their shapes forever, among the
+changeless pines, that fringe the crests of Jura.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 9. And frequent pilgrimage.]
+
+Nor was it without similar effect on the minds of men that their
+journeyings and pilgrimages became more frequent than those of the
+Greek, the extent of ground traversed in the course of them larger,
+and the mode of travel more companionless. To the Greek, a voyage to
+Egypt, or the Hellespont, was the subject of lasting fame and fable,
+and the forests of the Danube and the rocks of Sicily closed for him
+the gates of the intelligible world. What parts of that narrow world
+he crossed were crossed with fleets or armies; the camp always
+populous on the plain, and the ships drawn in cautious symmetry around
+the shore. But to the mediaeval knight, from Scottish moor to Syrian
+sand, the world was one great exercise ground, or field of adventure;
+the staunch pacing of his charger penetrated the pathlessness of
+outmost forest, and sustained the sultriness of the most secret
+desert. Frequently alone,--or, if accompanied, for the most part only
+by retainers of lower rank, incapable of entering into complete
+sympathy with any of his thoughts,--he must have been compelled often
+to enter into dim companionship with the silent nature around him, and
+must assuredly sometimes have talked to the wayside flowers of his
+love, and to the fading clouds of his ambition.
+
+[Sidenote: 4. Dread of mountains.]
+
+Sec. 10. But, on the other hand, the idea of retirement from the world
+for the sake of self-mortification, of combat with demons, or
+communion with angels, and with their King,--authoritatively
+commended as it was to all men by the continual practice of Christ
+Himself,--gave to all mountain solitude at once a sanctity and a
+terror, in the mediaeval mind, which were altogether different from
+anything that it had possessed in the un-Christian periods. On the
+one side, there was an idea of sanctity attached to rocky
+wilderness, because it had always been among hills that the Deity
+had manifested himself most intimately to men, and to the hills that
+His saints had nearly always retired for meditation, for especial
+communion with Him, and to prepare for death. Men acquainted with
+the history of Moses, alone at Horeb, or with Israel at Sinai,--of
+Elijah by the brook Cherith, and in the Horeb cave; of the deaths of
+Moses and Aaron on Hor and Nebo; of the preparation of Jephthah's
+daughter for her death among the Judea Mountains; of the continual
+retirement of Christ Himself to the mountains for prayer, His
+temptation in the desert of the Dead Sea, His sermon on the hills of
+Capernaum, His transfiguration on the crest of Tabor, and his
+evening and morning walks over Olivet for the four or five days
+preceding His crucifixion,--were not likely to look with irreverent
+or unloving eyes upon the blue hills that girded their golden
+horizon, or drew upon them the mysterious clouds out of the height
+of the darker heaven. But with this impression of their greater
+sanctity was involved also that of a peculiar terror. In all
+this,--their haunting by the memories of prophets, the presences of
+angels, and the everlasting thoughts and words of the Redeemer,--the
+mountain ranges seemed separated from the active world, and only to
+be fitly approached by hearts which were condemnatory of it. Just in
+so much as it appeared necessary for the noblest men to retire to
+the hill-recesses before their missions could be accomplished or
+their spirits perfected, in so far did the daily world seem by
+comparison to be pronounced profane and dangerous; and to those who
+loved that world, and its work, the mountains were thus voiceful
+with perpetual rebuke, and necessarily contemplated with a kind of
+pain and fear, such as a man engrossed by vanity feels at being by
+some accident forced to hear a startling sermon, or to assist at a
+funeral service. Every association of this kind was deepened by the
+practice and the precept of the time; and thousands of hearts,
+which might otherwise have felt that there was loveliness in the
+wild landscape, shrank from it in dread, because they knew that the
+monk retired to it for penance, and the hermit for contemplation.
+The horror which the Greek had felt for hills only when they were
+uninhabitable and barren, attached itself now to many of the
+sweetest spots of earth; the feeling was conquered by political
+interests, but never by admiration; military ambition seized the
+frontier rock, or maintained itself in the unassailable pass; but it
+was only for their punishment, or in their despair, that men
+consented to tread the crocused slopes of the Chartreuse, or the
+soft glades and dewy pastures of Vallombrosa.
+
+Sec. 11. In all these modifications of temper and principle there
+appears much which tends to passionate, affectionate, or awe-struck
+observance of the features of natural scenery, closely resembling,
+in all but this superstitious dread of mountains, our feelings at
+the present day. But _one_ character which the mediaevals had in
+common with the ancients, and that exactly the most eminent
+character in both, opposed itself steadily to all the feelings we
+have hitherto been examining,--the admiration, namely, and constant
+watchfulness, of human beauty. Exercised in nearly the same manner
+as the Greeks, from their youth upwards, their countenances were
+cast even in a higher mould; for, although somewhat less regular in
+feature, and affected by minglings of Northern bluntness and
+stolidity of general expression, together with greater thinness of
+lip and shaggy formlessness of brow, these less sculpturesque
+features were, nevertheless, touched with a seriousness and
+refinement proceeding first from the modes of thought inculcated by
+the Christian religion, and secondly from their more romantic and
+various life. Hence a degree of personal beauty, both male and
+female, was attained in the Middle Ages, with which classical
+periods could show nothing for a moment comparable; and this beauty
+was set forth by the most perfect splendor, united with grace, in
+dress, which the human race have hitherto invented. The strength of
+their art-genius was directed in great part to this object; and
+their best workmen and most brilliant fanciers were employed in
+wreathing the mail or embroidering the robe. The exquisite arts of
+enamelling and chasing metal enabled them to make the armor as
+radiant and delicate as the plumage of a tropical bird; and the most
+various and vivid imaginations were displayed in the alternations of
+color, and fiery freaks of form, on shield and crest; so that of all
+the beautiful things which the eyes of men could fall upon, in the
+world about them, the most beautiful must have been a young knight
+riding out in morning sunshine, and in faithful hope.
+
+      "His broad, clear brow in sunlight glowed;
+      On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
+      From underneath his helmet flowed
+      His coal-black curls, as on he rode.
+      All in the blue, unclouded weather,
+      Thick jewelled shone the saddle leather;
+      The helmet and the helmet feather
+      Burned like one burning flame together;
+      And the gemmy bridle glittered free,
+      Like to some branch of stars we see
+      Hung in the golden galaxy."
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 12. 5. care for human beauty.]
+
+Now, the effect of this superb presence of human beauty on men in
+general was, exactly as it had been in Greek times, first, to turn
+their thoughts and glances in great part away from all other beauty
+but that, and to make the grass of the field take to them always more
+or less the aspect of a carpet to dance upon, a lawn to tilt upon, or
+a serviceable crop of hay; and, secondly, in what attention they paid
+to this lower nature, to make them dwell exclusively on what was
+graceful, symmetrical, and bright in color. All that was rugged,
+rough, dark, wild, unterminated, they rejected at once, as the domain
+of "salvage men" and monstrous giants: all that they admired was
+tender, bright, balanced, enclosed, symmetrical--only symmetrical in
+the noble and free sense: for what we moderns call "symmetry," or
+"balance," differs as much from mediaeval symmetry as the poise of a
+grocer's scales, or the balance of an Egyptian mummy with its hands
+tied to its sides, does from the balance of a knight on his horse,
+striking with the battle-axe, at the gallop; the mummy's balance
+looking wonderfully perfect, and yet sure to be one-sided if you weigh
+the dust of it,--the knight's balance swaying and changing like the
+wind, and yet as true and accurate as the laws of life.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 13. 6. Symmetrical government of design.]
+
+And this love of symmetry was still farther enhanced by the peculiar
+duties required of art at the time; for, in order to fit a flower or
+leaf for inlaying in armor, or showing clearly in glass, it was
+absolutely necessary to take away its complexity, and reduce it to
+the condition of a disciplined and orderly pattern; and this the
+more, because, for all military purposes, the device, whatever it
+was, had to be distinctly intelligible at extreme distance. That it
+should be a good imitation of nature, when seen near, was of no
+moment; but it was of highest moment that when first the knight's
+banner flashed in the sun at the turn of the mountain road, or rose,
+torn and bloody, through the drift of the battle dust, it should
+still be discernible what the bearing was.
+
+      "At length, the freshening western blast
+      Aside the shroud of battle cast;
+      And first the ridge of mingled spears
+      Above the brightening cloud appears;
+      And in the smoke the pennons flew,
+      As in the storm the white sea-mew;
+      Then marked they, dashing broad and far
+      The broken billows of the war.
+      Wide raged the battle on the plain;
+      Spears shook, and falchions flashed amain,
+      Fell England's arrow-flight like rain;
+      Crests rose, and stooped, and rose again,
+          Wild and disorderly.
+      Amidst the scene of tumult, high,
+      _They saw Lord Marmion's falcon fly,
+      And stainless Tunstall's banner white,
+      And Edmund Howard's lion bright._"
+
+It was needed, not merely that they should see it was a falcon, but
+Lord Marmion's falcon; not only a lion, but the Howard's lion.
+Hence, to the one imperative end of _intelligibility_, every minor
+resemblance to nature was sacrificed, and above all, the _curved_,
+which are chiefly the confusing lines; so that the straight,
+elongated back, doubly elongated tail, projected and separate claws,
+and other rectilinear unnaturalnesses of form, became the means by
+which the leopard was, in midst of the mist and storm of battle,
+distinguished from the dog, or the lion from the wolf; the most
+admirable fierceness and vitality being, in spite of these
+necessary changes (so often shallowly sneered at by the modern
+workman), obtained by the old designer.
+
+Farther, it was necessary to the brilliant harmony of color, and
+clear setting forth of everything, that all confusing shadows, all
+dim and doubtful lines should be rejected: hence at once an utter
+denial of natural appearances by the great body of workmen; and a
+calm rest in a practice of representation which would make either
+boar or lion blue, scarlet, or golden, according to the device of
+the knight, or the need of such and such a color in that place of
+the pattern; and which wholly denied that any substance ever cast a
+shadow, or was affected by any kind of obscurity.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 14. 7. Therefore, inaccurate rendering of nature.]
+
+All this was in its way, and for its end, absolutely right, admirable,
+and delightful; and those who despise it, laugh at it, or derive no
+pleasure from it, are utterly ignorant of the highest principles of
+art, and are mere tyros and beginners in the practice of color. But,
+admirable though it might be, one necessary result of it was a farther
+withdrawal of the observation of men from the refined and subtle
+beauty of nature; so that the workman who first was led to think
+_lightly_ of natural beauty, as being subservient to human, was next
+led to think _inaccurately_ of natural beauty, because he had
+continually to alter and simplify it for his practical purposes.
+
+Sec. 15. Now, assembling all these different sources of the peculiar
+mediaeval feeling towards nature in one view, we have:
+
+    1st. Love of the garden instead of love of the farm, leading
+    to a sentimental contemplation of nature, instead of a
+    practical and agricultural one. (Sec.Sec. 3. 4. 6.)
+
+    2nd. Loss of sense of actual Divine presence, leading to
+    fancies of fallacious animation, in herbs, flowers, clouds,
+    &c. (Sec. 7.)
+
+    3rd. Perpetual, and more or less undisturbed, companionship
+    with wild nature. (Sec.Sec. 8. 9.)
+
+    4th. Apprehension of demoniacal and angelic presence among
+    mountains, leading to a reverent dread of them. (Sec. 10.)
+
+    5th. Principalness of delight in human beauty, leading to
+    comparative contempt of natural objects. (Sec. 11.)
+
+    6th. Consequent love of order, light, intelligibility, and
+    symmetry, leading to dislike of the wildness, darkness, and
+    mystery of nature. (Sec. 12.)
+
+    7th. Inaccuracy of observance of nature, induced by the
+    habitual practice of change on its forms. (Sec. 13.)
+
+From these mingled elements, we should necessarily expect to find
+resulting, as the characteristic of mediaeval landscape art, compared
+with Greek, a far higher sentiment about it, and affection for it,
+more or less subdued by still greater respect for the loveliness of
+man, and therefore subordinated entirely to human interests; mingled
+with curious traces of terror, piety, or superstition, and cramped
+by various formalisms,--some wise and necessary, some feeble, and
+some exhibiting needless ignorance and inaccuracy.
+
+Under these lights, let us examine the facts.
+
+Sec. 16. The landscape of the Middle Ages is represented in a central
+manner by the illuminations of the MSS. of Romances, executed about
+the middle of the fifteenth century. On one side of these stands the
+earlier landscape work, more or less treated as simple decoration;
+on the other, the later landscape work, becoming more or less
+affected with modern ideas and modes of imitation.
+
+These central fifteenth century landscapes are almost invariably
+composed of a grove or two of tall trees, a winding river, and a
+castle, or a garden: the peculiar feature of both these last being
+_trimness_; the artist always dwelling especially on the fences;
+wreathing the espaliers indeed prettily with sweet-briar, and
+putting pots of orange-trees on the tops of the walls, but taking
+great care that there shall be no loose bricks in the one, nor
+broken stakes in the other,--the trouble and ceaseless warfare of
+the times having rendered security one of the first elements of
+pleasantness, and making it impossible for any artist to conceive
+Paradise but as surrounded by a moat, or to distinguish the road to
+it better than by its narrow wicket gate, and watchful porter.
+
+Sec. 17. One of these landscapes is thus described by Macaulay: "We
+have an exact square, enclosed by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel,
+and Euphrates, each with a convenient bridge in the centre;
+rectangular beds of flowers; a long canal neatly bricked and railed
+in; the tree of knowledge, clipped like one of the limes behind the
+Tuileries, standing in the centre of the grand alley; the snake
+turned round it, the man on the right hand, the woman on the left,
+and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round them."
+
+All this is perfectly true; and seems in the description very
+curiously foolish. The only curious folly, however, in the matter is
+the exquisite _naivete_ of the historian, in supposing that the
+quaint landscape indicates in the understanding of the painter so
+marvellous an inferiority to his own; whereas, it is altogether his
+own wit that is at fault, in not comprehending that nations, whose
+youth had been decimated among the sands and serpents of Syria, knew
+probably nearly as much about Eastern scenery as youths trained in
+the schools of the modern Royal Academy; and that this curious
+symmetry was entirely symbolic, only more or less modified by the
+various instincts which I have traced above. Mr. Macaulay is
+evidently quite unaware that the serpent with the human head, and
+body twisted round the tree, was the universally accepted symbol of
+the evil angel, from the dawn of art up to Michael Angelo; that the
+greatest sacred artists invariably place the man on the one side of
+the tree, the woman on the other, in order to denote the enthroned
+and balanced dominion about to fall by temptation; that the beasts
+are ranged (when they _are_ so, though this is much more seldom the
+case,) in a circle round them, expressly to mark that they were then
+not wild, but obedient, intelligent, and orderly beasts; and that
+the four rivers are trenched and enclosed on the four sides, to mark
+that the waters which now wander in waste, and destroy in fury, had
+then for their principal office to "water the garden" of God. The
+description is, however, sufficiently apposite and interesting, as
+bearing upon what I have noted respecting the eminent _fence_-loving
+spirit of the mediaevals.
+
+Sec. 18. Together with this peculiar formality, we find an infinite
+delight in drawing pleasant flowers, always articulating and outlining
+them completely; the sky is always blue, having only a few delicate
+white clouds in it, and in the distance are blue mountains, very far
+away, if the landscape is to be simply delightful; but brought near,
+and divided into quaint overhanging rocks, if it is intended to be
+meditative, or a place of saintly seclusion. But the whole of it
+always,--flowers, castles, brooks, clouds, and rocks,--subordinate to
+the human figures in the foreground, and painted for no other end than
+that of explaining their adventures and occupations.
+
+[Illustration: 7. Botany of 13th Century. (Apple-tree and Cyclamen)]
+
+Sec. 19. Before the idea of landscape had been thus far developed, the
+representations of it had been purely typical; the objects which had
+to be shown in order to explain the scene of the event, being firmly
+outlined, usually on a pure golden or chequered color background,
+not on sky. The change from the golden background, (characteristic
+of the finest thirteenth century work) and the colored chequer
+(which in like manner belongs to the finest fourteenth) to the blue
+sky, gradated to the horizon, takes place early in the fifteenth
+century, and is the _crisis_ of change in the spirit of mediaeval
+art. Strictly speaking, we might divide the art of Christian times
+into two great masses--Symbolic and Imitative;--the symbolic,
+reaching from the earliest periods down to the close of the
+fourteenth century, and the imitative from that close to the present
+time; and, then, the most important circumstance indicative of the
+culminating point, or turn of tide, would be this of the change from
+chequered background to sky background. The uppermost figure in
+Plate 7. opposite, representing the tree of knowledge, taken from a
+somewhat late thirteenth century Hebrew manuscript (Additional
+11,639) in the British Museum, will at once illustrate Mr.
+Macaulay's "serpent turned round the tree," and the mode of
+introducing the chequer background, will enable the reader better to
+understand the peculiar feeling of the period, which no more
+intended the formal walls or streams for an imitative representation
+of the Garden of Eden, than these chequers for an imitation of sky.
+
+Sec. 20. The moment the sky is introduced (and it is curious how
+perfectly it is done _at once_, many manuscripts presenting, in
+alternate pages, chequered backgrounds, and deep blue skies
+exquisitely gradated to the horizon)--the moment, I say, the sky is
+introduced, the spirit of art becomes for evermore changed, and
+thenceforward it gradually proposes imitation more and more as an
+end, until it reaches the Turnerian landscape. This broad division
+into two schools would therefore be the most true and accurate we
+could employ, but not the most convenient. For the great mediaeval
+art lies in a cluster about the culminating point, including
+symbolism on one side, and imitation on the other, and extending
+like a radiant cloud upon the mountain peak of ages, partly down
+both sides of it, from the year 1200 to 1500; the brightest part of
+the cloud leaning a little backwards, and poising itself between
+1250 and 1350. And therefore the most convenient arrangement is into
+Romanesque and barbaric art, up to 1200,--mediaeval art, 1200 to
+1500,--and modern art, from 1500 downwards. But it is only in the
+earlier or symbolic mediaeval art, reaching up to the close of the
+fourteenth century, that the peculiar modification of natural forms
+for decorative purposes is seen in its perfection, with all its
+beauty, and all its necessary shortcomings; the minds of men being
+accurately balanced between that honor for the superior human form
+which they shared with the Greek ages, and the sentimental love of
+nature which was peculiar to their own. The expression of the two
+feelings will be found to vary according to the material and place
+of the art; in painting, the conventional forms are more adopted, in
+order to obtain definition, and brilliancy of color, while in
+sculpture the life of nature is often rendered with a love and
+faithfulness which put modern art to shame. And in this earnest
+contemplation of the natural facts, united with an endeavor to
+simplify, for clear expression, the results of that contemplation,
+the ornamental artists arrived at two abstract conclusions about
+form, which are highly curious and interesting.
+
+Sec. 21. They saw, first, that a leaf might always be considered as a
+sudden expansion of the stem that bore it; an uncontrollable
+expression of delight, on the part of the twig, that spring had come,
+shown in a fountain-like expatiation of its tender green heart into
+the air. They saw that in this violent proclamation of its delight and
+liberty, whereas the twig had, until that moment, a disposition only
+to grow quietly forwards, it expressed its satisfaction and extreme
+pleasure in sunshine by springing out to right and left. Let _a b_,
+Fig. 1. Plate 8., be the twig growing forward in the direction from
+_a_ to _b_. It reaches the point _b_, and then--spring coming,--not
+being able to contain itself, it bursts out in every direction, even
+springing backwards at first for joy; but as this backward
+direction is contrary to its own proper fate and nature, it cannot go
+on so long, and the length of each rib into which it separates is
+proportioned accurately to the degree in which the proceedings of that
+rib are in harmony with the natural destiny of the plant. Thus the rib
+_c_, entirely contradictory, by the direction of his life and energy,
+of the general intentions to the tree, is but a short-lived rib; _d_,
+not quite so opposite to his fate, lives longer; _e_, accommodating
+himself still more to the spirit of progress, attains a greater length
+still; and the largest rib of all is the one who has not yielded at
+all to the erratic disposition of the others when spring came, but,
+feeling quite as happy about the spring as they did, nevertheless took
+no holiday, minded his business, and grew straightforward.
+
+[Illustration: 8. The Growth of Leaves.]
+
+Sec. 22. Fig. 6. in the same plate, which shows the disposition of the
+ribs in the leaf of an American Plane, exemplifies the principle
+very accurately; it is indeed more notably seen in this than in most
+leaves, because the ribs at the base have evidently had a little
+fraternal quarrel about their spring holiday; and the more
+gaily-minded ones, getting together into trios on each side, have
+rather pooh-poohed and laughed at the seventh brother in the middle,
+who wanted to go on regularly, and attend to his work. Nevertheless,
+though thus starting quite by himself in life, this seventh brother,
+quietly pushing on in the right direction, lives longest, and makes
+the largest fortune, and the triple partnerships on the right and
+left meet with a very minor prosperity.
+
+Sec. 23. Now if we inclose Fig. 1. in Plate 8. with two curves passing
+through the extremities of the ribs, we get Fig. 2., the central type
+of all leaves. Only this type is modified of course in a thousand ways
+by the life of the plant. If it be marsh or aquatic, instead of
+springing out in twigs, it is almost certain to expand in soft
+currents, as the liberated stream does at its mouth into the ocean,
+Fig. 3. (Alisma Plantago); if it be meant for one of the crowned and
+lovely trees of the earth, it will separate into stars, and each ray
+of the leaf will form a ray of light in the crown, Fig. 5.
+(Horsechestnut); and if it be a commonplace tree, rather prudent and
+practical than imaginative, it will not expand all at once, but throw
+out the ribs every now and then along the central rib, like a
+merchant taking his occasional and restricted holiday, Fig. 4. (Elm).
+
+Sec. 24. Now in the bud, where all these proceedings on the leaf's part
+are first imagined, the young leaf is generally (always?) doubled up in
+embryo, so as to present the profile of the half-leaves, as Fig. 7.,
+only in exquisite complexity of arrangement; Fig. 9., for instance, is
+the profile of the leaf-bud of a rose. Hence the general arrangement of
+line represented by Fig. 8. (in which the lower line is slightly curved
+to express the bending life in the spine) is everlastingly typical of
+the expanding powers of joyful vegetative youth; and it is of all
+simple forms the most exquisitely delightful to the human mind. It
+presents itself in a thousand different proportions and variations in
+the buds and profiles of leaves; those being always the loveliest in
+which, either by accidental perspective of position, or inherent
+character in the tree, it is most frequently presented to the eye. The
+branch of bramble, for instance, Fig. 10. at the bottom of Plate 8.,
+owes its chief beauty to the perpetual recurrence of this typical form;
+and we shall find presently the enormous importance of it, even in
+mountain ranges, though, in these, _falling_ force takes the place of
+_vital_ force.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
+
+Sec. 25. This abstract conclusion the great thirteenth century artists
+were the first to arrive at; and whereas, before their time,
+ornament had been constantly refined into intricate and
+subdivided symmetries, they were content with this simple form as
+the termination of its most important features. Fig. 3., which is a
+scroll out of a Psalter executed in the latter half of the
+thirteenth century, is a sufficient example of a practice at that
+time absolutely universal.
+
+[Illustration: 9. Botany of the 14th Century. From the Prayer-book of
+Yolande of Navarre.]
+
+Sec. 26. The second great discovery of the Middle Ages in floral
+ornament, was that, in order completely to express the law of
+subordination among the leaf-ribs, two ribs were necessary, _and no
+more_, on each side of the leaf, forming a series of three with the
+central one, because proportion is between three terms at least.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+That is to say, when they had only three ribs altogether, as _a_,
+Fig. 4., no _law_ of relation was discernible between the ribs, or
+the leaflets they bore; but by the addition of a third on each
+side as at _b_, proportion instantly was expressible, whether
+arithmetical or geometrical, or of any other kind. Hence the
+adoption of forms more or less approximating to that at _c_ (young
+ivy), or _d_ (wild geranium), as the favorite elements of their
+floral ornament, those leaves being in their disposition of masses,
+the simplest which can express a perfect law of proportion, just as
+the outline Fig. 7. Plate 8. is the simplest which can express a
+perfect law of growth.
+
+Plate 9. opposite gives, in rude outline, the arrangement of the
+border of one of the pages of a missal in my own possession, executed
+for the Countess Yolande of Flanders,[72] in the latter half of the
+fourteenth century, and furnishing, in exhaustless variety, the most
+graceful examples I have ever seen of the favorite decoration at the
+period, commonly now known as the "Ivy leaf" pattern.
+
+Sec. 27. In thus reducing these two everlasting laws of beauty to their
+simplest possible exponents, the mediaeval workmen were the first to
+discern and establish the principles of decorative art to the end of
+time, nor of decorative art merely, but of mass arrangement in
+general. For the members of any great composition, arranged about a
+centre, are always reducible to the law of the ivy leaf, the best
+cathedral entrances having five porches corresponding in
+proportional purpose to its five lobes (three being an imperfect,
+and seven a superfluous number); while the loveliest groups of lines
+attainable in any pictorial composition are always based on the
+section of the leaf-bud, Fig. 7. Plate 8., or on the relation of its
+ribs to the convex curve enclosing them.
+
+Sec. 28. These discoveries of ultimate truth are, I believe, never made
+philosophically, but instinctively; so that wherever we find a high
+abstract result of the kind, we may be almost sure it has been the
+work of the penetrative imagination, acting under the influence of
+strong affection. Accordingly, when we enter on our botanical
+inquiries, I shall have occasion to show with what tender and loving
+fidelity to nature the masters of the thirteenth century always
+traced the leading lines of their decorations, either in
+missal-painting or sculpture, and how totally in this respect their
+methods of subduing, for the sake of distinctness, the natural forms
+they loved so dearly, differ from the iron formalisms to which the
+Greeks, careless of all that was not completely divine or completely
+human, reduced the thorn of the acanthus, and softness of the lily.
+Nevertheless, in all this perfect and loving decorative art, we have
+hardly any careful references to other landscape features than herbs
+and flowers; mountains, water, and clouds are introduced so rudely,
+that the representations of them can never be received for anything
+else than letters or signs. Thus the _sign_ of clouds, in the
+thirteenth century, is an undulating band, usually in painting, of
+blue edged with white, in sculpture, wrought so as to resemble very
+nearly the folds of a curtain closely tied, and understood for
+clouds only by its position, as surrounding angels or saints in
+heaven, opening to souls ascending at the Last Judgment, or forming
+canopies over the Saviour or the Virgin. Water is represented by
+zigzag lines, nearly resembling those employed for clouds, but
+distinguished, in sculpture, by having fish in it; in painting, both
+by fish and a more continuous blue or green color. And when these
+unvaried symbols are associated under the influence of that love of
+firm fence, moat, and every other means of definition which we have
+seen to be one of the prevailing characteristics of the mediaeval
+mind, it is not possible for us to conceive, through the rigidity of
+the signs employed, what were the real feelings of the workman or
+spectator about the natural landscape. We see that the thing carved
+or painted is not intended in any wise to imitate the truth, or
+convey to us the feelings which the workman had in contemplating the
+truth. He has got a way of talking about it so definite and cold,
+and tells us with his chisel so calmly that the knight had a castle
+to attack, or the saint a river to cross dryshod, without making the
+smallest effort to describe pictorially either castle or river, that
+we are left wholly at fault as to the nature of the emotion with
+which he contemplated the real objects. But that emotion, as the
+intermediate step between the feelings of the Grecian and the
+Modern, it must be our aim to ascertain as clearly as possible; and,
+therefore, finding it not at this period completely expressed in
+visible art, we must, as we did with the Greeks, take up the written
+landscape instead, and examine this mediaeval sentiment as we find it
+embodied in the poem of Dante.
+
+Sec. 29. The thing that must first strike us in this respect, as we
+turn our thoughts to the poem, is, unquestionably, the _formality_
+of its landscape.
+
+Milton's effort, in all that he tells us of his Inferno, is to make
+it indefinite; Dante's, to make it _definite_. Both, indeed,
+describe it as entered through gates; but, within the gate, all is
+wild and fenceless with Milton, having indeed its four rivers,--the
+last vestige of the mediaeval tradition,--but rivers which flow
+through a waste of mountain and moorland, and by "many a frozen,
+many a fiery Alp." But Dante's Inferno is accurately separated into
+circles drawn with well-pointed compasses; mapped and properly
+surveyed in every direction, trenched in a thoroughly good style of
+engineering from depth to depth, and divided in the "_accurate_
+middle" (dritto mezzo) of its deepest abyss, into a concentric
+series of ten moats and embankments, like those about a castle, with
+bridges from each embankment to the next; precisely in the manner of
+those bridges over Hiddekel and Euphrates, which Mr. Macaulay thinks
+so innocently designed, apparently not aware that he is also
+laughing at Dante. These larger fosses are of rock, and the bridges
+also; but as he goes further into detail, Dante tells us of various
+minor fosses and embankments, in which he anxiously points out to us
+not only the formality, but the neatness and perfectness, of the
+stonework. For instance, in describing the river Phlegethon, he
+tells us that it was "paved with stone at the bottom, and at the
+sides, and _over the edges of the sides_," just as the water is at
+the baths of Bulicame; and for fear we should think this embankment
+at all _larger_ than it really was, Dante adds, carefully, that it
+was made just like the embankments of Ghent or Bruges against the
+sea, or those in Lombardy which bank the Brenta, only "not so high,
+nor so wide," as any of these. And besides the trenches, we have two
+well-built castles; one like Ecbatana, with seven circuits of wall
+(and surrounded by a fair stream), wherein the great poets and sages
+of antiquity live; and another, a great fortified city with walls of
+iron, red-hot, and a deep fosse round it, and full of "grave
+citizens,"--the city of Dis.
+
+Sec. 30. Now, whether this be in what we moderns call "good taste," or
+not, I do not mean just now to inquire--Dante having nothing to do
+with taste, but with the facts of what he had seen; only, so far as
+the imaginative faculty of the two poets is concerned, note that
+Milton's vagueness is not the sign of imagination, but of its
+absence, so far as it is significative in the matter. For it does
+not follow, because Milton did not map out his Inferno as Dante did,
+that he _could_ not have done so if he had chosen; only, it was the
+easier and less imaginative process to leave it vague than to
+define it. Imagination is always the seeing and asserting faculty;
+that which obscures or conceals may be judgment, or feeling, but not
+invention. The invention, whether good or bad, is in the accurate
+engineering, not in the fog and uncertainty.
+
+Sec. 31. When we pass with Dante from the Inferno to Purgatory, we have
+indeed more light and air, but no more liberty; being now confined
+on various ledges cut into a mountain side, with a precipice on one
+hand and a vertical wall on the other; and, lest here also we should
+make any mistake about magnitudes, we are told that the ledges were
+eighteen feet wide,[73] and that the ascent from one to the other
+was by steps, made like those which go up from Florence to the
+church of San Minieto.[74]
+
+Lastly, though in the Paradise there is perfect freedom and infinity
+of space, though for trenches we have planets, and for cornices
+constellations, yet there is more cadence, procession, and order
+among the redeemed souls than any others; they fly, so as to
+describe letters and sentences in the air, and rest in circles, like
+rainbows, or determinate figures, as of a cross and an eagle; in
+which certain of the more glorified natures are so arranged as to
+form the eye of the bird, while those most highly blessed are
+arranged with their white crowds in leaflets, so as to form the
+image of a white rose in the midst of heaven.
+
+Sec. 32. Thus, throughout the poem, I conceive that the first striking
+character of its scenery is intense definition; precisely the
+reflection of that definiteness which we have already traced in
+pictorial art. But the second point which seems noteworthy is, that
+the flat ground and embanked trenches are reserved for the Inferno;
+and that the entire territory of the Purgatory is a mountain, thus
+marking the sense of that purifying and perfecting influence in
+mountains which we saw the mediaeval mind was so ready to suggest.
+The same general idea is indicated at the very commencement of the
+poem, in which Dante is overwhelmed by fear and sorrow in passing
+through a dark forest, but revives on seeing the sun touch the top
+of a hill, afterwards called by Virgil "the pleasant mount--the
+cause and source of all delight."
+
+Sec. 33. While, however, we find this greater honor paid to mountains, I
+think we may perceive a much greater dread and dislike of woods. We
+saw that Homer seemed to attach a pleasant idea, for the most part, to
+forests; regarding them as sources of wealth and places of shelter;
+and we find constantly an idea of sacredness attached to them, as
+being haunted especially by the gods; so that even the wood which
+surrounds the house of Circe is spoken of as a sacred thicket, or
+rather, as a sacred glade, or labyrinth of glades (of the particular
+word used I shall have more to say presently); and so the wood is
+sought as a kindly shelter by Ulysses, in spite of its wild beasts;
+and evidently regarded with great affection by Sophocles, for, in a
+passage which is always regarded by readers of Greek tragedy with
+peculiar pleasure, the aged and blind Oedipus, brought to rest in "the
+sweetest resting-place" in all the neighborhood of Athens, has the
+spot described to him as haunted perpetually by nightingales, which
+sing "in the green glades and in the dark ivy, and in the
+thousand-fruited, sunless, and windless thickets of the god"
+(Bacchus); the idea of the complete shelter from wind and sun being
+here, as with Ulysses, the uppermost one. After this come the usual
+staples of landscape,--narcissus, crocus, plenty of rain, olive trees;
+and last, and the greatest boast of all,--"it is a good country for
+horses, and conveniently by the sea;" but the prominence and
+pleasantness of the thick wood in the thoughts of the writer are very
+notable; whereas to Dante the idea of a forest is exceedingly
+repulsive, so that, as just noticed, in the opening of his poem, he
+cannot express a general despair about life more strongly than by
+saying he was lost in a wood so savage and terrible, that "even to
+think or speak of it is distress,--it was so bitter,--it was something
+next door to death;" and one of the saddest scenes in all the Inferno
+is in a forest, of which the trees are haunted by lost souls; while
+(with only one exception,) whenever the country is to be beautiful, we
+find ourselves coming out into open air and open meadows.
+
+It is quite true that this is partly a characteristic, not merely of
+Dante, or of mediaeval writers, but of _southern_ writers; for the
+simple reason that the forest, being with them higher upon the
+hills, and more out of the way than in the north was generally a
+type of lonely and savage places; while in England, the
+"greenwood," coming up to the very walls of the towns, it was
+possible to be "merry in the good greenwood," in a sense which an
+Italian could not have understood. Hence Chaucer, Spenser, and
+Shakspere send their favorites perpetually to the woods for pleasure
+or meditation; and trust their tender Canace, or Rosalind, or
+Helena, or Silvia, or Belphoebe, where Dante would have sent no one
+but a condemned spirit. Nevertheless, there is always traceable in
+the mediaeval mind a dread of thick foliage, which was not present to
+that of a Greek; so that, even in the north, we have our sorrowful
+"children in the wood," and black huntsmen of the Hartz forests, and
+such other wood terrors; the principal reason for the difference
+being that a Greek, being by no means given to travelling, regarded
+his woods as so much valuable property; and if he ever went into
+them for pleasure expected to meet one or two gods in the course of
+his walk, but no banditti; while a mediaeval, much more of a solitary
+traveller, and expecting to meet with no gods in the thickets, but
+only with thieves, or a hostile ambush, or a bear, besides a great
+deal of troublesome ground for his horse, and a very serious chance,
+next to a certainty, of losing his way, naturally kept in the open
+ground as long as he could, and regarded the forests, in general,
+with anything but an eye of favor.
+
+Sec. 34. These, I think, are the principal points which must strike us,
+when we first broadly think of the poem as compared with classical
+work. Let us now go a little more into detail.
+
+As Homer gave us an ideal landscape, which even a god might have been
+pleased to behold, so Dante gives us, fortunately, an ideal landscape,
+which is specially intended for the terrestrial paradise. And it will
+doubtless be with some surprise, after our reflections above on the
+general tone of Dante's feelings, that we find ourselves here first
+entering a _forest_, and that even a _thick_ forest. But there is a
+peculiar meaning in this. With any other poet than Dante, it might
+have been regarded as a wanton inconsistency. Not so with him: by
+glancing back to the two lines which explain the nature of Paradise,
+we shall see what he means by it. Virgil tells him, as he enters it,
+"Henceforward, take thine own pleasure for guide; thou art beyond the
+steep ways, and beyond all Art;"--meaning, that the perfectly purified
+and noble human creature, having no pleasure but in right, is past
+all effort, and past all _rule_. Art has no existence for such a
+being. Hence, the first aim of Dante, in his landscape imagery, is to
+show evidence of this perfect liberty, and of the purity and
+sinlessness of the new nature, converting pathless ways into happy
+ones. So that all those fences and formalisms which had been needed
+for him in imperfection, are removed in this paradise; and even the
+pathlessness of the wood, the most dreadful thing possible to him in
+his days of sin and shortcoming, is now a joy to him in his days of
+purity. And as the fencelessness and thicket of sin led to the
+fettered and fearful order of eternal punishment, so the fencelessness
+and thicket of the free virtue lead to the loving and constellated
+order of eternal happiness.
+
+Sec. 35. This forest, then, is very like that of Colonos in several
+respects--in its peace and sweetness, and number of birds; it
+differs from it only in letting a light breeze through it, being
+therefore somewhat thinner than the Greek wood; the tender lines
+which tell of the voices of the birds mingling with the wind, and of
+the leaves all turning one way before it, have been more or less
+copied by every poet since Dante's time. They are, so far as I know,
+the sweetest passage of wood description which exists in literature.
+
+Before, however, Dante has gone far in this wood,--that is to say,
+only so far as to have lost sight of the place where he entered it,
+or rather, I suppose, of the light under the boughs of the outside
+trees, and it must have been a very thin wood indeed if he did not
+do this in some quarter of a mile's walk,--he comes to a little
+river, three paces over, which bends the blades of grass to the
+left, with a meadow on the other side of it; and in this meadow
+
+      "A lady, graced with solitude, who went
+        Singing, and setting flower by flower apart,
+      By which the path she walked on was besprent.
+      'Ah, lady beautiful, that basking art
+        In beams of love, if I may trust thy face,
+      Which useth to bear witness of the heart,
+      Let liking come on thee,' said I, 'to trace
+        Thy path a little closer to the shore,
+      Where I may reap the hearing of thy lays.
+      Thou mindest me, how Proserpine of yore
+        Appeared in such a place, what time her mother
+      Lost her, and she the spring, for evermore.'
+      As, pointing downwards and to one another
+        Her feet, a lady bendeth in the dance,
+      And barely setteth one before the other,
+      Thus, on the scarlet and the saffron glance
+        Of flowers, with motion maidenlike she bent
+      (Her modest eyelids drooping and askance);
+      And there she gave my wishes their content,
+        Approaching, so that her sweet melodies
+      Arrived upon mine ear with what they meant.
+      When first she came amongst the blades, that rise,
+        Already wetted, from the goodly river,
+      She graced me by the lifting of her eyes."   (CAYLEY.)
+
+Sec. 36. I have given this passage at length, because, for our
+purposes, it is by much the most important, not only in Dante, but
+in the whole circle of poetry. This lady, observe, stands on the
+opposite side of the little stream, which, presently, she explains
+to Dante is Lethe, having power to cause forgetfulness of all evil,
+and she stands just among the bent blades of grass at its edge. She
+is first seen gathering flower from flower, then "passing
+continually the multitudinous flowers through her hands," smiling at
+the same time so brightly, that her first address to Dante is to
+prevent him from wondering at her, saying, "if he will remember the
+verse of the ninety-second Psalm, beginning. 'Delectasti,' he will
+know why she is so happy."
+
+And turning to the verse of the Psalm, we find it written, "Thou,
+Lord, hast made me glad _through Thy works_. I will triumph _in the
+works of Thy hands_;" or, in the very words in which Dante would
+read it,--
+
+      "Quia delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua,
+      Et in operibus manuum Tuarum exultabo."
+
+Sec. 37. Now we could not for an instant have had any difficulty in
+understanding this, but that, some way farther on in the poem, this
+lady is called Matilda, and it is with reason supposed by the
+commentators to be the great Countess Matilda of the eleventh
+century; notable equally for her ceaseless activity, her brilliant
+political genius, her perfect piety, and her deep reverence for the
+see of Rome. This Countess Matilda is therefore Dante's guide in
+the terrestrial paradise, as Beatrice is afterwards in the
+celestial; each of them having a spiritual and symbolic character in
+their glorified state, yet retaining their definite personality.
+
+The question is, then, what is the symbolic character of the
+Countess Matilda, as the guiding spirit of the terrestrial paradise?
+Before Dante had entered this paradise he had rested on a step of
+shelving rock, and as he watched the stars he slept, and dreamed,
+and thus tells us what he saw:--
+
+      "A lady, young and beautiful, I dreamed,
+      Was passing o'er a lea; and, as she came,
+      Methought I saw her ever and anon
+      Bending to cull the flowers; and thus she sang:
+      'Know ye, whoever of my name would ask,
+      That I am Leah; for my brow to weave
+      A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply;
+      To please me at the crystal mirror, here
+      I deck me. But my sister Rachel, she
+      Before her glass abides the livelong day,
+      Her radiant eyes beholding, charmed no less
+      Than I with this delightful task. Her joy
+      In contemplation, as in labor mine.'"
+
+This vision of Rachel and Leah has been always, and with
+unquestionable truth, received as a type of the Active and
+Contemplative life, and as an introduction to the two divisions of the
+paradise which Dante is about to enter. Therefore the unwearied spirit
+of the Countess Matilda is understood to represent the Active life,
+which forms the felicity of Earth; and the spirit of Beatrice the
+Contemplative life, which forms the felicity of Heaven. This
+interpretation appears at first straightforward and certain; but it
+has missed count of exactly the most important fact in the two
+passages which we have to explain. Observe: Leah gathers the flowers
+to decorate _herself_, and delights in _Her Own_ Labor. Rachel sits
+silent, contemplating herself, and delights in _Her Own_ Image. These
+are the types of the Unglorified Active and Contemplative powers of
+Man. But Beatrice and Matilda are the same powers, Glorified. And how
+are they Glorified? Leah took delight in her own labor; but
+Matilda--"in operibus _manuum Tuarum_"--_in God's labor_: Rachel in
+the sight of her own face; Beatrice in the sight of _God's face_.
+
+Sec. 38. And thus, when afterwards Dante sees Beatrice on her throne, and
+prays her that, when he himself shall die, she would receive him with
+kindness, Beatrice merely looks down for an instant, and answers with
+a single smile, then "towards the eternal fountain turns."
+
+Therefore it is evident that Dante distinguishes in both cases, not
+between earth and heaven, but between perfect and imperfect happiness,
+whether in earth or heaven. The active life which has only the service
+of man for its end, and therefore gathers flowers, with Leah, for its
+own decoration, is indeed happy, but not perfectly so; it has only the
+happiness of the dream, belonging essentially to the dream of human
+life, and passing away with it. But the active life which labors for
+the more and more discovery of God's work, is perfectly happy, and is
+the life of the terrestrial paradise, being a true foretaste of
+heaven, and beginning in earth, as heaven's vestibule. So also the
+contemplative life which is concerned with human feeling and thought
+and beauty--the life which is in earthly poetry and imagery of noble
+earthly emotion--is happy, but it is the happiness of the dream; the
+contemplative life which has God's person and love in Christ for its
+object, has the happiness of eternity. But because this higher
+happiness is also begun here on earth, Beatrice descends to earth; and
+when revealed to Dante first, he sees the image of the twofold
+personality of Christ reflected in her _eyes_; as the flowers, which
+are, to the mediaeval heart, the chief work of God, are for ever
+passing through Matilda's _hands_.
+
+Sec. 39. Now, therefore, we see that Dante, as the great prophetic
+exponent of the heart of the Middle Ages, has, by the lips of the
+spirit of Matilda, declared the mediaeval faith,--that all perfect
+active life was "the expression of man's delight _in God's work_;"
+and that all their political and warlike energy, as fully shown in
+the mortal life of Matilda, was yet inferior and impure,--the energy
+of the dream,--compared with that which on the opposite bank of
+Lethe stood "choosing flower from flower." And what joy and peace
+there were in this work is marked by Matilda's being the person who
+draws Dante through the stream of Lethe, so as to make him forget
+all sin, and all sorrow: throwing her arms round him, she plunges
+his head under the waves of it; then draws him through, crying to
+him, "_hold me, hold me_" (tiemmi, tiemmi), and so presents him,
+thus bathed, free from all painful memory, at the feet of the spirit
+of the more heavenly contemplation.
+
+Sec. 40. The reader will, I think, now see, with sufficient
+distinctness, why I called this passage the most important, for our
+present purposes, in the whole circle of poetry. For it contains the
+first great confession of the discovery by the human race (I mean as
+a matter of experience, not of revelation), that their happiness was
+not in themselves, and that their labor was not to have their own
+service as its chief end. It embodies in a few syllables the
+_sealing_ difference between the Greek and the mediaeval, in that the
+former sought the flower and herb for his own uses, the latter for
+God's honor; the former, primarily and on principle, contemplated
+his own beauty and the workings of his own mind, and the latter,
+primarily and on principle, contemplated Christ's beauty and the
+workings of the mind of Christ.
+
+Sec. 41. I will not at present follow up this subject any farther; it
+being enough that we have thus got to the root of it, and have a
+great declaration of the central mediaeval purpose, whereto we may
+return for solution of all future questions. I would only,
+therefore, desire the reader now to compare the Stones of Venice,
+vol. i. chap. xx. Sec.Sec. 15. 16.; the Seven Lamps of Architecture, chap.
+iv. Sec. 3.; and the second volume of this work, Chap. II. Sec.Sec. 9. 10.,
+and Chap. III. Sec. 10.; that he may, in these several places, observe
+how gradually our conclusions are knitting themselves together as we
+are able to determine more and more of the successive questions that
+come before us: and, finally, to compare the two interesting
+passages in Wordsworth, which, without any memory of Dante,
+nevertheless, as if by some special ordaining, describe in matters
+of modern life exactly the soothing or felicitous powers of the two
+active spirits of Dante--Leah and Matilda, Excursion, book v. line
+608. to 625., and book vi. line 102. to 214.
+
+Sec. 42. Having thus received from Dante this great lesson, as to the
+spirit in which mediaeval landscape is to be understood, what else we
+have to note respecting it, as seen in his poem, will be
+comparatively straightforward and easy. And first, we have to
+observe the place occupied in his mind by _color_. It has already
+been shown, in the Stones of Venice, vol. ii. chap. v. Sec.Sec. 30--34,
+that color is the most _sacred_ element of all visible things.
+Hence, as the mediaeval mind contemplated them first for their
+sacredness, we should, beforehand, expect that the first thing it
+would seize would be the color; and that we should find its
+expressions and renderings of color infinitely more loving and
+accurate than among the Greeks.
+
+Sec. 43. Accordingly, the Greek sense of color seems to have been so
+comparatively dim and uncertain, that it is almost impossible to
+ascertain what the real idea was which they attached to any word
+alluding to hue: and above all, color, though pleasant to their
+eyes, as to those of all human beings, seems never to have been
+impressive to their feelings. They liked purple, on the whole, the
+best; but there was no sense of cheerfulness or pleasantness in one
+color, and gloom in another, such as the mediaevals had.
+
+For instance, when Achilles goes, in great anger and sorrow, to
+complain to Thetis of the scorn done him by Agamemnon, the sea appears
+to him "wine-colored." One might think this meant that the sea looked
+dark and reddish-purple to him, in a kind of sympathy with his anger.
+But we turn to the passage of Sophocles, which has been above
+quoted--a passage peculiarly intended to express peace and rest--and
+we find that the birds sing among "wine-colored" ivy. The uncertainty
+of conception of the hue itself, and entire absence of expressive
+character in the word, could hardly be more clearly manifested.
+
+Sec. 44. Again: I said the Greek liked purple, as a general source of
+enjoyment, better than any other color. So he did, and so all healthy
+persons who have eye for color, and are unprejudiced about it, do; and
+will to the end of time, for a reason presently to be noted. But so
+far was this instinctive preference for purple from giving, in the
+Greek mind, any consistently cheerful or sacred association to the
+color, that Homer constantly calls death "purple death."
+
+Sec. 45. Again: in the passage of Sophocles, so often spoken of, I said
+there was some difficulty respecting a word often translated
+"thickets." I believe, myself, it means glades; literally, "going
+places" in the woods,--that is to say, places where, either naturally
+or by force, the trees separate, so as to give some accessible
+avenue. Now, Sophocles tells us the birds sang in these "_green_ going
+places;" and we take up the expression gratefully, thinking the old
+Greek perceived and enjoyed, as we do, the sweet fall of the eminently
+_green_ light through the leaves when they are a little thinner than
+in the heart of the wood. But we turn to the tragedy of Ajax, and are
+much shaken in our conclusion about the meaning of the word, when we
+are told that the body of Ajax is to lie unburied, and be eaten by
+sea-birds on the "_green_ sand." The formation, geologically
+distinguished by that title, was certainly not known to Sophocles; and
+the only conclusion which, it seems to me, we can come to under the
+circumstances,--assuming Ariel's[75] authority as to the color of
+pretty sand, and the ancient mariner's (or, rather, his hearer's[76])
+as to the color of ugly sand, to be conclusive,--is that Sophocles
+really did not know green from yellow or brown.
+
+Sec. 46. Now, without going out of the terrestrial paradise, in which
+Dante last left us, we shall be able at once to compare with this
+Greek incertitude the precision of the mediaeval eye for color. Some
+three arrowflights further up into the wood we come to a tall tree,
+which is at first barren, but, after some little time, visibly opens
+into flowers, of a color "less than that of roses, but more than
+that of violets."
+
+It certainly would not be possible, in words, to come nearer to the
+_definition_ of the exact hue which Dante meant--that of the
+apple-blossom. Had he employed any simple color-phrase, as a "pale
+pink," or "violet-pink," or any other such combined expression, he
+still could not have completely got at the delicacy of the hue; he
+might perhaps have indicated its kind, but not its tenderness; but
+by taking the rose-leaf as the type of the delicate red, and then
+enfeebling this with the violet grey, he gets, as closely as
+language can carry him, to the complete rendering of the vision,
+though it is evidently felt by him to be in its perfect beauty
+ineffable; and rightly so felt, for of all lovely things which grace
+the spring time in our fair temperate zone, I am not sure but this
+blossoming of the apple-tree is the fairest. At all events, I find
+it associated in my mind with four other kinds of color, certainly
+principal among the gifts of the northern earth, namely:
+
+    1st. Bell gentians growing close together, mixed with lilies
+    of the valley, on the Jura pastures.
+
+    2nd. Alpine roses with dew upon them, under low rays of
+    morning sunshine, touching the tops of the flowers.
+
+    3rd. Bell heather in mass, in full light, at sunset.
+
+    4th. White narcissus (red-centred) in mass, on the Vevay
+    pastures, in sunshine, after rain.
+
+And I know not where in the group to place the wreaths of
+apple-blossoms, in the Vevay orchards, with the far-off blue of the
+lake of Geneva seen between the flowers.
+
+A Greek, however, would have regarded this blossom simply with the
+eyes of a Devonshire farmer, as bearing on the probable price of
+cider, and would have called it red, cerulean, purple, white,
+hyacinthine, or generally "aglaos," agreeable, as happened to suit
+his verse.
+
+Sec. 47. Again: we have seen how fond the Greek was of composing his
+paradises of rather damp grass; but that in this fondness for grass
+there was always an undercurrent of consideration for his horses; and
+the characters in it which pleased him most were its depth and
+freshness; not its color. Now, if we remember carefully the general
+expressions, respecting grass, used in modern literature, I think
+nearly the commonest that occurs to us will be that of "enamelled"
+turf or sward. This phrase is usually employed by our pseudo-poets,
+like all their other phrases, without knowing what it means, because
+it has been used by other writers before them, and because they do not
+know what else to say of grass. If we were to ask them what enamel
+was, they could not tell us; and if we asked why grass was like
+enamel, they could not tell us. The expression _has_ a meaning,
+however, and one peculiarly characteristic of mediaeval and modern
+temper.
+
+Sec. 48. The first instance I know of its right use, though very
+probably it had been so employed before, is in Dante. The righteous
+spirits of the pre-Christian ages are seen by him, though in the
+Inferno, yet in a place open, luminous, and high, walking upon the
+"green enamel."
+
+I am very sure that Dante did not use this phrase as we use it. He
+knew well what enamel was; and his readers, in order to understand
+him thoroughly, must remember what it is,--a vitreous paste,
+dissolved in water, mixed with metallic oxides, to give it the
+opacity and the color required, spread in a moist state on metal,
+and afterwards hardened by fire, so as never to change. And Dante
+means, in using this metaphor of the grass of the Inferno, to mark
+that it is laid as a tempering and cooling substance over the dark,
+metallic, gloomy ground; but yet so hardened by the fire, that it is
+not any more fresh or living grass, but a smooth, silent, lifeless
+bed of eternal green. And we know how _hard_ Dante's idea of it was;
+because afterwards, in what is perhaps the most awful passage of the
+whole Inferno, when the three furies rise at the top of the burning
+tower, and catching sight of Dante, and not being able to get at
+him, shriek wildly for the Gorgon to come up too, that they may turn
+him into stone,--the word _stone_ is not hard enough for them. Stone
+might crumble away after it was made, or something with life might
+grow upon it; no, it shall not be stone; they will make enamel of
+him; nothing can grow out of that; it is dead for ever.[77]
+
+    "Venga Medusa, si lo farem di _Smalto_."
+
+Sec. 49. Now, almost in the opening of the Purgatory, as there at the
+entrance of the Inferno, we find a company of great ones resting in
+a grassy place. But the idea of the grass now is very different. The
+word now used is not "enamel," but "herb," and instead of being
+merely green, it is covered with flowers of many colors. With the
+usual mediaeval accuracy, Dante insists on telling us precisely what
+these colors were, and how bright; which he does by naming the
+actual pigments used in illumination,--"Gold, and fine silver, and
+cochineal, and white lead, and Indian wood, serene and lucid, and
+fresh emerald, just broken, would have been excelled, as less is by
+greater, by the flowers and grass of the place." It is evident that
+the "emerald" here means the emerald green of the illuminators; for
+a fresh emerald is no brighter than one which is not fresh, and
+Dante was not one to throw away his words thus. Observe, then, we
+have here the idea of the growth, life, and variegation of the
+"green herb," as opposed to the smalto of the Inferno; but the
+colors of the variegation are illustrated and defined by the
+reference to actual pigments; and, observe, because the other colors
+are rather bright, the blue ground (Indian wood, indigo?) is sober;
+lucid, but serene; and presently two angels enter, who are dressed
+in green drapery, but of a paler green than the grass, which Dante
+marks, by telling us that it was "the green of leaves just budded."
+
+Sec. 50. In all this, I wish the reader to observe two things: first, the
+general carefulness of the poet in defining color, distinguishing it
+precisely as a painter would (opposed to the Greek carelessness about
+it); and, secondly, his regarding the grass for its greenness and
+variegation, rather than, as a Greek would have done, for its depth
+and freshness. This greenness or brightness, and variegation, are
+taken up by later and modern poets, as the things intended to be
+chiefly expressed by the word "enamelled;" and, gradually, the term is
+taken to indicate any kind of bright and interchangeable coloring;
+there being always this much of propriety about it, when used of
+greensward, that such sward is indeed, like enamel, a coat of bright
+color on a comparatively dark ground; and is thus a sort of natural
+jewelry and painter's work, different from loose and large vegetation.
+The word is often awkwardly and falsely used, by the later poets, of
+all kinds of growth and color; as by Milton of the flowers of Paradise
+showing themselves over its wall; but it retains, nevertheless,
+through all its jaded inanity, some half-unconscious vestige of the
+old sense, even to the present day.
+
+Sec. 51. There are, it seems to me, several important deductions to be
+made from these facts. The Greek, we have seen, delighted in the
+grass for its usefulness; the mediaeval, as also we moderns, for its
+color and beauty. But both dwell on it as the _first_ element of the
+lovely landscape; we saw its use in Homer, we see also that Dante
+thinks the righteous spirits of the heathen enough comforted in
+Hades by having even the _image_ of green grass put beneath their
+feet; the happy resting-place in Purgatory has no other delight than
+its grass and flowers; and, finally, in the terrestrial paradise,
+the feet of Matilda pause where the Lethe stream first bends the
+blades of grass. Consider a little what a depth there is in this
+great instinct of the human race. Gather a single blade of grass,
+and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of
+fluted green. Nothing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or
+beauty. A very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a
+few delicate long lines meeting in a point,--not a perfect point
+neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or
+apparently much cared for example of Nature's workmanship; made, as
+it seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast
+into the oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and
+flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet,
+think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers that
+beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to
+the eyes and good for food,--stately palm and pine, strong ash and
+oak, scented citron, burdened vine,--there be any by man so deeply
+loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble
+green. It seems to me not to have been without a peculiar
+significance, that our Lord, when about to work the miracle which,
+of all that He showed, appears to have been felt by the multitude as
+the most impressive,--the miracle of the loaves,--commanded the
+people to sit down by companies "upon the green grass." He was about
+to feed them with the principal produce of earth and the sea, the
+simplest representations of the food of mankind. He gave them the
+seed of the herb; He bade them sit down upon the herb itself, which
+was as great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest, as its
+perfect fruit, for their sustenance; thus, in this single order and
+act, when rightly understood, indicating for evermore how the
+Creator had entrusted the comfort, consolation, and sustenance of
+man, to the simplest and most despised of all the leafy families of
+the earth. And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe
+merely to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by
+that glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless,
+and peaceful spears. The fields! Follow but forth for a little time
+the thoughts of all that we ought to recognise in those words. All
+spring and summer is in them,--the walks by silent, scented
+paths,--the rests in noon-day heat,--the joy of herds and
+flocks,--the power of all shepherd life and meditation,--the life of
+sunlight upon the world, falling in emerald streaks, and falling in
+soft blue shadows, where else it would have struck upon the dark
+mould, or scorching dust,--pastures beside the pacing brooks,--soft
+banks and knolls of lowly hills,--thymy slopes of down overlooked by
+the blue line of lifted sea,--crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or
+smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet,
+and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices: all these
+are summed in those simple words; and these are not all. We may not
+measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in our own
+land; though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that
+meadow sweetness, Shakspere's peculiar joy, would open on us more
+and more, yet we have it but in part. Go out, in the spring time,
+among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to
+the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller
+gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and
+as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all
+veiled and dim with blossom,--paths that for ever droop and rise
+over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation,
+steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new mown heaps,
+filling all the air with fainter sweetness,--look up towards the
+higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently
+into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may,
+perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th
+Psalm, "He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains."
+
+Sec. 52. There are also several lessons symbolically connected with this
+subject, which we must not allow to escape us. Observe, the peculiar
+characters of the grass, which adapt it especially for the service of
+man, are its apparent _humility_, and _cheerfulness_. Its humility, in
+that it seems created only for lowest service,--appointed to be
+trodden on, and fed upon. Its cheerfulness, in that it seems to exult
+under all kinds of violence and suffering. You roll it, and it is
+stronger the next day; you mow it, and it multiplies its shoots, as if
+it were grateful; you tread upon it, and it only sends up richer
+perfume. Spring comes, and it rejoices with all the earth,--glowing
+with variegated flame of flowers,--waving in soft depth of fruitful
+strength. Winter comes, and though it will not mock its fellow plants
+by growing then, it will not pine and mourn, and turn colorless or
+leafless as they. It is always green; and is only the brighter and
+gayer for the hoar-frost.
+
+Sec. 53. Now, these two characters--of humility, and joy under
+trial--are exactly those which most definitely distinguish the
+Christian from the Pagan spirit. Whatever virtue the pagan possessed
+was rooted in pride, and fruited with sorrow. It began in the
+elevation of his own nature; it ended but in the "verde smalto"--the
+hopeless green--of the Elysian fields. But the Christian virtue is
+rooted in self-debasement, and strengthened under suffering by
+gladness of hope. And remembering this, it is curious to observe how
+utterly without gladness the Greek heart appears to be in watching
+the flowering grass, and what strange discords of expression arise
+sometimes in consequence. There is one, recurring once or twice in
+Homer, which has always pained me. He says, "the Greek army was on
+the fields, as thick as flowers in the spring." It might be so; but
+flowers in spring time are not the image by which Dante would have
+numbered soldiers on their path of battle. Dante could not have
+thought of the flowering of the grass but as associated with
+happiness. There is a still deeper significance in the passage
+quoted, a little while ago, from Homer, describing Ulysses casting
+himself down on the _rushes_ and the corn-giving land at the river
+shore,--the rushes and corn being to him only good for rest and
+sustenance,--when we compare it with that in which Dante tells us he
+was ordered to descend to the shore of the lake as he entered
+Purgatory, to gather a _rush_, and gird himself with it, it being to
+him the emblem not only of rest, but of humility under chastisement,
+the rush (or reed) being the only plant which can grow there;--"no
+plant which bears leaves, or hardens its bark, can live on that
+shore, because it does not yield to the chastisement of its waves."
+It cannot but strike the reader singularly how deep and harmonious a
+significance runs through all these words of Dante--how every
+syllable of them, the more we penetrate it, becomes a seed of
+farther thought! For, follow up this image of the girding with the
+reed, under trial, and see to whose feet it will lead us. As the
+grass of the earth, thought of as the herb yielding seed, leads us
+to the place where our Lord commanded the multitude to sit down by
+companies upon the green grass; so the grass of the waters, thought
+of as sustaining itself among the waters of affliction, leads us to
+the place where a stem of it was put into our Lord's hand for his
+sceptre; and in the crown of thorns, and the rod of reed, was
+foreshown the everlasting truth of the Christian ages--that all
+glory was to be begun in suffering, and all power in humility.
+
+Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest of
+all, from Isaiah xl. 6., we find, the grass and flowers are types,
+in their passing, of the passing of human life, and, in their
+excellence, of the excellence of human life; and this in a twofold
+way; first, by their Beneficence, and then, by their endurance:--the
+grass of the earth, in giving the seed of corn, and in its beauty
+under tread of foot and stroke of scythe; and the grass of the
+waters, in giving its freshness for our rest, and in its bending
+before the wave.[78] But understood in the broad human and Divine
+sense, the "_herb_ yielding seed" (as opposed to the fruit-tree
+yielding fruit) includes a third family of plants, and fulfils a
+third office to the human race. It includes the great family of the
+lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the _three_ offices of giving
+food, raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfilment; consider the
+association of the linen garment and the linen embroidery, with the
+priestly office, and the furniture of the tabernacle: and consider
+how the rush has been, in all time, the first natural carpet thrown
+under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely
+set forth by the three families of plants; not arbitrarily or
+fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked
+for us by Scriptural words:
+
+1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the grass for food and
+beauty.--"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil
+not, neither do they spin."
+
+2nd. Humility; in the grass for rest.--"A bruised reed shall He not
+break."
+
+3rd. Love; in the grass for clothing (because of its swift
+kindling),--"The smoking flax shall He not quench."
+
+And then, finally, observe the confirmation of these last two images
+in, I suppose, the most important prophecy, relating to the future
+state of the Christian Church, which occurs in the Old Testament,
+namely, that contained in the closing chapters of Ezekiel. The
+measures of the Temple of God are to be taken; and because it is
+only by charity and humility that those measures ever can be taken,
+the angel has "a line of _flax_ in his hand, and a measuring
+_reed_." The use of the line was to measure the land, and of the
+reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of
+the church, or its labors, are to be measured by _humility_, and its
+territory or land, by _love_.
+
+The limits of the Church have, indeed, in later days, been measured,
+to the world's sorrow, by another kind of flaxen line, burning with
+the fire of unholy zeal, not with that of Christian charity; and
+perhaps the best lesson which we can finally take to ourselves, in
+leaving these sweet fields of the mediaeval landscape, is the memory
+that, in spite of all the fettered habits of thought of his age,
+this great Dante, this inspired exponent of what lay deepest at the
+heart of the early Church, placed his terrestrial paradise where
+there had ceased to be fence or division, and where the grass of the
+earth was bowed down, in unity of direction, only by the soft waves
+that bore with them the forgetfulness of evil.
+
+  [71] The peculiar dislike felt by the mediaevals for the _sea_, is
+       so interesting a subject of inquiry, that I have reserved it
+       for separate discussion in another work, in present
+       preparation, "Harbors of England."
+
+  [72] Married to Philip, younger son of the King of Navarre, in
+       1352. She died in 1394.
+
+  [73] "Three times the length of a human body."--Purg. x. 24.
+
+  [74] Purg. xii. 102.
+
+  [75] "Come unto these _yellow_ sands."
+
+  [76] "And thou art long, and lank, and _brown_,
+       As is the ribbed sea sand."
+
+  [77] Compare parallel passage, making Dante hard or changeless in
+       good Purg. viii. 114.
+
+  [78] So also in Isa. xxxv. 7., the prevalence of righteousness and
+       peace over all evil is thus foretold:
+
+       "In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be
+       _grass_, with _reeds_ and _rushes_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE:--SECONDLY, THE ROCKS.
+
+
+Sec. 1. I closed the last chapter, not because our subject was
+exhausted, but to give the reader breathing time, and because I
+supposed he would hardly care to turn back suddenly from the
+subjects of thought last suggested, to the less pregnant matters of
+inquiry connected with mediaeval landscape. Nor was the pause
+mistimed even as respects the order of our subjects; for hitherto we
+have been arrested chiefly by the beauty of the pastures and fields,
+and have followed the mediaeval mind in its fond regard of leaf and
+flower. But now we have some hard hill-climbing to do; and the
+remainder of our investigation must be carried on, for the most
+part, on hands and knees, so that it is not ill done of us first to
+take breath.
+
+Sec. 2. It will be remembered that in the last chapter, Sec. 14., we
+supposed it probable that there would be considerable inaccuracies
+in the mediaeval mode of regarding nature. Hitherto, however, we have
+found none; but, on the contrary, intense accuracy, precision, and
+affection. The reason of this is, that all floral and foliaged
+beauty might be perfectly represented, as far as its form went, in
+the sculpture and ornamental painting of the period; hence the
+attention of men was thoroughly awakened to that beauty. But as
+mountains and clouds and large features of natural scenery could not
+be accurately represented, we must be prepared to find them not so
+carefully contemplated,--more carefully, indeed, than by the Greeks,
+but still in no wise as the things themselves deserve.
+
+Sec. 3. It was besides noticed that mountains, though regarded with
+reverence by the mediaeval, were also the subjects of a certain
+dislike and dread. And we have seen already that in fact the place
+of the soul's purification, though a mountain, is yet by Dante
+subdued, whenever there is any pleasantness to be found upon it,
+from all mountainous character into grassy recesses, or slopes to
+rushy shore; and, in his general conception of it, resembles much
+more a castle mound, surrounded by terraced walks,--in the manner,
+for instance, of one of Turner's favorite scenes, the bank under
+Richmond Castle (Yorkshire); or, still more, one of the hill slopes
+divided by terraces, above the Rhine, in which the picturesqueness
+of the ground has been reduced to the form best calculated for the
+growing of costly wine, than any scene to which we moderns should
+naturally attach the term "Mountainous." On the other hand, although
+the Inferno is just as accurately measured and divided as the
+Purgatory, it is nevertheless cleft into rocky chasms which possess
+something of true mountain nature--nature which we moderns of the
+north should most of us seek with delight, but which, to the great
+Florentine, appeared adapted only for the punishment of lost
+spirits, and which, on the mind of nearly all his countrymen, would
+to this day produce a very closely correspondent effect; so that
+their graceful language, dying away on the north side of the Alps,
+gives its departing accents to proclaim its detestation of hardness
+and ruggedness; and is heard for the last time, as it bestows on the
+noblest defile in all the Grisons, if not in all the Alpine chain,
+the name of the "_evil_ way"--"la Via Mala."
+
+Sec. 4. This "evil way," though much deeper and more sublime,
+corresponds closely in general character to Dante's "Evil-pits,"
+just as the banks of Richmond do to his mountain of Purgatory; and
+it is notable that Turner has been led to illustrate, with his whole
+strength, the character of both; having founded, as it seems to me,
+his early dreams of mountain form altogether on the sweet banks of
+the Yorkshire streams, and rooted his hardier thoughts of it in the
+rugged clefts of the Via Mala.
+
+Sec. 5. Nor of the Via Mala only: a correspondent defile on the St.
+Gothard,--so terrible in one part of it, that it can, indeed,
+suggest no ideas but those of horror to minds either of northern or
+southern temper, and whose wild bridge, cast from rock to rock over
+a chasm as utterly hopeless and escapeless as any into which Dante
+gazed from the arches of Malebolge, has been, therefore, ascribed
+both by northern and southern lips to the master-building of the
+great spirit of evil--supplied to Turner the element of his most
+terrible thoughts in mountain vision, even to the close of his life.
+The noblest plate in the series of the Liber Studiorum,[79] one
+engraved by his own hand, is of that bridge; the last mountain
+journey he ever took was up the defile; and a rocky bank and arch,
+in the last mountain drawing which he ever executed with his perfect
+power, are remembrances of the path by which he had traversed in his
+youth this Malebolge of the St. Gothard.
+
+Sec. 6. It is therefore with peculiar interest, as bearing on our own
+proper subject, that we must examine Dante's conception of the rocks
+of the eighth circle. And first, as to general tone of color: from
+what we have seen of the love of the mediaeval for bright and
+variegated color, we might guess that his chief cause of dislike to
+rocks would be, in Italy, their comparative colorlessness. With
+hardly an exception, the range of the Apennines is composed of a
+stone of which some special account is given hereafter in the
+chapters on Materials of Mountains, and of which one peculiarity,
+there noticed, is its monotony of hue. Our slates and granites are
+often of very lovely colors; but the Apennine limestone is so grey
+and toneless, that I know not any mountain district so utterly
+melancholy as those which are composed of this rock, when unwooded.
+Now, as far as I can discover from the internal evidence in his
+poem, nearly all Dante's mountain wanderings had been upon this
+ground. He had journeyed once or twice among the Alps, indeed, but
+seems to have been impressed chiefly by the road from Garda to
+Trent, and that along the Corniche, both of which are either upon
+those limestones, or a dark serpentine, which shows hardly any color
+till it is polished. It is not ascertainable that he had ever seen
+rocky scenery of the finely colored kind, aided by the Alpine
+mosses: I do not know the fall at Forli (Inferno, xvi. 99.), but
+every other scene to which he alludes is among these Apennine
+limestones; and when he wishes to give the idea of enormous mountain
+size, he names Tabernicch and Pietra-pana,--the one clearly chosen
+only for the sake of the last syllable of its name, in order to make
+a sound as of cracking ice, with the two sequent rhymes of the
+stanza,--and the other is an Apennine near Lucca.
+
+Sec. 7. His idea, therefore, of rock color, founded on these
+experiences, is that of a dull or ashen grey, more or less stained
+by the brown of iron ochre, precisely as the Apennine limestones
+nearly always are; the grey being peculiarly cold and disagreeable.
+As we go down the very hill which stretches out from Pietra-pana
+towards Lucca, the stones laid by the road-side to mend it are of
+this ashen grey, with efflorescences of manganese and iron in the
+fissures. The whole of Malebolge is made of this rock, "All wrought
+in stone of iron-colored grain."[80]
+
+Perhaps the iron color may be meant to predominate in Evil-pits; but
+the definite grey limestone color is stated higher up, the river
+Styx flowing at the base of "malignant _grey_ cliffs"[81] (the word
+malignant being given to the iron-colored Malebolge also); and the
+same whitish-grey idea is given again definitely in describing the
+robe of the purgatorial or penance angel, which is "of the color of
+ashes, or earth dug dry." Ashes necessarily mean _wood_-ashes in an
+Italian mind, so that we get the tone very pale; and there can be no
+doubt whatever about the hue meant, because it is constantly seen on
+the sunny sides of the Italian hills, produced by the scorching of
+the ground, a dusty and lifeless whitish grey, utterly painful and
+oppressive; and I have no doubt that this color, assumed eminently
+also by limestone crags in the sun, is the quality which Homer means
+to express by a term he applies often to bare rocks, and which is
+usually translated "craggy," or "rocky." Now Homer is indeed quite
+capable of talking of "rocky rocks," just as he talks sometimes of
+"wet water;" but I think he means more by this word: it sounds as if
+it were derived from another, meaning "meal," or "flour," and I have
+little doubt it means "mealy white;" the Greek limestones being for
+the most part brighter in effect than the Apennine ones.
+
+Sec. 8. And the fact is, that the great and pre-eminent fault of
+southern, as compared with northern scenery, is this rock-whiteness,
+which gives to distant mountain ranges, lighted by the sun, sometimes
+a faint and monotonous glow, hardly detaching itself from the whiter
+parts of the sky, and sometimes a speckled confusion of white light
+with blue shadow, breaking up the whole mass of the hills, and making
+them look near and small; the whiteness being still distinct at the
+distance of twenty or twenty-five miles. The inferiority and
+meagreness of such effects of hill, compared with the massive purple
+and blue of our own heaps of crags and morass, or the solemn
+grass-green and pine-purples of the Alps, have always struck me most
+painfully; and they have rendered it impossible for any poet or
+painter studying in the south, to enter with joy into hill scenery.
+Imagine the difference to Walter Scott, if instead of the single
+lovely color which, named by itself alone, was enough to describe his
+hills,--
+
+      "Their southern rapine to renew,
+      Far in the distant Cheviot's _blue_,"--
+
+a dusty whiteness had been the image that first associated itself
+with a hill range, and he had been obliged, instead of "blue"
+Cheviots, to say, "barley-meal-colored" Cheviots.
+
+Sec. 9. But although this would cause a somewhat painful shock even to
+a modern mind, it would be as nothing when compared with the pain
+occasioned by absence of color to a mediaeval one. We have been
+trained, by our ingenious principles of Renaissance architecture, to
+think that meal-color and ash-color are the properest colors of all;
+and that the most aristocratic harmonies are to be deduced out of
+grey mortar and creamy stucco. Any of our modern classical
+architects would delightedly "face" a heathery hill with Roman
+cement; and any Italian sacristan would, but for the cost of it, at
+once whitewash the Cheviots. But the mediaevals had not arrived at
+these abstract principles of taste. They liked fresco better than
+whitewash; and, on the whole, thought that Nature was in the right
+in painting her flowers yellow, pink, and blue;--not grey.
+Accordingly, this absence of color from rocks, as compared with
+meadows and trees, was in their eyes an unredeemable defect; nor did
+it matter to them whether its place was supplied by the grey neutral
+tint, or the iron-colored stain; for both colors, grey and brown,
+were, to them, hues of distress, despair, and mortification, hence
+adopted always for the dresses of monks; only the word "brown" bore,
+in their color vocabulary, a still gloomier sense than with us. I
+was for some time embarrassed by Dante's use of it with respect to
+dark skies and water. Thus, in describing a simple twilight--not a
+Hades twilight, but an ordinarily fair evening--(Inf. ii. 1.) he
+says, the "brown" air took the animals of earth away from their
+fatigues;--the waves under Charon's boat are "brown" (Inf. iii.
+117.); and Lethe, which is perfectly clear and yet dark, as with
+oblivion, is "bruna-bruna," "brown, _exceeding_ brown." Now, clearly
+in all these cases no _warmth_ is meant to be mingled in the color.
+Dante had never seen one of our bog-streams, with its porter-colored
+foam; and there can be no doubt that, in calling Lethe brown, he
+means that it was dark slate grey, inclining to black; as, for
+instance, our clear Cumberland lakes, which, looked straight down
+upon where they are deep, seem to be lakes of ink. I am sure this is
+the color he means; because no clear stream or lake on the Continent
+ever looks brown, but blue or green; and Dante, by merely taking
+away the pleasant color, would get at once to this idea of grave
+clear grey. So, when he was talking of twilight, his eye for color
+was far too good to let him call it _brown_ in our sense. Twilight
+is not brown, but purple, golden, or dark grey; and this last was
+what Dante meant. Farther, I find that this negation of color is
+always the means by which Dante subdues his tones. Thus the fatal
+inscription on the Hades gate is written in "obscure color," and the
+air which torments the passionate spirits is "aer nero" _black_ air
+(Inf. v. 51.), called presently afterwards (line 81.) malignant air,
+just as the grey cliffs are called malignant cliffs.
+
+Sec. 10. I was not, therefore, at a loss to find out what Dante meant
+by the word; but I was at a loss to account for his not, as it
+seemed, acknowledging the existence of the color of _brown_ at all;
+for if he called dark neutral tint "brown," it remained a question
+what term he would use for things of the color of burnt umber. But,
+one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to
+be sitting by one of our best living modern colorists, watching him
+at his work, when he said, suddenly, and by mere accident, after we
+had been talking of other things, "Do you know I have found that
+there is no _brown_ in Nature? What we call brown is always a
+variety either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by
+umber, unless altered by contrast."
+
+Sec. 11. It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends,
+how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediaeval sense of
+hue;--how far, on the other hand, it cuts into the heart of the old
+umber idolatries of Sir George Beaumont and his colleagues, the "where
+do you put your _brown_ tree" system; the code of Cremona-violin-
+colored foregrounds, of brown varnish and asphaltum; and all the old
+night-owl science, which, like Young's pencil of sorrow,
+
+      "In melancholy dipped, _embrowns_ the whole."
+
+Nay, I do Young an injustice by associating his words with the
+asphalt schools; for his eye for color was true, and like Dante's;
+and I doubt not that he means dark grey, as Byron purple-grey in
+that night piece in the Siege of Corinth, beginning
+
+      "'Tis midnight; on the mountains _brown_
+      The cold, round moon looks deeply down;"
+
+and, by the way, Byron's best piece of evening color farther
+certifies the hues of Dante's twilight,--it
+
+      "Dies like the dolphin, when it gasps away--
+      The last still loveliest; till 'tis gone, and all is _grey_."
+
+Sec. 12. Let not, however, the reader confuse the use of brown, as an
+expression of a natural tint, with its use as a means of _getting
+other tints_. Brown is often an admirable ground, just because it is
+the only tint which is _not_ to be in the finished picture, and
+because it is the best basis of many silver greys and purples, utterly
+opposite to it in their nature. But there is infinite difference
+between laying a brown ground as a representation of shadow,--and as a
+base for light; and also an infinite difference between using brown
+shadows, associated with colored lights--always the characteristic of
+false schools of color--and using brown as a warm neutral tint for
+general study. I shall have to pursue this subject farther hereafter,
+in noticing how brown is used by great colorists in their studies,
+not as color, but as the pleasantest negation of color, possessing
+more transparency than black, and having more pleasant and sunlike
+warmth. Hence Turner, in his early studies, used blue for distant
+neutral tint, and brown for foreground neutral tint; while, as he
+advanced in color science, he gradually introduced, in the place of
+brown, strange purples, altogether peculiar to himself, founded,
+apparently, on Indian red and vermilion, and passing into various
+tones of russet and orange.[82] But, in the meantime, we must go back
+to Dante and his mountains.
+
+Sec. 13. We find, then, that his general type of rock color was meant,
+whether pale or dark, to be a colorless grey--the most melancholy
+hue which he supposed to exist in Nature (hence the synonym for it,
+subsisting even till late times, in mediaeval appellatives of dress,
+"_sad_-colored")--with some rusty stain from iron; or perhaps the
+"color ferrigno" of the Inferno does not involve even so much of
+orange, but ought to be translated "iron grey."
+
+This being his idea of the color of rocks, we have next to observe
+his conception of their substance. And I believe it will be found that
+the character on which he fixes first in them is _frangibility_
+--breakableness to bits, as opposed to wood, which can be sawn or
+rent, but not shattered with a hammer, and to metal, which is tough
+and malleable.
+
+Thus, at the top of the abyss of the seventh circle, appointed for
+the "violent," or souls who had done evil by force, we are told,
+first, that the edge of it was composed of "great broken stones in a
+circle;" then, that the place was "Alpine;" and, becoming hereupon
+attentive, in order to hear what an Alpine place is like, we find
+that it was "like the place beyond Trent, where the rock, either by
+earthquake, or failure of support, has broken down to the plain, so
+that it gives any one at the top some means of getting down to the
+bottom." This is not a very elevated or enthusiastic description of
+an Alpine scene; and it is far from mended by the following verses,
+in which we are told that Dante "began to go down by this great
+_unloading_ of stones," and that they moved often under his feet by
+reason of the new weight. The fact is that Dante, by many
+expressions throughout the poem, shows himself to have been a
+notably bad climber; and being fond of sitting in the sun, looking
+at his fair Baptistery, or walking in a dignified manner on flat
+pavement in a long robe, it puts him seriously out of his way when
+he has to take to his hands and knees, or look to his feet; so that
+the first strong impression made upon him by any Alpine scene
+whatever, is, clearly, that it is bad walking. When he is in a
+fright and hurry, and has a very steep place to go down, Virgil has
+to carry him altogether, and is obliged to encourage him, again and
+again, when they have a steep slope to go up,--the first ascent of
+the purgatorial mountain. The similes by which he illustrates the
+steepness of that ascent are all taken from the Riviera of Genoa,
+now traversed by a good carriage road under the name of the
+Corniche; but as this road did not exist in Dante's time, and the
+steep precipices and promontories were then probably traversed by
+footpaths, which, as they necessarily passed in many places over
+crumbling and slippery limestone, were doubtless not a little
+dangerous, and as in the manner they commanded the bays of sea
+below, and lay exposed to the full blaze of the south-eastern sun,
+they corresponded precisely to the situation of the path by which he
+ascends above the purgatorial sea, the image could not possibly have
+been taken from a better source for the fully conveying his idea to
+the reader: nor, by the way, is there reason to discredit, in _this_
+place, his powers of climbing; for, with his usual accuracy, he has
+taken the angle of the path for us, saying it was considerably more
+than forty-five. Now a continuous mountain slope of forty-five
+degrees is already quite unsafe either for ascent or descent, except
+by zigzag paths; and a greater slope than this could not be climbed,
+straightforward, but by help of crevices or jags in the rock, and
+great physical exertion besides.
+
+Sec. 14. Throughout these passages, however, Dante's thoughts are
+clearly fixed altogether on the question of mere accessibility or
+inaccessibility. He does not show the smallest interest in the
+rocks, except as things to be conquered; and his description of
+their appearance is utterly meagre, involving no other epithets than
+"erto" (steep or upright), Inf. xix. 131., Purg. iii. 48. &c.;
+"sconcio" (monstrous), Inf. xix. 131.; "stagliata" (cut), Inf. xvii.
+134.; "maligno" (malignant), Inf. vii. 108; "duro" (hard), xx. 25.;
+with "large" and "broken" (rotto) in various places. No idea of
+roundness, massiveness, or pleasant form of any kind appears for a
+moment to enter his mind; and the different names which are given to
+the rocks in various places seem merely to refer to variations in
+size: thus a "rocco" is a part of a "scoglio," Inf. xx. 25. and
+xxvi. 27.; a "scheggio" (xxi. 69. and xxvi. 17.) is a less fragment
+yet; a "petrone," or "sasso," is a large stone or boulder (Purg. iv.
+101. 104.), and "pietra," a less stone,--both of these last terms,
+especially "sasso," being used for any large mountainous mass, as in
+Purg. xxi. 106.; and the vagueness of the word "monte" itself, like
+that of the French "montagne," applicable either to a hill on a
+post-road requiring the drag to be put on,--or to the Mont Blanc,
+marks a peculiar carelessness in both nations, at the time of the
+formation of their languages, as to the sublimity of the higher
+hills; so that the effect produced on an English ear by the word
+"mountain," signifying always a mass of a certain large size, cannot
+be conveyed either in French or Italian.
+
+Sec. 15. In all these modes of regarding rocks we find (rocks being in
+themselves, as we shall see presently, by no means monstrous or
+frightful things) exactly that inaccuracy in the mediaeval mind which
+we had been led to expect, in its bearings on things contrary to the
+spirit of that symmetrical and perfect humanity which had formed its
+ideal; and it is very curious to observe how closely in the terms he
+uses, and the feelings they indicate, Dante here agrees with Homer.
+For the word stagliata (cut) corresponds very nearly to a favorite
+term of Homer's respecting rocks "sculptured," used by him also of
+ships' sides; and the frescoes and illuminations of the Middle Ages
+enable us to ascertain exactly what this idea of "cut" rock was.
+
+Sec. 16. In Plate 10. I have assembled some examples, which will give
+the reader a sufficient knowledge of mediaeval rock-drawing, by men
+whose names are known. They are chiefly taken from engravings, with
+which the reader has it in his power to compare them,[83] and if,
+therefore, any injustice is done to the original paintings the fault
+is not mine; but the general impression conveyed is quite accurate,
+and it would not have been worth while, where work is so deficient
+in first conception, to lose time in insuring accuracy of facsimile.
+Some of the crags may be taller here, or broader there, than in the
+original paintings; but the character of the work is perfectly
+preserved, and that is all with which we are at present concerned.
+
+[Illustration: 10. Geology of the Middle Ages.]
+
+Figs. 1. and 5. are by Ghirlandajo; 2. by Filippo Pesellino; 4. by
+Leonardo da Vinci; and 6. by Andrea del Castagno. All these are
+indeed workmen of a much later period than Dante, but the system of
+rock-drawing remains entirely unchanged from Giotto's time to
+Ghirlandajo's;--is then altered only by an introduction of
+stratification indicative of a little closer observance of nature,
+and so remains until Titian's time. Fig 1. is exactly representative
+of one of Giotto's rocks, though actually by Ghirlandajo; and Fig.
+2. is rather less skilful than Giotto's ordinary work. Both these
+figures indicate precisely what Homer and Dante meant by "cut"
+rocks. They had observed the concave smoothness of certain rock
+fractures as eminently distinctive of rock from earth, and use the
+term "cut" or "sculptured" to distinguish the smooth surface from
+the knotty or sandy one, having observed nothing more respecting its
+real contours than is represented in Figs. 1. and 2., which look as
+if they had been hewn out with an adze. Lorenzo Ghiberti preserves
+the same type, even in his finest work.
+
+Fig. 3., from an interesting sixteenth century MS. in the British
+Museum (Cotton, Augustus, A. 5.), is characteristic of the best
+later illuminators' work; and Fig. 5., from Ghirlandajo, is pretty
+illustrative of Dante's idea of terraces on the purgatorial
+mountain. It is the road by which the Magi descend in his picture of
+their Adoration, in the Academy of Florence. Of the other examples I
+shall have more to say in the chapter on Precipices; meanwhile we
+have to return to the landscape of the poem.
+
+Sec. 17. Inaccurate as this conception of rock was, it seems to have been
+the only one which, in mediaeval art had place as representative of
+mountain scenery. To Dante, mountains are inconceivable except as
+great broken stones or crags; all their broad contours and undulations
+seem to have escaped his eye. It is, indeed, with his usual undertone
+of symbolic meaning that he describes the great broken stones, and the
+fall of the shattered mountain, as the entrance to the circle
+appointed for the punishment of the violent; meaning that the violent
+and cruel, notwithstanding all their iron hardness of heart, have no
+true strength, but, either by earthquake, or want of support, fall at
+last into desolate ruin, naked, loose, and shaking under the tread.
+But in no part of the poem do we find allusion to mountains in any
+other than a stern light; nor the slightest evidence that Dante cared
+to look at them. From that hill of San Miniato, whose steps he knew so
+well, the eye commands, at the farther extremity of the Val d'Arno,
+the whole purple range of the mountains of Carrara, peaked and mighty,
+seen always against the sunset light in silent outline, the chief
+forms that rule the scene as twilight fades away. By this vision Dante
+seems to have been wholly unmoved, and, but for Lucan's mention of
+Aruns at Luna, would seemingly not have spoken of the Carrara hills in
+the whole course of his poem: when he does allude to them, he speaks
+of their white marble, and their command of stars and sea, but has
+evidently no regard for the hills themselves. There is not a single
+phrase or syllable throughout the poem which indicates such a regard.
+Ugolino, in his dream, seemed to himself to be in the mountains, "by
+cause of which the Pisan cannot see Lucca;" and it is impossible to
+look up from Pisa to that hoary slope without remembering the awe that
+there is in the passage; nevertheless, it was as a hunting-ground only
+that he remembered those hills. Adam of Brescia, tormented with
+eternal thirst, remembers the hills of Romena, but only for the sake
+of their sweet waters:
+
+      "The rills that glitter down the grassy slopes
+      Of Casentino, making fresh and soft
+      The banks whereby they glide to Arno's stream,
+      Stand ever in my view."
+
+And, whenever hills are spoken of as having any influence on
+character, the repugnance to them is still manifest; they are always
+causes of rudeness or cruelty:
+
+      "But that ungrateful and malignant race,
+      Who in old times came down from Fesole,
+      _Ay, and still smack of their rough mountain flint_,
+      Will, for thy good deeds, show thee enmity.
+      Take heed thou cleanse thee of their ways."
+
+So again--
+
+                "As one _mountain-bred_,
+      Rugged, and clownish, if some city's walls
+      He chance to enter, round him stares agape."
+
+Sec. 18. Finally, although the Carrara mountains are named as having
+command of the stars and sea, the _Alps_ are never specially
+mentioned but in bad weather, or snow. On the sand of the circle of
+the blasphemers--
+
+                "Fell slowly wafting down
+      Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow
+      On Alpine summit, when the wind is hushed."
+
+So the Paduans have to defend their town and castles against
+inundation,
+
+              "Ere the genial warmth be felt,
+      On Chiarentana's top."
+
+The clouds of anger, in Purgatory, can only be figured to the reader
+who has
+
+      "On an Alpine height been ta'en by cloud,
+      Through which thou sawest no better than the mole
+      Doth through opacous membrane."
+
+And in approaching the second branch of Lethe, the seven ladies
+pause,--
+
+                "Arriving at the verge
+      Of a dim umbrage hoar, such as is seen
+      Beneath green leaves and gloomy branches oft
+      To overbrow a bleak and Alpine cliff."
+
+Sec. 19. Truly, it is unfair of Dante, that when he is going to use
+snow for a lovely image, and speak of it as melting away under
+heavenly sunshine, he must needs put it on the Apennines, not on the
+Alps:
+
+            "As snow that lies
+      Amidst the living rafters, on the back
+      Of Italy, congealed, when drifted high
+      And closely piled by rough Sclavonian blasts,
+      Breathe but the land whereon no shadow falls,
+      And straightway melting, it distils away,
+      Like a fire-washed taper; thus was I,
+      Without a sigh, or tear, consumed in heart."
+
+The reader will thank me for reminding him, though out of its proper
+order, of the exquisite passage of Scott which we have to compare
+with this:
+
+      "As snow upon the mountain's breast
+      Slides from the rock that gave it rest,
+      Sweet Ellen glided from her stay,
+      And at the monarch's feet she lay."
+
+Examine the context of this last passage, and its beauty is quite
+beyond praise; but note the northern love of rocks in the very first
+words I have to quote from Scott, "The rocks that gave it rest." Dante
+could not have thought of his "cut rocks" as giving rest even to snow.
+He must put it on the pine branches, if it is to be at peace.
+
+Sec. 20. There is only one more point to be noticed in the Dantesque
+landscape; namely, the feeling entertained by the poet towards the
+sky. And the love of mountains is so closely connected with the love
+of clouds, the sublimity of both depending much on their
+association, that having found Dante regardless of the Carrara
+mountains as seen from San Miniato, we may well expect to find him
+equally regardless of the clouds in which the sun sank behind them.
+Accordingly, we find that his only pleasure in the sky depends on
+its "white clearness,"--that turning into "bianca aspette di
+celestro" which is so peculiarly characteristic of fine days in
+Italy. His pieces of pure pale light are always exquisite. In the
+dawn on the purgatorial mountain, first, in its pale white, he sees
+the "tremola della marina"--trembling of the sea; then it becomes
+vermilion; and at last, near sunrise, orange. These are precisely
+the changes of a calm and perfect dawn. The scenery of Paradise
+begins with "Day added to day," the light of the sun so flooding the
+heavens, that "never rain nor river made lake so wide;" and
+throughout the Paradise all the beauty depends on spheres of light,
+or stars, never on clouds. But the pit of the Inferno is at first
+sight obscure, deep, and so _cloudy_ that at its bottom nothing
+could be seen. When Dante and Virgil reach the marsh in which the
+souls of those who have been angry and sad in their lives are for
+ever plunged, they find it covered with thick fog; and the condemned
+souls say to them,--
+
+                          "We once were sad,
+      In the _sweet air, made gladsome by the sun_.
+      Now in these murky settlings are we sad."
+
+Even the angel crossing the marsh to help them is annoyed by this
+bitter marsh smoke, "fummo acerbo," and continually sweeps it with
+his hand from before his face.
+
+Anger, on the purgatorial mountain, is in like manner imaged,
+because of its blindness and wildness, by the Alpine clouds. As they
+emerge from its mist they see the white light radiated through the
+fading folds of it; and, except this appointed cloud, no other can
+touch the mountain of purification.
+
+              "Tempest none, shower, hail, or snow,
+      Hoar-frost, or dewy moistness, higher falls,
+      Than that brief scale of threefold steps. Thick clouds,
+      Nor scudding rack, are ever seen, swift glance
+      Ne'er lightens, nor Thaumantian iris gleams."
+
+Dwell for a little while on this intense love of Dante for
+light,--taught, as he is at last by Beatrice, to gaze on the sun
+itself like an eagle,--and endeavor to enter into his equally
+intense detestation of all mist, rack of cloud, or dimness of rain;
+and then consider with what kind of temper he would have regarded a
+landscape of Copley Fielding's or passed a day in the Highlands. He
+has, in fact, assigned to the souls of the gluttonous no other
+punishment in the Inferno than perpetuity of Highland weather:
+
+                                    "Showers
+      Ceaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchanged
+      For ever, both in kind and in degree,--
+      Large hail, discolored water, sleety flaw,
+      Through the dim midnight air streamed down amain."
+
+Sec. 21. However, in this immitigable dislike of clouds, Dante goes
+somewhat beyond the general temper of his age. For although the calm
+sky was alone loved, and storm and rain were dreaded by all men,
+yet the white horizontal clouds of serene summer were regarded with
+great affection by all early painters, and considered as one of the
+accompaniments of the manifestation of spiritual power; sometimes,
+for theological reasons which we shall soon have to examine, being
+received, even without any other sign, as the types of blessing or
+Divine acceptance: and in almost every representation of the
+heavenly paradise, these level clouds are set by the early painters
+for its floor, or for thrones of its angels; whereas Dante retains
+steadily, through circle after circle, his cloudless thought, and
+concludes his painting of heaven, as he began it upon the
+purgatorial mountain, with the image of shadowless morning:
+
+      "I raised my eyes, and as at morn is seen
+      The horizon's eastern quarter to excel,
+      So likewise, that pacific Oriflamb
+      Glowed in the midmost, and toward every part,
+      With like gradation paled away its flame."
+
+But the best way of regarding this feeling of Dante's is as the
+ultimate and most intense expression of the love of light, color,
+and clearness, which, as we saw above, distinguished the mediaeval
+from the Greek on one side, and, as we shall presently see,
+distinguished him from the modern on the other. For it is evident
+that precisely in the degree in which the Greek was agriculturally
+inclined, in that degree the sight of clouds would become to him
+more acceptable than to the mediaeval knight, who only looked for the
+fine afternoons in which he might gather the flowers in his garden,
+and in no wise shared or imagined the previous anxieties of his
+gardener. Thus, when we find Ulysses comforted about Ithaca, by
+being told it had "plenty of rain," and the maids of Colonos
+boasting of their country for the same reason, we may be sure that
+they had some regard for clouds; and accordingly, except
+Aristophanes, of whom more presently, all the Greek poets speak
+fondly of the clouds, and consider them the fitting resting-places
+of the gods; including in their idea of clouds not merely the thin
+clear cirrus, but the rolling and changing volume of the
+thundercloud; nor even these only, but also the dusty whirlwind
+cloud of the earth, as in that noble chapter of Herodotus which
+tells us of the cloud, full of mystic voices, that rose out of the
+dust of Eleusis, and went down to Salamis. Clouds and rain were of
+course regarded with a like gratitude by the eastern and southern
+nations--Jews and Egyptians; and it is only among the northern
+mediaevals, with whom fine weather was rarely so prolonged as to
+occasion painful drought, or dangerous famine, and over whom the
+clouds broke coldly and fiercely when they came, that the love of
+serene light assumes its intense character, and the fear of tempest
+is gloomiest; so that the powers of the clouds which to the Greek
+foretold his conquest at Salamis, and with whom he fought in
+alliance, side by side with their lightnings, under the crest of
+Parnassus, seemed, in the heart of the Middle Ages, to be only under
+the dominion of the spirit of evil. I have reserved, for our last
+example of the landscape of Dante, the passage in which this
+conviction is expressed; a passage not less notable for its close
+description of what the writer feared and disliked, than for the
+ineffable tenderness, in which Dante is always raised as much above
+all other poets, as in softness the rose above all other flowers. It
+is the spirit of Buonconte da Montefeltro who speaks:
+
+      "Then said another: 'Ah, so may thy wish,
+      That takes thee o'er the mountain, be fulfilled,
+      As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine!
+      Of Montefeltro I; Buonconte I:
+      Giovanna, nor none else, have care for me;
+      Sorrowing with these I therefore go.' I thus:
+      From Campaldino's field what force or chance
+      Drew thee, that ne'er thy sepulchre was known?'
+      'Oh!' answered he, 'at Casentino's foot
+      A stream there courseth, named Archiano, sprung
+      In Apennine, above the hermit's seat.
+      E'en where its name is cancelled, there came I,
+      Pierced in the throat, fleeing away on foot,
+      And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speech
+      failed me; and finishing with Mary's name,
+      I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained.
+                        ...
+      _That evil will, which in his intellect
+      Still follows evil, came;_
+                           ... the valley, soon
+      As day was spent, _he covered o'er with cloud_.
+      From Pratomagno to the mountain range,
+      And stretched the sky above; so that the air,
+      Impregnate, changed to water. Fell the rain;
+      And to the fosses came all that the land
+      Contained not; and as mightiest streams are wont.
+      To the great river, with such headlong sweep,
+      Rushed, that nought stayed its course. My stiffened frame,
+      Laid at his mouth, the fell Archiano found,
+      And dashed it into Arno; from my breast
+      Loosening the cross, that of myself I made
+      When overcome with pain. He hurled me on,
+      Along the banks and bottom of his course;
+      Then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.'"
+
+Observe, Buonconte, as he dies, crosses his arms over his breast,
+pressing them together, partly in his pain, partly in prayer. His
+body thus lies by the river shore, as on a sepulchral monument, the
+arms folded into a cross. The rage of the river, under the influence
+of the evil demon, _unlooses this cross_, dashing the body supinely
+away, and rolling it over and over by bank and bottom. Nothing can
+be truer to the action of a stream in fury than these lines. And how
+desolate is it all! The lonely flight,--the grisly wound, "pierced
+in the throat,"--the death, without help or pity,--only the name of
+Mary on the lips,-and the cross folded over the heart. Then the rage
+of the demon and the river,--the noteless grave,--and, at last, even
+she who had been most trusted forgetting him,--
+
+      "Giovanna, none else have care for me."
+
+There is, I feel assured, nothing else like it in all the range of
+poetry; a faint and harsh echo of it, only, exists in one Scottish
+ballad, "The Twa Corbies."
+
+Here, then, I think, we may close our inquiry into the nature of the
+mediaeval landscape; not but that many details yet require to be worked
+out; but these will be best observed by recurrence to them, for
+comparison with similar details in modern landscape,--our principal
+purpose, the getting at the governing tones and temper of conception,
+being, I believe, now sufficiently accomplished. And I think that our
+subject may be best pursued by immediately turning from the mediaeval
+to the perfectly modern landscape; for although I have much to say
+respecting the transitional state of mind exhibited in the sixteenth
+and seventeenth centuries, I believe the transitions may be more
+easily explained after we have got clear sight of the extremes; and
+that by getting perfect and separate hold of the three great phases of
+art,--Greek, mediaeval, and modern,--we shall be enabled to trace, with
+least chance of error, those curious vacillations which brought us to
+the modern temper while vainly endeavoring to resuscitate the Greek. I
+propose, therefore, in the next chapter, to examine the spirit of
+modern landscape, as seen generally in modern painting, and especially
+in the poetry of Scott.
+
+  [79] It is an unpublished plate. I know only two impressions of it.
+
+  [80] (Cayley.) "Tutto di pietra, e di color ferrigno"--Inf. xviii. 2.
+
+  [81] "Maligne piagge grige."--Inf. vii. 108.
+
+  [82] It is in these subtle purples that even the more
+       elaborate passages of the earlier drawings are worked; as,
+       for instance, the Highland streams, spoken of in
+       Pre-Raphaelitism. Also, Turner could, by opposition, get what
+       color he liked out of a brown. I have seen cases in which he
+       had made it stand for the purest _rose_ light.
+
+  [83] The references are in Appendix I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+OF MODERN LANDSCAPE.
+
+
+Sec. 1. We turn our eyes, therefore, as boldly and as quickly as may
+be, from these serene fields and skies of mediaeval art, to the most
+characteristic examples of modern landscape. And, I believe, the
+first thing that will strike us, or that ought to strike us, is
+their _cloudiness_.
+
+Out of perfect light and motionless air, we find ourselves on a
+sudden brought under sombre skies, and into drifting wind; and, with
+fickle sunbeams flashing in our face, or utterly drenched with sweep
+of rain, we are reduced to track the changes of the shadows on the
+grass, or watch the rents of twilight through angry cloud. And we
+find that whereas all the pleasure of the mediaeval was in
+_stability_, _definiteness_, and _luminousness_, we are expected to
+rejoice in darkness, and triumph in mutability; to lay the
+foundation of happiness in things which momentarily change or fade;
+and to expect the utmost satisfaction and instruction from what is
+impossible to arrest, and difficult to comprehend.
+
+Sec. 2. We find, however, together with this general delight in breeze
+and darkness, much attention to the real form of clouds, and careful
+drawing of effects of mist: so that the appearance of objects, as
+seen through it, becomes a subject of science with us: and the
+faithful representation of that appearance is made of primal
+importance, under the name of aerial perspective. The aspects of
+sunset and sunrise, with all their attendant phenomena of cloud and
+mist, are watchfully delineated; and in ordinary daylight landscape,
+the sky is considered of so much importance, that a principal mass
+of foliage, or a whole foreground, is unhesitatingly thrown into
+shade merely to bring out the form of a white cloud. So that, if a
+general and characteristic name were needed for modern landscape
+art, none better could be invented than "the service of clouds."
+
+Sec. 3. And this name would, unfortunately, be characteristic of our
+art in more ways than one. In the last chapter, I said that all the
+Greeks spoke kindly about the clouds, except Aristophanes; and he, I
+am sorry to say (since his report is so unfavorable), is the only
+Greek who had studied them attentively. He tells us, first, that
+they are "great goddesses to idle men;" then, that they are
+"mistresses of disputings, and logic, and monstrosities, and noisy
+chattering;" declares that whoso believes in their divinity must
+first disbelieve in Jupiter, and place supreme power in the hands of
+an unknown god "Whirlwind;" and, finally, he displays their
+influence over the mind of one of their disciples, in his sudden
+desire "to speak ingeniously concerning smoke."
+
+There is, I fear, an infinite truth in this Aristophanic judgment
+applied to our modern cloud-worship. Assuredly, much of the love of
+mystery in our romances, our poetry, our art, and, above all, in our
+metaphysics, must come under that definition so long ago given by
+the great Greek, "speaking ingeniously concerning smoke." And much
+of the instinct, which, partially developed in painting, may be now
+seen throughout every mode of exertion of mind,--the easily
+encouraged doubt, easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and
+delight in the changing and the marvellous, as opposed to the old
+quiet serenity of social custom and religious faith,--is again
+deeply defined in those few words, the "dethroning of Jupiter," the
+"coronation of the whirlwind."
+
+Sec. 4. Nor of whirlwind merely, but also of darkness or ignorance
+respecting all stable facts. That darkening of the foreground to
+bring out the white cloud, is, in one aspect of it, a type of the
+subjection of all plain and positive fact, to what is uncertain and
+unintelligible. And as we examine farther into the matter, we shall
+be struck by another great difference between the old and modern
+landscape, namely, that in the old no one ever thought of drawing
+anything but as well _as he could_. That might not be _well_, as we
+have seen in the case of rocks; but it was as well as he _could_,
+and always distinctly. Leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was
+equally drawn with care and clearness, and its essential characters
+shown. If it was an oak tree, the acorns were drawn; if a flint
+pebble, its veins were drawn; if an arm of the sea, its fish were
+drawn; if a group of figures, their faces and dresses were drawn--to
+the very last subtlety of expression and end of thread that could be
+got into the space, far off or near. But now our ingenuity is all
+"concerning smoke." Nothing is truly drawn but that; all else is
+vague, slight, imperfect; got with as little pains as possible. You
+examine your closest foreground, and find no leaves; your largest
+oak, and find no acorns; your human figure, and find a spot of red
+paint instead of a face; and in all this, again and again, the
+Aristophanic words come true, and the clouds seem to be "great
+goddesses to idle men."
+
+Sec. 5. The next thing that will strike us, after this love of clouds, is
+the love of liberty. Whereas the mediaeval was always shutting himself
+into castles, and behind fosses, and drawing brickwork neatly, and
+beds of flowers primly, our painters delight in getting to the open
+fields and moors; abhor all hedges and moats; never paint anything but
+free-growing trees, and rivers gliding "at their own sweet will;"
+eschew formality down to the smallest detail; break and displace the
+brickwork which the mediaeval would have carefully cemented; leave
+unpruned the thickets he would have delicately trimmed; and, carrying
+the love of liberty even to license, and the love of wildness even to
+ruin, take pleasure at last in every aspect of age and desolation
+which emancipates the objects of nature from the government of
+men;--on the castle wall displacing its tapestry with ivy, and
+spreading, through the garden, the bramble for the rose.
+
+Sec. 6. Connected with this love of liberty we find a singular
+manifestation of love of mountains, and see our painters traversing
+the wildest places of the globe in order to obtain subjects with
+craggy foregrounds and purple distances. Some few of them remain
+content with pollards and flat land; but these are always men of
+third-rate order; and the leading masters, while they do not reject
+the beauty of the low grounds, reserve their highest powers to paint
+Alpine peaks or Italian promontories. And it is eminently
+noticeable, also, that this pleasure in the mountains is never
+mingled with fear, or tempered by a spirit of meditation, as with
+the mediaeval; but it is always free and fearless, brightly
+exhilarating, and wholly unreflective; so that the painter feels
+that his mountain foreground may be more consistently animated by a
+sportsman than a hermit; and our modern society in general goes to
+the mountains, not to fast, but to feast, and leaves their glaciers
+covered with chicken-bones and egg-shells.
+
+Sec. 7. Connected with this want of any sense of solemnity in mountain
+scenery, is a general profanity of temper in regarding all the rest
+of nature; that is to say, a total absence of faith in the presence
+of any deity therein. Whereas the mediaeval never painted a cloud,
+but with the purpose of placing an angel in it; and a Greek never
+entered a wood without expecting to meet a god in it; _we_ should
+think the appearance of an angel in the cloud wholly unnatural, and
+should be seriously surprised by meeting a god anywhere. Our chief
+ideas about the wood are connected with poaching. We have no belief
+that the clouds contain more than so many inches of rain or hail,
+and from our ponds and ditches expect nothing more divine than ducks
+and watercresses.
+
+Sec. 8. Finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a strong
+tendency to deny the sacred element of color, and make our boast in
+blackness. For though occasionally glaring, or violent, modern color
+is on the whole eminently sombre, tending continually to grey or
+brown, and by many of our best painters consistently falsified, with
+a confessed pride in what they call chaste or subdued tints; so
+that, whereas a mediaeval paints his sky bright blue, and his
+foreground bright green, gilds the towers of his castles, and
+clothes his figures with purple and white, we paint our sky grey,
+our foreground black, and our foliage brown, and think that enough
+is sacrificed to the sun in admitting the dangerous brightness of a
+scarlet cloak or a blue jacket.
+
+Sec. 9. These, I believe, are the principal points which would strike
+us instantly, if we were to be brought suddenly into an exhibition
+of modern landscapes out of a room filled with mediaeval work. It is
+evident that there are both evil and good in this change; but how
+much evil, or how much good, we can only estimate by considering, as
+in the former divisions of our inquiry, what are the real roots of
+the habits of mind which have caused them.
+
+[Sidenote: Distinctive characters of the modern mind:]
+
+And first, it is evident that the title "Dark Ages," given to the
+mediaeval centuries, is, respecting art, wholly inapplicable. They
+were, on the contrary, the bright ages; ours are the dark ones. I do
+not mean metaphysically, but literally. They were the ages of gold:
+ours are the ages of umber.
+
+[Sidenote: 1. Despondency arising from faithlessness.]
+
+This is partly mere mistake in us; we build brown brick walls, and
+wear brown coats, because we have been blunderingly taught to do so,
+and go on doing so mechanically. There is, however, also some cause
+for the change in our own tempers. On the whole, these are much
+_sadder_ ages than the early ones; not sadder in a noble and deep way,
+but in a dim, wearied way,--the way of ennui, and jaded intellect, and
+uncomfortableness of soul and body. The Middle Ages had their wars and
+agonies, but also intense delights. Their gold was dashed with blood;
+but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their life was interwoven with white
+and purple; ours is one seamless stuff of brown. Not that we are
+without apparent festivity, but festivity more or less forced,
+mistaken, embittered, incomplete--not of the heart. How wonderfully,
+since Shakspere's time, have we lost the power of laughing at bad
+jests! The very finish of our wit belies our gaiety.
+
+Sec. 10. The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, I believe,
+our want of faith. There never yet was a generation of men (savage or
+civilized) who, taken as a body, so wofully fulfilled the words,
+"having no hope, and without God in the world," as the present
+civilized European race. A Red Indian or Otaheitan savage has more
+sense of a Divine existence round him, or government over him, than
+the plurality of refined Londoners and Parisians; and those among us
+who may in some sense be said to believe, are divided almost without
+exception into two broad classes, Romanist and Puritan; who, but for
+the interference of the unbelieving portions of society, would, either
+of them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; the
+Romanist having always done so whenever he could, from the beginning
+of their separation, and the Puritan at this time holding himself in
+complacent expectation of the destruction of Rome by volcanic fire.
+Such division as this between persons nominally of one religion, that
+is to say, believing in the same God, and the same Revelation, cannot
+but become a stumbling-block of the gravest kind to all thoughtful and
+far-sighted men,--a stumbling-block which they can only surmount under
+the most favorable circumstances of early education. Hence, nearly all
+our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of
+them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the
+plurality in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what
+practical work lies ready to their hands. Most of our scientific men
+are in this last class; our popular authors either set themselves
+definitely against all religious form, pleading for simple truth and
+benevolence (Thackeray, Dickens), or give themselves up to bitter and
+fruitless statement of facts (De Balzac), or surface-painting (Scott),
+or careless blasphemy, sad or smiling (Byron, Beranger). Our earnest
+poets, and deepest thinkers, are doubtful and indignant (Tennyson,
+Carlyle); one or two, anchored, indeed, but anxious, or weeping
+(Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning); and of these two, the first is not so
+sure of his anchor, but that now and then it drags with him, even to
+make him cry out,--
+
+                        "Great God, I had rather be
+      A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn:
+        So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
+      Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn."
+
+In politics, religion is now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or
+affectation. Over German religious pictures the inscription, "See
+how Pious I am," can be read at a glance by any clear-sighted
+person. Over French and English religious pictures, the inscription,
+"See how Impious I am," is equally legible. All sincere and modest
+art is, among us, profane.[84]
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 11. 2. Levity from the same cause.]
+
+This faithlessness operates among us according to our tempers,
+producing either sadness or levity, and being the ultimate root
+alike of our discontents and of our wantonnesses. It is marvellous
+how full of contradiction it makes us; we are first dull, and seek
+for wild and lonely places because we have no heart for the garden;
+presently we recover our spirits, and build an assembly room among
+the mountains, because we have no reverence for the desert. I do not
+know if there be game on Sinai, but I am always expecting to hear of
+some one's shooting over it.
+
+Sec. 12. There is, however, another, and a more innocent root of our
+delight in wild scenery.
+
+[Sidenote: 3. Reactionary love of inanimate beauty.]
+
+All the Renaissance principles of art tended, as I have before often
+explained, to the setting Beauty above Truth, and seeking for it
+always at the expense of truth. And the proper punishment of such
+pursuit--the punishment which all the laws of the universe rendered
+inevitable--was, that those who thus pursued beauty should wholly lose
+sight of beauty. All the thinkers of the age, as we saw previously,
+declared that it did not exist. The age seconded their efforts, and
+banished beauty, so far as human effort could succeed in doing so,
+from the face of the earth, and the form of man. To powder the hair,
+to patch the cheek, to hoop the body, to buckle the foot, were all
+part and parcel of the same system which reduced streets to brick
+walls, and pictures to brown stains. One desert of Ugliness was
+extended before the eyes of mankind; and their pursuit of the
+beautiful, so recklessly continued, received unexpected consummation
+in high-heeled shoes and periwigs,--Gower Street, and Gaspar Poussin.
+
+Sec. 13. Reaction from this state was inevitable, if any true life was
+left in the races of mankind; and, accordingly, though still forced,
+by rule and fashion, to the producing and wearing all that is ugly,
+men steal out, half-ashamed of themselves for doing so, to the
+fields and mountains; and, finding among these the color, and
+liberty, and variety, and power, which are for ever grateful to
+them, delight in these to an extent never before known; rejoice in
+all the wildest shattering of the mountain side, as an opposition to
+Gower Street; gaze in a rapt manner at sunsets and sunrises, to see
+there the blue, and gold, and purple, which glow for them no longer
+on knight's armor or temple porch; and gather with care out of the
+fields, into their blotted herbaria, the flowers which the five
+orders of architecture have banished from their doors and casements.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 14. 4. Disdain of beauty in man.]
+
+The absence of care for personal beauty, which is another great
+characteristic of the age, adds to this feeling in a twofold way:
+first, by turning all reverent thoughts away from human nature; and
+making us think of men as ridiculous or ugly creatures, getting
+through the world as well as they can, and spoiling it in doing so;
+not ruling it in a kingly way and crowning all its loveliness. In
+the Middle Ages hardly anything but vice could be caricatured,
+because virtue was always visibly and personally noble; now virtue
+itself is apt to inhabit such poor human bodies, that no aspect of
+it is invulnerable to jest; and for all fairness we have to seek to
+the flowers, for all sublimity, to the hills.
+
+The same want of care operates, in another way, by lowering the
+standard of health, increasing the susceptibility to nervous or
+sentimental impressions, and thus adding to the other powers of
+nature over us whatever charm may be felt in her fostering the
+melancholy fancies of brooding idleness.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 15. 5. Romantic imagination of the past.]
+
+It is not, however, only to existing inanimate nature that our want
+of beauty in person and dress has driven us. The imagination of it,
+as it was seen in our ancestors, haunts us continually; and while we
+yield to the present fashions, or act in accordance with the dullest
+modern principles of economy and utility, we look fondly back to the
+manners of the ages of chivalry, and delight in painting, to the
+fancy, the fashions we pretend to despise, and the splendors we
+think it wise to abandon. The furniture and personages of our
+romance are sought, when the writer desires to please most easily,
+in the centuries which we profess to have surpassed in everything;
+the art which takes us into the present times is considered as both
+daring and degraded; and while the weakest words please us, and are
+regarded as poetry, which recall the manners of our forefathers, or
+of strangers, it is only as familiar and vulgar that we accept the
+description of our own.
+
+In this we are wholly different from all the races that preceded us.
+All other nations have regarded their ancestors with reverence as
+saints or heroes; but have nevertheless thought their own deeds and
+ways of life the fitting subjects for their arts of painting or of
+verse. We, on the contrary, regard our ancestors as foolish and
+wicked, but yet find our chief artistic pleasures in descriptions of
+their ways of life.
+
+The Greeks and mediaevals honored, but did not imitate, their
+forefathers; we imitate, but do not honor.
+
+[Sidenote: Sec. 16. 6. Interest in science.]
+
+[Sidenote: 7. Fear of war.]
+
+With this romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in history, and in
+external nature, the satisfaction it cannot find in ordinary life,
+we mingle a more rational passion, the due and just result of newly
+awakened powers of attention. Whatever may first lead us to the
+scrutiny of natural objects, that scrutiny never fails of its
+reward. Unquestionably they are intended to be regarded by us with
+both reverence and delight; and every hour we give to them renders
+their beauty more apparent, and their interest more engrossing.
+Natural science--which can hardly be considered to have existed
+before modern times--rendering our knowledge fruitful in
+accumulation and exquisite in accuracy, has acted for good or evil,
+according to the temper of the mind which received it; and though it
+has hardened the faithlessness of the dull and proud, has shown new
+grounds for reverence to hearts which were thoughtful and humble.
+The neglect of the art of war, while it has somewhat weakened and
+deformed the body,[85] has given us leisure and opportunity for
+studies to which, before, time and space were equally wanting; lives
+which once were early wasted on the battle field are now passed
+usefully in the study; nations which exhausted themselves in annual
+warfare now dispute with each other the discovery of new planets;
+and the serene philosopher dissects the plants, and analyzes the
+dust, of lands which were of old only traversed by the knight in
+hasty march, or by the borderer in heedless rapine.
+
+Sec. 17. The elements of progress and decline being thus strangely
+mingled in the modern mind, we might beforehand anticipate that one
+of the notable characters of our art would be its inconsistency;
+that efforts would be made in every direction, and arrested by every
+conceivable cause and manner of failure; that in all we did, it
+would become next to impossible to distinguish accurately the
+grounds for praise or for regret; that all previous canons of
+practice and methods of thought would be gradually overthrown, and
+criticism continually defied by successes which no one had expected,
+and sentiments which no one could define.
+
+Sec. 18. Accordingly, while, in our inquiries into Greek and mediaeval
+art, I was able to describe, in general terms, what all men did or
+felt, I find now many characters in many men; some, it seems to me,
+founded on the inferior and evanescent principles of modernism, on
+its recklessness, impatience, or faithlessness; others founded on
+its science, its new affection for nature, its love of openness and
+liberty. And among all these characters, good or evil, I see that
+some, remaining to us from old or transitional periods, do not
+properly belong to us, and will soon fade away; and others, though
+not yet distinctly developed, are yet properly our own, and likely
+to grow forward into greater strength.
+
+For instance: our reprobation of bright color is, I think, for the
+most part, mere affectation, and must soon be done away with.
+Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety, will indeed always express
+themselves through art in brown and grey, as in Rembrandt,
+Caravaggio, and Salvator; but we are not wholly vulgar, dull, or
+impious; nor, as moderns, are we necessarily obliged to continue so
+in any wise. Our greatest men, whether sad or gay, still delight,
+like the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues. The coloring of
+Scott and Byron is full and pure; that of Keats and Tennyson rich
+even to excess. Our practical failures in coloring are merely the
+necessary consequences of our prolonged want of practice during the
+periods of Renaissance affectation and ignorance; and the only
+durable difference between old and modern coloring, is the
+acceptance of certain hues, by the modern, which please him by
+expressing that melancholy peculiar to his more reflective or
+sentimental character, and the greater variety of them necessary to
+express his greater science.
+
+Sec. 19. Again: if we ever become wise enough to dress consistently and
+gracefully, to make health a principal object in education, and to
+render our streets beautiful with art, the external charm of past
+history will in great measure disappear. There is no essential
+reason, because we live after the fatal seventeenth century, that we
+should never again be able to confess interest in sculpture, or see
+brightness in embroidery; nor, because now we choose to make the
+night deadly with our pleasures, and the day with our labors,
+prolonging the dance till dawn, and the toil to twilight, that we
+should never again learn how rightly to employ the sacred trusts of
+strength, beauty, and time. Whatever external charm attaches itself
+to the past, would then be seen in proper subordination to the
+brightness of present life; and the elements of romance would exist,
+in the earlier ages, only in the attraction which must generally
+belong to whatever is unfamiliar; in the reverence which a noble
+nation always pays to its ancestors; and in the enchanted light
+which races, like individuals, must perceive in looking back to the
+days of their childhood.
+
+Sec. 20. Again: the peculiar levity with which natural scenery is
+regarded by a large number of modern minds cannot be considered as
+entirely characteristic of the age, inasmuch as it never can belong
+to its greatest intellects. Men of any high mental power must be
+serious, whether in ancient or modern days: a certain degree of
+reverence for fair scenery is found in all our great writers without
+exception,--even the one who has made us laugh oftenest, taking us
+to the valley of Chamouni, and to the sea beach, there to give peace
+after suffering, and change revenge into pity.[86] It is only the
+dull, the uneducated, or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet on
+the hill sides; and levity, as a ruling character, cannot be
+ascribed to the whole nation, but only to its holiday-making
+apprentices, and its House of Commons.
+
+Sec. 21. We need not, therefore, expect to find any single poet or
+painter representing the entire group of powers, weaknesses, and
+inconsistent instincts which govern or confuse our modern life. But
+we may expect that in the man who seems to be given by Providence as
+the type of the age (as Homer and Dante were given, as the types of
+classical and mediaeval mind), we shall find whatever is fruitful and
+substantial to be completely present, together with those of our
+weaknesses, which are indeed nationally characteristic, and
+compatible with general greatness of mind; just as the weak love of
+fences, and dislike of mountains, were found compatible with Dante's
+greatness in other respects.
+
+Sec. 22. Farther: as the admiration of mankind is found, in our times,
+to have in great part passed from men to mountains, and from human
+emotion to natural phenomena, we may anticipate that the great
+strength of art will also be warped in this direction; with this
+notable result for us, that whereas the greatest painters or painter
+of classical and mediaeval periods, being wholly devoted to the
+representation of humanity, furnished us with but little to examine
+in landscape, the greatest painters or painter of modern times will
+in all probability be devoted to landscape principally; and farther,
+because in representing human emotion words surpass painting, but in
+representing natural scenery painting surpasses words, we may
+anticipate also that the painter and poet (for convenience' sake I
+here use the words in opposition) will somewhat change their
+relations of rank in illustrating the mind of the age; that the
+painter will become of more importance, the poet of less; and that
+the relations between the men who are the types and firstfruits of
+the age in word and work,--namely, Scott and Turner,--will be, in
+many curious respects, different from those between Homer and
+Phidias, or Dante and Giotto.
+
+It is this relation which we have now to examine.
+
+Sec. 23. And, first, I think it probable that many readers may be
+surprised at my calling Scott the great representative of the mind
+of the age in literature. Those who can perceive the intense
+penetrative depth of Wordsworth, and the exquisite finish and
+melodious power of Tennyson, may be offended at my placing in higher
+rank that poetry of careless glance, and reckless rhyme, in which
+Scott poured out the fancies of his youth; and those who are
+familiar with the subtle analysis of the French novelists, or who
+have in any wise submitted themselves to the influence of German
+philosophy, may be equally indignant at my ascribing a principality
+to Scott among the literary men of Europe, in an age which has
+produced De Balzac and Goethe.
+
+So also in painting, those who are acquainted with the sentimental
+efforts made at present by the German religious and historical
+schools, and with the disciplined power and learning of the French,
+will think it beyond all explanation absurd to call a painter of
+light water-color landscapes, eighteen inches by twelve, the first
+representative of the arts of the age. I can only crave the reader's
+patience, and his due consideration of the following reasons for my
+doing so, together with those advanced in the farther course of the
+work.
+
+Sec. 24. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility.
+I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his own power, or hesitation in
+speaking of his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation
+between what _he_ can do and say, and the rest of the world's
+sayings and doings. All great men not only know their business, but
+usually know that they know it; and are not only right in their main
+opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them; only,
+they do not think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows
+he can build a good dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to
+one who had found fault with his work, "It cannot be better done;"
+Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that
+would have puzzled anybody else;--only they do not expect their
+fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them; they have a
+curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is
+not _in_ them, but _through_ them; that they could not do or be
+anything else than God-made them. And they see something divine and
+God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly,
+incredibly merciful.
+
+Sec. 25. Now, I find among the men of the present age, as far as I know
+them, this character in Scott and Turner preeminently; I am not
+sure if it is not in them alone. I do not find Scott talking about
+the dignity of literature, nor Turner about the dignity of painting.
+They do their work, feeling that they cannot well help it; the story
+must be told, and the effect put down; and if people like it, well
+and good; and if not, the world will not be much the worse.
+
+I believe a very different impression of their estimate of
+themselves and their doings will be received by any one who reads
+the conversations of Wordsworth or Goethe. The _slightest_
+manifestation of jealousy or self-complacency is enough to mark a
+second-rate character of the intellect; and I fear that especially
+in Goethe, such manifestations are neither few nor slight.
+
+Sec. 26. Connected with this general humility is the total absence of
+affectation in these men,--that is to say, of any assumption of
+manner or behavior in their work, in order to attract attention. Not
+but that they are mannerists both. Scott's verse is strongly
+mannered, and Turner's oil painting; but the manner of it is
+necessitated by the feelings of the men, entirely natural to both,
+never exaggerated for the sake of show. I hardly know any other
+literary or pictorial work of the day which is not in some degree
+affected. I am afraid Wordsworth was often affected in his
+simplicity, and De Balzac in his finish. Many fine French writers
+are affected in their reserve, and full of stage tricks in placing
+of sentences. It is lucky if in German writers we ever find so much
+as a sentence without affectation. I know no painters without it,
+except one or two Pre-Raphaelites (chiefly Holman Hunt), and some
+simple water-color painters, as William Hunt, William Turner of
+Oxford, and the late George Robson; but these last have no
+invention, and therefore by our fourth canon, Chap. III. sec. 21.,
+are excluded from the first rank of artists; and of the
+Pre-Raphaelites there is here no question, as they in no wise
+represent the modern school.
+
+Sec. 27. Again: another very important, though not infallible, test of
+greatness is, as we have often said, the appearance of Ease with
+which the thing is done. It may be that, as with Dante and Leonardo,
+the finish given to the work effaces the evidence of ease; but where
+the ease is manifest, as in Scott, Turner, and Tintoret; and the
+thing done is very noble, it is a strong reason for placing the men
+above those who confessedly work with great pains. Scott writing his
+chapter or two before breakfast--not retouching, Turner finishing a
+whole drawing in a forenoon before he goes out to shoot (providing
+always the chapter and drawing be good), are instantly to be set
+above men who confessedly have spent the day over the work, and
+think the hours well spent if it has been a little mended between
+sunrise and sunset. Indeed, it is no use for men to think to appear
+great by working fast, dashing, and scrawling; the thing they do
+must be good and great, cost what time it may; but if it _be_ so,
+and they have honestly and unaffectedly done it with _no effort_, it
+is probably a greater and better thing than the result of the
+hardest efforts of others.
+
+Sec. 28. Then, as touching the kind of work done by these two men, the
+more I think of it I find this conclusion more impressed upon
+me,--that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is
+to _see_ something, and tell what it _saw_ in a plain way. Hundreds
+of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think
+for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and
+religion,--all in one.
+
+Therefore, finding the world of Literature more or less divided into
+Thinkers and Seers, I believe we shall find also that the Seers are
+wholly the greater race of the two. A true Thinker, who has practical
+purpose in his thinking, and is sincere, as Plato, or Carlyle, or
+Helps, becomes in some sort a seer, and must be always of infinite use
+in his generation; but an affected Thinker, who supposes his thinking
+of any other importance than as it tends to work, is about the vainest
+kind of person that can be found in the occupied classes. Nay, I
+believe that metaphysicians and philosophers are, on the whole, the
+greatest troubles the world has got to deal with; and that while a
+tyrant or bad man is of some use in teaching people submission or
+indignation, and a thoroughly idle man is only harmful in setting an
+idle example, and communicating to other lazy people his own lazy
+misunderstandings, busy metaphysicians are always entangling _good_
+and _active_ people, and weaving cobwebs among the finest wheels of
+the world's business; and are as much as possible, by all prudent
+persons, to be brushed out of their way, like spiders, and the meshed
+weed that has got into the Cambridgeshire canals, and other such
+impediments to barges and business. And if we thus clear the
+metaphysical element out of modern literature, we shall find its bulk
+amazingly diminished, and the claims of the remaining writers, or of
+those whom we have thinned by this abstraction of their straw
+stuffing, much more easily adjusted.[87]
+
+Sec. 29. Again: the mass of sentimental literature, concerned with the
+analysis and description of emotion, headed by the poetry of Byron,
+is altogether of lower rank than the literature which merely
+describes what it saw. The true Seer always feels as intensely as
+any one else; but he does not much describe his feelings. He tells
+you whom he met, and what they said; leaves you to make out, from
+that, what they feel, and what he feels, but goes into little
+detail. And, generally speaking, pathetic writing and careful
+explanation of passion are quite easy, compared with this plain
+recording of what people said or did, or with the right invention of
+what they are likely to say and do; for this reason, that to invent
+a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is
+necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in
+it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens;
+which to do requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a
+separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel
+it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or
+that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the
+feelings of somebody sitting on the other side of the table. Even,
+therefore, when this sentimental literature is first rate, as in
+passages of Byron, Tennyson, and Keats, it ought not to be ranked so
+high as the Creative; and though perfection, even in narrow fields,
+is perhaps as rare as in the wider, and it may be as long before we
+have another In Memoriam as another Guy Mannering, I unhesitatingly
+receive as a greater manifestation of power the right invention of a
+few sentences spoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their
+supper-table, than the most tender and passionate melodies of the
+self-examining verse.
+
+Sec. 30. Having, therefore, cast metaphysical writers out of our way,
+and sentimental writers into the second rank, I do not think Scott's
+supremacy among those who remain will any more be doubtful; nor
+would it, perhaps, have been doubtful before, had it not been
+encumbered by innumerable faults and weaknesses. But it is
+preeminently in these faults and weaknesses that Scott is
+representative of the mind of his age: and because he is the
+greatest man born amongst us, and intended for the enduring type of
+us, all our principal faults must be laid on his shoulders, and he
+must bear down the dark marks to the latest ages; while the smaller
+men, who have some special work to do, perhaps not so much belonging
+to this age as leading out of it to the next, are often kept
+providentially quit of the encumbrances which they had not strength
+to sustain, and are much smoother and pleasanter to look at, in
+their way; only that is a smaller way.
+
+Sec. 31. Thus, the most startling fault of the age being its
+faithlessness, it is necessary that its greatest man should be
+faithless. Nothing is more notable or sorrowful in Scott's mind than
+its incapacity of steady belief in anything. He cannot even resolve
+hardily to believe in a ghost, or a water-spirit; always explains
+them away in an apologetic manner, not believing, all the while,
+even his own explanation. He never can clearly ascertain whether
+there is anything behind the arras but rats; never draws sword, and
+thrusts at it for life or death; but goes on looking at it timidly,
+and saying, "it must be the wind." He is educated a Presbyterian,
+and remains one, because it is the most sensible thing he can do if
+he is to live in Edinburgh; but he thinks Romanism more picturesque,
+and profaneness more gentlemanly: does not see that anything affects
+human life but love, courage, and destiny; which are, indeed, not
+matters of faith at all, but of sight. Any gods but those are very
+misty in outline to him; and when the love is laid ghastly in poor
+Charlotte's coffin; and the courage is no more of use,--the pen
+having fallen from between the fingers; and destiny is sealing the
+scroll,--the God-light is dim in the tears that fall on it.
+
+He is in all this the epitome of his epoch.
+
+Sec. 32. Again: as another notable weakness of the age is its habit of
+looking back, in a romantic and passionate idleness, to the past ages,
+not understanding them all the while, nor really desiring to
+understand them, so Scott gives up nearly the half of his intellectual
+power to a fond, yet purposeless, dreaming over the past, and spends
+half his literary labors in endeavors to revive it, not in reality,
+but on the stage of fiction; endeavors which were the best of the
+kind that modernism made, but still successful only so far as Scott
+put, under the old armor, the everlasting human nature which he knew;
+and totally unsuccessful, so far as concerned the painting of the
+armor itself, which he knew _not_. The excellence of Scott's work is
+precisely in proportion to the degree in which it is sketched from
+present nature. His familiar life is inimitable; his quiet scenes of
+introductory conversation, as the beginning of Rob Roy and
+Redgauntlet, and all his living Scotch characters, mean or noble, from
+Andrew Fairservice to Jeanie Deans, are simply right, and can never be
+bettered. But his romance and antiquarianism, his knighthood and
+monkery, are all false, and he knows them to be false; does not care
+to make them earnest; enjoys them for their strangeness, but laughs at
+his own antiquarianism, all through his own third novel,--with
+exquisite modesty indeed, but with total misunderstanding of the
+function of an Antiquary. He does not see how anything is to be got
+out of the past but confusion, old iron on drawingroom chairs, and
+serious inconvenience to Dr. Heavysterne.
+
+Sec. 33. Again: more than any age that had preceded it, ours had been
+ignorant of the meaning of the word "Art." It had not a single fixed
+principle, and what unfixed principles it worked upon were all wrong.
+It was necessary that Scott should know nothing of art. He neither
+cared for painting nor sculpture, and was totally incapable of forming
+a judgment about them. He had some confused love of Gothic
+architecture, because it was dark, picturesque, old, and like nature;
+but could not tell the worst from the best, and built for himself
+perhaps the most incongruous and ugly pile that gentlemanly modernism
+ever designed; marking, in the most curious and subtle way, that
+mingling of reverence with irreverence which is so striking in the
+age; he reverences Melrose, yet casts one of its piscinas, puts a
+modern steel grate into it, and makes it his fireplace. Like all pure
+moderns, he supposes the Gothic barbarous, notwithstanding his love of
+it; admires, in an equally ignorant way, totally opposite styles; is
+delighted with the new town of Edinburgh; mistakes its dulness for
+purity of taste, and actually compares it, in its deathful formality
+of street, as contrasted with the rudeness of the old town, to
+Britomart taking off her armor.
+
+Sec. 34. Again: as in reverence and irreverence, so in levity and
+melancholy, we saw that the spirit of the age was strangely
+interwoven. Therefore, also, it is necessary that Scott should be
+light, careless, unearnest, and yet eminently sorrowful. Throughout
+all his work there is no evidence of any purpose but to while away
+the hour. His life had no other object than the pleasure of the
+instant, and the establishing of a family name. All his thoughts
+were, in their outcome and end, less than nothing, and vanity. And
+yet, of all poetry that I know, none is so sorrowful as Scott's.
+Other great masters are pathetic in a resolute and predetermined
+way, when they choose; but, in their own minds, are evidently stern,
+or hopeful, or serene; never really melancholy. Even Byron is rather
+sulky and desperate than melancholy; Keats is sad because he is
+sickly; Shelley because he is impious; but Scott is inherently and
+consistently sad. Around all his power, and brightness, and
+enjoyment of eye and heart, the far-away AEolian knell is for ever
+sounding; there is not one of those loving or laughing glances of
+his but it is brighter for the film of tears; his mind is like one
+of his own hill rivers,--it is white, and flashes in the sun fairly,
+careless, as it seems, and hasty in its going, but
+
+      "Far beneath, where slow they creep
+      From pool to eddy, dark and deep,
+      Where alders moist, and willows weep,
+          You hear her streams repine."
+
+Life begins to pass from him very early; and while Homer sings
+cheerfully in his blindness, and Dante retains his courage, and
+rejoices in hope of Paradise, through all his exile, Scott, yet
+hardly past his youth, lies pensive in the sweet sunshine and among
+the harvest of his native hills.
+
+      "Blackford, on whose uncultured breast,
+        Among the broom, and thorn, and whin,
+      A truant boy, I sought the nest,
+      Or listed as I lay at rest,
+        While rose on breezes thin
+      The murmur of the city crowd,
+      And, from his steeple jangling loud,
+        St. Giles's mingling din!
+      Now, from the summit to the plain,
+      Waves all the hill with yellow grain;
+        And on the landscape as I look,
+      Nought do I see unchanged remain,
+        Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook;
+      To me they make a heavy moan
+      Of early friendships past and gone."
+
+Sec. 35. Such, then, being the weaknesses which it was necessary that
+Scott should share with his age, in order that he might sufficiently
+represent it, and such the grounds for supposing him, in spite of
+all these weaknesses, the greatest literary man whom that age
+produced, let us glance at the principal points in which his view of
+landscape differs from that of the mediaevals.
+
+I shall not endeavor now, as I did with Homer and Dante, to give a
+complete analysis of all the feelings which appear to be traceable
+in Scott's allusions to landscape scenery,--for this would require a
+volume,--but only to indicate the main points of differing character
+between his temper and Dante's. Then we will examine in detail, not
+the landscape of literature, but that of painting, which must, of
+course, be equally, or even in a higher degree, characteristic of
+the age.
+
+Sec. 36. And, first, observe Scott's habit of looking at nature neither
+as dead, or merely material, in the way that Homer regards it, nor
+as altered by his own feelings, in the way that Keats and Tennyson
+regard it, but as having an animation and pathos of _its own_,
+wholly irrespective of human presence or passion,--an animation
+which Scott loves and sympathizes with, as he would with a fellow
+creature, forgetting himself altogether, and subduing his own
+humanity before what seems to him the power of the landscape.
+
+      "Yon lonely thorn,--would he could tell
+      The changes of his parent dell,
+      Since he, so grey and stubborn now,
+      Waved in each breeze a sapling bough!
+      Would he could tell, how deep the shade
+      A thousand mingled branches made,
+      How broad the shadows of the oak,
+      How clung the rowan to the rock,
+      And through the foliage showed his head,
+      With narrow leaves and berries red!"
+
+Scott does not dwell on the grey stubbornness of the thorn, because he
+himself is at that moment disposed to be dull, or stubborn; neither on
+the cheerful peeping forth of the rowan, because he himself is that
+moment cheerful or curious: but he perceives them both with the kind
+of interest that he would take in an old man, or a climbing boy;
+forgetting himself, in sympathy with either age or youth.
+
+      "And from the grassy slope he sees
+      The Greta flow to meet the Tees,
+      Where issuing from her darksome bed,
+      She caught the morning's eastern red,
+      And through the softening vale below
+      Rolled her bright waves in rosy glow,
+      All blushing to her bridal bed,
+      Like some shy maid, in convent bred;
+          While linnet, lark, and blackbird gay
+      Sing forth her nuptial roundelay."
+
+Is Scott, or are the persons of his story, gay at this moment? Far
+from it. Neither Scott nor Risingham are happy, but the Greta is;
+and all Scott's sympathy is ready for the Greta, on the instant.
+
+Sec. 37. Observe, therefore, this is not _pathetic_ fallacy; for there
+is no passion in _Scott_ which alters nature. It is not the lover's
+passion, making him think the larkspurs are listening for his lady's
+foot; it is not the miser's passion, making him think that dead
+leaves are falling coins; but it is an inherent and continual habit
+of thought, which Scott shares with the moderns in general, being,
+in fact, nothing else than the instinctive sense which men must have
+of the Divine presence, not formed into distinct belief. In the
+Greek it created, as we saw, the faithfully believed gods of the
+elements: in Dante and the mediaevals, it formed the faithfully
+believed angelic presence; in the modern, it creates no perfect
+form, does not apprehend distinctly any Divine being or operation;
+but only a dim, slightly credited animation in the natural object,
+accompanied with great interest and affection for it. This feeling
+is quite universal with us, only varying in depth according to the
+greatness of the heart that holds it; and in Scott, being more than
+usually intense, and accompanied with infinite affection and
+quickness of sympathy, it enables him to conquer all tendencies to
+the pathetic fallacy, and, instead of making Nature anywise
+subordinate to himself, he makes himself subordinate to
+_her_--follows her lead simply--does not venture to bring his own
+cares and thoughts into her pure and quiet presence--paints her in
+her simple and universal truth, adding no result of momentary
+passion or fancy, and appears, therefore, at first shallower than
+other poets, being in reality wider and healthier. "What am I?" he
+says continually, "that I should trouble this sincere nature with my
+thoughts. I happen to be feverish and depressed, and I could see a
+great many sad and strange things in those waves and flowers; but I
+have no business to see such things. Gay Greta! sweet harebells!
+_you_ are not sad nor strange to most people; you are but bright
+water and blue blossoms; you shall not be anything else to me,
+except that I cannot help thinking you are a little alive,--no one
+can help thinking that." And thus, as Nature is bright, serene, or
+gloomy, Scott takes her temper, and paints her as she is; nothing of
+himself being ever intruded, except that far-away Eolian tone, of
+which he is unconscious; and sometimes a stray syllable or two, like
+that about Blackford Hill, distinctly stating personal feeling, but
+all the more modestly for that distinctness and for the clear
+consciousness that it is not the chiming brook, nor the cornfields,
+that are sad, but only the boy that rests by them; so returning on
+the instant to reflect, in all honesty, the image of Nature as she
+is meant by all to be received; nor that in fine words, but in the
+first that come; nor with comment of far-fetched thoughts, but with
+easy thoughts, such as all sensible men ought to have in such
+places, only spoken sweetly; and evidently also with an undercurrent
+of more profound reflection, which here and there murmurs for a
+moment, and which I think, if we choose, we may continually pierce
+down to, and drink deeply from, but which Scott leaves us to seek,
+or shun, at our pleasure.
+
+Sec. 38. And in consequence of this unselfishness and humility, Scott's
+enjoyment of Nature is incomparably greater than that of any other
+poet I know. All the rest carry their cares to her, and begin
+maundering in her ears about their own affairs. Tennyson goes out on
+a furzy common, and sees it is calm autumn sunshine, but it gives
+him no pleasure. He only remembers that it is
+
+            "Dead calm in that noble breast
+      Which heaves but with the heaving deep."
+
+He sees a thundercloud in the evening, and _would_ have "doted and
+pored" on it, but cannot, for fear it should bring the ship bad
+weather. Keats drinks the beauty of Nature violently; but has no more
+real sympathy with her than he has with a bottle of claret. His palate
+is fine; but he "bursts joy's grape against it," gets nothing but
+misery, and a bitter taste of dregs out of his desperate draught.
+
+Byron and Shelley are nearly the same, only with less truth of
+perception, and even more troublesome selfishness. Wordsworth is more
+like Scott, and understands how to be happy, but yet cannot altogether
+rid himself of the sense that he is a philosopher, and ought always to
+be saying something wise. He has also a vague notion that Nature would
+not be able to get on well without Wordsworth; and finds a
+considerable part of his pleasure in looking at himself as well as at
+her. But with Scott the love is entirely humble and unselfish. "I,
+Scott, am nothing, and less than nothing; but these crags, and heaths,
+and clouds, how great they are, how lovely, how for ever to be
+beloved, only for their own silent, thoughtless sake!"
+
+Sec. 39. This pure passion for nature in its abstract being, is still
+increased in its intensity by the two elements above taken notice
+of,--the love of antiquity, and the love of color and beautiful form,
+mortified in our streets, and seeking for food in the wilderness and
+the ruin: both feelings, observe, instinctive in Scott from his
+childhood, as everything that makes a man great is always.
+
+      "And well the lonely infant knew
+      Recesses where the wallflower grew,
+      And honeysuckle loved to crawl
+      Up the long crag and ruined wall.
+      I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
+      The sun in all its round surveyed."
+
+Not that these could have been instinctive in a child in the Middle
+Ages. The sentiments of a people increase or diminish in intensity
+from generation to generation,--every disposition of the parents
+affecting the frame of the mind in their offspring: the soldier's
+child is born to be yet more a soldier, and the politician's to be
+still more a politician; even the slightest colors of sentiment and
+affection are transmitted to the heirs of life; and the crowning
+expression of the mind of a people is given when some infant of
+highest capacity, and sealed with the impress of this national
+character, is born where providential circumstances permit the full
+development of the powers it has received straight from Heaven, and
+the passions which it has inherited from its fathers.
+
+Sec. 40. This love of ancientness, and that of natural beauty,
+associate themselves also in Scott with the love of liberty, which
+was indeed at the root even of all his Jacobite tendencies in
+politics. For, putting aside certain predilections about landed
+property, and family name, and "gentlemanliness" in the club sense
+of the word,--respecting which I do not now inquire whether they
+were weak or wise,--the main element which makes Scott like
+Cavaliers better than Puritans is, that he thinks the former _free_
+and _masterful_ as well as loyal; and the latter _formal_ and
+_slavish_. He is loyal, not so much in respect for law, as in
+unselfish love for the king; and his sympathy is quite as ready for
+any active borderer who breaks the law, or fights the king, in what
+Scott thinks a generous way, as for the king himself. Rebellion of a
+rough, free, and bold kind he is always delighted by; he only
+objects to rebellion on principle and in form: bare-headed and
+open-throated treason he will abet to any extent, but shrinks from
+it in a peaked hat and starched collar: nay, politically, he only
+delights in kingship itself, because he looks upon it as the head
+and centre of liberty; and thinks that, keeping hold of a king's
+hand, one may get rid of the cramps and fences of law; and that the
+people may be governed by the whistle, as a Highland clan on the
+open hill-side, instead of being shut up into hurdled folds or
+hedged fields, as sheep or cattle left masterless.
+
+Sec. 41. And thus nature becomes dear to Scott in a threefold way: dear
+to him, first, as containing those remains or memories of the past,
+which he cannot find in cities, and giving hope of Praetorian mound
+or knight's grave, in every green slope and shade of its desolate
+places;--dear, secondly, in its moorland liberty, which has for him
+just as high a charm as the fenced garden had for the mediaeval:
+
+      "For I was wayward, bold, and wild,
+      A self-willed imp--a grandame's child;
+      But, half a plague, and half a jest,
+      Was still endured, beloved, caressed.
+      For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask
+      The classic poet's well-conned task?
+      Nay, Erskine, nay. On the wild hill
+      Let the wild heathbell flourish still;
+      Cherish the tulip, prune the vine;
+      But freely let the woodbine twine,
+      And leave untrimmed the eglantine;"
+
+--and dear to him, finally, in that perfect beauty, denied alike in
+cities and in men, for which every modern heart had begun at last to
+thirst, and Scott's, in its freshness and power, of all men's, most
+earnestly.
+
+Sec. 42. And in this love of beauty, observe, that (as I said we might
+except) the love of _color_ is a leading element, his healthy mind
+being incapable of losing, under any modern false teaching, its joy
+in brilliancy of hue. Though not so subtle a colorist as Dante,
+which, under the circumstances of the age, he could not be, he
+depends quite as much upon color for his power or pleasure. And, in
+general, if he does not mean to say much about things, the _one_
+character which he will give is color, using it with the most
+perfect mastery and faithfulness, up to the point of possible modern
+perception. For instance, if he has a sea-storm to paint in a single
+line, he does not, as a feebler poet would probably have done, use
+any expression about the temper or form of the waves; does not call
+them angry or mountainous. He is content to strike them out with two
+dashes of Tintoret's favorite colors:
+
+      "_The blackening wave edged with white_;
+      To inch and rock the seamews fly."
+
+There is no form in this. Nay, the main virtue of it is, that it
+gets rid of all form. The dark raging of the sea--what form has
+that? But out of the cloud of its darkness those lightning flashes
+of the foam, coming at their terrible intervals--you need no more.
+
+Again: where he has to describe tents mingled among oaks, he says
+nothing about the form of either tent or tree, but only gives the
+two strokes of color:
+
+      "Thousand pavilions, _white as snow_,
+      _Chequered_ the borough moor below,
+      Oft giving way, where still there stood
+      Some relics of the old oak wood,
+      That darkly huge did intervene,
+      _And tamed the glaring white with green_."
+
+Again: of tents at Flodden:
+
+      "Next morn the Baron climbed the tower,
+      To view, afar, the Scottish power,
+        Encamped on Flodden edge.
+      The white pavilions made a show,
+      Like remnants of the winter snow,
+        Along the dusky ridge."
+
+Again: of trees mingled with dark rocks:
+
+      "Until, where Teith's young waters roll
+      Betwixt him and a wooded knoll,
+      That graced the _sable_ strath with _green_,
+      The chapel of St. Bride was seen."
+
+Again: there is hardly any form, only smoke and color, in his
+celebrated description of Edinburgh:
+
+      "The wandering eye could o'er it go,
+      And mark the distant city glow
+        With gloomy splendor red;
+      For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,
+      That round her sable turrets flow,
+        The morning beams were shed,
+      And tinged them with a lustre proud,
+      Like that which streaks a thundercloud.
+      Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
+      Where the huge castle holds its state,
+        And all the steep slope down,
+      Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
+      Piled deep and massy, close and high,
+        Mine own romantic town!
+      But northward far with purer blaze,
+      On Ochil mountains fell the rays,
+      And as each heathy top they kissed,
+      It gleamed a purple amethyst.
+      Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;
+      Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law:
+        And, broad between them rolled,
+      The gallant Frith the eye might note,
+      Whose islands on its bosom float,
+        Like emeralds chased in gold."
+
+I do not like to spoil a fine passage by italicizing it; but
+observe, the only hints at form, given throughout, are in the
+somewhat vague words, "ridgy," "massy," "close," and "high;" the
+whole being still more obscured by modern mystery, in its most
+tangible form of smoke. But the _colors_ are all definite; note the
+rainbow band of them--gloomy or dusky red, sable (pure black),
+amethyst (pure purple), green, and gold--a noble chord throughout;
+and then, moved doubtless less by the smoky than the amethystine
+part of the group,
+
+      "Fitz Eustace' heart felt closely pent,
+      The spur he to his charger lent,
+        And raised his bridle hand.
+      And making demivolte in air,
+      Cried, 'Where's the coward would not dare
+        To fight for such a laud?'"
+
+I need not multiply examples: the reader can easily trace for
+himself, through verse familiar to us all, the force of these color
+instincts. I will therefore add only two passages, not so completely
+known by heart as most of the poems in which they occur.
+
+      "'Twas silence all. He laid him down
+      Where purple heath profusely strown,
+      And throatwort, with its azure bell,
+      And moss and thyme his cushion swell.
+      There, spent with toil, he listless eyed
+      The course of Greta's playful tide;
+      Beneath her banks, now eddying dun,
+      Now brightly gleaming to the sun,
+      As, dancing over rock and stone,
+      In yellow light her currents shone,
+      Matching in hue the favorite gem
+      Of Albin's mountain diadem.
+      Then tired to watch the current play,
+      He turned his weary eyes away
+      To where the bank opposing showed
+      Its huge square cliffs through shaggy wood.
+      One, prominent above the rest,
+      Reared to the sun its pale grey breast;
+      Around its broken summit grew
+      The hazel rude, and sable yew;
+      A thousand varied lichens dyed
+      Its waste and weather-beaten side;
+      And round its rugged basis lay,
+      By time or thunder rent away,
+      Fragments, that, from its frontlet torn,
+      Were mantled now by verdant thorn."
+
+Sec. 43. Note, first, what an exquisite chord of color is given in the
+succession of this passage. It begins with purple and blue; then
+passes to gold, or cairngorm color (topaz color); then to _pale
+grey_, through which the yellow passes into black; and the black,
+through broken dyes of lichen, into green. Note, secondly,--what is
+indeed so manifest throughout Scott's landscape as hardly to need
+pointing out,--the love of rocks, and true understanding of their
+colors and characters, opposed as it is in every conceivable way to
+Dante's hatred and misunderstanding of them.
+
+I have already traced, in various places, most of the causes of this
+great difference: namely, first, the ruggedness of northern temper
+(compare Sec. 8. of the chapter on the Nature of Gothic in the Stones
+of Venice); then the really greater beauty of the northern rocks, as
+noted when we were speaking of the Apennine limestone; then the need
+of finding beauty among them, if it were to be found anywhere,--no
+well-arranged colors being any more to be seen in dress, but only in
+rock lichens; and, finally, the love of irregularity, liberty, and
+power, springing up in glorious opposition to laws of prosody,
+fashion, and the five orders.
+
+Sec. 44. The other passage I have to quote is still more interesting;
+because it has _no form_ in it _at all_ except in one word
+(chalice), but wholly composes its imagery either of color, or of
+that delicate half-believed life which we have seen to be so
+important an element in modern landscape.
+
+      "The summer dawn's reflected hue
+      _To purple changed Loch Katrine blue_;
+      Mildly and soft the western breeze
+      Just kissed the lake; just stirred the trees;
+      _And the pleased lake, like maiden coy_,
+      _Trembled, but dimpled not, for joy_;
+      The mountain-shadows on her breast
+      Were neither broken nor at rest;
+      In bright uncertainty they lie,
+      Like future joys to Fancy's eye.
+      The water-lily to the light
+      Her chalice reared of silver bright:
+      The doe awoke, and to the lawn,
+      Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn;
+      The grey mist left the mountain side;
+      The torrent showed its glistening pride;
+      Invisible in flecked sky,
+      The lark sent down her revelry;
+      The blackbird and the speckled thrush
+      Good-morrow gave from brake and bush;
+      In answer cooed the cushat dove
+      Her notes of peace, and rest, and love."
+
+Two more considerations are, however, suggested by the above
+passage. The first, that the love of natural history, excited by the
+continual attention now given to all wild landscape, heightens
+reciprocally the interest of that landscape, and becomes an
+important element in Scott's description, leading him to finish,
+down to the minutest speckling of breast, and slightest shade of
+attributed emotion, the portraiture of birds and animals; in strange
+opposition to Homer's slightly named "sea-crows, who have care of
+the works of the sea," and Dante's singing-birds, of undefined
+species. Compare carefully a passage, too long to be quoted,--the
+2nd and 3rd stanzas of canto VI. of Rokeby.
+
+Sec. 45. The second, and the last point I have to note, is Scott's
+habit of drawing a slight _moral_ from every scene, just enough to
+excuse to his conscience his want of definite religious feeling; and
+that this slight moral is almost always melancholy. Here he has
+stopped short without entirely expressing it--
+
+      "The mountain shadows ...
+                              ... lie
+      Like future joys to Fancy's eye."
+
+His completed thought would be, that those future joys, like the
+mountain shadows, were never to be attained. It occurs fully uttered
+in many other places. He seems to have been constantly rebuking his
+own worldly pride and vanity, but never purposefully:
+
+      "The foam-globes on her eddies ride,
+      Thick as the schemes of human pride
+      That down life's current drive amain,
+      As frail, as frothy, and as vain."
+
+      "Foxglove, and nightshade, side by side,
+      Emblems of punishment and pride."
+
+      "Her dark eye flashed; she paused and sighed;--
+      'Ah, what have I to do with pride!'"
+
+And hear the thought he gathers from the sunset (noting first the
+Turnerian color,--as usual, its principal element):
+
+      "The sultry summer day is done.
+      The western hills have hid the sun,
+      But mountain peak and village spire
+      Retain reflection of his fire.
+      Old Barnard's towers are purple still,
+      To those that gaze from Toller Hill;
+      Distant and high the tower of Bowes
+      Like steel upon the anvil glows;
+      And Stanmore's ridge, behind that lay,
+      Rich with the spoils of parting day,
+      In crimson and in gold arrayed,
+      Streaks yet awhile the closing shade;
+      Then slow resigns to darkening heaven
+      The tints which brighter hours had given
+      Thus, aged men, full loth and slow,
+      The vanities of life forego,
+      And count their youthful follies o'er
+      Till Memory lends her light no more."
+
+That is, as far as I remember, one of the most finished pieces of
+sunset he has given; and it has a woful moral; yet one which, with
+Scott, is inseparable from the scene.
+
+Hark, again:
+
+      "'Twere sweet to mark the setting day
+      On Bourhope's lonely top decay;
+      And, as it faint and feeble died
+      On the broad lake and mountain's side,
+      To say, 'Thus pleasures fade away;
+      Youth, talents, beauty, thus decay,
+      And leave us dark, forlorn, and grey.'"
+
+And again, hear Bertram:
+
+      "Mine be the eve of tropic sun:
+      With disk like battle target red,
+      He rushes to his burning bed,
+      Dyes the wide wave with bloody light,
+      Then sinks at once; and all is night."
+
+In all places of this kind, where a passing thought is suggested by
+some external scene, that thought is at once a slight and sad one.
+Scott's deeper moral sense is marked in the _conduct_ of his
+stories, and in casual reflections or exclamations arising out of
+their plot, and therefore sincerely uttered; as that of Marmion:
+
+      "Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
+      When first we practise to deceive!"
+
+But the reflections which are founded, not on events, but on scenes,
+are, for the most part, shallow, partly insincere, and, as far as
+sincere, sorrowful. This habit of ineffective dreaming and moralizing
+over passing scenes, of which the earliest type I know is given in
+Jaques, is, as aforesaid, usually the satisfaction made to our modern
+consciences for the want of a sincere acknowledgment of God in nature:
+and Shakspere has marked it as the characteristic of a mind "compact
+of jars" (Act II. Sc. VII., As You Like It). That description attaches
+but too accurately to all the moods which we have traced in the
+moderns generally, and in Scott as the first representative of them;
+and the question now is, what this love of landscape, so composed, is
+likely to lead us to, and what use can be made of it.
+
+We began our investigation, it will be remembered, in order to
+determine whether landscape-painting was worth studying or not. We
+have now reviewed the three principal phases of temper in the
+civilized human race, and we find that landscape has been mostly
+disregarded by great men, or cast into a second place, until now;
+and that now it seems dear to us, partly in consequence of our
+faults, and partly owing to accidental circumstances, soon, in all
+likelihood, to pass away: and there seems great room for question
+still, whether our love of it is a permanent and healthy feeling, or
+only a healthy crisis in a generally diseased state of mind. If the
+former, society will for ever hereafter be affected by its results;
+and Turner, the first great landscape painter, must take a place in
+the history of nations corresponding in art accurately to that of
+Bacon in philosophy;--Bacon having first opened the study of the
+laws of material nature, when, formerly, men had thought only of the
+laws of human mind; and Turner having first opened the study of the
+aspect of material nature, when, before, men had thought only of the
+aspect of the human form. Whether, therefore, the love of landscape
+be trivial and transient, or important and permanent, it now becomes
+necessary to consider. We have, I think, data enough before us for
+the solution of the question, and we will enter upon it,
+accordingly, in the following chapter.
+
+  [84] Pre-Raphaelitism, of course, excepted, which is a new phase
+       of art, in no wise considered in this chapter. Blake was
+       sincere, but full of wild creeds, and somewhat diseased in
+       brain.
+
+  [85] Of course this is only meant of the modern citizen or country
+       gentleman, as compared with a citizen of Sparta or old
+       Florence. I leave it to others to say whether the "neglect of
+       the _art_ of war" may or may not, in a yet more fatal sense,
+       be predicated of the English nation. War, _without_ art, we
+       seem, with God's help, able still to wage nobly.
+
+  [86] See David Copperfield, chap. lv. and lviii.
+
+  [87] Observe, I do not speak thus of metaphysics because I have no
+       pleasure in them. When I speak contemptuously of philology,
+       it may be answered me, that I am a bad scholar; but I cannot
+       be so answered touching metaphysics, for every one conversant
+       with such subjects may see that I have strong inclination
+       that way, which would, indeed, have led me far astray long
+       ago, if I had not learned also some use of my hands, eyes,
+       and feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE MORAL OF LANDSCAPE.
+
+
+Sec. 1. SUPPOSING then the preceding conclusions correct, respecting
+the grounds and component _elements_ of the pleasure which the
+moderns take in landscape, we have here to consider what are the
+probable or usual _effects_ of this pleasure. Is it a safe or a
+seductive one? May we wisely boast of it, and unhesitatingly indulge
+it? or is it rather a sentiment to be despised when it is slight,
+and condemned when it is intense; a feeling which disinclines us to
+labor, and confuses us in thought; a joy only to the inactive and
+the visionary, incompatible with the duties of life, and the
+accuracies of reflection?
+
+Sec. 2. It seems to me that, as matters stand at present, there is
+considerable ground for the latter opinion. We saw, in the preceding
+chapter, that our love of nature had been partly forced upon us by
+mistakes in our social economy, and led to no distinct issues of
+action or thought. And when we look to Scott--the man who feels it
+most deeply--for some explanation of its effect upon him, we find a
+curious tone of apology (as if for involuntary folly) running
+through his confessions of such sentiment, and a still more curious
+inability to define, beyond a certain point, the character of this
+emotion. He has lost the company of his friends among the hills, and
+turns to these last for comfort. He says, "there is a pleasure in
+the pain" consisting in such thoughts
+
+        "As oft awake
+      By lone St. Mary's silent lake;"
+
+but, when we look for some definition of these thoughts, all that we
+are told is, that they compose
+
+      "A mingled sentiment
+      Of resignation and content!"[88]
+
+a sentiment which, I suppose, many people can attain to on the loss
+of their friends, without the help of lakes or mountains; while
+Wordsworth definitely and positively affirms that _thought_ has
+nothing whatever to do with the matter, and that though, in his
+youth, the cataract and wood "haunted him like a passion," it was
+without the help of any "remoter charm, by thought supplied."
+
+Sec. 3. There is not, however, any question, but that both Scott and
+Wordsworth are here mistaken in their analysis of their feelings.
+Their delight, so far from being without thought, is more than half
+made up of thought, but of thought in so curiously languid and
+neutralized a condition that they cannot trace it. The thoughts are
+beaten to a powder so small that they know not what they are; they
+know only that in such a state they are not good for much, and
+disdain to call them thoughts. But the way in which thought, even
+thus broken, acts in producing the delight will be understood by
+glancing back to Sec.Sec. 9. and 10. of the tenth chapter, in which we
+observed the power of the imagination in exalting any visible
+object, by gathering round it, in farther vision, all the facts
+properly connected with it; this being, as it were, a spiritual or
+second sight, multiplying the power of enjoyment according to the
+fulness of the vision. For, indeed, although in all lovely nature
+there is, first, an excellent degree of simple beauty, addressed to
+the eye alone, yet often what impresses us most will form but a very
+small portion of that visible beauty. That beauty may, for instance,
+be composed of lovely flowers and glittering streams, and blue sky,
+and white clouds; and yet the thing that impresses us most, and
+which we should be sorriest to lose, may be a thin grey film on the
+extreme horizon, not so large, in the space of the scene it
+occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near at hand bush, nor in any
+wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but, because the
+gossamer is known by us for a little bit of spider's work, and the
+other grey film is known to mean a mountain ten thousand feet high,
+inhabited by a race of noble mountaineers, we are solemnly impressed
+by the aspect of it; and yet, all the while the thoughts and
+knowledge which cause us to receive this impression are so obscure
+that we are not conscious of them; we think we are only enjoying the
+visible scene; and the very men whose minds are fullest of such
+thoughts absolutely deny, as we have just heard, that they owe their
+pleasure to anything but the eye, or that the pleasure consists in
+anything else than "Tranquillity."
+
+Sec. 4. And observe, farther, that this comparative Dimness and
+Untraceableness of the thoughts which are the sources of our
+admiration, is not a _fault_ in the thoughts, at such a time. It is,
+on the contrary, a necessary condition of their subordination to the
+pleasure of Sight. If the thoughts were more distinct we should not
+_see_ so well; and beginning definitely to think, we must
+comparatively cease to see. In the instance just supposed, as long as
+we look at the film of mountain or Alp, with only an obscure
+consciousness of its being the source of mighty rivers, that
+consciousness adds to our sense of its sublimity; and if we have ever
+seen the Rhine or the Rhone near their mouths, our knowledge, so long
+as it is only obscurely suggested, adds to our admiration of the Alp;
+but once let the idea define itself,--once let us begin to consider
+seriously _what_ rivers flow from that mountain, to trace their
+course, and to recall determinately our memories of their distant
+aspects,--and we cease to behold the Alp; or, if we still behold it,
+it is only as a point in a map which we are painfully designing, or as
+a subordinate object which we strive to thrust aside, in order to make
+room for our remembrances of Avignon or Rotterdam.
+
+Again: so long as our idea of the multitudes who inhabit the ravines
+at its foot remains indistinct, that idea comes to the aid of all
+the other associations which increase our delight. But let it once
+arrest us, and entice us to follow out some clear course of thought
+respecting the causes of the prosperity or misfortune of the Alpine
+villagers, and the snowy peak again ceases to be visible, or holds
+its place only as a white spot upon the retina, while we pursue our
+meditations upon the religion or the political economy of the
+mountaineers.
+
+Sec. 5. It is thus evident that a curiously balanced condition of the
+powers of mind is necessary to induce full admiration of any natural
+scene. Let those powers be themselves inert, and the mind vacant of
+knowledge, and destitute of sensibility, and the external object
+becomes little more to us than it is to birds or insects; we fall
+into the temper of the clown. On the other hand, let the reasoning
+powers be shrewd in excess, the knowledge vast, or sensibility
+intense, and it will go hard but that the visible object will
+suggest so much that it shall be soon itself forgotten, or become,
+at the utmost, merely a kind of key-note to the course of purposeful
+thought. Newton, probably, did not perceive whether the apple which
+suggested his meditations on gravity was withered or rosy; nor could
+Howard be affected by the picturesqueness of the architecture which
+held the sufferers it was his occupation to relieve.
+
+Sec. 6. This wandering away in thought from the thing seen to the
+business of life, is not, however, peculiar to men of the highest
+reasoning powers, or most active benevolence. It takes place more or
+less in nearly all persons of average mental endowment. They see and
+love what is beautiful, but forget their admiration of it in
+following some train of thought which it suggested, and which is of
+more personal interest to them. Suppose that three or four persons
+come in sight of a group of pine-trees, not having seen pines for
+some time. One, perhaps an engineer, is struck by the manner in
+which their roots hold the ground, and sets himself to examine their
+fibres, in a few minutes retaining little more consciousness of the
+beauty of the trees than if he were a rope-maker untwisting the
+strands of a cable: to another, the sight of the trees calls up some
+happy association, and presently he forgets them, and pursues the
+memories they summoned: a third is struck by certain groupings of
+their colors, useful to him as an artist, which he proceeds
+immediately to note mechanically for future use, with as little
+feeling as a cook setting down the constituents of a newly
+discovered dish; and a fourth, impressed by the wild coiling of
+boughs and roots, will begin to change them in his fancy into
+dragons and monsters, and lose his grasp of the scene in fantastic
+metamorphosis: while, in the mind of the man who has most the power
+of contemplating the thing itself, all these perceptions and trains
+of idea are partially present, not distinctly, but in a mingled and
+perfect harmony. He will not see the colors of the tree so well as
+the artist, nor its fibres so well as the engineer; he will not
+altogether share the emotion of the sentimentalist, nor the trance
+of the idealist; but fancy, and feeling, and perception, and
+imagination, will all obscurely meet and balance themselves in him,
+and he will see the pine-trees somewhat in this manner:
+
+          "Worthier still of note
+      Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
+      Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
+      Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
+      Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
+      Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;
+      Nor uniformed with Phantasy, and looks
+      That threaten the profane; a pillared shade,
+      Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
+      By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
+      Perennially,--beneath whose sable roof
+      Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
+      With unrejoicing berries, ghostly Shapes
+      May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,
+      Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,
+      And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,
+      As in a natural temple scattered o'er
+      With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
+      United worship."
+
+Sec. 7. The power, therefore, of thus fully _perceiving_ any natural
+object depends on our being able to group and fasten all our fancies
+about it as a centre, making a garland of thoughts for it, in which
+each separate thought is subdued and shortened of its own strength,
+in order to fit it for harmony with others; the intensity of our
+enjoyment of the object depending, first, on its own beauty, and
+then on the richness of the garland. And men who have this habit of
+clustering and harmonizing their thoughts are a little too apt to
+look scornfully upon the harder workers who tear the bouquet to
+pieces to examine the stems. This was the chief narrowness of
+Wordsworth's mind; he could not understand that to break a rock with
+a hammer in search of crystal may sometimes be an act not
+disgraceful to human nature, and that to dissect a flower may
+sometimes be as proper as to dream over it; whereas all experience
+goes to teach us, that among men of average intellect the most
+useful members of society are the dissectors, not the dreamers. It
+is not that they love nature or beauty less, but that they love
+result, effect, and progress more; and when we glance broadly along
+the starry crowd of benefactors to the human race, and guides of
+human thought, we shall find that this dreaming love of natural
+beauty--or at least its expression--has been more or less checked by
+them all, and subordinated either to hard work or watching of
+_human_ nature. Thus in all the classical and mediaeval periods, it
+was, as we have seen, subordinate to agriculture, war, and religion;
+and in the modern period, in which it has become far more powerful,
+observe in what persons it is chiefly manifested.
+
+  (1.) It is subordinate in        (2.) It is intense in
+          Bacon.                       Mrs. Radclyffe.
+          Milton.                      St. Pierre.
+          Johnson.                     Shenstone.
+          Richardson.                  Byron.
+          Goldsmith.                   Shelley.
+          Young.                       Keats.
+          Newton.                      Burns.
+          Howard.                      Eugene Sue.
+          Fenelon.                     George Sand.
+          Pascal.                      Dumas.
+
+Sec. 8. I have purposely omitted the names of Wordsworth, Tennyson, and
+Scott, in the second list, because, glancing at the two columns as
+they now stand, we may, I think, draw some useful conclusions from
+the high honorableness and dignity of the names on one side, and the
+comparative slightness of those on the other,--conclusions which may
+help us to a better understanding of Scott and Tennyson themselves.
+Glancing, I say, down those columns in their present form, we shall
+at once perceive that the intense love of nature is, in modern
+times, characteristic of persons not of the first order of
+intellect, but of brilliant imagination, quick sympathy, and
+undefined religious principle, suffering also usually under strong
+and ill-governed passions: while in the same individual it will be
+found to vary at different periods, being, for the most part,
+strongest in youth, and associated with force of emotion, and with
+indefinite and feeble powers of thought; also, throughout life,
+perhaps developing itself most at times when the mind is slightly
+unhinged by love, grief, or some other of the passions.
+
+Sec. 9. But, on the other hand, while these feelings of delight in
+natural objects cannot be construed into signs of the highest
+mental powers, or purest moral principles, we see that they are
+assuredly indicative of minds above the usual standard of power, and
+endowed with sensibilities of great preciousness to humanity; so
+that those who find themselves entirely destitute of them, must make
+this want a subject of humiliation, not of pride. The apathy which
+cannot perceive beauty is very different from the stern energy which
+disdains it; and the coldness of heart which receives no emotion
+from external nature, is not to be confounded with the wisdom of
+purpose which represses emotion in action. In the case of most men,
+it is neither acuteness of the reason, nor breadth of humanity,
+which shields them from the impressions of natural scenery, but
+rather low anxieties, vain discontents, and mean pleasures; and for
+one who is blinded to the works of God by profound abstraction or
+lofty purpose, tens of thousands have their eyes sealed by vulgar
+selfishness, and their intelligence crushed by impious care.
+
+Observe, then: we have, among mankind in general, the three orders
+of being;--the lowest, sordid and selfish, which neither sees nor
+feels; the second, noble and sympathetic, but which sees and feels
+without concluding or acting; the third and highest, which loses
+sight in resolution, and feeling in work.[89]
+
+Thus, even in Scott and Wordsworth themselves, the love of nature
+is more or less associated with their weaknesses. Scott shows it
+most in the cruder compositions of his youth, his perfect powers of
+mind being displayed only in dialogues with which description has
+nothing whatever to do. Wordsworth's distinctive work was a war with
+pomp and pretence, and a display of the majesty of simple feelings
+and humble hearts, together with high reflective truth in his
+analysis of the courses of politics and ways of men; without these,
+his love of nature would have been comparatively worthless.
+
+Sec. 10. "If this be so, it is not well to encourage the observance of
+landscape, any more than other ways of dreamily and ineffectually
+spending time?"
+
+Stay a moment. We have hitherto observed this love of natural beauty
+only as it distinguishes one man from another, not as it acts for
+good or evil on those minds to which it necessarily belongs. It may,
+on the whole, distinguish weaker men from stronger men, and yet in
+those weaker men may be of some notable use. It may distinguish
+Byron from St. Bernard, and Shelley from Sir Isaac Newton, and yet
+may, perhaps, be the best thing that Byron and Shelley possess--a
+saving element in them; just as a rush may be distinguished from an
+oak by its bending, and yet the bending may be the saving element
+in the rush, and an admirable gift in its place and way. So that,
+although St. Bernard journeys all day by the Lake of Geneva, and
+asks at evening "where it is," and Byron learns by it "to love earth
+only for its earthly sake,"[90] it does not follow that Byron,
+hating men, was the worse for loving the earth, nor that St.
+Bernard, loving men, was the better or wiser for being blind to it.
+And this will become still more manifest if we examine somewhat
+farther into the nature of this instinct, as characteristic
+especially of youth.
+
+Sec. 11. We saw above that Wordsworth described the feeling as
+independent of thought, and, in the particular place then quoted, he
+_therefore_ speaks of it depreciatingly. But in other places he does
+not speak of it depreciatingly, but seems to think the absence of
+thought involves a certain nobleness:
+
+          "In such high hour
+      Of visitation from the living God
+      _Thought_ was not."
+
+And he refers to the intense delight which he himself felt, and
+which he supposes other men feel, in nature, during their
+thoughtless youth, as an intimation of their immortality, and a joy
+which indicates their having come fresh from the hand of God.
+
+Now, if Wordsworth be right in supposing this feeling to be in some
+degree common to all men, and most vivid in youth, we may question if
+it can be _entirely_ explained as I have now tried to explain it. For
+if it entirely depended on multitudes of ideas, clustering about a
+beautiful object, it might seem that the youth could not feel it so
+strongly as the man, because the man knows more, and must have more
+ideas to make the garland of. Still less can we suppose the pleasure
+to be of that melancholy and languid kind, which Scott defines as
+"Resignation" and "Content;" boys being not distinguished for either
+of those characters, but for eager effort and delightsome discontent.
+If Wordsworth is at all right in this matter, therefore, there must
+surely be some other element in the feeling not yet detected.
+
+Sec. 12. Now, in a question of this subtle kind, relating to a period
+of life when self-examination is rare, and expression imperfect, it
+becomes exceedingly difficult to trace, with any certainty, the
+movements of the minds of others, nor always easy to remember those
+of our own. I cannot, from observation, form any decided opinion as
+to the extent in which this strange delight in nature influences the
+hearts of young persons in general; and, in stating what has passed
+in my own mind, I do not mean to draw any positive conclusion as to
+the nature of the feeling in other children; but the inquiry is
+clearly one in which personal experience is the only safe ground to
+go upon, though a narrow one; and I will make no excuse for talking
+about myself with reference to this subject, because, though there
+is much egotism in the world, it is often the last thing a man
+thinks of doing,--and, though there is much work to be done in the
+world, it is often the best thing a man can do,--to tell the exact
+truth about the movements of his own mind; and there is this farther
+reason, that, whatever other faculties I may or may not possess,
+this gift of taking pleasure in landscape I assuredly possess in a
+greater degree than most men; it having been the ruling passion of
+my life, and the reason for the choice of its field of labor.
+
+Sec. 13. The first thing which I remember as an event in life, was being
+taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar's Crag on Derwentwater; the
+intense joy, mingled with awe, that I had in looking through the
+hollows in the mossy roots, over the crag, into the dark lake, has
+associated itself more or less with all twining roots of trees ever
+since. Two other things I remember, as, in a sort, beginnings of
+life;--crossing Shapfells (being let out of the chaise to run up the
+hills), and going through Glenfarg, near Kinross, in a winter's
+morning, when the rocks where hung with icicles; these being
+culminating points in an early life of more travelling than is usually
+indulged to a child. In such journeyings, whenever they brought me
+near hills, and in all mountain ground and scenery, I had a pleasure,
+as early as I can remember, and continuing till I was eighteen or
+twenty, infinitely greater than any which has been since possible to
+me in anything; comparable for intensity only to the joy of a lover in
+being near a noble and kind mistress, but no more explicable or
+definable than that feeling of love itself. Only thus much I can
+remember, respecting it, which is important to our present subject.
+
+Sec. 14. First: it was never independent of associated thought. Almost
+as soon as I could see or hear, I had got reading enough to give me
+associations with all kinds of scenery; and mountains, in
+particular, were always partly confused with those of my favorite
+book, Scott's Monastery; so that Glenfarg and all other glens were
+more or less enchanted to me, filled with forms of hesitating creed
+about Christie of the Clint Hill, and the monk Eustace; and with a
+general presence of White Lady everywhere. I also generally knew, or
+was told by my father and mother, such simple facts of history as
+were necessary to give more definite and justifiable association to
+other scenes which chiefly interested me, such as the ruins of
+Lochleven and Kenilworth; and thus my pleasure in mountains or ruins
+was never, even in earliest childhood, free from a certain awe and
+melancholy, and general sense of the meaning of death, though in its
+principal influence, entirely exhilarating and gladdening.
+
+Sec. 15. Secondly: it was partly dependent on contrast with a very
+simple and unamused mode of general life; I was born in London, and
+accustomed, for two or three years, to no other prospect than that
+of the brick walls over the way; had no brothers, nor sisters, nor
+companions; and though I could always make myself happy in a quiet
+way, the beauty of the mountains had an additional charm of change
+and adventure which a country-bred child would not have felt.
+
+Sec. 16. Thirdly: there was no definite religious feeling mingled with
+it. I partly believed in ghosts and fairies; but supposed that
+angels belonged entirely to the Mosaic dispensation, and cannot
+remember any single thought or feeling connected with them. I
+believed that God was in heaven, and could hear me and see me; but
+this gave me neither pleasure nor pain, and I seldom thought of it
+at all. I never thought of nature as God's work, but as a separate
+fact or existence.
+
+Sec. 17. Fourthly: it was entirely unaccompanied by powers of
+reflection or invention. Every fancy that I had about nature was put
+into my head by some book; and I never reflected about anything till
+I grew older; and then, the more I reflected, the less nature was
+precious to me: I could then make myself happy, by thinking, in the
+dark, or in the dullest scenery; and the beautiful scenery became
+less essential to my pleasure.
+
+Sec. 18. Fifthly: it was, according to its strength, inconsistent with
+every evil feeling, with spite, anger, covetousness, discontent, and
+every other hateful passion; but would associate itself deeply with
+every just and noble sorrow, joy, or affection. It had not, however,
+always the power to repress what was inconsistent with it; and,
+though only after stout contention, might at last be crushed by what
+it had partly repressed. And as it only acted by setting one impulse
+against another, though it had much power in moulding the character,
+it had hardly any in strengthening it; it formed temperament, but
+never instilled principle; it kept me generally good-humored and
+kindly, but could not teach me perseverance or self-denial: what
+firmness or principle I had was quite independent of it; and it came
+itself nearly as often in the form of a temptation as of a
+safeguard, leading me to ramble over hills when I should have been
+learning lessons, and lose days in reveries which I might have spent
+in doing kindnesses.
+
+Sec. 19. Lastly: although there was no definite religious sentiment
+mingled with it, there was a continual perception of Sanctity in the
+whole of nature, from the slightest thing to the vastest:--an
+instinctive awe, mixed with delight; an indefinable thrill, such as
+we sometimes imagine to indicate the presence of a disembodied
+spirit. I could only feel this perfectly when I was alone; and then
+it would often make me shiver from head to foot with the joy and
+fear of it, when after being some time away from the hills, I first
+got to the shore of a mountain river, where the brown water circled
+among the pebbles, or when I saw the first swell of distant land
+against the sunset, or the first low broken wall, covered with
+mountain moss. I cannot in the least _describe_ the feeling; but I
+do not think this is my fault, nor that of the English language,
+for, I am afraid, no feeling _is_ describable. If we had to explain
+even the sense of bodily hunger to a person who had never felt it,
+we should be hard put to it for words; and this joy in nature seemed
+to me to come of a sort of heart-hunger, satisfied with the presence
+of a Great and Holy Spirit. These feelings remained in their full
+intensity till I was eighteen or twenty, and then, as the reflective
+and practical power increased, and the "cares of this world" gained
+upon me, faded gradually away, in the manner described by Wordsworth
+in his Intimations of Immortality.
+
+Sec. 20. I cannot, of course, tell how far I am justified in supposing
+that these sensations may be reasoned upon as common to children in
+general. In the same degree they are not of course common, otherwise
+children would be, most of them, very different from what they are
+in their choice of pleasures. But, as far as such feelings exist, I
+apprehend they are more or less similar in their nature and
+influence; only producing different characters according to the
+elements with which they are mingled. Thus, a very religious child
+may give up many pleasures to which its instincts lead it, for the
+sake of irksome duties; and an inventive child would mingle its love
+of nature with watchfulness of human sayings and doings: but I
+believe the feelings I have endeavored to describe are the pure
+landscape-instinct; and the likelihoods of good or evil resulting
+from them may be reasoned upon as generally indicating the
+usefulness or danger of the modern love and study of landscape.
+
+Sec. 21. And, first, observe that the charm of romantic association (Sec.
+14.) can be felt only by the modern European child. It rises
+eminently out of the contrast of the beautiful past with the
+frightful and monotonous present; and it depends for its force on
+the existence of ruins and traditions, on the remains of
+architecture, the traces of battlefields, and the precursorship of
+eventful history. The instinct to which it appeals can hardly be
+felt in America, and every day that either beautifies our present
+architecture and dress, or overthrows a stone of mediaeval monument,
+contributes to weaken it in Europe. Of its influence on the mind of
+Turner and Prout, and the permanent results which, through them, it
+is likely to effect, I shall have to speak presently.
+
+Sec. 22. Again: the influence of surprise in producing the delight, is
+to be noted as a suspicious or evanescent element in it. Observe, my
+pleasure was chiefly (Sec. 19.) when I _first_ got into beautiful
+scenery, out of London. The enormous influence of novelty--the way
+in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts
+sentiment--is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a
+very sorrowful matter. I think that what Wordsworth speaks of as a
+glory in the child, because it has come fresh from God's hands, is
+in reality nothing more than the freshness of all things to its
+newly opened sight. I find that by keeping long away from hills, I
+can in great part still restore the old childish feeling about them;
+and the more I live and work among them, the more it vanishes.
+
+Sec. 23. This evil is evidently common to all minds; Wordsworth himself
+mourning over it in the same poem:
+
+      "Custom hangs upon us, with a weight
+      Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life."
+
+And if we grow impatient under it, and seek to recover the mental
+energy by more quickly repeated and brighter novelty, it is all over
+with our enjoyment. There is no cure for this evil, any more than for
+the weariness of the imagination already described, but in patience
+and rest: if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will
+become monotonous; and then we are reduced to that old despair, "If
+water chokes, what will you drink after it?" And the two points of
+practical wisdom in this matter are, first, to be content with as
+little novelty as possible at a time; and, secondly, to preserve, as
+much as possible in the world, the sources of novelty.
+
+Sec. 24. I say, first, to be content with as little change as possible.
+If the attention is awake, and the feelings in proper train, a turn
+of a country road, with a cottage beside it, which we have not seen
+before, is as much as we need for refreshment; if we hurry past it,
+and take two cottages at a time, it is already too much: hence, to
+any person who has all his senses about him, a quiet walk along not
+more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, is the most amusing of
+all travelling; and all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion
+to its rapidity. Going by railroad I do not consider as travelling
+at all; it is merely "being sent" to a place, and very little
+different from becoming a parcel; the next step to it would of
+course be telegraphic transport, of which, however, I suppose it has
+been truly said by Octave Feuillet,
+
+    "_Il y aurait des gens assez betes_ pour trouver ca amusant."[91]
+
+If we walk more than ten or twelve miles, it breaks up the day too
+much; leaving no time for stopping at the stream sides or shady
+banks, or for any work at the end of the day; besides that the last
+few miles are apt to be done in a hurry, and may then be considered
+as lost ground. But if, advancing thus slowly, after some days we
+approach any more interesting scenery, every yard of the changeful
+ground becomes precious and piquant; and the continual increase of
+hope, and of surrounding beauty, affords one of the most exquisite
+enjoyments possible to the healthy mind; besides that real knowledge
+is acquired of whatever it is the object of travelling to learn, and
+a certain sublimity given to all places, so attained, by the true
+sense of the spaces of earth that separate them. A man who really
+loves travelling would as soon consent to pack a day of such
+happiness into an hour of railroad, as one who loved eating would
+agree, if it were possible, to concentrate his dinner into a pill.
+
+Sec. 25. And, secondly, I say that it is wisdom to preserve as much as
+possible the innocent _sources_ of novelty;--not definite
+inferiorities of one place to another, if such can be done away; but
+differences of manners and customs, of language and architecture. The
+greatest effort ought especially to be made by all wise and
+far-sighted persons, in the present crisis of civilization, to enforce
+the distinction between wholesome reform, and heartless abandonment of
+ancestral custom; between kindly fellowship of nation with nation, and
+ape-like adoption, by one, of the habits of another. It is ludicrously
+awful to see the luxurious inhabitants of London and Paris rushing
+over the Continent (as they say, to _see_ it), and transposing every
+place, as far as lies in their power, instantly into a likeness of
+Regent Street and the Rue de la Paix, which they need not certainly
+have come so far to see. Of this evil I shall have more to say
+hereafter; meantime I return to our main subject.
+
+Sec. 26. The next character we have to note in the landscape-instinct
+(and on this much stress is to be laid), is its total inconsistency
+with all evil passion; its absolute contrariety (whether in the
+contest it were crushed or not) to all care, hatred, envy, anxiety,
+and moroseness. A feeling of this kind is assuredly not one to be
+lightly repressed, or treated with contempt.
+
+But how, if it be so, the reader asks, can it be characteristic of
+passionate and unprincipled men, like Byron, Shelley, and such
+others, and not characteristic of the noblest and most highly
+principled men?
+
+First, because it is itself a passion, and therefore likely to be
+characteristic of passionate men. Secondly, because it is (Sec. 18)
+wholly a separate thing from moral principle, and may or may not be
+joined to strength of will, or rectitude of purpose[92]; only, this
+much is always observable in the men whom it characterizes, that,
+whatever their faults or failings, they always understand and love
+noble qualities of character; they can conceive (if not certain
+phases of piety), at all events, self-devotion of the highest kind;
+they delight in all that is good, gracious, and noble; and though
+warped often to take delight also in what is dark or degraded, that
+delight is mixed with bitter self-reproach; or else is wanton,
+careless, or affected, while their delight in noble things is
+constant and sincere.
+
+Sec. 27. Look back to the two lists given above, Sec. 7. I have not lately
+read anything by Mrs. Radclyffe or George Sand, and cannot,
+therefore, take instances from them; Keats hardly introduced human
+character into his work; but glance over the others, and note the
+general tone of their conceptions. Take St. Pierre's Virginia,
+Byron's Myrrha, Angiolina, and Marina, and Eugene Sue's Fleur de
+Marie; and out of the other lists you will only be able to find
+Pamela, Clementina, and, I suppose, Clarissa,[93] to put beside
+them; and these will not more than match Myrrha and Marina; leaving
+Fleur de Marie and Virginia rivalless. Then meditate a little, with
+all justice and mercy, over the two groups of names; and I think you
+will, at last, feel that there is a pathos and tenderness of heart
+among the lovers of nature in the second list, of which it is nearly
+impossible to estimate either the value or the danger; that the
+sterner consistency of the men in the first may, in great part, have
+arisen only from the, to them, most merciful, appointment of having
+had religious teaching or disciplined education in their youth;
+while their want of love for nature, whether that love be originally
+absent, or artificially repressed, is to none of them an advantage.
+Johnson's indolence, Goldsmith's improvidence, Young's worldliness,
+Milton's severity, and Bacon's servility, might all have been less,
+if they could in any wise have sympathized with Byron's lonely joy
+in a Jura storm,[94] or with Shelley's interest in floating paper
+boats down the Serchio.
+
+Sec. 28. And then observe, farther, as I kept the names of Wordsworth
+and Scott out of the second list, I withdrew, also, certain names
+from the first; and for this reason, that in all the men who are
+named in that list, there is evidently _some_ degree of love for
+nature, which may have been originally of more power than we
+suppose, and may have had an infinitely hallowing and protective
+influence upon them. But there also lived certain men of high
+intellect in that age who had _no_ love of nature whatever. They do
+not appear ever to have received the smallest sensation of ocular
+delight from any natural scene, but would have lived happily all
+their lives in drawingrooms or studies. And, therefore, in these men
+we shall be able to determine, with the greatest chance of accuracy,
+what the real influence of natural beauty is, and what the character
+of a mind destitute of its love. Take, as conspicuous instances, Le
+Sage and Smollett, and you will find, in meditating over their
+works, that they are utterly incapable of conceiving a human soul as
+endowed with any nobleness whatever; their heroes are simply beasts
+endowed with some degree of human intellect;--cunning, false,
+passionate, reckless, ungrateful, and abominable, incapable of noble
+joy, of noble sorrow, of any spiritual perception or hope. I said,
+"beasts with human intellect;" but neither Gil Blas nor Roderick
+Random reach, morally, anything near the level of dogs; while the
+delight which the writers themselves feel in mere filth and pain,
+with an unmitigated foulness and cruelty of heart, is just as
+manifest in every sentence as the distress and indignation which
+with pain and injustice are seen by Shelley and Byron.
+
+Sec. 29. Distinguished from these men by _some_ evidence of love for
+nature, yet an evidence much less clear than that for any of those
+named even in the first list, stand Cervantes, Pope, and Moliere. It
+is not easy to say how much the character of these last depended on
+their epoch and education; but it is noticeable that the first two
+agree thus far in temper with Le Sage and Smollett,--that they delight
+in dwelling upon vice, misfortune, or folly, as subjects of amusement;
+while yet they are distinguished from Le Sage and Smollett by capacity
+of conceiving nobleness of character, only in a humiliating and
+hopeless way; the one representing all chivalry as insanity, the other
+placing the wisdom of man in a serene and sneering reconciliation of
+good with evil. Of Moliere I think very differently. Living in the
+blindest period of the world's history, in the most luxurious city,
+and the most corrupted court, of the time, he yet manifests through
+all his writings an exquisite natural wisdom; a capacity for the most
+simple enjoyment; a high sense of all nobleness, honor, and purity,
+variously marked throughout his slighter work, but distinctly made the
+theme of his two perfect plays--the Tartuffe and Misanthrope; and in
+all that he says of art or science he has an unerring instinct for
+what is useful and sincere, and uses his whole power to defend it,
+with as keen a hatred of everything affected and vain. And, singular
+as it may seem, the first definite lesson read to Europe, in that
+school of simplicity of which Wordsworth was the supposed originator
+among the mountains of Cumberland, was, in fact, given in the midst of
+the court of Louis XIV., and by Moliere. The little canzonet "J'aime
+mieux ma mie," is, I believe, the first Wordsworthian poem brought
+forward on philosophical principles to oppose the schools of art and
+affectation.
+
+Sec. 30. I do not know if, by a careful analysis, I could point out any
+evidences of a capacity for the love of natural scenery in Moliere
+stealing forth through the slightness of his pastorals; but, if not,
+we must simply set him aside as exceptional, as a man uniting
+Wordsworth's philosophy with Le Sage's wit, turned by circumstances
+from the observance of natural beauty to that of human frailty. And
+thus putting him aside for the moment, I think we cannot doubt of
+our main conclusion, that, though the absence of the love of nature
+is not an assured condemnation, its presence is an invariable sign
+of goodness of heart and justness of moral _perception_, though by
+no means of moral _practice_; that in proportion to the degree in
+which it is felt, will _probably_ be the degree in which all
+nobleness and beauty of character will also be felt; that when it is
+originally absent from any mind, that mind is in many other respects
+hard, worldly, and degraded; that where, having been originally
+present, it is repressed by art or education, that repression
+appears to have been detrimental to the person suffering it; and
+that wherever the feeling exists, it acts for good on the character
+to which it belongs, though, as it may often belong to characters
+weak in other respects, it may carelessly be mistaken for a source
+of evil in them.
+
+Sec. 31. And having arrived at this conclusion by a review of facts,
+which I hope it will be admitted, whether accurate or not, has at
+least been candid, these farther considerations may confirm our
+belief in its truth. Observe: the whole force of education, until
+very lately, has been directed in every possible way to the
+destruction of the love of nature. The only knowledge which has been
+considered essential among us is that of words, and, next after it,
+of the abstract sciences; while every liking shown by children for
+simple natural history has been either violently checked, (if it
+took an inconvenient form for the housemaids,) or else scrupulously
+limited to hours of play: so that it has really been impossible for
+any child earnestly to study the works of God but against its
+conscience; and the love of nature has become inherently the
+characteristic of truants and idlers. While also the art of drawing,
+which is of more real importance to the human race than that of
+writing (because people can hardly draw anything without being of
+some use both to themselves and others, and can hardly write
+anything without wasting their own time and that of others),--this
+art of drawing, I say, which on plain and stern system should be
+taught to every child, just as writing is,--has been so neglected
+and abused, that there is not one man in a thousand, even of its
+professed teachers, who knows its first principles: and thus it
+needs much ill-fortune or obstinacy--much neglect on the part of his
+teachers, or rebellion on his own--before a boy can get leave to use
+his eyes or his fingers; so that those who _can_ use them are for
+the most part neglected or rebellious lads--runaways and bad
+scholars--passionate, erratic, self-willed, and restive against all
+forms of education; while your well-behaved and amiable scholars are
+disciplined into blindness and palsy of half their faculties.
+Wherein there is at once a notable ground for what difference we
+have observed between the lovers of nature and its despisers;
+between the somewhat immoral and unrespectable watchfulness of the
+one, and the moral and respectable blindness of the other.
+
+Sec. 32. One more argument remains, and that, I believe, an unanswerable
+one. As, by the accident of education, the love of nature has been,
+among us, associated with _wilfulness_, so, by the accident of time,
+it has been associated with _faithlessness_. I traced, above, the
+peculiar mode in which this faithlessness was indicated; but I never
+intended to imply, therefore, that it was an invariable concomitant of
+the love. Because it happens that, by various concurrent operations of
+evil, we have been led, according to those words of the Greek poet
+already quoted, "to dethrone the gods, and crown the whirlwind," it is
+no reason that we should forget there was once a time when "the Lord
+answered Job _out of_ the whirlwind." And if we now take final and
+full view of the matter, we shall find that the love of nature,
+wherever it has existed, has been a faithful and sacred element of
+human feeling; that is to say, supposing all circumstances otherwise
+the same with respect to two individuals, the one who loves nature
+most will be _always_ found to have more _faith in God_ than the
+other. It is intensely difficult, owing to the confusing and counter
+influences which always mingle in the data of the problem, to make
+this abstraction fairly; but so far as we can do it, so far, I boldly
+assert, the result is constantly the same: the nature-worship will be
+found to bring with it such a sense of the presence and power of a
+Great Spirit as no mere reasoning can either induce or controvert; and
+where that nature-worship is innocently pursued,--i.e. with due
+respect to other claims on time, feeling, and exertion, and associated
+with the higher principles of religion,--it becomes the channel of
+certain sacred truths, which by no other means can be conveyed.
+
+Sec. 33. This is not a statement which any investigation is needed to
+prove. It comes to us at once from the highest of all authority. The
+greater number of the words which are recorded in Scripture, as
+directly spoken to men by the lips of the Deity, are either simple
+revelations of His law, or special threatenings, commands, and
+promises relating to special events. But two passages of God's
+speaking, one in the Old and one in the New Testament, possess, it
+seems to me, a different character from any of the rest, having been
+uttered, the one to effect the last necessary change in the mind of
+a man whose piety was in other respects perfect; and the other, as
+the first statement to all men of the principles of Christianity by
+Christ Himself--I mean the 38th to 41st chapters of the book of Job,
+and the Sermon on the Mount. Now the first of these passages is,
+from beginning to end, nothing else than a direction of the mind
+which was to be perfected to humble observance of the works of God
+in nature. And the other consists only in the inculcation of _three_
+things: 1st, right conduct; 2nd, looking for eternal life; 3rd,
+trusting God, through watchfulness of His dealings with His
+creation: and the entire contents of the book of Job, and of the
+Sermon on the Mount, will be found resolvable simply into these
+three requirements from all men,--that they should act rightly, hope
+for heaven, and watch God's wonders and work in the earth; the right
+conduct being always summed up under the three heads of _justice_,
+_mercy_, and _truth_, and no mention of any doctrinal point whatsoever
+occurring in either piece of divine teaching.
+
+Sec. 34. As far as I can judge of the ways of men, it seems to me that
+the simplest and most necessary truths are always the last
+believed; and I suppose that well-meaning people in general would
+rather regulate their conduct and creed by almost any other portion
+of Scripture whatsoever, than by that Sermon on the Mount, which
+contains the things that Christ thought it first necessary for all
+men to understand. Nevertheless, I believe the time will soon come
+for the full force of these two passages of Scripture to be
+accepted. Instead of supposing the love of nature necessarily
+connected with the faithlessness of the age, I believe it is
+connected properly with the benevolence and liberty of the age; that
+it is precisely the most healthy element which distinctively belongs
+to us; and that out of it, cultivated no longer in levity or
+ignorance, but in earnestness and as a duty, results will spring of
+an importance at present inconceivable; and lights arise, which, for
+the first time in man's history, will reveal to him the true nature
+of his life, the true field for his energies, and the true relations
+between him and his Maker.
+
+Sec. 35. I will not endeavor here to trace the various modes in which
+these results are likely to be effected, for this would involve an
+essay on education, on the uses of natural history, and the probable
+future destiny of nations. Somewhat on these subjects I have spoken
+in other places; and I hope to find time, and proper place, to say
+more. But one or two observations maybe made merely to suggest the
+directions in which the reader may follow out the subject for
+himself.
+
+The great mechanical impulses of the age, of which most of us are so
+proud, are a mere passing fever, half-speculative, half-childish.
+People will discover at last that royal roads to anything can no
+more be laid in iron than they can in dust; that there are, in fact,
+no royal roads to anywhere worth going to; that if there were, it
+would that instant cease to be worth going to,--I mean so far as the
+things to be obtained are in any way estimable in terms of _price_.
+For there are two classes of precious things in the world: those
+that God gives us for nothing--sun, air, and life (both mortal life
+and immortal); and the secondarily precious things which he gives us
+for a price: these secondarily precious things, worldly wine and
+milk, can only be bought for definite money; they never can be
+cheapened. No cheating nor bargaining will ever get a single thing
+out of nature's "establishment" at half-price. Do we want to be
+strong?--we must work. To be hungry?--we must starve. To be
+happy?--we must be kind. To be wise?--we must look and think. No
+changing of place at a hundred miles an hour, nor making of stuffs a
+thousand yards a minute, will make us one whit stronger, happier, or
+wiser. There was always more in the world than men could see, walked
+they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. And
+they will at last, and soon too, find out that their grand
+inventions for conquering (as they think) space and time, do, in
+reality, conquer nothing; for space and time are, in their own
+essence, unconquerable, and besides did not want any sort of
+conquering; they wanted _using_. A fool always wants to shorten
+space and time: a wise man wants to lengthen both. A fool wants to
+kill space and kill time: a wise man, first to gain them, then to
+animate them. Your railroad, when you come to understand it, is only
+a device for making the world smaller: and as for being able to talk
+from place to place, that is, indeed, well and convenient; but
+suppose you have, originally, nothing to say.[95] We shall be
+obliged at last to confess, what we should long ago have known, that
+the really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does
+a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no
+harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.
+
+Sec. 36. "Well; but railroads and telegraphs are so useful for
+communicating knowledge to savage nations." Yes, if you have any to
+give them. If you know nothing _but_ railroads, and can communicate
+nothing but aqueous vapor and gunpowder,--what then? But if you have
+any other thing than those to give, then the railroad is of use only
+because it communicates that other thing and the question is--what
+that other thing may be. Is it religion? I believe if we had really
+wanted to communicate that, we could have done it in less than 1800
+years, without steam. Most of the good religious communication that
+I remember has been done on foot; and it cannot be easily done
+faster than at foot pace. Is it science? But what science--of
+motion, meat, and medicine? Well; when you have moved your savage,
+and dressed your savage, fed him with white bread, and shown him how
+to set a limb,--what next? Follow out that question. Suppose every
+obstacle overcome; give your savage every advantage of civilization
+to the full: suppose that you have put the Red Indian in tight
+shoes; taught the Chinese how to make Wedgwood's ware, and to paint
+it with colors that will rub off; and persuaded all Hindoo women
+that it is more pious to torment their husbands into graves than to
+burn themselves at the burial,--what next? Gradually, thinking on
+from point to point, we shall come to perceive that all true
+happiness and nobleness are near us, and yet neglected by us; and
+that till we have learned how to be happy and noble, we have not
+much to tell, even to Red Indians. The delights of horse-racing and
+hunting, of assemblies in the night instead of the day, of costly
+and wearisome music, of costly and burdensome dress, of chagrined
+contention for place or power, or wealth, or the eyes of the
+multitude; and all the endless occupation without purpose, and
+idleness without rest, of our vulgar world, are not, it seems to me,
+enjoyments we need be ambitious to communicate. And all real and
+wholesome enjoyments possible to man have been just as possible to
+him, since first he was made of the earth, as they are now; and they
+are possible to him chiefly in peace. To watch the corn grow, and
+the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to
+read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray,--these are the things
+that make men happy; they have always had the power of doing these,
+they never _will_ have power to do more. The world's prosperity or
+adversity depends upon our knowing and teaching these few things:
+but upon iron, or glass, or electricity, or steam, in no wise.
+
+Sec. 37. And I am Utopian and enthusiastic enough to believe, that the
+time will come when the world will discover this. It has now made
+its experiments in every possible direction but the right one; and
+it seems that it must, at last, try the right one, in a mathematical
+necessity. It has tried fighting, and preaching, and fasting, buying
+and selling, pomp and parsimony, pride and humiliation,--every
+possible manner of existence in which it could conjecture there was
+any happiness or dignity; and all the while, as it bought, sold,
+and fought, and fasted, and wearied itself with policies, and
+ambitions, and self-denials, God had placed its real happiness in
+the keeping of the little mosses of the wayside, and of the clouds
+of the firmament. Now and then a weary king, or a tormented slave,
+found out where the true kingdoms of the world were, and possessed
+himself, in a furrow or two of garden ground, of a truly infinite
+dominion. But the world would not believe their report, and went on
+trampling down the mosses, and forgetting the clouds, and seeking
+happiness in its own way, until, at last, blundering and late, came
+natural science; and in natural science not only the observation of
+things, but the finding out of new uses for them. Of course the
+world, having a choice left to it, went wrong as usual, and thought
+that these mere material uses were to be the sources of its
+happiness. It got the clouds packed into iron cylinders, and made it
+carry its wise self at their own cloud pace. It got weavable fibres
+out of the mosses, and made clothes for itself, cheap and
+fine,--here was happiness at last. To go as fast as the clouds, and
+manufacture everything out of anything,--here was paradise, indeed!
+
+Sec. 38. And now, when, in a little while, it is unparadised again, if
+there were any other mistake that the world could make, it would of
+course make it. But I see not that there is any other; and, standing
+fairly at its wits' end, having found that going fast, when it is
+used to it, is no more paradisiacal than going slow; and that all
+the prints and cottons in Manchester cannot make it comfortable in
+its mind, I do verily believe it will come, finally, to understand
+that God paints the clouds and shapes the moss-fibres, that men may
+be happy in seeing Him at His work, and that in resting quietly
+beside Him, and watching His working, and--according to the power He
+has communicated to ourselves, and the guidance He grants,--in
+carrying out His purposes of peace and charity among all His
+creatures, are the only real happinesses that ever were, or will be,
+possible to mankind.
+
+Sec. 39. How far art is capable of helping us in such happiness we
+hardly yet know; but I hope to be able, in the subsequent parts of
+this work, to give some data for arriving at a conclusion in the
+matter. Enough has been advanced to relieve the reader from any
+lurking suspicion of unworthiness in our subject, and to induce him
+to take interest in the mind and work of the great painter who has
+headed the landscape school among us. What farther considerations
+may, within any reasonable limits, be put before him, respecting the
+effect of natural scenery on the human heart, I will introduce in
+their proper places either as we examine, under Turner's guidance,
+the different classes of scenery, or at the close of the whole work;
+and therefore I have only one point more to notice here, namely, the
+exact relation between landscape-painting and natural science,
+properly so-called.
+
+Sec. 40. For it may be thought that I have rashly assumed that the
+Scriptural authorities above quoted apply to that partly superficial
+view of nature which is taken by the landscape-painter, instead of
+to the accurate view taken by the man of science. So far from there
+being rashness in such an assumption, the whole language, both of
+the book of Job and the Sermon on the Mount, gives precisely the
+view of nature which is taken by the uninvestigating affection of a
+humble, but powerful mind. There is no dissection of muscles or
+counting of elements, but the boldest and broadest glance at the
+apparent facts, and the most magnificent metaphor in expressing
+them. "His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. In his neck
+remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him." And
+in the often repeated, never obeyed, command, "Consider the lilies
+of the field," observe there is precisely the delicate attribution
+of life which we have seen to be the characteristic of the modern
+view of landscape,--"They toil not," There is no science, or hint of
+science; no counting of petals, nor display of provisions for
+sustenance: nothing but the expression of sympathy, at once the most
+childish, and the most profound,--"They toil not."
+
+Sec. 41. And we see in this, therefore, that the instinct which leads
+us thus to attribute life to the lowest forms of organic nature,
+does not necessarily spring from faithlessness, nor the deducing a
+moral out of them from an irregular and languid conscientiousness.
+In this, as in almost all things connected with moral discipline,
+the same results may follow from contrary causes; and as there are a
+good and evil contentment, a good and evil discontent, a good and
+evil care, fear, ambition, and so on, there are also good and evil
+forms of this sympathy with nature, and disposition to moralize over
+it.[96] In general, active men, of strong sense and stern principle,
+do not care to see anything in a leaf, but vegetable tissue, and are
+so well convinced of useful moral truth, that it does not strike
+them as a new or notable thing when they find it in any way
+symbolized by material nature; hence there is a strong presumption,
+when first we perceive a tendency in any one to regard trees as
+living, and enunciate moral aphorisms over every pebble they stumble
+against, that such tendency proceeds from a morbid temperament, like
+Shelley's, or an inconsistent one, like Jaques's. But when the
+active life is nobly fulfilled, and the mind is then raised beyond
+it into clear and calm beholding of the world around us, the same
+tendency again manifests itself in the most sacred way: the simplest
+forms of nature are strangely animated by the sense of the Divine
+presence; the trees and flowers seem all, in a sort, children of
+God; and we ourselves, their fellows, made out of the same dust, and
+greater than they only in having a greater portion of the Divine
+power exerted on our frame, and all the common uses and palpably
+visible forms of things, become subordinate in our minds to their
+inner glory,--to the mysterious voices in which they talk to us
+about God, and the changeful and typical aspects by which they
+witness to us of holy truth, and fill us with obedient, joyful, and
+thankful emotion.
+
+Sec. 42. It is in raising us from the first state of inactive reverie
+to the second of useful thought, that scientific pursuits are to be
+chiefly praised. But in restraining us at this second stage, and
+checking the impulses towards higher contemplation, they are to be
+feared or blamed. They may in certain minds be consistent with such
+contemplation; but only by an effort: in their nature they are
+always adverse to it, having a tendency to chill and subdue the
+feelings, and to resolve all things into atoms and numbers. For most
+men, an ignorant enjoyment is better than an informed one; it is
+better to conceive the sky as a blue dome than a dark cavity, and
+the cloud as a golden throne than a sleety mist. I much question
+whether any one who knows optics, however religious he may be, can
+feel in equal degree the pleasure or reverence which an unlettered
+peasant may feel at the sight of a rainbow. And it is mercifully
+thus ordained, since the law of life, for a finite being, with
+respect to the works of an infinite one, must be always an infinite
+ignorance. We cannot fathom the mystery of a single flower, nor is
+it intended that we should; but that the pursuit of science should
+constantly be stayed by the love of beauty, and accuracy of
+knowledge by tenderness of emotion.
+
+Sec. 43. Nor is it even just to speak of the love of beauty as in all
+respects unscientific; for there is a science of the aspects of
+things as well as of their nature; and it is as much a fact to be
+noted in their constitution, that they produce such and such an
+effect upon the eye or heart (as, for instance, that minor scales of
+sound cause melancholy), as that they are made up of certain atoms
+or vibrations of matter.
+
+It is as the master of this science of _Aspects_, that I said, some
+time ago, Turner must eventually be named always with Bacon, the
+master of the science of _Essence_. As the first poet who has, in
+all their range, understood the grounds of noble emotion which exist
+in Landscape, his future influence will be of a still more subtle
+and important character. The rest of this work will therefore be
+dedicated to the explanation of the principles on which he composed,
+and of the aspects of nature which he was the first to discern.
+
+  [88] Marmion, Introduction to canto II.
+
+  [89] The investigation of this subject becomes, therefore,
+       difficult beyond all other parts of our inquiry, since
+       precisely the same sentiments may arise in different minds
+       from totally opposite causes; and the extreme of frivolity
+       may sometimes for a moment desire the same things as the
+       extreme of moral power and dignity. In the following extract
+       from "Marriage," the sentiment expressed by Lady Juliana (the
+       ineffably foolish and frivolous heroine of the story) is as
+       nearly as possible what Dante would have felt, under the same
+       circumstances:
+
+       "The air was soft and genial; not a cloud stained the bright
+       azure of the heavens; and the sun shone out in all his
+       splendor, shedding life and beauty even over the desolate
+       heath-clad hills of Glenfern. But, after they had journeyed a
+       few miles, suddenly emerging from the valley, a scene of
+       matchless beauty burst at once upon the eye. Before them lay
+       the dark blue waters of Lochmarlie, reflecting, as in a
+       mirror, every surrounding object, and bearing on its placid,
+       transparent bosom a fleet of herring-boats, the drapery of
+       whose black, suspended nets contrasted, with picturesque
+       effect, the white sails of the larger vessels, which were
+       vainly spread to catch a breeze. All around, rocks, meadows,
+       woods, and hills mingled in wild and lovely irregularity.
+
+       "Not a breath was stirring, not a sound was heard, save the
+       rushing of a waterfall, the tinkling of some silver rivulet,
+       or the calm rippling of the tranquil lake; now and then, at
+       intervals, the fisherman's Gaelic ditty, chanted as he lay
+       stretched on the sand in some sunny nook; or the shrill,
+       distant sound of childish glee. How delicious to the feeling
+       heart to behold so fair a scene of unsophisticated nature, and
+       to listen to her voice alone, breathing the accents of
+       innocence and joy! But none of the party who now gazed on it
+       had minds capable of being touched with the emotions it was
+       calculated to inspire.
+
+       "Henry, indeed, was rapturous in his expressions of admiration;
+       but he concluded his panegyrics by wondering his brother did
+       not keep a cutter, and resolving to pass a night on board one
+       of the herring-boats, that he might eat the fish in perfection.
+
+       "Lady Juliana thought it might be very pretty, if, instead of
+       those frightful rocks and shabby cottages, there could be
+       villas, and gardens, and lawns, and conservatories, and
+       summer-houses, and statues.
+
+       "Miss Bella observed, if it was hers she would cut down the
+       woods, and level the hills, and have races."
+
+  [90] Childe Harold, canto iii. st. 71.
+
+  [91] Scenes et Proverbes. La Crise; (Scene en caleche, hors
+       Paris.)
+
+  [92] Compare the characters of Fleur de Marie and Rigolette, in
+       the Mysteres de Paris. I know no other instance in which the
+       two tempers are so exquisitely delineated and opposed. Read
+       carefully the beautiful pastoral, in the eighth chapter of
+       the first Part, where Fleur de Marie is first taken into the
+       fields under Montmartre, and compare it with the sixth of the
+       second Part, its accurately traced companion sketch, noting
+       carefully Rigolette's "Non, _je deteste la campagne_." She
+       does not, however, dislike flowers or birds: "Cette caisse de
+       bois, que Rigolette appellait le jardin de ses oiseaux, etait
+       remplie de terre recouverte de mousse, pendant l'hiver. Elle
+       travaillait aupres de la fenetre ouverte, a-demi-voilee par
+       un verdoyant rideau de pois de senteur roses, de capucines
+       oranges, de volubilis bleus et blancs."
+
+  [93] I have not read Clarissa.
+
+  [94] It might be thought that Young _could_ have sympathized with
+       it. He would have made better use of it, but he would not
+       have had the same delight in it. He turns his solitude to
+       good account; but this is because, to him, solitude is
+       sorrow, and his real enjoyment would have been of amiable
+       society, and a place at court.
+
+  [95] "The light-outspeeding telegraph
+       Bears nothing on its beam."    EMERSON.
+
+       See Appendix III., Plagiarism.
+
+  [96] Compare what is said before in various places of good and bad
+       finish, good and bad mystery, &c. If a man were disposed to
+       system-making, he could easily throw together a
+       counter-system to Aristotle's, showing that in all things
+       there were two extremes which exactly resembled each other,
+       but of which one was bad, the other good; and a mean,
+       resembling neither, but better than the one, and worse than
+       the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+OF THE TEACHERS OF TURNER.
+
+
+Sec. 1. The first step to the understanding either the mind or position
+of a great man ought, I think, to be an inquiry into the elements of
+his early instruction, and the mode in which he was affected by the
+circumstances of surrounding life. In making this inquiry, with
+respect to Turner, we shall be necessarily led to take note of the
+causes which had brought landscape-painting into the state in which
+he found it; and, therefore, of those transitions of style which, it
+will be remembered, we overleaped (hoping for a future opportunity
+of examining them) at the close of the fifteenth chapter.
+
+Sec. 2. And first, I said, it will be remembered, some way back, that
+the relations between Scott and Turner would probably be found to
+differ very curiously from those between Dante and Giotto. They
+differ primarily in this,--that Dante and Giotto, living in a
+consistent age, were subjected to one and the same influence, and
+maybe reasoned about almost in similar terms. But Scott and Turner,
+living in an inconsistent age, became subjected to inconsistent
+influences; and are at once distinguished by notable contrarieties,
+requiring separate examination in each.
+
+Sec. 3. Of these, the chief was that Scott, having had the blessing of
+a totally neglected education, was able early to follow most of his
+noble instincts; but Turner, having suffered under the instruction
+of the Royal Academy, had to pass nearly thirty years of his life in
+recovering from its consequences;[97] this permanent result
+following for both,--that Scott never was led into any fault
+foreign to his nature, but spoke what was in him, in rugged or idle
+simplicity; erring only where it was natural to err, and failing
+only where it was impossible to succeed. But Turner, from the
+beginning, was led into constrained and unnatural error; diligently
+debarred from every ordinary help to success. The one thing which
+the Academy _ought_ to have taught him (namely, the simple and safe
+use of oil color), it never taught him; but it carefully repressed
+his perceptions of truth, his capacities of invention, and his
+tendencies of choice. For him it was impossible to do right but in
+the spirit of defiance; and the first condition of his progress in
+learning, was the power to forget.
+
+Sec. 4. One most important distinction in their feelings throughout
+life was necessitated by this difference in early training. Scott
+gathered what little knowledge of architecture he possessed, in
+wanderings among the rocky walls of Crichtoun, Lochleven, and
+Linlithgow, and among the delicate pillars of Holyrood, Roslin, and
+Melrose. Turner acquired his knowledge of architecture at the desk,
+from academical elevations of the Parthenon and St. Paul's; and
+spent a large portion of his early years in taking views of
+gentlemen's seats, temples of the Muses, and other productions of
+modern taste and imagination; being at the same time directed
+exclusively to classical sources for information as to the proper
+subjects of art. Hence, while Scott was at once directed to the
+history of his native land, and to the Gothic fields of imagination;
+and his mind was fed in a consistent, natural, and felicitous way
+from his youth up, poor Turner for a long time knew no inspiration
+but that of Twickenham; no sublimity but that of Virginia Water. All
+the history and poetry presented to him at the age when the mind
+receives its dearest associations, were those of the gods and
+nations of long ago; and his models of sentiment and style were the
+worst and last wrecks of the Renaissance affectations.
+
+Sec. 5. Therefore (though utterly free from affectation), his early
+works are full of an _enforced_ artificialness, and of things
+ill-done and ill-conceived, because foreign to his own instincts;
+and, throughout life, whatever he did, because he thought he _ought_
+to do it, was wrong; all that he planned on any principle, or in
+supposed obedience to canons of taste, was false and abortive: he
+only did right when he ceased to reflect; was powerful only when he
+made no effort, and successful only when he had taken no aim.
+
+Sec. 6. And it is one of the most interesting things connected with the
+study of his art, to watch the way in which his own strength of
+English instinct breaks gradually through fetter and formalism; how
+from Egerian wells he steals away to Yorkshire streamlets; how from
+Homeric rocks, with laurels at the top and caves in the bottom, he
+climbs, at last, to Alpine precipices fringed with pine, and fortified
+with the slopes of their own ruins; and how from Temples of Jupiter
+and Gardens of the Hesperides, a spirit in his feet guides him, at
+last, to the lonely arches of Whitby, and bleak sands of Holy Isle.
+
+Sec. 7. As, however, is the case with almost all inevitable evil, in
+its effect on great minds, a certain good rose even out of this
+warped education; namely, his power of more completely expressing
+all the tendencies of his epoch, and sympathizing with many feelings
+and many scenes which must otherwise have been entirely profitless
+to him. Scott's mind was just as large and full of sympathy as
+Turner's; but having been permitted always to take his own choice
+among sources of enjoyment, Scott was entirely incapable of entering
+into the spirit of any classical scene. He was strictly a Goth and a
+Scot, and his sphere of sensation may be almost exactly limited by
+the growth of heather. But Turner had been forced to pay early
+attention to whatever of good and right there was even in things
+naturally distasteful to him. The charm of early association had
+been cast around much that to other men would have been tame: while
+making drawings of flower-gardens and Palladian mansions, he had
+been taught sympathy with whatever grace or refinement the garden or
+mansion could display, and to the close of life could enjoy the
+delicacy of trellis and parterre, as well as the wildness of the
+wood and the moorland; and watch the staying of the silver fountain
+at its appointed height in the sky, with an interest as earnest, if
+not as intense, as that with which he followed the crash of the
+Alpine cataract into its clouds of wayward rage.
+
+Sec. 8. The distinct losses to be weighed against this gain are, first,
+the waste of time during youth in painting subjects of no interest
+whatsoever,--parks, villas, and ugly architecture in general:
+secondly, the devotion of its utmost strength in later years to
+meaningless classical compositions, such as the Fall and Rise of
+Carthage, Bay of Baiae, Daphne and Leucippus, and such others, which,
+with infinite accumulation of material, are yet utterly heartless and
+emotionless, dead to the very root of thought, and incapable of
+producing wholesome or useful effect on any human mind, except only as
+exhibitions of technical skill and graceful arrangement: and, lastly,
+his incapacity, to the close of life, of entering heartily into the
+spirit of any elevated architecture; for those Palladian and classical
+buildings which he had been taught that it was right to admire, being
+wholly devoid of interest, and in their own formality and barrenness
+quite unmanageable, he was obliged to make them manageable in his
+pictures by disguising them, and to use all kinds of playing shadows
+and glittering lights to obscure their ugly details; and as in their
+best state such buildings are white and colorless, he associated the
+idea of whiteness with perfect architecture generally, and was
+confused and puzzled when he found it grey. Hence he never got
+thoroughly into the feeling of Gothic; its darkness and complexity
+embarrassed him; he was very apt to whiten by way of idealizing it,
+and to cast aside its details in order to get breadth of delicate
+light. In Venice, and the towns of Italy generally, he fastened on the
+wrong buildings, and used those which he chose merely as kind of white
+clouds, to set off his brilliant groups of boats, or burning spaces of
+lagoon. In various other minor ways, which we shall trace in their
+proper place, his classical education hindered or hurt him; but I feel
+it very difficult to say how far the loss was balanced by the general
+grasp it gave his mind; nor am I able to conceive what would have been
+the result, if his aims had been made at once narrower and more
+natural, and he had been led in his youth to delight in Gothic legends
+instead of classical mythology; and, instead of the porticos of the
+Parthenon, had studied in the aisles of Notre Dame.
+
+Sec. 9. It is still more difficult to conjecture whether he gathered
+most good or evil from the pictorial art which surrounded him in his
+youth. What that art was, and how the European schools had arrived
+at it, it now becomes necessary briefly to inquire.
+
+It will be remembered that, in the 14th chapter, we left our
+mediaeval landscape (Sec. 18.) in a state of severe formality, and
+perfect subordination to the interest of figure subject. I will now
+rapidly trace the mode and progress of its emancipation.
+
+Sec. 10. The formalized conception of scenery remained little altered
+until the time of Raphael, being only better executed as the
+knowledge of art advanced; that is to say, though the trees were
+still stiff, and often set one on each side of the principal
+figures, their color and relief on the sky were exquisitely
+imitated, and all groups of near leaves and flowers drawn with the
+most tender care, and studious botanical accuracy. The better the
+subjects were painted, however, the more logically absurd they
+became: a background wrought in Chinese confusion of towers and
+rivers, was in early times passed over carelessly, and forgiven for
+the sake of its pleasant color; but it appealed somewhat too far to
+imaginative indulgence when Ghirlandajo drew an exquisite
+perspective view of Venice and her lagoons behind an Adoration of
+the Magi;[98] and the impossibly small boats which might be pardoned
+in a mere illumination, representing the miraculous draught of
+fishes, became, whatever may be said to the contrary, inexcusably
+absurd in Raphael's fully realized landscape; so as at once to
+destroy the credibility of every circumstance of the event.
+
+Sec. 11. A certain charm, however, attached itself to many forms of
+this landscape, owing to their very unnaturalness, as I have
+endeavored to explain already in the last chapter of the second
+volume, Sec.Sec. 9. to 12.; noting, however, there, that it was in no wise
+to be made a subject of imitation; a conclusion which I have since
+seen more and more ground for holding finally. The longer I think
+over the subject, the more I perceive that the pleasure we take in
+such unnatural landscapes is intimately connected with our habit of
+regarding the New Testament as a beautiful poem, instead of a
+statement of plain facts. He who believes thoroughly that the events
+are true will expect, and ought to expect, real olive copse behind
+real Madonna, and no sentimental absurdities in either.
+
+[Illustration: 11. Latest Purism.]
+
+Sec. 12. Nor am I at all sure how far the delight which we take (when I
+say _we_, I mean, in general, lovers of old sacred art) in such
+quaint landscape, arises from its peculiar _falsehood_, and how far
+from its peculiar _truth_. For as it falls into certain errors more
+boldly, so, also, what truth it states, it states more firmly than
+subsequent work. No engravings, that I know, render the backgrounds
+of sacred pictures with sufficient care to enable the reader to
+judge of this matter unless before the works themselves. I have,
+therefore, engraved, on the opposite page, a bit of the background
+of Raphael's Holy Family, in the Tribune of the Uffizii, at
+Florence. I copied the trees leaf for leaf, and the rest of the work
+with the best care I could; the engraver, Mr. Armytage, has
+admirably rendered the delicate atmosphere which partly veils the
+distance. Now I do not know how far it is necessary to such pleasure
+as we receive from this landscape, that the trees should be both so
+straight and formal in stem, and should have branches no thicker
+than threads; or that the outlines of the distant hills should
+approximate so closely to those on any ordinary Wedgewood's china
+pattern. I know that, on the contrary, a great part of the pleasure
+arises from the sweet expression of air and sunshine; from the
+traceable resemblance of the city and tower to Florence and Fesole;
+from the fact that, though the boughs are too thin, the lines of
+ramification are true and beautiful; and from the expression of
+continually varied form in the clusters of leafage. And although all
+lovers of sacred art would shrink in horror from the idea of
+substituting for such a landscape a bit of Cuyp or Rubens, I do not
+think that the horror they feel is because Cuyp and Rubens's
+landscape is _truer_, but because it is _coarser_ and more vulgar in
+associated idea than Raphael's; and I think it possible that the
+true forms of hills, and true thicknesses of boughs, might be
+tenderly stolen into this background of Raphael's without giving
+offence to any one.
+
+Sec. 13. Take a somewhat more definite instance. The rock in Fig. 5.,
+at the side, is one put by Ghirlandajo into the background of his
+Baptism of Christ. I have no doubt Ghirlandajo's own rocks and trees
+are better, in several respects, than those here represented, since
+I have copied them from one of Lasinio's execrable engravings;
+still, the harsh outline, and generally stiff and uninventful
+blankness of the design are true enough, and characteristic of all
+rock-painting of the period. In the plate below I have etched[99]
+the outline of a fragment of one of Turner's cliffs, out of his
+drawing of Bolton Abbey; and it does not seem to me that, supposing
+them properly introduced in the composition, the substitution of the
+soft natural lines for the hard unnatural ones would make
+Ghirlandajo's background one whit less sacred.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
+
+Sec. 14. But be this as it may, the fact is, as ill luck would have it,
+that profanity of feeling, and skill in art, increased together; so
+that we do not find the backgrounds rightly painted till the figures
+become irreligious and feelingless; and hence we associate
+necessarily the perfect landscape with want of feeling. The first
+great innovator was either Masaccio or Filippino Lippi: their works
+are so confused together in the Chapel of the Carmine, that I know
+not to whom I may attribute,--or whether, without being immediately
+quarrelled with, and contradicted, I may attribute to anybody,--the
+landscape background of the fresco of the Tribute Money. But that
+background, with one or two other fragments in the same
+chapel, is far in advance of all other work I have seen of the
+period, in expression of the rounded contours and large slopes of
+hills, and the association of their summits with the clouds. The
+opposite engraving will give some better idea of its character than
+can be gained from the outlines commonly published; though the dark
+spaces, which in the original are deep blue, come necessarily
+somewhat too harshly on the eye when translated into light and
+shade. I shall have occasion to speak with greater speciality of
+this background in examining the forms of hills; meantime, it is
+only as an isolated work that it can be named in the history of
+pictorial progress, for Masaccio died too young to carry out his
+purposes; and the men around him were too ignorant of landscape to
+understand or take advantage of the little he had done. Raphael,
+though he borrowed from him in the human figure, never seems to have
+been influenced by his landscape, and retains either, as in Plate
+11., the upright formalities of Perugino; or, by way of being
+natural, expands his distances into flattish flakes of hill, nearly
+formless, as in the backgrounds of the Charge to Peter and Draught
+of Fishes; and thenceforward the Tuscan and Roman schools grew more
+and more artificial, and lost themselves finally under round-headed
+niches and Corinthian porticos.
+
+[Illustration: 12. The Shores of Wharfe.]
+
+[Illustration: 13. First Mountain Naturalism.]
+
+[Illustration: 14. The Lombard Apennine.]
+
+[Illustration: 15. St. George of the Seaweed.]
+
+Sec. 15. It needed, therefore, the air of the northern mountains and of
+the sea to brace the hearts of men to the development of the true
+landscape schools. I sketched by chance one evening the line of the
+Apennines from the ramparts of Parma, and I have put the rough note
+of it, and the sky that was over it, in Plate 14., and next to this
+(Plate 15.) a moment of sunset, behind the Euganean hills at Venice.
+I shall have occasion to refer to both hereafter; but they have some
+interest here as types of the kind of scenes which were daily set
+before the eyes of Correggio and Titian, and of the sweet free
+spaces of sky through which rose and fell, to them, the colored rays
+of the morning and evening.
+
+Sec. 16. And they are connected, also, with the forms of landscape
+adopted by the Lombardic masters, in a very curious way. We noticed
+that the Flemings, educated entirely in flat land, seemed to be
+always contented with the scenery it supplied; and we should
+naturally have expected that Titian and Correggio, living in the
+midst of the levels of the lagoons, and of the plain of Lombardy,
+would also have expressed, in their backgrounds, some pleasure in
+such level scenery, associated, of course, with the sublimity of the
+far-away Apennine, Euganean, or Alp. But not a whit. The plains of
+mulberry and maize, of sea and shoal, by which they were surrounded,
+never occur in their backgrounds but in cases of necessity; and both
+of them, in all their important landscapes, bury themselves in wild
+wood; Correggio delighting to relieve with green darkness of oak and
+ivy the golden hair and snowy flesh of his figures; and Titian,
+whenever the choice of a scene was in his power, retiring to the
+narrow glens and forests of Cadore.
+
+Sec. 17. Of the vegetation introduced by both, I shall have to speak at
+length in the course of the chapters on Foliage; meantime, I give in
+Plate 16. one of Titian's slightest bits of background, from one of
+the frescoes in the little chapel behind St. Antonio, at Padua,
+which may be compared more conveniently than any of his more
+elaborate landscapes with the purist work from Raphael. For in both
+these examples the trees are equally slender and delicate, only the
+formality of mediaeval art is, by Titian, entirely abandoned, and the
+old conception of the aspen grove and meadow done away with for
+ever. We are now far from cities: the painter takes true delight in
+the desert; the trees grow wild and free; the sky also has lost its
+peace, and is writhed into folds of motion, closely impendent upon
+earth, and somewhat threatening, through its solemn light.
+
+Sec. 18. Although, however, this example is characteristic of Titian in
+its wildness, it is not so in its _looseness_. It is only in the
+distant backgrounds of the slightest work, or when he is in a hurry,
+that Titian is vague: in all his near and studied work he completes
+every detail with scrupulous care. The next Plate, 17., a background
+of Tintoret's, from his picture of the Entombment at Parma, is more
+entirely characteristic of the Venetians. Some mistakes made in the
+reduction of my drawing during the course of engraving have cramped
+the curves of the boughs and leaves, of which I will give the true
+outline farther on; meantime the subject, which is that described in
+Sec. 16. of the chapter on Penetrative Imagination, Vol. II., will just
+as well answer the purpose of exemplifying the Venetian love of
+gloom and wildness, united with perfect definition of detail. Every
+leaf and separate blade of grass is drawn; but observe how the
+blades of grass are broken, how completely the aim at expression of
+faultlessness and felicity has been withdrawn, as contrary to the
+laws of the existent world.
+
+[Illustration: 16. Early Naturalism.]
+
+[Illustration: 17. Advanced Naturalism.]
+
+Sec. 19. From this great Venetian school of landscape Turner received
+much important teaching,--almost the only healthy teaching which he
+owed to preceding art. The designs of the Liber Studiorum are founded
+first on nature, but in many cases modified by _forced_ imitation of
+Claude, and _fond_ imitation of Titian. All the worst and feeblest
+studies in the book--as the pastoral with the nymph playing the
+tambourine, that with the long bridge seen through trees, and with the
+flock of goats on the walled road--owe the principal part of their
+imbecilities to Claude; another group (Solway Moss, Peat Bog,
+Lauffenbourg, &c.) is taken with hardly any modification by pictorial
+influence, straight from nature; and the finest works in the book--the
+Grande Chartreuse, Rizpah, Jason, Cephalus, and one or two more--are
+strongly under the influence of Titian.
+
+Sec. 20. The Venetian school of landscape expired with Tintoret, in the
+year 1594; and the sixteenth century closed, like a grave, over the
+great art of the world. There is _no_ entirely sincere or great art
+in the seventeenth century. Rubens and Rembrandt are its two
+greatest men, both deeply stained by the errors and affectations of
+their age. The influence of the Venetians hardly extended to them;
+the tower of the Titianesque art fell southwards; and on the dust of
+its ruins grew various art-weeds, such as Domenichino and the
+Carraccis. Their landscape, which may in few words be accurately
+defined as "Scum of Titian," possesses no single merit, nor any
+ground for the forgiveness of demerit; they are to be named only as
+a link through which the Venetian influence came dimly down to
+Claude and Salvator.
+
+Sec. 21. Salvator possessed real genius, but was crushed by misery in his
+youth, and by fashionable society in his age. He had vigorous animal
+life, and considerable invention, but no depth either of thought or
+perception. He took some hints directly from nature, and expressed
+some conditions of the grotesque of terror with original power; but
+his baseness of thought, and bluntness of sight, were unconquerable;
+and his works possess no value whatsoever for any person versed in the
+walks of noble art. They had little, if any, influence on Turner; if
+any, it was in blinding him for some time to the grace of tree trunks,
+and making him tear them too much into splinters.
+
+Sec. 22. Not so Claude, who may be considered as Turner's principal
+master. Claude's capacities were of the most limited kind; but he
+had tenderness of perception, and sincerity of purpose, and he
+effected a revolution in art. This revolution consisted mainly in
+setting the sun in heaven.[100] Till Claude's time no one had
+seriously thought of painting the sun but conventionally; that is to
+say, as a red or yellow star, (often) with a face in it, under which
+type it was constantly represented in illumination; else it was kept
+out of the picture, or introduced in fragmentary distances, breaking
+through clouds with almost definite rays. Perhaps the honor of
+having first tried to represent the real effect of the sun in
+landscape belongs to Bonifazio, in his pictures of the camps of
+Israel.[101] Rubens followed in a kind of bravado, sometimes making
+the rays issue from anything but the orb of the sun;--here, for
+instance, Fig. 6., is an outline of the position of the sun (at _s_)
+with respect to his own rays, in a sunset behind a tournament in the
+Louvre: and various interesting effects of sunlight issuing from the
+conventional face-filled orb occur in contemporary missal-painting;
+for instance, very richly in the Harleian MS. Brit. Mus. 3469. But
+all this was merely indicative of the tendency to transition which
+may always be traced in any age before the man comes who is to
+_accomplish_ the transition. Claude took up the new idea seriously,
+made the sun his subject, and painted the effects of misty shadows
+cast by his rays over the landscape, and other delicate aerial
+transitions, as no one had ever done before, and, in some respects,
+as no one has done in oil color since.
+
+Sec. 23. "But, how, if this were so, could his capacities be of the
+meanest order?" Because doing _one_ thing well, or better than others
+have done it, does not necessarily imply large capacity. Capacity
+means breadth of glance, understanding of the relations of things, and
+invention, and these are rare and precious; but there are very few men
+who have not done _something_, in the course of their lives, better
+than other people. I could point out many engravers, draughtsmen, and
+artists, who have each a particular merit in their manner, or
+particular field of perception, that nobody else has, or ever had. But
+this does not make them great men, it only indicates a small special
+capacity of some kind: and all the smaller if the gift be very
+peculiar and single; for a great man never so limits himself to one
+thing, as that we shall be able to say, "That's all he can do." If
+Claude had been a great man he would not have been so steadfastly set
+on painting effects of sun; he would have looked at all nature, and at
+all art, and would have painted sun effects somewhat worse, and nature
+universally much better.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
+
+Sec. 24. Such as he was, however, his discovery of the way to make
+pictures look warm was very delightful to the shallow connoisseurs
+of the age. Not that they cared for sunshine; but they liked seeing
+jugglery. They could not feel Titian's noble color, nor Veronese's
+noble composition; but they thought it highly amusing to see the sun
+brought into a picture: and Claude's works were bought and
+delighted in by vulgar people then, for their real-looking suns, as
+pictures are now by vulgar people for having real timepieces in
+their church towers.
+
+Sec. 25. But when Turner arose, with an earnest desire to paint the
+whole of nature, he found that the existence of the sun was an
+important fact, and by no means an easily manageable one. _He_ loved
+sunshine for its own sake; but he could not at first paint it. Most
+things else, he would more or less manage without much technical
+difficulty; but the burning orb and the golden haze could not,
+somehow, be got out of the oil paint. Naturally he went to Claude,
+who really had got them out of oil paint; approached him with great
+reverence, as having done that which seemed to Turner most difficult
+of all technical matters, and he became his faithful disciple. How
+much he learned from him of manipulation, I cannot tell; but one
+thing is certain, that he never quite equalled him in that
+particular forte of his. I imagine that Claude's way of laying on
+oil color was so methodical that it could not possibly be imitated
+by a man whose mechanism was interfered with by hundreds of thoughts
+and aims totally different from Claude's; and, besides, I suppose
+that certain useful principles in the management of paint, of which
+our schools are now wholly ignorant, had come down as far as Claude,
+from the Venetians. Turner at last gave up the attempt, and adopted
+a manipulation of his own, which indeed effected certain objects
+attainable in no other way, but which still was in many respects
+unsatisfactory, dangerous, and deeply to be regretted.
+
+Sec. 26. But meantime his mind had been strongly warped by Claude's
+futilities of conception. It was impossible to dwell on such works for
+any length of time without being grievously harmed by them; and the
+style of Turner's compositions was for ever afterwards weakened or
+corrupted. For, truly, it is almost beyond belief into what depth of
+absurdity Claude plunges continually in his most admired designs. For
+instance; undertaking to paint Moses at the Burning Bush, he
+represents a graceful landscape with a city, a river, and a bridge,
+and plenty of tall trees, and the sea, and numbers of people going
+about their business and pleasure in every direction; and the bush
+burning quietly upon a bank in the corner; rather in the dark, and
+not to be seen without close inspection. It would take some pages of
+close writing to point out, one by one, the inanities of heart, soul,
+and brain which such a conception involves; the ineffable ignorance of
+the nature of the event, and of the scene of it; the incapacity of
+conceiving anything even _in_ ignorance, which should be impressive;
+the dim, stupid, serene, leguminous enjoyment of his sunny
+afternoon--burn the bushes as much as they liked--these I leave the
+reader to think over at his leisure, either before the picture in Lord
+Ellesmere's gallery, or the sketch of it in the Liber Veritatis. But
+all these kinds of fallacy sprung more or less out of the vices of the
+time in which Claude lived; his own peculiar character reaches beyond
+these, to an incapacity of understanding the _main point_ in anything
+he had to represent, down to the minutest detail, which is quite
+unequalled, as far as I know, in human nugatoriness. For instance;
+here, in Fig. 7., is the head, with half the body, of Eneas drawing
+his Bow, from No. 180. of the Liber Veritatis. Observe, the string is
+too long by half; for if the bow were unbent, it would be two feet
+longer than the whole bow. Then the arrow is too long by half, has too
+heavy a head by half; and finally, it actually is _under_ the
+bow-hand, instead of above it. Of the ideal and heroic refinement of
+the head and drapery I will say nothing; but look only at the wretched
+archery, and consider if it would be possible for any child to draw
+the thing with less understanding, or to make more mistakes in the
+given compass.[102]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
+
+Sec. 27. And yet, exquisite as is Claude's instinct for blunder, he has
+not strength of mind enough to blunder in a wholly original manner,
+but he must needs falter out of his way to pick up other people's
+puerilities, and be absurd at second-hand. I have been obliged to
+laugh a little--though I hope reverently--at Ghirlandajo's
+landscapes, which yet we saw had a certain charm of quaintness in
+them when contrasted with his grand figures; but could any one have
+believed that Claude, with all the noble landscapes of Titian set
+before him, and all nature round about him, should yet go back to
+Ghirlandajo for types of form. Yet such is the case. I said that the
+Venetian influence came dimly down to Claude; but the old Florentine
+influence came clearly. The Claudesque landscape is not, as so
+commonly supposed, an idealized abstract of the nature about Rome.
+It is an ultimate condition of the Florentine conventional
+landscape, more or less softened by reference to nature. Fig. 8.,
+from No. 145. of the Liber Veritatis, is sufficiently characteristic
+of Claude's rock-drawing; and compared with Fig. 5. (p. 314), will
+show exactly the kind of modification he made on old and received
+types. We shall see other instances of it hereafter.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
+
+Imagine this kind of reproduction of whatever other people had done
+worst, and this kind of misunderstanding of all that he saw himself
+in nature, carried out in Claude's trees, rocks, ships--in
+everything that he touched,--and then consider what kind of school
+this work was for a young and reverent disciple. As I said, Turner
+never recovered the effects of it; his compositions were always
+mannered, lifeless, and even foolish; and he only did noble things
+when the immediate presence of nature had overpowered the
+reminiscences of his master.
+
+Sec. 28. Of the influence of Gaspar and Nicolo Poussin on Turner, there
+is hardly anything to be said, nor much respecting that which they
+had on landscape generally. Nicolo Poussin had noble powers of
+design, and might have been a thoroughly great painter had he been
+trained in Venice; but his Roman education kept him tame; his
+trenchant severity was contrary to the tendencies of the age, and
+had few imitators compared to the dashing of Salvator, and the mist
+of Claude. Those few imitators adopted his manner without possessing
+either his science or invention; and the Italian school of landscape
+soon expired. Reminiscences of him occur sometimes in Turner's
+compositions of sculptured stones for foreground; and the beautiful
+Triumph of Flora, in the Louvre, probably first showed Turner the
+use of definite flower, or blossom-painting, in landscape. I doubt
+if he took anything from Gaspar; whatever he might have learned from
+him respecting masses of foliage and golden distances, could have
+been learned better, and, I believe, _was_ learned, from Titian.
+
+Sec. 29. Meantime, a lower, but more living school had developed itself
+in the north; Cuyp had painted sunshine as truly as Claude, gilding
+with it a more homely, but far more honestly conceived landscape; and
+the effects of light of De Hooghe and Rembrandt presented examples of
+treatment to which southern art could show no parallel. Turner
+evidently studied these with the greatest care, and with great benefit
+in every way; especially this, that they neutralized the idealisms of
+Claude, and showed the young painter what power might be in plain
+truth, even of the most familiar kind. He painted several pictures in
+imitation of these masters; and those in which he tried to rival Cuyp
+are healthy and noble works, being, in fact, just what most of Cuyp's
+own pictures are--faithful studies of Dutch boats in calm weather, on
+smooth water. De Hooghe was too precise, and Rembrandt too dark, to be
+successfully or affectionately followed by him; but he evidently
+learned much from both.
+
+Sec. 30. Finally, he painted many pictures in the manner of Vandevelde
+(who was the accepted authority of his time in sea painting), and
+received much injury from him. To the close of his life, Turner
+always painted the sea too grey, and too opaque, in consequence of
+his early study of Vandevelde. He never seemed to perceive color so
+truly in the sea as he saw it elsewhere. But he soon discovered the
+poorness of Vandevelde's forms of waves, and raised their meanly
+divided surfaces into massive surge, effecting rapidly other
+changes, of which more in another place.
+
+Such was the art to which Turner, in early years, devoted his most
+earnest thoughts. More or less respectful contemplation of Reynolds,
+Loutherbourg, Wilson, Gainsborough, Morland, and Wilkie, was
+incidentally mingled with his graver study; and he maintained a
+questioning watchfulness of even the smallest successes of his
+brother artists of the modern landscape school. It remains for us
+only to note the position of that living school when Turner, helped
+or misled, as the case may be, by the study of the older artists,
+began to consider what remained for him to do, or design.
+
+Sec. 31. The dead schools of landscape, composed of the works we have
+just been examining, were broadly divisible into northern and
+southern: the Dutch schools, more or less natural, but vulgar; the
+Italian, more or less elevated, but absurd. There was a certain
+foolish elegance in Claude, and a dull dignity in Gaspar; but then
+their work resembled nothing that ever existed in the world. On the
+contrary, a canal or cattle piece of Cuyp's had many veracities
+about it; but they were, at best, truths of the ditch and dairy. The
+grace of nature, or her gloom, her tender and sacred seclusions, or
+her reach of power and wrath, had never been painted; nor had
+_anything_ been painted yet in true _love_ of it; for both Dutch and
+Italians agreed in this, that they always painted for the
+_picture's_ sake, to show how well they could imitate sunshine,
+arrange masses, or articulate straws,--never because they loved the
+scene, or wanted to carry away some memory of it.
+
+And thus, all that landscape of the old masters is to be considered
+merely as a struggle of expiring skill to discover some new
+direction in which to display itself. There was no love of nature in
+the age; only a desire for something new. Therefore those schools
+expired at last, leaving the chasm of nearly utter emptiness between
+them and the true moderns, out of which chasm the new school rises,
+not engrafted on that old one, but, from the very base of all
+things, beginning with mere washes of Indian ink, touched upon with
+yellow and brown; and gradually feeling its way to color.
+
+But this infant school differed inherently from that ancienter one,
+in that its motive was love. However feeble its efforts might be,
+they were _for the sake of the nature_, not of the picture, and
+therefore, having this germ of true life, it grew and throve. Robson
+did not paint purple hills because he wanted to show how he could
+lay on purple; but because he truly loved their dark peaks. Fielding
+did not paint downs to show how dexterously he could sponge out
+mists; but because he loved downs.
+
+This modern school, therefore, became the only true school of
+landscape which had yet existed; the artificial Claude and Gaspar
+work may be cast aside out of our way,--as I have said in my
+Edinburgh lectures, under the general title of "pastoralism,"--and
+from the last landscape of Tintoret, if we look for _life_, we must
+pass at once to the first of Turner.
+
+Sec. 32. What help Turner received from this or that companion of his
+youth is of no importance to any one now. Of course every great man is
+always being helped by everybody,[103] for his gift is to get good out
+of all things and all persons; and also there were two men associated
+with him in early study, who showed high promise in the same field,
+Cousen and Girtin (especially the former), and there is no saying what
+these men might have done had they lived; there might, perhaps, have
+been a struggle between one or other of them and Turner, as between
+Giorgione and Titian. But they lived not; and Turner is the only great
+man whom the school has yet produced,--quite great enough, as we shall
+see, for all that needed to be done. To him, therefore, we now finally
+turn, as the sole object of our inquiry. I shall first reinforce, with
+such additions as they need, those statements of his general
+principles which I made in the first volume, but could not then
+demonstrate fully, for want of time to prepare pictorial illustration;
+and then proceed to examine, piece by piece, his representations of
+the facts of nature, comparing them, as it may seem expedient, with
+what had been accomplished by others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I cannot close this volume without alluding briefly to a subject of
+different interest from any that have occupied us in its pages. For
+it may, perhaps, seem to a general reader heartless and vain to
+enter zealously into questions about our arts and pleasures in a
+time of so great public anxiety as this.
+
+But he will find, if he looks back to the sixth paragraph of the
+opening chapter of the last volume, some statement of feelings,
+which, as they made me despondent in a time of apparent national
+prosperity, now cheer me in one which, though of stern trial, I will
+not be so much a coward as to call one of adversity. And I derive
+this encouragement first from the belief that the War itself, with
+all its bitterness, is, in the present state of the European
+nations, productive of more good than evil; and, secondly, because I
+have more confidence than others generally entertain, in the justice
+of its cause.
+
+I say, first, because I believe the war is at present productive of
+good more than of evil. I will not argue this hardly and coldly, as
+I might, by tracing in past history some of the abundant evidence
+that nations have always reached their highest virtue, and wrought
+their most accomplished works, in times of straitening and battle;
+as, on the other hand, no nation ever yet enjoyed a protracted and
+triumphant peace without receiving in its own bosom ineradicable
+seeds of future decline. I will not so argue this matter; but I will
+appeal at once to the testimony of those whom the war has cost the
+dearest. I know what would be told me, by those who have suffered
+nothing; whose domestic happiness has been unbroken; whose daily
+comfort undisturbed; whose experience of calamity consists, at its
+utmost, in the incertitude of a speculation, the dearness of a
+luxury, or the increase of demands upon their fortune which they
+could meet fourfold without inconvenience. From these, I can well
+believe, be they prudent economists, or careless pleasure-seekers,
+the cry for peace will rise alike vociferously, whether in street or
+senate. But I ask _their_ witness, to whom the war has changed the
+aspect of the earth, and imagery of heaven, whose hopes it has cut
+off like a spider's web, whose treasure it has placed, in a moment,
+under the seals of clay. Those who can never more see sunrise, nor
+watch the climbing light gild the Eastern clouds, without thinking
+what graves it has gilded, first, far down behind the dark
+earth-line,--who never more shall see the crocus bloom in spring,
+without thinking what dust it is that feeds the wild flowers of
+Balaclava. Ask _their_ witness, and see if they will not reply that
+it is well with them, and with theirs; that they would have it no
+otherwise; would not, if they might, receive back their gifts of
+love and life, nor take again the purple of their blood out of the
+cross on the breastplate of England. Ask them: and though they
+should answer only with a sob, listen if it does not gather upon
+their lips into the sound of the old Seyton war-cry--"Set on."
+
+And this not for pride--not because the names of their lost ones
+will be recorded to all time, as of those who held the breach and
+kept the gate of Europe against the North, as the Spartans did
+against the East; and lay down in the place they had to guard, with
+the like home message, "Oh, stranger, go and tell the English that
+we are lying here, having obeyed their words;"--not for this, but
+because, also, they have felt that the spirit which has discerned
+them for eminence in sorrow--the helmed and sworded skeleton that
+rakes with its white fingers the sands of the Black Sea beach into
+grave-heap after grave-heap, washed by everlasting surf of
+tears--has been to them an angel of other things than agony; that
+they have learned, with those hollow, undeceivable eyes of his, to
+see all the earth by the sunlight of deathbeds;--no inch-high stage
+for foolish griefs and feigned pleasures; no dream, neither, as its
+dull moralists told them;--_Any_thing but that: a place of true,
+marvellous, inextricable sorrow and power; a question-chamber of
+trial by rack and fire, irrevocable decision recording continually;
+and no sleep, nor folding of hands, among the demon-questioners;
+none among the angel-watchers, none among the men who stand or fall
+beside those hosts of God. They know now the strength of sacrifice,
+and that its flames can illumine as well as consume; they are bound
+by new fidelities to all that they have saved,--by new love to all
+for whom they have suffered; every affection which seemed to sink
+with those dim life-stains into the dust, has been delegated, by
+those who need it no more, to the cause for which they have expired;
+and every mouldering arm, which will never more embrace the beloved
+ones, has bequeathed to them its strength and its faithfulness.
+
+For the cause of this quarrel is no dim, half-avoidable involution
+of mean interests and errors, as some would have us believe. There
+never was a great war caused by such things. There never can be. The
+historian may trace it, with ingenious trifling, to a courtier's
+jest or a woman's glance; but he does not ask--(and it is the sum of
+questions)--how the warring nations had come to found their
+destinies on the course of the sneer, or the smile. If they have so
+based them, it is time for them to learn, through suffering, how to
+build on other foundations--for great, accumulated, and most
+righteous cause, their foot slides in due time; and against the
+torpor, or the turpitude, of their myriads, there is loosed the
+haste of the devouring sword and the thirsty arrow. But if they have
+set their fortunes on other than such ground, then the war must be
+owing to some deep conviction or passion in their own hearts,--a
+conviction which, in resistless flow, or reckless ebb, or consistent
+stay, is the ultimate arbiter of battle, disgrace, or conquest.
+
+Wherever there is war, there _must_ be injustice on one side or the
+other, or on both. There have been wars which were little more than
+trials of strength between friendly nations, and in which the
+injustice was not to each other, but to the God who gave them life.
+But in a malignant war of these present ages there is injustice of
+ignobler kind, at once to God and man, which _must_ be stemmed for
+both their sakes. It may, indeed, be so involved with national
+prejudices, or ignorances, that neither of the contending nations
+can conceive it as attaching to their cause; nay, the constitution
+of their governments, and the clumsy crookedness of their political
+dealings with each other, may be such as to prevent either of them
+from knowing the actual cause for which they have gone to war.
+Assuredly this is, in a great degree, the state of things with _us_;
+for I noticed that there never came news by telegraph of the
+explosion of a powder-barrel, or of the loss of thirty men by a
+sortie, but the Parliament lost confidence immediately in the
+justice of the war; reopened the question whether we ever should
+have engaged in it, and remained in a doubtful and repentant state
+of mind until one of the enemy's powder-barrels blew up also; upon
+which they were immediately satisfied again that the war was a wise
+and necessary one. How far, therefore, the calamity may have been
+brought upon us by men whose political principles shoot annually
+like the leaves, and change color at every autumn frost:--how loudly
+the blood that has been poured out round the walls of that city, up
+to the horse-bridles, may now be crying from the ground against men
+who did not know, when they first bade shed it, exactly what war
+was, or what blood was, or what life was, or truth, or what anything
+else was upon the earth; and whose tone of opinions touching the
+destinies of mankind depended entirely upon whether they were
+sitting on the right or left side of the House of Commons;--this, I
+repeat, I know not, nor (in all solemnity I say it) do I care to
+know. For if it be so, and the English nation could at the present
+period of its history be betrayed into a war such as this by the
+slipping of a wrong word into a protocol, or bewitched into
+unexpected battle under the budding hallucinations of its sapling
+senators, truly it is time for us to bear the penalty of our
+baseness, and learn, as the sleepless steel glares close upon us,
+how to choose our governors more wisely, and our ways more warily.
+For that which brings swift punishment in war, must have brought
+slow ruin in peace; and those who have now laid down their lives for
+England, have doubly saved her; they have humbled at once her
+enemies and herself; and have done less for her, in the conquest
+they achieve, than in the sorrow that they claim.
+
+But it is not altogether thus: we have not been cast into this war
+by mere political misapprehensions, or popular ignorances. It is
+quite possible that neither we nor our rulers may clearly understand
+the nature of the conflict; and that we may be dealing blows in the
+dark, confusedly, and as a soldier suddenly awakened from slumber by
+an unknown adversary. But I believe the struggle was inevitable, and
+that the sooner it came, the more easily it was to be met, and the
+more nobly concluded. France and England are both of them, from
+shore to shore, in a state of intense progression, change, and
+experimental life. They are each of them beginning to examine, more
+distinctly than ever nations did yet in the history of the world,
+the dangerous question respecting the rights of governed, and the
+responsibilities of governing, bodies; not, as heretofore; foaming
+over them in red frenzy, with intervals of fetter and straw crown,
+but in health, quietness, and daylight, with the help of a good
+Queen and a great Emperor; and to determine them in a way which, by
+just so much as it is more effective and rational, is likely to
+produce more permanent results than ever before on the policy of
+neighboring States, and to force, gradually, the discussion of
+similar questions into their places of silence. To force it,--for
+true liberty, like true religion, is always aggressive or
+persecuted; but the attack is _generally_ made upon it by the nation
+which is to be crushed,--by Persian on Athenian, Tuscan on Roman,
+Austrian on Swiss; or, as now, by Russia upon us and our allies: her
+attack appointed, it seems to me, for confirmation of all our
+greatness, trial of our strength, purging and punishment of our
+futilities, and establishment for ever, in our hands, of the
+leadership in the political progress of the world.
+
+Whether this its providential purpose be accomplished, must depend
+on its enabling France and England to love one another, and teaching
+these, the two noblest foes that ever stood breast to breast among
+the nations, first to decipher the law of international charities;
+first to discern that races, like individuals, can only reach their
+true strength, dignity, or joy, in seeking each the welfare, and
+exulting each in the glory, of the other. It is strange how far we
+still seem from fully perceiving this. We know that two men, cast on
+a desert island, could not thrive in dispeace; we can understand
+that four, or twelve, might still find their account in unity; but
+that a multitude should thrive otherwise than by the contentions of
+its classes, or _two_ multitudes hold themselves in anywise bound by
+brotherly law to serve, support, rebuke, rejoice in one another,
+this seems still as far beyond our conception, as the clearest of
+commandments, "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's
+wealth," is beyond our habitual practice. Yet, if once we comprehend
+that precept in its breadth, and feel that what we now call jealousy
+for our country's honor, is, so far as it tends to other countries'
+_dis_honor, merely one of the worst, because most complacent and
+self-gratulatory, forms of irreligion,--a newly breathed strength
+will, with the newly interpreted patriotism, animate and sanctify
+the efforts of men. Learning, unchecked by envy, will be accepted
+more frankly, throned more firmly, guided more swiftly; charity,
+unchilled by fear, will dispose the laws of each State without
+reluctance to advantage its neighbor by justice to itself; and
+admiration, unwarped by prejudice, possess itself continually of new
+treasure in the arts and the thoughts of the stranger.
+
+If France and England fail of this, if again petty jealousies or
+selfish interests prevail to unknit their hands from the armored
+grasp, then, indeed, their faithful children will have fallen in
+vain; there will be a sound as of renewed lamentation along those
+Euxine waves, and a shaking among the bones that bleach by the
+mounds of Sebastopol. But if they fail not of this,--if we, in our
+love of our queens and kings, remember how France gave to the cause
+of early civilization, first the greatest, then the holiest, of
+monarchs;[104] and France, in her love of liberty, remembers how
+_we_ first raised the standard of Commonwealth, trusted to the grasp
+of one good and strong hand, witnessed for by victory; and so join
+in perpetual compact of our different strengths, to contend for
+justice, mercy, and truth throughout the world,--who dares say that
+one soldier has died in vain? The scarlet of the blood that has
+sealed this covenant will be poured along the clouds of a new
+aurora, glorious in that Eastern heaven; for every sob of wreck-fed
+breaker round those Pontic precipices, the floods shall clap their
+hands between the guarded mounts of the Prince-Angel; and the
+spirits of those lost multitudes, crowned with the olive and rose
+among the laurel, shall haunt, satisfied, the willowy brooks and
+peaceful vales of England, and glide, triumphant, by the poplar
+groves and sunned coteaux of Seine.
+
+  [97] The education here spoken of is, of course, that bearing on
+       the main work of life. In other respects, Turner's education
+       was more neglected than Scott's, and that not beneficently.
+       See the close of the third of my Edinburgh Lectures.
+
+  [98] The picture is in the Uffizii of Florence.
+
+  [99] This etching is prepared for receiving mezzotint in the next
+       volume; it is therefore much heavier in line, especially in
+       the water, than I should have made it, if intended to be
+       complete as it is.
+
+  [100] Compare Vol. I. Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. I repeat here
+        some things that were then said; but it is necessary now to
+        review them in connection with Turner's education, as well
+        as for the sake of enforcing them by illustration.
+
+  [101] Now in the old library of Venice.
+
+  [102] My old friend Blackwood complains bitterly, in his last
+        number, of my having given this illustration at one of my
+        late lectures, saying, that I "have a disagreeable knack of
+        finding out the joints in my opponent's armor," and that "I
+        never fight for love." I never do. I fight for truth,
+        earnestly, and in no wise for jest; and against all lies,
+        earnestly, and in no wise for love. They complain that "a
+        noble adversary is not in Mr. Ruskin's way." No; a noble
+        adversary never was, never will be. With all that is noble
+        I have been, and shall be, in perpetual peace, with all that
+        is ignoble and false everlastingly at war. And as for these
+        Scotch _bourgeois gentilshommes_ with their "Tu n'as pas la
+        patience que je pare," let them look to their fence. But
+        truly, if they will tell me where Claude's strong points
+        are, I will strike there, and be thankful.
+
+  [103] His first drawing master was, I believe, that Mr. Lowe,
+        whose daughters, now aged and poor, have, it seems to me,
+        some claim on public regard, being connected distantly with
+        the memory of Johnson, and closely with that of Turner.
+
+  [104] Charlemagne and St. Louis.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+I. CLAUDE'S TREE-DRAWING.
+
+
+The reader may not improbably hear it said, by persons who are
+incapable of maintaining an honest argument, and therefore incapable
+of understanding or believing the honesty of an adversary, that I
+have caricatured, or unfairly chosen, the examples I give of the
+masters I depreciate. It is evident, in the first place, that I
+could not, if I were even cunningly disposed, adopt a worse policy
+than in so doing; for the discovery of caricature or falsity in my
+representations, would not only invalidate the immediate statement,
+but the whole book; and invalidate it in the most fatal way, by
+showing that all I had ever said about "truth" was hypocrisy, and
+that in my own affairs I expected to prevail by help of lies.
+Nevertheless it necessarily happens, that in endeavors to facsimile
+any work whatsoever, bad or good, some changes are induced from the
+exact aspect of the original. These changes are, of course,
+sometimes harmful, sometimes advantageous; the bad thing generally
+gains; the good thing _always_ loses: so that I am continually
+tormented by finding, in my plates of contrasts, the virtue and vice
+I exactly wanted to talk about, eliminated from _both_ examples. In
+some cases, however, the bad thing will lose also, and then I must
+either cancel the plate, or increase the cost of the work by
+preparing another (at a similar risk), or run the chance of
+incurring the charge of dishonest representation. I desire,
+therefore, very earnestly, and once for all, to have it understood
+that whatever I say in the text, bearing on questions of comparison,
+refers _always_ to the _original_ works; and that, if the reader has
+it in his power, I would far rather he should look at those works
+than at my plates of them; I only give the plates for his immediate
+help and convenience: and I mention this, with respect to my plate
+of Claude's ramification, because, if I have such a thing as a
+prejudice at all, (and, although I do not myself think I have,
+people certainly say so,) it is against Claude; and I might,
+therefore, be sooner suspected of some malice in this plate than in
+others. But I simply gave the original engravings from the Liber
+Veritatis to Mr. Le Keux, earnestly requesting that the portions
+selected might be faithfully copied; and I think he is much to be
+thanked for so carefully and successfully accomplishing the task.
+The figures are from the following plates:--
+
+  No. 1. Part of the central tree in No. 134. of the Liber Veritatis.
+      2. From the largest tree       "   158.
+      3. Bushes at root of tree      "   134.
+      4. Tree on the left            "   183.
+      5. Tree on the left            "    95.
+      6. Tree on the left            "    72.
+      7. Principal tree              "    92.
+      8. Tree on the right           "    32.
+
+If, in fact, any change be effected in the examples in this plate, it
+is for the better; for, thus detached, they all look like small
+boughs, in which the faults are of little consequence; in the original
+works they are seen to be intended for large trunks of trees, and the
+errors are therefore pronounced on a much larger scale.
+
+The plate of mediaeval rocks (10.) has been executed with much less
+attention in transcript, because the points there to be illustrated
+were quite indisputable, and the instances were needed merely to show
+the _kind_ of _thing_ spoken of, not the skill of particular masters.
+The example from Leonardo was, however, somewhat carefully treated.
+Mr. Cuff copied it accurately from the only engraving of the picture
+which I believe exists, and with which, therefore, I suppose the world
+is generally content. That engraving, however, in no respect seems to
+me to give the look of the light behind Leonardo's rocks; so I
+afterwards darkened the rocks, and put some light into the sky and
+lily; and the effect is certainly more like that of the picture than
+it is in the same portion of the old engraving.
+
+Of the other masters represented in the plates of this volume, the
+noblest, Tintoret, has assuredly suffered the most (Plate 17.);
+first, in my too hasty drawing from the original, picture; and,
+secondly, through some accidental errors of outline which occurred
+in the reduction to the size of the page; lastly, and chiefly, in
+the withdrawal of the heads of the four figures underneath, in the
+shadow, on which the composition entirely depends. This last evil is
+unavoidable. It is quite impossible to make _extracts_ from the
+great masters without partly spoiling every separated feature; the
+very essence of a noble composition being, that none should bear
+separation from the rest.
+
+The plate from Raphael (11) is, I think, on the whole, satisfactory.
+It cost me much pains, as I had to facsimile the irregular form of
+every leaf; each being, in the original picture, executed with a
+somewhat wayward pencil-stroke of vivid brown on the clear sky.
+
+Of the other plates it would be tedious to speak in detail.
+Generally, it will be found that I have taken most pains to do
+justice to the masters of whom I have to speak depreciatingly; and
+that, if there be calumny at all, it is always of Turner, rather
+than of Claude.
+
+The reader might, however, perhaps suspect me of ill-will towards
+Constable, owing to my continually introducing him for depreciatory
+comparison. So far from this being the case, I had, as will be seen
+in various passages of the first volume, considerable respect for
+the feeling with which he worked; but I was compelled to do harsh
+justice upon him now, because Mr. Leslie, in his unadvised and
+unfortunate _rechauffe_ of the fallacious art-maxims of the last
+century, has suffered his personal regard for Constable so far to
+prevail over his judgment as to bring him forward as a great artist,
+comparable in some kind with Turner. As Constable's reputation was,
+even before this, most mischievous, in giving countenance to the
+blotting and blundering of Modernism, I saw myself obliged, though
+unwillingly, to carry the suggested comparison thoroughly out.
+
+
+II. GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
+
+The reader must have noticed that I never speak of German art, or
+German philosophy, but in depreciation. This, however, is not
+because I cannot feel, or would not acknowledge, the value and
+power, within certain limits, of both; but because I also feel that
+the immediate tendency of the English mind is to rate them too
+highly; and, therefore, it becomes a necessary task, at present, to
+mark what evil and weakness there are in them, rather than what
+good. I also am brought continually into collision with certain
+extravagances of the German mind, by my own steady pursuit of
+Naturalism as opposed to Idealism; and, therefore, I become
+unfortunately cognizant of the evil, rather than of the good; which
+evil, so far as I feel it, I am bound to declare. And it is not to
+the point to protest, as the Chevalier Bunsen and other German
+writers have done, against the expression of opinions respecting
+their philosophy by persons who have not profoundly or carefully
+studied it; for the very resolution to study any system of
+metaphysics profoundly, must be based, in any prudent man's mind, on
+some preconceived opinion of its worthiness to be studied; which
+opinion of German metaphysics the naturalistic English cannot be led
+to form. This is not to be murmured against,--it is in the simple
+necessity of things. Men who have other business on their hands must
+be content to choose what philosophy they have occasion for, by the
+sample; and when, glancing into the second volume of "Hippolytus,"
+we find the Chevalier Bunsen himself talking of a "finite
+realization of the infinite" (a phrase considerably less rational
+than "a black realization of white"), and of a triad composed of
+God, Man, and Humanity[105] (which is a parallel thing to talking of
+a triad composed of man, dog, and canineness), knowing those
+expressions to be pure, definite, and highly finished nonsense, we
+do not in general trouble ourselves to look any farther. Some one
+will perhaps answer that if one always judged thus by the
+sample,--as, for instance, if one judged of Turner's pictures by the
+head of a figure cut out of one of them,--very precious things might
+often be despised. Not, I think, often. If any one went to Turner,
+expecting to learn figure-drawing from him, the sample of his
+figure-drawing would accurately and justly inform him that he had
+come to the wrong master. But if he came to be taught landscape, the
+smallest fragment of Turner's work would justly exemplify his power.
+It may sometimes unluckily happen that, in such short trial, we
+strike upon an accidentally failing part of the thing to be tried,
+and then we may be unjust; but there is, nevertheless, in multitudes
+of cases, no other way of judging or acting; and the necessity of
+occasionally being unjust is a law of life,--like that of sometimes
+stumbling, or being sick. It will not do to walk at snail's pace all
+our lives for fear of stumbling, nor to spend years in the
+investigation of everything which, by specimen, we must condemn. He
+who seizes all that he plainly discerns to be valuable, and never is
+unjust but when he honestly cannot help it, will soon be enviable in
+his possessions, and venerable in his equity.
+
+Nor can I think that the risk of loss is great in the matter under
+discussion. I have often been told that any one who will read Kant,
+Strauss, and the rest of the German metaphysicians and divines,
+resolutely through, and give his whole strength to the study of them,
+will, after ten or twelve years' labor, discover that there is very
+little harm in them; and this I can well believe; but I believe also
+that the ten or twelve years may be better spent; and that any man who
+honestly wants philosophy not for show, but for _use_, and knowing the
+Proverbs of Solomon, can, by way of Commentary, afford to buy, in
+convenient editions, Plato, Bacon, Wordsworth, Carlyle, and Helps,
+will find that he has got as much as will be sufficient for him and
+his household during life, and of as good quality as need be.
+
+It is also often declared necessary to study the German
+controversialists, because the grounds of religion "must be inquired
+into." I am sorry to hear they have not been inquired into yet; but
+if it be so, there are two ways of pursuing that inquiry: one for
+scholarly men, who have leisure on their hands, by reading all that
+they have time to read, for and against, and arming themselves at
+all points for controversy with all persons; the other,--a shorter
+and simpler way,--for busy and practical men, who want merely to
+find out how to live and die. Now for the learned and leisurely men
+I am not writing; they know what and how to read better than I can
+tell them. For simple and busy men, concerned much with art, which
+is eminently a practical matter, and fatigues the eyes, so as to
+render much reading inexpedient, I _am_ writing; and such men I do,
+to the utmost of my power, dissuade from meddling with German books;
+not because I fear inquiry into the grounds of religion, but because
+the only inquiry which is _possible_ to them must be conducted in a
+totally different way. They have been brought up as Christians, and
+doubt if they should remain Christians. They cannot ascertain, by
+investigation, if the Bible be true; but _if it be_, and Christ ever
+existed, and was God, then, certainly, the Sermon which He has
+permitted for 1800 years to stand recorded as first of all His own
+teaching in the New Testament, must be true. Let them take that
+Sermon and give it fair practical trial: act out every verse of it,
+with no quibbling or explaining away, except the reduction of such
+_evidently_ metaphorical expressions as "cut off thy foot," "pluck
+the beam out of thine eye," to their effectively practical sense.
+Let them act out, or obey, every verse literally for a whole year,
+so far as they can,--a year being little enough time to give to an
+inquiry into religion; and if, at the end of the year, they are not
+satisfied, and still need to prosecute the inquiry, let them try the
+German system if they choose.
+
+
+III. PLAGIARISM.
+
+Some time after I had written the concluding chapter of this work,
+the interesting and powerful poems of Emerson were brought under my
+notice by one of the members of my class at the Working Men's
+College. There is much in some of these poems so like parts of the
+chapter in question, even in turn of expression, that though I do
+not usually care to justify myself from the charge of plagiarism, I
+felt that a few words were necessary in this instance.
+
+I do not, as aforesaid, justify myself, in general, because I know
+there is internal evidence in my work of its originality, if people
+care to examine it; and if they do not, or have not skill enough to
+know genuine from borrowed work, my simple assertion would not
+convince them, especially as the charge of plagiarism is hardly ever
+made but by plagiarists, and persons of the unhappy class who do not
+believe in honesty but on evidence. Nevertheless, as my work is so
+much out of doors, and among pictures, that I have time to read few
+modern books, and am therefore in more danger than most people of
+repeating, as if it were new, what others have said, it may be well
+to note, once for all, that any such apparent plagiarism results in
+fact from my writings being more original than I wish them to be,
+from my having worked out my whole subject in unavoidable, but to
+myself hurtful, ignorance of the labors of others. On the other
+hand, I should be very sorry if I had _not_ been continually taught
+and influenced by the writers whom I love; and am quite unable to
+say to what extent my thoughts have been guided by Wordsworth,
+Carlyle, and Helps; to whom (with Dante and George Herbert, in olden
+time) I owe more than to any other writers;--most of all, perhaps,
+to Carlyle, whom I read so constantly, that, without wilfully
+setting myself to imitate him, I find myself perpetually falling
+into his modes of expression, and saying many things in a "quite
+other," and, I hope, stronger, way, than I should have adopted some
+years ago; as also there are things which I hope are said more
+clearly and simply than before, owing to the influence upon me of
+the beautiful _quiet_ English of Helps. It would be both foolish and
+wrong to struggle to cast off influences of this kind; for they
+consist mainly in a real and healthy help;--the master, in writing
+as in painting, showing certain methods of language which it would
+be ridiculous, and even affected, not to employ, when once shown;
+just as it would have been ridiculous in Bonifacio to refuse to
+employ Titian's way of laying on color, if he felt it the best,
+because he had not himself discovered it. There is all the
+difference in the world between this receiving of guidance, or
+allowing of influence, and wilful imitation, much more, plagiarism;
+nay, the guidance may even innocently reach into local tones of
+thought, and must do so to some extent; so that I find Carlyle's
+stronger thinking coloring mine continually; and should be very
+sorry if I did not; otherwise I should have read him to little
+purpose. But what I have of my own is still all there, and, I
+believe, better brought out, by far, than it would have been
+otherwise. Thus, if we glance over the wit and satire of the popular
+writers of the day, we shall find that the _manner_ of it, so far as
+it is distinctive, is always owing to Dickens; and that out of his
+first exquisite ironies branched innumerable other forms of wit,
+varying with the disposition of the writers; original in the matter
+and substance of them, yet never to have been expressed as they now
+are, but for Dickens.
+
+Many people will suppose that for several ideas in the chapters on
+Landscape I was indebted to Humboldt's Kosmos, and Howitt's Rural
+Scenery. I am indebted to Mr. Howitt's book for much pleasure, but
+for no suggestion, as it was not put into my hands till the chapters
+in question were in type. I wish it had been; as I should have been
+glad to have taken farther note on the landscape of Theocritus, on
+which Mr. Howitt dwells with just delight. Other parts of the book
+will be found very suggestive and helpful to the reader who cares to
+pursue the subject. Of Humboldt's Kosmos I heard much talk when it
+first came out, and looked through it cursorily; but thinking it
+contained no material (connected with my subject)[106] which I had
+not already possessed myself of, I have never since referred to the
+work. I may be mistaken in my estimate of it, but certainly owe it
+absolutely nothing.
+
+It is also often said that I borrow from Pugin. I glanced at Pugin's
+Contrasts once, in the Oxford architectural reading-room, during an
+idle forenoon. His "Remarks on Articles in the Rambler" were brought
+under my notice by some of the reviews. I never read a word of any
+other of his works, not feeling, from the style of his architecture,
+the smallest interest in his opinions.
+
+I have so often spoken, in the preceding pages, of Holman Hunt's
+picture of the Light of the World, that I may as well, in this
+place, glance at the envious charge against it, of being plagiarized
+from a German print.
+
+It is indeed true that there was a painting of the subject before;
+and there were, of course, no paintings of the Nativity before
+Raphael's time, nor of the Last Supper before Leonardo's, else those
+masters could have laid no claim to originality. But what was still
+more singular (the verse to be illustrated being, "Behold, I stand
+at the door and knock"), the principal figure in the antecedent
+picture was knocking at a door, knocked with its right hand, and had
+its face turned to the spectator! Nay, it was even robed in a long
+robe, down to its feet. All these circumstances were the same in Mr.
+Hunt's picture; and as the chances evidently were a hundred to one
+that if he had not been helped to the ideas by the German artist, he
+would have represented the figure as _not_ knocking at any door, as
+turning its back to the spectator, and as dressed in a short robe,
+the plagiarism was considered as demonstrated. Of course no defence
+is possible in such a case. All I can say is, that I shall be
+sincerely grateful to any unconscientious persons who will adapt a
+few more German prints in the same manner.
+
+Finally, touching plagiarism in general, it is to be remembered that
+all men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped:
+they are taught by every person whom they meet, and enriched by
+everything that falls in their way. The greatest is he who has been
+oftenest aided; and, if the attainments of all human minds could be
+traced to their real sources, it would be found that the world had
+been laid most under contribution by the men of most original power,
+and that every day of their existence deepened their debt to their
+race, while it enlarged their gifts to it. The labor devoted to
+trace the origin of any thought, or any invention, will usually
+issue in the blank conclusion that there is nothing new under the
+sun; yet nothing that is truly great can ever be altogether
+borrowed; and he is commonly the wisest, and is always the happiest,
+who receives simply, and without envious question, whatever good is
+offered him, with thanks to its immediate giver.
+
+  [105] I am truly sorry to have introduced such words in an
+        apparently irreverent way. But it would be a guilty
+        reverence which prevented us from exposing fallacy,
+        precisely where fallacy was most dangerous, and shrank from
+        unveiling an error, just because that error existed in
+        parlance respecting the most solemn subjects to which it
+        could possibly be attached.
+
+  [106] See the Fourth Volume.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+           Transcriber's Notes (continued from top of text):
+
+
+  Typographical changes to the original work are as follows:
+
+  Minor punctuation changes have been made without annotation.
+
+  pg 242 paus/pause: Matilda pause where ...
+  pg 277 charater/character: the character of this ...
+  pg 330 cloads/clouds: clouds of rage ...
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Modern Painters Vol. III., by John Ruskin
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