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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15200-8.txt b/15200-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..129d700 --- /dev/null +++ b/15200-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11106 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Selections From the Works of John Ruskin, 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: Selections From the Works of John Ruskin + +Author: John Ruskin + +Release Date: February 28, 2005 [EBook #15200] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +Riverside College Classics + + +SELECTIONS + +FROM THE WORKS OF + +JOHN RUSKIN + + + +EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY + +CHAUNCEY B. TINKER, Ph.D. +_Professor of English in Yale College_ + +BOSTON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO--SAN FRANCISCO +HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY +The Riverside Press Cambridge + + + +1908 + +BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY + +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + +The Riverside Press +CAMBRIDGE--MASSACHUSETTS +PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. + + + + +PREFACE + + +In making the following selections, I have tried to avoid the +appearance of such a volume as used to be entitled _Elegant Extracts_. +Wherever practicable, entire chapters or lectures are given, or at +least passages of sufficient length to insure a correct notion of the +general complexion of Ruskin's work. The text is in all cases that of +the first editions, unless these were later revised by Ruskin himself. +The original spelling and punctuation are preserved, but a few minor +changes have been made for the sake of uniformity among the various +extracts. For similar reasons, Ruskin's numbering of paragraphs is +dispensed with. + +I have aimed not to multiply notes. Practically all Ruskin's own +annotation is given, with the exception of one or two very long and +somewhat irrelevant notes from _Stones of Venice_. It has not been +deemed necessary to give the dates of every painter or to explain +every geographical reference. On the other hand, the sources of most +of the quotations are indicated. In the preparation of these notes, +the magnificent library edition of Messrs. Cook and Wedderburn has +inevitably been of considerable assistance; but all their references +have been verified, many errors have been corrected, and much has of +course been added. + +In closing I wish to express my obligation to my former colleague, Dr. +Lucius H. Holt, without whose assistance this volume would never have +appeared. He wrote a number of the notes, including the short prefaces +to the various selections, and prepared the manuscript for the +printer. + +C.B.T. + +_September, 1908_. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +INTRODUCTION + The Life of Ruskin + The Unity of Ruskin's Writings + Ruskin's Style + +SELECTIONS FROM MODERN PAINTERS + The Earth-Veil + The Mountain Glory + Sunrise on the Alps + The Grand Style + Of Realization + Of the Novelty of Landscape + Of the Pathetic Fallacy + Of Classical Landscape + Of Modern Landscape + The Two Boyhoods + +SELECTIONS FROM THE STONES OF VENICE + The Throne + St. Mark's + Characteristics of Gothic Architecture + +SELECTIONS FROM THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE + The Lamp of Memory + The Lamp of Obedience + +SELECTIONS FROM LECTURES ON ART + Inaugural + The Relation of Art to Morals + The Relation of Art to Use + + ART AND HISTORY + + TRAFFIC + + LIFE AND ITS ARTS + + BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +JOHN RUSKIN IN 1857 +TURNER'S FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE +CHURCH OF ST. MARK, VENICE +ST. MARK'S: CENTRAL ARCH OF FAÇADE + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +[Sidenote: Two conflicting tendencies in Ruskin.] + +It is distinctive of the nineteenth century that in its passion for +criticising everything in heaven and earth it by no means spared to +criticise itself. Alike in Carlyle's fulminations against its +insincerity, in Arnold's nice ridicule of Philistinism, and in +Ruskin's repudiation of everything modern, we detect that fine +dissatisfaction with the age which is perhaps only proof of its +idealistic trend. For the various ills of society, each of these men +had his panacea. What Carlyle had found in hero-worship and Arnold in +Hellenic culture, Ruskin sought in the study of art; and it is of the +last importance to remember that throughout his work he regarded +himself not merely as a writer on painting or buildings or myths or +landscape, but as the appointed critic of the age. For there existed +in him, side by side with his consuming love of the beautiful, a +rigorous Puritanism which was constantly correcting any tendency +toward a mere cult of the aesthetic. It is with the interaction of +these two forces that any study of the life and writings of Ruskin +should be primarily concerned. + + + + +I + +THE LIFE OF RUSKIN + + +[Sidenote: Ancestry.] + +It is easy to trace in the life of Ruskin these two forces tending +respectively toward the love of beauty and toward the contempt of mere +beauty. They are, indeed, present from the beginning. He inherited +from his Scotch parents that upright fearlessness which has always +characterized the race. His stern mother "devoted him to God before he +was born,"[1] and she guarded her gift with unremitting but perhaps +misguided caution. The child was early taught to find most of his +entertainment within himself, and when he did not, he was whipped. He +had no playmates and few toys. His chief story-book was the Bible, +which he read many times from cover to cover at his mother's knee. +His father, the "perfectly honest wine-merchant," seems to have been +the one to foster the boy's aesthetic sense; he was in the habit of +reading aloud to his little family, and his son's apparently genuine +appreciation of Scott, Pope, and Homer dates from the incredibly early +age of five. It was his father, also, to whom he owed his early +acquaintance with the finest landscape, for the boy was his companion +in yearly business trips about Britain, and later visited, in his +parents' company, Belgium, western Germany, and the Alps. + +[Sidenote: Early education.] + +All this of course developed the child's precocity. He was early +suffered and even encouraged to compose verses;[2] by ten he had +written a play, which has unfortunately been preserved. The hot-house +rearing which his parents believed in, and his facility in teaching +himself, tended to make a regular course of schooling a mere +annoyance; such schooling as he had did not begin till he was fifteen, +and lasted less than two years, and was broken by illness. But the +chief effect of the sheltered life and advanced education to which he +was subjected was to endow him with depth at the expense of breadth, +and to deprive him of a possibly vulgar, but certainly healthy, +contact with his kind, which, one must believe, would have checked a +certain disposition in him to egotism, sentimentality, and dogmatic +vehemence. "The bridle and blinkers were never taken off me," he +writes.[3] + +[Sidenote: Student at Oxford.] + +[Sidenote: Traveling in Europe.] + +At Oxford--whither his cautious mother pursued him--Ruskin seems to +have been impressed in no very essential manner by curriculum or +college mates. With learning _per se_ he was always dissatisfied and +never had much to do; his course was distinguished not so much by +erudition as by culture. He easily won the Newdigate prize in poetry; +his rooms in Christ Church were hung with excellent examples of +Turner's landscapes,--the gift of his art-loving father,--of which he +had been an intimate student ever since the age of thirteen. But his +course was interrupted by an illness, apparently of a tuberculous +nature, which necessitated total relaxation and various trips in Italy +and Switzerland, where he seems to have been healed by walking among +his beloved Alps. For many years thereafter he passed months of his +time in these two countries, accompanied sometimes by his parents and +sometimes rather luxuriously, it seems, by valet and guide. + +[Sidenote: Career as an author begins.] + +Meanwhile he had commenced his career as author with the first volume +of _Modern Painters_, begun, the world knows, as a short defense of +Turner, originally intended for nothing more than a magazine article. +But the role of art-critic and law-giver pleased the youth,--he was +only twenty-four when the volume appeared,--and having no desire to +realize the ambition of his parents and become a bishop, and even less +to duplicate his father's career as vintner, he gladly seized the +opportunity thus offered him to develop his aesthetic vein and to +redeem the public mind from its vulgar apathy thereby. He continued +his work on _Modern Painters_, with some intermissions, for eighteen +years, and supplemented it with the equally famous _Seven Lamps of +Architecture_ in 1849, and _The Stones of Venice_ in 1853. + +[Sidenote: Domestic troubles.] + +This life of zealous work and brilliant recognition was interrupted in +1848 by Ruskin's amazing marriage to Miss Euphemia Gray, a union into +which he entered at the desire of his parents with a docility as +stupid as it was stupendous. Five years later the couple were quietly +divorced, that Mrs. Ruskin might marry Millais. All the author's +biographers maintain an indiscreet reserve in discussing the affair, +but there can be no concealment of the fact that its effect upon +Ruskin was profound in its depression. Experiences like this and his +later sad passion for Miss La Touche at once presage and indicate his +mental disorder, and no doubt had their share--a large one--in +causing Ruskin's dissatisfaction with everything, and above all with +his own life and work. Be this as it may, it is at this time in the +life of Ruskin that we must begin to reckon with the decline of his +aesthetic and the rise of his ethical impulse; his interest passes +from art to conduct. It is also the period in which he began his +career as lecturer, his chief interest being the social life of his +age. + +[Sidenote: Ruskin's increasing interest in social questions.] + +By 1860, he was publishing the papers on political economy, later +called _Unto this Last_, which roused so great a storm of protest +when they appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_ that their publication +had to be suspended. The attitude of the public toward such works +as these,--its alternate excitement and apathy,--the death of his +parents, combined with the distressing events mentioned above, +darkened Ruskin's life and spoiled his interest in everything that +did not tend to make the national life more thoughtfully solemn. + + "It seems to me that now ... the thoughts of the true nature of + our life, and of its powers and responsibilities should present + themselves with absolute sadness and sternness."[4] + +His lectures as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, a post which he +held at various times from 1870 to 1883, failed to re-establish his +undistracted interest in things beautiful. + +[Sidenote: Triumph of the reformer over the art-critic.] + +The complete triumph of the reformer over the art-critic is marked by +_Fors Clavigera_, a series of letters to workingmen, begun New Year's +Day, 1871, in which it was proposed to establish a model colony of +peasants, whose lives should be made simple, honest, happy, and even +cultured, by a return to more primitive methods of tilling the soil +and of making useful and beautiful objects. The Guild of St. George, +established to "slay the dragon of industrialism," to dispose of +machinery, slums, and discontent, consumed a large part of Ruskin's +time and money. He had inherited a fortune of approximately a million +dollars, and he now began to dispose of it in various charitable +schemes,--establishing tea-shops, supporting young painters, planning +model tenements, but, above all, in elaborating his ideas for the +Guild. The result of it all--whatever particular reforms were effected +or manual industries established--was, to Ruskin's view, failure, and +his mind, weakening under the strain of its profound disappointments, +at last crashed in ruin. + +[Sidenote: Death in 1900.] + +It is needless to follow the broken author through the desolation +of his closing years to his death in 1900. Save for his charming +reminiscences, _Præterita_, his work was done; the long struggle was +over, the struggle of one man to reduce the complexities of a national +life to an apostolic simplicity, to make it beautiful and good, + + Till the high God behold it from beyond, + And enter it. + + + [1] _Præterita_. He was born February 8, 1819. + + [2] Ruskin himself quotes a not very brilliant specimen in _Modern + Painters_, III, in "Moral of Landscape." + + [3] _Præterita_, § 53. + + [4] _The Mystery of Life._ + + + + +II + +THE UNITY OF RUSKIN'S WRITINGS + + +[Sidenote: Diversity of his writings.] + +Ruskin is often described as an author of bewildering variety, whose +mind drifted waywardly from topic to topic--from painting to political +economy, from architecture to agriculture--with a license as +illogical as it was indiscriminating. To this impression, Ruskin +himself sometimes gave currency. He was, for illustration, once +announced to lecture on crystallography, but, as we are informed by +one present,[5] he opened by asserting that he was really about to +lecture on Cistercian architecture; nor did it greatly matter what the +title was; "for," said he, "if I had begun to speak about Cistercian +abbeys, I should have been sure to get on crystals presently; and if +I had begun upon crystals, I should soon have drifted into +architecture." Those who conceive of Ruskin as being thus a kind of +literary Proteus like to point to the year 1860, that of the +publication of his tracts on economics, as witnessing the greatest +and suddenest of his changes, that from reforming art to reforming +society; and it is true that this year affords a simple dividing-line +between Ruskin's earlier work, which is sufficiently described by the +three titles, _Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and +_The Stones of Venice_, and his later work, chiefly on social subjects +such as are discussed in _Unto This Last, The Crown of Wild Olive_, +and _Fors Clavigera_. And yet we cannot insist too often on the +essential unity of this work, for, viewed in the large, it betrays one +continuous development. The seeds of _Fors_ are in _The Stones of +Venice_. + +[Sidenote: Underlying idea in all his works.] + +The governing idea of Ruskin's first published work, _Modern Painters, +Volume I_, was a moral idea. The book was dedicated to the principle +that that art is greatest which deals with the greatest number of +greatest ideas,--those, we learn presently, which reveal divine +truth; the office of the painter, we are told,[6] is the same as that +of the preacher, for "the duty of both is to take for each discourse +one essential truth." As if recalling this argument that the painter +is a preacher, Carlyle described _The Stones of Venice_ as a "sermon +in stones." In the idea that all art, when we have taken due account +of technique and training, springs from a moral character, we find the +unifying principle of Ruskin's strangely diversified work. The very +title _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, with its chapters headed +"Sacrifice," "Obedience," etc., is a sufficient illustration of +Ruskin's identification of moral principles with aesthetic principles. +A glance at the following pages of this book will show how Ruskin is +for ever halting himself to demand the moral significance of some fair +landscape, gorgeous painting, heaven-aspiring cathedral. In "Mountain +Glory," for example, he refers to the mountains as "kindly in simple +lessons to the workman," and inquires later at what times mankind has +offered worship in these mountain churches; of the English cathedral +he says, "Weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who have +passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries";[7] of +St. Mark's, "And what effect has this splendour on those who pass +beneath it?"--and it will be noticed on referring to "The Two +Boyhoods," that, in seeking to define the difference between Giorgione +and Turner, the author instinctively has recourse to distinguishing +the _religious_ influences exerted on the two in youth. + +[Sidenote: Underlying idea a moral one.] + +Now it is clear that a student of the relation of art to life, of work +to the character of the workman and of his nation, may, and in fact +inevitably must, be led in time to attend to the producer rather than +to the product, to the cause rather than to the effect; and if we +grant, with Ruskin, that the sources of art, namely, the national +life, are denied, it will obviously be the part, not only of humanity +but of common sense, for such a student to set about purifying the +social life of the nation. Whether the reformation proposed by Ruskin +be the proper method of attack is not the question we are here +concerned with; our only object at present being to call attention to +the fact that such a lecture as that on "Traffic" in _The Crown of +Wild Olive_ is the logical outgrowth of such a chapter as "Ideas of +Beauty" in the first volume of _Modern Painters_. Between the author +who wrote in 1842, of the necessity of revealing new truths in +painting, "This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done, +for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to +his race. God appoints to every one of his creatures a separate +mission, and if they discharge it honourably ... there will assuredly +come of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall +shine before men, and be of service constant and holy,"[8] and the +author who wrote, "That country is the richest which nourishes the +greatest number of noble and happy human beings,"[9] or, "The +beginning of art is in getting our country clean, and our people +beautiful,"[10]--between these two, I say, there is no essential +difference. They are not contradictory but consistent. + +[Sidenote: Art dependent upon personal and national greatness.] + +Amidst the maze of subjects, then, which Ruskin, with kaleidoscopic +suddenness and variety, brings before the astonished gaze of his +readers, let them confidently hold this guiding clue. They will find +that Ruskin's "facts" are often not facts at all; they will discover +that many of Ruskin's choicest theories have been dismissed to the +limbo of exploded hypotheses; but they will seek long before they find +a more eloquent and convincing plea for the proposition that all great +art reposes upon a foundation of personal and national greatness. +Critics of Ruskin will show you that he began _Modern Painters_ while +he was yet ignorant of the classic Italians; that he wrote _The Stones +of Venice_ without realizing the full indebtedness of the Venetian to +the Byzantine architecture; that he proposed to unify the various +religious sects although he had no knowledge of theology; that he +attempted a reconstruction of society though he had had no scientific +training in political economy; but in all this neglect of mere fact +the sympathetic reader will discover that contempt for the letter +of the law which was characteristic of the nineteenth-century +prophet,--of Carlyle, of Arnold, and of Emerson,--and which, if it +be blindness, is that produced by an excess of light. + + + [5] See Harrison's _Life_, p. 111. Cf. the opening of _The Mystery + of Life_. + + [6] Part 2, sec. 1, chap. 4. + + [7] See p. 159. + + [8] _Modern Painters_, vol. 1, part 2, sec. 1, chap. 7. + + [9] _Unto This Last_. + + [10] See p. 262. + + + + +III + +RUSKIN'S STYLE + + +[Sidenote: Sensuousness of his style.] + +Many people regard the style of Ruskin as his chief claim to +greatness. If the time ever come when men no longer study him for +sermons in stones, they will nevertheless turn to his pages to enjoy +one of the most gorgeous prose styles of the nineteenth century. For a +parallel to the sensuous beauties of Ruskin's essays on art, one turns +instinctively to poetry; and of all the poets Ruskin is perhaps likest +Keats. His sentences, like the poet's, are thick-set with jeweled +phrases; they are full of subtle harmonies that respond, like a +Stradivarius, to the player's every mood. In its ornateness Ruskin's +style is like his favorite cathedral of Amiens, in the large stately, +in detail exquisite, profuse, and not without a touch of the +grotesque. It is the style of an artist. + +[Sidenote: Ruskin's method of construction in description.] + +A critical fancy may even discover in the construction of his finest +descriptions a method not unlike that of a painter at work upon his +canvas. He blocks them out in large masses, then sketches and colors +rapidly for general effects, treating detail at first more or less +vaguely and collectively, but passing in the end to the elaboration of +detail in the concrete, touching the whole with an imaginative gleam +that lends a momentary semblance of life to the thing described, after +the manner of the "pathetic fallacy." Thus it is in the famous +description of St. Mark's:[11] we are given first the largest general +impression, the "long, low pyramid of coloured light," which the +artist proceeds to "hollow beneath into five great vaulted porches," +whence he leads the eye slowly upwards amidst a mass of bewildering +detail--"a confusion of delight"--from which there slowly emerge those +concrete details with which the author particularly wishes to impress +us, "the breasts of the Greek horses blazing in their breadth of +golden strength and St. Mark's lion lifted on a blue field covered +with stars." In lesser compass we are shown the environs of Venice,[12] +the general impression of the "long, low, sad-coloured line," being +presently broken by the enumeration of unanalyzed detail, "tufted +irregularly with brushwood and willows," and passing to concrete +detail in the hills of Arqua, "a dark cluster of purple pyramids." In +the still more miniature description of the original site of Venice[13] +we have the same method: + + "The black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath + the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor + and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the + tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with a + questioning cry." + +[Sidenote: His love of color.] + +Equally characteristic of the painter is the ever-present use of +color. It is interesting merely to count the number and variety of +colors used in the descriptions. It will serve at least to call the +reader's attention to the felicitous choice of words used in +describing the opalescence of St. Mark's or the skillful combination +of the colors characteristic of the great Venetians in such a sentence +as, "the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armor shot angrily under +their blood-red mantle-folds"[14]--a glimpse of a Giorgione. + +[Sidenote: His love of prose rhythm.] + +He is even more attentive to the ear than to the eye. He loves the +sentence of stately rhythms and long-drawn harmonies, and he omits no +poetic device that can heighten the charm of sound,--alliteration, as +in the famous description of the streets of Venice, + + "Far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless + waters proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor + the thistle could grow in those glancing fields";[15] + +the balanced close for some long period, + + "to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges and + to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in the + world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from + the burning heart of her Fortitude and splendour";[16] + +and the tendency, almost a mannerism, to add to the music of his own +rhythm, the deep organ-notes of Biblical text and paraphrase. But if +we wish to see how aptly Ruskin's style responds to the tone of his +subject, we need but remark the rich liquid sentence descriptive of +Giorgione's home, + + "brightness out of the north and balm from the south, and the stars + of evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched + heaven and circling sea,"[17] + +which he has set over against the harsh explosiveness of + + "Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit + or wall is formed by a close-set block of house to the back + windows of which it admits a few rays of light--" + +the birthplace of Turner. + +[Sidenote: His beauty of style often distracts from the thought.] + +But none knew better than Ruskin that a style so stiff with ornament +was likely to produce all manner of faults. In overloading his +sentences with jewelry he frequently obscures the sense; his beauties +often degenerate into mere prettiness; his sweetness cloys. His free +indulgence of the emotions, often at the expense of the intellect, +leads to a riotous extravagance of superlative. But, above all, his +richness distracts attention from matter to manner. In the case of an +author so profoundly in earnest, this could not but be unfortunate; +nothing enraged him more than to have people look upon the beauties of +his style rather than ponder the substance of his book. In a passage +of complacent self-scourging he says: + + "For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the + misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not + without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing + so, until I was heavily punished for this pride by finding that + many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their + meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such language--if + indeed it ever were mine--is passing away from me; and whatever I + am now able to say at all I find myself forced to say with great + plainness."[18] + +[Sidenote: His picturesque extravagance of style.] + +But Ruskin's decision to speak with "great plainness" by no means made +the people of England attend to what he said rather than the way he +said it. He could be, and in his later work he usually was, strong +and clear; but the old picturesqueness and exuberance of passion were +with him still. The public discovered that it enjoyed Ruskin's +denunciations of machinery much as it had enjoyed his descriptions of +mountains, and, without obviously mending its ways, called loudly for +more. Lecture-rooms were crowded and editions exhausted by the ladies +and gentlemen of England, whose nerves were pleasantly thrilled with a +gentle surprise on being told that they had despised literature, art, +science, nature, and compassion, and that what they thought upon any +subject was "a matter of no serious importance"; that they could not +be said to have any thoughts at all--indeed, no right to think.[19] +The fiercer his anathemas, the greater the applause; the louder he +shouted, the better he pleased. Let him split the ears of the +groundlings, let him out-Herod Herod,--the judicious might grieve, but +all would be excitedly attentive. Their Jeremiah seemed at times like +to become a jester,--there was a suggestion of the ludicrous in the +sudden passage from birds to Greek coins, to mills, to Walter Scott, +to millionaire malefactors,--a suggestion of acrobatic tumbling and +somersault; but he always got a hearing. In lecturing to the students +of a military academy he had the pleasing audacity to begin: + + "Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came + unwillingly to-night, and many of you in merely contemptuous + curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting could possibly say, + or would venture to say, respecting your great art of war";[20] + +after which stinging challenge, one has no doubt, any feeling of +offense was swallowed up in admiration of the speaker's physical +courage. + +[Sidenote: Influence of Carlyle upon Ruskin.] + +[Sidenote: The unity of Ruskin's style.] + +There can be little doubt that this later manner in which Ruskin +allowed his Puritan instincts to defeat his aestheticism, and indulged +to an alarming degree his gift of vituperation, was profoundly +influenced by his "master," Carlyle, who had long since passed into +his later and raucous manner. Carlyle's delight in the disciple's +diatribes probably encouraged the younger man in a vehemence of +invective to which his love of dogmatic assertion already rendered +him too prone. At his best, Ruskin, like Carlyle, reminds us of a +major prophet; at his worst he shrieks and heats the air. His high +indignations lead him into all manner of absurdity and self-contradiction. +An amusing instance of this may be given from _Sesame and Lilies_. In +the first lecture, which, it will be recalled, was given in aid of a +library fund, we find[21] the remark, "We are filthy and foolish enough +to thumb one another's books out of circulating libraries." His friends +and his enemies, the clergy (who "teach a false gospel for hire") and +the scientists, the merchants and the universities, Darwin and Dante, +all had their share in the indignant lecturer's indiscriminate abuse. +And yet in all the tropical luxuriance of his inconsistency, one can +never doubt the man's sincerity. He never wrote for effect. He may +dazzle us, but his fire is never pyrotechnical; it always springs from +the deep volcanic heart of him. His was a fervor too easily stirred and +often ill-directed, but its wild brilliance cannot long be mistaken for +the sky-rocket's; it flares madly in all directions, now beautifying, +now appalling, the night, the fine ardor of the painter passing into +the fierce invective of the prophet. But in the end it is seen that +Ruskin's style, like his subject-matter, is a unity,--an emanation from +a divine enthusiasm making for "whatsoever things are lovely, +whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report." + + + [11] See p. 162. + + [12] See p. 139. + + [13] See p. 147. + + [14] See p. 121. + + [15] See p. 122. + + [16] See p. 149. + + [17] See p. 122. + + [18] _The Mystery of Life_. + + [19] _Sesame and Lilies_, "Kings' Treasuries," §§ 25, 31. + + [20] _The Crown of Wild Olive_, "War." + + [21] "Kings' Treasuries," § 32. + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM MODERN PAINTERS + + +The five volumes of _Modern Painters_ appeared at various intervals +between 1843 and 1860, from the time Ruskin was twenty-four until he +was forty. The first volume was published in May, 1843; the second, in +April, 1846; the third, January 15, 1856; the fourth, April 14, 1856; +the last, in June, 1860. As his knowledge of his subject broadened and +deepened, we find the later volumes differing greatly in viewpoint +and style from the earlier; but, as stated in the preface to the last +volume, "in the main aim and principle of the book there is no +variation, from its first syllable to its last." Ruskin himself +maintained that the most important influence upon his thought in +preparation for his work in _Modern Painters_ was not from his "love +of art, but of mountains and seas"; and all the power of judgment he +had obtained in art, he ascribed to his "steady habit of always +looking for the subject principally, and for the art only as the means +of expressing it." The first volume was published as the work of "a +graduate of Oxford," Ruskin "fearing that I might not obtain fair +hearing if the reader knew my youth." The author's proud father did +not allow the secret to be kept long. The title Ruskin originally +chose for the volume was _Turner and the Ancients_. To this Smith, +Elder & Co., his publishers, objected, and the substitution of _Modern +Painters_ was their suggestion The following is the title-page of the +first volume in the original edition: + + MODERN PAINTERS: + _Their Superiority_ + _In the Art of Landscape Painting_ + _To_ all + _The Ancient Masters_ + proved by examples of + The True, the Beautiful, and the Intellectual, + From the + Works of Modern Artists, especially + From those of J.M.W. Turner, Esq., R.A. + By a Graduate of Oxford + (Quotation from Wordsworth) + London: Smith, Elder & Co., 65 Cornhill. + 1843. + + + + +THE EARTH-VEIL + +VOLUME V, CHAPTER I + + +"To dress it and to keep it."[22] + +That, then, was to be our work. Alas! what work have we set ourselves +upon instead! How have we ravaged the garden instead of kept +it--feeding our war-horses with its flowers, and splintering its trees +into spear-shafts! + +"And at the East a flaming sword."[22] + +Is its flame quenchless? and are those gates that keep the way indeed +passable no more? or is it not rather that we no more desire to enter? +For what can we conceive of that first Eden which we might not yet win +back, if we chose? It was a place full of flowers, we say. Well: the +flowers are always striving to grow wherever we suffer them; and the +fairer, the closer. There may, indeed, have been a Fall of Flowers, as +a Fall of Man; but assuredly creatures such as we are can now fancy +nothing lovelier than roses and lilies, which would grow for us side +by side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the Earth was white and red with +them, if we cared to have it so. And Paradise was full of pleasant +shades and fruitful avenues. Well: what hinders us from covering as +much of the world as we like with pleasant shade, and pure blossom, +and goodly fruit? Who forbids its valleys to be covered over with corn +till they laugh and sing? Who prevents its dark forests, ghostly and +uninhabitable, from being changed into infinite orchards, wreathing +the hills with frail-floreted snow, far away to the half-lighted +horizon of April, and flushing the face of all the autumnal earth with +glow of clustered food? But Paradise was a place of peace, we say, and +all the animals were gentle servants to us. Well: the world would yet +be a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and gentle service +should we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But so +long as we make sport of slaying bird and beast, so long as we choose +to contend rather with our fellows than with our faults, and make +battlefield of our meadows instead of pasture--so long, truly, the +Flaming Sword will still turn every way, and the gates of Eden remain +barred close enough, till we have sheathed the sharper flame of our +own passions, and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts. + +I have been led to see and feel this more and more, as I consider the +service which the flowers and trees, which man was at first appointed +to keep, were intended to render to him in return for his care; and +the services they still render to him, as far as he allows their +influence, or fulfils his own task towards them. For what infinite +wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, considered, as indeed it +is, as the means by which the earth becomes the companion of man--his +friend and his teacher! In the conditions which we have traced in its +rocks, there could only be seen preparation for his existence;--the +characters which enable him to live on it safely, and to work with it +easily--in all these it has been inanimate and passive; but vegetation +is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man. The +earth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except of +slow crystalline change; but at its surface, which human beings look +upon and deal with, it ministers to them through a veil of strange +intermediate being: which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but +cannot leave its appointed place; passes through life without +consciousness, to death without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth, +without its passion; and declines to the weakness of age, without its +regret. + +And in this mystery of intermediate being, entirely subordinate to us, +with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power as +we have the less responsibility for our treatment of the unsuffering +creature, most of the pleasures which we need from the external world +are gathered, and most of the lessons we need are written, all kinds +of precious grace and teaching being united in this link between the +Earth and Man; wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, +and discipline; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with +beautiful means of life. First, a carpet to make it soft for him; +then, a coloured fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading +of foliage to shade him from sun heat, and shade also the fallen rain; +that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish +the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage: easily to +be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments +(lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless, it +had been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less +elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the +sun warm the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of +winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable +according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into +infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his +service: cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening +oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling +charm: and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility +or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring +uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble +tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to +the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of +summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the +transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or +hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in +entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing, with +variegated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, +or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest +joy of humanity. + +Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good +for food, and for building, and for instruments in our hands, this +race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, +becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of +our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can +be far wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one is +assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has +brought them in his way. It is clearly possible to do without them, +for the great companionship of the sea and sky are all that sailors +need; and many a noble heart has been taught the best it had to learn +between dark stone walls. Still if human life be cast among trees at +all, the love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is a +sorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the "country," +in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been +the source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the words +"countryman, rustic, clown, paysan, villager," still signify a rude +and untaught person, as opposed to the words "townsman" and "citizen". +We accept this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, +somewhat too quietly; as if it were quite necessary and natural that +country-people should be rude, and townspeople gentle. Whereas I +believe that the result of each mode of life may, in some stages of +the world's progress, be the exact reverse; and that another use of +words may be forced upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we may +find ourselves saying: "Such and such a person is very gentle and +kind--he is quite rustic; and such and such another person is very +rude and ill-taught--he is quite urbane." + +At all events, cities have hitherto gained the better part of their +good report through our evil ways of going on in the world generally; +chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of fighting with each +other. No field, in the Middle Ages, being safe from devastation, and +every country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders, +peacefully-minded men necessarily congregated in cities, and walled +themselves in, making as few cross-country roads as possible: while +the men who sowed and reaped the harvests of Europe were only the +servants or slaves of the barons. The disdain of all agricultural +pursuits by the nobility, and of all plain facts by the monks, kept +educated Europe in a state of mind over which natural phenomena could +have no power; body and intellect being lost in the practice of war +without purpose, and the meditation of words without meaning. Men +learned the dexterity with sword and syllogism, which they mistook for +education, within cloister and tilt-yard; and looked on all the broad +space of the world of God mainly as a place for exercise of horses, or +for growth of food. + +There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of the +Earth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture of +Paul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio,[23] in which the armies +meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses; the tender red +flowers tossing above the helmets, and glowing beneath the lowered +lances. For in like manner the whole of Nature only shone hitherto for +man between the tossing of helmet-crests; and sometimes I cannot but +think of the trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, in +that imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves in +the warm springtime, in vain for men; and all along the dells of +England her beeches cast their dappled shade only where the outlaw +drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase; and by the sweet +French rivers their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only +to show the flames of burning cities on the horizon, through the +tracery of their stems; amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the +twisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery; and on their +valley meadows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn +were washed with crimson at sunset. + +And indeed I had once purposed, in this work, to show what kind of +evidence existed respecting the possible influence of country life on +men; it seeming to me, then, likely that here and there a reader would +perceive this to be a grave question, more than most which we contend +about, political or social, and might care to follow it out with me +earnestly. + +The day will assuredly come when men will see that it _is_ a +grave question; at which period, also, I doubt not, there will arise +persons able to investigate it. For the present, the movements of the +world seem little likely to be influenced by botanical law; or by any +other considerations respecting trees, than the probable price of +timber. I shall limit myself, therefore, to my own simple woodman's +work, and try to hew this book into its final shape, with the limited +and humble aim that I had in beginning it, namely, to prove how far +the idle and peaceable persons, who have hitherto cared about leaves +and clouds, have rightly seen, or faithfully reported of them. + + + [22] _Genesis_ ii, 15; iii 24. + + [23] "In our own National Gallery. It is quaint and imperfect, but + of great interest." [Ruskin.] Paolo Uccello (c. 1397-1475), a + Florentine painter of the Renaissance, the first of the naturalists. + His real name was Paolo di Dono, but he was called Uccello from his + fondness for birds. + + + + +THE MOUNTAIN GLORY + +VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 20 + + +I have dwelt, in the foregoing chapter, on the sadness of the hills +with the greater insistence that I feared my own excessive love for +them might lead me into too favourable interpretation of their +influences over the human heart; or, at least, that the reader might +accuse me of fond prejudice, in the conclusions to which, finally, I +desire to lead him concerning them. For, to myself, mountains are the +beginning and the end of all natural scenery; in them, and in the +forms of inferior landscape that lead to them, my affections are +wholly bound up; and though I can look with happy admiration at the +lowland flowers, and woods, and open skies, the happiness is tranquil +and cold, like that of examining detached flowers in a conservatory, +or reading a pleasant book; and if the scenery be resolutely level, +insisting upon the declaration of its own flatness in all the detail +of it, as in Holland, or Lincolnshire, or Central Lombardy, it appears +to me like a prison, and I cannot long endure it. But the slightest +rise and fall in the road,--a mossy bank at the side of a crag of +chalk, with brambles at its brow, overhanging it,--a ripple over three +or four stones in the stream by the bridge,--above all, a wild bit of +ferny ground under a fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one might +see a hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will instantly +give me intense delight, because the shadow, or the hope, of the hills +is in them. + +And thus, although there are few districts of Northern Europe, however +apparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure, though the +whole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to most +travellers, is to me a perpetual Paradise; and, putting Lincolnshire, +Leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districts +aside, there is not an English county which I should not find +entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot; yet all +my best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills, +colouring, with their far-away memories, every lowland stone and herb. +The pleasant French coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me, either +by what real mountain character it has in itself (for in extent and +succession of promontory the flanks of the French valleys have quite +the sublimity of true mountain distances), or by its broken ground +and rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above, +against the blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not +a wave of the Seine but is associated in my mind with the first rise +of the sandstones and forest pines of Fontaine-bleau; and with the +hope of the Alps, as one leaves Paris with the horses' heads to the +south-west, the morning sun flashing on the bright waves at Charenton. +If there be _no_ hope or association of this kind, and if I cannot +deceive myself into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the road +there may be seen the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the +horizon, the landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind +of sickness and pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or Windsor +Terrace,--nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual +summer,--or of the Hesperides (if they were flat, and not close to +Atlas), golden apples and all,--I would give away in an instant, for +one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady-fern.[24] + +I know that this is in great part idiosyncrasy; and that I must not +trust to my own feelings, in this respect, as representative of the +modern landscape instinct: yet I know it is not idiosyncrasy, in so +far as there may be proved to be indeed an increase of the absolute +beauty of all scenery in exact proportion to its mountainous +character, providing that character be _healthily_ mountainous. I do +not mean to take the Col de Bonhomme as representative of hills, any +more than I would take Romney Marsh as representative of plains; but +putting Leicestershire or Staffordshire fairly beside Westmoreland, +and Lombardy or Champagne fairly beside the Pays de Vaud or the Canton +Berne, I find the increase in the calculable sum of elements of beauty +to be steadily in proportion to the increase of mountainous character; +and that the best image which the world can give of Paradise is in the +slope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a +great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal snows above; this +excellence not being in any wise a matter referable to feeling, or +individual preferences, but demonstrable by calm enumeration of the +number of lovely colours on the rocks, the varied grouping of the +trees, and quantity of noble incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, +presented to the eye at any given moment. + +For consider, first, the difference produced in the whole tone of +landscape colour by the introductions of purple, violet, and deep +ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. In an ordinary lowland +landscape we have the blue of the sky; the green of grass, which I +will suppose (and this is an unnecessary concession to the lowlands) +entirely fresh and bright; the green of trees; and certain elements of +purple, far more rich and beautiful than we generally should think, in +their bark and shadows (bare hedges and thickets, or tops of trees, in +subdued afternoon sunshine, are nearly perfect purple, and of an +exquisite tone), as well as in ploughed fields, and dark ground in +general. But among mountains, in _addition_ to all this, large +unbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are introduced in their +distances; and even near, by films of cloud passing over the darkness +of ravines or forests, blues are produced of the most subtle +tenderness; these azures and purples[25] passing into rose-colour of +otherwise wholly unattainable delicacy among the upper summits, the +blue of the sky being at the same time purer and deeper than in the +plains. Nay, in some sense, a person who has never seen the +rose-colour of the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve or +fifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what _tenderness_ in +colour means at all; _bright_ tenderness he may, indeed, see in the +sky or in a flower, but this grave tenderness of the far-away +hill-purples he cannot conceive. + +Together with this great source of pre-eminence in _mass_ of colour, +we have to estimate the influence of the finished inlaying and +enamel-work of the colour-jewellery on every stone; and that of the +continual variety in species of flower; most of the mountain flowers +being, besides, separately lovelier than the lowland ones. The wood +hyacinth and wild rose are, indeed, the only _supreme_ flowers that +the lowlands can generally show; and the wild rose is also a +mountaineer, and more fragrant in the hills, while the wood hyacinth, +or grape hyacinth, at its best cannot match even the dark +bell-gentian, leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncontested +queenliness, and the Alpine rose and Highland heather wholly without +similitude. The violet, lily of the valley, crocus, and wood anemone +are, I suppose, claimable partly by the plains as well as the hills; +but the large orange lily and narcissus I have never seen but on hill +pastures, and the exquisite oxalisis pre-eminently a mountaineer.[26] + +To this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add an +inestimable gain in the continual presence and power of water. Neither +in its clearness, its colour, its fantasy of motion, its calmness of +space, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can water be conceived by +a lowlander, out of sight of sea. A sea wave is far grander than any +torrent--but of the sea and its influences we are not now speaking; +and the sea itself, though it _can_ be clear, is never calm, among our +shores, in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. The sea seems +only to pause; the mountain lake to sleep, and to dream. Out of sight +of the ocean a lowlander cannot be considered ever to have seen water +at all. The mantling of the pools in the rock shadows, with the golden +flakes of light sinking down through them like falling leaves, the +ringing of the thin currents among the shallows, the flash and the +cloud of the cascade, the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, +the long lines of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery of +the hills reversed in the blue of morning,--all these things belong to +those hills as their undivided inheritance. + +To this supremacy in wave and stream is joined a no less manifest +pre-eminence in the character of trees. It is possible among plains, +in the species of trees which properly belong to them, the poplars of +Amiens, for instance, to obtain a serene simplicity of grace, which, +as I said, is a better help to the study of gracefulness, as such, +than any of the wilder groupings of the hills; so, also, there are +certain conditions of symmetrical luxuriance developed in the park and +avenue, rarely rivalled in their way among mountains; and yet the +mountain superiority in foliage is, on the whole, nearly as complete +as it is in water: for exactly as there are some expressions in the +broad reaches of a navigable lowland river, such as the Loire or +Thames, not, in their way, to be matched among the rock rivers, and +yet for all that a lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen the +element of water at all; so even in the richest parks and avenues he +cannot be said to have truly seen trees. For the resources of trees +are not developed until they have difficulty to contend with; neither +their tenderness of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced +to choose their ways of various life where there is contracted room +for them, talking to each other with their restrained branches. The +various action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, +stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of glacier +winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down +together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand among the +difficult slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls, +gathering into companies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in +grave procession over the heavenward ridges--nothing of this can be +conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the lowland +forest: while to all these direct sources of greater beauty are added, +first the power of redundance,--the mere quantity of foliage visible +in the folds and on the promontories of a single Alp being greater +than that of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view from some +cathedral tower); and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer +_visibility_,--tree after tree being constantly shown in successive +height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and flanks of +masses, as in the plains; and the forms of multitudes of them +continually defined against the clear sky, near and above, or against +white clouds entangled among their branches, instead of being confused +in dimness of distance. + +Finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the still less +questionable supremacy in clouds. There is no effect of sky possible +in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among the +hills; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible +and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among +the hills in the course of one day. The mere power of familiarity with +the clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and renders +clear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky; +and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single wreath of early +cloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the +points of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill the +arched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. And of the +nobler cloud manifestations,--the breaking of their troublous seas +against the crags, their black spray sparkling with lightning; or the +going forth of the morning[27] along their pavements of moving marble, +level-laid between dome and dome of snow;--of these things there can +be as little imagination or understanding in an inhabitant of the +plains as of the scenery of another planet than his own. + +And, observe, all these superiorities are matters plainly measurable +and calculable, not in any wise to be referred to estimate of +_sensation_. Of the grandeur or expression of the hills I have not +spoken; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, I do not for +the moment consider, because vastness, and strength, and terror, are +not to all minds subjects of desired contemplation. It may make no +difference to some men whether a natural object be large or small, +whether it be strong or feeble. But loveliness of colour, perfectness +of form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure, are +precious to all undiseased human minds; and the superiority of the +mountains in all these things to the lowland is, I repeat, as +measurable as the richness of a painted window matched with a white +one, or the wealth of a museum compared with that of a simply +furnished chamber. They seem to have been built for the human race, as +at once their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminated +manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, +quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the +worshipper. And of these great cathedrals of the earth, with their +gates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars +of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars,--of +these, as we have seen,[28] it was written, nor long ago, by one of the +best of the poor human race for whom they were built, wondering in +himself for whom their Creator _could_ have made them, and thinking to +have entirely discerned the Divine intent in them--"They are inhabited +by the Beasts."[29] + +Was it then indeed thus with us, and so lately? Had mankind offered no +worship in their mountain churches? Was all that granite sculpture and +floral painting done by the angels in vain? + +Not so. It will need no prolonged thought to convince us that in the +hills the purposes of their Maker have indeed been accomplished in +such measure as, through the sin or folly of men, He ever permits them +to be accomplished. It may not seem, from the general language held +concerning them, or from any directly traceable results, that +mountains have had serious influence on human intellect; but it will +not, I think, be difficult to show that their occult influence has +been both constant and essential to the progress of the race. + + + [24] In tracing the _whole_ of the deep enjoyment to mountain + association, I of course except whatever feelings are connected with + the observance of rural life, or with that of architecture. None of + these feelings arise out of the landscape properly so called: the + pleasure with which we see a peasant's garden fairly kept, or a + ploughman doing his work well, or a group of children playing at a + cottage door, being wholly separate from that which we find in the + fields or commons around them; and the beauty of architecture, or the + associations connected with it, in like manner often ennobling the + most tame scenery;--yet not so but that we may always distinguish + between the abstract character of the unassisted landscape, and the + charm which it derives from the architecture. Much of the majesty of + French landscape consists in its grand and grey village churches and + turreted farmhouses, not to speak of its cathedrals, castles, and + beautifully placed cities. [Ruskin.] + + [25] One of the principal reasons for the false supposition that + Switzerland is not picturesque, is the error of most sketchers and + painters in representing pine forest in middle distance as dark green, + or grey green, whereas its true colour is always purple, at distances + of even two or three miles. Let any traveller coming down the + Montanvert look for an aperture, three or four inches wide, between + the near pine branches, through which, standing eight or ten feet + from it, he can see the opposite forests on the Breven or Flegère. + Those forests are not above two or two and a half miles from him; + but he will find the aperture is filled by a tint of nearly pure + azure or purple, not by green. [Ruskin.] + + [26] The Savoyard's name for its flower, "Pain du Bon Dieu," is very + beautiful; from, I believe, the supposed resemblance of its white + and scattered blossom to the fallen manna, [Ruskin.] + + [27] _Ezekiel_ vii, 10; _Hosea_ vi, 3. + + [28] In "The Mountain Gloom," the chapter immediately preceding. + + [29] Ruskin refers to _The Fulfilling of the Scripture_, a book by + Robert Fleming [1630-94]. + + + + +SUNRISE ON THE ALPS[30] + +VOLUME I, SECTION 3, PART 2, CHAPTER 4 + + +Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the +night mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white and +lake-like fields, as they float in level bays and winding gulfs about +the islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than +dawn, colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of +midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver +channels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passes +away, and down under their depths the glittering city and green +pasture lie like Atlantis,[31] between the white paths of winding +rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader +among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above +them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten +their grey shadows upon the plain.... Wait a little longer, and you +shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating +up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet +masses, iridescent with the morning light,[32] upon the broad breasts +of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back +and back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost +in its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene heaven, like a +wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless and inaccessible, their +very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep +lake below.[33]... Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those +mists gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortresses +along the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every +instant higher and higher into the sky, and casting longer shadows +athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you will +see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapours, +which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their grey network, and +take the light off the landscape with an eclipse which will stop the +singing of the birds and the motion of the leaves, together; and then +you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and +lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, along the shoulders +of the hills; you never see them form, but when you look back to a +place which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging +by the precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey.... And then you +will hear the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those +watch-towers of vapour swept away from their foundations, and waving +curtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swinging from the +burdened clouds in black bending fringes, or pacing in pale columns +along the lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. And +then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm drift for an instant, +from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded yet +with snow-white, torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapour, now gone, +now gathered again; while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, +but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach +it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong +fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with +blood.... And then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the +hollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on the +summit of the eastern hills, brighter--brighter yet, till the large +white circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds, +step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her +kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable, +fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move +together, hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so +measured in their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll +with them, and the earth to reel under them.... And then wait yet for +one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving +mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, +are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning: watch the white +glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty +serpents with scales of fire: watch the columnar peaks of solitary +snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new +morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than +the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like +altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes +flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer +light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on +every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet +canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault +beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels: +and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are +bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me +who has best delivered this His message unto men![34] + + + [30] Some sentences of an argumentative nature have been omitted from + this selection. + + [31] A mythical island in the Atlantic. + + [32] I have often seen the white, thin, morning cloud, edged with + the seven colours of the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this + phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to + the sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over + indefinite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. + The colours are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic + lustre upon them. [Ruskin.] + + [33] Lake Lucerne. [Ruskin.] + + [34] The implication is that Turner has best delivered it. + + + + +THE GRAND STYLE[35] + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER I + + +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 endeavoured, 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 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 merely 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. + +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 labour 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. + +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 endeavoured 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 characterizing 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 +vapour, on which the sun of praise so long has risen and set? It will +be well at once to consider this. + +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, October 20, 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 consequence of which is, +that everyone 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 merely 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 characterize History; but the +very being of Poetry consists in departing from this plain narrative, +and adopting every ornament that will warm the imagination.)[36] To +desire to see the excellences 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." + +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 is 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. + +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. + +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 a 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." + +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.[37] + +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.[38] 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. + +"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 mètres, +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! + +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. + +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. + +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. + +I come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion, that poetry is +"the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble +emotions."[39] 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 warehouses. 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. + +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."[40] + +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.[41] + +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. + +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 colours 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. + +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. + +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. + +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.[42] 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;[43] 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 armour, 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. + +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,[44] 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. + + + [35] The full title of this chapter is "Of the Received Opinions + touching the 'Grand Style.'" + + [36] 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." [Ruskin.] + + [37] Stanza 6 of Byron's _Prisoner of Chillon_, quoted with a slight + inaccuracy. + + [38] "Messrs. Mallet and Pictet, being on the lake, in front of the + Castle of Chillon, on August 6, 1774, sunk a thermometer to the + depth of 312 feet." ... --SAUSSURE, _Voyages dans les Alpes_, chap. + ii, § 33. It appears from the next paragraph, that the thermometer + was at the bottom of the lake. [Ruskin, altered.] + + [39] Ruskin later wrote: "It leaves out rhythm, which I now consider + a defect in said definition; otherwise good." + + [40] Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the _Affliction of + Margaret_: + + I look for ghosts, but none will force + Their way to me. 'T is 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 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 _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. [Ruskin.] + + [41] The closing lines of Wordsworth's _Childless Father_. + + [42] _Iliad_, 1. 463 ff., 2. 425 ff.; _Odyssey_, 3. 455 ff., etc. + + [43] _Iliad_, 6. 468 ff. + + [44] 1625-1713. Known also as Carlo delle Madonne. + + + + +OF REALIZATION + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 2 + + +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." + +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 +colour, interested by the liveliness of its story, and touched by +certain countenances or details which remind him of friends whom he +loved, or 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 colours 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. + +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[45] and Titians; and +the only merit which many persons can either see or conceive in them +is, that they must be "like nature." + +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,[46] and in dew which he endeavours 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.[47] + +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[48] 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. + +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,[49] 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, chi' 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. + + --CARY. + +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 colours that had flashed upon it for an +instant,--would we not part with our picture--Titian's or Veronese's +though it might be? + +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 favour. 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 round +me, utterly inexpressible by the highest human skill." Now, it is +evident that to persons of this temper the only valuable picture +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?[50] + +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. + +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 endeavour 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 labours, 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 colour 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. + + + [45] Claude Gelée [1600-82], usually called Claude Lorrain, a French + landscape painter and etcher. + + [46] Vasari, in his _Lives of the Painters_, tells how Giotto, + when a student under Cimabue, once painted a fly on the nose of a + figure on which the master was working, the fly being so realistic + that Cimabue on returning to the painting attempted to brush it + away. + + [47] Guercino's Hagar in the Brera gallery in Milan. + + [48] Gerard Dow [1613-75], a Dutch genre painter; Hobbima [1638-1709], + a Dutch landscape painter; Walpole [1717-97], a famous English + litterateur; Vasari [1511-74], an Italian painter, now considered + full of mannerisms and without originality, mainly famous as author + of _The Lives of the Painters_. + + [49] Giotto. + + [50] _Purgatorio_, 12. 31. + + + + +OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER II + + +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. + +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. + +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-Colour +Society:[51] 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 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,--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 fogs, 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 armour did +not get too hot in the sun!" + +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 +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, not 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 honour 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 honour 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. + +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. + +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 +honour, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to help him to imagine +them, or temples raised to their honour, 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 specially devoted to +illustration of their lives and nature. + +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; honouring 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. + +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 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 nature +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. + +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 il 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. + +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 endeavour +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; 2dly, on the +Mediæval 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 endeavour to do in the next chapter. + + + [51] The Society of Painters in Water-Colours, often referred to as + the Old Water-Colour Society. Ruskin was elected an honorary member + in 1873. + + + + +OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 12 + + +Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words[52] 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; 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.[53] + +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 favourite poetry, we shall find it full +of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being +so. + +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.[54] + +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." + +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.[55] + +Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of +Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough,"[56] 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,[57] + +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,[58] 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?"[59] + +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? + +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 anywise +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.[60] + +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 endeavour to state the main bearings of this +matter. + +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,[61] 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. + +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. + +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 +stedfast; 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. + +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";[62] but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of +the sea without talking of "raging waves," "remorseless floods," +"ravenous billows," etc.; 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 +conies 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.[63] + +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. + +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 Scæan 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 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?" + +Then Homer:-- + + "So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth possessed, + there in Lacedæmon, in the dear fatherland."[64] + +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. + +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 fanés, ces noeuds; + Ils sont d'hier; mon Dieu, comme tout passe! + Que du réseau qui retient mes cheveux + Les glands d'azur retombent avec grâce. + Plus haut! Plus bas! Vous ne comprenez rien! + Que sur mon front ce saphir étincelle: + Vous me piquez, maladroite. Ah, c'est bien, + Bien,--chère Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle." + + "Celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier ... + (Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espère. + (Ah, fi! profane, est-ce là mon collier? + Quoi! ces grains d'or bénits par le Saint-Père!) + II y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main, + En y pensant à peine je respire: + Frère 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 étincelle! + Au feu! Courez! Quand l'espoir l'enivrait, + Tout perdre ainsi! Quoi! Mourir,--et si belle! + L'horrible feu ronge avec volupté + Ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'élève, + Et sans pitié dévore sa beauté, + Ses dix-huit ans, hélas, et son doux rêve! + + Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour! + On disait, Pauvre Constance! + Et l'on dansa, jusqu'au jour, + Chez l'ambassadeur de France.[65] + +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!" + +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.'"[66] 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 field shall clap their hands."[67] + +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?[68] + +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.[69] + +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."[70] + +Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a water-fall 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! + +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."[71] + +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."[72] + +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.[73] + +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. + + + [52] Three short sections discussing the use of the terms "Objective" + and "Subjective" have been omitted from the beginning of this chapter. + + [53] Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her + _Recollections of a Literary Life_. [Ruskin.] From _Astræa, a Poem + delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College_. The + passage in which these lines are found was later published as + _Spring_. + + [54] Kingsley's _Alton Locke_, chap. 26. + + [55] 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. [Ruskin.] + + [56] _Inferno_, 3. 112. + + [57] _Christabel_, 1. 49-50. + + [58] "Well said, old mole! can'st work i' the ground so + fast?"--[Ruskin.] + + [59] _Odyssey_, 11. 57-58. + + [60] 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 cumbrous 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 + Perplex'd, the while melodiously he said, + _"How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?"_ + + _Hyperion_, 3. 42.--[Ruskin.] + + [61] See Wordsworth's _Peter Bell_, Part I:-- + + A primrose by a river's brim + A yellow primrose was to him, + And it was nothing more. + + [62] _Jude_ 13. + + [63] _Kings_ xxiii, 18, and _Hosea_ x, 7. + + [64] _Iliad_, 3. 243. In the MS. Ruskin notes, "The insurpassably + tender irony in the epithet--'life-giving earth'--of the grave"; + and then adds another illustration:--"Compare the hammer-stroke at + the close of the [32d] chapter of _Vanity Fair_--'The darkness came + down on the field and city, and Amelia was praying for George, who + was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart. A + great deal might have been said about it. The writer is very sorry + for Amelia, neither does he want faith in prayer. He knows as well + as any of us that prayer must be answered in some sort; but those + are the facts. The man and woman sixteen miles apart---one on her + knees on the floor, the other on his face in the clay. So much love + in her heart, so much lead in his. Make what you can of it." [Cook + and Wedderburn.] + + [65] The poem may be crudely paraphrased as follows:-- + + "Quick, Anna, quick! to the mirror! It is late, + And I'm to dance at the ambassador's ... + I'm going to the ball ... + + "They're faded, see, + These ribbons--they belong to yesterday. + Heavens, how all things pass! Now gracefully hang + The blue tassels from the net that holds my hair. + + "Higher!--no, lower!--you get nothing right!... + Now let this sapphire sparkle on my brow. + You're pricking me, you careless + thing! That's good! + I love you, Anna dear. How fair I am.... + + "I hope he'll be there, too--the one I've tried + To forget! no use! (Anna, my gown!) he too ... + (O fie, you wicked girl! my necklace, _this?_ + These golden beads the Holy Father blessed?) + + "He'll be there--Heavens! suppose he takes my hand + --I scarce can draw my breath for thinking of it! + And I confess to Father Anselmo + To-morrow--how can I ever tell him _all_?... + One last glance at the mirror. + O, I'm sure That they'll adore me at the ball to-night." + + Before the fire she stands admiringly. + O God! a spark has leapt into her gown. + Fire, fire!--O run!--Lost thus when mad with hope? + What, die? and she so fair? The hideous flames + Rage greedily about her arms and breast, + Envelop her, and leaping ever higher, + Swallow up all her beauty, pitiless-- + Her eighteen years, alas! and her sweet dream. + + Adieu to ball, to pleasure, and to love! + "Poor Constance!" said the dancers at the ball, + "Poor Constance!"--and they danced till break of day. + + [66] _Isaiah_ xiv, 8. + + [67] _Isaiah_ lv, 12. + + [68] _Night Thoughts_, 2. 345. + + [69] Pastorals: _Summer, or Alexis_, 73 ff., with the omission of + two couplets after the first. + + [70] From the poem beginning _'T is said that some have died for + love_, Ruskin evidently quoted from memory, for there are several + verbal slips in the passage quoted. + + [71] Stanza 16, of Shenstone's twenty-sixth Elegy. + + [72] _The Excursion_, 6. 869 ff. + + [73] I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, + both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come + upon, in Maud:-- + + 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."_ [Ruskin.] + + + + +OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 13 + + +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 endeavouring 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. + +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.[74] + +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-coloured," "wine-coloured," 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-coloured, cold salt +water it is always, and nothing but that. + +"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. + +I do not think we ever enough endeavour 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. + +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. + +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,[75] 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 with 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 +invisible--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." + +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 of 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 dishonourable 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.[76] 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."[77] Achilles refuses to +obey its commands; and from the human form it returns instantly into +its natural or divine one, and endeavours 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,[78] 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. + +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.[79] 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 endeavouring 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;[80] or else, +dealing with him in a more retired spirituality, as Apollo sending the +plague upon the Greeks,[81] 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. + +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,[82] 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 unlady-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. + +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.[83] + +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 endeavouring 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!"[84] 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."[85] + +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 honourable, 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 god's 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. + +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. + +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 no wise 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 entirely 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. + +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;[86] 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. + +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."[87] +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[88]); 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. + +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." + +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;[89] 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.[90] + +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.[91] 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. + +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,"[92] 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[93] 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.[94] 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."[95] 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;[96] 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 +disfavour; 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's vloor, for vorty mile on end--there's the country +to live in!"[97] + +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. + +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-eminently 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.[98] So the sirens sing in a +meadow; [99] 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";[100] 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";[101] 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.[102] + +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 no +wise 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_,[103] where the sailors in a desert +island, having no flour of corn to offer as a meat offering with their +sacrifices, take the leaves of the trees, and scatter them over the +burnt offering instead. + +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."[104] + +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 chambermaid at the +Bull aired the four-poster, and put on two extra blankets. + +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 +protecting 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 erst +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_."[105] + +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,"[106] 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";[107] 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 truck roads. + +And thus, in general, whenever the landscape is intended to be lovely, +it verges towards the ploughed lands 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 _Odyssey_ xi. 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. + +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 +uncharacteristially 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:[108]--"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.[109] + +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 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. + +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,[110] 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.[111] + + + [74] _Endymion_, 2. 349-350. + + [75] See p. 68. + + [76] _Iliad_, 21. 212-360. + + [77] 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. [Ruskin.] + + [78] _The Excursion_, 4. 861-871. + + [79] _Genesis_ xxviii, 12; xxxii, 1; xxii, 11; _Joshua_ v, 13 ff.; + _Judges_ xiii, 3 ff. + + [80] _Iliad_, 5. 846. + + [81] _Iliad_, 1. 43. + + [82] _Iliad_, 21. 489 ff. + + [83] 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 up-gathers his spent shafts. + And puts them back into his golden quiver. [Ruskin.] + + [84] _Iliad_, 3. 365. + + [85] _Iliad_, 3. 406 ff. + + [86] _Iliad_, 4. 141. [Ruskin.] + + [87] _Odyssey_, 5. 63-74. + + [88] _Iliad_, 2. 776. [Ruskin.] + + [89] _Odyssey_ 7. 112-132. + + [90] _Odyssey_, 24. 334 ff. + + [91] _Odyssey_, 6. 162. + + [92] _Odyssey_, 6. 291-292. + + [93] _Odyssey_, 10. 510. [Ruskin.] + + [94] Compare the passage in Dante referred to above, p. 60. + [Ruskin.] + + [95] _Iliad_, 4. 482-487. + + [96] Pollards, trees polled or cut back at some height above the + ground, producing a thick growth of young branches in a rounded + mass. + + [97] Quoted, with some omission, from chapter 12. + + [98] _Odyssey_, 11. 572; 24. 13. The couch of Ceres, with Homer's + usual faithfulness, is made of a _ploughed_ field, 5. 127. + [Ruskin.] + + [99] _Odyssey_, 12. 45. + + [100] _Odyssey_, 4. 605. + + [101] _Iliad_, 21. 351. + + [102] _Odyssey_, 5. 398, 463. [Ruskin.] + + [103] _Odyssey_, 12. 357. [Ruskin.] + + [104] _Odyssey_, 5. 481-493. + + [105] _Odyssey_, 9. 132, etc. Hence Milton's + + From haunted spring, and dale, Edged with poplar pale. [Ruskin.] + + _Hymn on The Morning of Christ's Nativity_, 184-185. + + [106] _Odyssey_, 9. 182. + + [107] _Odyssey_, 10. 87-88. + + [108] _Odyssey_, 13. 236, etc. [Ruskin.] + + [109] 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. [Ruskin.] + + [110] Flodden, Flodden Field, a plain in Northumberland, famous as + the battlefield where James IV of Scotland was defeated by an + English army under the Earl of Surrey, Sept. 9, 1513. The sixth + canto of Scott's _Marmion_ gives a fairly accurate description of + the action. + + _Chevy-Chase_, a famous old English ballad recounting the incidents + of the battle of Otterburn [Aug. 19, 1388] in which the Scots under + the Earl of Douglas defeated the English under the Percies. + + [111] Shenstone's _Rural Elegance_, 201 ff., quoted with some + slight inaccuracies. + + + + +OF MODERN LANDSCAPE + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 16 + + +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 +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 mediæval 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 it is impossible to +arrest, and difficult to comprehend. + +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 aërial 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." + +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 unfavourable), 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."[112] + +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." + +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." + +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;--on the castle wall +displacing its tapestry with ivy, and spreading, through the garden, +the bramble for the rose. + +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 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. + +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; 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. + +Finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a strong tendency +to deny the sacred element of colour, and make our boast in blackness. +For though occasionally glaring or violent, modern colour 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 inwoven 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. + +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,"[113] 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 favourable 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, Béranger). 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.[114] + +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.[115] + +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. + +There is, however, another, and a more innocent root of our delight in +wild scenery. + +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.[116] + +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 colour, 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 armour +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. + +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. + +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 splendours 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 mediævals honoured, but did not imitate their +forefathers; we imitate, but do not honour. + +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,[117] 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. + +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. + +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. + +For instance: our reprobation of bright colour 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 colouring of Scott and Byron is full +and pure; that of Keats and Tennyson rich even to excess. Our +practical failures in colouring 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 colouring, 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. + +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 labours, 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. + +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.[118] It is only the dull, the uneducated, +or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet on the hillsides; 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. + +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 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. + +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,--namely, +Scott and Turner,--will be, in many curious respects, different from +those between Homer and Phidias, or Dante and Giotto.[119] + + + [112] _Clouds_, 316-318; 380 ff.; 320-321. + + [113] _Ephesians_ ii, 12. + + [114] Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us." + + [115] 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. [Ruskin.] + + [116] Gower Street, a London street selected as typical of modern + ugliness. + + Gaspar Poussin [1613-75], a French landscape painter, of the + pseudo-classical school. + + [117] Of course this is meant only 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. [Ruskin.] + + [118] See _David Copperfield_, chap. 55 and 58. [Ruskin.] + + [119] Ruskin proceeds to discuss Scott as he has discussed Homer. + The chapter on Turner that follows here is an almost equally good + illustration of Ruskin's ideas. + + + + +THE TWO BOYHOODS + +VOLUME V, PART 9, CHAPTER 9 + + +Born half-way between the mountains and the sea--that young George of +Castelfranco--of the Brave Castle:--Stout George they called him, +George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was--Giorgione.[120] + +Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on--fair, searching +eyes of youth? What a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots +to the shore;--of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to +the marble city--and became himself as a fiery heart to it? + +A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with +emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, +overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea +drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. +Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,--the men of Venice moved +in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her +mothers and maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights; +the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armour shot angrily under their +blood-red mantle-folds. Fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, +implacable,--every word a fate--sate her senate. In hope and honour, +lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each with +his name written and the cross graved at his side, lay her dead. A +wonderful piece of world. Rather, itself a world. It lay along the face +of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at +evening, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away; but for its +power, it must have seemed to them as if they were sailing in the +expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened +through ether. A world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts +were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. No +foulness, nor tumult, in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, +beneath the moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or thrilling +silence. No weak walls could rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, +nor straw-built shed. Only the strength as of rock, and the finished +setting of stones most precious. And around them, far as the eye could +reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as not +the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle, could grow in the +glancing fields. Ethereal strength of Alps, dreamlike, vanishing in +high procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue islands of Paduan +hills, poised in the golden west. Above, free winds and fiery clouds +ranging at their will;--brightness out of the north, and balm from the +south, and the stars of the evening and morning clear in the limitless +light of arched heaven and circling sea. + +Such was Giorgione's school--such Titian's home. + +Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or well +is formed by a close-set block of houses, to the back windows of which +it admits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom of it is obtained +out of Maiden Lane, through a low archway and an iron gate; and if you +stand long enough under the archway to accustom your eyes to the +darkness you may see on the left hand a narrow door, which formerly +gave quiet access to a respectable barber's shop, of which the front +window, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant, filled, in this year +(1860), with a row of bottles, connected, in some defunct manner, with +a brewer's business. A more fashionable neighbourhood, it is said, +eighty years ago than now--never certainly a cheerful one--wherein a +boy being born on St. George's day, 1775, began soon after to take +interest in the world of Covent Garden, and put to service such +spectacles of life as it afforded. + +No knights to be seen there, nor, I imagine, many beautiful ladies; +their costume at least disadvantageous, depending much on incumbency of +hat and feather, and short waists; the majesty of men founded similarly +on shoebuckles and wigs;--impressive enough when Reynolds will do his +best for it; but not suggestive of much ideal delight to a boy. + +"Bello ovile dov' io dormii agnello";[121] of things beautiful, besides +men and women, dusty sunbeams up or down the street on summer mornings; +deep furrowed cabbage-leaves at the greengrocer's; magnificence of +oranges in wheelbarrows round the corner; and Thames' shore within +three minutes' race. + +None of these things very glorious; the best, however, that England, it +seems, was then able to provide for a boy of gift: who, such as they +are, loves them--never, indeed, forgets them. The short waists modify +to the last his visions of Greek ideal. His foregrounds had always a +succulent cluster or two of greengrocery at the corners. Enchanted +oranges gleam in Covent Gardens of the Hesperides; and great ships go +to pieces in order to scatter chests of them on the waves.[122] That mist +of early sunbeams in the London dawn crosses, many and many a time, the +clearness of Italian air; and by Thames' shore, with its stranded +barges and glidings of red sail, dearer to us than Lucerne lake or +Venetian lagoon,--by Thames' shore we will die. + +With such circumstance round him in youth, let us note what necessary +effects followed upon the boy. I assume him to have had Giorgione's +sensibility (and more than Giorgione's, if that be possible) to colour +and form. I tell you farther, and this fact you may receive trustfully, +that his sensibility to human affection and distress was no less keen +than even his sense for natural beauty--heart-sight deep as eyesight. + +Consequently, he attaches himself with the faithfullest child-love to +everything that bears an image of the place he was born in. No matter +how ugly it is,--has it anything about it like Maiden Lane, or like +Thames' shore? If so, it shall be painted for their sake. Hence, to the +very close of life, Turner could endure ugliness which no one else, of +the same sensibility, would have borne with for an instant. Dead brick +walls, blank square windows, old clothes, market-womanly types of +humanity--anything fishy and muddy, like Billingsgate or Hungerford +Market, had great attraction for him; black barges, patched sails, and +every possible condition of fog. + +You will find these tolerations and affections guiding or sustaining +him to the last hour of his life; the notablest of all such endurances +being that of dirt. No Venetian ever draws anything foul; but Turner +devoted picture after picture to the illustration of effects of +dinginess, smoke, soot, dust, and dusty texture; old sides of boats, +weedy roadside vegetation, dunghills, straw-yards, and all the soilings +and stains of every common labour. + +And more than this, he not only could endure, but enjoyed and looked +for _litter_, like Covent Garden wreck after the market. His pictures +are often full of it, from side to side; their foregrounds differ from +all others in the natural way that things have of lying about in them. +Even his richest vegetation, in ideal work, is confused; and he +delights in shingle, debris, and heaps of fallen stones. The last words +he ever spoke to me about a picture were in gentle exultation about his +St. Gothard: "that _litter_ of stones which I endeavoured to +represent." + +The second great result of this Covent Garden training was understanding +of and regard for the poor, whom the Venetians, we saw, despised; whom, +contrarily, Turner loved, and more than loved--understood. He got no +romantic sight of them, but an infallible one, as he prowled about the +end of his lane, watching night effects in the wintry streets; nor +sight of the poor alone, but of the poor in direct relations with the +rich. He knew, in good and evil, what both classes thought of, and how +they dwelt with, each other. + +Reynolds and Gainsborough, bred in country villages, learned there the +country boy's reverential theory of "the squire," and kept it. They +painted the squire and the squire's lady as centres of the movements of +the universe, to the end of their lives. But Turner perceived the +younger squire in other aspects about his lane, occurring prominently +in its night scenery, as a dark figure, or one of two, against the +moonlight. He saw also the working of city commerce, from endless +warehouse, towering over Thames, to the back shop in the lane, with its +stale herrings--highly interesting these last; one of his father's best +friends, whom he often afterwards visited affectionately at Bristol, +being a fishmonger and glue-boiler; which gives us a friendly turn of +mind towards herring-fishing, whaling, Calais poissardes, and many +other of our choicest subjects in after life; all this being connected +with that mysterious forest below London Bridge on one side;--and, on +the other, with these masses of human power and national wealth which +weigh upon us, at Covent Garden here, with strange compression, and +crush us into narrow Hand Court. + +"That mysterious forest below London Bridge"--better for the boy than +wood of pine, or grove of myrtle. How he must have tormented the +watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch anywhere in the bows, +quiet as a log, so only that he might get floated down there among the +ships, and round and round the ships, and with the ships, and by the +ships, and under the ships, staring, and clambering;--these the only +quite beautiful things he can see in all the world, except the sky; +but these, when the sun is on their sails, filling or falling, +endlessly disordered by sway of tide and stress of anchorage, +beautiful unspeakably; which ships also are inhabited by glorious +creatures--red-faced sailors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales, +true knights, over their castle parapets--the most angelic beings in +the whole compass of London world. And Trafalgar happening long before +we can draw ships, we, nevertheless, coax all current stories out of +the wounded sailors, do our best at present to show Nelson's funeral +streaming up the Thames; and vow that Trafalgar shall have its tribute +of memory some day. Which, accordingly, is accomplished--once, with +all our might, for its death; twice, with all our might, for its +victory; thrice, in pensive farewell to the old Téméraire, and, with +it, to that order of things.[123] + +Now this fond companying with sailors must have divided his time, it +appears to me, pretty equally between Covent Garden and Wapping +(allowing for incidental excursions to Chelsea on one side, and +Greenwich on the other), which time he would spend pleasantly, but not +magnificently, being limited in pocket-money, and leading a kind of +"Poor-Jack" life on the river. + +In some respects, no life could be better for a lad. But it was not +calculated to make his ear fine to the niceties of language, nor form +his moralities on an entirely regular standard. Picking up his first +scraps of vigorous English chiefly at Deptford and in the markets, and +his first ideas of female tenderness and beauty among nymphs of the +barge and the barrow,--another boy might, perhaps, have become what +people usually term "vulgar." But the original make and frame of +Turner's mind being not vulgar, but as nearly as possible a combination +of the minds of Keats and Dante, joining capricious waywardness, and +intense openness to every fine pleasure of sense, and hot defiance of +formal precedent, with a quite infinite tenderness, generosity, and +desire of justice and truth--this kind of mind did not become vulgar, +but very tolerant of vulgarity, even fond of it in some forms; and on +the outside, visibly infected by it, deeply enough; the curious result, +in its combination of elements, being to most people wholly +incomprehensible. It was as if a cable had been woven of blood-crimson +silk, and then tarred on the outside. People handled it, and the tar +came off on their hands; red gleams were seen through the black, +underneath, at the places where it had been strained. Was it +ochre?--said the world--or red lead? + +Schooled thus in manners, literature, and general moral principles at +Chelsea and Wapping, we have finally to inquire concerning the most +important point of all. We have seen the principal differences between +this boy and Giorgione, as respects sight of the beautiful, +understanding of poverty, of commerce, and of order of battle; then +follows another cause of difference in our training--not slight,--the +aspect of religion, namely, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. I +say the aspect; for that was all the lad could judge by. Disposed, for +the most part, to learn chiefly by his eyes, in this special matter he +finds there is really no other way of learning. His father had taught +him "to lay one penny upon another." Of mother's teaching, we hear of +none; of parish pastoral teaching, the reader may guess how much. + +I chose Giorgione rather than Veronese to help me in carrying out this +parallel; because I do not find in Giorgione's work any of the early +Venetian monarchist element. He seems to me to have belonged more to an +abstract contemplative school. I may be wrong in this; it is no +matter;--suppose it were so, and that he came down to Venice somewhat +recusant, or insentient, concerning the usual priestly doctrines of his +day,--how would the Venetian religion, from an outer intellectual +standing-point, have _looked_ to him? + +He would have seen it to be a religion indisputably powerful in human +affairs; often very harmfully so; sometimes devouring widows' +houses,[124] and consuming the strongest and fairest from among the +young; freezing into merciless bigotry the policy of the old: also, on +the other hand, animating national courage, and raising souls, +otherwise sordid, into heroism: on the whole, always a real and great +power; served with daily sacrifice of gold, time, and thought; putting +forth its claims, if hypocritically, at least in bold hypocrisy, not +waiving any atom of them in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in large +measure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed: a goodly system, +moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, harmonious, mysterious;--a thing which +had either to be obeyed or combated, but could not be scorned. A +religion towering over all the city--many-buttressed--luminous in +marble stateliness, as the dome of our Lady of Safety[125] shines over +the sea; many-voiced also, giving, over all the eastern seas, to the +sentinel his watchword, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips of +all who died for Venice, shaping the whisper of death. + +I suppose the boy Turner to have regarded the religion of his city also +from an external intellectual standing-point. + +What did he see in Maiden Lane? + +Let not the reader be offended with me; I am willing to let him +describe, at his own pleasure, what Turner saw there; but to me, it +seems to have been this. A religion maintained occasionally, even the +whole length of the lane, at point of constable's staff; but, at other +times, placed under the custody of the beadle, within certain black and +unstately iron railings of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Among the +wheelbarrows and over the vegetables, no perceptible dominance of +religion; in the narrow, disquieted streets, none; in the tongues, +deeds, daily ways of Maiden Lane, little. Some honesty, indeed, and +English industry, and kindness of heart, and general idea of justice; +but faith, of any national kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next, +not artistically beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibitions; its +paraphernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and cold +grimness of behaviour. + +What chiaroscuro belongs to it--(dependent mostly on candlelight),--we +will, however, draw considerately; no goodliness of escutcheon, nor +other respectability being omitted, and the best of their results +confessed, a meek old woman and a child being let into a pew, for whom +the reading by candlelight will be beneficial.[126] + +For the rest, this religion seems to him +discreditable--discredited--not believing in itself; putting forth its +authority in a cowardly way, watching how far it might be tolerated, +continually shrinking, disclaiming, fencing, finessing; divided against +itself, not by stormy rents, but by thin fissures, and splittings of +plaster from the walls. Not to be either obeyed, or combated, by an +ignorant, yet clear-sighted youth: only to be scorned. And scorned not +one whit the less, though also the dome dedicated to it looms high over +distant winding of the Thames; as St. Mark's campanile rose, for goodly +landmark, over mirage of lagoon. For St. Mark ruled over life; the +Saint of London over death; St. Mark over St. Mark's Place, but St. +Paul over St. Paul's Churchyard. + +Under these influences pass away the first reflective hours of life, +with such conclusion as they can reach. In consequence of a fit of +illness, he was taken--I cannot ascertain in what year[127]--to live with +an aunt, at Brentford; and here, I believe, received some schooling, +which he seems to have snatched vigorously; getting knowledge, at least +by translation, of the more picturesque classical authors, which he +turned presently to use, as we shall see. Hence also, walks about +Putney and Twickenham in the summer time acquainted him with the look +of English meadow-ground in its restricted states of paddock and park; +and with some round-headed appearances of trees, and stately entrances +to houses of mark: the avenue at Bushy, and the iron gates and carved +pillars of Hampton,[128] impressing him apparently with great awe and +admiration; so that in after life his little country house is,--of all +places in the world,--at Twickenham! Of swans and reedy shores he now +learns the soft motion and the green mystery, in a way not to be +forgotten. + +And at last fortune wills that the lad's true life shall begin; and one +summer's evening, after various wonderful stage-coach experiences on +the north road, which gave him a love of stage-coaches ever after, he +finds himself sitting alone among the Yorkshire hills.[129] For the +first time, the silence of Nature round him, her freedom sealed to him, +her glory opened to him. Peace at last; no roll of cart-wheel, nor +mutter of sullen voices in the back shop; but curlew-cry in space of +heaven, and welling of bell-toned streamlet by its shadowy rock. +Freedom at last. Dead-wall, dark railing, fenced field, gated garden, +all passed away like the dream, of a prisoner; and behold, far as foot +or eye can race or range, the moor, and cloud. Loveliness at last. It +is here, then, among these deserted vales! Not among men. Those pale, +poverty-struck, or cruel faces;--that multitudinous, marred +humanity--are not the only things that God has made. Here is something +He has made which no one has marred. Pride of purple rocks, and river +pools of blue, and tender wilderness of glittering trees, and misty +lights of evening on immeasurable hills. + +Beauty, and freedom, and peace; and yet another teacher, graver than +these. Sound preaching at last here, in Kirkstall crypt, concerning +fate and life. Here, where the dark pool reflects the chancel pillars, +and the cattle lie in unhindered rest, the soft sunshine on their +dappled bodies, instead of priests' vestments; their white furry hair +ruffled a little, fitfully, by the evening wind deep-scented from the +meadow thyme. + +Consider deeply the import to him of this, his first sight of ruin, and +compare it with the effect of the architecture that was around +Giorgione. There were indeed aged buildings, at Venice, in his time, +but none in decay. All ruin was removed, and its place filled as +quickly as in our London; but filled always by architecture loftier and +more wonderful than that whose place it took, the boy himself happy to +work upon the walls of it; so that the idea of the passing away of the +strength of men and beauty of their works never could occur to him +sternly. Brighter and brighter the cities of Italy had been rising and +broadening on hill and plain, for three hundred years. He saw only +strength and immortality, could not but paint both; conceived the form +of man as deathless, calm with power, and fiery with life. + +Turner saw the exact reverse of this. In the present work of men, +meanness, aimlessness, unsightliness: thin-walled, lath-divided, +narrow-garreted houses of clay; booths of a darksome Vanity Fair, +busily base. + +But on Whitby Hill, and by Bolton Brook,[130] remained traces of other +handiwork. Men who could build had been there; and who also had +wrought, not merely for their own days. But to what purpose? Strong +faith, and steady hands, and patient souls--can this, then, be all you +have left! this the sum of your doing on the earth!--a nest whence the +night-owl may whimper to the brook, and a ribbed skeleton of consumed +arches, looming above the bleak banks of mist, from its cliff to the +sea? + +As the strength of men to Giorgione, to Turner their weakness and +vileness, were alone visible. They themselves, unworthy or ephemeral; +their work, despicable, or decayed. In the Venetian's eyes, all beauty +depended on man's presence and pride; in Turner's, on the solitude he +had left, and the humiliation he had suffered. + +And thus the fate and issue of all his work were determined at once. He +must be a painter of the strength of nature, there was no beauty +elsewhere than in that; he must paint also the labour and sorrow and +passing away of men: this was the great human truth visible to him. + +Their labour, their sorrow, and their death. Mark the three. Labour; by +sea and land, in field and city, at forge and furnace, helm and plough. +No pastoral indolence nor classic pride shall stand between him and the +troubling of the world; still less between him and the toil of his +country,--blind, tormented, unwearied, marvellous England. + +Also their Sorrow; Ruin of all their glorious work, passing away of +their thoughts and their honour, mirage of pleasure, FALLACY OF HOPE; +gathering of weed on temple step; gaining of wave on deserted strand; +weeping of the mother for the children, desolate by her breathless +first-born in the streets of the city,[131] desolate by her last sons +slain, among the beasts of the field.[132] + +And their Death. That old Greek question again;--yet unanswered. The +unconquerable spectre still flitting among the forest trees at +twilight; rising ribbed out of the sea-sand;--white, a strange +Aphrodite,--out of the sea-foam; stretching its grey, cloven wings +among the clouds; turning the light of their sunsets into blood. This +has to be looked upon, and in a more terrible shape than ever Salvator +or Dürer saw it.[133] The wreck of one guilty country does not infer the +ruin of all countries, and need not cause general terror respecting the +laws of the universe. Neither did the orderly and narrow succession of +domestic joy and sorrow in a small German community bring the question +in its breadth, or in any unresolvable shape, before the mind of Dürer. +But the English death--the European death of the nineteenth +century--was of another range and power; more terrible a thousandfold +in its merely physical grasp and grief; more terrible, incalculably, in +its mystery and shame. What were the robber's casual pang, or the range +of the flying skirmish, compared to the work of the axe, and the sword, +and the famine, which was done during this man's youth on all the hills +and plains of the Christian earth, from Moscow to Gibraltar? He was +eighteen years old when Napoleon came down on Arcola. Look on the map +of Europe and count the blood-stains on it, between Arcola and +Waterloo.[134] + +Not alone those blood-stains on the Alpine snow, and the blue of the +Lombard plain. The English death was before his eyes also. No decent, +calculable, consoled dying; no passing to rest like that of the aged +burghers of Nuremberg town. No gentle processions to churchyards among +the fields, the bronze crests bossed deep on the memorial tablets, and +the skylark singing above them from among the corn. But the life +trampled out in the slime of the street, crushed to dust amidst the +roaring of the wheel, tossed countlessly away into howling winter wind +along five hundred leagues of rock-fanged shore. Or, worst of all, +rotted down to forgotten graves through years of ignorant patience, and +vain seeking for help from man, for hope in God--infirm, imperfect +yearning, as of motherless infants starving at the dawn; oppressed +royalties of captive thought, vague ague-fits of bleak, amazed despair. + +A goodly landscape this, for the lad to paint, and under a goodly +light. Wide enough the light was, and clear; no more Salvator's lurid +chasm on jagged horizon, nor Dürer's spotted rest of sunny gleam on +hedgerow and field; but light over all the world. Full shone now its +awful globe, one pallid charnel-house,--a ball strewn bright with human +ashes, glaring in poised sway beneath the sun, all blinding-white with +death from pole to pole,--death, not of myriads of poor bodies only, +but of will, and mercy, and conscience; death, not once inflicted on +the flesh, but daily, fastening on the spirit; death, not silent or +patient, waiting his appointed hour, but voiceful, venomous; death with +the taunting word, and burning grasp, and infixed sting. + +"Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe."[135] The word is spoken +in our ears continually to other reapers than the angels,--to the busy +skeletons that never tire for stooping. When the measure of iniquity is +full, and it seems that another day might bring repentance and +redemption,--"Put ye in the sickle." When the young life has been +wasted all away, and the eyes are just opening upon the tracks of ruin, +and faint resolution rising in the heart for nobler things,--"Put ye in +the sickle." When the roughest blows of fortune have been borne long +and bravely, and the hand is just stretched to grasp its goal,--"Put ye +in the sickle." And when there are but a few in the midst of a nation, +to save it, or to teach, or to cherish; and all its life is bound up in +those few golden ears,--"Put ye in the sickle, pale reapers, and pour +hemlock for your feast of harvest home." + +This was the sight which opened on the young eyes, this the watchword +sounding within the heart of Turner in his youth. + +So taught, and prepared for his life's labour, sate the boy at last +alone among his fair English hills; and began to paint, with cautious +toil, the rocks, and fields, and trickling brooks, and soft white +clouds of heaven. + + + [120] c. 1478-1511. + + [121] Dante, alluding to Florence, _Paradiso_, 25. 5. "From the + fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered." Longfellow's tr. + + [122] Allusions to pictures by Turner, The Garden of the + Hesperides, and The Meuse: Orange-Merchantman going to pieces on + the Bar. + + [123] The pictures referred to are: The Death of Nelson, The Battle + of Trafalgar, and The Fighting Téméraire being towed to its Last + Berth (see cut). The first and third are in the National Gallery, + London. + + [124] _Matthew_ xxiii, 14. + + [125] Santa Maria della Salute, a church conspicuously situated at + the junction of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca. + + [126] _Liber Studiorum_. "Interior of a church." It is worthy of + remark that Giorgione and Titian are always delighted to have an + opportunity of drawing priests. The English Church may, perhaps, + accept it as matter of congratulation that this is the only + instance in which Turner drew a clergyman. [Ruskin.] + + [127] 1785. + + [128] Wolsey's famous palace, twelve miles from London. + + [129] I do not mean that this is his first acquaintance with the + country, but the first impressive and touching one, after his mind + was formed. The earliest sketches I found in the National + Collection are at Clifton and Bristol; the next, at Oxford. + [Ruskin.] + + [130] The reference is to the two famous ruined abbeys of + Yorkshire--Whitby and Bolton. + + [131] The Tenth Plague of Egypt. [Ruskin.] + + [132] Rizpah, the Daughter of Aiah. [Ruskin.] + + [133] Dürer [1471-1528], German painter, engraver, and designer. + Salvator [1615-73], Italian painter, etcher, satirical poet, and + musical composer. + + [134] _I.e._, between November 17, 1796, and June 18, 1815. + + [135] _Joel_ iii, 13. + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM + +THE STONES OF VENICE + + +The first volume of _The Stones of Venice_ appeared in March, 1851; the +first day of May of the same year we find the following entry in +Ruskin's diary: "About to enter on the true beginning of the second +part of my Venetian work. May God help me to finish it--to His glory, +and man's good." The main part of the volume was composed at Venice in +the winter of 1851-52, though it did not appear until the end of July, +1853. His work on architecture, including _The Seven Lamps_, it will be +noted, intervenes between the composition of the second and third +volumes of _Modern Painters_; and Ruskin himself always looked upon +the work as an interlude, almost as an interruption. But he also came +to believe that this digression had really led back to the heart of +the truth for all art. Its main theme, as in _The Seven Lamps of +Architecture_, is its illustration of the principle that architecture +expresses certain states in the moral temper of the people by and for +whom it is produced. It may surprise us to-day to know that when Ruskin +wrote of the glories of Venetian architecture, the common "professional +opinion was that St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace were as ugly and +repulsive as they were contrary to rule and order." In a private letter +Gibbon writes of the Square of St. Mark's as "a large square decorated +with the worst architecture I ever saw." The architects of his own time +regarded Ruskin's opinions as dictated by wild caprice, and almost +evincing an unbalanced mind. Probably the core of all this +architectural work is to be found in his chapter "On the Nature of +Gothic," in the main reproduced in this volume. And we find here again +a point of fundamental significance--that his artistic analysis led him +inevitably on to social inquiries. He proved to himself that the main +virtue of Gothic lay in the unrestricted play of the individual +imagination; that the best results were produced when every artist was +a workman and every workman an artist. Twenty years after the +publication of this book, he wrote in a private letter that his main +purpose "was to show the dependence of (architectural) beauty on the +happiness and fancy of the workman, and to show also that no architect +could claim the title to authority of _Magister_ unless he himself +wrought at the head of his men, captain of manual skill, as the best +knight is captain of armies." He himself called the chapter "precisely +and accurately the most important in the whole book." Mr. Frederic +Harrison says that in it is "the creed, if it be not the origin, of a +new industrial school of thought." + + + + +THE THRONE + +VOLUME II, CHAPTER I + + +In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which +distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil +was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries +through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the +evening hours, when from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, +the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered +among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long hoped for +turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, +the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset--hours of +peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in +the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an +equivalent,--in those days, I say, when there was something more to be +anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive +halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, +there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly +cherished by the traveller, than that which, as I endeavoured to +describe in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of +Venice, as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of +Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the +source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its +buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other great +towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, +and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers +out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible +that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of +the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling +lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets +bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, +the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in +knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all +proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city +rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the +Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, +but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subdued +into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a +field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of +the lonely island church, fitly named "St. George of the Seaweed." As +the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had +just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-coloured line, tufted +irregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed its +northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple +pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or three +smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, +and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the +chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north--a wall of +jagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of +misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and +itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite +upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up +behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the +crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, +to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the +great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick +silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when +its walls were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was +entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep +inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the +traveller's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces,--each +with its black boat moored at the portal,--each with its image cast +down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze +broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the +extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal +curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi;[136] that +strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, +graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike +circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stalì,"[137] +struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty +cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the splash of the +water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's +side; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of +silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed with +its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of +Salvation,[138] it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply +entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so +strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. +Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to +the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the +waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, +rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature +was wild or merciless,--Time and Decay, as well as the waves and +tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might +still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed +for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea. + +And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the +face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on +Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the noble +landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a +glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though +many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated ruins, +there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried +traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect +has been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her +origin, and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at +least, are little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of +the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to +repress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is +ignoble, and disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its +remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the +imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before +us. The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of +this century, may indeed gild, but never save, the remains of those +mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; and +they must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see +them as they stood in their own strength. Those feelings, always as +fruitless as they are fond, are in Venice not only incapable of +protecting, but even of discerning, the objects to which they ought to +have been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing +of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the +first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name +is worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossed +that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of +Venice;[139] no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which +the traveller now passes with breathless interest: the statue which +Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors was +erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after +Faliero's death;[140] and the most conspicuous parts of the city have +been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries, +that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari[141] could be summoned from +their tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance +of the Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favourite +subject, the novelist's favourite scene, where the water first narrows +by the steps of the Church of La Salute,--the mighty Doges would not +know in what part of the world they stood, would literally not +recognize one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and by whose +ingratitude, their grey hairs had been brought down with bitterness to +the grave. The remains of _their_ Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous +masses which were the delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in +many a grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal, +where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred +years, and must soon prevail over them for ever. It must be our task to +glean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some faint image +of the lost city; more gorgeous a thousandfold than that which now +exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince, nor by the +ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, +contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that +its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, +but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and +solitary scene, whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed +shelter the birth of the city, but long denied her dominion. + +When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no feature by +which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange sweeping loop +formed by the junction of the Alps and Apennines, and enclosing the +great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain upon itself +causes a vast difference in the character of the distribution of its +debris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and sediment which the +torrents on the other side of the Alps bear into the plains are +distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here and there +lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm substrata to +appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which descend from +the southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern slope of the +Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain bay which the +two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks out of their +battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain washes from +their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of the +Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky +barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences +which continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the +accumulation of the ruins of ages. + +I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by insisting on the +singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which appears for many +centuries to have taken place steadily and continually; the main fact +with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the Po and its +great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment to the +sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressed +by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part of large +rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick; and +was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these same +pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to check +the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona.[142] The +finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the +rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, +however pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the +foot of the great chain, they become of the colour and opacity of clay +before they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once +thrown down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land +along the eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of +course builds forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, +there is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable +to rapid change than the delta of the central river. In one of these +tracts is built RAVENNA, and in the other VENICE. + +What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this great belt +of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place to inquire. +It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the Adige to those +of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three to +five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long +islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the +true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and other +rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighbourhood +of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most places of a +foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, +but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, +from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to the run +of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, +some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to be built +upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the contrary, +it has not reached the sea level; so that, at the average low water, +shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of +seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance +by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the +openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a +crowded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which +appear to the north and south of this central cluster, have at +different periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according +to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents +and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and +encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the +metropolis. + +The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet (varying +considerably with the seasons); but this fall, on so flat a shore, is +enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main +canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At +high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of +Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or +gleaming with villages: there is a channel, some three miles wide, +between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide +between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the +lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the +impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, +although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, +betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deepwater channels, +which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge +sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded +waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the uplifted +level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low +tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over +the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is +seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of sea-weed, of gloomy +green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its +associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this +salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by +tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, and often +so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till +their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea water like the +ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground +at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the +banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the +uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly +oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears +some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what it was once, +let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some +unfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain; let +him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city that +still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the +islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture and +sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black +desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, +pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful +silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, +or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he +will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with +which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. +They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and +strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be +the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in the +great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be +remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things which +no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existence +and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, by +the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had +deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and +again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surges +beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of the Venetian +architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an +ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the +Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, +and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only +a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the +doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there +is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without +setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps; and the highest tides +sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. +Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood and +ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a +treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of +water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily +intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city +would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the +peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed. + +The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between this +faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the romantic +conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he have +felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the +instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the +wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been +permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid +rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh +waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little +could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were +shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their +desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than +of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the +glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all +the corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which +were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and +feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a +preparation, and _the only preparation possible_, for the founding of a +city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the +earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, and +to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in +world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the +burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendour. + + + [136] The palace of the Camerlenghi, beside the Rialto, is a + graceful work of the early Renaissance (1525) passing into Roman + Renaissance. [Adapted from Ruskin.] + + [137] Signifying approximately "Keep to the right." + + [138] See note 1, p. 129. + + [139] _Childe Harold_, 4. 1. + + [140] _Marino Faliero_, 3. 1. 22 ff. + + [141] Dandolo [c. 1108-1205] and Foscari [1372-1457] were among the + most famous of Venetian Doges. + + [142] In the battle of Custozza, 1848, the Austrians defeated the + Piedmontese. + + + + +ST. MARK'S + +VOLUME II, CHAPTER 4 + + +"And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as the shores +of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had entered +into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his hand +was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of Christ's +captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the work,[143] +how wonderful would he have thought it, that by the lion symbol in +future ages he was to be represented among men! how woful, that the +war-cry of his name should so often reanimate the rage of the soldier, +on those very plains where he himself had failed in the courage of the +Christian, and so often dye with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, +over whose waves, in repentance and shame, he was following the Son of +Consolation! + +That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the ninth +century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it was +principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose him +for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that before +he went into Egypt he had founded the church at Aquileia, and was thus +in some sort the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I +believe that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of +St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome[144]; but, as usual, it is +enriched by various later additions and embellishments, much resembling +the stories told respecting the church of Murano. Thus we find it +recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the _Vife de' Santi spettanti +alle Chiese di Venezia_,[145] that "St. Mark having seen the people of +Aquileia well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. +Peter, before setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and +went in a small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that +period some houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and +the boat being driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when +St. Mark, snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to +him: 'Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel +goes on to foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne più veduta +Città"[146]; but the fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther +relation. + +But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not, St. Theodore +was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be considered as +having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue, standing on a +crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the opposing pillar of +the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said to have occupied, +before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and the traveller, +dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not to leave it +without endeavouring to imagine its aspect in that early time, when it +was a green field cloister-like and quiet,[147] divided by a small canal, +with a line of trees on each side; and extending between the two +churches of St. Theodore and St. Gemanium, as the little piazza of +Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral. + +But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally removed to +the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the present one +stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it,[148] gave a very different +character to the Square of St. Mark; and fifteen years later, the +acquisition of the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the Ducal +Chapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned the investiture of that +chapel with all possible splendour. St. Theodore was deposed from his +patronship, and his church destroyed, to make room for the +aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, and +thenceforward known as "St. Mark's."[149] + +This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the Ducal Palace +was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was partly +rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and, with +the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on under +successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building being +completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till +considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085,[150] +according to Sansovino and the author of the _Chiesa Ducale di S. +Marco_, in 1094 according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and +1096, those years being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I +incline to the supposition that it was soon after his accession to the +throne in 1085, though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead +of Vital Falier. But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh +century the great consecration of the church took place. It was again +injured by fire in 1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall +of Venice there was probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree +embellish or alter the fabric, so that few parts of it can be +pronounced boldly to be of any given date. Two periods of interference +are, however, notable above the rest: the first, that in which the +Gothic school had superseded the Byzantine towards the close of the +fourteenth century, when the pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window +traceries were added to the exterior, and the great screen with various +chapels and tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the +Renaissance school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian +and Tintoret substituted, over one half of the church, their own +compositions for the Greek mosaics with which it was originally +decorated;[151] happily, though with no good will, having left enough +to enable us to imagine and lament what they destroyed. Of this +irreparable loss we shall have more to say hereafter; meantime, I wish +only to fix in the reader's mind the succession of periods of +alterations as firmly and simply as possible. + +We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly stated to +be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the fourteenth, and +the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no difficulty in +distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the Byzantine; but +there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how long, during the +course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, additions were made to +the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily distinguished from the +work of the eleventh century, being purposely executed in the same +manner. Two of the most important pieces of evidence on this point are, +a mosaic in the south transept, and another over the northern door of +the façade; the first representing the interior, the second the +exterior, of the ancient church. + +It has just been stated that the existing building was consecrated by +the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to that act of +consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what appears to +have been one of the best arranged and most successful impostures ever +attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body of St. Mark had, +without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976; but the revenues +of the church depended too much upon the devotion excited by these +relics to permit the confession of their loss. The following is the +account given by Corner, and believed to this day by the Venetians, of +the pretended miracle by which it was concealed. + +"After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which +the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten; +so that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the +venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious +Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by +confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer +and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not +now depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore +proclaimed, and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, +while the people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent +prayers for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as +joy, a slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where +the altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth, +exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in +which the body of the Evangelist was laid." + +Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They were embellished +afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as, for instance, +that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark extended his hand +out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which he permitted a +noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint and delightful story +was further invented of this ring, which I shall not repeat here, as it +is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian Nights. But the fast +and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means effected, are facts; +and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved mosaics of the +north[152] transept, executed very certainly not long after the event +had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of the Bayeux +tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior of the +church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer, then in +thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the Doge, in +the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet embroidered with +gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux" over his head, as +uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most other pictorial +works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely represented, and +the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in order to form a +background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of picture history +which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand things besides, +never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or two, of the real +or perspective size, and subdued it into a vague background: the old +workman crushed the church together that he might get it all in, up to +the cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some useful notes of its +ancient form, though any one who is familiar with the method of drawing +employed at the period will not push the evidence too far. The two +pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day, and the fringe of +mosaic flowerwork which then encompassed the whole church, but which +modern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment still left in the +south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the other mosaics on the +roof, the scale being too small to admit of their being represented +with any success; but some at least of those mosaics had been executed +at that period, and their absence in the representation of the entire +church is especially to be observed, in order to show that we must not +trust to any negative evidence in such works. M. Lazari has rashly +concluded that the central archivolt of St. Mark's _must_ be posterior +to the year 1205, because it does not appear in the representation of +the exterior of the church over the northern door;[153] but he justly +observes that this mosaic (which is the other piece of evidence we +possess respecting the ancient form of the building) cannot itself be +earlier than 1205, since it represents the bronze horses which were +brought from Constantinople in that year. And this one fact renders it +very difficult to speak with confidence respecting the date of any part +of the exterior of St. Mark's; for we have above seen that it was +consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet here is one of its most +important exterior decorations assuredly retouched, if not entirely +added, in the thirteenth, although its style would have led us to +suppose it had been an original part of the fabric. However, for all +our purposes, it will be enough for the reader to remember that the +earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh, twelfth, and +first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions to the +fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the fifteenth and +sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the seventeenth. + +This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I may speak +generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without leading +him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated by +Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the +seventeenth-century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to +the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a +Byzantine building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely +necessary, direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the +reader with anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the +eye, or affects the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified +by Byzantine influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits +need not therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or +arrested by the obscurities of chronology. + +And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St. Mark's +Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English +cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. +Let us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we +can see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low +grey gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in +the centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing +goes in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the +chapter, and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by +neat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and +excessively trim houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out +here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream colour +and white, and small porches to their doors in the shape of +cockle-shells, or little, crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables +warped a little on one side; and so forward till we come to larger +houses, also old-fashioned, but of red brick, and with gardens behind +them, and fruit walls, which show here and there, among the nectarines, +the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on +the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of smooth +grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, especially on the sunny +side, where the canons' children are walking with their nursery-maids. +And so, taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go along the +straight walk to the west front, and there stand for a time, looking up +at its deep-pointed porches and the dark places between their pillars +where there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, +of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the likeness of a +king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps a saintly king long ago +in heaven; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering wall of +rugged sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and grey, and grisly +with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirling +winds into yet unseemlier shape, and coloured on their stony scales by +the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, higher still, +to the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the +bosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only +sees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scattering, +and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and +flowers, the crowd of restless birds that fill the whole square with +that strange clangour of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like the +cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and sea. + +Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of all its +small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its +secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense +and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by +the cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on +all who have passed through the lonely square at their feet for +centuries, and on all who have seen them rising far away over the +wooded plain, or catching on their square masses the last rays of the +sunset, when the city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at +the bend of the river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in +Venice, and land at the extremity of the Calla Lunga San Moisè, which +may be considered as there answering to the secluded street that led us +to our English cathedral gateway. + +We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide where it is +widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant +salesmen,--a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of +brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high +houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over-head, +an inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and +chimney flues, pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows +with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here +and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some +inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high +over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be, +occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about +eight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which one +is narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectable +shops, wainscotted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but +in those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares +laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases +entering at the front only, and fading away in a few feet from the +threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but +which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the +back of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less +pious shopkeeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented +with a penny print; the more religious one has his print coloured and +set in a little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a +faded flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. +Here, at the fruiterer's, where the dark-green water-melons are heaped +upon the counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of +fresh laurel leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, +and there is nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the +studded patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the +darkness. Next comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori,"[154] where the +Virgin, enthroned in a very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a +back shelf, presides over certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too +ambiguous to be defined or enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at +the regular wine-shop of the calle, where we are offered "Vino +Nostrani a Soldi 28-32," the Madonna is in great glory, enthroned above +ten or a dozen large red casks of three-year-old vintage, and flanked +by goodly ranks of bottles of Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and +for the evening, when the gondoliers will come to drink out, under her +auspices, the money they have gained during the day, she will have a +whole chandelier. + +A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle, and, +glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply moulded, +in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting +on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side; and so +presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè, whence to the +entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of +the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the +frightful facade of San Moisè, which we will pause at another time to +examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near the +piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging +groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them into +the shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and then +we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great +light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of +St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of +chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong +themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses +that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back +into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements +and broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly +sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone. + +And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches +there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems +to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far +away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long +low pyramid of coloured light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of +gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into +five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with +sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture +fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and +pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all +twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the +midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the +feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures +indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves +beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded +back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were +angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are +set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green +serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse +and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to +kiss"[155]--the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line +after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved +sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of +herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, +all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broad +archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life--angels, and the +signs of heaven, and the labours of men, each in its appointed season +upon the earth; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, +mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers,--a confusion of +delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing +in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on +a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the +crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far +into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the +breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and +the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. + +Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! +There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead +of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the +bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle +among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their +living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less +lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years. + +And what effect has this splendour on those who pass beneath it? You +may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St. +Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance +brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and +poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the +porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, +the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them +that sell doves"[156] for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and +caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is +almost a continuous line of cafés, where the idle Venetians of the +middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the +Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music +jarring with the organ notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the +sullen crowd thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its +will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the +recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest +classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; +and unregarded children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full +of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with +cursing,--gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, +clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church +porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it +continually. + + + [143] _Acts_ xiii, 13 and xv, 38, 39. [Ruskin.] + + [144] The reader who desires to investigate it may consult + Galliciolli, _Delle Memorie Venete_ (Venice, 1795), tom. 2, p. 332, + and the authorities quoted by him. [Ruskin.] + + [145] _Venice_, 1761 tom. 1, p. 126. [Ruskin.] + + [146] A wonderful City, such as was never seen before. + + [147] St. Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a + few trees; and on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or + Broglio, that is to say, Garden." The canal passed through it, over + which is built the bridge of the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. I, + cap. viii. [Ruskin.] + + [148] My authorities for this statement are given below, in the + chapter on the Ducal Palace. [Ruskin.] + + [149] In the Chronicles, _Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappdla_. [Ruskin.] + + [150] "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the + Protector St. Mark."--Corner, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the + reader with the various authorities for the above statements: I + have consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on + the church itself: + + Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno Desuper undecimo fuit facta + primo, + + is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much + probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro." [Ruskin.] + + [151] Signed Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc. [Ruskin.] + + [152] An obvious slip. The mosaic is on the west wall of the south + transept. [Cook and Wedderburn.] + + [153] _Guida di Venezia_, p. 6. [Ruskin.] + + [154] Fritters and liquors for sale. + + [155] _Antony and Cleopatra_, 2. 5. 29. + + [156] Matthew xxi, 12 and _John_ ii, 16. + + + + +CHARACTERISTICS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE + +VOLUME II, CHAPTER 6 + + +I believe, then, that the characteristic or moral elements of Gothic +are the following, placed in the order of their importance: + + 1. Savageness. + 2. Changefulness. + 3. Naturalism. + 4. Grotesqueness. + 5. Rigidity. + 6. Redundance. + +These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building; as +belonging to the builder, they would be expressed thus:--1. Savageness, +or Rudeness. 2. Love of Change. 3. Love of Nature. 4. Disturbed +Imagination. 5. Obstinacy. 6. Generosity. And I repeat, that the +withdrawal of any one, or any two, will not at once destroy the Gothic +character of a building, but the removal of a majority of them will. I +shall proceed to examine them in their order. + +1. SAVAGENESS. I am not sure when the word "Gothic" was first +generically applied to the architecture of the North; but I presume +that, whatever the date of its original usage, it was intended to imply +reproach, and express the barbaric character of the nations among whom +that architecture arose. It never implied that they were literally of +Gothic lineage, far less that their architecture had been originally +invented by the Goths themselves; but it did imply that they and their +buildings together exhibited a degree of sternness and rudeness, which, +in contradistinction to the character of Southern and Eastern nations, +appeared like a perpetual reflection of the contrast between the Goth +and the Roman in their first encounter. And when that fallen Roman, in +the utmost impotence of his luxury, and insolence of his guilt, became +the model for the imitation of civilized Europe, at the close of the +so-called Dark Ages, the word Gothic became a term of unmitigated +contempt, not unmixed with aversion. From that contempt, by the +exertion of the antiquaries and architects of this century, Gothic +architecture has been sufficiently vindicated; and perhaps some among +us, in our admiration of the magnificent science of its structure, and +sacredness of its expression, might desire that the term of ancient +reproach should be withdrawn, and some other, of more apparent +honourableness, adopted in its place. There is no chance, as there is +no need, of such a substitution. As far as the epithet was used +scornfully, it was used falsely; but there is no reproach in the word, +rightly understood; on the contrary, there is a profound truth, which +the instinct of mankind almost unconsciously recognizes. It is true, +greatly and deeply true, that the architecture of the North is rude and +wild; but it is not true, that, for this reason, we are to condemn it, +or despise. Far otherwise: I believe it is in this very character that +it deserves our profoundest reverence. + +The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern science have +thrown into a narrow space the expression of a vast amount of +knowledge, but I have never yet seen any one pictorial enough to enable +the spectator to imagine the kind of contrast in physical character +which exists between Northern and Southern countries. We know the +differences in detail, but we have not that broad glance and grasp +which would enable us to feel them in their fulness. We know that +gentians grow on the Alps, and olives on the Apennines; but we do not +enough conceive for ourselves that variegated mosaic of the world's +surface which a bird sees in its migration, that difference between the +district of the gentian and of the olive which the stork and the +swallow see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let us, for a +moment, try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight, +and imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, +and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun: here and there an +angry spot of thunder, a grey stain of storm, moving upon the burning +field; and here and there a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, +surrounded by its circle of ashes; but for the most part a great +peacefulness of light, Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like +pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop +nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing +softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, +mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate +with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of +the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass +farther towards the north, until we see the orient colours change +gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of +Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the +Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of +the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flaky +veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands: +and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave into mighty +masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste of +gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into +irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm, +and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending +tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill +ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into +barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, +deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And, +having once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned iris of +the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it, +and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life; the +multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and +sea, or tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and +spotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and +scarlet. Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of colour, and +swiftness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy +covering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the +Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf +and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of paradise with the +osprey: and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by which +the earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being. Let +us not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in +the statutes of the lands that gave him birth. Let us watch him with +reverence as he sets side by side the burning gems, and smooths with +soft sculpture the jasper pillars, that are to reflect a ceaseless +sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but not with less reverence +let us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried stroke, he +smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn from +among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air the +pile of iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with work of an +imagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creations of +ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as the +winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them. + +There is, I repeat, no degradation, no reproach in this, but all +dignity and honourableness: and we should err grievously in refusing +either to recognize as an essential character of the existing +architecture of the North, or to admit as a desirable character in that +which it yet may be, this wildness of thought, and roughness of work; +this look of mountain brotherhood between the cathedral and the Alp; +this magnificence of sturdy power, put forth only the more +energetically because the fine finger-touch was chilled away by the +frosty wind, and the eye dimmed by the moor-mist, or blinded by the +hail; this outspeaking of the strong spirit of men who may not gather +redundant fruitage from the earth, nor bask in dreamy benignity of +sunshine, but must break the rock for bread, and cleave the forest for +fire, and show, even in what they did for their delight, some of the +hard habits of the arm and heart that grew on them as they swung the +axe or pressed the plough. + +If, however, the savageness of Gothic architecture, merely as an +expression of its origin among Northern nations, may be considered, in +some sort, a noble character, it possesses a higher nobility still, +when considered as an index, not of climate, but of religious +principle. + +In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXL of the first volume of +this work, it was noticed that the systems of architectural ornament, +properly so called, might be divided into three:--1. Servile ornament, +in which the execution or power of the inferior workman is entirely +subjected to the intellect of the higher;--2. Constitutional ornament, +in which the executive inferior power is, to a certain point, +emancipated and independent, having a will of its own, yet confessing +its inferiority and rendering obedience to higher powers;--and 3. +Revolutionary ornament, in which no executive inferiority is admitted +at all. I must here explain the nature of these divisions at somewhat +greater length. + +Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, and +Egyptian; but their servility is of different kinds. The Greek +master-workman was far advanced in knowledge and power above the +Assyrian or Egyptian. Neither he nor those for whom he worked could +endure the appearance of imperfection in anything; and, therefore, what +ornament he appointed to be done by those beneath him was composed of +mere geometrical forms,--balls, ridges, and perfectly symmetrical +foliage,--which could be executed with absolute precision by line and +rule, and were as perfect in their way, when completed, as his own +figure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, less +cognizant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow their +figure sculpture to be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered the +method of its treatment to a standard which every workman could reach, +and then trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chance +of his falling beneath the standard appointed. The Greek gave to the +lower workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute. The +Assyrian gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, but +fixed a legal standard for his imperfection. The workman was, in both +systems, a slave.[157] + +But in the mediæval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this +slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized, +in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul. +But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, in +only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness. That +admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite +felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether +refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly contemplating the fact of +it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God's greater glory. +Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service, +her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are +unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, +nor your confession silenced for fear of shame. And it is, perhaps, the +principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that +they thus receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out +of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in +every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole. + +But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of the +Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion +or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble character +in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget the +relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness +of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher; not considering +that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would be +preferable to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind, +and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of man, +those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those +which are, in their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. For +the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness +of it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall be +seldomest seen in their best form. The wild grass grows well and +strongly, one year with another; but the wheat is, according to the +greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. And +therefore, while in all things that we see or do, we are to desire +perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the +meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in +its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered +majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower +the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency +of success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other +men, we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrow +caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; and, +still more, how we withhold our admiration from great excellencies, +because they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in the make and nature +of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labour, +there are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid +capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are, even at the +worst; and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are tardy or +torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take +them in their feebleness, and unless we prize and honour them in their +imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this is +what we have to do with all our labourers; to look for the _thoughtful_ +part of them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it, +whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. For the best +that is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error. +Understand this clearly; You can teach a man to draw a straight line, +and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy +and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and +perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if +you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot +find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes +hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he +makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking +being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a +machine before, an animated tool. + +And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must +either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make +both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be +precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that +precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like +cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must +unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make +cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must +go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be +bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the +invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err +from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the +whole human being be lost at last--a heap of sawdust, so far as its +intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, +which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after +the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if +you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. +Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth +doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all +his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, +failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole +majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the +clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, +there will be transfiguration behind and within them. + +And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about which you +have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good and +strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those +accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of +the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over +them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was +done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are +signs of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more +degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be +beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer +flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to +smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting +pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the +flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God,[158] +into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with,--this it is to be +slave-masters indeed; and there might be more freedom in England, +though her feudal lords' lightest words were worth men's lives, and +though the blood of the vexed husbandman dropped in the furrows of her +fields, than there is while the animation of her multitudes is sent +like fuel to feed the factory smoke, and the strength of them is given +daily to be wasted into the fineness of a web, or racked into the +exactness of a line. + +And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral +front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of the +old sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins, and formless +monsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid; but do not mock at +them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman who +struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, +such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which it +must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her +children. + +Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is verily +this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than any +other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere +into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which +they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry +against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them either by +the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These do much, +and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society were +never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are ill +fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make +their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of +pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper +classes, but they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind +of labour to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and +makes them less than men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathy +with the lower, or charity for them, as they have at this day, and yet +never were they so much hated by them: for, of old, the separation +between the noble and the poor was merely a wall built by law; now it +is a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice between +upper and lower grounds in the field of humanity, and there is +pestilential air at the bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to +come when the nature of right freedom will be understood, and when men +will see that to obey another man, to labour for him, yield reverence +to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of +liberty,--liberty from care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth, +and to another, Come, and he cometh,[159] has, in most cases, more sense +of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. The movements +of the one are hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by +the bridle on his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be +lightened; but we need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at +it. To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at +his disposal, is not slavery; often it is the noblest state in which a +man can live in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence which is +servile, that is to say irrational or selfish: but there is also noble +reverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never so +noble as when he is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the feeling +pass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised +by it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him,--the +Irish peasant who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with +his musket muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain +servant, who 200 years ago, at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and +the lives of his seven sons for his chief?--as each fell, calling forth +his brother to the death, "Another for Hector!"[160] And therefore, in +all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice made +by men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and +famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been +borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts +of the heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who +received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But +to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their +whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a +heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its +hammer strokes;--this nature bade not,--this God blesses not,--this +humanity for no long time is able to endure. + +We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized +invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It +is not, truly speaking; the labour that is divided; but the +men:--Divided into mere segments of men--broken into small fragments +and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that +is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts +itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a +good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we +could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished,--sand +of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what +it is,--we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the +great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than +their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,--that we manufacture +everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, +and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to +refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our +estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging +our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, +for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach to +them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be +met only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what +kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; +by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness +as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally +determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling +labour. + +And how, it will be asked, are these products to be recognized, and +this demand to be regulated? Easily: by the observance of three broad +and simple rules: + + 1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely + necessary, in the production of which _Invention_ has no share. + + 2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some + practical or noble end. + + 3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the + sake of preserving record of great works. + +The second of these principles is the only one which directly rises out +of the consideration of our immediate subject; but I shall briefly +explain the meaning and extent of the first also, reserving the +enforcement of the third for another place. + + 1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not necessary, in the + production of which invention has no share. + +For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, and there is no +design or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed by +first drawing out the glass into rods; these rods are chopped up into +fragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fragments are +then rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at their +work all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely +timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like hail. +Neither they, nor the men who draw out the rods or fuse the fragments, +have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human faculty; and +every young lady, therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the +slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have so +long been endeavouring to put down. + +But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisite +invention; and if in buying these we pay for the invention, that is to +say for the beautiful form, or colour, or engraving, and not for mere +finish of execution, we are doing good to humanity. + +So, again, the cutting of precious stones, in all ordinary cases, +requires little exertion of any mental faculty; some tact and judgment +in avoiding flaws, and so on, but nothing to bring out the whole mind. +Every person who wears cut jewels merely for the sake of their value +is, therefore, a slave-driver. + +But the working of the goldsmith, and the various designing of grouped +jewellery and enamel-work, may become the subject of the most noble +human intelligence. Therefore, money spent in the purchase of +well-designed plate, of precious engraved vases, cameos, or enamels, +does good to humanity; and, in work of this kind, jewels may be +employed to heighten its splendour; and their cutting is then a price +paid for the attainment of a noble end, and thus perfectly allowable. + +I shall perhaps press this law farther elsewhere, but our immediate +concern is chiefly with the second, namely, never to demand an exact +finish, when it does not lead to a noble end. For observe, I have only +dwelt upon the rudeness of Gothic, or any other kind of imperfectness, +as admirable, where it was impossible to get design or thought without +it. If you are to have the thought of a rough and untaught man, you +must have it in a rough and untaught way; but from an educated man, who +can without effort express his thoughts in an educated way, take the +graceful expression, and be thankful. Only _get_ the thought, and do +not silence the peasant because he cannot speak good grammar, or until +you have taught him his grammar. Grammar and refinement are good +things, both, only be sure of the better thing first. And thus in art, +delicate finish is desirable from the greatest masters, and is always +given by them. In some places Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Phidias, +Perugino, Turner, all finished with the most exquisite care; and the +finish they give always leads to the fuller accomplishment of their +noble purpose. But lower men than these cannot finish, for it requires +consummate knowledge to finish consummately, and then we must take +their thoughts as they are able to give them. So the rule is simple: +Always look for invention first, and after that, for such execution as +will help the invention, and as the inventor is capable of without +painful effort, and _no more_. Above all, demand no refinement of +execution where there is no thought, for that is slaves' work, +unredeemed. Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only that the +practical purpose be answered, and never imagine there is reason to be +proud of anything that may be accomplished by patience and sand-paper. + +I shall only give one example, which however will show the reader what +I mean, from the manufacture already alluded to, that of glass. Our +modern glass is exquisitely clear in its substance, true in its form, +accurate in its cutting. We are proud of this. We ought to be ashamed +of it. The old Venice glass was muddy, inaccurate in all its forms, and +clumsily cut, if at all. And the old Venetian was justly proud of it. +For there is this difference between the English and Venetian workman, +that the former thinks only of accurately matching his patterns, and +getting his curves perfectly true and his edges perfectly sharp, and +becomes a mere machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges; while +the old Venetian cared not a whit whether his edges were sharp or not, +but he invented a new design for every glass that he made, and never +moulded a handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And therefore, +though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy enough when made by +clumsy and uninventive workmen, other Venetian glass is so lovely in +its forms that no price is too great for it; and we never see the same +form in it twice. Now you cannot have the finish and the varied form +too. If the workman is thinking about his edges, he cannot be thinking +of his design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose +whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and +choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a +grindstone. + +Nay, but the reader interrupts me,--"If the workman can design +beautifully, I would not have him kept at the furnace. Let him be taken +away and made a gentleman, and have a studio, and design his glass +there, and I will have it blown and cut for him by common workmen, and +so I will have my design and my finish too." + +All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mistaken suppositions: the +first, that one man's thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed by +another man's hands; the second, that manual labour is a degradation, +when it is governed by intellect. + +On a large scale, and in work determinable by line and rule, it is +indeed both possible and necessary that the thoughts of one man should +be carried out by the labour of others; in this sense I have already +defined the best architecture to be the expression of the mind of +manhood by the hands of childhood. But on a smaller scale, and in a +design which cannot be mathematically defined, one man's thoughts can +never be expressed by another: and the difference between the spirit of +touch of the man who is inventing, and of the man who is obeying +directions, is often all the difference between a great and a common +work of art. How wide the separation is between original and +second-hand execution, I shall endeavour to show elsewhere; it is not +so much to our purpose here as to mark the other and more fatal error +of despising manual labour when governed by intellect; for it is no +less fatal an error to despise it when thus regulated by intellect, +than to value it for its own sake. We are always in these days +endeavouring to separate the two; we want one man to be always +thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a +gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often +to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be +gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one +envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is +made up of morbid thinkers, and miserable workers. Now it is only by +labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that +labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with +impunity. It would be well if all of us were good handicraftsmen in +some kind, and the dishonour of manual labour done away with +altogether; so that though there should still be a trenchant +distinction of race between nobles and commoners, there should not, +among the latter, be a trenchant distinction of employment, as between +idle and working men, or between men of liberal and illiberal +professions. All professions should be liberal, and there should be +less pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and more in excellence of +achievement. And yet more, in each several profession, no master should +be too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind his own +colours; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; the +master-manufacturer be himself a more skilful operative than any man in +his mills; and the distinction between one man and another be only in +experience and skill, and the authority and wealth which these must +naturally and justly obtain. + +I should be led far from the matter in hand, if I were to pursue this +interesting subject. Enough, I trust, has been said to show the reader +that the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the term +"Gothic" one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one of the +most noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a noble +but an _essential_ one. It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is +nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly +noble which is not imperfect. And this is easily demonstrable. For +since the architect, whom we will suppose capable of doing all in +perfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must either +make slaves of his workmen in the old Greek, and present English +fashion, and level his work to a slave's capacities, which is to +degrade it; or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, and let +them show their weaknesses together with their strength, which will +involve the Gothic imperfection, but render the whole work as noble as +the intellect of the age can make it. + +But the principle may be stated more broadly still. I have confined the +illustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true +of architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and +perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work +executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading +that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the +labourer's mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no +good work whatever can be perfect, and _the demand for perfection is +always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art_. + +This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that +no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of +failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his +powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in +trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior +portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and +according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of +dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude +or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be +dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not +acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, +Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take +ten years to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we +are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the +work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what +is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.[161] + +The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to +all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that +is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or +can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The +foxglove blossom,--a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in +full bloom,--is a type of the life of this world. And in all things +that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are +not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly +the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no +branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; +and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, +to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and +more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, +that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human +judgment, Mercy. + +Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any +other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us +be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern +clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first +cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of +perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for +greatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity. + +Thus far then of the Rudeness or Savageness, which is the first mental +element of Gothic architecture. It is an element in many other healthy +architectures also, as in Byzantine and Romanesque; but true Gothic +cannot exist without it. + +The second mental element above named was CHANGEFULNESS, or Variety. + +I have already enforced the allowing independent operation to the +inferior workman, simply as a duty _to him_, and as ennobling the +architecture by rendering it more Christian. We have now to consider +what reward we obtain for the performance of this duty, namely, the +perpetual variety of every feature of the building. + +Wherever the workman is utterly enslaved, the parts of the building +must of course be absolutely like each other; for the perfection of his +execution can only be reached by exercising him in doing one thing, and +giving him nothing else to do. The degree in which the workman is +degraded may be thus known at a glance, by observing whether the +several parts of the building are similar or not; and if, as in Greek +work, all the capitals are alike, and all the mouldings unvaried, then +the degradation is complete; if, as in Egyptian or Ninevite work, +though the manner of executing certain figures is always the same, the +order of design is perpetually varied, the degradation is less total; +if, as in Gothic work, there is perpetual change both in design and +execution, the workman must have been altogether set free. + +How much the beholder gains from the liberty of the labourer may +perhaps be questioned in England, where one of the strongest instincts +in nearly every mind is that Love of Order which makes us desire that +our house windows should pair like our carriage horses, and allows us +to yield our faith unhesitatingly to architectural theories which fix a +form for everything, and forbid variation from it. I would not impeach +love of order: it is one of the most useful elements of the English +mind; it helps us in our commerce and in all purely practical matters; +and it is in many cases one of the foundation stones of morality. Only +do not let us suppose that love of order is love of art. It is true +that order, in its highest sense, is one of the necessities of art, +just as time is a necessity of music; but love of order has no more to +do with our right enjoyment of architecture or painting, than love of +punctuality with the appreciation of an opera. Experience, I fear, +teaches us that accurate and methodical habits in daily life are seldom +characteristic of those who either quickly perceive, or richly possess, +the creative powers of art; there is, however, nothing inconsistent +between the two instincts, and nothing to hinder us from retaining our +business habits, and yet fully allowing and enjoying the noblest gifts +of Invention. We already do so, in every other branch of art except +architecture, and we only do _not_ so there because we have been taught +that it would be wrong. Our architects gravely inform us that, as there +are four rules of arithmetic, there are five orders of architecture; +we, in our simplicity, think that this sounds consistent, and believe +them. They inform us also that there is one proper form for Corinthian +capitals, another for Doric, and another for Ionic. We, considering +that there is also a proper form for the letters A, B, and C, think +that this also sounds consistent, and accept the proposition. +Understanding, therefore, that one form of the said capitals is proper, +and no other, and having a conscientious horror of all impropriety, we +allow the architect to provide us with the said capitals, of the proper +form, in such and such a quantity, and in all other points to take care +that the legal forms are observed; which having done, we rest in forced +confidence that we are well housed. + +But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no pleasure in the +building provided for us, resembling that which we take in a new book +or a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in its +correctness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the same +pleasure in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, or +a skilful piece of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all the +pleasure that architecture was ever intended to give us. The idea of +reading a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the +same kind of delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never +enters our minds for a moment. And for good reason;--There is indeed +rhythm in the verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of +the architecture, and a thousand times more beautiful, but there is +something else than rhythm. The verses were neither made to order, nor +to match, as the capitals were; and we have therefore a kind of +pleasure in them other than a sense of propriety. But it requires a +strong effort of common sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we +have been taught for the last two centuries, and wake to the perception +of a truth just as simple and certain as it is new: that great art, +whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does _not_ say +the same thing over and over again; that the merit of architectural, as +of every other art, consists in its saying new and different things; +that to repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in marble +than it is of genius in print; and that we may, without offending any +laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, +that he should be not only correct, but entertaining. + +Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden from us, as many +other self-evident things are, by false teaching. Nothing is a great +work of art, for the production of which either rules or models can be +given. Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, and from +given models, it is not an art, but a manufacture; and it is, of the +two procedures, rather less rational (because more easy) to copy +capitals or mouldings from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than +to copy heads and hands from Titian, and call ourselves painters. + +Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a +necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that +there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; +and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit +from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose +pillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a universe in +which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one size. + +And this we confess in deeds, though not in words. All the pleasure +which the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in pictures, +sculpture, minor objects of virtù, or mediæval architecture, which we +enjoy under the term picturesque: no pleasure is taken anywhere in +modern buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting to +escape out of modern cities into natural scenery: hence, as I shall +hereafter show, that peculiar love of landscape, which is +characteristic of the age. It would be well, if, in all other matters, +we were as ready to put up with what we dislike, for the sake of +compliance with established law, as we are in architecture. + +How so debased a law ever came to be established, we shall see when we +come to describe the Renaissance schools; here we have only to note, as +the second most essential element of the Gothic spirit, that it broke +through that law wherever it found it in existence; it not only dared, +but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle; and +invented a series of forms of which the merit was, not merely that they +were new, but that they were _capable of perpetual novelty_. The +pointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the round, but it +admitted of millions of variations in itself; for the proportions of a +pointed arch are changeable to infinity, while a circular arch is +always the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from +the single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in its +grouping, and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. The +introduction of tracery was not only a startling change in the +treatment of window lights, but admitted endless changes in the +interlacement of the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in all +living Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the Gothic +schools exhibited that love in culminating energy; and their influence, +wherever it extended itself, may be sooner and farther traced by this +character than by any other; the tendency to the adoption of Gothic +types being always first shown by greater irregularity, and richer +variation in the forms of the architecture it is about to supersede, +long before the appearance of the pointed arch or of any other +recognizable _outward_ sign of the Gothic mind. + +We must, however, herein note carefully what distinction there is +between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in +healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly +in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. In +order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the +different ways in which change and monotony are presented to us in +nature; both having their use, like darkness and light, and the one +incapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being most +delightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light appears most +brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed. + +I believe that the true relations of monotony and change may be most +simply understood by observing them in music. We may therein notice +first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony, which there +is not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout all +nature. The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its +monotony; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and +especially the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall and +rise of an engine beam. So also there is sublimity in darkness which +there is not in light. + +Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain degree, +becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is +obliged to break it in one or two ways: either while the air or passage +is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and +harmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, an +entirely new passage is introduced, which is more or less delightful +according to the length of the previous monotony. Nature, of course, +uses both these kinds of variation perpetually. The sea-waves, +resembling each other in general mass, but none like its brother in +minor divisions and curves, are a monotony of the first kind; the great +plain, broken by an emergent rock or clump of trees, is a monotony of +the second. + +Farther: in order to the enjoyment of the change in either case, a +certain degree of patience is required from the hearer or observer. In +the first case, he must be satisfied to endure with patience the +recurrence of the great masses of sound or form, and to seek for +entertainment in a careful watchfulness of the minor details. In the +second case, he must bear patiently the infliction of the monotony for +some moments, in order to feel the full refreshment of the change. This +is true even of the shortest musical passage in which the element of +monotony is employed. In cases of more majestic monotony, the patience +required is so considerable that it becomes a kind of pain,--a price +paid for the future pleasure. + +Again: the talent of the composer is not in the monotony, but in the +changes: he may show feeling and taste by his use of monotony in +certain places or degrees; that is to say, by his _various_ employment +of it; but it is always in the new arrangement or invention that his +intellect is shown, and not in the monotony which relieves it. + +Lastly: if the pleasure of change be too often repeated, it ceases to +be delightful, for then change itself becomes monotonous, and we are +driven to seek delight in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This is +the diseased love of change of which we have above spoken. + +From these facts we may gather generally that monotony is, and ought to +be, in itself painful to us, just as darkness is; that an architecture +which is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead architecture; and of +those who love it, it may be truly said, "they love darkness rather +than light." But monotony in certain measure, used in order to give +value to change, and above all, that _transparent_ monotony, which, +like the shadows of a great painter, suffers all manner of dimly +suggested form to be seen through the body of it, is an essential in +architectural as in all other composition; and the endurance of +monotony has about the same place in a healthy mind that the endurance +of darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect will have +pleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the broken +and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in mere +brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow and +the storm; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness of +fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, while +an inferior man will not pay the price; exactly in like manner a great +mind will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisome +to an inferior intellect, because it has more patience and power of +expectation, and is ready to pay the full price for the great future +pleasure of change. But in all cases it is not that the noble nature +loves monotony, anymore than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bear +with it, and receives a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, a +pleasure necessary to the well-being of this world; while those who +will not submit to the temporary sameness, but rush from one change to +another, gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a shadow +and weariness over the whole world from which there is no more escape. + +From these general uses of variety in the economy of the world, we may +at once understand its use and abuse in architecture. The variety of +the Gothic schools is the more healthy and beautiful, because in many +cases it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from the mere love of +change, but from practical necessities. For in one point of view Gothic +is not only the best, but the _only rational_ architecture, as being +that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. +Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, or +disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a +hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded +grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change +in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of +loss either to its unity or majesty,--subtle and flexible like a fiery +serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one +of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered +ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the +real use and value of what they did. If they wanted a window, they +opened one; a room, they added one; a buttress, they built one; utterly +regardless of any established conventionalities of external appearance, +knowing (as indeed it always happened) that such daring interruptions +of the formal plan would rather give additional interest to its +symmetry than injure it. So that, in the best times of Gothic, a +useless window would rather have been opened in an unexpected place for +the sake of the surprise, than a useful one forbidden for the sake of +symmetry. Every successive architect, employed upon a great work, built +the pieces he added in his own way, utterly regardless of the style +adopted by his predecessors; and if two towers were raised in nominal +correspondence at the sides of a cathedral front, one was nearly sure +to be different from the other, and in each the style at the top to be +different from the style at the bottom. + +These marked variations were, however, only permitted as part of the +great system of perpetual change which ran through every member of +Gothic design, and rendered it as endless a field for the beholder's +inquiry as for the builder's imagination: change, which in the best +schools is subtle and delicate, and rendered more delightful by +intermingling of a noble monotony; in the more barbaric schools is +somewhat fantastic and redundant; but, in all, a necessary and constant +condition of the life of the school. Sometimes the variety is in one +feature, sometimes in another; it may be in the capitals or crockets, +in the niches or the traceries, or in all together, but in some one or +other of the features it will be found always. If the mouldings are +constant, the surface sculpture will change; if the capitals are of a +fixed design, the traceries will change; if the traceries are +monotonous, the capitals will change; and if even, as in some fine +schools, the early English for example, there is the slightest +approximation to an unvarying type of mouldings, capitals, and floral +decoration, the variety is found in the disposition of the masses, and +in the figure sculpture. + +I must now refer for a moment, before we quit the consideration of +this, the second mental element of Gothic, to the opening of the third +chapter of the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, in which the distinction +was drawn (§ 2) between man gathering and man governing; between his +acceptance of the sources of delight from nature, and his development +of authoritative or imaginative power in their arrangement: for the two +mental elements, not only of Gothic, but of all good architecture, +which we have just been examining, belong to it, and are admirable in +it, chiefly as it is, more than any other subject of art, the work of +man, and the expression of the average power of man. A picture or poem +is often little more than a feeble utterance of man's admiration of +something out of himself; but architecture approaches more to a +creation of his own, born of his necessities, and expressive of his +nature. It is also, in some sort, the work of the whole race, while the +picture or statue are the work of one only, in most cases more highly +gifted than his fellows. And therefore we may expect that the first two +elements of good architecture should be expressive of some great truths +commonly belonging to the whole race, and necessary to be understood or +felt by them in all their work that they do under the sun. And observe +what they are: the confession of Imperfection, and the confession of +Desire of Change. The building of the bird and the bee needs not +express anything like this. It is perfect and unchanging. But just +because we are something better than birds or bees, our building must +confess that we have not reached the perfection we can imagine, and +cannot rest in the condition we have attained. If we pretend to have +reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves +and our work. God's work only may express that; but ours may never have +that sentence written upon it,--"And behold, it was very good." And, +observe again, it is not merely as it renders the edifice a book of +various knowledge, or a mine of precious thought, that variety is +essential to its nobleness. The vital principle is not the love of +_Knowledge_, but the love of _Change_. It is that strange _disquietude_ +of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; that restlessness of the +dreaming mind, that wanders hither and thither among the niches, and +flickers feverishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in +labyrinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not +satisfied, nor shall be satisfied. The Greek could stay in his triglyph +furrow, and be at peace; but the work of the Gothic heart is fretwork +still, and it can neither rest in, nor from, its labour, but must pass +on, sleeplessly, until its love of change shall be pacified for ever in +the change that must come alike on them that wake and them that +sleep.... + +Last, because the least essential, of the constituent elements of this +noble school, was placed that of REDUNDANCE,--the uncalculating +bestowal of the wealth of its labour. There is, indeed, much Gothic, +and that of the best period, in which this element is hardly traceable, +and which depends for its effect almost exclusively on loveliness of +simple design and grace of uninvolved proportion; still, in the most +characteristic buildings, a certain portion of their effect depends +upon accumulation of ornament; and many of those which have most +influence on the minds of men, have attained it by means of this +attribute alone. And although, by careful study of the school, it is +possible to arrive at a condition of taste which shall be better +contented by a few perfect lines than by a whole façade covered with +fretwork, the building which only satisfies such a taste is not to be +considered the best. For the very first requirement of Gothic +architecture being, as we saw above, that it shall both admit the aid, +and appeal to the admiration, of the rudest as well as the most refined +minds, the richness of the work is, paradoxical as the statement may +appear, a part of its humility. No architecture is so haughty as that +which is simple; which refuses to address the eye, except in a few +clear and forceful lines; which implies, in offering so little to our +regards, that all it has offered is perfect; and disdains, either by +the complexity of the attractiveness of its features, to embarrass our +investigation, or betray us into delight. That humility, which is the +very life of the Gothic school, is shown not only in the imperfection, +but in the accumulation, of ornament. The inferior rank of the workman +is often shown as much in the richness, as the roughness, of his work; +and if the co-operation of every hand, and the sympathy of every heart, +are to be received, we must be content to allow the redundance which +disguises the failure of the feeble, and wins the regard of the +inattentive. There are, however, far nobler interests mingling, in the +Gothic heart, with the rude love of decorative accumulation: a +magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough to +reach the fulness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, which +would rather cast fruitless labour before the altar than stand idle in +the market; and, finally, a profound sympathy with the fulness and +wealth of the material universe, rising out of that Naturalism whose +operation we have already endeavoured to define. The sculptor who +sought for his models among the forest leaves, could not but quickly +and deeply feel that complexity need not involve the loss of grace, nor +richness that of repose; and every hour which he spent in the study of +the minute and various work of Nature, made him feel more forcibly the +barrenness of what was best in that of man: nor is it to be wondered +at, that, seeing her perfect and exquisite creations poured forth in a +profusion which conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he +should think that it ill became him to be niggardly of his own rude +craftsmanship; and where he saw throughout the universe a faultless +beauty lavished on measureless spaces of broidered field and blooming +mountain, to grudge his poor and imperfect labour to the few stones +that he had raised one upon another, for habitation or memorial. The +years of his life passed away before his task was accomplished; but +generation succeeded generation with unwearied enthusiasm, and the +cathedral front was at last lost in the tapestry of its traceries, like +a rock among the thickets and herbage of spring. + + + [157] The third kind of ornament, the Renaissance, is that in which + the inferior detail becomes principal, the executor of every minor + portion being required to exhibit skill and possess knowledge as + great as that which is possessed by the master of the design; and + in the endeavour to endow him with this skill and knowledge, his + own original power is overwhelmed, and the whole building becomes a + wearisome exhibition of well-educated imbecility. We must fully + inquire into the nature of this form of error, when we arrive at + the examination of the Renaissance schools. [Ruskin.] + + [158] Job xix, 26. + + [159] _Matthew_ viii, 9. + + [160] Vide Preface to _Fair Maid of Perth_. [Ruskin.] + + [161] The Elgin marbles are supposed by many persons to be "perfect". + In the most important portions they indeed approach perfection, + but only there. The draperies are unfinished, the hair and wool + of the animals are unfinished, and the entire bas-reliefs of the + frieze are roughly cut. [Ruskin.] + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE + + + This book began to assume shape in Ruskin's mind as early as 1846; + he actually wrote it in the six months between November, 1848, and + April, 1849. It is the first of five illustrated volumes embodying + the results of seven years devoted to the study of the principles + and ideals of Gothic Architecture, the other volumes being _The + Stones of Venice_ and _Examples of the Architecture of Venice_ + (1851). In the first edition of _The Seven Lamps_ the plates were + not only all drawn but also etched by his own hand. Ruskin at a + later time wrote that the purpose of _The Seven Lamps_ was "to + show that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were + the magic powers by which all good architecture had been + produced." He is really applying here the same tests of truth and + sincerity that he employed in _Modern Painters_. Chronologically, + this volume and the others treating of architecture come between + the composition of Volumes II and III of _Modern Painters_. + Professor Charles Eliot Norton writes that the _Seven Lamps_ is + "the first treatise in English to teach the real significance of + architecture as the most trustworthy record of the life and faith + of nations." The following selections form the closing chapters of + the volume, and have a peculiar interest as anticipating the + social and political ideas which came to colour all his later + work. + + + + +THE LAMP OF MEMORY + + +Among the hours of his life to which the writer looks back with +peculiar gratitude, as having been marked by more than ordinary fulness +of joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some years ago, +near time of sunset, among the broken masses of pine forest which skirt +the course of the Ain, above the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. +It is a spot which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, +of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be +manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the rise +of the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterance of those +mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly +broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet +restrained; and the far reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed +each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet +waters from some far off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness +pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the stern +expression of the central ranges are alike withdrawn. No +frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient glacier fret the soft +Jura pastures; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her +forest; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and +changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear +green streams wind along their well-known beds; and under the dark +quietness of the undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such +company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the +blessings of the earth. It was spring time, too; and all were coming +forth in clusters crowded for very love; there was room enough for all, +but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to +be nearer each other. There was the wood anemone, star after star, +closing every now and then into nebulae; and there was the oxalis, +troop by troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie,[162] the +dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy +snow, and touched with ivy on the edges--ivy as light and lovely as the +vine; and, ever and anon, a blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in +sunny places; and in the more open ground, the vetch, and comfrey, and +mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, and the +wild strawberry, just a blossom or two all showered amidst the golden +softness of deep, warm, amber-coloured moss. I came out presently on +the edge of the ravine: the solemn murmur of its waters rose suddenly +from beneath, mixed with the singing of the thrushes among the pine +boughs; and, on the opposite side of the valley, walled all along as it +was by grey cliffs of limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off +their brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and with the shadows +of the pines flickering upon his plumage from above; but with the fall +of a hundred fathoms under his breast, and the curling pools of the +green river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam +globes moving with him as he flew. It would be difficult to conceive a +scene less dependent upon any other interest than that of its own +secluded and serious beauty; but the writer well remembers the sudden +blankness and chill which were cast upon it when he endeavoured, in +order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impressiveness, to +imagine it, for a moment, a scene in some aboriginal forest of the New +Continent. The flowers in an instant lost their light, the river its +music; the hills became oppressively desolate; a heaviness in the +boughs of the darkened forest showed how much of their former power had +been dependent upon a life which was not theirs, how much of the glory +of the imperishable, or continually renewed, creation is reflected from +things more precious in their memories than it, in its renewing. Those +ever springing flowers and ever flowing streams had been dyed by the +deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue; and the crests of +the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper +worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron wall of +Joux, and the four-square keep of Granson. + +It is as the centralization and protectress of this sacred influence, +that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious +thought. We may live without her, and worship without her, but we +cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all +imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the +uncorrupted marble bears!--how many pages of doubtful record might we +not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The ambition +of the old Babel builders was well directed for this world:[163] there +are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and +Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is +mightier in its reality: it is well to have, not only what men have +thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength +wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The age of +Homer is surrounded with darkness, his very personality with doubt. Not +so that of Pericles: and the day is coming when we shall confess, that +we have learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her +sculpture than even from her sweet singers or soldier historians. And +if indeed there be any profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joy +in the thought of being remembered hereafter, which can give strength +to present exertion, or patience to present endurance, there are two +duties respecting national architecture whose importance it is +impossible to overrate: the first, to render the architecture of the +day, historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious of +inheritances, that of past ages. + +It is in the first of these two directions that Memory may truly be +said to be the Sixth Lamp of Architecture; for it is in becoming +memorial or monumental that a true perfection is attained by civil and +domestic buildings; and this partly as they are, with such a view, +built in a more stable manner, and partly as their decorations are +consequently animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning. + +As regards domestic buildings, there must always be a certain +limitation to views of this kind in the power, as well as in the +hearts, of men; still I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people +when their houses are built to last for one generation only. There is a +sanctity in a good man's house which cannot be renewed in every +tenement that rises on its ruins: and I believe that good men would +generally feel this; and that having spent their lives happily and +honourably, they would be grieved, at the close of them, to think that +the place of their earthly abode, which had seen, and seemed almost to +sympathize in, all their honour, their gladness, or their +suffering,--that this, with all the record it bare of them, and of all +material things that they had loved and ruled over, and set the stamp +of themselves upon--was to be swept away, as soon as there was room +made for them in the grave; that no respect was to be shown to it, no +affection felt for it, no good to be drawn from it by their children; +that though there was a monument in the church, there was no warm +monument in the hearth and house to them; that all that they ever +treasured was despised, and the places that had sheltered and comforted +them were dragged down to the dust. I say that a good man would fear +this; and that, far more, a good son, a noble descendant, would fear +doing it to his father's house. I say that if men lived like men +indeed, their houses would be temples--temples which we should hardly +dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to +live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a +strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents +taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our +fathers' honour, or that our own lives are not such as would make our +dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to +himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only. +And I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring +up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our +capital--upon those thin, tottering, foundationless shells of splintered +wood and imitated stone--upon those gloomy rows of formalized +minuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, as +solitary as similar--not merely with the careless disgust of an +offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but +with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must +be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native +ground; that those comfortless and unhonoured dwellings are the signs +of a great and spreading spirit of popular discontent; that they mark +the time when every man's aim is to be in some more elevated sphere +than his natural one, and every man's past life is his habitual scorn; +when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, and +live in the hope of forgetting the years that they have lived; when the +comfort, the peace, the religion of home have ceased to be felt; and +the crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differ +only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy +openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of +earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of +stability without the luxury of change. + +This is no slight, no consequenceless evil; it is ominous, infectious, +and fecund of other fault and misfortune. When men do not love their +hearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have +dishonoured both, and that they have never acknowledged the true +universality of that Christian worship which was indeed to supersede +the idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household +God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's +dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly and pour out its +ashes. It is not a question of mere ocular delight, it is no question +of intellectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and +with what aspect of durability and of completeness, the domestic +buildings of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, +not with more impunity to be neglected because the perception of them +depends on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build our +dwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, and diligent +completion, and with a view to their duration at least for such a +period as, in the ordinary course of national revolutions, might be +supposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the direction of +local interests. This at the least; but it would be better if, in every +possible instance, men built their own houses on a scale commensurate +rather with their condition at the commencement, than their attainments +at the termination, of their worldly career; and built them to stand as +long as human work at its strongest can be hoped to stand; recording to +their children what they had been, and from what, if so it had been +permitted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may +have that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, which +does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the small +habitation as well as the large, and which invests with the dignity of +contented manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance. + +I look to this spirit of honourable, proud, peaceful self-possession, +this abiding wisdom of contented life, as probably one of the chief +sources of great intellectual power in all ages, and beyond dispute as +the very primal source of the great architecture of old Italy and +France. To this day, the interest of their fairest cities depends, not +on the isolated richness of palaces, but on the cherished and exquisite +decoration of even the smallest tenements of their proud periods. The +most elaborate piece of architecture in Venice is a small house at the +head of the Grand Canal, consisting of a ground floor with two storeys +above, three windows in the first, and two in the second. Many of the +most exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, and of no larger +dimensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fifteenth-century +architecture in North Italy, is a small house in a back street, behind +the market-place of Vicenza; it bears date 1481, and the motto, _Il. +n'est. rose. sans. épine_; it has also only a ground floor and two +storeys, with three windows in each, separated by rich flower-work, and +with balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with open wings, +the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopiæ. The idea +that a house must be large in order to be well built, is altogether of +modern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be +historical, except of a size admitting figures larger than life. + +I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and +built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be, within +and without; with what degree of likeness to each other in style and +manner, I will say presently, under another head;[164] but, at all +events, with such differences as might suit and express each man's +character and occupation, and partly his history. This right over the +house, I conceive, belongs to its first builder, and is to be respected +by his children; and it would be well that blank stones should be left +in places, to be inscribed with a summary of his life and of its +experience, raising thus the habitation into a kind of monument, and +developing, into more systematic instructiveness, that good custom +which was of old universal, and which still remains among some of the +Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of God's permission to +build and possess a quiet resting-place, in such sweet words as may +well close our speaking of these things. I have taken them from the +front of a cottage lately built among the green pastures which descend +from the village of Grindelwald to the lower glacier:-- + + Mit herzlichem Vertrauen + Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi + Dieses Haus bauen lassen. + Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren + Vor allem Unglück und Gefahren, + Und es in Segen lassen stehn + Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit + Nach dem himmlischen Paradiese, + Wo alle Frommen wohnen, + Da wird Gott sie belohnen + Mil der Friedenskrone + Zu alle Ewigkeit.[165] + +In public buildings the historical purpose should be still more +definite. It is one of the advantages of Gothic architecture,--I use +the word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly opposed to +classical,--that it admits of a richness of record altogether +unlimited. Its minute and multitudinous sculptural decorations afford +means of expressing, either symbolically or literally, all that need be +known of national feeling or achievement. More decoration will, indeed, +be usually required than can take so elevated a character; and much, +even in the most thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom of +fancy, or suffered to consist of mere repetitions of some national +bearing or symbol. It is, however, generally unwise, even in mere +surface ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of variety which +the spirit of Gothic architecture admits; much more in important +features--capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as of +course in all confessed has-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells +a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There +should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without +some intellectual intention. Actual representation of history has in +modern times been checked by a difficulty, mean indeed, but steadfast; +that of unmanageable costume: nevertheless, by a sufficiently bold +imaginative treatment, and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles may +be vanquished; not perhaps in the degree necessary to produce sculpture +in itself satisfactory, but at all events so as to enable it to become +a grand and expressive element of architectural composition. Take, for +example, the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice. +History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior, +but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning. The large +one, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted to +the symbolization of Abstract Justice; above it is a sculpture of the +Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful subjection in its +treatment to its decorative purpose. The figures, if the subject had +been entirely composed of them, would have awkwardly interrupted the +line of the angle, and diminished its apparent strength; and therefore +in the midst of them, entirely without relation to them, and indeed +actually between the executioner and interceding mother, there rises +the ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues the +shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and enrich the +whole. The capital below bears among its leafage a throned figure of +Justice, Trajan doing justice to the widow, Aristotle "che die legge," +and one or two other subjects now unintelligible from decay. The +capitals next in order represent the virtues and vices in succession, +as preservative or destructive of national peace and power, concluding +with Faith, with the inscription "Fides optima in Deo est." A figure is +seen on the opposite side of the capital, worshipping the sun. After +these, one or two capitals are fancifully decorated with birds, and +then come a series representing, first the various fruits, then the +national costumes, and then the animals of the various countries +subject to Venetian rule. + +Now, not to speak of any more important public building, let us imagine +our own India House adorned in this way, by historical or symbolical +sculpture: massively built in the first place; then chased with +has-reliefs of our Indian battles, and fretted with carvings of +Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental stones; and the more +important members of its decoration composed of groups of Indian life +and landscape, and prominently expressing the phantasms of Hindoo +worship in their subjection to the Cross. Would not one such work be +better than a thousand histories? If, however, we have not the +invention necessary for such efforts, or if, which is probably one of +the most noble excuses we can offer for our deficiency in such matters, +we have less pleasure in talking about ourselves, even in marble, than +the Continental nations, at least we have no excuse for any want of +care in the points which insure the building's endurance. And as this +question is one of great interest in its relations to the choice of +various modes of decoration, it will be necessary to enter into it at +some length. + +The benevolent regards and purposes of men in masses seldom can be +supposed to extend beyond their own generation. They may look to +posterity as an audience, may hope for its attention, and labour for +its praise: they may trust to its recognition of unacknowledged merit, +and demand its justice for contemporary wrong. But all this is mere +selfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, or +consideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers we would fain +swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would +gladly support our presently disputed claims. The idea of self-denial +for the sake of posterity, of practising present economy for the sake +of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants may +live under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations to +inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly +recognized motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less our duties; +nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the range of our +intended and deliberate usefulness include, not only the companions but +the successors, of our pilgrimage. God has lent us the earth for our +life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come +after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, +as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to +involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits +which it was in our power to bequeath. And this the more, because it is +one of the appointed conditions of the labour of men that, in +proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and the harvest, is the +fulness of the fruit; and that generally, therefore, the farther off we +place our aim, and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of +what we have laboured for, the more wide and rich will be the measure +of our success. Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they can +benefit those who come after them; and of all the pulpits from which +human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so +far as from the grave. + +Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect for futurity. +Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true magnificence, +by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the +quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, +separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no +action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test. +Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it +not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such +work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay +stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held +sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as +they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, "See! this our +fathers did for us." For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is +not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in +that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious +sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls +that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in +their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the +transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through +the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, +and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the +sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, +connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half +constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations: +it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real +light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not +until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted +with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have +been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of +death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the +natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much +as these possess, of language and of life. + +For that period, then, we must build; not, indeed, refusing to +ourselves the delight of present completion, nor hesitating to follow +such portions of character as may depend upon delicacy of execution to +the highest perfection of which they are capable, even although we may +know that in the course of years such details must perish; but taking +care that for work of this kind we sacrifice no enduring quality, and +that the building shall not depend for its impressiveness upon anything +that is perishable. This would, indeed, be the law of good composition +under any circumstances, the arrangement of the larger masses being +always a matter of greater importance than the treatment of the +smaller; but in architecture there is much in that very treatment which +is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the +probable effects of time: and (which is still more to be considered) +there is a beauty in those effects themselves, which nothing else can +replace, and which it is our wisdom to consult and to desire. For +though, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of age only, +there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, such and so great as to +have become not unfrequently the subject of especial choice among +certain schools of art, and to have impressed upon those schools the +character usually and loosely expressed by the term "picturesque.".... + +Now, to return to our immediate subject, it so happens that, in +architecture, the superinduced and accidental beauty is most commonly +inconsistent with the preservation of original character, and the +picturesque is therefore sought in ruin, and supposed to consist in +decay. Whereas, even when so sought, it consists in the mere sublimity +of the rents, or fractures, or stains, or vegetation, which assimilate +the architecture with the work of Nature, and bestow upon it those +circumstances of colour and form which are universally beloved by the +eye of man. So far as this is done, to the extinction of the true +characters of the architecture, it is picturesque, and the artist who +looks to the stem of the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar, is +carrying out in more daring freedom the debased sculptor's choice of +the hair instead of the countenance. But so far as it can be rendered +consistent with the inherent character, the picturesque or extraneous +sublimity of architecture has just this of nobler function in it than +that of any other object whatsoever, that it is an exponent of age, of +that in which, as has been said, the greatest glory of the building +consists; and, therefore, the external signs of this glory, having +power and purpose greater than any belonging to their mere sensible +beauty, may be considered as taking rank among pure and essential +characters; so essential to my mind, that I think a building cannot be +considered as in its prime until four or five centuries have passed +over it; and that the entire choice and arrangement of its details +should have reference to their appearance after that period, so that +none should be admitted which would suffer material injury either by +the weather-staining, or the mechanical degradation which the lapse of +such a period would necessitate. + +It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions which the +application of this principle involves. They are of too great interest +and complexity to be even touched upon within my present limits, but +this is broadly to be noticed, that those styles of architecture which +are picturesque in the sense above explained with respect to sculpture, +that is to say, whose decoration depends on the arrangement of points +of shade rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but commonly +gain in richness of effect when their details are partly worn away; +hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should always +be adopted when the materials to be employed are liable to degradation, +as brick, sandstone, or soft limestone; and styles in any degree +dependent on purity of line, as the Italian Gothic, must be practised +altogether in hard and undecomposing materials, granite, serpentine, or +crystalline marbles. There can be no doubt that the nature of the +accessible materials influenced the formation of both styles; and it +should still more authoritatively determine our choice of either. + +It does not belong to my present plan to consider at length the second +head of duty of which I have above spoken; the preservation of the +architecture we possess: but a few words may be forgiven, as especially +necessary in modern times. Neither by the public, nor by those who have +the care of public monuments, is the true meaning of the word +_restoration_ understood. It means the most total destruction which a +building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be +gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing +destroyed. Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; it +is _impossible_, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore +anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That +which I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit +which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, never can be +recalled. Another spirit may be given by another time, and it is then a +new building; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be summoned up, +and commanded to direct other hands, and other thoughts. And as for +direct and simple copying, it is palpably impossible. What copying can +there be of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down? The whole +finish of the work was in the half inch that is gone; if you attempt to +restore that finish, you do it conjecturally; if you copy what is left, +granting fidelity to be possible (and what care, or watchfulness, or +cost can secure it,) how is the new work better than the old? There was +yet in the old _some_ life, some mysterious suggestion of what it had +been, and of what it had lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines which +rain and sun had wrought. There can be none in the brute hardness of +the new carving. Look at the animals which I have given in Plate XIV., +as an instance of living work, and suppose the markings of the scales +and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who shall +ever restore them? The first step to restoration, (I have seen it, and +that again and again--seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on +the Casa d'Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux,) is to +dash the old work to pieces; the second is usually to put up the +cheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection, but in all +cases, however careful, and however laboured, an imitation still, a +cold model of such parts as _can_ be modelled, with conjectural +supplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one +instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, +the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained, or +even attempted.[166] + +Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from +beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a +corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as +your cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see +nor care: but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and +mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a +mass of clay: more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever +will be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there may come a +necessity for restoration! Granted. Look the necessity full in the +face, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for +destruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its +stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you +will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place. And +look that necessity in the face before it comes, and you may prevent +it. The principle of modern times, (a principle which, I believe, at +least in France, to be _systematically acted on by the masons_, in +order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen was pulled down +by the magistrates of the town by way of giving work to some vagrants,) +is to neglect buildings first, and restore them afterwards. Take proper +care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. A few +sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks +swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from +ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you +may, and at _any_ cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Count its +stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at +the gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where it +loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the +unsightliness of the aid: better a crutch than a lost limb; and do this +tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation will +still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its evil day must come +at last; but let it come declaredly and openly, and let no dishonouring +and false substitute deprive it of the funeral offices of memory. + +Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to speak; my words will +not reach those who commit them, and yet, be it heard or not, I must +not leave the truth unstated, that it is again no question of +expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past +times or not. _We have no right whatever to touch them_. They are not +ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the +generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead have still their +right in them: that which they laboured for, the praise of achievement +or the expression of religious feeling, or whatsoever else it might be +which in those buildings they intended to be permanent, we have no +right to obliterate. What we have ourselves built, we are at liberty to +throw down; but what other men gave their strength and wealth and life +to accomplish, their right over does not pass away with their death; +still less is the right to the use of what they have left vested in us +only. It belongs to all their successors. It may hereafter be a subject +of sorrow, or a cause of injury, to millions, that we have consulted +our present convenience by casting down such buildings as we choose to +dispense with. That sorrow, that loss, we have no right to inflict. Did +the cathedral of Avranches[167] belong to the mob who destroyed it, any +more than it did to us, who walk in sorrow to and fro over its +foundation? Neither does any building whatever belong to those mobs who +do violence to it. For a mob it is, and must be always; it matters not +whether enraged, or in deliberate folly; whether countless, or sitting +in committees; the people who destroy anything causelessly are a mob, +and Architecture is always destroyed causelessly. A fair building is +necessarily worth the ground it stands upon, and will be so until +Central Africa and America shall have become as populous as Middlesex: +nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for its destruction. If +ever valid, certainly not now, when the place both of the past and +future is too much usurped in our minds by the restless and +discontented present. The very quietness of nature is gradually +withdrawn from us; thousands who once in their necessarily prolonged +travel were subjected to an influence, from the silent sky and +slumbering fields, more effectual than known or confessed, now bear +with them even there the ceaseless fever of their life; and along the +iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the +fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All +vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the +central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow +bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon the +city gates. The only influence which can in any wise _there_ take the +place of that of the woods and fields, is the power of ancient +Architecture. Do not part with it for the sake of the formal square, or +of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly street nor opened +quay. The pride of a city is not in these. Leave them to the crowd; but +remember that there will surely be some within the circuit of the +disquieted walls who would ask for some other spots than these wherein +to walk; for some other forms to meet their sight familiarly: like +him[168] who sat so often where the sun struck from the west to watch the +lines of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like those, his +Hosts, who could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, the +places where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of the dark +streets of Verona. + + + [162] May-day processions in honour of the Virgin. + + [163] _Genesis_ xi, 4. + + [164] See pp. 225 ff. + + [165] In heartfelt trust Johannes Mooter and Maria Rubi had this + house erected. May dear God shield us from all perils and + misfortune; and let His blessing rest upon it during the journey + through this wretched life up to heavenly Paradise where the pious + dwell. There will God reward them with the Crown of Peace to all + eternity. + + [166] Baptistery of Pisa, circular, of marble, with dome two + hundred feet high, embellished with numerous columns, is a notable + work of the twelfth century. The pulpit is a masterpiece of Nicola + Pisano. Casa d'Oro at Venice is noted for its elegance. It was + built in the fourteenth century. The Cathedral of Lisieux dates + chiefly from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and contains + many works of art. The Palais de Justice is of the fifteenth + century. It was built for the Parliament of the Province. + + [167] This cathedral, destroyed in 1799, was one of the most + beautiful in all Normandy. + + [168] Dante. + + + + +THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE + + +It has been my endeavour to show in the preceding pages how every form +of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the Polity, +Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing +this, I have named a principle to which I would now assign a definite +place among those which direct that embodiment; the last place, not +only as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather as +belonging to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest; +that principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stability, Life its +happiness, Faith its acceptance, Creation its continuance,--Obedience. + +Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious satisfaction +which I have found in the pursuit of a subject that at first appeared +to bear but slightly on the grave interests of mankind, that the +conditions of material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to +consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the conception, how +frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call +Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest +ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but +its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. +There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the +sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only +for our heaviest punishment. + +In one of the noblest poems[169] for its imagery and its music belonging +to the recent school of our literature, the writer has sought in the +aspect of inanimate nature the expression of that Liberty which, having +once loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes of darkness. But +with what strange fallacy of interpretation! since in one noble line of +his invocation he has contradicted the assumptions of the rest, and +acknowledged the presence of a subjection, surely not less severe +because eternal. How could he otherwise? since if there be any one +principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or +more sternly than another imprinted on every atom, of the visible +creation, that principle is not Liberty, but Law. + +The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the Law of Liberty. +Then why use the single and misunderstood word? If by liberty you mean +chastisement of the passions, discipline of the intellect, subjection +of the will; if you mean the fear of inflicting, the shame of +committing, a wrong; if you mean respect for all who are in authority, +and consideration for all who are in dependence; veneration for the +good, mercy to the evil, sympathy with the weak; if you mean +watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all pleasures, and +perseverance in all toils; if you mean, in a word, that Service which +is defined in the liturgy of the English church to be perfect Freedom, +why do you name this by the same word by which the luxurious mean +license, and the reckless mean change; by which the rogue means rapine, +and the fool, equality; by which the proud mean anarchy, and the +malignant mean violence? Call it by any name rather than this, but its +best and truest, is Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind +of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is +only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus, while a +measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of +things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all +consist in their Restraint. Compare a river that has burst its banks +with one that is bound by them, and the clouds that are scattered over +the face of the whole heaven with those that are marshalled into ranks +and orders by its winds. So that though restraint, utter and +unrelaxing, can never be comely, this is not because it is in itself an +evil, but only because, when too great, it overpowers the nature of the +thing restrained, and so counteracts the other laws of which that +nature is itself composed. And the balance wherein consists the +fairness of creation is between the laws of life and being in the +things governed, and the laws of general sway to which they are +subjected; and the suspension or infringement of either, kind of law, +or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and synonymous with, +disease; while the increase of both honour and beauty is habitually on +the side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than of +character (or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in the +catalogue of social virtue is "Loyalty," and the sweetest which men +have learned in the pastures of the wilderness is "Fold." + +Nor is this all; but we may observe, that exactly in proportion to the +majesty of things in the scale of being, is the completeness of their +obedience to the laws that are set over them. Gravitation is less +quietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than it is by the sun +and moon; and the ocean falls and flows under influences which the lake +and river do not recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of any +action or occupation of men, there is perhaps no better test than the +question "are its laws strait?" For their severity will probably be +commensurate with the greatness of the numbers whose labour it +concentrates or whose interest it concerns. + +This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art, +above all others, whose productions are the most vast and the most +common; which requires for its practice the co-operation of bodies of +men, and for its perfection the perseverance of successive generations. +And, taking into account also what we have before so often observed of +Architecture, her continual influence over the emotions of daily life, +and her realism, as opposed to the two sister arts which are in +comparison but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we might +beforehand expect that we should find her healthy state and action +dependent on far more severe laws than theirs: that the license which +they extend to the workings of individual mind would be withdrawn by +her; and that, in assertion of the relations which she holds with all +that is universally important to man, she would set forth, by her own +majestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man's social +happiness and power depend. We might, therefore, without the light of +experience, conclude, that Architecture never could flourish except +when it was subjected to a national law as strict and as minutely +authoritative as the laws which regulate religion, policy, and social +relations; nay, even more authoritative than these, because both +capable of more enforcement, as over more passive matter; and needing +more enforcement, as the purest type not of one law nor of another, but +of the common authority of all. But in this matter experience speaks +more loudly than reason. If there be any one condition which, in +watching the progress of architecture, we see distinct and general; if, +amidst the counter-evidence of success attending opposite accidents of +character and circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly and +indisputably drawn, it is this; that the architecture of a nation is +great only when it is as universal and as established as its language; +and when provincial differences of style are nothing more than so many +dialects. Other necessities are matters of doubt: nations have been +alike successful in their architecture in times of poverty and of +wealth; in times of war and of peace; in times of barbarism and of +refinement; under governments the most liberal or the most arbitrary; +but this one condition has been constant, this one requirement clear in +all places and at all times, that the work shall be that of a _school_, +that no individual caprice shall dispense with, or materially vary, +accepted types and customary decorations; and that from the cottage to +the palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from the garden +fence to the fortress wall, every member and feature of the +architecture of the nation shall be as commonly current, as frankly +accepted, as its language or its coin. + +A day never passes without our hearing our English architects called +upon to be original, and to invent a new style: about as sensible and +necessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had rags +enough on his back to keep out cold, to invent a new mode of cutting a +coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him concern himself about +the fashion of it afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Who +wants a new style of painting or sculpture? But we want some style. It +is of marvellously little importance, if we have a code of laws and +they be good laws, whether they be new or old, foreign or native, Roman +or Saxon, or Norman, or English laws. But it is of considerable +importance that we should have a code of laws of one kind or another, +and that code accepted and enforced from one side of the island to +another, and not one law made ground of judgment at York and another in +Exeter. And in like manner it does not matter one marble splinter +whether we have an old or new architecture, but it matters everything +whether we have an architecture truly so called or not; that is, +whether an architecture whose laws might be taught at our schools from +Cornwall to Northumberland, as we teach English spelling and English +grammar, or an architecture which is to be invented fresh every time we +build a workhouse or a parish school. There seems to me to be a +wonderful misunderstanding among the majority of architects at the +present day as to the very nature and meaning of Originality, and of +all wherein it consists. Originality in expression does not depend on +invention of new words; nor originality in poetry on invention of new +measures; nor, in painting, on invention of new colours, or new modes +of using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of colour, the +general principles of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have been +determined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to any +more than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, such +additions or alterations are much more the work of time and of +multitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck,[170] +who will be known as the introducer of a new style once in ten +centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to some accidental +by-play or pursuit; and the use of that invention will depend +altogether on the popular necessities or instincts of the period. +Originality depends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the gift, +will take up any style that is going, the style of his day, and will +work in that, and be great in that, and make everything that he does in +it look as fresh as if every thought of it had just come down from +heaven. I do not say that he will not take liberties with his +materials, or with his rules: I do not say that strange changes will +not sometimes be wrought by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. But +those changes will be instructive, natural, facile, though sometimes +marvellous; they will never be sought after as things necessary to his +dignity or to his independence; and those liberties will be like the +liberties that a great speaker takes with the language, not a defiance +of its rules for the sake of singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated, +and brilliant consequences of an effort to express what the language, +without such infraction, could not. There may be times when, as I have +above described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, and +in its refusal of ancient limitations: so there are in the life of an +insect; and there is great interest in the state of both the art and +the insect at those periods when, by their natural progress and +constitutional power, such changes are about to be wrought. But as that +would be both an Uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, instead +of being contented with a caterpillar's life and feeding on +caterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself into a +chrysalis; and as that would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie +awake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn +itself prematurely into a moth; so will that art be unhappy and +unprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the food, and +contenting itself with the customs, which have been enough for the +support and guidance of other arts before it and like it, is struggling +and fretting under the natural limitations of its existence, and +striving to become something other than it is. And though it is the +nobility of the highest creatures to look forward to, and partly to +understand the changes which are appointed for them, preparing for them +beforehand; and if, as is usual with _appointed_ changes, they be into +a higher state, even desiring them, and rejoicing in the hope of them, +yet it is the strength of every creature, be it changeful or not, to +rest for the time being, contented with the conditions of its +existence, and striving only to bring about the changes which it +desires, by fulfilling to the uttermost the duties for which its +present state is appointed and continued. + +Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though both may be, +and this is commonly a most merciful and enthusiastic supposition with +respect to either, is ever to be sought in itself, or can ever be +healthily obtained by any struggle or rebellion against common laws. We +want neither the one nor the other. The forms of architecture already +known are good enough for us, and for far better than any of us: and it +will be time enough to think of changing them for better when we can +use them as they are. But there are some things which we not only want, +but cannot do without; and which all the struggling and raving in the +world, nay more, which all the real talent and resolution in England, +will never enable us to do without: and these are Obedience, Unity, +Fellowship, and Order. And all our schools of design, and committees of +taste; all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and essays; all +the sacrifices which we are beginning to make, all the truth which +there is in our English nature, all the power of our English will, and +the life of our English intellect, will in this matter be as useless as +efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit +architecture and all art, like other things, to English law. + +I say architecture and all art; for I believe architecture must be the +beginning of arts, and that the others must follow her in their time +and order; and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting and +sculpture, in which no one will deny the life, though many the health, +depends upon that of our architecture. I think that all will languish +until that takes the lead, and (this I do not _think_, but I proclaim, +as confidently as I would assert the necessity, for the safety of +society, of an understood and strongly administered legal government) +our architecture _will_ languish, and that in the very dust, until the +first principle of common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal +system of form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. It +may be said that this is impossible. It may be so--I fear it is so: I +have nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of it; I +simply know and assert the necessity of it. If it be impossible, +English art is impossible. Give it up at once. You are wasting time, +and money, and energy upon it, and though you exhaust centuries and +treasures, and break hearts for it, you will never raise it above the +merest dilettanteism. Think not of it. It is a dangerous vanity, a mere +gulph in which genius after genius will be swallowed up, and it will +not close. And so it will continue to be, unless the one bold and broad +step be taken at the beginning. We shall not manufacture art out of +pottery and printed stuffs; we shall not reason out art by our +philosophy; we shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, nor +create it by our fancies: I do not say that we can even build it out of +brick and stone; but there is a chance for us in these, and there is +none else; and that chance rests on the bare possibility of obtaining +the consent, both of architects and of the public, to choose a style, +and to use it universally. + +How surely its principles ought at first to be limited, we may easily +determine by the consideration of the necessary modes of teaching any +other branch of general knowledge. When we begin to teach children +writing, we force them to absolute copyism, and require absolute +accuracy in the formation of the letters; as they obtain command of the +received modes of literal expression, we cannot prevent their falling +into such variations as are consistent with their feeling, their +circumstances, or their characters. So, when a boy is first taught to +write Latin, an authority is required of him for every expression he +uses; as he becomes master of the language he may take a license, and +feel his right to do so without any authority, and yet write better +Latin than when he borrowed every separate expression. In the same way +our architects would have to be taught to write the accepted style. We +must first determine what buildings are to be considered Augustan in +their authority; their modes of construction and laws of proportion are +to be studied with the most penetrating care; then the different forms +and uses of their decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as a +German grammarian classes the powers of prepositions; and under this +absolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work; admitting +not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto,[171] or the +breadth of a fillet. Then, when our sight is once accustomed to the +grammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the +expression of them all; when we can speak this dead language naturally, +and apply it to whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, to +every practical purpose of life; then, and not till then, a license +might be permitted, and individual authority allowed to change or to +add to the received forms, always within certain limits; the +decorations, especially, might be made subjects of variable fancy, and +enriched with ideas either original or taken from other schools. And +thus, in process of time and by a great national movement, it might +come to pass that a new style should arise, as language itself changes; +we might perhaps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak +modern instead of old English; but this would be a matter of entire +indifference, and a matter, besides, which no determination or desire +could either hasten or prevent. That alone which it is in our power to +obtain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous style of +some kind, and such comprehension and practice of it as would enable us +to adapt its features to the peculiar character of every several +building, large or small, domestic, civil or ecclesiastical. + + + [169] Coleridge's _Ode to France_. + + [170] Hubert Van Eyck [1366-1440]. The great Flemish master. + + [171] A hollowed moulding. [New Eng. Dict.] + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM LECTURES ON ART + + + Ruskin was first elected to the Slade Professorship of Fine Art in + Oxford in 1869, and held the chair continuously until 1878, when + he resigned because of ill-health, and again from 1883 to 1885. + The _Lectures on Art_ were announced in the _Oxford University + Gazette_ of January 28, 1870, the general subject of the course + being "The Limits and Elementary Practice of Art," with Leonardo's + _Trattato della Pittura_ as the text-book. The lectures were + delivered between February 8 and March 23, 1870. They appeared in + book form in July of the same year. These lectures contain much of + his best and most mature thought, of his most painstaking research + and keenest analysis. Talking with a friend in later years, he + said: "I have taken more pains with the Oxford Lectures than with + anything else I have ever done": and in the preface to the edition + of 1887 he began: "The following lectures were the most important + piece of my literary work, done with unabated power, best motive, + and happiest concurrence of circumstance." Ruskin took his + professorship very seriously. He spent almost infinite labour in + composing his more formal lectures, and during the eight years + in which he held the chair he published six volumes of them, not + to mention three Italian guide-books, which came under his + interpretation of his professional duties;--"the real duty + involved in my Oxford Professorship cannot be completely done by + giving lectures in Oxford only, but ... I ought also to give what + guidance I may to travellers in Italy." Not only by lecturing and + writing did he fill the chair, but he taught individuals, founded + and endowed a Drawing mastership, and presented elaborately + catalogued collections to illustrate his subject. His lecture + classes were always large, and his work had a marked influence in + the University. + + + +INAUGURAL + + +We see lately a most powerful impulse given to the production of +costly works of art by the various causes which promote the sudden +accumulation of wealth in the hands of private persons. We have thus a +vast and new patronage, which, in its present agency, is injurious to +our schools; but which is nevertheless in a great degree earnest and +conscientious, and far from being influenced chiefly by motives of +ostentation. Most of our rich men would be glad to promote the true +interests of art in this country; and even those who buy for vanity, +found their vanity on the possession of what they suppose to be best. + +It is therefore in a great measure the fault of artists themselves if +they suffer from this partly unintelligent, but thoroughly +well-intended patronage. If they seek to attract it by eccentricity, +to deceive it by superficial qualities, or take advantage of it by +thoughtless and facile production, they necessarily degrade themselves +and it together, and have no right to complain afterwards that it will +not acknowledge better-grounded claims. But if every painter of real +power would do only what he knew to be worthy of himself, and refuse +to be involved in the contention for undeserved or accidental success, +there is indeed, whatever may have been thought or said to the +contrary, true instinct enough in the public mind to follow such firm +guidance. It is one of the facts which the experience of thirty years +enables me to assert without qualification, that a really good picture +is ultimately always approved and bought, unless it is wilfully +rendered offensive to the public by faults which the artist has been +either too proud to abandon or too weak to correct. + +The development of whatever is healthful and serviceable in the two +modes of impulse which we have been considering, depends however, +ultimately, on the direction taken by the true interest in art which +has lately been aroused by the great and active genius of many of our +living, or but lately lost, painters, sculptors, and architects. It +may perhaps surprise, but I think it will please you to hear me, or +(if you will forgive me, in my own Oxford, the presumption of fancying +that some may recognize me by an old name) to hear the author of +_Modern Painters_ say, that his chief error in earlier days was not in +over-estimating, but in too slightly acknowledging the merit of living +men. The great painter whose power, while he was yet among us, I was +able to perceive,[172] was the first to reprove me for my disregard of +the skill of his fellow-artists; and, with this inauguration of the +study of the art of all time,--a study which can only by true modesty +end in wise admiration,--it is surely well that I connect the record +of these words of his, spoken then too truly to myself, and true +always more or less for all who are untrained in that toil,--"You +don't know how difficult it is." + +You will not expect me, within the compass of this lecture, to give +you any analysis of the many kinds of excellent art (in all the three +great divisions) which the complex demands of modern life, and yet +more varied instincts of modern genius, have developed for pleasure or +service. It must be my endeavour, in conjunction with my colleagues in +other Universities, hereafter to enable you to appreciate these +worthily; in the hope that also the members of the Royal Academy, and +those of the Institute of British Architects, may be induced to +assist, and guide, the efforts of the Universities, by organizing such +a system of art education for their own students, as shall in future +prevent the waste of genius in any mistaken endeavours; especially +removing doubt as to the proper substance and use of materials; and +requiring compliance with certain elementary principles of right, in +every picture and design exhibited with their sanction. It is not +indeed possible for talent so varied as that of English artists to be +compelled into the formalities of a determined school; but it must +certainly be the function of every academical body to see that their +younger students are guarded from what must in every school be error; +and that they are practised in the best methods of work hitherto +known, before their ingenuity is directed to the invention of others. + +I need scarcely refer, except for the sake of completeness in my +statement, to one form of demand for art which is wholly +unenlightened, and powerful only for evil;--namely, the demand of the +classes occupied solely in the pursuit of pleasure, for objects and +modes of art that can amuse indolence or excite passion. There is no +need for any discussion of these requirements, or of their forms of +influence, though they are very deadly at present in their operation +on sculpture, and on jewellers' work. They cannot be checked by blame, +nor guided by instruction; they are merely the necessary results of +whatever defects exist in the temper and principles of a luxurious +society; and it is only by moral changes, not by art-criticism, that +their action can be modified. + +Lastly, there is a continually increasing demand for popular art, +multipliable by the printing-press, illustrative of daily events, of +general literature, and of natural science. Admirable skill, and some +of the best talent of modern times, are occupied in supplying this +want; and there is no limit to the good which may be effected by +rightly taking advantage of the powers we now possess of placing good +and lovely art within the reach of the poorest classes. Much has been +already accomplished; but great harm has been done also,--first, by +forms of art definitely addressed to depraved tastes; and, secondly, +in a more subtle way, by really beautiful and useful engravings which +are yet not good enough to retain their influence on the public +mind;--which weary it by redundant quantity of monotonous average +excellence, and diminish or destroy its power of accurate attention to +work of a higher order. + +Especially this is to be regretted in the effect produced on the +schools of line engraving, which had reached in England an executive +skill of a kind before unexampled, and which of late have lost much of +their more sterling and legitimate methods. Still, I have seen plates +produced quite recently, more beautiful, I think, in some qualities +than anything ever before attained by the burin:[173] and I have not the +slightest fear that photography, or any other adverse or competitive +operation, will in the least ultimately diminish,--I believe they will, +on the contrary, stimulate and exalt--the grand old powers of the wood +and the steel. + +Such are, I think, briefly the present conditions of art with which +we have to deal; and I conceive it to be the function of this +Professorship, with respect to them, to establish both a practical and +critical school of fine art for English gentlemen: practical, so that, +if they draw at all, they may draw rightly; and critical, so that, +being first directed to such works of existing art as will best reward +their study, they may afterwards make their patronage of living +artists delightful to themselves in their consciousness of its +justice, and, to the utmost, beneficial to their country, by being +given only to the men who deserve it; in the early period of their +lives, when they both need it most and can be influenced by it to the +best advantage. + +And especially with reference to this function of patronage, I believe +myself justified in taking into account future probabilities as to the +character and range of art in England; and I shall endeavour at once to +organize with you a system of study calculated to develope chiefly the +knowledge of those branches in which the English schools have shown, +and are likely to show, peculiar excellence. + +Now, in asking your sanction both for the nature of the general plans I +wish to adopt, and for what I conceive to be necessary limitations of +them, I wish you to be fully aware of my reasons for both: and I will +therefore risk the burdening of your patience while I state the +directions of effort in which I think English artists are liable to +failure, and those also in which past experience has shown they are +secure of success. + +I referred, but now, to the effort we are making to improve the designs +of our manufactures. Within certain limits I believe this improvement +may indeed take effect: so that we may no more humour momentary +fashions by ugly results of chance instead of design; and may produce +both good tissues, of harmonious colours, and good forms and substance +of pottery and glass. But we shall never excel in decorative design. +Such design is usually produced by people of great natural powers of +mind, who have no variety of subjects to employ themselves on, no +oppressive anxieties, and are in circumstances either of natural +scenery or of daily life, which cause pleasurable excitement. _We_ +cannot design because we have too much to think of, and we think of it +too anxiously. It has long been observed how little real anxiety exists +in the minds of the partly savage races which excel in decorative art; +and we must not suppose that the temper of the middle ages was a +troubled one, because every day brought its dangers or its changes. The +very eventfulness of the life rendered it careless, as generally is +still the case with soldiers and sailors. Now, when there are great +powers of thought, and little to think of, all the waste energy and +fancy are thrown into the manual work, and you have as much intellect +as would direct the affairs of a large mercantile concern for a day, +spent all at once, quite unconsciously, in drawing an ingenious spiral. + +Also, powers of doing fine ornamental work are only to be reached by a +perpetual discipline of the hand as well as of the fancy; discipline as +attentive and painful as that which a juggler has to put himself +through, to overcome the more palpable difficulties of his profession. +The execution of the best artists is always a splendid tour-de-force, +and much that in painting is supposed to be dependent on material is +indeed only a lovely and quite inimitable legerdemain. Now, when powers +of fancy, stimulated by this triumphant precision of manual dexterity, +descend uninterruptedly from generation to generation, you have at +last, what is not so much a trained artist as a new species of animal, +with whose instinctive gifts you have no chance of contending. And thus +all our imitations of other peoples' work are futile. We must learn +first to make honest English wares, and afterward to decorate them as +may please the then approving Graces. + +Secondly--and this is an incapacity of a graver kind, yet having its +own good in it also--we shall never be successful in the highest fields +of ideal or theological art. + +For there is one strange, but quite essential, character in us--ever +since the Conquest, if not earlier:--a delight in the forms of burlesque +which are connected in some degree with the foulness in evil. I think +the most perfect type of a true English mind in its best possible +temper, is that of Chaucer; and you will find that, while it is for +the most part full of thoughts of beauty, pure and wild like that of +an April morning, there are, even in the midst of this, sometimes +momentarily jesting passages which stoop to play with evil--while the +power of listening to and enjoying the jesting of entirely gross +persons, whatever the feeling may be which permits it, afterwards +degenerates into forms of humour which render some of quite the +greatest, wisest, and most moral of English writers now almost useless +for our youth. And yet you will find that whenever Englishmen are +wholly without this instinct, their genius is comparatively weak and +restricted. + +Now, the first necessity for the doing of any great work in ideal art, +is the looking upon all foulness with horror, as a contemptible though +dreadful enemy. You may easily understand what I mean, by comparing +the feelings with which Dante regards any form of obscenity or of base +jest, with the temper in which the same things are regarded by +Shakspere. And this strange earthly instinct of ours, coupled as it +is, in our good men, with great simplicity and common sense, renders +them shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual nature, +low or high; but precludes them from that speciality of art which is +properly called sublime. If ever we try anything in the manner of +Michael Angelo or of Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, as +Milton in the battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod:[174] while in +art, every attempt in this style has hitherto been the sign either of +the presumptuous egotism of persons who had never really learned to be +workmen, or it has been connected with very tragic forms of the +contemplation of death,--it has always been partly insane, and never +once wholly successful. + +But we need not feel any discomfort in these limitations of our +capacity. We can do much that others cannot, and more than we have +ever yet ourselves completely done. Our first great gift is in the +portraiture of living people--a power already so accomplished in both +Reynolds and Gainsborough, that nothing is left for future masters but +to add the calm of perfect workmanship to their vigour and felicity of +perception. And of what value a true school of portraiture may become +in the future, when worthy men will desire only to be known, and +others will not fear to know them, for what they truly were, we cannot +from any past records of art influence yet conceive. But in my next +address it will be partly my endeavour to show you how much more +useful, because more humble, the labour of great masters might have +been, had they been content to bear record of the souls that were +dwelling with them on earth, instead of striving to give a deceptive +glory to those they dreamed of in heaven. + +Secondly, we have an intense power of invention and expression in +domestic drama; (King Lear and Hamlet being essentially domestic in +their strongest motives of interest). There is a tendency at this +moment towards a noble development of our art in this direction, +checked by many adverse conditions, which may be summed in one,--the +insufficiency of generous civic or patriotic passion in the heart of +the English people; a fault which makes its domestic affections +selfish, contracted, and, therefore, frivolous. + +Thirdly, in connection with our simplicity and good-humour, and partly +with that very love of the grotesque which debases our ideal, we have a +sympathy with the lower animals which is peculiarly our own; and which, +though it has already found some exquisite expression in the works of +Bewick and Landseer, is yet quite undeveloped. This sympathy, with the +aid of our now authoritative science of physiology, and in association +with our British love of adventure, will, I hope, enable us to give to +the future inhabitants of the globe an almost perfect record of the +present forms of animal life upon it, of which many are on the point of +being extinguished.... + +While I myself hold this professorship, I shall direct you in these +exercises very definitely to natural history, and to landscape; not +only because in these two branches I am probably able to show you +truths which might be despised by my successors; but because I think +the vital and joyful study of natural history quite the principal +element requiring introduction, not only into University, but into +national, education, from highest to lowest; and I even will risk +incurring your ridicule by confessing one of my fondest dreams, that I +may succeed in making some of you English youths like better to look at +a bird than to shoot it; and even desire to make wild creatures tame, +instead of tame creatures wild. And for the study of landscape, it is, +I think, now calculated to be of use in deeper, if not more important +modes, than that of natural science, for reasons which I will ask you +to let me state at some length. + +Observe first;--no race of men which is entirety bred in wild country, +far from cities, ever enjoys landscape. They may enjoy the beauty of +animals, but scarcely even that: a true peasant cannot see the beauty +of cattle; but only the qualities expressive of their serviceableness. +I waive discussion of this to-day; permit my assertion of it, under my +confident guarantee of future proof. Landscape can only be enjoyed by +cultivated persons; and it is only by music, literature, and painting, +that cultivation can be given. Also, the faculties which are thus +received are hereditary; so that the child of an educated race has an +innate instinct for beauty, derived from arts practised hundreds of +years before its birth. Now farther note this, one of the loveliest +things in human nature. In the children of noble races, trained by +surrounding art, and at the same time in the practice of great deeds, +there is an intense delight in the landscape of their country as +_memorial_; a sense not taught to them, nor teachable to any others; +but, in them, innate; and the seal and reward of persistence in great +national life;--the obedience and the peace of ages having extended +gradually the glory of the revered ancestors also to the ancestral +land; until the Motherhood of the dust, the mystery of the Demeter from +whose bosom we came, and to whose bosom we return, surrounds and +inspires, everywhere, the local awe of field and fountain; the +sacredness of landmark that none may remove, and of wave that none may +pollute; while records of proud days, and of dear persons, make every +rock monumental with ghostly inscription, and every path lovely with +noble desolateness. + +Now, however checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive love +of landscape in us has this deep root, which, in your minds, I will +pray you to disencumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and to +strive to feel with all the strength of your youth that a nation is +only worthy of the soil and the scenes that it has inherited, when, +by all its acts and arts, it is making them more lovely for its +children.... + +But if either our work, or our inquiries, are to be indeed successful +in their own field, they must be connected with others of a sterner +character. Now listen to me, if I have in these past details lost or +burdened your attention; for this is what I have chiefly to say to you. +The art of any country _is the exponent of its social and political +virtues_. I will show you that it is so in some detail, in the second +of my subsequent course of lectures; meantime accept this as one of the +things, and the most important of all things, I can positively declare +to you. The art, or general productive and formative energy, of any +country, is an exact exponent of its ethical life. You can have noble +art only from noble persons, associated under laws fitted to their time +and circumstances. And the best skill that any teacher of art could +spend here in your help, would not end in enabling you even so much as +rightly to draw the water-lilies in the Cherwell (and though it did, +the work when done would not be worth the lilies themselves) unless +both he and you were seeking, as I trust we shall together seek, in the +laws which regulate the finest industries, the clue to the laws which +regulate all industries, and in better obedience to which we shall +actually have henceforward to live: not merely in compliance with our +own sense of what is right, but under the weight of quite literal +necessity. For the trades by which the British people has believed it +to be the highest of destinies to maintain itself, cannot now long +remain undisputed in its hands; its unemployed poor are daily becoming +more violently criminal; and a certain distress in the middle classes, +arising, _partly from their vanity in living always up to their +incomes, and partly from, their folly in imagining that they can +subsist in idleness upon usury_, will at last compel the sons and +daughters of English families to acquaint themselves with the +principles of providential economy; and to learn that food can only be +got out of the ground, and competence only secured by frugality; and +that although it is not possible for all to be occupied in the highest +arts, nor for any, guiltlessly, to pass their days in a succession of +pleasures, the most perfect mental culture possible to men is founded +on their useful energies, and their best arts and brightest happiness +are consistent, and consistent only, with their virtue. + +This, I repeat, gentlemen, will soon become manifest to those among us, +and there are yet many, who are honest-hearted. And the future fate of +England depends upon the position they then take, and on their courage +in maintaining it. + +There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a +nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a +race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in +temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. +We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now +betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an +inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of +noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with +splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, +should be the most offending souls alive.[175] Within the last few years +we have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity +which has been blinding by its brightness; and means of transit and +communication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of the +habitable globe. One kingdom;--but who is to be its king? Is there to +be no king in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in +his own eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene empires of +Mammon and Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your country +again a royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle, for all the world a +source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of Learning and of the +Arts;--faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent +and ephemeral visions;--faithful servant of time-tried principles, +under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and +amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in +her strange valour of goodwill toward men?[176] + +"Vexilla regis prodeunt."[177] Yes, but of which king? There are the +two oriflammes; which shall we plant on the farthest islands--the one +that floats in heavenly fire, or that hangs heavy with foul tissue of +terrestrial gold? There is indeed a course of beneficent glory open to +us, such as never was yet offered to any poor group of mortal souls. +But it must be--it _is_ with us, now. "Reign or Die." And if it shall +be said of this country, "Fece per viltate, il gran rifiuto,"[178] +that refusal of the crown will be, of all yet recorded in history, +the shamefullest and most untimely. + +And this is what she must either do, or perish: she must found +colonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most +energetic and worthiest men;--seizing every piece of fruitful waste +ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching these her +colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, +and that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by +land and sea: and that, though they live on a distant plot of ground, +they are no more to consider themselves therefore disfranchised from +their native land, than the sailors of her fleets do, because they +float on distant waves. So that literally, these colonies must be +fastened fleets; and every man of them must be under authority of +captains and officers, whose better command is to be over fields and +streets instead of ships of the line; and England, in these her +motionless navies (or, in the true and mightiest sense, motionless +_churches_, ruled by pilots on the Galilean lake[179] of all the +world), is to "expect every man to do his duty";[180] recognizing +that duty is indeed possible no less in peace than war; and that if we +can get men, for little pay, to cast themselves against cannon-mouths +for love of England, we may find men also who will plough and sow for +her, who will behave kindly and righteously for her, who will bring up +their children to love her, and who will gladden themselves in the +brightness of her glory, more than in all the light of tropic skies. + +But that they may be able to do this, she must make her own majesty +stainless; she must give them thoughts of their home of which they can +be proud. The England who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannot +remain herself a heap of cinders, trampled by contending and miserable +crowds; she must yet again become the England she was once, and in all +beautiful ways,--more: so happy, so secluded, and so pure, that in her +sky--polluted by no unholy clouds--she may be able to spell rightly of +every star that heaven doth show; and in her fields, ordered and wide +and fair, of every herb that sips the dew;[181] and under the green +avenues of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter of the +Sun, she must guide the human arts, and gather the divine knowledge, of +distant nations, transformed from savageness to manhood, and redeemed +from despairing into Peace. + +You think that an impossible ideal. Be it so; refuse to accept it if +you will; but see that you form your own in its stead. All that I ask +of you is to have a fixed purpose of some kind for your country and +yourselves; no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and +unselfish. I know what stout hearts are in you, to answer acknowledged +need; but it is the fatallest form of error in English youth to hide +their hardihood till it fades for lack of sunshine, and to act in +disdain of purpose, till all purpose is vain. It is not by deliberate, +but by careless selfishness; not by compromise with evil, but by dull +following of good, that the weight of national evil increases upon us +daily. Break through at least this pretence of existence; determine +what you will be, and what you would win. You will not decide wrongly +if you resolve to decide at all. Were even the choice between lawless +pleasure and loyal suffering, you would not, I believe, choose basely. +But your trial is not so sharp. It is between drifting in confused +wreck among the castaways of Fortune, who condemns to assured ruin +those who know not either how to resist her, or obey; between this, I +say, and the taking of your appointed part in the heroism of Rest; the +resolving to share in the victory which is to the weak rather than the +strong; and the binding yourselves by that law, which, thought on +through lingering night and labouring day, makes a man's life to be as +a tree planted by the water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in his +season;-- + + "ET FOLIUM EJUS NON DEFLUET, + ET OMNIA, QUÆCUNQUE FACIET, PROSPERABUNTUR."[182] + + + [172] Turner. + + [173] The tool of the engraver on copper. + + [174] See _Paradise Lost_, 6. 207 ff., and Hesiod's _Theogony_, 676 ff. + + [175] _Henry V_, 4. 3. 29. + + [176] _Luke_ ii, 14. + + [177] "Forward go the banners of the King," or more commonly, "The + royal banners forward go." One of the seven great hymns of the Church. + See the Episcopal Hymnal, 94. + + [178] Dante, _Inferno_, 3. 60. "Who made through cowardice the great + refusal." Longfellow's tr. + + [179] _Lyridas_, 109. + + [180] Nelson's famous signal at Trafalgar. + + [181] Milton's _Il Penseroso_, 170 ff. + + [182] _Psalms_ i, 3. + + + +THE RELATION OF ART TO MORALS + + +And now I pass to the arts with which I have special concern, in +which, though the facts are exactly the same, I shall have more +difficulty in proving my assertion, because very few of us are as +cognizant of the merit of painting as we are of that of language; and +I can only show you whence that merit springs, after having thoroughly +shown you in what it consists. But, in the meantime, I have simply to +tell you, that the manual arts are as accurate exponents of ethical +state, as other modes of expression; first, with absolute precision, +of that of the workman; and then with precision, disguised by many +distorting influences, of that of the nation to which it belongs. + +And, first, they are a perfect exponent of the mind of the workman: +but, being so, remember, if the mind be great or complex, the art is +not an easy book to read; for we must ourselves possess all the mental +characters of which we are to read the signs. No man can read the +evidence of labour who is not himself laborious, for he does not know +what the work cost: nor can he read the evidence of true passion if he +is not passionate; nor of gentleness if he is not gentle: and the most +subtle signs of fault and weakness of character he can only judge by +having had the same faults to fight with. I myself, for instance, know +impatient work, and tired work, better than most critics, because I am +myself always impatient, and often tired:--so also, the patient and +indefatigable touch of a mighty master becomes more wonderful to me +than to others. Yet, wonderful in no mean measure it will be to you +all, when I make it manifest;--and as soon as we begin our real work, +and you have learned what it is to draw a true line, I shall be able +to make manifest to you,--and undisputably so,--that the day's work of +a man like Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists of an unfaltering, +uninterrupted, succession of movements of the hand more precise than +those of the finest fencer: the pencil leaving one point and arriving +at another, not only with unerring precision at the extremity of the +line, but with an unerring and yet varied course--sometimes over +spaces a foot or more in extent--yet a course so determined everywhere +that either of these men could, and Veronese often does, draw a +finished profile, or any other portion of the contour of the face, +with one line, not afterwards changed. Try, first, to realize to +yourselves the muscular precision of that action, and the intellectual +strain of it; for the movement of a fencer is perfect in practised +monotony; but the movement of the hand of a great painter is at every +instant governed by direct and new intention. Then imagine that +muscular firmness and subtlety, and the instantaneously selective and +ordinant energy of the brain, sustained all day long, not only without +fatigue, but with a visible joy in the exertion, like that which an +eagle seems to take in the wave of his wings; and this all life long, +and through long life, not only without failure of power, but with +visible increase of it, until the actually organic changes of old age. +And then consider, so far as you know anything of physiology, what +sort of an ethical state of body and mind that means!--ethic through +ages past! what fineness of race there must be to get it, what +exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers! And then, finally, +determine for yourselves whether a manhood like that is consistent +with any viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any gnawing lust, +any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of rebellion +against law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious violation +of even the least law to which obedience is essential for the glory of +life, and the pleasing of its Giver. + +It is, of course, true that many of the strong masters had deep faults +of character, but their faults always show in their work. It is true +that some could not govern their passions; if so, they died young, or +they painted ill when old. But the greater part of our misapprehension +in the whole matter is from our not having well known who the great +painters were, and taking delight in the petty skill that was bred in +the fumes of the taverns of the North, instead of theirs who breathed +empyreal air, sons of the morning, under the woods of Assisi and the +crags of Cadore. + +It is true however also, as I have pointed out long ago, that the +strong masters fall into two great divisions, one leading simple and +natural lives, the other restrained in a Puritanism of the worship of +beauty; and these two manners of life you may recognize in a moment +by their work. Generally the naturalists are the strongest; but there +are two of the Puritans, whose work if I can succeed in making +clearly understandable to you during my three years[183] here, it is +all I need care to do. But of these two Puritans one I cannot name +to you, and the other I at present will not. One I cannot, for no one +knows his name, except the baptismal one, Bernard, or "dear little +Bernard"--Bernardino, called from his birthplace, (Luino, on the Lago +Maggiore,) Bernard of Luino. The other is a Venetian, of whom many of +you probably have never heard, and of whom, through me, you shall not +hear, until I have tried to get some picture by him over to England. + +Observe then, this Puritanism in the worship of beauty, though +sometimes weak, is always honourable and amiable, and the exact +reverse of the false Puritanism, which consists in the dread or +disdain of beauty. And in order to treat my subject rightly, I ought +to proceed from the skill of art to the choice of its subject, and +show you how the moral temper of the workman is shown by his seeking +lovely forms and thoughts to express, as well as by the force of his +hand in expression. But I need not now urge this part of the proof on +you, because you are already, I believe, sufficiently conscious of the +truth in this matter, and also I have already said enough of it in my +writings; whereas I have not at all said enough of the infallibleness +of fine technical work as a proof of every other good power. And +indeed it was long before I myself understood the true meaning of the +pride of the greatest men in their mere execution, shown for a +permanent lesson to us, in the stories which, whether true or not, +indicate with absolute accuracy the general conviction of great +artists;--the stories of the contest of Apelles and Protogenes[184] in +a line only, (of which I can promise you, you shall know the meaning +to some purpose in a little while),--the story of the circle of +Giotto,[185] and especially, which you may perhaps not have observed, +the expression of Dürer in his inscription on the drawings sent him by +Raphael. These figures, he says, "Raphael drew and sent to Albert +Dürer in Nurnberg, to show him"--What? Not his invention, nor his +beauty of expression, but "sein Hand zu weisen," "to show him his +_hand_." And you will find, as you examine farther, that all inferior +artists are continually trying to escape from the necessity of sound +work, and either indulging themselves in their delights in subject, or +pluming themselves on their noble motives for attempting what they +cannot perform; (and observe, by the way, that a great deal of what is +mistaken for conscientious motive is nothing but a very pestilent, +because very subtle, condition of vanity); whereas the great men +always understand at once that the first morality of a painter, as of +everybody else, is to know his business; and so earnest are they in +this, that many, whose lives you would think, by the results of their +work, had been passed in strong emotion, have in reality subdued +themselves, though capable of the very strongest passions, into a calm +as absolute as that of a deeply sheltered mountain lake, which +reflects every agitation of the clouds in the sky, and every change of +the shadows on the hills, but AS itself motionless. + +Finally, you must remember that great obscurity has been brought upon +the truth in this matter by the want of integrity and simplicity in +our modern life. I mean integrity in the Latin sense, wholeness. +Everything is broken up, and mingled in confusion, both in our habits +and thoughts; besides being in great part imitative: so that you not +only cannot tell what a man is, but sometimes you cannot tell whether +he _is_, at all!--whether you have indeed to do with a spirit, or +only with an echo. And thus the same inconsistencies appear now, +between the work of artists of merit and their personal characters, as +those which you find continually disappointing expectation in the +lives of men of modern literary power;--the same conditions of society +having obscured or misdirected the best qualities of the imagination, +both in our literature and art. Thus there is no serious question with +any of us as to the personal character of Dante and Giotto, of +Shakespeare and Holbein; but we pause timidly in the attempt to +analyze the moral laws of the art skill in recent poets, novelists, +and painters. + +Let me assure you once for all, that as you grow older, if you enable +yourselves to distinguish by the truth of your own lives, what is true +in those of other men, you will gradually perceive that all good has +its origin in good, never in evil; that the fact of either literature +or painting being truly fine of their kind, whatever their mistaken +aim, or partial error, is proof of their noble origin: and that, if +there is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come of a +sterling worth in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled by +conditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling or more strange +than those which all may detect in their own hearts, because they are +part of a personality altogether larger than ours, and as far beyond +our judgment in its darkness as beyond our following in its light. And +it is sufficient warning against what some might dread as the probable +effect of such a conviction on your own minds, namely, that you might +permit yourselves in the weaknesses which you imagined to be allied to +genius, when they took the form of personal temptations;--it is +surely, I say, sufficient warning against so mean a folly, to discern, +as you may with little pains, that, of all human existences, the lives +of men of that distorted and tainted nobility of intellect are +probably the most miserable. + +I pass to the second, and for us the more practically important +question, What is the effect of noble art upon other men; what has it +done for national morality in time past: and what effect is the +extended knowledge or possession of it likely to have upon us now? +And here we are at once met by the facts, which are as gloomy as +indisputable, that, while many peasant populations, among whom +scarcely the rudest practice of art has ever been attempted, have +lived in comparative innocence, honour, and happiness, the worst +foulness and cruelty of savage tribes have been frequently associated +with fine ingenuities of decorative design; also, that no people has +ever attained the higher stages of art skill, except at a period of +its civilization which was sullied by frequent, violent, and even +monstrous crime; and, lastly, that the attaining of perfection in art +power, has been hitherto, in every nation, the accurate signal of the +beginning of its ruin. + +Respecting which phenomena, observe first, that although good never +springs out of evil, it is developed to its highest by contention with +evil. There are some groups of peasantry, in far-away nooks of +Christian countries, who are nearly as innocent as lambs; but the +morality which gives power to art is the morality of men, not of +cattle. + +Secondly, the virtues of the inhabitants of many country districts are +apparent, not real; their lives are indeed artless, but not innocent; +and it is only the monotony of circumstances, and the absence of +temptation, which prevent the exhibition of evil passions not less +real because often dormant, nor less foul because shown only in petty +faults, or inactive malignities. + +But you will observe also that _absolute_ artlessness, to men in any +kind of moral health, is impossible; they have always, at least, the +art by which they live--agriculture or seamanship; and in these +industries, skilfully practised, you will find the law of their moral +training; while, whatever the adversity of circumstances, every +rightly-minded peasantry, such as that of Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, or +Switzerland, has associated with its needful industry a quite studied +school of pleasurable art in dress; and generally also in song, and +simple domestic architecture. + +Again, I need not repeat to you here what I endeavoured to explain in +the first lecture in the book I called _The Two Paths_, respecting the +arts of savage races: but I may now note briefly that such arts are +the result of an intellectual activity which has found no room to +expand, and which the tyranny of nature or of man has condemned to +disease through arrested growth. And where neither Christianity, nor +any other religion conveying some moral help, has reached, the animal +energy of such races necessarily flames into ghastly conditions of +evil, and the grotesque or frightful forms assumed by their art are +precisely indicative of their distorted moral nature. + +But the truly great nations nearly always begin from a race possessing +this imaginative power; and for some time their progress is very slow, +and their state not one of innocence, but of feverish and faultful +animal energy. This is gradually subdued and exalted into bright human +life; the art instinct purifying itself with the rest of the nature, +until social perfectness is nearly reached; and then comes the period +when conscience and intellect are so highly developed, that new forms +of error begin in the inability to fulfil the demands of the one, or +to answer the doubts of the other. Then the wholeness of the people is +lost; all kinds of hypocrisies and oppositions of science develope +themselves; their faith is questioned on one side, and compromised +with on the other; wealth commonly increases at the same period to a +destructive extent; luxury follows; and the ruin of the nation is then +certain: while the arts, all this time, are simply, as I said at first, +the exponents of each phase of its moral state, and no more control it +in its political career than the gleam of the firefly guides its +oscillation. It is true that their most splendid results are usually +obtained in the swiftness of the power which is hurrying to the +precipice; but to lay the charge of the catastrophe to the art by +which it is illumined, is to find a cause for the cataract in the hues +of its iris. It is true that the colossal vices belonging to periods +of great national wealth (for wealth, you will find, is the real root +of all evil)[186] can turn every good gift and skill of nature or of +man to evil purpose. If, in such times, fair pictures have been +misused, how much more fair realities? And if Miranda is immoral to +Caliban is that Miranda's fault? + + + [183] As Slade Professor, Ruskin held a three years' appointment at + Oxford. + + [184] This story comes from Pliny, _Natural History_, 35. 36; the + two rival painters alternately showing their skill by the drawing + of lines of increasing fineness. + + [185] This story comes from Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_. See + Blashfield and Hopkins's ed. vol. 1, p. 61. Giotto was asked by a + messenger of the Pope for a specimen of his work, and sent a perfect + circle, drawn free hand. + + [186] _Timothy_ vi, 10. + + + +THE RELATION OF ART TO USE + + +Our subject of inquiry to-day, you will remember, is the mode in +which fine art is founded upon, or may contribute to, the practical +requirements of human life. + +Its offices in this respect are mainly twofold: it gives Form to +knowledge, and Grace to utility; that is to say, it makes permanently +visible to us things which otherwise could neither be described by +our science, nor retained by our memory; and it gives delightfulness +and worth to the implements of daily use, and materials of dress, +furniture and lodging. In the first of these offices it gives +precision and charm to truth; in the second it gives precision and +charm to service. For, the moment we make anything useful thoroughly, +it is a law of nature that we shall be pleased with ourselves, and +with the thing we have made; and become desirous therefore to adorn +or complete it, in some dainty way, with finer art expressive of our +pleasure. + +And the point I wish chiefly to bring before you today is this close +and healthy connection of the fine arts with material use; but I must +first try briefly to put in clear light the function of art in giving +Form to truth. + +Much that I have hitherto tried to teach has been disputed on the +ground that I have attached too much importance to art as representing +natural facts, and too little to it as a source of pleasure. And I +wish, in the close of these four prefatory lectures, strongly to +assert to you, and, so far as I can in the time, convince you, that +the entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of +truth, or full of use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful, or +impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and +tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main +objects,--either to _state a true thing_, or to _adorn a serviceable +one_. It must never exist alone,--never for itself; it exists rightly +only when it is the means of knowledge, or the grace of agency for +life. + +Now, I pray you to observe--for though I have said this often before, +I have never yet said it clearly enough--every good piece of art, to +whichever of these ends it may be directed, involves first essentially +the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually +beautiful thing by it. + +Skill and beauty, always, then; and, beyond these, the formative arts +have always one or other of the two objects which I have just defined +to you--truth, or serviceableness; and without these aims neither +the skill nor their beauty will avail; only by these can either +legitimately reign. All the graphic arts begin in keeping the outline +of shadow that we have loved, and they end in giving to it the aspect +of life; and all the architectural arts begin in the shaping of the +cup and the platter, and they end in a glorified roof. + +Therefore, you see, in the graphic arts you have Skill, Beauty, and +Likeness; and in the architectural arts Skill, Beauty, and Use: and +you _must_ have the three in each group, balanced and co-ordinate; and +all the chief errors of art consist in losing or exaggerating one of +these elements. + +For instance, almost the whole system and hope of modern life are +founded on the notion that you may substitute mechanism for skill, +photograph for picture, cast-iron for sculpture. That is your main +nineteenth-century faith, or infidelity. You think you can get +everything by grinding--music, literature, and painting. You will find +it grievously not so; you can get nothing but dust by mere grinding. +Even to have the barley-meal out of it, you must have the barley +first; and that comes by growth, not grinding. But essentially, we +have lost our delight in Skill; in that majesty of it which I was +trying to make clear to you in my last address, and which long +ago[187] I tried to express, under the head of ideas of power. The +entire sense of that, we have lost, because we ourselves do not take +pains enough to do right, and have no conception of what the right +costs; so that all the joy and reverence we ought to feel in looking +at a strong man's work have ceased in us. We keep them yet a little in +looking at a honeycomb or a bird's-nest; we understand that these +differ, by divinity of skill, from a lump of wax or a cluster of +sticks. But a picture, which is a much more wonderful thing than a +honeycomb or a bird's-nest,--have we not known people, and sensible +people too, who expected to be taught to produce that, in six lessons? + +Well, you must have the skill, you must have the beauty, which is the +highest moral element; and then, lastly, you must have the verity or +utility, which is not the moral, but the vital element; and this +desire for verity and use is the one aim of the three that always +leads in great schools, and in the minds of great masters, without any +exception. They will permit themselves in awkwardness, they will +permit themselves in ugliness;--but they will never permit themselves +in uselessness or in unveracity. + +And farther, as their skill increases, and as their grace, so much +more their desire for truth. It is impossible to find the three +motives in fairer balance and harmony than in our own Reynolds. He +rejoices in showing you his skill; and those of you who succeed in +learning what painters' work really is, will one day rejoice also, +even to laughter--that highest laughter which springs of pure delight, +in watching the fortitude and the fire of a hand which strikes forth +its will upon the canvas as easily as the wind strikes it on the sea. +He rejoices in all abstract beauty and rhythm and melody of design; he +will never give you a colour that is not lovely, nor a shade that is +unnecessary, nor a line that is ungraceful. But all his power and all +his invention are held by him subordinate,--and the more obediently +because of their nobleness,-to his true leading purpose of setting +before you such likeness of the living presence of an English +gentleman or an English lady, as shall be worthy of being looked upon +for ever. + +But farther, you remember, I hope--for I said it in a way that I +thought would shock you a little, that you might remember it--my +statement, that art had never done more than this, never more than +given the likeness of a noble human being. Not only so, but it very +seldom does so much as this, and the best pictures that exist of the +great schools are all portraits, or groups of portraits, often of very +simple and nowise noble persons. You may have much more brilliant and +impressive qualities in imaginative pictures; you may have figures +scattered like clouds, or garlanded like flowers; you may have light +and shade as of a tempest, and colour, as of the rainbow; but all that +is child's play to the great men, though it is astonishment to us. +Their real strength is tried to the utmost, and as far as I know, it +is never elsewhere brought out so thoroughly, as in painting one man +or woman, and the soul that was in them; nor that always the highest +soul, but often only a thwarted one that was capable of height; or +perhaps not even that, but faultful and poor, yet seen through, to the +poor best of it, by the masterful sight. So that in order to put +before you in your Standard series the best art possible, I am +obliged, even from the very strongest men, to take the portraits, +before I take the idealism. Nay, whatever is best in the great +compositions themselves has depended on portraiture; and the study +necessary to enable you to understand invention will also convince you +that the mind of man never invented a greater thing than the form of +man, animated by faithful life. Every attempt to refine or exalt such +healthy humanity has weakened or caricatured it; or else consists only +in giving it, to please our fancy, the wings of birds, or the eyes of +antelopes. Whatever is truly great in either Greek or Christian art, +is also restrictedly human; and even the raptures of the redeemed +souls who enter "celestemente ballando,"[188] the gate of Angelico's +Paradise, were seen first in the terrestrial, yet most pure, mirth of +Florentine maidens. + +I am aware that this cannot but at present appear gravely questionable +to those of my audience who are strictly cognizant of the phases of +Greek art; for they know that the moment of its decline is accurately +marked, by its turning from abstract form to portraiture. But the +reason of this is simple. The progressive course of Greek art was in +subduing monstrous conceptions to natural ones; it did this by general +laws; it reached absolute truth of generic human form, and if its +ethical force had remained, would have advanced into healthy +portraiture. But at the moment of change the national life ended in +Greece; and portraiture, there, meant insult to her religion, and +flattery to her tyrants. And her skill perished, not because she +became true in sight, but because she became vile in heart.... + +But I have told you enough, it seems to me, at least to-day, of this +function of art in recording fact; let me now finally, and with all +distinctness possible to me, state to you its main business of +all;--its service in the actual uses of daily life. + +You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me call this its main business. +That is indeed so, however. The giving brightness to picture is much, +but the giving brightness to life more. And remember, were it as +patterns only, you cannot, without the realities, have the pictures. +_You cannot have a landscape by Turner without a country for him to +paint; you cannot have a portrait by Titian, without a man to be +pourtrayed_. I need not prove that to you, I suppose, in these short +terms; but in the outcome I can get no soul to believe that the +beginning of art _is in getting our country clean, and our people +beautiful_. I have been ten years trying to get this very plain +certainty--I do not say believed--but even thought of, as anything but +a monstrous proposition. To get your country clean, and your people +lovely;--I assure you that is a necessary work of art to begin with! +There has indeed been art in countries where people lived in dirt to +serve God, but never in countries where they lived in dirt to serve +the devil. There has indeed been art where the people were not all +lovely,--where even their lips were thick--and their skins black, +because the sun had looked upon them;[189] but never in a country +where the people were pale with miserable toil and deadly shade, and +where the lips of youth, instead of being full with blood, were +pinched by famine, or warped with poison. And now, therefore, note +this well, the gist of all these long prefatory talks. I said that the +two great moral instincts were those of Order and Kindness. Now, all +the arts are founded on agriculture by the hand, and on the graces and +kindness of feeding, and dressing, and lodging your people. Greek art +begins in the gardens of Alcinous--perfect order, leeks in beds, and +fountains in pipes.[190] And Christian art, as it arose out of +chivalry, was only possible so far as chivalry compelled both kings +and knights to care for the right personal training of their people; +it perished utterly when those kings and knights became [Greek: +daemoboroi], devourers of the people. And it will become possible +again only, when, literally, the sword is beaten into the +ploughshare,[191] when your St. George of England shall justify his +name,[192] and Christian art shall be known as its Master was, in +breaking of bread.[193] + +Now look at the working out of this broad principle in minor detail; +observe how, from highest to lowest, health of art has first depended +on reference to industrial use. There is first the need of cup and +platter, especially of cup; for you can put your meat on the +Harpies',[194] or any other, tables; but you must have your cup to +drink from. And to hold it conveniently, you must put a handle to it; +and to fill it when it is empty you must have a large pitcher of some +sort; and to carry the pitcher you may most advisably have two +handles. Modify the forms of these needful possessions according to +the various requirements of drinking largely and drinking delicately; +of pouring easily out, or of keeping for years the perfume in; of +storing in cellars, or bearing from fountains; of sacrificial +libation, of Pan-athenaic treasure of oil, and sepulchral treasure of +ashes,--and you have a resultant series of beautiful form and +decoration, from the rude amphora of red earth up to Cellini's vases +of gems and crystal, in which series, but especially in the more +simple conditions of it, are developed the most beautiful lines and +most perfect types of severe composition which have yet been attained +by art. + +But again, that you may fill your cup with pure water, you must go to +the well or spring; you need a fence round the well; you need some +tube or trough, or other means of confining the stream at the spring. +For the conveyance of the current to any distance you must build +either enclosed or open aqueduct; and in the hot square of the city +where you set it free, you find it good for health and pleasantness to +let it leap into a fountain. On these several needs you have a school +of sculpture founded; in the decoration of the walls of wells in level +countries, and of the sources of springs in mountainous ones, and +chiefly of all, where the women of household or market meet at the +city fountain. + +There is, however, a farther reason for the use of art here than in +any other material service, so far as we may, by art, express our +reverence or thankfulness. Whenever a nation is in its right mind, it +always has a deep sense of divinity in the gift of rain from heaven, +filling its heart with food and gladness;[195] and all the more when +that gift becomes gentle and perennial in the flowing of springs. It +literally is not possible that any fruitful power of the Muses should +be put forth upon a people which disdains their Helicon; still less is +it possible that any Christian nation should grow up "tanquam lignum +quod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum,"[196] which cannot recognize +the lesson meant in their being told of the places where Rebekah was +met;--where Rachel,--where Zipporah,--and she who was asked for water +under Mount Gerizim by a Stranger, weary, who had nothing to draw +with.[197] + +And truly, when our mountain springs are set apart in vale or craggy +glen, or glade of wood green through the drought of summer, far from +cities, then, it is best let them stay in their own happy peace; but +if near towns, and liable therefore to be defiled by common usage, we +could not use the loveliest art more worthily than by sheltering the +spring and its first pools with precious marbles: nor ought anything +to be esteemed more important, as a means of healthy education, than +the care to keep the streams of it afterwards, to as great a distance +as possible, pure, full of fish, and easily accessible to children. +There used to be, thirty years ago, a little rivulet of the Wandel, +about an inch deep, which ran over the carriage-road and under a +footbridge just under the last chalk hill near Croydon. Alas! men came +and went; and it--did _not_ go on for ever. It has long since been +bricked over by the parish authorities; but there was more education +in that stream with its minnows than you could get out of a thousand +pounds spent yearly in the parish schools, even though you were to +spend every farthing of it in teaching the nature of oxygen and +hydrogen, and the names, and rate per minute, of all the rivers in +Asia and America. + +Well, the gist of this matter lies here then. Suppose we want a school +of pottery again in England, all we poor artists are ready to do the +best we can, to show you how pretty a line may be that is twisted first +to one side, and then to the other; and how a plain household-blue will +make a pattern on white; and how ideal art may be got out of the +spaniel's colours of black and tan. But I tell you beforehand, all that +we can do will be utterly useless, unless you teach your peasant to say +grace, not only before meat, but before drink; and having provided him +with Greek cups and platters, provide him also with something that is +not poisoned to put into them. + +There cannot be any need that I should trace for you the conditions of +art that are directly founded on serviceableness of dress, and of +armour; but it is my duty to affirm to you, in the most positive +manner, that after recovering, for the poor, wholesomeness of food, +your next step toward founding schools of art in England must be in +recovering, for the poor, decency and wholesomeness of dress; +thoroughly good in substance, fitted for their daily work, becoming to +their rank in life, and worn with order and dignity. And this order +and dignity must be taught them by the women of the upper and middle +classes, whose minds can be in nothing right, as long as they are so +wrong in this matter us to endure the squalor of the poor, while they +themselves dress gaily. And on the proper pride and comfort of both +poor and rich in dress, must be founded the true arts of dress; +carried on by masters of manufacture no less careful of the +perfectness and beauty of their tissues, and of all that in substance +and in design can be bestowed upon them, than ever the armourers of +Milan and Damascus were careful of their steel. + +Then, in the third place, having recovered some wholesome habits of +life as to food and dress, we must recover them as to lodging. I said +just now that the best architecture was but a glorified roof. Think of +it. The dome of the Vatican, the porches of Rheims or Chartres, the +vaults and arches of their aisles, the canopy of the tomb, and the +spire of the belfry, are all forms resulting from the mere requirement +that a certain space shall be strongly covered from heat and rain. +More than that--as I have tried all through _The Stones of Venice_ to +show--the lovely forms of these were every one of them developed in +civil and domestic building, and only after their invention employed +ecclesiastically on the grandest scale. I think you cannot but have +noticed here in Oxford, as elsewhere, that our modern architects never +seem to know what to do with their roofs. Be assured, until the roofs +are right, nothing else will be; and there are just two ways of +keeping them right. Never build them of iron, but only of wood or +stone; and secondly, take care that in every town the little roofs are +built before the large ones, and that everybody who wants one has got +one. And we must try also to make everybody want one. That is to say, +at some not very advanced period of life, men should desire to have a +home, which they do not wish to quit any more, suited to their habits +of life, and likely to be more and more suitable to them until their +death. And men must desire to have these their dwelling-places built +as strongly as possible, and furnished and decorated daintily, and set +in pleasant places, in bright light, and good air, being able to +choose for themselves that at least as well as swallows. And when the +houses are grouped together in cities, men must have so much civic +fellowship as to subject their architecture to a common law, and so +much civic pride as to desire that the whole gathered group of human +dwellings should be a lovely thing, not a frightful one, on the face +of the earth. Not many weeks ago an English clergyman,[198] a master of +this University, a man not given to sentiment, but of middle age, and +great practical sense, told me, by accident, and wholly without +reference to the subject now before us, that he never could enter +London from his country parsonage but with closed eyes, lest the sight +of the blocks of houses which the railroad intersected in the suburbs +should unfit him, by the horror of it, for his day's work. + +Now, it is not possible--and I repeat to you, only in more deliberate +assertion, what I wrote just twenty-two years ago in the last chapter +of the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_--it is not possible to have any +right morality, happiness, or art, in any country where the cities are +thus built, or thus, let me rather say, clotted and coagulated; spots +of a dreadful mildew, spreading by patches and blotches over the +country they consume. You must have lovely cities, crystallized, not +coagulated, into form; limited in size, and not casting out the scum +and scurf of them into an encircling eruption of shame, but girded +each with its sacred pomoerium, and with garlands of gardens full of +blossoming trees and softly guided streams. + + + [187] In _Modern Painters_, vol. 1. + + [188] The quotation is from Vasari's account of Angelico's Last + Judgment (now in the Accademia at Florence). [Cook and Wedderbum.] + + [189] _Song of Solomon_ i, 6. + + [190] Cf. _Classical Landscape_, pp. 92-93. + + [191] _Isaiah_, ii, 4; _Micah_ iv, 3; _Joel_ iii, 10. + + [192] The name of St. George, the "Earthworker," or "Husbandman." + [Ruskin.] + + [193] _Luke_ xxiv, 35. + + [194] Virgil, _Æneid_, 3, 209. _seqq_. [Ruskin.] + + [195] _Acts_ xiv, 17. + + [196] _Psalms_ i, 3. + + [197] _Genesis_ xxiv, 15, 16 and xxix, 10; _Exodus_ ii, 16; _John_ + iv, 11. + + [198] Osborne Gordon. [Ruskin.] + + + + +ART AND HISTORY + +ATHENA ERGANE + + + This short selection is taken from the volume entitled _The Queen + of the Air_, in which Ruskin, fascinated by the deep significance + of the Greek myths and realizing the religious sincerity + underlying them, attempts to interpret those that cluster about + Athena. The book was published June 22, 1869. It is divided into + three "Lectures," parts of which actually were delivered as + lectures on different occasions, entitled respectively "Athena + Chalinitis" (Athena in the Heavens), "Athena Keramitis" (Athena + in the Earth), "Athena Ergane" (Athena in the Heart). The first + lecture is the only one which keeps to the title of the book; in + the others the legend is used merely as a starting-point for the + expression of various pregnant ideas on social and historical + problems. The book as a whole abounds in flashes of inspiration + and insight, and is a favourite with many readers of Ruskin. + Carlyle, in a letter to Froude, wrote: "Passages of that last + book, _Queen of the Air_, went into my heart like arrows." + +In different places of my writings, and through many years of +endeavour to define the laws of art, I have insisted on this Tightness +in work, and on its connection with virtue of character, in so many +partial ways, that the impression left on the reader's mind--if, +indeed, it was ever impressed at all--has been confused and uncertain. +In beginning the series of my corrected works, I wish this principle +(in my own mind the foundation of every other) to be made plain, if +nothing else is: and will try, therefore, to make it so, so far as, by +any effort, I can put it into unmistakable words. And, first, here is +a very simple statement of it, given lately in a lecture on the +Architecture of the Valley of the Somme,[199] which will be better read +in this place than in its incidental connection with my account of the +porches of Abbeville. + +I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the expression, "by +what faults" this Gothic architecture fell. We continually speak thus +of works of art. We talk of their faults and merits, as of virtues and +vices. What do we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or the +merits of a piece of stone? + +The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, and its +virtues his virtues. + +Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, and mean art, +that of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish person builds +foolishly, and a wise one, sensibly; a virtuous one, beautifully; and +a vicious one, basely. If stone work is well put together, it means +that a thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an +honest man cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means that its +carver was too greedy of pleasure; if too little, that he was rude, or +insensitive, or stupid, and the like. So that when once you have +learned how to spell these most precious of all legends,--pictures +and buildings,--you may read the characters of men, and of nations, in +their art, as in a mirror;--nay, as in a microscope, and magnified a +hundredfold; for the character becomes passionate in the art, and +intensifies itself in all its noblest or meanest delights. Nay, not +only as in a microscope, but as under a scalpel, and in dissection; +for a man may hide himself from you, or misrepresent himself to you, +every other way; but he cannot in his work: there, be sure, you have +him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that he sees,--all that he +can do,--his imagination, his affections, his perseverance, his +impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If the +work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a honeycomb, by +a bee; a worm-cast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed by a +bird; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, and +ignobly, if he is ignoble. + +And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made thing is good +or bad, so is the maker of it. + +You all use this faculty of judgment more or less, whether you +theoretically admit the principle or not. Take that floral gable;[200] +you don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, +or that the man who built that, _would_ have built Stonehenge? Do you +think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or +that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems +of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a +burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill +Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? You +will find in the end, that _no man could have done it but exactly the +man who did it_; and by looking close at it, you may, if you know your +letters, read precisely the manner of man he was. + +Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. Of all facts +concerning art, this is the one most necessary to be known, that, +while manufacture is the work of hands only, art is the work of the +whole spirit of man; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it: and +by whatever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same vice +or virtue it reproduces and teaches. That which is born of evil begets +evil; and that which is born of valour and honour, teaches valour and +honour. Al art is either infection or education. It _must_ be one or +other of these. + +This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of which +understanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. And I +assert it the more, because it has of late been repeatedly, expressly, +and with contumely denied; and that by high authority: and I hold it +one of the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the arts +among us, that English gentlemen, of high standing as scholars and +artists, should have been blinded into the acceptance, and betrayed +into the assertion of a fallacy which only authority such as theirs +could have rendered for an instant credible. For the contrary of it is +written in the history of all great nations; it is the one sentence +always inscribed on the steps of their thrones; the one concordant +voice in which they speak to us out of their dust. + +All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure and beautiful +animal race, with intense energy and imagination. They live lives of +hardship by choice, and by grand instinct of manly discipline: they +become fierce and irresistible soldiers; the nation is always its own +army, and their king, or chief head of government, is always their +first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or +Barbarossa, or Coeur de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandolo, or Frederick +the Great:--Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, French, +Venetian,--that is inviolable law for them all; their king must be +their first soldier, or they cannot be in progressive power. Then, +after their great military period, comes the domestic period; in +which, without betraying the discipline of war, they add to their +great soldiership the delights and possessions of a delicate and +tender home-life: and then, for all nations, is the time of their +perfect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of their +national ideal of character, developed by the finished care of the +occupations of peace. That is the history of all true art that ever +was, or can be: palpably the history of it,--unmistakably,--written on +the forehead of it in letters of light,--in tongues of fire, by which +the seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever iron burnt into a +convict's flesh the seal of crime. But always, hitherto, after the +great period, has followed the day of luxury, and pursuit of the arts +for pleasure only. And all has so ended. + +Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have here asserted two +things,--first, the foundation of art in moral character; next, the +foundation of moral character in war. I must make both these +assertions clearer, and prove them. + +First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course art-gift +and amiability of disposition are two different things. A good man is +not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for colour necessarily +imply an honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers: +it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is +not there, we can have no art at all; and if the soul--and a right +soul too--is not there, the art is bad, however dexterous. + +But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the result of the +moral character of generations. A bad woman may have a sweet voice; +but that sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race. +That she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of +laws of music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, +of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous +power, and vigour and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in +rightness of human conduct, renders, after a certain number of +generations, human art possible; every sin clouds it, be it ever so +little a one; and persistent vicious living and following of pleasure +render, after a certain number of generations, all art impossible. Men +are deceived by the long-suffering of the laws of nature; and mistake, +in a nation, the reward of the virtue of its sires for the issue of +its own sins. The time of their visitation will come, and that +inevitably; for, it is always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour +grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge.[201] And for the +individual, as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I have +said, know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let his art-gift +be never so great, and cultivated to the height by the schools of a +great race of men; and it is still but a tapestry thrown over his own +being and inner soul; and the bearing of it will show, infallibly, +whether it hangs on a man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you +may not see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, but +learn how to look, and the folds themselves will become transparent, +and you shall see through them the death's shape, or the divine one, +making the tissue above it as a cloud of light, or as a winding-sheet. + +Then farther, observe, I have said (and you will find it true, and +that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is rooted in virtue, so +it bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic in its own nature. It is +often didactic also in actually expressed thought, as Giotto's, +Michael Angelo's, Dürer's, and hundreds more; but that is not its +special function,--it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful; but +beautiful with haunting thought, no less than with form, and full of +myths that can be read only with the heart. + +For instance, at this moment there is open beside me as I write, a +page of Persian manuscript, wrought with wreathed azure and geld, and +soft green, and violet, and ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure +resplendence. It is wrought to delight the eyes only; and does delight +them; and the man who did it assuredly had eyes in his head; but not +much more. It is not didactic art, but its author was happy: and it +will do the good, and the harm, that mere pleasure can do. But, +opposite me, is an early Turner drawing of the lake of Geneva, taken +about two miles from Geneva, on the Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc in +the distance. The old city is seen lying beyond the waveless waters, +veiled with a sweet misty veil of Athena's weaving: a faint light of +morning, peaceful exceedingly, and almost colourless, shed from behind +the Voirons, increases into soft amber along the slope of the Salève, +and is just seen, and no more, on the fair warm fields of its summit, +between the folds of a white cloud that rests upon the grass, but +rises, high and towerlike, into the zenith of dawn above. + +There is not as much colour in that low amber light upon the hill-side +as there is in the palest dead leaf. The lake is not blue, but grey in +mist, passing into deep shadow beneath the Voirons' pines; a few dark +clusters of leaves, a single white flower--scarcely seen--are all the +gladness given to the rocks of the shore. One of the ruby spots of the +eastern manuscript would give colour enough for all the red that is in +Turner's entire drawing. For the mere pleasure of the eye, there is +not so much in all those lines of his, throughout the entire +landscape, as in half an inch square of the Persian's page. What made +him take pleasure in the low colour that is only like the brown of a +dead leaf? in the cold grey of dawn--in the one white flower among the +rocks--in these--and no more than these? + +He took pleasure in them because he had been bred among English fields +and hills; because the gentleness of a great race was in his heart, +and its power of thought in his brain; because he knew the stories of +the Alps, and of the cities at their feet; because he had read the +Homeric legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods of dawn, and the +givers of dew to the fields; because he knew the faces of the crags, +and the imagery of the passionate mountains, as a man knows the face +of his friend; because he had in him the wonder and sorrow concerning +life and death, which are the inheritance of the Gothic soul from the +days of its first sea kings; and also the compassion and the joy that +are woven into the innermost fabric of every great imaginative spirit, +born now in countries that have lived by the Christian faith with any +courage or truth. And the picture contains also, for us, just this +which its maker had in him to give; and can convey it to us, just so +far as we are of the temper in which it must be received. It is +didactic if we are worthy to be taught, no otherwise. The pure heart, +it will make more pure; the thoughtful, more thoughtful. It has in it +no words for the reckless or the base. + + + [199] _The Flamboyant Architecture of the Valley of the Somme_, a + lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, January 29, 1869. + + [200] The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west + end of Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, + and enriched with a border of "twisted eglantine." [Ruskin.] + + [201] _Jeremiah_ xxxi, 29. + + + + +TRAFFIC + + + "Traffic" is the second of the three lectures published May, 1866, + in the volume entitled _The Crown of Wild Olive_. All these + lectures were delivered in the years 1864 and 1865, but the one + here printed was earliest. The occasion on which Ruskin addressed + the people of Bradford is made sufficiently clear from the opening + sentences. The lecture is important as emphasizing in a popular + way some of his most characteristic economic theories. + + + +TRAFFIC[202] + + +My good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down here among your hills +that I might talk to you about this Exchange you are going to build: +but, earnestly and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to do +nothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can say very little, +about this same Exchange. I must talk of quite other things, though +not willingly;--I could not deserve your pardon, if, when you invited +me to speak on one subject, I _wilfully_ spoke on another. But I +cannot speak, to purpose, of anything about which I do not care; and +most simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, that I +do _not_ care about this Exchange of yours. + +If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had answered, "I +won't come, I don't care about the Exchange of Bradford," you would +have been justly offended with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt +a carelessness. So I have come down, hoping that you will patiently +let me tell you why, on this, and many other such occasions, I now +remain silent, when formerly I should have caught at the opportunity +of speaking to a gracious audience. + +In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange--because _you_ +don't; and because you know perfectly well I cannot make you. Look at +the essential conditions of the case, which you, as business men, know +perfectly well, though perhaps you think I forget them. You are going +to spend £30,000, which to you, collectively, is nothing; the buying a +new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much more important matter of +consideration to me, than building a new Exchange is to you. But you +think you may as well have the right thing for your money. You know +there are a great many odd styles of architecture about; you don't +want to do anything ridiculous; you hear of me, among others, as a +respectable architectural man-milliner; and you send for me, that I +may tell you the leading fashion; and what is, in our shops, for the +moment, the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles. + +Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot have good +architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good +architecture is the expression of national life and character, and it +is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for +beauty. And I want you to think a little of the deep significance of +this word "taste"; for no statement of mine has been more earnestly or +oftener controverted than that good taste is essentially a moral +quality. "No," say many of my antagonists, "taste is one thing, +morality is another. Tell us what is pretty: we shall be glad to know +that; but we need no sermons--even were you able to preach them, which +may be doubted." + +Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine somewhat. +Taste is not only a part and an index of morality;--it is the ONLY +morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any +living creature is, "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, and +I'll tell you what you are. Go out into the street, and ask the first +man or woman you meet, what their "taste" is; and if they answer +candidly, you know them, body and soul. "You, my friend in the rags, +with the unsteady gait, what do _you_ like?" "A pipe and a quartern of +gin." I know you. "You, good woman, with the quick step and tidy +bonnet, what do you like?" "A swept hearth, and a clean tea-table; and +my husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast." Good, I know you +also. "You, little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, what +do you like?" "My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths." "You, +little boy with the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do you +like?" "A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch farthing." Good; we +know them all now. What more need we ask? + +"Nay," perhaps you answer; "we need rather to ask what these people +and children do, than what they like. If they do right, it is no +matter that they like what is wrong; and if they _do_ wrong, it is no +matter that they like what is right. Doing is the great thing; and it +does not matter that the man likes drinking, so that he does not +drink; nor that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she +will not learn her lessons; nor that the little boy likes throwing +stones at the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school." Indeed, for +a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. For if, +resolutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like doing +it. But they only are in a right moral state when they _have_ come to +like doing it; and as long as they don't like it, they are still in a +vicious state. The man is not in health of body who is always thinking +of the bottle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst; but +the man who heartily enjoys water in the morning, and wine in the +evening, each in its proper quantity and time. And the entire object +of true education is to make people not merely _do_ the right things, +but _enjoy_ the right things:--not merely industrious, but to love +industry--not merely learned, but to love knowledge--not merely pure, +but to love purity--not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after +justice.[203] + +But you may answer or think, "Is the liking for outside +ornaments,--for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or +architecture,--a moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a rightly set +liking. Taste for _any_ pictures or statues is not a moral quality, +but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word +"good." I don't mean by "good," clever--or learned--or difficult in +the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their +dice; it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in its +kind has ever been done equal to it; but it is also an entirely base +and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolonged +contemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an "unmannered," +or "immoral" quality. It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense--it +is the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of Titian's, +or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, expresses +delight in the perpetual contemplation of a good and perfect thing. +That is an entirely moral quality--it is the taste of the angels And +all delight in art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple +love of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality which +we call "loveliness"--(we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness, +to be said of the things which deserve to be hated); and it is not an +indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is +just the vital function of all our being. What we _like_ determines +what we _are_, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is +inevitably to form character. + +As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet Street the other day, +my eye caught the title of a book standing open in a bookseller's +window. It was--"On the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all +classes." "Ah," I thought to myself, "my classifying friend, when you +have diffused your taste, where will your classes be? The man who +likes what you like, belongs to the same class with you, I think. +Inevitably so. You may put him to other work if you choose; but, by +the condition you have brought him into, he will dislike the other +work as much as you would yourself. You get hold of a scavenger or a +costermonger, who enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and +'Pop goes the Weasel' for music. You think you can make him like Dante +and Beethoven? I wish you joy of your lessons; but if you do, you have +made a gentleman of him:--he won't like to go back to his +coster-mongering." + +And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, that, if I had time +to-night, I could show you that a nation cannot be affected by any +vice, or weakness, without expressing it, legibly, and for ever, +either in bad art, or by want of art; and that there is no national +virtue, small or great, which is not manifestly expressed in all the +art which circumstances enable the people possessing that virtue to +produce. Take, for instance, your great English virtue of enduring and +patient courage. You have at present in England only one art of any +consequence--that is, iron-working. You know thoroughly well how to +cast and hammer iron. Now, do you think, in those masses of lava which +you build volcanic cones to melt, and which you forge at the mouths of +the Infernos you have created; do you think, on those iron plates, +your courage and endurance are not written for ever,--not merely with +an iron pen, but on iron parchment? And take also your great English +vice--European vice--vice of all the world--vice of all other worlds +that roll or shine in heaven, bearing with them yet the atmosphere of +hell--the vice of jealousy, which brings competition into your +commerce, treachery into your councils, and dishonour into your +wars--that vice which has rendered for you, and for your next +neighbouring nation, the daily occupations of existence no longer +possible, but with the mail upon your breasts and the sword loose in +its sheath; so that at last, you have realized for all the multitudes +of the two great peoples who lead the so-called civilization of the +earth,--you have realized for them all, I say, in person and in +policy, what was once true only of the rough Border riders of your +Cheviot hills-- + + They carved at the meal + With gloves of steel, + +And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd;[204] do you +think that this national shame and dastardliness of heart are not +written as legibly on every rivet of your iron armour as the strength +of the right hands that forged it? + +Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more ludicrous or the +more melancholy. It is quite unspeakably both. Suppose, instead of +being now sent for by you, I had been sent for by some private +gentleman, living in a suburban house, with his garden separated only +by a fruit wall from his next door neighbour's; and he had called me +to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing-room. I begin +looking about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and +such a paper might be desirable--perhaps a little fresco here and +there on the ceiling--a damask curtain or so at the windows. "Ah," +says my employer, "damask curtains, indeed! That's all very fine, but +you know I can't afford that kind of thing just now!" "Yet the world +credits you with a splendid income!" "Ah, yes," says my friend, "but +do you know, at present I am obliged to spend it nearly all in +steel-traps?" "Steel-traps! for whom?" "Why, for that fellow on the +other side the wall, you know: we're very good friends, capital +friends; but we are obliged to keep our traps set on both sides of the +wall; we could not possibly keep on friendly terms without them, and +our spring guns. The worst of it is, we are both clever fellows +enough; and there's never a day passes that we don't find out a new +trap, or a new gun-barrel, or something; we spend about fifteen +millions a year each in our traps, take it altogether; and I don't see +how we're to do with less." A highly comic state of life for two +private gentlemen! but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly +comic. Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman +in it; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only one +clown in it; but when the whole world turns clown, and paints itself +red with its own heart's blood instead of vermilion, it is something +else than comic, I think. + +Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and willingly allow for +that. You don't know what to do with yourselves for a sensation: +fox-hunting and cricketing will not carry you through the whole of +this unendurably long mortal life: you liked pop-guns when you were +schoolboys, and rifles and Armstrongs are only the same things better +made: but then the worst of it is, that what was play to you when +boys, was not play to the sparrows; and what is play to you now, is +not play to the small birds of State neither; and for the black +eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking shots at them, if I mistake +not.[205] + +I must get back to the matter in hand, however. Believe me, without +further instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation's +vice, or virtue, was written in its art: the soldiership of early +Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of +Tuscany; the splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. I have no +time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now);[206] +but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in a more searching +manner. + +I notice that among all the new buildings that cover your once wild +hills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large +proportion, with your mills and mansions; and I notice also that the +churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and +mills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely the meaning +of this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When +Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and when +the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well +as houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of Antwerp, +there is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if Inigo +Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an +Italian St. Paul's.[207] But now you live under one school of +architecture, and worship under another. What do you mean by doing +this? Am I to understand that you are thinking of changing your +architecture back to Gothic; and that you treat your churches +experimentally, because it does not matter what mistakes you make in a +church? Or am I to understand that you consider Gothic a pre-eminently +sacred and beautiful mode of building, which you think, like the fine +frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and reserved +for your religious services? For if this be the feeling, though it may +seem at first as if it were graceful and reverent, you will find that, +at the root of the matter, it signifies neither more nor less than +that you have separated your religion from your life. + +For consider what a wide significance this fact has: and remember that +it is not you only, but all the people of England, who are behaving +thus, just now. + +You have all got into the habit of calling the church "the house of +God." I have seen, over the doors of many churches, the legend +actually carved, "_This_ is the house of God and this is the gate of +heaven."[208] Now, note where that legend comes from, and of what +place it was first spoken. A boy leaves his father's house to go on a +long journey on foot, to visit his uncle: he has to cross a wild +hill-desert; just as if one of your own boys had to cross the wolds to +visit an uncle at Carlisle. The second or third day your boy finds +himself somewhere between Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the moors, +at sunset. It is stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go one foot +further that night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best +he may, gathering a few of the stones together to put under his +head;--so wild the place is, he cannot get anything but stones. And +there, lying under the broad night, he has a dream; and he sees a +ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and +the angels of God are ascending and descending upon it. And when he +wakes out of his sleep, he says, "How dreadful is this place; surely +this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of +heaven." This PLACE, observe; not this church; not this city; not this +stone, even, which he puts up for a memorial--the piece of flint on +which his head has lain. But this _place_; this windy slope of +Wharnside; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted! this +_any_ place where God lets down the ladder. And how are you to know +where that will be? or how are you to determine where it may be, but +by being ready for it always? Do you know where the lightning is to +fall next? You _do_ know that, partly; you can guide the lightning; +but you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit, which is that +lightning when it shines from the east to the west.[209] + +But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong verse to serve a +merely ecclesiastical purpose is only one of the thousand instances in +which we sink back into gross Judaism. We call our churches "temples." +Now, you know perfectly well they are _not_ temples. They have never +had, never can have, anything whatever to do with temples. They are +"synagogues"--"gathering places"--where you gather yourselves together +as an assembly; and by not calling them so, you again miss the force +of another mighty text--"Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the +hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the churches" [we +should translate it], "that they may be seen of men. But thou, when +thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, +pray to thy Father"--which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but "in +secret."[210] + +Now, you feel, as I say this to you--I know you feel--as if I were +trying to take away the honour of your churches. Not so; I am trying +to prove to you the honour of your houses and your hills; not that the +Church is not sacred--but that the whole Earth is. I would have you +feel, what careless, what constant, what infectious sin there is in +all modes of thought, whereby, in calling your churches only "holy," +you call your hearths and homes "profane"; and have separated +yourselves from the heathen by casting all your household gods to the +ground, instead of recognizing, in the place of their many and feeble +Lares, the presence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. + +"But what has all this to do with our Exchange?" you ask me, +impatiently. My dear friends, it has just everything to do with it; on +these inner and great questions depend all the outer and little ones; +and if you have asked me down here to speak to you, because you had +before been interested in anything I have written, you must know that +all I have yet said about architecture was to show this. The book I +called _The Seven Lamps_ was to show that certain right states of +temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good +architecture, without exception, had been produced. _The Stones of +Venice_ had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that the +Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all +its features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue; +and that its Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in all +its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and +of domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what style is best to +build in, and how can I answer, knowing the meaning of the two styles, +but by another question--do you mean to build as Christians or as +Infidels? And still more--do you mean to build as honest Christians or +as honest Infidels? as thoroughly and confessedly either one or the +other? You don't like to be asked such rude questions. I cannot help +it; they are of much more importance than this Exchange business; and +if they can be at once answered, the Exchange business settles itself +in a moment. But before I press them farther, I must ask leave to +explain one point clearly. + +In all my past work, my endeavour has been to show that good +architecture is essentially religious--the production of a faithful +and virtuous, not of an infidel and corrupted people. But in the +course of doing this, I have had also to show that good architecture +is not _ecclesiastical_. People are so apt to look upon religion as +the business of the clergy, not their own, that the moment they hear +of anything depending on "religion," they think it must also have +depended on the priesthood; and I have had to take what place was to +be occupied between these two errors, and fight both, often with +seeming contradiction. Good architecture is the work of good and +believing men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, "Good +architecture must essentially have been the work of the clergy, not of +the laity." No--a thousand times no; good architecture[211] has always +been the work of the commonalty, _not_ of the clergy. "What," you say, +"those glorious cathedrals--the pride of Europe--did their builders +not form Gothic architecture?" No; they corrupted Gothic architecture. +Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, and the burgher's street. It +was formed by the thoughts, and hands, and powers of labouring +citizens and warrior kings. By the monk it was used as an instrument +for the aid of his superstition; when that superstition became a +beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly dreamed and +pined in the cloister, and vainly raged and perished in the +crusade,--through that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the +Gothic rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most +foolish dreams; and in those dreams, was lost. + +I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunderstanding me when I +come to the gist of what I want to say to-night;--when I repeat, that +every great national architecture has been the result and exponent of +a great national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits +there--you must have it everywhere or nowhere. It is not the monopoly +of a clerical company--it is not the exponent of a theological +dogma--it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood; +it is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common +purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible +laws of an undoubted God. + +Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools of European +architecture. I say, European, because Asiatic and African +architectures belong so entirely to other races and climates, that +there is no question of them here; only, in passing, I will simply +assure you that whatever is good or great in Egypt, and Syria, and +India, is just good or great for the same reasons as the buildings on +our side of the Bosphorus. We Europeans, then, have had three great +religions: the Greek, which was the worship of the God of Wisdom and +Power; the Mediæval, which was the worship of the God of Judgment and +Consolation; the Renaissance, which was the worship of the God of +Pride and Beauty: these three we have had--they are past,--and now, at +last, we English have got a fourth religion, and a God of our own, +about which I want to ask you. But I must explain these three old ones +first. + +I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God of Wisdom; +so that whatever contended against their religion,--to the Jews a +stumbling-block,--was, to the Greeks--_Foolishness_.[212] + +The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed in the word, of which +we keep the remnant in our words "_Di_-urnal" and "_Di_-vine"--the god +of _Day_, Jupiter the revealer. Athena is his daughter, but especially +daughter of the Intellect, springing armed from the head. We are only +with the help of recent investigation beginning to penetrate the depth +of meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly, +that her ægis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which she +often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her left +hand, for better guard; and the Gorgon, on her shield, are both +representative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men +to stone, as it were), of the outmost and superficial spheres of +knowledge--that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, +and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown man from the heart of the +child. For out of imperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension, +danger, and disdain; but from perfect knowledge, given by the +full-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign of which she is +crowned with the olive spray, and bears the resistless spear.[213] + +This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity; and every habit +of life, and every form of his art developed themselves from the +seeking this bright, serene, resistless wisdom; and setting himself, +as a man, to do things evermore rightly and strongly;[214] not with +any ardent affection or ultimate hope; but with a resolute and +continent energy of will, as knowing that for failure there was no +consolation, and for sin there was no remission. And the Greek +architecture rose unerring, bright, clearly defined, and +self-contained. + +Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which was +essentially the religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is the +remission of sins; for which cause, it happens, too often, in certain +phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness themselves are partly +glorified, as if, the more you had to be healed of, the more divine +was the healing. The practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a +continual contemplation of sin and disease, and of imaginary states of +purification from them; thus we have an architecture conceived in a +mingled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, partly severe, partly +luxuriant, which will bend itself to every one of our needs, and every +one of our fancies, and be strong or weak with us, as we are strong or +weak ourselves. It is, of all architecture, the basest, when base +people build it--of all, the noblest, when built by the noble. + +And now note that both these religions--Greek and Mediæval--perished +by falsehood in their own main purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdom +perished in a false philosophy--"Oppositions of science, falsely so +called." The Mediæval religion of Consolation perished in false +comfort; in remission of sins given lyingly. It was the selling of +absolution that ended the Mediæval faith; and I can tell you more, it +is the selling of absolution which, to the end of time, will mark +false Christianity. Pure Christianity gives her remission of sins only +by _ending_ them; but false Christianity gets her remission of sins by +_compounding for_ them. And there are many ways of compounding for +them. We English have beautiful little quiet ways of buying +absolution, whether in low Church or high, far more cunning than any +of Tetzel's trading.[215] + +Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, in which all +Europe gave itself to luxury, ending in death. First, _bals masqués_ +in every saloon, and then guillotines in every square. And all these +three worships issue in vast temple building. Your Greek worshipped +Wisdom, and built you the Parthenon--the Virgin's temple. The Mediæval +worshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples also--but to our +Lady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist worshipped beauty, of a sort, +and built you Versailles and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell +me what _we_ worship, and what _we_ build? + +You know we are speaking always of the real, active, continual, +national worship; that by which men act, while they live; not that +which they talk of, when they die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal +religion, to which we pay tithes of property and sevenths of time; but +we have also a practical and earnest religion, to which we devote +nine-tenths of our property and sixth-sevenths of our time. And we +dispute a great deal about the nominal religion: but we are all +unanimous about this practical one; of which I think you will admit +that the ruling goddess may be best generally described as the +"Goddess of Getting-on," or "Britannia of the Market." The Athenians +had an "Athena Agoraia," or Athena of the Market; but she was a +subordinate type of their goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is the +principal type of ours. And all your great architectural works are, of +course, built to her. It is long since you built a great cathedral; +and how you would laugh at me if I proposed building a cathedral on +the top of one of these hills of yours, taking it for an Acropolis! +But your railroad mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon; your +railroad stations, vaster than the temple of Ephesus, and innumerable; +your chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires! +your harbour-piers; your warehouses; your exchanges!--all these are +built to your great Goddess of "Getting-on"; and she has formed, and +will continue to form your architecture, as long as you worship her; +and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to _her_; you +know far better than I. + +There might, indeed, on some theories, be a conceivably good +architecture for Exchanges--that is to say, if there were any heroism +in the fact or deed of exchange which might be typically carved on the +outside of your building. For, you know, all beautiful architecture +must be adorned with sculpture or painting; and for sculpture or +painting, you must have a subject. And hitherto it has been a received +opinion among the nations of the world that the only right subjects +for either, were _heroisms_ of some sort. Even on his pots and his +flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, or an Apollo slaying +serpents, or Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and earthborn +despondencies. On his temples, the Greek put contests of great +warriors in founding states, or of gods with evil spirits. On his +houses and temples alike, the Christian put carvings of angels +conquering devils; or of hero-martyrs exchanging this world for +another: subject inappropriate, I think, to our manner of exchange +here. And the Master of Christians not only left His followers without +any orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange on the outside +of buildings, but gave some strong evidence of His dislike of affairs +of exchange within them.[216] And yet there might surely be a heroism +in such affairs; and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves, +not impious. The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism has +never been supposed to be in any wise consistent with the practice of +supplying people with food, or clothes; but rather with that of +quartering one's self upon them for food, and stripping them of their +clothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all ages; but the +selling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken any colour of +magnanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and clothing +the naked should ever become base businesses, even when engaged in on +a large scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion of conquest +to them anyhow! so that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinate +race, who refused to be comforted, one might take some pride in giving +them compulsory comfort! and, as it were, "_occupying_ a country" with +one's gifts, instead of one's armies? If one could only consider it as +much a victory to get a barren field sown, as to get an eared field +stripped; and contend who should build villages, instead of who should +"carry" them! Are not all forms of heroism conceivable in doing these +serviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be ascertained +by push of spade, as well as push of sword. Who is wisest? There are +witty things to be thought of in planning other business than +campaigns. Who is bravest? There are always the elements to fight +with, stronger than men; and nearly as merciless. + +The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier's +work seems to be--that he is paid little for it--and regularly: while +you traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied in presumably +benevolent business, like to be paid much for it--and by chance. I +never can make out how it is that a _knight_-errant does not expect to +be paid for his trouble, but a _pedlar_-errant always does;--that +people are willing to take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell +ribands cheap; that they are ready to go on fervent crusades, to +recover the tomb of a buried God, but never on any travels to fulfil +the orders of a living one;--that they will go anywhere barefoot to +preach their faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, and are +perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and +fishes. + +If you chose to take the matter up on any such soldierly principle; to +do your commerce, and your feeding of nations, for fixed salaries; and +to be as particular about giving people the best food, and the best +cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the best gunpowder, I could +carve something for you on your exchange worth looking at. But I can +only at present suggest decorating its frieze with pendant purses; and +making its pillars broad at the base, for the sticking of bills. And +in the innermost chambers of it there might be a statue of Britannia +of the Market, who may have, perhaps advisably, a partridge for her +crest, typical at once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas, and +of her interest in game; and round its neck, the inscription in golden +letters, "Perdix fovit quæ non peperit."[217] Then, for her spear, she +might have a weaver's beam; and on her shield, instead of St. George's +Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret +proper, in the field; and the legend, "In the best market,"[218] and +her corslet, of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of a +purse, with thirty slits in it, for a piece of money to go in at, on +each day of the month. And I doubt not but that people would come to +see your exchange, and its goddess, with applause. + +Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain strange characters in +this goddess of yours. She differs from the great Greek and Mediæval +deities essentially in two things--first, as to the continuance of her +presumed power; secondly, as to the extent of it. + +1st, as to the Continuance. + +The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual increase of wisdom, as the +Christian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual increase of +comfort. There was no question, with these, of any limit or cessation +of function. But with your Agora Goddess, that is just the most +important question. Getting on--but where to? Gathering together--but +how much? Do you mean to gather always--never to spend? If so, I wish +you joy of your goddess, for I am just as well off as you, without the +trouble of worshipping her at all. But if you do not spend, somebody +else will--somebody else must. And it is because of this (among many +other such errors) that I have fearlessly declared your so-called +science of Political Economy to be no science; because, namely, it has +omitted the study of exactly the most important branch of the +business--the study of _spending_. For spend you must, and as much as +you make, ultimately. You gather corn:--will you bury England under a +heap of grain; or will you, when you have gathered, finally eat? You +gather gold:--will you make your house-roofs of it, or pave your +streets with it? That is still one way of spending it. But if you keep +it, that you may get more, I'll give you more; I'll give you all the +gold you want--all you can imagine--if you can tell me what you'll do +with it. You shall have thousands of gold-pieces;--thousands of +thousands--millions--mountains, of gold: where will you keep them? +Will you put an Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelion--make Ossa like +a wart?[219] Do you think the rain and dew would then come down to +you, in the streams from such mountains, more blessedly than they will +down the mountains which God has made for you, of moss and whinstone? +But it is not gold that you want to gather! What is it? greenbacks? +No; not those neither. What is it then--is it ciphers after a capital +I? Cannot you practise writing ciphers, and write as many as you want? +Write ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big book, and say every +evening, I am worth all those noughts more than I was yesterday. Won't +that do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is it you want? Not gold, +not greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital I? You will have to +answer, after all, "No; we want, somehow or other, money's _worth_." +Well, what is that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on discover it, and +let her learn to stay therein. + +2d. But there is yet another question to be asked respecting this +Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of the continuance of her power; +the second is of its extent. + +Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the world's Pallas, and +all the world's Madonna. They could teach all men, and they could +comfort all men. But, look strictly into the nature of the power of +your Goddess of Getting-on; and you will find she is the Goddess--not +of everybody's getting on--but only of somebody's getting on. This is +a vital, or rather deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal +of the state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke and +maintain. I asked you what it was, when I was last here;--you have +never told me.[220] Now, shall I try to tell you? + +Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should be passed in +a pleasant undulating world, with iron and coal everywhere underneath +it. On each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, +with two wings; and stables, and coach-houses; a moderately-sized +park; a large garden and hot-houses; and pleasant carriage drives +through the shrubberies In this mansion are to live the favoured +votaries of the Goddess; the English gentleman, with his gracious +wife, and his beautiful family; always able to have the boudoir and +the jewels for the wife, and the beautiful ball dresses for the +daughters, and hunters for the sons, and a shooting in the Highlands +for himself. At the bottom of the bank, is to be the mill; not less +than a quarter of a mile long, with a steam engine at each end, and +two in the middle, and a chimney three hundred feet high. In this mill +are to be in constant employment from eight hundred to a thousand +workers, who never drink, never strike, always go to church on Sunday, +and always express themselves in respectful language. + +Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of thing you +propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed seen from above; not +at all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family +this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand families +she is the Goddess of _not_ Getting-on. "Nay," you say, "they have all +their chance." Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must +always be the same number of blanks. "Ah! but in a lottery it is not +skill and intelligence which take the lead, but blind chance." What +then! do you think the old practice, that "they should take who have +the power, and they should keep who can,"[221] is less iniquitous, +when the power has become power of brains instead of fist? and that, +though we may not take advantage of a child's or a woman's weakness, +we may of a man's foolishness? "Nay, but finally, work must be done, +and some one must be at the top, some one at the bottom." Granted, my +friends. Work must always be, and captains of work must always be; and +if you in the least remember the tone of any of my writings, you must +know that they are thought unfit for this age, because they are always +insisting on need of government, and speaking with scorn of liberty. +But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being +captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It does +not follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to take +all the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure or +land;) neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are to +consume all the profits of the nation's work. Real kings, on the +contrary, are known invariably by their doing quite the reverse of +this,--by their taking the least possible quantity of the nation's +work for themselves. There is no test of real kinghood so infallible +as that. Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely, +unostentatiously? probably he _is_ a King. Does he cover his body with +jewels, and his table with delicates? in all probability he is _not_ a +King. It is possible he may be, as Solomon was; but that is when the +nation shares his splendour with him. Solomon made gold, not only to +be in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones.[222] +But, even so, for the most part, these splendid kinghoods expire in +ruin, and only the true king-hoods live, which are of royal labourers +governing loyal labourers; who, both leading rough lives, establish +the true dynasties. Conclusively you will find that because you are +king of a nation, it does not follow that you are to gather for +yourself all the wealth of that nation; neither, because you are king +of a small part of the nation, and lord over the means of its +maintenance--over field, or mill, or mine,--are you to take all the +produce of that piece of the foundation of national existence for +yourself. + +You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannot +mend them. No, good friends, I cannot; but you can, and you will; or +something else can and will. Even good things have no abiding +power--and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? All +history shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact thing they never +can do. Change _must_ come; but it is ours to determine whether change +of growth, or change of death. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on its +rock, and Bolton priory[223] in its meadow, but these mills of yours +be the consummation of the buildings of the earth, and their wheels be +as the wheels of eternity? Think you that "men may come, and men may +go," but--mills--go on for ever?[224] Not so; out of these, better or +worse shall come; and it is for you to choose which. + +I know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate purpose. I +know, on the contrary, that you wish your workmen well; that you do +much for them, and that you desire to do more for them, if you saw +your way to such benevolence safely. I know that even all this wrong +and misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each of you +striving to do his best; but, unhappily, not knowing for whom this +best should be done. And all our hearts have been betrayed by the +plausible impiety of the modern economist, telling us that, "To do the +best for ourselves, is finally to do the best for others." Friends, +our great Master said not so; and most absolutely we shall find this +world is not made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, is finally to +do the best for ourselves; but it will not do to have our eyes fixed +on that issue. The Pagans had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says +of this matter; hear what were, perhaps, the last written words of +Plato,--if not the last actually written (for this we cannot know), +yet assuredly in fact and power his parting words--in which, +endeavouring to give full crowning and harmonious close to all his +thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by the imagined sentence of the +Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, and the words +cease, broken off for ever. They are at the close of the dialogue +called _Critias_, in which he describes, partly from real tradition, +partly in ideal dream, the early state of Athens; and the genesis, and +order, and religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis +he conceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy of man, +which in our own Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that the +Sons of God inter-married with the daughters of men,[225] for he +supposes the earliest race to have been indeed the children of God; +and to have corrupted themselves, until "their spot was not the spot +of his children."[226] And this, he says, was the end; that indeed +"through many generations, so long as the God's nature in them yet was +full, they were submissive to the sacred laws, and carried themselves +lovingly to all that had kindred with them in divineness; for their +uttermost spirit was faithful and true, and in every wise great; so +that, in _all meekness of wisdom, they dealt with each other_, and +took all the chances of life; and despising all things except virtue, +they cared little what happened day by day, and _bore lightly the +burden_ of gold and of possessions; for they saw that, if _only their +common love and virtue increased, all these things would be increased +together with them_; but to set their esteem and ardent pursuit upon +material possession would be to lose that first, and their virtue and +affection together with it. And by such reasoning, and what of the +divine nature remained in them, they gained all this greatness of +which we have already told; but when the God's part of them faded and +became extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced by the +prevalent mortality; and the human nature at last exceeded, they then +became unable to endure the courses of fortune; and fell into +shapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him who could see, +having lost everything that was fairest of their honour; while to the +blind hearts which could not discern the true life, tending to +happiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy, +being filled with an iniquity of inordinate possession and power. +Whereupon, the God of Gods, whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a +once just nation thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay such +punishment upon them as might make them repent into restraining, +gathered together all the gods into his dwelling-place, which from +heaven's centre overlooks whatever has part in creation; and having +assembled them, he said "-- + +The rest is silence. Last words of the chief wisdom of the heathen, +spoken of this idol of riches; this idol of yours; this golden image, +high by measureless cubits, set up where your green fields of England +are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura:[227] this +idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and +faith; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, in any +age or people, been accounted of as able to speak according to the +purposes of God. Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal +one, and soon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be +possible. Catastrophe will come; or, worse than catastrophe, slow +mouldering and withering into Hades. But if you can fix some +conception of a true human state of life to be striven for--life, good +for all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest and +simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, +which are pleasantness,[228] and seeking her quiet and withdrawn +paths, which are peace;--then, and so sanctifying wealth into +"commonwealth," all your art, your literature, your daily labours, +your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase +into one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build, well +enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples +not made with hands,[229] but riveted of hearts; and that kind of +marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal. + + + [202] Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford, April 21, 1864. + + [203] _Matthew_ v, 6. + + [204] Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, canto 1, stanza 4. + + [205] The reference was to the reluctance of this country to take + arms in defence of Denmark against Prussia and Austria. [Cook and + Wedderburn.] + + [206] See, e.g., pp. 167 ff. and 270 ff. + + [207] Inigo Jones [1573-1652] and Sir Christopher Wren [1632-1723] + were the best known architects of their respective generations. + + [208] _Genesis_ xxviii, 17. + + [209] _Matthew_ xxiv, 27. + + [210] _Matthew_ vi, 6. + + [211] And all other arts, for the most part; even of incredulous + and secularly-minded commonalties. [Ruskin.] + + [212] 1 _Corinthians_ i, 23. + + [213] For further interpretation of Greek mythology see Ruskin's + _Queen of the Air_. + + [214] It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, + was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Rightness and + Strength, founded on Forethought: the principal character of Greek + art is not beauty, but design: and the Dorian Apollo-worship and + Athenian Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine + wisdom and purity. Next to these great deities, rank, in power over + the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength + and life; then, for heroic example, Hercules. There is no + Venus-worship among the Greeks in the great times: and the Muses + are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. [Ruskin.] + + [215] Tetzel's trading in Papal indulgences aroused Luther to the + protest which ended in the Reformation. + + [216] _Matthew_ xxi, 12. + + [217] _Jeremiah_ xvii, 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As the + partridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth + riches not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days, and + at his end shall be a fool." [Ruskin.] + + [218] Meaning, fully, "We have brought our pigs to it." [Ruskin.] + + [219] Cf. _Hamlet_, 5. 1. 306. + + [220] Referring to a lecture on _Modern Manufacture and Design_, + delivered at Bradford, March 1, 1859 published later as Lecture III + in _The Two Paths_. + + [221] See Wordsworth's _Rob Roy's Grave_, 39-40. + + [222] 1 Kings x, 27. + + [223] A beautiful ruin in Yorkshire. + + [224] Cf. Tennyson's _The Brook_. + + [225] _Genesis_ vi, 2. + + [226] _Deuteronomy_ xxxii, 5. + + [227] _Daniel_ iii, 1. + + [228] _Proverbs_ iii, 17. + + [229] _Acts_ vii, 48. + + + + +LIFE AND ITS ARTS + + + This lecture, the full title of which is "The Mystery of Life and + its Arts," was delivered in Dublin on May 13, 1868. It composed + one of a series of afternoon lectures on various subjects, + religion excepted, arranged by some of the foremost residents in + Dublin. The latter half of the lecture is included in the present + volume of selections. The first publication of the lecture was as + an additional part to a revised edition of _Sesame and Lilies_ in + 1871. Ruskin took exceptional care in writing "The Mystery of + Life": he once said in conversation, "I put into it all that I + know," and in the preface to it when published he tells us that + certain passages of it "contain the best expression I have yet + been able to put in words of what, so far as is within my power, I + mean henceforward both to do myself, and to plead with all over + whom I have any influence to do according to their means." Sir + Leslie Stephen says this "is, to my mind, the most perfect of his + essays." In later editions of _Sesame and Lilies_ this lecture was + withdrawn. At the time the lecture was delivered its tone was + characteristic of Ruskin's own thought and of the attitude he then + took toward the public. + +We have sat at the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, and they have +told us their dreams. We have listened to the poets who sang of earth, +and they have chanted to us dirges and words of despair. But there is +one class of men more:--men, not capable of vision, nor sensitive to +sorrow, but firm of purpose--practised in business; learned in all +that can be, (by handling,) known. Men, whose hearts and hopes are +wholly in this present world, from whom, therefore, we may surely +learn, at least, how, at present, conveniently to live in it. What +will _they_ say to us, or show us by example? These kings--these +councillors--these statesmen and builders of kingdoms--these +capitalists and men of business, who weigh the earth, and the dust of +it, in a balance.[230] They know the world, surely; and what is the +mystery of life to us, is none to them. They can surely show us how to +live, while we live, and to gather out of the present world what is +best. + +I think I can best tell you their answer, by telling you a dream I had +once. For though I am no poet, I have dreams sometimes:--I dreamed I +was at a child's May-day party, in which every means of entertainment +had been provided for them, by a wise and kind host. It was in a +stately house, with beautiful gardens attached to it; and the children +had been set free in the rooms and gardens, with no care whatever but +how to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know +much about what was to happen next day; and some of them, I thought, +were a little frightened, because there was a chance of their being +sent to a new school where there were examinations; but they kept the +thoughts of that out of their heads as well as they could, and +resolved to enjoy themselves. The house, I said, was in a beautiful +garden, and in the garden were all kinds of flowers; sweet, grassy +banks for rest; and smooth lawns for play; and pleasant streams and +woods; and rocky places for climbing. And the children were happy for +a little while, but presently they separated themselves into parties; +and then each party declared it would have a piece of the garden for +its own, and that none of the others should have anything to do with +that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently which pieces they would +have; and at last the boys took up the thing, as boys should do, +"practically," and fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly a +flower left standing; then they trampled down each other's bits of the +garden out of spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no more; +and so they all lay down at last breathless in the ruin, and waited +for the time when they were to be taken home in the evening.[231] + +Meanwhile, the children in the house had been making themselves happy +also in their manner. For them, there had been provided every kind of +in-door pleasure: there was music for them to dance to; and the +library was open, with all manner of amusing books; and there was a +museum full of the most curious shells, and animals, and birds; and +there was a workshop, with lathes and carpenters' tools, for the +ingenious boys; and there were pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls +to dress in; and there were microscopes, and kaleidoscopes; and +whatever toys a child could fancy; and a table, in the dining-room, +loaded with everything nice to eat. + +But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of the more +"practical" children, that they would like some of the brass-headed +nails that studded the chairs; and so they set to work to pull them +out. Presently, the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, +took a fancy to do the like; and, in a little while, all the children, +nearly, were spraining their fingers, in pulling out brass-headed +nails. With all that they could pull out, they were not satisfied; and +then, everybody wanted some of somebody else's. And at last, the +really practical and sensible ones declared, that nothing was of any +real consequence, that afternoon, except to get plenty of brass-headed +nails; and that the books, and the cakes, and the microscopes were of +no use at all in themselves, but only, if they could be exchanged for +nail-heads. And at last they began to fight for nail-heads, as the +others fought for the bits of garden. Only here and there, a despised +one shrank away into a corner, and tried to get a little quiet with a +book, in the midst of the noise; but all the practical ones thought of +nothing else but counting nail-heads all the afternoon--even though +they knew they would not be allowed to carry so much as one brass knob +away with them. But no--it was--"who has most nails? I have a hundred, +and you have fifty; or, I have a thousand, and you have two. I must +have as many as you before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly go +home in peace." At last, they made so much noise that I awoke, and +thought to myself, "What a false dream that is, of _children!_" The +child is the father of the man;[232] and wiser. Children never do such +foolish things. Only men do. + +But there is yet one last class of persons to be interrogated. The +wise religious men we have asked in vain; the wise contemplative men, +in vain; the wise worldly men, in vain. But there is another group +yet. In the midst of this vanity of empty religion--of tragic +contemplation--of wrathful and wretched ambition, and dispute for +dust, there is yet one great group of persons, by whom all these +disputers live--the persons who have determined, or have had it by a +beneficent Providence determined for them, that they will do something +useful; that whatever may be prepared for them hereafter, or happen to +them here, they will, at least, deserve the food that God gives them +by winning it honourably: and that, however fallen from the purity, or +far from the peace, of Eden, they will carry out the duty of human +dominion, though they have lost its felicity; and dress and keep the +wilderness,[233] though they no more can dress or keep the garden. + +These,--hewers of wood, and drawers of water,[234]--these, bent under +burdens, or torn of scourges--these, that dig and weave--that plant +and build; workers in wood, and in marble, and in iron--by whom all +food, clothing, habitation, furniture, and means of delight are +produced, for themselves, and for all men beside; men, whose deeds are +good, though their words may be few; men, whose lives are serviceable, +be they never so short, and worthy of honour, be they never so +humble;--from these, surely, at least, we may receive some clear +message of teaching; and pierce, for an instant, into the mystery of +life, and of its arts. + +Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But I grieve to say, +or rather--for that is the deeper truth of the matter--I rejoice to +say--this message of theirs can only be received by joining them--not +by thinking about them. + +You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have obeyed you in +coming. But the main thing I have to tell you is,--that art must not +be talked about. The fact that there is talk about it at all, +signifies that it is ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter ever +speaks, or ever has spoken, much of his art. The greatest speak +nothing. Even Reynolds is no exception, for he wrote of all that he +could not himself do,[235] and was utterly silent respecting all that he +himself did. + +The moment a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about +it. All words become idle to him--all theories. + +Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or boast of it +when built? All good work is essentially done that way--without +hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting; and in the doers of +the best, there is an inner and involuntary power which approximates +literally to the instinct of an animal--nay, I am certain that in the +most perfect human artists, reason does _not_ supersede instinct, but +is added to an instinct as much more divine than that of the lower +animals as the human body is more beautiful than theirs; that a great +singer sings not with less instinct than the nightingale, but with +more--only more various, applicable, and governable; that a great +architect does not build with less instinct than the beaver or the +bee, but with more--with an innate cunning of proportion that embraces +all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises all +construction. But be that as it may--be the instinct less or more than +that of inferior animals--like or unlike theirs, still the human art +is dependent on that first, and then upon an amount of practice, of +science,--and of imagination disciplined by thought, which the true +possessor of it knows to be incommunicable, and the true critic of it, +inexplicable, except through long process of laborious years. That +journey of life's conquest, in which hills over hills, and Alps on +Alps arose, and sank,--do you think you can make another trace it +painlessly, by talking? Why, you cannot even carry us up an Alp, by +talking. You can guide us up it, step by step, no otherwise--even so, +best silently. You girls, who have been among the hills, know how the +bad guide chatters and gesticulates, and it is "put your foot here"; +and "mind how you balance yourself there"; but the good guide walks on +quietly, without a word, only with his eyes on you when need is, and +his arm like an iron bar, if need be. + +In that slow way, also, art can be taught--if you have faith in your +guide, and will let his arm be to you as an iron bar when need is. But +in what teacher of art have you such faith? Certainly not in me; for, +as I told you at first, I know well enough it is only because you +think I can talk, not because you think I know my business, that you +let me speak to you at all. If I were to tell you anything that seemed +to you strange, you would not believe it, and yet it would only be in +telling you strange things that I could be of use to you. I could be +of great use to you--infinite use--with brief saying, if you would +believe it; but you would not, just because the thing that would be of +real use would displease you. You are all wild, for instance, with +admiration of Gustave Doré. Well, suppose I were to tell you, in the +strongest terms I could use, that Gustave Doré's art was bad--bad, not +in weakness,--not in failure,--but bad with dreadful power--the power +of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, and polluting; that +so long as you looked at it, no perception of pure or beautiful art +was possible for you. Suppose I were to tell you that! What would be +the use? Would you look at Gustave Doré less? Rather, more, I fancy. +On the other hand, I could soon put you into good humour with me, if I +chose. I know well enough what you like, and how to praise it to your +better liking. I could talk to you about moonlight, and twilight, and +spring flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Raphael--how +motherly! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo--how majestic! and the +Saints of Angelico--how pious! and the Cherubs of Correggio--how +delicious! Old as I am, I could play you a tune on the harp yet, that +you would dance to. But neither you nor I should be a bit the better +or wiser; or, if we were, our increased wisdom could be of no +practical effect. For, indeed, the arts, as regards teachableness, +differ from the sciences also in this, that their power is founded not +merely on facts which can be communicated, but on dispositions which +require to be created. Art is neither to be achieved by effort of +thinking, nor explained by accuracy of speaking. It is the instinctive +and necessary result of power, which can only be developed through the +mind of successive generations, and which finally burst into life +under social conditions as slow of growth as the faculties they +regulate. Whole æras of mighty history are summed, and the passions of +dead myriads are concentrated, in the existence of a noble art; and if +that noble art were among us, we should feel it and rejoice; not +caring in the least to hear lectures on it; and since it is not among +us, be assured we have to go back to the root of it, or, at least, to +the place where the stock of it is yet alive, and the branches began +to die. + +And now, may I have your pardon for pointing out, partly with +reference to matters which are at this time of greater moment than the +arts--that if we undertook such recession to the vital germ of +national arts that have decayed, we should find a more singular arrest +of their power in Ireland than in any other European country. For in +the eighth century Ireland possessed a school of art in her +manuscripts and sculpture, which, in many of its qualities--apparently +in all essential qualities of decorative invention--was quite without +rival; seeming as if it might have advanced to the highest triumphs in +architecture and in painting. But there was one fatal flaw in its +nature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a conspicuousness of +pause to which there is no parallel: so that, long ago, in tracing the +progress of European schools from infancy to strength, I chose for the +students of Kensington, in a lecture since published, two +characteristic examples of early art, of equal skill; but in the one +case, skill which was progressive--in the other, skill which was at +pause. In the one case, it was work receptive of correction--hungry +for correction; and in the other, work which inherently rejected +correction. I chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible +Angel, and I grieve to say[236] that the incorrigible Angel was also an +Irish angel! + +And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. In both pieces of art +there was an equal falling short of the needs of fact; but the +Lombardic Eve knew she was in the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought +himself all right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmly +insisting on his childish idea, yet showed in the irregular broken +touches of the features, and the imperfect struggle for softer lines +in the form, a perception of beauty and law that he could not render; +there was the strain of effort, under conscious imperfection, in every +line. But the Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel with no sense +of failure, in happy complacency, and put red dots into the palms of +each hand, and rounded the eyes into perfect circles, and, I regret to +say, left the mouth out altogether, with perfect satisfaction to +himself. + +May I without offence ask you to consider whether this mode of arrest +in ancient Irish art may not be indicative of points of character +which even yet, in some measure, arrest your national power? I have +seen much of Irish character, and have watched it closely, for I have +also much loved it. And I think the form of failure to which it is +most liable is this,--that being generous-hearted, and wholly +intending always to do right, it does not attend to the external laws +of right, but thinks it must necessarily do right because it means to +do so, and therefore does wrong without finding it out; and then, when +the consequences of its wrong come upon it, or upon others connected +with it, it cannot conceive that the wrong is in any wise of its +causing or of its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange agony of +desire for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, which leads it +farther astray, until there is nothing that it is not capable of doing +with a good conscience. + +But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past or present relations +between Ireland and England, you have been wrong, and we right. Far +from that, I believe that in all great questions of principle, and in +all details of administration of law, you have been usually right, and +we wrong; sometimes in misunderstanding you, sometimes in resolute +iniquity to you. Nevertheless, in all disputes between states, though +the strongest is nearly always mainly in the wrong, the weaker is +often so in a minor degree; and I think we sometimes admit the +possibility of our being in error, and you never do.[237] + +And now, returning to the broader question, what these arts and +labours of life have to teach us of its mystery, this is the first of +their lessons--that the more beautiful the art, the more it is +essentially the work of people who _feel themselves wrong_;--who are +striving for the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness, +which they have not yet attained, which they feel even farther and +farther from attaining the more they strive for it. And yet, in still +deeper sense, it is the work of people who know also that they are +right. The very sense of inevitable error from their purpose marks the +perfectness of that purpose, and the continued sense of failure arises +from the continued opening of the eyes more clearly to all the +sacredest laws of truth. + +This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and greatly precious +one: namely,--that whenever the arts and labours of life are fulfilled +in this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have +to do, honourably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, as +much as seems possible to the nature of man. In all other paths by +which that happiness is pursued there is disappointment, or +destruction: for ambition and for passion there is no rest--no +fruition; the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greater +than their past light; and the loftiest and purest love too often does +but inflame the cloud of life with endless fire of pain. But, +ascending from lowest to highest, through every scale of human +industry, that industry worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the +labourer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the patient, +delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted worker +in bronze, and in marble, and in the colours of light; and none of +these, who are true workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found +the law of heaven an unkind one--that in the sweat of their face they +should eat bread, till they return to the ground;[238] nor that they +ever found it an unrewarded obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered +faithfully to the command--"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do--do it +with thy might."[239] + +These are the two great and constant lessons which our labourers teach +us of the mystery of life. But there is another, and a sadder one, +which they cannot teach us, which we must read on their tombstones. + +"Do it with thy might." There have been myriads upon myriads of human +creatures who have obeyed this law--who have put every breath and +nerve of their being into its toil--who have devoted every hour, and +exhausted every faculty--who have bequeathed their unaccomplished +thoughts at death--who, being dead, have yet spoken,[240] by majesty of +memory, and strength of example. And, at last, what has all this +"Might" of humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of labour and +sorrow? What has it _done_? Take the three chief occupations and arts +of men, one by one, and count their achievements. Begin with the +first--the lord of them all--Agriculture. Six thousand years have +passed since we were sent to till the ground, from which we were +taken. How much of it is tilled? How much of that which is, wisely or +well? In the very centre and chief garden of Europe--where the two +forms of parent Christianity have had their fortresses--where the +noble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, and the noble Protestants of +the Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for dateless ages, their faiths +and liberties--there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild in +devastation; and the marshes, which a few hundred men could redeem +with a year's labour, still blast their helpless inhabitants into +fevered idiotism. That is so, in the centre of Europe! While, on the +near coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab +woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for famine. And, with +all the treasures of the East at our feet, we, in our own dominion, +could not find a few grains of rice, for a people that asked of us no +more; but stood by, and saw five hundred thousand of them perish of +hunger.[241] + +Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take the next head of +human arts--weaving; the art of queens, honoured of all noble +Heathen women, in the person of their virgin goddess[242]--honoured +of all Hebrew women, by the word of their wisest king--"She layeth +her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; she +stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid of the snow +for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. +She maketh herself covering of tapestry; her clothing is silk and +purple. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth +girdles unto the merchant."[243] What have we done in all these +thousands of years with this bright art of Greek maid and Christian +matron? Six thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to weave? +Might not every naked wall have been purple with tapestry, and every +feeble breast fenced with sweet colours from the cold? What have we +done? Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some poor +covering for our bodies. We set our streams to work for us, and +choke the air with fire, to turn our pinning-wheels--and,--_are we +yet clothed_? Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe foul +with the sale of cast clouts and rotten rags?[244] Is not the beauty +of your sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, with +better honour, nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest, and +the suckling of the wolf in her den? And does not every winter's +snow robe what you have not robed, and shroud what you have not +shrouded; and every winter's wind bear up to heaven its wasted +souls, to witness against you hereafter, by the voice of their +Christ,--"I was naked, and ye clothed me not"?[245] + +Lastly--take the Art of Building--the strongest--proudest--most +orderly--most enduring of the arts of man; that of which the produce +is in the surest manner accumulative, and need not perish, or be +replaced; but if once well done, will stand more strongly than the +unbalanced rocks--more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art +which is associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; with +which men record their power--satisfy their enthusiasm--make sure +their defence--define and make dear their habitation. And in six +thousand years of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of +all that skill and strength, _no_ vestige is left, but fallen stones, +that encumber the fields and impede the streams. But, from this waste +of disorder, and of time, and of rage, what _is_ left to us? +Constructive and progressive creatures that we are, with ruling +brains, and forming hands, capable of fellowship, and thirsting for +fame, can we not contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, +or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea? The white surf rages in +vain against the ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent +life; but only ridges of formless ruin mark the places where once +dwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells for each +of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in homes +that consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners of +our streets, rises up the cry of the homeless--"I was a stranger, and +ye took me not in."[246] + +Must it be always thus? Is our life for ever to be without +profit--without possession? Shall the strength of its generations be +as barren as death; or cast away their labour, as the wild fig-tree +casts her untimely figs?[247] Is it all a dream then--the desire of the +eyes and the pride of life--or, if it be, might we not live in nobler +dream than this? The poets and prophets, the wise men, and the +scribes, though they have told us nothing about a life to come, have +told us much about the life that is now. They have had--they +also,--their dreams, and we have laughed at them. They have dreamed of +mercy, and of justice; they have dreamed of peace and good-will; they +have dreamed of labour undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed; they +have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in store; they +have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of providence in law; of +gladness of parents, and strength of children, and glory of grey +hairs. And at these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held them +for idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we +accomplished with our realities? Is this what has come of our worldly +wisdom, tried against their folly? this, our mightiest possible, +against their impotent ideal? or, have we only wandered among the +spectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of the tombs, instead +of visions of the Almighty; and walked after the imaginations of our +evil hearts,[248] instead of after the counsels of Eternity, until our +lives--not in the likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of +hell--have become "as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and +then vanisheth away"?[249] + +_Does_ it vanish then? Are you sure of that?--sure, that the +nothingness of the grave will be a rest from this troubled +nothingness; and that the coiling shadow, which disquiets itself in +vain, cannot change into the smoke of the torment that ascends for +ever?[250] Will any answer that they _are_ sure of it, and that there +is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither they go?[251] Be +it so: will you not, then, make as sure of the Life that now is, as +you are of the Death that is to come? Your hearts are wholly in this +world--will you not give them to it wisely, as well as perfectly? And +see, first of all, that you _have_ hearts, and sound hearts, too, to +give. Because you have no heaven to look for, is that any reason that +you should remain ignorant of this wonderful and infinite earth, which +is firmly and instantly given you in possession? Although your days +are numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary that +you should share the degradation of the brute, because you are +condemned to its mortality; or live the life of the moth, and of the +worm, because you are to companion them in the dust? Not so; we may +have but a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds +only--perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our time and best, looked back +on, will be but as a moment, as the twinkling of an eye; still we are +men, not insects; we are living spirits, not passing clouds. "He +maketh the winds His messengers; the momentary fire, His minister";[252] +and shall we do less than _these_? Let us do the work of men while +we bear the form of them; and, as we snatch our narrow portion of +time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance of passion +out of Immortality--even though our lives _be_ as a vapour, that +appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. + +But there are some of you who believe not this--who think this +cloud of life has no such close--that it is to float, revealed and +illumined, upon the floor of heaven, in the day when He cometh with +clouds, and every eye shall see Him.[253] Some day, you believe, +within these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us the +judgment will be set, and the books opened.[254] If that be true, +far more than that must be true. Is there but one day of judgment? +Why, for us every day is a day of judgment--every day is a Dies +Iræ,[255] and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its +West. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave are +opened? It waits at the doors of your houses--it waits at the +corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment--the +insects that we crush are our judges--the moments that we fret away +are our judges--the elements that feed us, judge, as they +minister--and the pleasures that deceive us, judge as they indulge. +Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear the form of +them, if indeed those lives are _Not_ as a vapour, and do _Not_ +vanish away. + +"The work of men"--and what is that? Well, we may any of us know very +quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of +us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of +what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of +Ananias,[256] and it is a mortal one--we want to keep back part of the +price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only +harm in a cross was the _weight_ of it--as if it was only a thing to +be carried, instead of to be--crucified upon. "They that are His have +crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."[257] Does that +mean, think you, that in time of national distress, of religious +trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of humanity--none of us +will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put themselves to any +wholesome work, none take so much as a tag of lace off their footmen's +coats, to save the world? Or does it rather mean, that they are ready +to leave houses, lands, and kindreds--yes, and life, if need be? +Life!--some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless as we +have made it. But "_station_ in Life"--how many of us are ready to +quit _that_? Is it not always the great objection, where there is +question of finding something useful to do--"We cannot leave our +stations in Life"? + +Those of us who really cannot--that is to say, who can only maintain +themselves by continuing in some business or salaried office, have +already something to do; and all that they have to see to is, that +they do it honestly and with all their might. But with most people who +use that apology, "remaining in the station of life to which +Providence has called them" means keeping all the carriages, and all +the footmen and large houses they can possibly pay for; and, once for +all, I say that if ever Providence _did_ put them into stations of +that sort--which is not at all a matter of certainty--Providence is +just now very distinctly calling them out again. Levi's station in +life was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and +Paul's, the antechambers of the High Priest,--which "station in life" +each had to leave, with brief notice. + +And, whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, those of us +who mean to fulfil our duty ought first to live on as little as we +can; and, secondly, to do all the wholesome work for it we can, and to +spend all we can spare in doing all the sure good we can. + +And sure good is, first in feeding people, then in dressing people, +then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly pleasing people, with +arts, or sciences, or any other subject of thought. + +I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let yourselves be +deceived by any of the common talk of "indiscriminate charity." The +order to us is not to feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious +hungry, nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply to +feed the hungry.[258] It is quite true, infallibly true, that if any +man will not work, neither should he eat[259]--think of that, and every +time you sit down to your dinner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, +before you ask a blessing, "How much work have I done to-day for my +dinner?" But the proper way to enforce that order on those below you, +as well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest people +to starve together, but very distinctly to discern and seize your +vagabond; and shut your vagabond up out of honest people's way, and +very sternly then see that, until he has worked, he does _not_ eat. +But the first thing is to be sure you have the food to give; and, +therefore, to enforce the organization of vast activities in +agriculture and in commerce, for the production of the wholesomest +food, and proper storing and distribution of it, so that no famine +shall any more be possible among civilized beings There is plenty of +work in this business alone, and at once, for any number of people who +like to engage in it. + +Secondly, dressing people--that is to say, urging every one within +reach of your influence to be always neat and clean, and giving them +means of being so. In so far as they absolutely refuse, you must give +up the effort with respect to them, only taking care that no children +within your sphere of influence shall any more be brought up with such +habits; and that every person who is willing to dress with propriety +shall have encouragement to do so. And the first absolutely necessary +step towards this is the gradual adoption of a consistent dress for +different ranks of persons, so that their rank shall be known by their +dress; and the restriction of the changes of fashion within certain +limits. All which appears for the present quite impossible; but it is +only so far even difficult as it is difficult to conquer our vanity, +frivolity, and desire to appear what we are not. And it is not, nor +ever shall be, creed of mine, that these mean and shallow vices are +unconquerable by Christian women. + +And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may think should have +been put first, but I put it third, because we must feed and clothe +people where we find them, and lodge them afterwards. And providing +lodgment for them means a great deal of vigorous legislation, and +cutting down of vested interests that stand in the way, and after +that, or before that, so far as we can get it, thorough sanitary and +remedial action in the houses that we have; and then the building of +more, strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, kept in +proportion to their streams, and walled round, so that there may be no +festering and wretched suburb anywhere, but clean and busy street +within, and the open country without, with a belt of beautiful garden +and orchard round the walls, so that from any part of the city +perfectly fresh air and grass, and the sight of far horizon, might be +reachable in a few minutes' walk. This is the final aim; but in +immediate action every minor and possible good to be instantly done, +when, and as, we can; roofs mended that have holes in them--fences +patched that have gaps in them--walls buttressed that totter--and +floors propped that shake; cleanliness and order enforced with our own +hands and eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all the fine +arts will healthily follow. I myself have washed a flight of stone +stairs all down, with bucket and broom, in a Savoy inn, where they +hadn't washed their stairs since they first went up them; and I never +made a better sketch than that afternoon. + +These, then, are the three first needs of civilized life; and the law +for every Christian man and woman is, that they shall be in direct +service towards one of these three needs, as far as is consistent with +their own special occupation, and if they have no special business, +then wholly in one of these services. And out of such exertion in +plain duty all other good will come; for in this direct contention +with material evil, you will find out the real nature of all evil; you +will discern by the various kinds of resistance, what is really the +fault and main antagonism to good; also you will find the most +unexpected helps and profound lessons given, and truths will come thus +down to us which the speculation of all our lives would never have +raised us up to. You will find nearly every educational problem +solved, as soon as you truly want to do something; everybody will +become of use in their own fittest way, and will learn what is best +for them to know in that use. Competitive examination will then, and +not till then, be wholesome, because it will be daily, and calm, and +in practice; and on these familiar arts, and minute, but certain and +serviceable knowledges, will be surely edified and sustained the +greater arts and splendid theoretical sciences. + +But much more than this. On such holy and simple practice will be +founded, indeed, at last, an infallible religion. The greatest of all +the mysteries of life, and the most terrible, is the corruption of +even the sincerest religion, which is not daily founded on rational, +effective, humble, and helpful action. Helpful action, observe! for +there is just one law, which obeyed, keeps all religions +pure--forgotten, makes them all false. Whenever in any religious +faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points in +which we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the devil's +power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's thanksgiving--"Lord, I +thank Thee that I am not as other men are."[260] At every moment of our +lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with +other people, but in what we agree with them; and the moment we find +we can agree as to anything that should be done, kind or good, (and +who but fools couldn't?) then do it; push at it together: you can't +quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the moment that even the best men +stop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity for +piety, and if's all over. I will not speak of the crimes which in past +times have been committed in the name of Christ, nor of the follies +which are at this hour held to be consistent with obedience to Him; +but I _will_ speak of the morbid corruption and waste of vital power +in religious sentiment, by which the pure strength of that which +should be the guiding soul of every nation, the splendour of its +youthful manhood, and spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted or +cast away. You may see continually girls who have never been taught to +do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, +who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole life +has been passed either in play or in pride; you will find girls like +these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of +religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them through the +irksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over the +meaning of the great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to be +understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of +their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences +warped into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws of +common serviceable life would have either solved for them in an +instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a girl any true work that +will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the +consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better +for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform +itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace. + +So with our youths. We once taught them to make Latin verses, and +called them educated; now we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a +ball with a bat, and call them educated. Can they plough, can they +sow, can they plant at the right time, or build with a steady hand? Is +it the effort of their lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in +thought, lovely in word and deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay with +many, and the strength of England is in them, and the hope; but we +have to turn their courage from the toil of war to the toil of mercy; +and their intellect from dispute of words to discernment of things; +and their knighthood from the errantry of adventure to the state and +fidelity of a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall abide, for them, +and for us, an incorruptible felicity, and an infallible religion; +shall abide for us Faith, no more to be assailed by temptation, no +more to be defended by wrath and by fear;--shall abide with us Hope, +no more to be quenched by the years that overwhelm, or made ashamed by +the shadows that betray:--shall abide for us, and with us, the +greatest of these; the abiding will, the abiding name of our Father. +For the greatest of these is Charity.[261] + + + [230] _Isaiah_ xl, 12. + + [231] I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to + set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and + what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for + wealth. [Ruskin.] + + [232] See Wordsworth's poem, _My heart leaps up when I behold_. + + [233] See _Genesis_ ii, 15, and the opening lines of the first + selection in this volume. + + [234] _Joshua_ ix, 21. + + [235] In his _Discourses on Art_. Cf. pp. 24 ff. above. + + [236] See _The Two Paths_, §§ 28 _et seq_. [Ruskin.] + + [237] References mainly to the Irish Land Question, on which Ruskin + agreed with Mill and Gladstone in advocating the establishment of a + peasant-proprietorship in Ireland. + + [238] _Genesis_ iii, 19. + + [239] _Ecclesiastes_ ix, 10. + + [240] _Hebrews_ xi, 4. + + [241] During the famine in the Indian province of Orissa. + + [242] Athena, goddess of weaving. + + [243] _Proverbs_ xxxi, 19-22, 24. + + [244] _Jeremiah_ xxxviii, 11. + + [245] _Matthew_ xxv, 43. + + [246] _Matthew_ xxv, 43. + + [247] _Revelation_ vi, 13. + + [248] _Jeremiah_ xi, 8. + + [249] _James_ iv, 14. + + [250] _Psalms_ xxxix, 6 and _Revelation_ xiv, 11. + + [251] _Ecclesiastes_ ix, 10. + + [252] _Psalms_ civ, 4. + + [253] _Revelation_ i, 7. + + [254] _Daniel_ vii, 10. + + [255] _Dies Iræ_, the name generally given (from the opening words) + to the most famous of the mediæval hymns, usually ascribed to the + Franciscan Thomas of Celano (died c. 1255). It is composed in + triplets of rhyming trochaic tetrameters, and describes the Last + Judgment in language of magnificent grandeur, passing into a + plaintive plea for the souls of the dead. + + [256] _Acts_ v, 1, 2. + + [257] _Galatians_ v. 24. + + [258] _Isaiah_ lviii, 7. + + [259] 2 _Thessalonians_ iii, 10. + + [260] _Luke_ xviii, 11. + + [261] 1 _Corinthians_ xiii, 13. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + + +_Editions_. The standard edition of Ruskin is that of Cook and + Wedderburn in 34 volumes. Most of his better-known works may + be had in cheap and convenient forms. + +The best lives are: + +COLLINGWOOD, W.G. The Life and Work of John Ruskin Houghton Mifflin + Company, 1893. (2 vols.) The standard biography. + +HARRISON, P. John Ruskin (English Men of Letters). The Macmillan + Company, 1902. A short and readable biography. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Selections From the Works of John +Ruskin, by John Ruskin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN *** + +***** This file should be named 15200-8.txt or 15200-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/2/0/15200/ + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Tinker, Ph.D.. +</title> +<style type="text/css"> + <!-- + + body {margin-left: 13%; + margin-right: 13%;} + + p {text-indent: 1em; + text-align: justify;} + + .ctr {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em;} + + .noindent {text-indent: 0em;} + + .chapter {text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1.5em; + margin-bottom: 1.5em; + text-align: center; + font-size: 140%; + font-weight: bold; + font-variant: small-caps;} + + .quote {text-align: justify; + margin-left: 2em; + margin-right: 1.95em; + text-indent: 0em;} + + .quoteleft {margin-left: 2em; + text-indent: 0em; + font-size: 95%;} + + .footnote {margin-left: 0%; + margin-right: 0%; + font-size: 0.96em; + text-indent: 0em;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + + hr.long {text-align: center; + width: 95%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em;} + + hr.med {text-align: center; + width: 60%; + margin-top: 1.5em; + margin-bottom: 2em;} + + hr.short {text-align: center; + width: 25%; + margin-top: 1.5em; + margin-bottom: 2em;} + + ul {list-style-type: none; + margin-left: -.7em; + text-align: left;} + + ol {list-style-type: none; + margin-left: -.9em; + text-align: left;} + + .lsidenote {position: absolute; + left: 2%; right: 88%; + font-size: 0.8em; + text-indent: 0em; + text-align: center;} + + .rsidenote {position: absolute; + left: 88%; right: 2%; + font-size: 0.8em; + text-indent: 0em; + text-align: center;} + + .poem {margin-left:8%; + margin-right:8%; + margin-bottom: 1em; + text-align: left; + font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; + font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p {margin: 0; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; + font-size: 0.94em;} + .poem p.i2 {margin-left: 1em; font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p.i4 {margin-left: 2em; font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p.i6 {margin-left: 3em; font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p.i8 {margin-left: 4em; font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p.i10 {margin-left: 5em; font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p.i12 {margin-left: 6em; font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p.i16 {margin-left: 8em; font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p.i18 {margin-left: 10em; font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p.i20 {margin-left: 12em; font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p.i22 {margin-left: 14em; font-size: 0.96em;} + .poem p.i25 {margin-left: 16em; font-size: 0.96em;} + + + a:link {color:#00C; + text-decoration:none; + font-weight: bold;} + link {color:#00C; + text-decoration:none;} + a:visited {color:#00C;; + text-decoration:none;} + a:hover {color:#F00;} + +</style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's Selections From the Works of John Ruskin, 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: Selections From the Works of John Ruskin + +Author: John Ruskin + +Release Date: February 28, 2005 [EBook #15200] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h3> +<i>Riverside College Classics</i> +</h3> + +<h1> +SELECTIONS +</h1> + +<h1> +FROM THE WORKS OF +</h1> + +<h1> +JOHN RUSKIN +</h1> + +<h3> +EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY +</h3> + +<h2> +CHAUNCEY B. TINKER, Ph.D.<br> +<i><small>Professor of English in Yale College</small></i> +</h2> + + +<h5> +BOSTON—NEW YORK—CHICAGO—SAN FRANCISCO<br> +HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br> +The Riverside Press Cambridge +</h5> + +<h4> +1908 +</h4> + +<h5> +BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY<br> +</h5> + +<h5> +The Riverside Press<br> +CAMBRIDGE—MASSACHUSETTS<br> +PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.<br> +</h5> +<hr class="long"> +<h3> +PREFACE +</h3> + +<p> +In making the following selections, I have tried to avoid the +appearance of such a volume as used to be entitled <i>Elegant Extracts</i>. +Wherever practicable, entire chapters or lectures are given, or at +least passages of sufficient length to insure a correct notion of the +general complexion of Ruskin's work. The text is in all cases that of +the first editions, unless these were later revised by Ruskin himself. +The original spelling and punctuation are preserved, but a few minor +changes have been made for the sake of uniformity among the various +extracts. For similar reasons, Ruskin's numbering of paragraphs is +dispensed with. +</p> + +<p> +I have aimed not to multiply notes. Practically all Ruskin's own +annotation is given, with the exception of one or two very long and +somewhat irrelevant notes from <i>Stones of Venice</i>. It has not been +deemed necessary to give the dates of every painter or to explain +every geographical reference. On the other hand, the sources of most +of the quotations are indicated. In the preparation of these notes, +the magnificent library edition of Messrs. Cook and Wedderburn has +inevitably been of considerable assistance; but all their references +have been verified, many errors have been corrected, and much has of +course been added. +</p> + +<p> +In closing I wish to express my obligation to my former colleague, Dr. +Lucius H. Holt, without whose assistance this volume would never have +appeared. He wrote a number of the notes, including the short prefaces +to the various selections, and prepared the manuscript for the +printer. +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +C.B.T.<br> +<i>September, 1908</i>. +</p> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="med"> + +<h3> +CONTENTS +</h3> + +<ul> +<li><a href="#Intro">INTRODUCTION</a> +<ul><li><a href="#Life">The Life of Ruskin</a></li> +<li><a href="#Unity">The Unity of Ruskin's Writings</a></li> +<li><a href="#Style">Ruskin's Style</a></li></ul></li></ul> + + +<ul> +<li><a href="#Modern">SELECTIONS FROM MODERN PAINTERS</a> +<ul><li><a href="#Earth">The Earth-Veil</a></li> +<li><a href="#Mountain">The Mountain Glory</a></li> +<li><a href="#Sunrise">Sunrise on the Alps</a></li> +<li><a href="#Grand">The Grand Style</a></li> +<li><a href="#Realization">Of Realization</a></li> +<li><a href="#Novelty">Of the Novelty of Landscape</a></li> +<li><a href="#Pathetic">Of the Pathetic Fallacy</a></li> +<li><a href="#Classical">Of Classical Landscape</a></li> +<li><a href="#Modernland">Of Modern Landscape</a></li> +<li><a href="#Two">The Two Boyhoods</a></li> +</ul></li></ul> + + +<ul><li><a href="#Stones">SELECTIONS FROM THE STONES OF VENICE</a> +<ul><li><a href="#Throne">The Throne</a></li> +<li><a href="#Marks">St. Mark's</a></li> +<li><a href="#Gothic">Characteristics of Gothic Architecture</a></li> +</ul></li></ul> + + +<ul><li><a href="#Lamps">SELECTIONS FROM THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE</a> +<ul><li><a href="#Memory">The Lamp of Memory</a></li> +<li><a href="#Obedience">The Lamp of Obedience</a></li> +</ul></li></ul> + + +<ul><li><a href="#Lectures">SELECTIONS FROM LECTURES ON ART</a> +<ul><li><a href="#Inaugural">Inaugural</a></li> +<li><a href="#Morals">The Relation of Art to Morals</a></li> +<li><a href="#Relation">The Relation of Art to Use</a></li> +</ul></li></ul> + +<ul> +<li><a href="#History">ART AND HISTORY</a></li></ul> + +<ul> +<li><a href="#Traffic">TRAFFIC</a></li></ul> + +<ul> +<li><a href="#LifeandArts">LIFE AND ITS ARTS</a></li></ul> + +<ul> +<li><a href="#Biblio">BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</a></li> +</ul> + +<p> </p> + +<h3> +ILLUSTRATIONS +</h3> + + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>JOHN RUSKIN IN 1857</li> +<li>TURNER'S FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE</li> +<li>CHURCH OF ST. MARK, VENICE</li> +<li>ST. MARK'S: CENTRAL ARCH OF FAÇADE</li> +</ul> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="med"> +<a name="Intro"></a><p class="chapter"> +Introduction +</p> + + +<p class="rsidenote"> +Two conflicting tendencies in Ruskin. +</p> + +<p> +It is distinctive of the nineteenth century that in its passion for +criticising everything in heaven and earth it by no means spared to +criticise itself. Alike in Carlyle's fulminations against its +insincerity, in Arnold's nice ridicule of Philistinism, and in +Ruskin's repudiation of everything modern, we detect that fine +dissatisfaction with the age which is perhaps only proof of its +idealistic trend. For the various ills of society, each of these men +had his panacea. What Carlyle had found in hero-worship and Arnold in +Hellenic culture, Ruskin sought in the study of art; and it is of the +last importance to remember that throughout his work he regarded +himself not merely as a writer on painting or buildings or myths or +landscape, but as the appointed critic of the age. For there existed +in him, side by side with his consuming love of the beautiful, a +rigorous Puritanism which was constantly correcting any tendency +toward a mere cult of the aesthetic. It is with the interaction of +these two forces that any study of the life and writings of Ruskin +should be primarily concerned. +</p> + +<a name="Life"></a><p> </p> +<h3> +I +</h3> + +<h4> +THE LIFE OF RUSKIN +</h4> + + +<p class="rsidenote">Ancestry.</p> + +<p> +It is easy to trace in the life of Ruskin these two forces tending +respectively toward the love of beauty and toward the contempt of mere +beauty. They are, indeed, present from the beginning. He inherited +from his Scotch parents that upright fearlessness which has always +characterized the race. His stern mother "devoted him to God before he +was born,"<a href="#fn1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> and she guarded her gift with unremitting but perhaps +misguided caution. The child was early taught to find most of his +entertainment within himself, and when he did not, he was whipped. He +had no playmates and few toys. His chief story-book was the Bible, +which he read many times from cover to cover at his mother's knee. +His father, the "perfectly honest wine-merchant," seems to have been +the one to foster the boy's aesthetic sense; he was in the habit of +reading aloud to his little family, and his son's apparently genuine +appreciation of Scott, Pope, and Homer dates from the incredibly early +age of five. It was his father, also, to whom he owed his early +acquaintance with the finest landscape, for the boy was his companion +in yearly business trips about Britain, and later visited, in his +parents' company, Belgium, western Germany, and the Alps. +</p> + +<p class="lsidenote">Early education.</p> + +<p> +All this of course developed the child's precocity. He was early +suffered and even encouraged to compose verses;<a href="#fn2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> by ten he had +written a play, which has unfortunately been preserved. The hot-house +rearing which his parents believed in, and his facility in teaching +himself, tended to make a regular course of schooling a mere +annoyance; such schooling as he had did not begin till he was fifteen, +and lasted less than two years, and was broken by illness. But the +chief effect of the sheltered life and advanced education to which he +was subjected was to endow him with depth at the expense of breadth, +and to deprive him of a possibly vulgar, but certainly healthy, +contact with his kind, which, one must believe, would have checked a +certain disposition in him to egotism, sentimentality, and dogmatic +vehemence. "The bridle and blinkers were never taken off me," he +writes.<a href="#fn3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p class="lsidenote">Student at Oxford.</p> + +<p class="rsidenote">Traveling in Europe. +</p> + +<p> +At Oxford—whither his cautious mother pursued him—Ruskin seems to +have been impressed in no very essential manner by curriculum or +college mates. With learning <i>per se</i> he was always dissatisfied and +never had much to do; his course was distinguished not so much by +erudition as by culture. He easily won the Newdigate prize in poetry; +his rooms in Christ Church were hung with excellent examples of +Turner's landscapes,—the gift of his art-loving father,—of which he +had been an intimate student ever since the age of thirteen. But his +course was interrupted by an illness, apparently of a tuberculous +nature, which necessitated total relaxation and various trips in Italy +and Switzerland, where he seems to have been healed by walking among +his beloved Alps. For many years thereafter he passed months of his +time in these two countries, accompanied sometimes by his parents and +sometimes rather luxuriously, it seems, by valet and guide. +</p> + +<p class="rsidenote">Career as an author begins.</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile he had commenced his career as author with the first volume +of <i>Modern Painters</i>, begun, the world knows, as a short defense of +Turner, originally intended for nothing more than a magazine article. +But the role of art-critic and law-giver pleased the youth,—he was +only twenty-four when the volume appeared,—and having no desire to +realize the ambition of his parents and become a bishop, and even less +to duplicate his father's career as vintner, he gladly seized the +opportunity thus offered him to develop his aesthetic vein and to +redeem the public mind from its vulgar apathy thereby. He continued +his work on <i>Modern Painters</i>, with some intermissions, for eighteen +years, and supplemented it with the equally famous <i>Seven Lamps of +Architecture</i> in 1849, and <i>The Stones of Venice</i> in 1853. +</p> + +<p class="rsidenote">Domestic troubles.</p> + +<p> +This life of zealous work and brilliant recognition was interrupted in +1848 by Ruskin's amazing marriage to Miss Euphemia Gray, a union into +which he entered at the desire of his parents with a docility as +stupid as it was stupendous. Five years later the couple were quietly +divorced, that Mrs. Ruskin might marry Millais. All the author's +biographers maintain an indiscreet reserve in discussing the affair, +but there can be no concealment of the fact that its effect upon +Ruskin was profound in its depression. Experiences like this and his +later sad passion for Miss La Touche at once presage and indicate his +mental disorder, and no doubt had their share—a large one—in +causing Ruskin's dissatisfaction with everything, and above all with +his own life and work. Be this as it may, it is at this time in the +life of Ruskin that we must begin to reckon with the decline of his +aesthetic and the rise of his ethical impulse; his interest passes +from art to conduct. It is also the period in which he began his +career as lecturer, his chief interest being the social life of his +age. +</p> + +<p class="lsidenote">Ruskin's increasing interest in social questions. +</p> + +<p> +By 1860, he was publishing the papers on political economy, later +called <i>Unto this Last</i>, which roused so great a storm of protest +when they appeared in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i> that their publication +had to be suspended. The attitude of the public toward such works +as these,—its alternate excitement and apathy,—the death of his +parents, combined with the distressing events mentioned above, +darkened Ruskin's life and spoiled his interest in everything that +did not tend to make the national life more thoughtfully solemn. +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + "It seems to me that now ... the thoughts of the true nature of + our life, and of its powers and responsibilities should present + themselves with absolute sadness and sternness."<a href="#fn4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +His lectures as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, a post which he +held at various times from 1870 to 1883, failed to re-establish his +undistracted interest in things beautiful. +</p> + +<p class="lsidenote">Triumph of the reformer over the art-critic. +</p> + +<p> +The complete triumph of the reformer over the art-critic is marked by +<i>Fors Clavigera</i>, a series of letters to workingmen, begun New Year's +Day, 1871, in which it was proposed to establish a model colony of +peasants, whose lives should be made simple, honest, happy, and even +cultured, by a return to more primitive methods of tilling the soil +and of making useful and beautiful objects. The Guild of St. George, +established to "slay the dragon of industrialism," to dispose of +machinery, slums, and discontent, consumed a large part of Ruskin's +time and money. He had inherited a fortune of approximately a million +dollars, and he now began to dispose of it in various charitable +schemes,—establishing tea-shops, supporting young painters, planning +model tenements, but, above all, in elaborating his ideas for the +Guild. The result of it all—whatever particular reforms were effected +or manual industries established—was, to Ruskin's view, failure, and +his mind, weakening under the strain of its profound disappointments, +at last crashed in ruin. +</p> + +<p class="rsidenote">Death in 1900.</p> + +<p> +It is needless to follow the broken author through the desolation +of his closing years to his death in 1900. Save for his charming +reminiscences, <i>Præterita</i>, his work was done; the long struggle was +over, the struggle of one man to reduce the complexities of a national +life to an apostolic simplicity, to make it beautiful and good, +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Till the high God behold it from beyond,</p> +<p>And enter it.</p></div></div> + +<a name="Unity"></a><p> </p> +<h3> +II +</h3> + +<h4> +THE UNITY OF RUSKIN'S WRITINGS +</h4> + + +<p class="rsidenote">Diversity of his writings.</p> + +<p> +Ruskin is often described as an author of bewildering variety, whose +mind drifted waywardly from topic to topic—from painting to political +economy, from architecture to agriculture—with a license as +illogical as it was indiscriminating. To this impression, Ruskin +himself sometimes gave currency. He was, for illustration, once +announced to lecture on crystallography, but, as we are informed by +one present,<a href="#fn5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> he opened by asserting that he was really about to +lecture on Cistercian architecture; nor did it greatly matter what the +title was; "for," said he, "if I had begun to speak about Cistercian +abbeys, I should have been sure to get on crystals presently; and if +I had begun upon crystals, I should soon have drifted into +architecture." Those who conceive of Ruskin as being thus a kind of +literary Proteus like to point to the year 1860, that of the +publication of his tracts on economics, as witnessing the greatest +and suddenest of his changes, that from reforming art to reforming +society; and it is true that this year affords a simple dividing-line +between Ruskin's earlier work, which is sufficiently described by the +three titles, <i>Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture</i>, and +<i>The Stones of Venice</i>, and his later work, chiefly on social subjects +such as are discussed in <i>Unto This Last, The Crown of Wild Olive</i>, +and <i>Fors Clavigera</i>. And yet we cannot insist too often on the +essential unity of this work, for, viewed in the large, it betrays one +continuous development. The seeds of <i>Fors</i> are in <i>The Stones of +Venice</i>. +</p> + +<p class="lsidenote">Underlying idea in all his works.</p> + +<p> +The governing idea of Ruskin's first published work, <i>Modern Painters, +Volume I</i>, was a moral idea. The book was dedicated to the principle +that that art is greatest which deals with the greatest number of +greatest ideas,—those, we learn presently, which reveal divine +truth; the office of the painter, we are told,<a href="#fn6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> is the same as that +of the preacher, for "the duty of both is to take for each discourse +one essential truth." As if recalling this argument that the painter +is a preacher, Carlyle described <i>The Stones of Venice</i> as a "sermon +in stones." In the idea that all art, when we have taken due account +of technique and training, springs from a moral character, we find the +unifying principle of Ruskin's strangely diversified work. The very +title <i>The Seven Lamps of Architecture</i>, with its chapters headed +"Sacrifice," "Obedience," etc., is a sufficient illustration of +Ruskin's identification of moral principles with aesthetic principles. +A glance at the following pages of this book will show how Ruskin is +for ever halting himself to demand the moral significance of some fair +landscape, gorgeous painting, heaven-aspiring cathedral. In "Mountain +Glory," for example, he refers to the mountains as "kindly in simple +lessons to the workman," and inquires later at what times mankind has +offered worship in these mountain churches; of the English cathedral +he says, "Weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who have +passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries";<a href="#fn7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> of +St. Mark's, "And what effect has this splendour on those who pass +beneath it?"—and it will be noticed on referring to "The Two +Boyhoods," that, in seeking to define the difference between Giorgione +and Turner, the author instinctively has recourse to distinguishing +the <i>religious</i> influences exerted on the two in youth. +</p> + +<p class="rsidenote">Underlying idea a moral one.</p> + +<p> +Now it is clear that a student of the relation of art to life, of work +to the character of the workman and of his nation, may, and in fact +inevitably must, be led in time to attend to the producer rather than +to the product, to the cause rather than to the effect; and if we +grant, with Ruskin, that the sources of art, namely, the national +life, are denied, it will obviously be the part, not only of humanity +but of common sense, for such a student to set about purifying the +social life of the nation. Whether the reformation proposed by Ruskin +be the proper method of attack is not the question we are here +concerned with; our only object at present being to call attention to +the fact that such a lecture as that on "Traffic" in <i>The Crown of +Wild Olive</i> is the logical outgrowth of such a chapter as "Ideas of +Beauty" in the first volume of <i>Modern Painters</i>. Between the author +who wrote in 1842, of the necessity of revealing new truths in +painting, "This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done, +for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to +his race. God appoints to every one of his creatures a separate +mission, and if they discharge it honourably ... there will assuredly +come of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall +shine before men, and be of service constant and holy,"<a href="#fn8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> and the +author who wrote, "That country is the richest which nourishes the +greatest number of noble and happy human beings,"<a href="#fn9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> or, "The +beginning of art is in getting our country clean, and our people +beautiful,"<a href="#fn10"><sup>[10]</sup></a>—between these two, I say, there is no essential +difference. They are not contradictory but consistent. +</p> + +<p class="lsidenote">Art dependent upon personal and national greatness.</p> + +<p> +Amidst the maze of subjects, then, which Ruskin, with kaleidoscopic +suddenness and variety, brings before the astonished gaze of his +readers, let them confidently hold this guiding clue. They will find +that Ruskin's "facts" are often not facts at all; they will discover +that many of Ruskin's choicest theories have been dismissed to the +limbo of exploded hypotheses; but they will seek long before they find +a more eloquent and convincing plea for the proposition that all great +art reposes upon a foundation of personal and national greatness. +Critics of Ruskin will show you that he began <i>Modern Painters</i> while +he was yet ignorant of the classic Italians; that he wrote <i>The Stones +of Venice</i> without realizing the full indebtedness of the Venetian to +the Byzantine architecture; that he proposed to unify the various +religious sects although he had no knowledge of theology; that he +attempted a reconstruction of society though he had had no scientific +training in political economy; but in all this neglect of mere fact +the sympathetic reader will discover that contempt for the letter +of the law which was characteristic of the nineteenth-century +prophet,—of Carlyle, of Arnold, and of Emerson,—and which, if it +be blindness, is that produced by an excess of light. +</p> + +<a name="Style"></a><p> </p> +<h3> +III +</h3> + +<h4> +RUSKIN'S STYLE +</h4> + +<p class="lsidenote">Sensuous-<br>ness of his style.</p> + +<p> +Many people regard the style of Ruskin as his chief claim to +greatness. If the time ever come when men no longer study him for +sermons in stones, they will nevertheless turn to his pages to enjoy +one of the most gorgeous prose styles of the nineteenth century. For a +parallel to the sensuous beauties of Ruskin's essays on art, one turns +instinctively to poetry; and of all the poets Ruskin is perhaps likest +Keats. His sentences, like the poet's, are thick-set with jeweled +phrases; they are full of subtle harmonies that respond, like a +Stradivarius, to the player's every mood. In its ornateness Ruskin's +style is like his favorite cathedral of Amiens, in the large stately, +in detail exquisite, profuse, and not without a touch of the +grotesque. It is the style of an artist. +</p> + +<p class="rsidenote">Ruskin's method of construction in description.</p> + +<p> +A critical fancy may even discover in the construction of his finest +descriptions a method not unlike that of a painter at work upon his +canvas. He blocks them out in large masses, then sketches and colors +rapidly for general effects, treating detail at first more or less +vaguely and collectively, but passing in the end to the elaboration of +detail in the concrete, touching the whole with an imaginative gleam +that lends a momentary semblance of life to the thing described, after +the manner of the "pathetic fallacy." Thus it is in the famous +description of St. Mark's:<a href="#fn11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> we are given first the largest general +impression, the "long, low pyramid of coloured light," which the +artist proceeds to "hollow beneath into five great vaulted porches," +whence he leads the eye slowly upwards amidst a mass of bewildering +detail—"a confusion of delight"—from which there slowly emerge those +concrete details with which the author particularly wishes to impress +us, "the breasts of the Greek horses blazing in their breadth of +golden strength and St. Mark's lion lifted on a blue field covered +with stars." In lesser compass we are shown the environs of Venice,<a href="#fn12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> +the general impression of the "long, low, sad-coloured line," being +presently broken by the enumeration of unanalyzed detail, "tufted +irregularly with brushwood and willows," and passing to concrete +detail in the hills of Arqua, "a dark cluster of purple pyramids." In +the still more miniature description of the original site of Venice<a href="#fn13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> +we have the same method: +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + "The black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath + the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor + and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the + tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with a + questioning cry." +</p> + +<p class="lsidenote">His love of color.</p> + +<p> +Equally characteristic of the painter is the ever-present use of +color. It is interesting merely to count the number and variety of +colors used in the descriptions. It will serve at least to call the +reader's attention to the felicitous choice of words used in +describing the opalescence of St. Mark's or the skillful combination +of the colors characteristic of the great Venetians in such a sentence +as, "the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armor shot angrily under +their blood-red mantle-folds"<a href="#fn14"><sup>[14]</sup></a>—a glimpse of a Giorgione. +</p> + +<p class="lsidenote">His love of prose rhythm.</p> + +<p> +He is even more attentive to the ear than to the eye. He loves the +sentence of stately rhythms and long-drawn harmonies, and he omits no +poetic device that can heighten the charm of sound,—alliteration, as +in the famous description of the streets of Venice, +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + "Far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless + waters proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor + the thistle could grow in those glancing fields";<a href="#fn15"><sup>[15]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +the balanced close for some long period, +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + "to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges and + to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in the + world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from + the burning heart of her Fortitude and splendour";<a href="#fn16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +and the tendency, almost a mannerism, to add to the music of his own +rhythm, the deep organ-notes of Biblical text and paraphrase. But if +we wish to see how aptly Ruskin's style responds to the tone of his +subject, we need but remark the rich liquid sentence descriptive of +Giorgione's home, +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + "brightness out of the north and balm from the south, and the stars + of evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched + heaven and circling sea,"<a href="#fn17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +which he has set over against the harsh explosiveness of +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + "Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit + or wall is formed by a close-set block of house to the back + windows of which it admits a few rays of light—" +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +the birthplace of Turner. +</p> + +<p class="rsidenote">His beauty of style often distracts from the thought.</p> + +<p> +But none knew better than Ruskin that a style so stiff with ornament +was likely to produce all manner of faults. In overloading his +sentences with jewelry he frequently obscures the sense; his beauties +often degenerate into mere prettiness; his sweetness cloys. His free +indulgence of the emotions, often at the expense of the intellect, +leads to a riotous extravagance of superlative. But, above all, his +richness distracts attention from matter to manner. In the case of an +author so profoundly in earnest, this could not but be unfortunate; +nothing enraged him more than to have people look upon the beauties of +his style rather than ponder the substance of his book. In a passage +of complacent self-scourging he says: +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + "For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the + misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not + without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing + so, until I was heavily punished for this pride by finding that + many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their + meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such language—if + indeed it ever were mine—is passing away from me; and whatever I + am now able to say at all I find myself forced to say with great + plainness."<a href="#fn18"><sup>[18]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p class="rsidenote">His picturesque extravagance of style.</p> + +<p> +But Ruskin's decision to speak with "great plainness" by no means made +the people of England attend to what he said rather than the way he +said it. He could be, and in his later work he usually was, strong +and clear; but the old picturesqueness and exuberance of passion were +with him still. The public discovered that it enjoyed Ruskin's +denunciations of machinery much as it had enjoyed his descriptions of +mountains, and, without obviously mending its ways, called loudly for +more. Lecture-rooms were crowded and editions exhausted by the ladies +and gentlemen of England, whose nerves were pleasantly thrilled with a +gentle surprise on being told that they had despised literature, art, +science, nature, and compassion, and that what they thought upon any +subject was "a matter of no serious importance"; that they could not +be said to have any thoughts at all—indeed, no right to think.<a href="#fn19"><sup>[19]</sup></a> +The fiercer his anathemas, the greater the applause; the louder he +shouted, the better he pleased. Let him split the ears of the +groundlings, let him out-Herod Herod,—the judicious might grieve, but +all would be excitedly attentive. Their Jeremiah seemed at times like +to become a jester,—there was a suggestion of the ludicrous in the +sudden passage from birds to Greek coins, to mills, to Walter Scott, +to millionaire malefactors,—a suggestion of acrobatic tumbling and +somersault; but he always got a hearing. In lecturing to the students +of a military academy he had the pleasing audacity to begin: +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + "Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came + unwillingly to-night, and many of you in merely contemptuous + curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting could possibly say, + or would venture to say, respecting your great art of war";<a href="#fn20"><sup>[20]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +after which stinging challenge, one has no doubt, any feeling of +offense was swallowed up in admiration of the speaker's physical +courage. +</p> + +<p class="lsidenote">Influence of Carlyle upon Ruskin.</p> + +<p class="rsidenote">The unity of Ruskin's style.</p> + +<p> +There can be little doubt that this later manner in which Ruskin +allowed his Puritan instincts to defeat his aestheticism, and indulged +to an alarming degree his gift of vituperation, was profoundly +influenced by his "master," Carlyle, who had long since passed into +his later and raucous manner. Carlyle's delight in the disciple's +diatribes probably encouraged the younger man in a vehemence of +invective to which his love of dogmatic assertion already rendered +him too prone. At his best, Ruskin, like Carlyle, reminds us of a +major prophet; at his worst he shrieks and heats the air. His high +indignations lead him into all manner of absurdity and self-contradiction. +An amusing instance of this may be given from <i>Sesame and Lilies</i>. In +the first lecture, which, it will be recalled, was given in aid of a +library fund, we find<a href="#fn21"><sup>[21]</sup></a> the remark, "We are filthy and foolish enough +to thumb one another's books out of circulating libraries." His friends +and his enemies, the clergy (who "teach a false gospel for hire") and +the scientists, the merchants and the universities, Darwin and Dante, +all had their share in the indignant lecturer's indiscriminate abuse. +And yet in all the tropical luxuriance of his inconsistency, one can +never doubt the man's sincerity. He never wrote for effect. He may +dazzle us, but his fire is never pyrotechnical; it always springs from +the deep volcanic heart of him. His was a fervor too easily stirred and +often ill-directed, but its wild brilliance cannot long be mistaken for +the sky-rocket's; it flares madly in all directions, now beautifying, +now appalling, the night, the fine ardor of the painter passing into +the fierce invective of the prophet. But in the end it is seen that +Ruskin's style, like his subject-matter, is a unity,—an emanation from +a divine enthusiasm making for "whatsoever things are lovely, +whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report." +</p> + +<p> </p> +<a name="Modern"></a><p> </p> +<p class="chapter"> +Selections from Modern Painters +</p> + + +<p> +The five volumes of <i>Modern Painters</i> appeared at various intervals +between 1843 and 1860, from the time Ruskin was twenty-four until he +was forty. The first volume was published in May, 1843; the second, in +April, 1846; the third, January 15, 1856; the fourth, April 14, 1856; +the last, in June, 1860. As his knowledge of his subject broadened and +deepened, we find the later volumes differing greatly in viewpoint +and style from the earlier; but, as stated in the preface to the last +volume, "in the main aim and principle of the book there is no +variation, from its first syllable to its last." Ruskin himself +maintained that the most important influence upon his thought in +preparation for his work in <i>Modern Painters</i> was not from his "love +of art, but of mountains and seas"; and all the power of judgment he +had obtained in art, he ascribed to his "steady habit of always +looking for the subject principally, and for the art only as the means +of expressing it." The first volume was published as the work of "a +graduate of Oxford," Ruskin "fearing that I might not obtain fair +hearing if the reader knew my youth." The author's proud father did +not allow the secret to be kept long. The title Ruskin originally +chose for the volume was <i>Turner and the Ancients</i>. To this Smith, +Elder & Co., his publishers, objected, and the substitution of <i>Modern +Painters</i> was their suggestion The following is the title-page of the +first volume in the original edition: +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +MODERN PAINTERS:<br> +<i>Their Superiority</i><br> +<i>In the Art of Landscape Painting</i><br> +<i>To</i> all<br> +<i>The Ancient Masters</i><br> +proved by examples of<br> +The True, the Beautiful, and the Intellectual,<br> +From the<br> +Works of Modern Artists, especially<br> +From those of J.M.W. Turner, +Esq., R.A.<br> +By a Graduate of Oxford<br> +(Quotation from Wordsworth)<br> +London: Smith, Elder & Co., 65 Cornhill.<br> +1843. +</p> + +<a name="Earth"></a><p> </p> +<h3> +THE EARTH-VEIL</h3> + +<h4>VOLUME V, CHAPTER I +</h4> + + +<p> +"To dress it and to keep it."<a href="#fn22"><sup>[22]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +That, then, was to be our work. Alas! what work have we set ourselves +upon instead! How have we ravaged the garden instead of kept +it—feeding our war-horses with its flowers, and splintering its trees +into spear-shafts! +</p> + +<p> +"And at the East a flaming sword."<a href="#fn22"><sup>[22]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Is its flame quenchless? and are those gates that keep the way indeed +passable no more? or is it not rather that we no more desire to enter? +For what can we conceive of that first Eden which we might not yet win +back, if we chose? It was a place full of flowers, we say. Well: the +flowers are always striving to grow wherever we suffer them; and the +fairer, the closer. There may, indeed, have been a Fall of Flowers, as +a Fall of Man; but assuredly creatures such as we are can now fancy +nothing lovelier than roses and lilies, which would grow for us side +by side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the Earth was white and red with +them, if we cared to have it so. And Paradise was full of pleasant +shades and fruitful avenues. Well: what hinders us from covering as +much of the world as we like with pleasant shade, and pure blossom, +and goodly fruit? Who forbids its valleys to be covered over with corn +till they laugh and sing? Who prevents its dark forests, ghostly and +uninhabitable, from being changed into infinite orchards, wreathing +the hills with frail-floreted snow, far away to the half-lighted +horizon of April, and flushing the face of all the autumnal earth with +glow of clustered food? But Paradise was a place of peace, we say, and +all the animals were gentle servants to us. Well: the world would yet +be a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and gentle service +should we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But so +long as we make sport of slaying bird and beast, so long as we choose +to contend rather with our fellows than with our faults, and make +battlefield of our meadows instead of pasture—so long, truly, the +Flaming Sword will still turn every way, and the gates of Eden remain +barred close enough, till we have sheathed the sharper flame of our +own passions, and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts. +</p> + +<p> +I have been led to see and feel this more and more, as I consider the +service which the flowers and trees, which man was at first appointed +to keep, were intended to render to him in return for his care; and +the services they still render to him, as far as he allows their +influence, or fulfils his own task towards them. For what infinite +wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, considered, as indeed it +is, as the means by which the earth becomes the companion of man—his +friend and his teacher! In the conditions which we have traced in its +rocks, there could only be seen preparation for his existence;—the +characters which enable him to live on it safely, and to work with it +easily—in all these it has been inanimate and passive; but vegetation +is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man. The +earth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except of +slow crystalline change; but at its surface, which human beings look +upon and deal with, it ministers to them through a veil of strange +intermediate being: which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but +cannot leave its appointed place; passes through life without +consciousness, to death without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth, +without its passion; and declines to the weakness of age, without its +regret. +</p> + +<p> +And in this mystery of intermediate being, entirely subordinate to us, +with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power as +we have the less responsibility for our treatment of the unsuffering +creature, most of the pleasures which we need from the external world +are gathered, and most of the lessons we need are written, all kinds +of precious grace and teaching being united in this link between the +Earth and Man; wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, +and discipline; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with +beautiful means of life. First, a carpet to make it soft for him; +then, a coloured fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading +of foliage to shade him from sun heat, and shade also the fallen rain; +that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish +the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage: easily to +be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments +(lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless, it +had been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less +elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the +sun warm the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of +winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable +according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into +infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his +service: cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening +oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling +charm: and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility +or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring +uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble +tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to +the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of +summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the +transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or +hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in +entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean—clothing, with +variegated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, +or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest +joy of humanity. +</p> + +<p> +Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good +for food, and for building, and for instruments in our hands, this +race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, +becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of +our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can +be far wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one is +assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has +brought them in his way. It is clearly possible to do without them, +for the great companionship of the sea and sky are all that sailors +need; and many a noble heart has been taught the best it had to learn +between dark stone walls. Still if human life be cast among trees at +all, the love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is a +sorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the "country," +in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been +the source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the words +"countryman, rustic, clown, paysan, villager," still signify a rude +and untaught person, as opposed to the words "townsman" and "citizen". +We accept this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, +somewhat too quietly; as if it were quite necessary and natural that +country-people should be rude, and townspeople gentle. Whereas I +believe that the result of each mode of life may, in some stages of +the world's progress, be the exact reverse; and that another use of +words may be forced upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we may +find ourselves saying: "Such and such a person is very gentle and +kind—he is quite rustic; and such and such another person is very +rude and ill-taught—he is quite urbane." +</p> + +<p> +At all events, cities have hitherto gained the better part of their +good report through our evil ways of going on in the world generally; +chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of fighting with each +other. No field, in the Middle Ages, being safe from devastation, and +every country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders, +peacefully-minded men necessarily congregated in cities, and walled +themselves in, making as few cross-country roads as possible: while +the men who sowed and reaped the harvests of Europe were only the +servants or slaves of the barons. The disdain of all agricultural +pursuits by the nobility, and of all plain facts by the monks, kept +educated Europe in a state of mind over which natural phenomena could +have no power; body and intellect being lost in the practice of war +without purpose, and the meditation of words without meaning. Men +learned the dexterity with sword and syllogism, which they mistook for +education, within cloister and tilt-yard; and looked on all the broad +space of the world of God mainly as a place for exercise of horses, or +for growth of food. +</p> + +<p> +There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of the +Earth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture of +Paul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio,<a href="#fn23"><sup>[23]</sup></a> in which the armies +meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses; the tender red +flowers tossing above the helmets, and glowing beneath the lowered +lances. For in like manner the whole of Nature only shone hitherto for +man between the tossing of helmet-crests; and sometimes I cannot but +think of the trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, in +that imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves in +the warm springtime, in vain for men; and all along the dells of +England her beeches cast their dappled shade only where the outlaw +drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase; and by the sweet +French rivers their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only +to show the flames of burning cities on the horizon, through the +tracery of their stems; amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the +twisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery; and on their +valley meadows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn +were washed with crimson at sunset. +</p> + +<p> +And indeed I had once purposed, in this work, to show what kind of +evidence existed respecting the possible influence of country life on +men; it seeming to me, then, likely that here and there a reader would +perceive this to be a grave question, more than most which we contend +about, political or social, and might care to follow it out with me +earnestly. +</p> + +<p> +The day will assuredly come when men will see that it <i>is</i> a +grave question; at which period, also, I doubt not, there will arise +persons able to investigate it. For the present, the movements of the +world seem little likely to be influenced by botanical law; or by any +other considerations respecting trees, than the probable price of +timber. I shall limit myself, therefore, to my own simple woodman's +work, and try to hew this book into its final shape, with the limited +and humble aim that I had in beginning it, namely, to prove how far +the idle and peaceable persons, who have hitherto cared about leaves +and clouds, have rightly seen, or faithfully reported of them. +</p> + +<a name="Mountain"></a><p> </p> +<h3> +THE MOUNTAIN GLORY +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 20 +</h4> + + +<p> +I have dwelt, in the foregoing chapter, on the sadness of the hills +with the greater insistence that I feared my own excessive love for +them might lead me into too favourable interpretation of their +influences over the human heart; or, at least, that the reader might +accuse me of fond prejudice, in the conclusions to which, finally, I +desire to lead him concerning them. For, to myself, mountains are the +beginning and the end of all natural scenery; in them, and in the +forms of inferior landscape that lead to them, my affections are +wholly bound up; and though I can look with happy admiration at the +lowland flowers, and woods, and open skies, the happiness is tranquil +and cold, like that of examining detached flowers in a conservatory, +or reading a pleasant book; and if the scenery be resolutely level, +insisting upon the declaration of its own flatness in all the detail +of it, as in Holland, or Lincolnshire, or Central Lombardy, it appears +to me like a prison, and I cannot long endure it. But the slightest +rise and fall in the road,—a mossy bank at the side of a crag of +chalk, with brambles at its brow, overhanging it,—a ripple over three +or four stones in the stream by the bridge,—above all, a wild bit of +ferny ground under a fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one might +see a hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will instantly +give me intense delight, because the shadow, or the hope, of the hills +is in them. +</p> + +<p> +And thus, although there are few districts of Northern Europe, however +apparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure, though the +whole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to most +travellers, is to me a perpetual Paradise; and, putting Lincolnshire, +Leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districts +aside, there is not an English county which I should not find +entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot; yet all +my best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills, +colouring, with their far-away memories, every lowland stone and herb. +The pleasant French coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me, either +by what real mountain character it has in itself (for in extent and +succession of promontory the flanks of the French valleys have quite +the sublimity of true mountain distances), or by its broken ground +and rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above, +against the blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not +a wave of the Seine but is associated in my mind with the first rise +of the sandstones and forest pines of Fontaine-bleau; and with the +hope of the Alps, as one leaves Paris with the horses' heads to the +south-west, the morning sun flashing on the bright waves at Charenton. +If there be <i>no</i> hope or association of this kind, and if I cannot +deceive myself into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the road +there may be seen the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the +horizon, the landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind +of sickness and pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or Windsor +Terrace,—nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual +summer,—or of the Hesperides (if they were flat, and not close to +Atlas), golden apples and all,—I would give away in an instant, for +one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady-fern.<a href="#fn24"><sup>[24]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +I know that this is in great part idiosyncrasy; and that I must not +trust to my own feelings, in this respect, as representative of the +modern landscape instinct: yet I know it is not idiosyncrasy, in so +far as there may be proved to be indeed an increase of the absolute +beauty of all scenery in exact proportion to its mountainous +character, providing that character be <i>healthily</i> mountainous. I do +not mean to take the Col de Bonhomme as representative of hills, any +more than I would take Romney Marsh as representative of plains; but +putting Leicestershire or Staffordshire fairly beside Westmoreland, +and Lombardy or Champagne fairly beside the Pays de Vaud or the Canton +Berne, I find the increase in the calculable sum of elements of beauty +to be steadily in proportion to the increase of mountainous character; +and that the best image which the world can give of Paradise is in the +slope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a +great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal snows above; this +excellence not being in any wise a matter referable to feeling, or +individual preferences, but demonstrable by calm enumeration of the +number of lovely colours on the rocks, the varied grouping of the +trees, and quantity of noble incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, +presented to the eye at any given moment. +</p> + +<p> +For consider, first, the difference produced in the whole tone of +landscape colour by the introductions of purple, violet, and deep +ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. In an ordinary lowland +landscape we have the blue of the sky; the green of grass, which I +will suppose (and this is an unnecessary concession to the lowlands) +entirely fresh and bright; the green of trees; and certain elements of +purple, far more rich and beautiful than we generally should think, in +their bark and shadows (bare hedges and thickets, or tops of trees, in +subdued afternoon sunshine, are nearly perfect purple, and of an +exquisite tone), as well as in ploughed fields, and dark ground in +general. But among mountains, in <i>addition</i> to all this, large +unbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are introduced in their +distances; and even near, by films of cloud passing over the darkness +of ravines or forests, blues are produced of the most subtle +tenderness; these azures and purples<a href="#fn25"><sup>[25]</sup></a> passing into rose-colour of +otherwise wholly unattainable delicacy among the upper summits, the +blue of the sky being at the same time purer and deeper than in the +plains. Nay, in some sense, a person who has never seen the +rose-colour of the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve or +fifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what <i>tenderness</i> in +colour means at all; <i>bright</i> tenderness he may, indeed, see in the +sky or in a flower, but this grave tenderness of the far-away +hill-purples he cannot conceive. +</p> + +<p> +Together with this great source of pre-eminence in <i>mass</i> of colour, +we have to estimate the influence of the finished inlaying and +enamel-work of the colour-jewellery on every stone; and that of the +continual variety in species of flower; most of the mountain flowers +being, besides, separately lovelier than the lowland ones. The wood +hyacinth and wild rose are, indeed, the only <i>supreme</i> flowers that +the lowlands can generally show; and the wild rose is also a +mountaineer, and more fragrant in the hills, while the wood hyacinth, +or grape hyacinth, at its best cannot match even the dark +bell-gentian, leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncontested +queenliness, and the Alpine rose and Highland heather wholly without +similitude. The violet, lily of the valley, crocus, and wood anemone +are, I suppose, claimable partly by the plains as well as the hills; +but the large orange lily and narcissus I have never seen but on hill +pastures, and the exquisite oxalisis pre-eminently a mountaineer.<a href="#fn26"><sup>[26]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +To this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add an +inestimable gain in the continual presence and power of water. Neither +in its clearness, its colour, its fantasy of motion, its calmness of +space, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can water be conceived by +a lowlander, out of sight of sea. A sea wave is far grander than any +torrent—but of the sea and its influences we are not now speaking; +and the sea itself, though it <i>can</i> be clear, is never calm, among our +shores, in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. The sea seems +only to pause; the mountain lake to sleep, and to dream. Out of sight +of the ocean a lowlander cannot be considered ever to have seen water +at all. The mantling of the pools in the rock shadows, with the golden +flakes of light sinking down through them like falling leaves, the +ringing of the thin currents among the shallows, the flash and the +cloud of the cascade, the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, +the long lines of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery of +the hills reversed in the blue of morning,—all these things belong to +those hills as their undivided inheritance. +</p> + +<p> +To this supremacy in wave and stream is joined a no less manifest +pre-eminence in the character of trees. It is possible among plains, +in the species of trees which properly belong to them, the poplars of +Amiens, for instance, to obtain a serene simplicity of grace, which, +as I said, is a better help to the study of gracefulness, as such, +than any of the wilder groupings of the hills; so, also, there are +certain conditions of symmetrical luxuriance developed in the park and +avenue, rarely rivalled in their way among mountains; and yet the +mountain superiority in foliage is, on the whole, nearly as complete +as it is in water: for exactly as there are some expressions in the +broad reaches of a navigable lowland river, such as the Loire or +Thames, not, in their way, to be matched among the rock rivers, and +yet for all that a lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen the +element of water at all; so even in the richest parks and avenues he +cannot be said to have truly seen trees. For the resources of trees +are not developed until they have difficulty to contend with; neither +their tenderness of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced +to choose their ways of various life where there is contracted room +for them, talking to each other with their restrained branches. The +various action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, +stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of glacier +winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down +together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand among the +difficult slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls, +gathering into companies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in +grave procession over the heavenward ridges—nothing of this can be +conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the lowland +forest: while to all these direct sources of greater beauty are added, +first the power of redundance,—the mere quantity of foliage visible +in the folds and on the promontories of a single Alp being greater +than that of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view from some +cathedral tower); and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer +<i>visibility</i>,—tree after tree being constantly shown in successive +height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and flanks of +masses, as in the plains; and the forms of multitudes of them +continually defined against the clear sky, near and above, or against +white clouds entangled among their branches, instead of being confused +in dimness of distance. +</p> + +<p> +Finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the still less +questionable supremacy in clouds. There is no effect of sky possible +in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among the +hills; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible +and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among +the hills in the course of one day. The mere power of familiarity with +the clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and renders +clear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky; +and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single wreath of early +cloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the +points of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill the +arched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. And of the +nobler cloud manifestations,—the breaking of their troublous seas +against the crags, their black spray sparkling with lightning; or the +going forth of the morning<a href="#fn27"><sup>[27]</sup></a> along their pavements of moving marble, +level-laid between dome and dome of snow;—of these things there can +be as little imagination or understanding in an inhabitant of the +plains as of the scenery of another planet than his own. +</p> + +<p> +And, observe, all these superiorities are matters plainly measurable +and calculable, not in any wise to be referred to estimate of +<i>sensation</i>. Of the grandeur or expression of the hills I have not +spoken; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, I do not for +the moment consider, because vastness, and strength, and terror, are +not to all minds subjects of desired contemplation. It may make no +difference to some men whether a natural object be large or small, +whether it be strong or feeble. But loveliness of colour, perfectness +of form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure, are +precious to all undiseased human minds; and the superiority of the +mountains in all these things to the lowland is, I repeat, as +measurable as the richness of a painted window matched with a white +one, or the wealth of a museum compared with that of a simply +furnished chamber. They seem to have been built for the human race, as +at once their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminated +manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, +quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the +worshipper. And of these great cathedrals of the earth, with their +gates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars +of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars,—of +these, as we have seen,<a href="#fn28"><sup>[28]</sup></a> it was written, nor long ago, by one of the +best of the poor human race for whom they were built, wondering in +himself for whom their Creator <i>could</i> have made them, and thinking to +have entirely discerned the Divine intent in them—"They are inhabited +by the Beasts."<a href="#fn29"><sup>[29]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Was it then indeed thus with us, and so lately? Had mankind offered no +worship in their mountain churches? Was all that granite sculpture and +floral painting done by the angels in vain? +</p> + +<p> +Not so. It will need no prolonged thought to convince us that in the +hills the purposes of their Maker have indeed been accomplished in +such measure as, through the sin or folly of men, He ever permits them +to be accomplished. It may not seem, from the general language held +concerning them, or from any directly traceable results, that +mountains have had serious influence on human intellect; but it will +not, I think, be difficult to show that their occult influence has +been both constant and essential to the progress of the race. +</p> + +<a name="Sunrise"></a><p> </p> +<h3>SUNRISE ON THE ALPS<a href="#fn30"><sup>[30]</sup></a> +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME I, SECTION 3, PART 2, CHAPTER 4 +</h4> + + +<p> +Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the +night mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white and +lake-like fields, as they float in level bays and winding gulfs about +the islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than +dawn, colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of +midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver +channels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passes +away, and down under their depths the glittering city and green +pasture lie like Atlantis,<a href="#fn31"><sup>[31]</sup></a> between the white paths of winding +rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader +among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above +them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten +their grey shadows upon the plain.... Wait a little longer, and you +shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating +up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet +masses, iridescent with the morning light,<a href="#fn32"><sup>[32]</sup></a> upon the broad breasts +of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back +and back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost +in its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene heaven, like a +wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless and inaccessible, their +very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep +lake below.<a href="#fn33"><sup>[33]</sup></a>... Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those +mists gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortresses +along the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every +instant higher and higher into the sky, and casting longer shadows +athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you will +see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapours, +which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their grey network, and +take the light off the landscape with an eclipse which will stop the +singing of the birds and the motion of the leaves, together; and then +you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and +lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, along the shoulders +of the hills; you never see them form, but when you look back to a +place which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging +by the precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey.... And then you +will hear the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those +watch-towers of vapour swept away from their foundations, and waving +curtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swinging from the +burdened clouds in black bending fringes, or pacing in pale columns +along the lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. And +then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm drift for an instant, +from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded yet +with snow-white, torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapour, now gone, +now gathered again; while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, +but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach +it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong +fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with +blood.... And then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the +hollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on the +summit of the eastern hills, brighter—brighter yet, till the large +white circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds, +step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her +kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable, +fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move +together, hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so +measured in their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll +with them, and the earth to reel under them.... And then wait yet for +one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving +mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, +are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning: watch the white +glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty +serpents with scales of fire: watch the columnar peaks of solitary +snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new +morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than +the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like +altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes +flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer +light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on +every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet +canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault +beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels: +and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are +bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me +who has best delivered this His message unto men!<a href="#fn34"><sup>[34]</sup></a> +</p> + + +<a name="Grand"></a><p> </p> +<h3> +THE GRAND STYLE<a href="#fn35"><sup>[35]</sup></a> +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME III, CHAPTER I +</h4> + + +<p> +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 endeavoured, 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 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,—an inquiry necessarily conducted +very imperfectly, owing to the want of pictorial illustration. +</p> + +<p> +The second volume merely 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> +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 labour 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> +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 endeavoured 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 characterizing 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 +vapour, on which the sun of praise so long has risen and set? It will +be well at once to consider this. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Idler</i>, 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 +<i>Idler</i> 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, October 20, 1759) begins, after a short preamble, +with the following passage:— +</p> + +<p> +"Amongst the Painters, and the writers on Painting, there is one maxim +universally admitted and continually inculcated. <i>Imitate nature</i> +is the invariable rule; but I know none who have explained in what +manner this rule is to be understood; the consequence of which is, +that everyone 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 merely 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 characterize History; but the +very being of Poetry consists in departing from this plain narrative, +and adopting every ornament that will warm the imagination.)<a href="#fn36"><sup>[36]</sup></a> To +desire to see the excellences 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." +</p> + +<p> +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 is 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> +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 <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—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> +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 <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> + +<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 a 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> + +<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> +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— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>A thousand feet in depth below</p> +<p>The massy waters meet and flow;</p> +<p>So far the fathom line was sent</p> +<p>From Chillon's snow-white battlement.<a href="#fn37"><sup>[37]</sup></a></p></div></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 href="#fn38"><sup>[38]</sup></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> + +<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,—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"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>A thousand feet in depth below.</p></div></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"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The massy waters meet and flow.</p></div></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> +"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"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>So far the fathom line was sent.</p></div></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 mètres, +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"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>From Chillon's snow-white battlement.</p></div></div> + + +<p> +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. +</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> +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> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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> +I come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion, that poetry is +"the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble +emotions."<a href="#fn39"><sup>[39]</sup></a> 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 warehouses. 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> +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 <i>the help of the imagination</i>, such images as will +excite these feelings, is the power of the poet or literally of the +"Maker."<a href="#fn40"><sup>[40]</sup></a> +</p> + +<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"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Perhaps to himself at that moment he said,</p> +<p>The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead;</p> +<p>But of this in my ears not a word did he speak;</p> +<p>And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.<a href="#fn41"><sup>[41]</sup></a></p></div></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> +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 colours 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 expression. Poetry is the +employment of either for the noblest purposes. +</p> + +<p> +This question being thus far determined, we may proceed with our paper +in the <i>Idler</i>. +</p> + +<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> + +<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> +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> +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.<a href="#fn42"><sup>[42]</sup></a> I suppose the passage in the +<i>Iliad</i> 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;<a href="#fn43"><sup>[43]</sup></a> 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 armour, 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 +<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> +Let us, however, proceed with our paper. +</p> + +<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,<a href="#fn44"><sup>[44]</sup></a> 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 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> + +<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>i.e.</i> 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,—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—that is to say, of painting carried to +the point at which it reaches a deceptive appearance of reality. +</p> + +<a name="Realization"></a><p> </p> +<h3> +OF REALIZATION +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 2 +</h4> + + +<p> +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,—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> +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 +colour, interested by the liveliness of its story, and touched by +certain countenances or details which remind him of friends whom he +loved, or 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 colours 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> +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<a href="#fn45"><sup>[45]</sup></a> 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> +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,<a href="#fn46"><sup>[46]</sup></a> and in dew which he endeavours 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.<a href="#fn47"><sup>[47]</sup></a> +</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 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<a href="#fn48"><sup>[48]</sup></a> 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> +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,<a href="#fn49"><sup>[49]</sup></a> 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: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Qual di pennel fu maestro, e di stile</p> +<p class="i2">Che ritraesse l'ombre, e i tratti, chi' ivi</p> +<p class="i2">Mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile?</p> +<p>Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi:</p> +<p class="i2">Non vide me' di me, chi vide il vero,</p> +<p class="i2">Quant' io calcai, fin che chinato givi.</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18">DANTE, <i>Purgatorio</i>, canto xii. 1. 64.</p></div></div> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>What master of the pencil, or the style,</p> +<p>Had traced the shades and lines that might have made</p> +<p>The subtlest workman wonder? <i>Dead, the dead,</i></p> +<p><i>The living seemed alive; with clearer view</i></p> +<p><i>His eye beheld not, who beheld the truth,</i></p> +<p>Than mine what I did tread on, while I went</p> +<p>Low bending.</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18">—CARY.</p></div></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 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 colours that had flashed upon it for an +instant,—would we not part with our picture—Titian's or Veronese's +though it might be? +</p> + +<p> +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 favour. 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 round +me, utterly inexpressible by the highest human skill." Now, it is +evident that to persons of this temper the only valuable picture +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 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?<a href="#fn50"><sup>[50]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +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? +</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—the best art we as yet possess comes +so far short of it. +</p> + +<p> +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 endeavour 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,—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 labours, 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 colour 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> + + +<p><a name="Novelty"> </a></p> +<h3>OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME III, CHAPTER II +</h4> + + +<p> +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. +</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> +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 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> +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-Colour +Society:<a href="#fn51"><sup>[51]</sup></a> 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 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,—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. +</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 fogs, 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 armour did +not get too hot in the sun!" +</p> + +<p> +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 +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, not 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 <i>seriousness</i> and +<i>purpose</i> in what they saw. They would all have admitted the nobleness +of whatever conduced to the honour 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 honour 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> +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> +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 +honour, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to help him to imagine +them, or temples raised to their honour, 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 specially devoted to +illustration of their lives and nature. +</p> + +<p> +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; honouring 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. +</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> +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,—doubting, fearing, +suspecting, analyzing,—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,—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 +Coeur de Lion, were among 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 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 nature +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> +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 il 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> +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 involve a +treatise on the whole history of the world. I shall merely endeavour +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; 2dly, 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 mind</i>, which must +be settled first; and this I will endeavour to do in the next chapter. +</p> + +<p><a name="Pathetic"> </a></p> +<h3>OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 12 +</h4> + + +<p> +Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words<a href="#fn52"><sup>[52]</sup></a> 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; 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> + +<p> +For instance— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould</p> +<p>Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold.<a href="#fn53"><sup>[53]</sup></a></p></div></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 favourite poetry, we shall find it full +of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being +so. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Alton Locke</i>,— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>They rowed her in across the rolling foam—</p> +<p>The cruel, crawling foam.<a href="#fn54"><sup>[54]</sup></a></p></div></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> +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.<a href="#fn55"><sup>[55]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of +Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough,"<a href="#fn56"><sup>[56]</sup></a> 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"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The one red leaf, the last of its clan,</p> +<p>That dances as often as dance it can,<a href="#fn57"><sup>[57]</sup></a></p></div></div> + +<p class="noindent"> +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,<a href="#fn58"><sup>[58]</sup></a> addresses the +spirit with the simple, startled words:— +</p> + +<p> +"Elpenor! How camest thou under the shadowy darkness? Hast thou come +faster on foot than I in my black ship?"<a href="#fn59"><sup>[59]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Which Pope renders thus:— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>O, say, what angry power Elpenor led</p> +<p>To glide in shades, and wander with the dead?</p> +<p>How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined,</p> +<p>Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?</p></div></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> +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—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 anywise +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.<a href="#fn60"><sup>[60]</sup></a> +</p> + +<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 endeavour to state the main bearings of this +matter. +</p> + +<p> +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,<a href="#fn61"><sup>[61]</sup></a> 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 <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> +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> +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 +stedfast; 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. +</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> +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";<a href="#fn62"><sup>[62]</sup></a> but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of +the sea without talking of "raging waves," "remorseless floods," +"ravenous billows," etc.; 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 +conies 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"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Whose changing mound, and foam that passed away</i>,</p> +<p>Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay.</p></div></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 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. +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Let no man move his bones.</p></div></div> + +<p class="noindent">As for Samaria, her king is cut off like the foam upon the +water.<a href="#fn63"><sup>[63]</sup></a> +</p> + +<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> +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 <i>Iliad</i>. Helen, looking +from the Scæan gate of Troy over the Grecian host, and telling Priam +the names of its captains, says at last:— +</p> + +<p class="quote"> +"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 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> + +<p class="noindent"> +Then Homer:— +</p> + +<p class="quote">"So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth possessed, there in Lacedæmon, in the dear fatherland."<a href="#fn64"><sup>[64]</sup></a> +</p> + +<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> +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"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">"Vite, Anna! vite; au miroir!</p> +<p class="i10">Plus vite, Anna. L'heure s'avance,</p> +<p class="i6">Et je vais au bal ce soir</p> +<p class="i10">Chez l'ambassadeur de France.</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Y pensez-vous? ils sont fanés, ces noeuds;</p> +<p class="i4">Ils sont d'hier; mon Dieu, comme tout passe!</p> +<p>Que du réseau qui retient mes cheveux</p> +<p class="i4">Les glands d'azur retombent avec grâce.</p> +<p>Plus haut! Plus bas! Vous ne comprenez rien!</p> +<p class="i4">Que sur mon front ce saphir étincelle:</p> +<p>Vous me piquez, maladroite. Ah, c'est bien,</p> +<p class="i4">Bien,—chère Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle."</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier ...</p> +<p class="i4">(Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espère.</p> +<p>(Ah, fi! profane, est-ce là mon collier?</p> +<p class="i4">Quoi! ces grains d'or bénits par le Saint-Père!)</p> +<p>II y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main,</p> +<p class="i4">En y pensant à peine je respire:</p> +<p>Frère Anselmo doit m'entendre demain,</p> +<p class="i4">Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire?...</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">"Vite! un coup d'oeil au miroir,</p> +<p class="i10">Le dernier.—J'ai l'assurance</p> +<p class="i6">Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir</p> +<p class="i10">Chez l'ambassadeur de France."</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Pres du foyer, Constance s'admirait.</p> +<p class="i4">Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une étincelle!</p> +<p>Au feu! Courez! Quand l'espoir l'enivrait,</p> +<p class="i4">Tout perdre ainsi! Quoi! Mourir,—et si belle!</p> +<p>L'horrible feu ronge avec volupté</p> +<p class="i4">Ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'élève,</p> +<p>Et sans pitié dévore sa beauté,</p> +<p class="i4">Ses dix-huit ans, hélas, et son doux rêve!</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour!</p> +<p class="i10">On disait, Pauvre Constance!</p> +<p class="i6">Et l'on dansa, jusqu'au jour,</p> +<p class="i10">Chez l'ambassadeur de France.<a href="#fn65"><sup>[65]</sup></a></p></div></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</i>—<i>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> + +<p class="quote">They said, "Poor Constance!"</p> + +<p> +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.'"<a href="#fn66"><sup>[66]</sup></a> 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 field shall clap their hands."<a href="#fn67"><sup>[67]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Where shall I find him? angels, tell me where.</p> +<p>You know him; he is near you; point him out.</p> +<p>Shall I see glories beaming from his brow,</p> +<p>Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?<a href="#fn68"><sup>[68]</sup></a></p></div></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— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade;</p> +<p>Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade;</p> +<p>Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove,</p> +<p>And winds shall waft it to the powers above.</p> +<p>But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain,</p> +<p>The wondering forests soon should dance again;</p> +<p>The moving mountains hear the powerful call,</p> +<p>And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall.<a href="#fn69"><sup>[69]</sup></a></p></div></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"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid,</p> +<p class="i2">When thus his moan he made:—</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak,</p> +<p class="i4">Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie,</p> +<p>That in some other way yon smoke</p> +<p class="i4">May mount into the sky.</p> +<p>If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough,</p> +<p class="i4">Headlong, the waterfall must come,</p> +<p class="i4">Oh, let it, then, be dumb—</p> +<p>Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now."<a href="#fn70"><sup>[70]</sup></a></p></div></div> +<p> +Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a water-fall 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,—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,—one might think +it could do as much as that! +</p> + +<p> +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 <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"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray,</p> +<p class="i2">Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure,</p> +<p>"Hope not to find delight in us," they say,</p> +<p class="i2">"For we are spotless, Jessy; we are pure."<a href="#fn71"><sup>[71]</sup></a></p></div></div> + +<p class="noindent"> +Compare with this some of the words of Ellen:— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Ah, why," said Ellen, sighing to herself,</p> +<p>"Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge,</p> +<p>And nature, that is kind in woman's breast,</p> +<p>And reason, that in man is wise and good,</p> +<p>And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,—</p> +<p>Why do not these prevail for human life,</p> +<p>To keep two hearts together, that began</p> +<p>Their springtime with one love, and that have need</p> +<p>Of mutual pity and forgiveness sweet</p> +<p>To grant, or be received; while that poor bird—</p> +<p>O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me</p> +<p>Been faithless, hear him;—though a lowly creature,</p> +<p>One of God's simple children that yet know not</p> +<p>The Universal Parent, <i>how</i> he sings!</p> +<p>As if he wished the firmament of heaven</p> +<p>Should listen, and give back to him the voice</p> +<p>Of his triumphant constancy and love;</p> +<p>The proclamation that he makes, how far</p> +<p>His darkness doth transcend our fickle light."<a href="#fn72"><sup>[72]</sup></a></p></div></div> + +<p> +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. +</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,—"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.<a href="#fn73"><sup>[73]</sup></a> +</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. +</p> + +<p><a name="Classical"> </a></p> +<h3>OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 13 +</h4> + + +<p> +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 endeavouring 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> +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:— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar,</p> +<p>Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.<a href="#fn74"><sup>[74]</sup></a></p></div></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 not be either wayward or indolent. He will call the +waves "over-roofed," "full-charged," "monstrous," "compact-black," +"dark-clear," "violet-coloured," "wine-coloured," 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-coloured, cold salt +water it is always, and nothing but that. +</p> + +<p> +"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> +I do not think we ever enough endeavour 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. +</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,—a block of stone +ignorantly, though sincerely, worshipped—or else an actual diabolic +or betraying power, usurping the place of God. +</p> + +<p> +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> +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,<a href="#fn75"><sup>[75]</sup></a> 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 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,—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 with 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 +invisible—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." +</p> + +<p> +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 of 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 dishonourable 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 <i>Iliad</i> which describes the river Scamander defending +the Trojans against Achilles.<a href="#fn76"><sup>[76]</sup></a> 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."<a href="#fn77"><sup>[77]</sup></a> Achilles refuses to +obey its commands; and from the human form it returns instantly into +its natural or divine one, and endeavours 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,<a href="#fn78"><sup>[78]</sup></a> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.<a href="#fn79"><sup>[79]</sup></a> 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 endeavouring 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;<a href="#fn80"><sup>[80]</sup></a> or else, +dealing with him in a more retired spirituality, as Apollo sending the +plague upon the Greeks,<a href="#fn81"><sup>[81]</sup></a> 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> +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,<a href="#fn82"><sup>[82]</sup></a> 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 unlady-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> +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.<a href="#fn83"><sup>[83]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +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 endeavouring 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!"<a href="#fn84"><sup>[84]</sup></a> 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."<a href="#fn85"><sup>[85]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +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 honourable, 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 god's 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <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> +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 no wise 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 entirely 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> +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;<a href="#fn86"><sup>[86]</sup></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,—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> +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 <i>Odyssey</i>; 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."<a href="#fn87"><sup>[87]</sup></a> +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 href="#fn88"><sup>[88]</sup></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-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> +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> +If we glance through the references to pleasant landscape which occur +in other parts of the <i>Odyssey</i>, 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;<a href="#fn89"><sup>[89]</sup></a> 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> + +<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.<a href="#fn90"><sup>[90]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +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.<a href="#fn91"><sup>[91]</sup></a> 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> +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,"<a href="#fn92"><sup>[92]</sup></a> 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<a href="#fn93"><sup>[93]</sup></a> 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.<a href="#fn94"><sup>[94]</sup></a> The likeness to the poplars by the +streams of Amiens is more marked still in the <i>Iliad</i>, 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."<a href="#fn95"><sup>[95]</sup></a> 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;<a href="#fn96"><sup>[96]</sup></a> 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 +disfavour; as the Lincolnshire farmer in <i>Alton Locke</i>: "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's vloor, for vorty mile on end—there's the country +to live in!"<a href="#fn97"><sup>[97]</sup></a> +</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 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> +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-eminently 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 href="#fn98"><sup>[98]</sup></a> So the sirens sing in a +meadow; <a href="#fn99"><sup>[99]</sup></a> and throughout the <i>Odyssey</i> there is a general tendency +to the depreciation of poor Ithaca, because it is rocky, and only fit +for goats, and has "no meadows";<a href="#fn100"><sup>[100]</sup></a> 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";<a href="#fn101"><sup>[101]</sup></a> 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 href="#fn102"><sup>[102]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +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 +<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 no +wise 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 <i>Odyssey</i>,<a href="#fn103"><sup>[103]</sup></a> where the sailors in a desert +island, having no flour of 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> +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 "<i>vain</i> (or <i>frustrate</i>) +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."<a href="#fn104"><sup>[104]</sup></a> +</p> + +<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,—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 chambermaid at the +Bull aired the four-poster, and put on two extra blankets. +</p> + +<p> +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—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 +protecting 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 erst +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 href="#fn105"><sup>[105]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +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,"<a href="#fn106"><sup>[106]</sup></a> 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";<a href="#fn107"><sup>[107]</sup></a> 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 truck roads. +</p> + +<p> +And thus, in general, whenever the landscape is intended to be lovely, +it verges towards the ploughed lands 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 <i>Odyssey</i> xi. 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> +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 +uncharacteristially 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:<a href="#fn108"><sup>[108]</sup></a>—"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,—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 href="#fn109"><sup>[109]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +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 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> +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 +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,<a href="#fn110"><sup>[110]</sup></a> 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 +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The simple, the sincere delight;</p> +<p>The habitual scene of hill and dale;</p> +<p>The rural herds, the vernal gale;</p> +<p>The tangled vetches' purple bloom;</p> +<p>The fragrance of the bean's perfume,—</p> +<p>Theirs, theirs alone, who cultivate the soil,</p> +<p>And drink the cup of thirst, and eat the bread of toil.<a href="#fn111"><sup>[111]</sup></a></p></div></div> + + + +<p><a name="Modernland"> </a></p> +<h3>OF MODERN LANDSCAPE +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 16 +</h4> + + +<p> +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 <i>their +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, +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 it is impossible to +arrest, and difficult to comprehend. +</p> + +<p> +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 aërial 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> + +<p> +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 unfavourable), 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."<a href="#fn112"><sup>[112]</sup></a> +</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,—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." +</p> + +<p> +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 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." +</p> + +<p> +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;—on the castle wall +displacing its tapestry with ivy, and spreading, through the garden, +the bramble for the rose. +</p> + +<p> +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 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> +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; 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. +</p> + +<p> +Finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a strong tendency +to deny the sacred element of colour, and make our boast in blackness. +For though occasionally glaring or violent, modern colour 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> +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> + +<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> + +<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,—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 inwoven 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. +</p> + +<p> +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,"<a href="#fn113"><sup>[113]</sup></a> 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 favourable 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, Béranger). 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,— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">Great God, I had rather be</p> +<p>A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn;</p> +<p class="i2">So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,</p> +<p>Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn.<a href="#fn114"><sup>[114]</sup></a></p></div></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 href="#fn115"><sup>[115]</sup></a> +</p> + +<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; 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> +There is, however, another, and a more innocent root of our delight in +wild scenery. +</p> + +<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—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.<a href="#fn116"><sup>[116]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +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 colour, 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 armour +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> + +<p> +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. +</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> + +<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 splendours 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> + +<p> +The Greeks and mediævals honoured, but did not imitate their +forefathers; we imitate, but do not honour. +</p> + +<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—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,<a href="#fn117"><sup>[117]</sup></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> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 colour 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 colouring of Scott and Byron is full +and pure; that of Keats and Tennyson rich even to excess. Our +practical failures in colouring 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 colouring, 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> +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 labours, 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> +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.<a href="#fn118"><sup>[118]</sup></a> It is only the dull, the uneducated, +or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet on the hillsides; 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> +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 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. +</p> + +<p> +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,—namely, +Scott and Turner,—will be, in many curious respects, different from +those between Homer and Phidias, or Dante and Giotto.<a href="#fn119"><sup>[119]</sup></a> +</p> + + +<p><a name="Two"> </a></p> +<h3>THE TWO BOYHOODS +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME V, PART 9, CHAPTER 9 +</h4> + + +<p> +Born half-way between the mountains and the sea—that young George of +Castelfranco—of the Brave Castle:—Stout George they called him, +George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was—Giorgione.<a href="#fn120"><sup>[120]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on—fair, searching +eyes of youth? What a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots +to the shore;—of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to +the marble city—and became himself as a fiery heart to it? +</p> + +<p> +A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with +emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, +overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea +drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. +Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,—the men of Venice moved +in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her +mothers and maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights; +the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armour shot angrily under their +blood-red mantle-folds. Fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, +implacable,—every word a fate—sate her senate. In hope and honour, +lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each with +his name written and the cross graved at his side, lay her dead. A +wonderful piece of world. Rather, itself a world. It lay along the face +of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at +evening, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away; but for its +power, it must have seemed to them as if they were sailing in the +expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened +through ether. A world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts +were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. No +foulness, nor tumult, in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, +beneath the moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or thrilling +silence. No weak walls could rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, +nor straw-built shed. Only the strength as of rock, and the finished +setting of stones most precious. And around them, far as the eye could +reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as not +the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle, could grow in the +glancing fields. Ethereal strength of Alps, dreamlike, vanishing in +high procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue islands of Paduan +hills, poised in the golden west. Above, free winds and fiery clouds +ranging at their will;—brightness out of the north, and balm from the +south, and the stars of the evening and morning clear in the limitless +light of arched heaven and circling sea. +</p> + +<p> +Such was Giorgione's school—such Titian's home. +</p> + +<p> +Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or well +is formed by a close-set block of houses, to the back windows of which +it admits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom of it is obtained +out of Maiden Lane, through a low archway and an iron gate; and if you +stand long enough under the archway to accustom your eyes to the +darkness you may see on the left hand a narrow door, which formerly +gave quiet access to a respectable barber's shop, of which the front +window, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant, filled, in this year +(1860), with a row of bottles, connected, in some defunct manner, with +a brewer's business. A more fashionable neighbourhood, it is said, +eighty years ago than now—never certainly a cheerful one—wherein a +boy being born on St. George's day, 1775, began soon after to take +interest in the world of Covent Garden, and put to service such +spectacles of life as it afforded. +</p> + +<p> +No knights to be seen there, nor, I imagine, many beautiful ladies; +their costume at least disadvantageous, depending much on incumbency of +hat and feather, and short waists; the majesty of men founded similarly +on shoebuckles and wigs;—impressive enough when Reynolds will do his +best for it; but not suggestive of much ideal delight to a boy. +</p> + +<p> +"Bello ovile dov' io dormii agnello";<a href="#fn121"><sup>[121]</sup></a> of things beautiful, besides +men and women, dusty sunbeams up or down the street on summer mornings; +deep furrowed cabbage-leaves at the greengrocer's; magnificence of +oranges in wheelbarrows round the corner; and Thames' shore within +three minutes' race. +</p> + +<p> +None of these things very glorious; the best, however, that England, it +seems, was then able to provide for a boy of gift: who, such as they +are, loves them—never, indeed, forgets them. The short waists modify +to the last his visions of Greek ideal. His foregrounds had always a +succulent cluster or two of greengrocery at the corners. Enchanted +oranges gleam in Covent Gardens of the Hesperides; and great ships go +to pieces in order to scatter chests of them on the waves.<a href="#fn122"><sup>[122]</sup></a> That mist +of early sunbeams in the London dawn crosses, many and many a time, the +clearness of Italian air; and by Thames' shore, with its stranded +barges and glidings of red sail, dearer to us than Lucerne lake or +Venetian lagoon,—by Thames' shore we will die. +</p> + +<p> +With such circumstance round him in youth, let us note what necessary +effects followed upon the boy. I assume him to have had Giorgione's +sensibility (and more than Giorgione's, if that be possible) to colour +and form. I tell you farther, and this fact you may receive trustfully, +that his sensibility to human affection and distress was no less keen +than even his sense for natural beauty—heart-sight deep as eyesight. +</p> + +<p> +Consequently, he attaches himself with the faithfullest child-love to +everything that bears an image of the place he was born in. No matter +how ugly it is,—has it anything about it like Maiden Lane, or like +Thames' shore? If so, it shall be painted for their sake. Hence, to the +very close of life, Turner could endure ugliness which no one else, of +the same sensibility, would have borne with for an instant. Dead brick +walls, blank square windows, old clothes, market-womanly types of +humanity—anything fishy and muddy, like Billingsgate or Hungerford +Market, had great attraction for him; black barges, patched sails, and +every possible condition of fog. +</p> + +<p> +You will find these tolerations and affections guiding or sustaining +him to the last hour of his life; the notablest of all such endurances +being that of dirt. No Venetian ever draws anything foul; but Turner +devoted picture after picture to the illustration of effects of +dinginess, smoke, soot, dust, and dusty texture; old sides of boats, +weedy roadside vegetation, dunghills, straw-yards, and all the soilings +and stains of every common labour. +</p> + +<p> +And more than this, he not only could endure, but enjoyed and looked +for <i>litter</i>, like Covent Garden wreck after the market. His pictures +are often full of it, from side to side; their foregrounds differ from +all others in the natural way that things have of lying about in them. +Even his richest vegetation, in ideal work, is confused; and he +delights in shingle, debris, and heaps of fallen stones. The last words +he ever spoke to me about a picture were in gentle exultation about his +St. Gothard: "that <i>litter</i> of stones which I endeavoured to +represent." +</p> + +<p> +The second great result of this Covent Garden training was understanding +of and regard for the poor, whom the Venetians, we saw, despised; whom, +contrarily, Turner loved, and more than loved—understood. He got no +romantic sight of them, but an infallible one, as he prowled about the +end of his lane, watching night effects in the wintry streets; nor +sight of the poor alone, but of the poor in direct relations with the +rich. He knew, in good and evil, what both classes thought of, and how +they dwelt with, each other. +</p> + +<p> +Reynolds and Gainsborough, bred in country villages, learned there the +country boy's reverential theory of "the squire," and kept it. They +painted the squire and the squire's lady as centres of the movements of +the universe, to the end of their lives. But Turner perceived the +younger squire in other aspects about his lane, occurring prominently +in its night scenery, as a dark figure, or one of two, against the +moonlight. He saw also the working of city commerce, from endless +warehouse, towering over Thames, to the back shop in the lane, with its +stale herrings—highly interesting these last; one of his father's best +friends, whom he often afterwards visited affectionately at Bristol, +being a fishmonger and glue-boiler; which gives us a friendly turn of +mind towards herring-fishing, whaling, Calais poissardes, and many +other of our choicest subjects in after life; all this being connected +with that mysterious forest below London Bridge on one side;—and, on +the other, with these masses of human power and national wealth which +weigh upon us, at Covent Garden here, with strange compression, and +crush us into narrow Hand Court. +</p> + +<p> +"That mysterious forest below London Bridge"—better for the boy than +wood of pine, or grove of myrtle. How he must have tormented the +watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch anywhere in the bows, +quiet as a log, so only that he might get floated down there among the +ships, and round and round the ships, and with the ships, and by the +ships, and under the ships, staring, and clambering;—these the only +quite beautiful things he can see in all the world, except the sky; +but these, when the sun is on their sails, filling or falling, +endlessly disordered by sway of tide and stress of anchorage, +beautiful unspeakably; which ships also are inhabited by glorious +creatures—red-faced sailors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales, +true knights, over their castle parapets—the most angelic beings in +the whole compass of London world. And Trafalgar happening long before +we can draw ships, we, nevertheless, coax all current stories out of +the wounded sailors, do our best at present to show Nelson's funeral +streaming up the Thames; and vow that Trafalgar shall have its tribute +of memory some day. Which, accordingly, is accomplished—once, with +all our might, for its death; twice, with all our might, for its +victory; thrice, in pensive farewell to the old Téméraire, and, with +it, to that order of things.<a href="#fn123"><sup>[123]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Now this fond companying with sailors must have divided his time, it +appears to me, pretty equally between Covent Garden and Wapping +(allowing for incidental excursions to Chelsea on one side, and +Greenwich on the other), which time he would spend pleasantly, but not +magnificently, being limited in pocket-money, and leading a kind of +"Poor-Jack" life on the river. +</p> + +<p> +In some respects, no life could be better for a lad. But it was not +calculated to make his ear fine to the niceties of language, nor form +his moralities on an entirely regular standard. Picking up his first +scraps of vigorous English chiefly at Deptford and in the markets, and +his first ideas of female tenderness and beauty among nymphs of the +barge and the barrow,—another boy might, perhaps, have become what +people usually term "vulgar." But the original make and frame of +Turner's mind being not vulgar, but as nearly as possible a combination +of the minds of Keats and Dante, joining capricious waywardness, and +intense openness to every fine pleasure of sense, and hot defiance of +formal precedent, with a quite infinite tenderness, generosity, and +desire of justice and truth—this kind of mind did not become vulgar, +but very tolerant of vulgarity, even fond of it in some forms; and on +the outside, visibly infected by it, deeply enough; the curious result, +in its combination of elements, being to most people wholly +incomprehensible. It was as if a cable had been woven of blood-crimson +silk, and then tarred on the outside. People handled it, and the tar +came off on their hands; red gleams were seen through the black, +underneath, at the places where it had been strained. Was it +ochre?—said the world—or red lead? +</p> + +<p> +Schooled thus in manners, literature, and general moral principles at +Chelsea and Wapping, we have finally to inquire concerning the most +important point of all. We have seen the principal differences between +this boy and Giorgione, as respects sight of the beautiful, +understanding of poverty, of commerce, and of order of battle; then +follows another cause of difference in our training—not slight,—the +aspect of religion, namely, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. I +say the aspect; for that was all the lad could judge by. Disposed, for +the most part, to learn chiefly by his eyes, in this special matter he +finds there is really no other way of learning. His father had taught +him "to lay one penny upon another." Of mother's teaching, we hear of +none; of parish pastoral teaching, the reader may guess how much. +</p> + +<p> +I chose Giorgione rather than Veronese to help me in carrying out this +parallel; because I do not find in Giorgione's work any of the early +Venetian monarchist element. He seems to me to have belonged more to an +abstract contemplative school. I may be wrong in this; it is no +matter;—suppose it were so, and that he came down to Venice somewhat +recusant, or insentient, concerning the usual priestly doctrines of his +day,—how would the Venetian religion, from an outer intellectual +standing-point, have <i>looked</i> to him? +</p> + +<p> +He would have seen it to be a religion indisputably powerful in human +affairs; often very harmfully so; sometimes devouring widows' +houses,<a href="#fn124"><sup>[124]</sup></a> and consuming the strongest and fairest from among the +young; freezing into merciless bigotry the policy of the old: also, on +the other hand, animating national courage, and raising souls, +otherwise sordid, into heroism: on the whole, always a real and great +power; served with daily sacrifice of gold, time, and thought; putting +forth its claims, if hypocritically, at least in bold hypocrisy, not +waiving any atom of them in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in large +measure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed: a goodly system, +moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, harmonious, mysterious;—a thing which +had either to be obeyed or combated, but could not be scorned. A +religion towering over all the city—many-buttressed—luminous in +marble stateliness, as the dome of our Lady of Safety<a href="#fn125"><sup>[125]</sup></a> shines over +the sea; many-voiced also, giving, over all the eastern seas, to the +sentinel his watchword, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips of +all who died for Venice, shaping the whisper of death. +</p> + +<p> +I suppose the boy Turner to have regarded the religion of his city also +from an external intellectual standing-point. +</p> + +<p> +What did he see in Maiden Lane? +</p> + +<p> +Let not the reader be offended with me; I am willing to let him +describe, at his own pleasure, what Turner saw there; but to me, it +seems to have been this. A religion maintained occasionally, even the +whole length of the lane, at point of constable's staff; but, at other +times, placed under the custody of the beadle, within certain black and +unstately iron railings of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Among the +wheelbarrows and over the vegetables, no perceptible dominance of +religion; in the narrow, disquieted streets, none; in the tongues, +deeds, daily ways of Maiden Lane, little. Some honesty, indeed, and +English industry, and kindness of heart, and general idea of justice; +but faith, of any national kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next, +not artistically beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibitions; its +paraphernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and cold +grimness of behaviour. +</p> + +<p> +What chiaroscuro belongs to it—(dependent mostly on candlelight),—we +will, however, draw considerately; no goodliness of escutcheon, nor +other respectability being omitted, and the best of their results +confessed, a meek old woman and a child being let into a pew, for whom +the reading by candlelight will be beneficial.<a href="#fn126"><sup>[126]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +For the rest, this religion seems to him +discreditable—discredited—not believing in itself; putting forth its +authority in a cowardly way, watching how far it might be tolerated, +continually shrinking, disclaiming, fencing, finessing; divided against +itself, not by stormy rents, but by thin fissures, and splittings of +plaster from the walls. Not to be either obeyed, or combated, by an +ignorant, yet clear-sighted youth: only to be scorned. And scorned not +one whit the less, though also the dome dedicated to it looms high over +distant winding of the Thames; as St. Mark's campanile rose, for goodly +landmark, over mirage of lagoon. For St. Mark ruled over life; the +Saint of London over death; St. Mark over St. Mark's Place, but St. +Paul over St. Paul's Churchyard. +</p> + +<p> +Under these influences pass away the first reflective hours of life, +with such conclusion as they can reach. In consequence of a fit of +illness, he was taken—I cannot ascertain in what year<a href="#fn127"><sup>[127]</sup></a>—to live with +an aunt, at Brentford; and here, I believe, received some schooling, +which he seems to have snatched vigorously; getting knowledge, at least +by translation, of the more picturesque classical authors, which he +turned presently to use, as we shall see. Hence also, walks about +Putney and Twickenham in the summer time acquainted him with the look +of English meadow-ground in its restricted states of paddock and park; +and with some round-headed appearances of trees, and stately entrances +to houses of mark: the avenue at Bushy, and the iron gates and carved +pillars of Hampton,<a href="#fn128"><sup>[128]</sup></a> impressing him apparently with great awe and +admiration; so that in after life his little country house is,—of all +places in the world,—at Twickenham! Of swans and reedy shores he now +learns the soft motion and the green mystery, in a way not to be +forgotten. +</p> + +<p> +And at last fortune wills that the lad's true life shall begin; and one +summer's evening, after various wonderful stage-coach experiences on +the north road, which gave him a love of stage-coaches ever after, he +finds himself sitting alone among the Yorkshire hills.<a href="#fn129"><sup>[129]</sup></a> For the +first time, the silence of Nature round him, her freedom sealed to him, +her glory opened to him. Peace at last; no roll of cart-wheel, nor +mutter of sullen voices in the back shop; but curlew-cry in space of +heaven, and welling of bell-toned streamlet by its shadowy rock. +Freedom at last. Dead-wall, dark railing, fenced field, gated garden, +all passed away like the dream, of a prisoner; and behold, far as foot +or eye can race or range, the moor, and cloud. Loveliness at last. It +is here, then, among these deserted vales! Not among men. Those pale, +poverty-struck, or cruel faces;—that multitudinous, marred +humanity—are not the only things that God has made. Here is something +He has made which no one has marred. Pride of purple rocks, and river +pools of blue, and tender wilderness of glittering trees, and misty +lights of evening on immeasurable hills. +</p> + +<p> +Beauty, and freedom, and peace; and yet another teacher, graver than +these. Sound preaching at last here, in Kirkstall crypt, concerning +fate and life. Here, where the dark pool reflects the chancel pillars, +and the cattle lie in unhindered rest, the soft sunshine on their +dappled bodies, instead of priests' vestments; their white furry hair +ruffled a little, fitfully, by the evening wind deep-scented from the +meadow thyme. +</p> + +<p> +Consider deeply the import to him of this, his first sight of ruin, and +compare it with the effect of the architecture that was around +Giorgione. There were indeed aged buildings, at Venice, in his time, +but none in decay. All ruin was removed, and its place filled as +quickly as in our London; but filled always by architecture loftier and +more wonderful than that whose place it took, the boy himself happy to +work upon the walls of it; so that the idea of the passing away of the +strength of men and beauty of their works never could occur to him +sternly. Brighter and brighter the cities of Italy had been rising and +broadening on hill and plain, for three hundred years. He saw only +strength and immortality, could not but paint both; conceived the form +of man as deathless, calm with power, and fiery with life. +</p> + +<p> +Turner saw the exact reverse of this. In the present work of men, +meanness, aimlessness, unsightliness: thin-walled, lath-divided, +narrow-garreted houses of clay; booths of a darksome Vanity Fair, +busily base. +</p> + +<p> +But on Whitby Hill, and by Bolton Brook,<a href="#fn130"><sup>[130]</sup></a> remained traces of other +handiwork. Men who could build had been there; and who also had +wrought, not merely for their own days. But to what purpose? Strong +faith, and steady hands, and patient souls—can this, then, be all you +have left! this the sum of your doing on the earth!—a nest whence the +night-owl may whimper to the brook, and a ribbed skeleton of consumed +arches, looming above the bleak banks of mist, from its cliff to the +sea? +</p> + +<p> +As the strength of men to Giorgione, to Turner their weakness and +vileness, were alone visible. They themselves, unworthy or ephemeral; +their work, despicable, or decayed. In the Venetian's eyes, all beauty +depended on man's presence and pride; in Turner's, on the solitude he +had left, and the humiliation he had suffered. +</p> + +<p> +And thus the fate and issue of all his work were determined at once. He +must be a painter of the strength of nature, there was no beauty +elsewhere than in that; he must paint also the labour and sorrow and +passing away of men: this was the great human truth visible to him. +</p> + +<p> +Their labour, their sorrow, and their death. Mark the three. Labour; by +sea and land, in field and city, at forge and furnace, helm and plough. +No pastoral indolence nor classic pride shall stand between him and the +troubling of the world; still less between him and the toil of his +country,—blind, tormented, unwearied, marvellous England. +</p> + +<p> +Also their Sorrow; Ruin of all their glorious work, passing away of +their thoughts and their honour, mirage of pleasure, FALLACY OF HOPE; +gathering of weed on temple step; gaining of wave on deserted strand; +weeping of the mother for the children, desolate by her breathless +first-born in the streets of the city,<a href="#fn131"><sup>[131]</sup></a> desolate by her last sons +slain, among the beasts of the field.<a href="#fn132"><sup>[132]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +And their Death. That old Greek question again;—yet unanswered. The +unconquerable spectre still flitting among the forest trees at +twilight; rising ribbed out of the sea-sand;—white, a strange +Aphrodite,—out of the sea-foam; stretching its grey, cloven wings +among the clouds; turning the light of their sunsets into blood. This +has to be looked upon, and in a more terrible shape than ever Salvator +or Dürer saw it.<a href="#fn133"><sup>[133]</sup></a> The wreck of one guilty country does not infer the +ruin of all countries, and need not cause general terror respecting the +laws of the universe. Neither did the orderly and narrow succession of +domestic joy and sorrow in a small German community bring the question +in its breadth, or in any unresolvable shape, before the mind of Dürer. +But the English death—the European death of the nineteenth +century—was of another range and power; more terrible a thousandfold +in its merely physical grasp and grief; more terrible, incalculably, in +its mystery and shame. What were the robber's casual pang, or the range +of the flying skirmish, compared to the work of the axe, and the sword, +and the famine, which was done during this man's youth on all the hills +and plains of the Christian earth, from Moscow to Gibraltar? He was +eighteen years old when Napoleon came down on Arcola. Look on the map +of Europe and count the blood-stains on it, between Arcola and +Waterloo.<a href="#fn134"><sup>[134]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Not alone those blood-stains on the Alpine snow, and the blue of the +Lombard plain. The English death was before his eyes also. No decent, +calculable, consoled dying; no passing to rest like that of the aged +burghers of Nuremberg town. No gentle processions to churchyards among +the fields, the bronze crests bossed deep on the memorial tablets, and +the skylark singing above them from among the corn. But the life +trampled out in the slime of the street, crushed to dust amidst the +roaring of the wheel, tossed countlessly away into howling winter wind +along five hundred leagues of rock-fanged shore. Or, worst of all, +rotted down to forgotten graves through years of ignorant patience, and +vain seeking for help from man, for hope in God—infirm, imperfect +yearning, as of motherless infants starving at the dawn; oppressed +royalties of captive thought, vague ague-fits of bleak, amazed despair. +</p> + +<p> +A goodly landscape this, for the lad to paint, and under a goodly +light. Wide enough the light was, and clear; no more Salvator's lurid +chasm on jagged horizon, nor Dürer's spotted rest of sunny gleam on +hedgerow and field; but light over all the world. Full shone now its +awful globe, one pallid charnel-house,—a ball strewn bright with human +ashes, glaring in poised sway beneath the sun, all blinding-white with +death from pole to pole,—death, not of myriads of poor bodies only, +but of will, and mercy, and conscience; death, not once inflicted on +the flesh, but daily, fastening on the spirit; death, not silent or +patient, waiting his appointed hour, but voiceful, venomous; death with +the taunting word, and burning grasp, and infixed sting. +</p> + +<p> +"Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe."<a href="#fn135"><sup>[135]</sup></a> The word is spoken +in our ears continually to other reapers than the angels,—to the busy +skeletons that never tire for stooping. When the measure of iniquity is +full, and it seems that another day might bring repentance and +redemption,—"Put ye in the sickle." When the young life has been +wasted all away, and the eyes are just opening upon the tracks of ruin, +and faint resolution rising in the heart for nobler things,—"Put ye in +the sickle." When the roughest blows of fortune have been borne long +and bravely, and the hand is just stretched to grasp its goal,—"Put ye +in the sickle." And when there are but a few in the midst of a nation, +to save it, or to teach, or to cherish; and all its life is bound up in +those few golden ears,—"Put ye in the sickle, pale reapers, and pour +hemlock for your feast of harvest home." +</p> + +<p> +This was the sight which opened on the young eyes, this the watchword +sounding within the heart of Turner in his youth. +</p> + +<p> +So taught, and prepared for his life's labour, sate the boy at last +alone among his fair English hills; and began to paint, with cautious +toil, the rocks, and fields, and trickling brooks, and soft white +clouds of heaven. +</p> + + + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="chapter"> +<a name="Stones">Selections from The Stones of Venice</a> +</p> + + +<p> +The first volume of <i>The Stones of Venice</i> appeared in March, 1851; the +first day of May of the same year we find the following entry in +Ruskin's diary: "About to enter on the true beginning of the second +part of my Venetian work. May God help me to finish it—to His glory, +and man's good." The main part of the volume was composed at Venice in +the winter of 1851-52, though it did not appear until the end of July, +1853. His work on architecture, including <i>The Seven Lamps</i>, it will be +noted, intervenes between the composition of the second and third +volumes of <i>Modern Painters</i>; and Ruskin himself always looked upon +the work as an interlude, almost as an interruption. But he also came +to believe that this digression had really led back to the heart of +the truth for all art. Its main theme, as in <i>The Seven Lamps of +Architecture</i>, is its illustration of the principle that architecture +expresses certain states in the moral temper of the people by and for +whom it is produced. It may surprise us to-day to know that when Ruskin +wrote of the glories of Venetian architecture, the common "professional +opinion was that St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace were as ugly and +repulsive as they were contrary to rule and order." In a private letter +Gibbon writes of the Square of St. Mark's as "a large square decorated +with the worst architecture I ever saw." The architects of his own time +regarded Ruskin's opinions as dictated by wild caprice, and almost +evincing an unbalanced mind. Probably the core of all this +architectural work is to be found in his chapter "On the Nature of +Gothic," in the main reproduced in this volume. And we find here again +a point of fundamental significance—that his artistic analysis led him +inevitably on to social inquiries. He proved to himself that the main +virtue of Gothic lay in the unrestricted play of the individual +imagination; that the best results were produced when every artist was +a workman and every workman an artist. Twenty years after the +publication of this book, he wrote in a private letter that his main +purpose "was to show the dependence of (architectural) beauty on the +happiness and fancy of the workman, and to show also that no architect +could claim the title to authority of <i>Magister</i> unless he himself +wrought at the head of his men, captain of manual skill, as the best +knight is captain of armies." He himself called the chapter "precisely +and accurately the most important in the whole book." Mr. Frederic +Harrison says that in it is "the creed, if it be not the origin, of a +new industrial school of thought." +</p> + +<p><a name="Throne"> </a></p> +<h3>THE THRONE +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME II, CHAPTER I +</h4> + + +<p> +In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which +distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil +was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries +through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the +evening hours, when from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, +the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered +among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long hoped for +turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, +the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset—hours of +peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in +the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an +equivalent,—in those days, I say, when there was something more to be +anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive +halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, +there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly +cherished by the traveller, than that which, as I endeavoured to +describe in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of +Venice, as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of +Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the +source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its +buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other great +towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, +and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers +out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible +that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of +the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling +lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets +bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, +the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in +knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all +proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city +rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the +Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, +but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subdued +into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a +field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of +the lonely island church, fitly named "St. George of the Seaweed." As +the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had +just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-coloured line, tufted +irregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed its +northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple +pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or three +smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, +and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the +chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north—a wall of +jagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of +misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and +itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite +upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up +behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the +crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, +to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the +great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick +silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when +its walls were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was +entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep +inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the +traveller's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces,—each +with its black boat moored at the portal,—each with its image cast +down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze +broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the +extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal +curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi;<a href="#fn136"><sup>[136]</sup></a> that +strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, +graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike +circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stalì,"<a href="#fn137"><sup>[137]</sup></a> +struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty +cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the splash of the +water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's +side; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of +silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed with +its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of +Salvation,<a href="#fn138"><sup>[138]</sup></a> it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply +entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so +strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. +Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to +the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the +waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, +rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature +was wild or merciless,—Time and Decay, as well as the waves and +tempests,—had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might +still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed +for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea. +</p> + +<p> +And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the +face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on +Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the noble +landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a +glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though +many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated ruins, +there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried +traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect +has been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her +origin, and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at +least, are little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of +the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to +repress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is +ignoble, and disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its +remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the +imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before +us. The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of +this century, may indeed gild, but never save, the remains of those +mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; and +they must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see +them as they stood in their own strength. Those feelings, always as +fruitless as they are fond, are in Venice not only incapable of +protecting, but even of discerning, the objects to which they ought to +have been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing +of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the +first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name +is worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossed +that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of +Venice;<a href="#fn139"><sup>[139]</sup></a> no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which +the traveller now passes with breathless interest: the statue which +Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors was +erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after +Faliero's death;<a href="#fn140"><sup>[140]</sup></a> and the most conspicuous parts of the city have +been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries, +that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari<a href="#fn141"><sup>[141]</sup></a> could be summoned from +their tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance +of the Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favourite +subject, the novelist's favourite scene, where the water first narrows +by the steps of the Church of La Salute,—the mighty Doges would not +know in what part of the world they stood, would literally not +recognize one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and by whose +ingratitude, their grey hairs had been brought down with bitterness to +the grave. The remains of <i>their</i> Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous +masses which were the delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in +many a grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal, +where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred +years, and must soon prevail over them for ever. It must be our task to +glean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some faint image +of the lost city; more gorgeous a thousandfold than that which now +exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince, nor by the +ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, +contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that +its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, +but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and +solitary scene, whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed +shelter the birth of the city, but long denied her dominion. +</p> + +<p> +When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no feature by +which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange sweeping loop +formed by the junction of the Alps and Apennines, and enclosing the +great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain upon itself +causes a vast difference in the character of the distribution of its +debris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and sediment which the +torrents on the other side of the Alps bear into the plains are +distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here and there +lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm substrata to +appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which descend from +the southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern slope of the +Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain bay which the +two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks out of their +battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain washes from +their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of the +Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky +barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences +which continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the +accumulation of the ruins of ages. +</p> + +<p> +I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by insisting on the +singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which appears for many +centuries to have taken place steadily and continually; the main fact +with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the Po and its +great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment to the +sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressed +by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part of large +rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick; and +was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these same +pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to check +the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona.<a href="#fn142"><sup>[142]</sup></a> The +finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the +rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, +however pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the +foot of the great chain, they become of the colour and opacity of clay +before they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once +thrown down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land +along the eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of +course builds forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, +there is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable +to rapid change than the delta of the central river. In one of these +tracts is built RAVENNA, and in the other VENICE. +</p> + +<p> +What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this great belt +of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place to inquire. +It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the Adige to those +of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three to +five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long +islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the +true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and other +rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighbourhood +of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most places of a +foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, +but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, +from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to the run +of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, +some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to be built +upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the contrary, +it has not reached the sea level; so that, at the average low water, +shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of +seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance +by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the +openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a +crowded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which +appear to the north and south of this central cluster, have at +different periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according +to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents +and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and +encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the +metropolis. +</p> + +<p> +The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet (varying +considerably with the seasons); but this fall, on so flat a shore, is +enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main +canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At +high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of +Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or +gleaming with villages: there is a channel, some three miles wide, +between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide +between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the +lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the +impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, +although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, +betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deepwater channels, +which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge +sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded +waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the uplifted +level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low +tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over +the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is +seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of sea-weed, of gloomy +green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its +associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this +salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by +tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, and often +so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till +their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea water like the +ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground +at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the +banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the +uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly +oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears +some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what it was once, +let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some +unfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain; let +him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city that +still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the +islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture and +sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black +desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, +pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful +silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, +or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he +will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with +which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. +They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and +strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be +the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in the +great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be +remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things which +no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existence +and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, by +the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had +deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and +again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surges +beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of the Venetian +architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an +ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the +Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, +and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only +a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the +doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there +is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without +setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps; and the highest tides +sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. +Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood and +ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a +treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of +water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily +intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city +would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the +peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed. +</p> + +<p> +The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between this +faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the romantic +conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he have +felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the +instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the +wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been +permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid +rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh +waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little +could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were +shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their +desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than +of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the +glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all +the corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which +were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and +feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a +preparation, and <i>the only preparation possible</i>, for the founding of a +city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the +earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, and +to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in +world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the +burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendour. +</p> + + + +<p><a name="Marks"> </a></p> +<h3>ST. MARK'S +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME II, CHAPTER 4 +</h4> + + +<p> +"And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as the shores +of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had entered +into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his hand +was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of Christ's +captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the work,<a href="#fn143"><sup>[143]</sup></a> +how wonderful would he have thought it, that by the lion symbol in +future ages he was to be represented among men! how woful, that the +war-cry of his name should so often reanimate the rage of the soldier, +on those very plains where he himself had failed in the courage of the +Christian, and so often dye with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, +over whose waves, in repentance and shame, he was following the Son of +Consolation! +</p> + +<p> +That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the ninth +century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it was +principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose him +for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that before +he went into Egypt he had founded the church at Aquileia, and was thus +in some sort the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I +believe that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of +St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome<a href="#fn144"><sup>[144]</sup></a>; but, as usual, it is +enriched by various later additions and embellishments, much resembling +the stories told respecting the church of Murano. Thus we find it +recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the <i>Vife de' Santi spettanti +alle Chiese di Venezia</i>,<a href="#fn145"><sup>[145]</sup></a> that "St. Mark having seen the people of +Aquileia well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. +Peter, before setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and +went in a small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that +period some houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and +the boat being driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when +St. Mark, snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to +him: 'Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel +goes on to foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne più veduta +Città"<a href="#fn146"><sup>[146]</sup></a>; but the fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther +relation. +</p> + +<p> +But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not, St. Theodore +was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be considered as +having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue, standing on a +crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the opposing pillar of +the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said to have occupied, +before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and the traveller, +dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not to leave it +without endeavouring to imagine its aspect in that early time, when it +was a green field cloister-like and quiet,<a href="#fn147"><sup>[147]</sup></a> divided by a small canal, +with a line of trees on each side; and extending between the two +churches of St. Theodore and St. Gemanium, as the little piazza of +Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral. +</p> + +<p> +But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally removed to +the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the present one +stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it,<a href="#fn148"><sup>[148]</sup></a> gave a very different +character to the Square of St. Mark; and fifteen years later, the +acquisition of the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the Ducal +Chapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned the investiture of that +chapel with all possible splendour. St. Theodore was deposed from his +patronship, and his church destroyed, to make room for the +aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, and +thenceforward known as "St. Mark's."<a href="#fn149"><sup>[149]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the Ducal Palace +was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was partly +rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and, with +the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on under +successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building being +completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till +considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085,<a href="#fn150"><sup>[150]</sup></a> +according to Sansovino and the author of the <i>Chiesa Ducale di S. +Marco</i>, in 1094 according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and +1096, those years being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I +incline to the supposition that it was soon after his accession to the +throne in 1085, though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead +of Vital Falier. But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh +century the great consecration of the church took place. It was again +injured by fire in 1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall +of Venice there was probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree +embellish or alter the fabric, so that few parts of it can be +pronounced boldly to be of any given date. Two periods of interference +are, however, notable above the rest: the first, that in which the +Gothic school had superseded the Byzantine towards the close of the +fourteenth century, when the pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window +traceries were added to the exterior, and the great screen with various +chapels and tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the +Renaissance school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian +and Tintoret substituted, over one half of the church, their own +compositions for the Greek mosaics with which it was originally +decorated;<a href="#fn151"><sup>[151]</sup></a> happily, though with no good will, having left enough +to enable us to imagine and lament what they destroyed. Of this +irreparable loss we shall have more to say hereafter; meantime, I wish +only to fix in the reader's mind the succession of periods of +alterations as firmly and simply as possible. +</p> + +<p> +We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly stated to +be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the fourteenth, and +the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no difficulty in +distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the Byzantine; but +there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how long, during the +course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, additions were made to +the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily distinguished from the +work of the eleventh century, being purposely executed in the same +manner. Two of the most important pieces of evidence on this point are, +a mosaic in the south transept, and another over the northern door of +the façade; the first representing the interior, the second the +exterior, of the ancient church. +</p> + +<p> +It has just been stated that the existing building was consecrated by +the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to that act of +consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what appears to +have been one of the best arranged and most successful impostures ever +attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body of St. Mark had, +without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976; but the revenues +of the church depended too much upon the devotion excited by these +relics to permit the confession of their loss. The following is the +account given by Corner, and believed to this day by the Venetians, of +the pretended miracle by which it was concealed. +</p> + +<p> +"After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which +the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten; +so that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the +venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious +Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by +confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer +and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not +now depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore +proclaimed, and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, +while the people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent +prayers for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as +joy, a slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where +the altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth, +exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in +which the body of the Evangelist was laid." +</p> + +<p> +Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They were embellished +afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as, for instance, +that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark extended his hand +out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which he permitted a +noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint and delightful story +was further invented of this ring, which I shall not repeat here, as it +is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian Nights. But the fast +and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means effected, are facts; +and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved mosaics of the +north<a href="#fn152"><sup>[152]</sup></a> transept, executed very certainly not long after the event +had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of the Bayeux +tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior of the +church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer, then in +thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the Doge, in +the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet embroidered with +gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux" over his head, as +uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most other pictorial +works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely represented, and +the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in order to form a +background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of picture history +which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand things besides, +never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or two, of the real +or perspective size, and subdued it into a vague background: the old +workman crushed the church together that he might get it all in, up to +the cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some useful notes of its +ancient form, though any one who is familiar with the method of drawing +employed at the period will not push the evidence too far. The two +pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day, and the fringe of +mosaic flowerwork which then encompassed the whole church, but which +modern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment still left in the +south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the other mosaics on the +roof, the scale being too small to admit of their being represented +with any success; but some at least of those mosaics had been executed +at that period, and their absence in the representation of the entire +church is especially to be observed, in order to show that we must not +trust to any negative evidence in such works. M. Lazari has rashly +concluded that the central archivolt of St. Mark's <i>must</i> be posterior +to the year 1205, because it does not appear in the representation of +the exterior of the church over the northern door;<a href="#fn153"><sup>[153]</sup></a> but he justly +observes that this mosaic (which is the other piece of evidence we +possess respecting the ancient form of the building) cannot itself be +earlier than 1205, since it represents the bronze horses which were +brought from Constantinople in that year. And this one fact renders it +very difficult to speak with confidence respecting the date of any part +of the exterior of St. Mark's; for we have above seen that it was +consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet here is one of its most +important exterior decorations assuredly retouched, if not entirely +added, in the thirteenth, although its style would have led us to +suppose it had been an original part of the fabric. However, for all +our purposes, it will be enough for the reader to remember that the +earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh, twelfth, and +first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions to the +fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the fifteenth and +sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the seventeenth. +</p> + +<p> +This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I may speak +generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without leading +him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated by +Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the +seventeenth-century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to +the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a +Byzantine building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely +necessary, direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the +reader with anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the +eye, or affects the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified +by Byzantine influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits +need not therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or +arrested by the obscurities of chronology. +</p> + +<p> +And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St. Mark's +Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English +cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. +Let us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we +can see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low +grey gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in +the centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing +goes in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the +chapter, and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by +neat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and +excessively trim houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out +here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream colour +and white, and small porches to their doors in the shape of +cockle-shells, or little, crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables +warped a little on one side; and so forward till we come to larger +houses, also old-fashioned, but of red brick, and with gardens behind +them, and fruit walls, which show here and there, among the nectarines, +the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on +the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of smooth +grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, especially on the sunny +side, where the canons' children are walking with their nursery-maids. +And so, taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go along the +straight walk to the west front, and there stand for a time, looking up +at its deep-pointed porches and the dark places between their pillars +where there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, +of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the likeness of a +king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps a saintly king long ago +in heaven; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering wall of +rugged sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and grey, and grisly +with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirling +winds into yet unseemlier shape, and coloured on their stony scales by +the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, higher still, +to the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the +bosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only +sees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scattering, +and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and +flowers, the crowd of restless birds that fill the whole square with +that strange clangour of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like the +cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and sea. +</p> + +<p> +Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of all its +small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its +secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense +and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by +the cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on +all who have passed through the lonely square at their feet for +centuries, and on all who have seen them rising far away over the +wooded plain, or catching on their square masses the last rays of the +sunset, when the city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at +the bend of the river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in +Venice, and land at the extremity of the Calla Lunga San Moisè, which +may be considered as there answering to the secluded street that led us +to our English cathedral gateway. +</p> + +<p> +We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide where it is +widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant +salesmen,—a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of +brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high +houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over-head, +an inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and +chimney flues, pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows +with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here +and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some +inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high +over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be, +occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about +eight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which one +is narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectable +shops, wainscotted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but +in those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares +laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases +entering at the front only, and fading away in a few feet from the +threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but +which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the +back of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less +pious shopkeeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented +with a penny print; the more religious one has his print coloured and +set in a little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a +faded flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. +Here, at the fruiterer's, where the dark-green water-melons are heaped +upon the counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of +fresh laurel leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, +and there is nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the +studded patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the +darkness. Next comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori,"<a href="#fn154"><sup>[154]</sup></a> where the +Virgin, enthroned in a very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a +back shelf, presides over certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too +ambiguous to be defined or enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at +the regular wine-shop of the calle, where we are offered "Vino +Nostrani a Soldi 28-32," the Madonna is in great glory, enthroned above +ten or a dozen large red casks of three-year-old vintage, and flanked +by goodly ranks of bottles of Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and +for the evening, when the gondoliers will come to drink out, under her +auspices, the money they have gained during the day, she will have a +whole chandelier. +</p> + +<p> +A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle, and, +glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply moulded, +in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting +on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side; and so +presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè, whence to the +entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of +the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the +frightful facade of San Moisè, which we will pause at another time to +examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near the +piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging +groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them into +the shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and then +we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great +light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of +St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of +chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong +themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses +that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back +into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements +and broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly +sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone. +</p> + +<p> +And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches +there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems +to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far +away;—a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long +low pyramid of coloured light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of +gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into +five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with +sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,—sculpture +fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and +pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all +twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the +midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the +feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures +indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves +beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded +back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were +angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are +set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green +serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse +and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to +kiss"<a href="#fn155"><sup>[155]</sup></a>—the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line +after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved +sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of +herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, +all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broad +archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life—angels, and the +signs of heaven, and the labours of men, each in its appointed season +upon the earth; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, +mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers,—a confusion of +delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing +in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on +a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the +crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far +into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the +breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and +the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. +</p> + +<p> +Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! +There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead +of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the +bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle +among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their +living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less +lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years. +</p> + +<p> +And what effect has this splendour on those who pass beneath it? You +may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St. +Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance +brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and +poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the +porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, +the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats—not "of them +that sell doves"<a href="#fn156"><sup>[156]</sup></a> for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and +caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is +almost a continuous line of cafés, where the idle Venetians of the +middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the +Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music +jarring with the organ notes,—the march drowning the miserere, and the +sullen crowd thickening round them,—a crowd, which, if it had its +will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the +recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest +classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; +and unregarded children,—every heavy glance of their young eyes full +of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with +cursing,—gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, +clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church +porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it +continually. +</p> + + +<p><a name="Gothic"> </a></p> +<h3>CHARACTERISTICS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE +</h3> + +<h4> +VOLUME II, CHAPTER 6 +</h4> + + +<p> +I believe, then, that the characteristic or moral elements of Gothic +are the following, placed in the order of their importance: +</p> + +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>1. Savageness.</li> +<li>2. Changefulness.</li> +<li>3. Naturalism.</li> +<li>4. Grotesqueness.</li> +<li>5. Rigidity.</li> +<li>6. Redundance.</li> +</ul> + +<p> +These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building; as +belonging to the builder, they would be expressed thus:—1. Savageness, +or Rudeness. 2. Love of Change. 3. Love of Nature. 4. Disturbed +Imagination. 5. Obstinacy. 6. Generosity. And I repeat, that the +withdrawal of any one, or any two, will not at once destroy the Gothic +character of a building, but the removal of a majority of them will. I +shall proceed to examine them in their order. +</p> + +<p> +1. SAVAGENESS. I am not sure when the word "Gothic" was first +generically applied to the architecture of the North; but I presume +that, whatever the date of its original usage, it was intended to imply +reproach, and express the barbaric character of the nations among whom +that architecture arose. It never implied that they were literally of +Gothic lineage, far less that their architecture had been originally +invented by the Goths themselves; but it did imply that they and their +buildings together exhibited a degree of sternness and rudeness, which, +in contradistinction to the character of Southern and Eastern nations, +appeared like a perpetual reflection of the contrast between the Goth +and the Roman in their first encounter. And when that fallen Roman, in +the utmost impotence of his luxury, and insolence of his guilt, became +the model for the imitation of civilized Europe, at the close of the +so-called Dark Ages, the word Gothic became a term of unmitigated +contempt, not unmixed with aversion. From that contempt, by the +exertion of the antiquaries and architects of this century, Gothic +architecture has been sufficiently vindicated; and perhaps some among +us, in our admiration of the magnificent science of its structure, and +sacredness of its expression, might desire that the term of ancient +reproach should be withdrawn, and some other, of more apparent +honourableness, adopted in its place. There is no chance, as there is +no need, of such a substitution. As far as the epithet was used +scornfully, it was used falsely; but there is no reproach in the word, +rightly understood; on the contrary, there is a profound truth, which +the instinct of mankind almost unconsciously recognizes. It is true, +greatly and deeply true, that the architecture of the North is rude and +wild; but it is not true, that, for this reason, we are to condemn it, +or despise. Far otherwise: I believe it is in this very character that +it deserves our profoundest reverence. +</p> + +<p> +The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern science have +thrown into a narrow space the expression of a vast amount of +knowledge, but I have never yet seen any one pictorial enough to enable +the spectator to imagine the kind of contrast in physical character +which exists between Northern and Southern countries. We know the +differences in detail, but we have not that broad glance and grasp +which would enable us to feel them in their fulness. We know that +gentians grow on the Alps, and olives on the Apennines; but we do not +enough conceive for ourselves that variegated mosaic of the world's +surface which a bird sees in its migration, that difference between the +district of the gentian and of the olive which the stork and the +swallow see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let us, for a +moment, try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight, +and imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, +and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun: here and there an +angry spot of thunder, a grey stain of storm, moving upon the burning +field; and here and there a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, +surrounded by its circle of ashes; but for the most part a great +peacefulness of light, Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like +pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop +nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing +softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, +mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate +with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of +the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass +farther towards the north, until we see the orient colours change +gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of +Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the +Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of +the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flaky +veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands: +and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave into mighty +masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste of +gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into +irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm, +and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending +tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill +ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into +barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, +deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And, +having once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned iris of +the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it, +and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life; the +multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and +sea, or tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and +spotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and +scarlet. Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of colour, and +swiftness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy +covering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the +Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf +and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of paradise with the +osprey: and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by which +the earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being. Let +us not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in +the statutes of the lands that gave him birth. Let us watch him with +reverence as he sets side by side the burning gems, and smooths with +soft sculpture the jasper pillars, that are to reflect a ceaseless +sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but not with less reverence +let us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried stroke, he +smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn from +among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air the +pile of iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with work of an +imagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creations of +ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as the +winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them. +</p> + +<p> +There is, I repeat, no degradation, no reproach in this, but all +dignity and honourableness: and we should err grievously in refusing +either to recognize as an essential character of the existing +architecture of the North, or to admit as a desirable character in that +which it yet may be, this wildness of thought, and roughness of work; +this look of mountain brotherhood between the cathedral and the Alp; +this magnificence of sturdy power, put forth only the more +energetically because the fine finger-touch was chilled away by the +frosty wind, and the eye dimmed by the moor-mist, or blinded by the +hail; this outspeaking of the strong spirit of men who may not gather +redundant fruitage from the earth, nor bask in dreamy benignity of +sunshine, but must break the rock for bread, and cleave the forest for +fire, and show, even in what they did for their delight, some of the +hard habits of the arm and heart that grew on them as they swung the +axe or pressed the plough. +</p> + +<p> +If, however, the savageness of Gothic architecture, merely as an +expression of its origin among Northern nations, may be considered, in +some sort, a noble character, it possesses a higher nobility still, +when considered as an index, not of climate, but of religious +principle. +</p> + +<p> +In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXL of the first volume of +this work, it was noticed that the systems of architectural ornament, +properly so called, might be divided into three:—1. Servile ornament, +in which the execution or power of the inferior workman is entirely +subjected to the intellect of the higher;—2. Constitutional ornament, +in which the executive inferior power is, to a certain point, +emancipated and independent, having a will of its own, yet confessing +its inferiority and rendering obedience to higher powers;—and 3. +Revolutionary ornament, in which no executive inferiority is admitted +at all. I must here explain the nature of these divisions at somewhat +greater length. +</p> + +<p> +Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, and +Egyptian; but their servility is of different kinds. The Greek +master-workman was far advanced in knowledge and power above the +Assyrian or Egyptian. Neither he nor those for whom he worked could +endure the appearance of imperfection in anything; and, therefore, what +ornament he appointed to be done by those beneath him was composed of +mere geometrical forms,—balls, ridges, and perfectly symmetrical +foliage,—which could be executed with absolute precision by line and +rule, and were as perfect in their way, when completed, as his own +figure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, less +cognizant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow their +figure sculpture to be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered the +method of its treatment to a standard which every workman could reach, +and then trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chance +of his falling beneath the standard appointed. The Greek gave to the +lower workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute. The +Assyrian gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, but +fixed a legal standard for his imperfection. The workman was, in both +systems, a slave.<a href="#fn157"><sup>[157]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +But in the mediæval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this +slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized, +in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul. +But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, in +only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness. That +admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite +felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether +refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly contemplating the fact of +it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God's greater glory. +Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service, +her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are +unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, +nor your confession silenced for fear of shame. And it is, perhaps, the +principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that +they thus receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out +of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in +every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole. +</p> + +<p> +But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of the +Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion +or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble character +in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget the +relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness +of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher; not considering +that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would be +preferable to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind, +and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of man, +those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those +which are, in their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. For +the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness +of it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall be +seldomest seen in their best form. The wild grass grows well and +strongly, one year with another; but the wheat is, according to the +greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. And +therefore, while in all things that we see or do, we are to desire +perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the +meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in +its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered +majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower +the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency +of success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other +men, we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrow +caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; and, +still more, how we withhold our admiration from great excellencies, +because they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in the make and nature +of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labour, +there are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid +capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are, even at the +worst; and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are tardy or +torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take +them in their feebleness, and unless we prize and honour them in their +imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this is +what we have to do with all our labourers; to look for the <i>thoughtful</i> +part of them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it, +whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. For the best +that is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error. +Understand this clearly; You can teach a man to draw a straight line, +and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy +and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and +perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if +you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot +find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes +hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he +makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking +being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a +machine before, an animated tool. +</p> + +<p> +And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must +either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make +both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be +precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that +precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like +cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must +unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make +cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must +go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be +bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the +invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err +from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the +whole human being be lost at last—a heap of sawdust, so far as its +intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, +which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after +the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if +you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. +Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth +doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all +his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, +failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole +majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the +clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, +there will be transfiguration behind and within them. +</p> + +<p> +And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about which you +have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good and +strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those +accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of +the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over +them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was +done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are +signs of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more +degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be +beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer +flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to +smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting +pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the +flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God,<a href="#fn158"><sup>[158]</sup></a> +into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with,—this it is to be +slave-masters indeed; and there might be more freedom in England, +though her feudal lords' lightest words were worth men's lives, and +though the blood of the vexed husbandman dropped in the furrows of her +fields, than there is while the animation of her multitudes is sent +like fuel to feed the factory smoke, and the strength of them is given +daily to be wasted into the fineness of a web, or racked into the +exactness of a line. +</p> + +<p> +And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral +front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of the +old sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins, and formless +monsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid; but do not mock at +them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman who +struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, +such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which it +must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her +children. +</p> + +<p> +Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is verily +this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than any +other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere +into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which +they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry +against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them either by +the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These do much, +and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society were +never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are ill +fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make +their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of +pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper +classes, but they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind +of labour to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and +makes them less than men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathy +with the lower, or charity for them, as they have at this day, and yet +never were they so much hated by them: for, of old, the separation +between the noble and the poor was merely a wall built by law; now it +is a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice between +upper and lower grounds in the field of humanity, and there is +pestilential air at the bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to +come when the nature of right freedom will be understood, and when men +will see that to obey another man, to labour for him, yield reverence +to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of +liberty,—liberty from care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth, +and to another, Come, and he cometh,<a href="#fn159"><sup>[159]</sup></a> has, in most cases, more sense +of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. The movements +of the one are hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by +the bridle on his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be +lightened; but we need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at +it. To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at +his disposal, is not slavery; often it is the noblest state in which a +man can live in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence which is +servile, that is to say irrational or selfish: but there is also noble +reverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never so +noble as when he is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the feeling +pass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised +by it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him,—the +Irish peasant who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with +his musket muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain +servant, who 200 years ago, at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and +the lives of his seven sons for his chief?—as each fell, calling forth +his brother to the death, "Another for Hector!"<a href="#fn160"><sup>[160]</sup></a> And therefore, in +all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice made +by men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and +famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been +borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts +of the heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who +received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But +to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their +whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a +heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its +hammer strokes;—this nature bade not,—this God blesses not,—this +humanity for no long time is able to endure. +</p> + +<p> +We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized +invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It +is not, truly speaking; the labour that is divided; but the +men:—Divided into mere segments of men—broken into small fragments +and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that +is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts +itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a +good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we +could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished,—sand +of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what +it is,—we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the +great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than +their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,—that we manufacture +everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, +and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to +refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our +estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging +our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, +for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach to +them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be +met only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what +kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; +by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness +as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally +determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling +labour. +</p> + +<p> +And how, it will be asked, are these products to be recognized, and +this demand to be regulated? Easily: by the observance of three broad +and simple rules: +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + 1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely + necessary, in the production of which <i>Invention</i> has no share. +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + 2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some + practical or noble end. +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + 3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the + sake of preserving record of great works. +</p> + +<p> +The second of these principles is the only one which directly rises out +of the consideration of our immediate subject; but I shall briefly +explain the meaning and extent of the first also, reserving the +enforcement of the third for another place. +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + 1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not necessary, in the + production of which invention has no share. +</p> + +<p> +For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, and there is no +design or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed by +first drawing out the glass into rods; these rods are chopped up into +fragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fragments are +then rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at their +work all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely +timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like hail. +Neither they, nor the men who draw out the rods or fuse the fragments, +have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human faculty; and +every young lady, therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the +slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have so +long been endeavouring to put down. +</p> + +<p> +But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisite +invention; and if in buying these we pay for the invention, that is to +say for the beautiful form, or colour, or engraving, and not for mere +finish of execution, we are doing good to humanity. +</p> + +<p> +So, again, the cutting of precious stones, in all ordinary cases, +requires little exertion of any mental faculty; some tact and judgment +in avoiding flaws, and so on, but nothing to bring out the whole mind. +Every person who wears cut jewels merely for the sake of their value +is, therefore, a slave-driver. +</p> + +<p> +But the working of the goldsmith, and the various designing of grouped +jewellery and enamel-work, may become the subject of the most noble +human intelligence. Therefore, money spent in the purchase of +well-designed plate, of precious engraved vases, cameos, or enamels, +does good to humanity; and, in work of this kind, jewels may be +employed to heighten its splendour; and their cutting is then a price +paid for the attainment of a noble end, and thus perfectly allowable. +</p> + +<p> +I shall perhaps press this law farther elsewhere, but our immediate +concern is chiefly with the second, namely, never to demand an exact +finish, when it does not lead to a noble end. For observe, I have only +dwelt upon the rudeness of Gothic, or any other kind of imperfectness, +as admirable, where it was impossible to get design or thought without +it. If you are to have the thought of a rough and untaught man, you +must have it in a rough and untaught way; but from an educated man, who +can without effort express his thoughts in an educated way, take the +graceful expression, and be thankful. Only <i>get</i> the thought, and do +not silence the peasant because he cannot speak good grammar, or until +you have taught him his grammar. Grammar and refinement are good +things, both, only be sure of the better thing first. And thus in art, +delicate finish is desirable from the greatest masters, and is always +given by them. In some places Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Phidias, +Perugino, Turner, all finished with the most exquisite care; and the +finish they give always leads to the fuller accomplishment of their +noble purpose. But lower men than these cannot finish, for it requires +consummate knowledge to finish consummately, and then we must take +their thoughts as they are able to give them. So the rule is simple: +Always look for invention first, and after that, for such execution as +will help the invention, and as the inventor is capable of without +painful effort, and <i>no more</i>. Above all, demand no refinement of +execution where there is no thought, for that is slaves' work, +unredeemed. Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only that the +practical purpose be answered, and never imagine there is reason to be +proud of anything that may be accomplished by patience and sand-paper. +</p> + +<p> +I shall only give one example, which however will show the reader what +I mean, from the manufacture already alluded to, that of glass. Our +modern glass is exquisitely clear in its substance, true in its form, +accurate in its cutting. We are proud of this. We ought to be ashamed +of it. The old Venice glass was muddy, inaccurate in all its forms, and +clumsily cut, if at all. And the old Venetian was justly proud of it. +For there is this difference between the English and Venetian workman, +that the former thinks only of accurately matching his patterns, and +getting his curves perfectly true and his edges perfectly sharp, and +becomes a mere machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges; while +the old Venetian cared not a whit whether his edges were sharp or not, +but he invented a new design for every glass that he made, and never +moulded a handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And therefore, +though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy enough when made by +clumsy and uninventive workmen, other Venetian glass is so lovely in +its forms that no price is too great for it; and we never see the same +form in it twice. Now you cannot have the finish and the varied form +too. If the workman is thinking about his edges, he cannot be thinking +of his design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose +whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and +choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a +grindstone. +</p> + +<p> +Nay, but the reader interrupts me,—"If the workman can design +beautifully, I would not have him kept at the furnace. Let him be taken +away and made a gentleman, and have a studio, and design his glass +there, and I will have it blown and cut for him by common workmen, and +so I will have my design and my finish too." +</p> + +<p> +All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mistaken suppositions: the +first, that one man's thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed by +another man's hands; the second, that manual labour is a degradation, +when it is governed by intellect. +</p> + +<p> +On a large scale, and in work determinable by line and rule, it is +indeed both possible and necessary that the thoughts of one man should +be carried out by the labour of others; in this sense I have already +defined the best architecture to be the expression of the mind of +manhood by the hands of childhood. But on a smaller scale, and in a +design which cannot be mathematically defined, one man's thoughts can +never be expressed by another: and the difference between the spirit of +touch of the man who is inventing, and of the man who is obeying +directions, is often all the difference between a great and a common +work of art. How wide the separation is between original and +second-hand execution, I shall endeavour to show elsewhere; it is not +so much to our purpose here as to mark the other and more fatal error +of despising manual labour when governed by intellect; for it is no +less fatal an error to despise it when thus regulated by intellect, +than to value it for its own sake. We are always in these days +endeavouring to separate the two; we want one man to be always +thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a +gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often +to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be +gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one +envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is +made up of morbid thinkers, and miserable workers. Now it is only by +labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that +labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with +impunity. It would be well if all of us were good handicraftsmen in +some kind, and the dishonour of manual labour done away with +altogether; so that though there should still be a trenchant +distinction of race between nobles and commoners, there should not, +among the latter, be a trenchant distinction of employment, as between +idle and working men, or between men of liberal and illiberal +professions. All professions should be liberal, and there should be +less pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and more in excellence of +achievement. And yet more, in each several profession, no master should +be too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind his own +colours; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; the +master-manufacturer be himself a more skilful operative than any man in +his mills; and the distinction between one man and another be only in +experience and skill, and the authority and wealth which these must +naturally and justly obtain. +</p> + +<p> +I should be led far from the matter in hand, if I were to pursue this +interesting subject. Enough, I trust, has been said to show the reader +that the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the term +"Gothic" one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one of the +most noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a noble +but an <i>essential</i> one. It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is +nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly +noble which is not imperfect. And this is easily demonstrable. For +since the architect, whom we will suppose capable of doing all in +perfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must either +make slaves of his workmen in the old Greek, and present English +fashion, and level his work to a slave's capacities, which is to +degrade it; or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, and let +them show their weaknesses together with their strength, which will +involve the Gothic imperfection, but render the whole work as noble as +the intellect of the age can make it. +</p> + +<p> +But the principle may be stated more broadly still. I have confined the +illustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true +of architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and +perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work +executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading +that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the +labourer's mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no +good work whatever can be perfect, and <i>the demand for perfection is +always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art</i>. +</p> + +<p> +This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that +no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of +failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his +powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in +trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior +portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and +according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of +dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude +or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be +dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not +acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, +Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take +ten years to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we +are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the +work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what +is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.<a href="#fn161"><sup>[161]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to +all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that +is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or +can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The +foxglove blossom,—a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in +full bloom,—is a type of the life of this world. And in all things +that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are +not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly +the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no +branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; +and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, +to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and +more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, +that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human +judgment, Mercy. +</p> + +<p> +Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any +other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us +be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern +clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first +cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of +perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for +greatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity. +</p> + +<p> +Thus far then of the Rudeness or Savageness, which is the first mental +element of Gothic architecture. It is an element in many other healthy +architectures also, as in Byzantine and Romanesque; but true Gothic +cannot exist without it. +</p> + +<p> +The second mental element above named was CHANGEFULNESS, or Variety. +</p> + +<p> +I have already enforced the allowing independent operation to the +inferior workman, simply as a duty <i>to him</i>, and as ennobling the +architecture by rendering it more Christian. We have now to consider +what reward we obtain for the performance of this duty, namely, the +perpetual variety of every feature of the building. +</p> + +<p> +Wherever the workman is utterly enslaved, the parts of the building +must of course be absolutely like each other; for the perfection of his +execution can only be reached by exercising him in doing one thing, and +giving him nothing else to do. The degree in which the workman is +degraded may be thus known at a glance, by observing whether the +several parts of the building are similar or not; and if, as in Greek +work, all the capitals are alike, and all the mouldings unvaried, then +the degradation is complete; if, as in Egyptian or Ninevite work, +though the manner of executing certain figures is always the same, the +order of design is perpetually varied, the degradation is less total; +if, as in Gothic work, there is perpetual change both in design and +execution, the workman must have been altogether set free. +</p> + +<p> +How much the beholder gains from the liberty of the labourer may +perhaps be questioned in England, where one of the strongest instincts +in nearly every mind is that Love of Order which makes us desire that +our house windows should pair like our carriage horses, and allows us +to yield our faith unhesitatingly to architectural theories which fix a +form for everything, and forbid variation from it. I would not impeach +love of order: it is one of the most useful elements of the English +mind; it helps us in our commerce and in all purely practical matters; +and it is in many cases one of the foundation stones of morality. Only +do not let us suppose that love of order is love of art. It is true +that order, in its highest sense, is one of the necessities of art, +just as time is a necessity of music; but love of order has no more to +do with our right enjoyment of architecture or painting, than love of +punctuality with the appreciation of an opera. Experience, I fear, +teaches us that accurate and methodical habits in daily life are seldom +characteristic of those who either quickly perceive, or richly possess, +the creative powers of art; there is, however, nothing inconsistent +between the two instincts, and nothing to hinder us from retaining our +business habits, and yet fully allowing and enjoying the noblest gifts +of Invention. We already do so, in every other branch of art except +architecture, and we only do <i>not</i> so there because we have been taught +that it would be wrong. Our architects gravely inform us that, as there +are four rules of arithmetic, there are five orders of architecture; +we, in our simplicity, think that this sounds consistent, and believe +them. They inform us also that there is one proper form for Corinthian +capitals, another for Doric, and another for Ionic. We, considering +that there is also a proper form for the letters A, B, and C, think +that this also sounds consistent, and accept the proposition. +Understanding, therefore, that one form of the said capitals is proper, +and no other, and having a conscientious horror of all impropriety, we +allow the architect to provide us with the said capitals, of the proper +form, in such and such a quantity, and in all other points to take care +that the legal forms are observed; which having done, we rest in forced +confidence that we are well housed. +</p> + +<p> +But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no pleasure in the +building provided for us, resembling that which we take in a new book +or a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in its +correctness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the same +pleasure in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, or +a skilful piece of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all the +pleasure that architecture was ever intended to give us. The idea of +reading a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the +same kind of delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never +enters our minds for a moment. And for good reason;—There is indeed +rhythm in the verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of +the architecture, and a thousand times more beautiful, but there is +something else than rhythm. The verses were neither made to order, nor +to match, as the capitals were; and we have therefore a kind of +pleasure in them other than a sense of propriety. But it requires a +strong effort of common sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we +have been taught for the last two centuries, and wake to the perception +of a truth just as simple and certain as it is new: that great art, +whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does <i>not</i> say +the same thing over and over again; that the merit of architectural, as +of every other art, consists in its saying new and different things; +that to repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in marble +than it is of genius in print; and that we may, without offending any +laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, +that he should be not only correct, but entertaining. +</p> + +<p> +Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden from us, as many +other self-evident things are, by false teaching. Nothing is a great +work of art, for the production of which either rules or models can be +given. Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, and from +given models, it is not an art, but a manufacture; and it is, of the +two procedures, rather less rational (because more easy) to copy +capitals or mouldings from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than +to copy heads and hands from Titian, and call ourselves painters. +</p> + +<p> +Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a +necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that +there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; +and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit +from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose +pillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a universe in +which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one size. +</p> + +<p> +And this we confess in deeds, though not in words. All the pleasure +which the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in pictures, +sculpture, minor objects of virtù, or mediæval architecture, which we +enjoy under the term picturesque: no pleasure is taken anywhere in +modern buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting to +escape out of modern cities into natural scenery: hence, as I shall +hereafter show, that peculiar love of landscape, which is +characteristic of the age. It would be well, if, in all other matters, +we were as ready to put up with what we dislike, for the sake of +compliance with established law, as we are in architecture. +</p> + +<p> +How so debased a law ever came to be established, we shall see when we +come to describe the Renaissance schools; here we have only to note, as +the second most essential element of the Gothic spirit, that it broke +through that law wherever it found it in existence; it not only dared, +but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle; and +invented a series of forms of which the merit was, not merely that they +were new, but that they were <i>capable of perpetual novelty</i>. The +pointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the round, but it +admitted of millions of variations in itself; for the proportions of a +pointed arch are changeable to infinity, while a circular arch is +always the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from +the single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in its +grouping, and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. The +introduction of tracery was not only a startling change in the +treatment of window lights, but admitted endless changes in the +interlacement of the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in all +living Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the Gothic +schools exhibited that love in culminating energy; and their influence, +wherever it extended itself, may be sooner and farther traced by this +character than by any other; the tendency to the adoption of Gothic +types being always first shown by greater irregularity, and richer +variation in the forms of the architecture it is about to supersede, +long before the appearance of the pointed arch or of any other +recognizable <i>outward</i> sign of the Gothic mind. +</p> + +<p> +We must, however, herein note carefully what distinction there is +between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in +healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly +in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. In +order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the +different ways in which change and monotony are presented to us in +nature; both having their use, like darkness and light, and the one +incapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being most +delightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light appears most +brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed. +</p> + +<p> +I believe that the true relations of monotony and change may be most +simply understood by observing them in music. We may therein notice +first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony, which there +is not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout all +nature. The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its +monotony; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and +especially the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall and +rise of an engine beam. So also there is sublimity in darkness which +there is not in light. +</p> + +<p> +Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain degree, +becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is +obliged to break it in one or two ways: either while the air or passage +is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and +harmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, an +entirely new passage is introduced, which is more or less delightful +according to the length of the previous monotony. Nature, of course, +uses both these kinds of variation perpetually. The sea-waves, +resembling each other in general mass, but none like its brother in +minor divisions and curves, are a monotony of the first kind; the great +plain, broken by an emergent rock or clump of trees, is a monotony of +the second. +</p> + +<p> +Farther: in order to the enjoyment of the change in either case, a +certain degree of patience is required from the hearer or observer. In +the first case, he must be satisfied to endure with patience the +recurrence of the great masses of sound or form, and to seek for +entertainment in a careful watchfulness of the minor details. In the +second case, he must bear patiently the infliction of the monotony for +some moments, in order to feel the full refreshment of the change. This +is true even of the shortest musical passage in which the element of +monotony is employed. In cases of more majestic monotony, the patience +required is so considerable that it becomes a kind of pain,—a price +paid for the future pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +Again: the talent of the composer is not in the monotony, but in the +changes: he may show feeling and taste by his use of monotony in +certain places or degrees; that is to say, by his <i>various</i> employment +of it; but it is always in the new arrangement or invention that his +intellect is shown, and not in the monotony which relieves it. +</p> + +<p> +Lastly: if the pleasure of change be too often repeated, it ceases to +be delightful, for then change itself becomes monotonous, and we are +driven to seek delight in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This is +the diseased love of change of which we have above spoken. +</p> + +<p> +From these facts we may gather generally that monotony is, and ought to +be, in itself painful to us, just as darkness is; that an architecture +which is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead architecture; and of +those who love it, it may be truly said, "they love darkness rather +than light." But monotony in certain measure, used in order to give +value to change, and above all, that <i>transparent</i> monotony, which, +like the shadows of a great painter, suffers all manner of dimly +suggested form to be seen through the body of it, is an essential in +architectural as in all other composition; and the endurance of +monotony has about the same place in a healthy mind that the endurance +of darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect will have +pleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the broken +and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in mere +brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow and +the storm; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness of +fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, while +an inferior man will not pay the price; exactly in like manner a great +mind will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisome +to an inferior intellect, because it has more patience and power of +expectation, and is ready to pay the full price for the great future +pleasure of change. But in all cases it is not that the noble nature +loves monotony, anymore than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bear +with it, and receives a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, a +pleasure necessary to the well-being of this world; while those who +will not submit to the temporary sameness, but rush from one change to +another, gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a shadow +and weariness over the whole world from which there is no more escape. +</p> + +<p> +From these general uses of variety in the economy of the world, we may +at once understand its use and abuse in architecture. The variety of +the Gothic schools is the more healthy and beautiful, because in many +cases it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from the mere love of +change, but from practical necessities. For in one point of view Gothic +is not only the best, but the <i>only rational</i> architecture, as being +that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. +Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, or +disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a +hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded +grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change +in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of +loss either to its unity or majesty,—subtle and flexible like a fiery +serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one +of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered +ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the +real use and value of what they did. If they wanted a window, they +opened one; a room, they added one; a buttress, they built one; utterly +regardless of any established conventionalities of external appearance, +knowing (as indeed it always happened) that such daring interruptions +of the formal plan would rather give additional interest to its +symmetry than injure it. So that, in the best times of Gothic, a +useless window would rather have been opened in an unexpected place for +the sake of the surprise, than a useful one forbidden for the sake of +symmetry. Every successive architect, employed upon a great work, built +the pieces he added in his own way, utterly regardless of the style +adopted by his predecessors; and if two towers were raised in nominal +correspondence at the sides of a cathedral front, one was nearly sure +to be different from the other, and in each the style at the top to be +different from the style at the bottom. +</p> + +<p> +These marked variations were, however, only permitted as part of the +great system of perpetual change which ran through every member of +Gothic design, and rendered it as endless a field for the beholder's +inquiry as for the builder's imagination: change, which in the best +schools is subtle and delicate, and rendered more delightful by +intermingling of a noble monotony; in the more barbaric schools is +somewhat fantastic and redundant; but, in all, a necessary and constant +condition of the life of the school. Sometimes the variety is in one +feature, sometimes in another; it may be in the capitals or crockets, +in the niches or the traceries, or in all together, but in some one or +other of the features it will be found always. If the mouldings are +constant, the surface sculpture will change; if the capitals are of a +fixed design, the traceries will change; if the traceries are +monotonous, the capitals will change; and if even, as in some fine +schools, the early English for example, there is the slightest +approximation to an unvarying type of mouldings, capitals, and floral +decoration, the variety is found in the disposition of the masses, and +in the figure sculpture. +</p> + +<p> +I must now refer for a moment, before we quit the consideration of +this, the second mental element of Gothic, to the opening of the third +chapter of the <i>Seven Lamps of Architecture</i>, in which the distinction +was drawn (§ 2) between man gathering and man governing; between his +acceptance of the sources of delight from nature, and his development +of authoritative or imaginative power in their arrangement: for the two +mental elements, not only of Gothic, but of all good architecture, +which we have just been examining, belong to it, and are admirable in +it, chiefly as it is, more than any other subject of art, the work of +man, and the expression of the average power of man. A picture or poem +is often little more than a feeble utterance of man's admiration of +something out of himself; but architecture approaches more to a +creation of his own, born of his necessities, and expressive of his +nature. It is also, in some sort, the work of the whole race, while the +picture or statue are the work of one only, in most cases more highly +gifted than his fellows. And therefore we may expect that the first two +elements of good architecture should be expressive of some great truths +commonly belonging to the whole race, and necessary to be understood or +felt by them in all their work that they do under the sun. And observe +what they are: the confession of Imperfection, and the confession of +Desire of Change. The building of the bird and the bee needs not +express anything like this. It is perfect and unchanging. But just +because we are something better than birds or bees, our building must +confess that we have not reached the perfection we can imagine, and +cannot rest in the condition we have attained. If we pretend to have +reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves +and our work. God's work only may express that; but ours may never have +that sentence written upon it,—"And behold, it was very good." And, +observe again, it is not merely as it renders the edifice a book of +various knowledge, or a mine of precious thought, that variety is +essential to its nobleness. The vital principle is not the love of +<i>Knowledge</i>, but the love of <i>Change</i>. It is that strange <i>disquietude</i> +of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; that restlessness of the +dreaming mind, that wanders hither and thither among the niches, and +flickers feverishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in +labyrinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not +satisfied, nor shall be satisfied. The Greek could stay in his triglyph +furrow, and be at peace; but the work of the Gothic heart is fretwork +still, and it can neither rest in, nor from, its labour, but must pass +on, sleeplessly, until its love of change shall be pacified for ever in +the change that must come alike on them that wake and them that +sleep.... +</p> + +<p> +Last, because the least essential, of the constituent elements of this +noble school, was placed that of REDUNDANCE,—the uncalculating +bestowal of the wealth of its labour. There is, indeed, much Gothic, +and that of the best period, in which this element is hardly traceable, +and which depends for its effect almost exclusively on loveliness of +simple design and grace of uninvolved proportion; still, in the most +characteristic buildings, a certain portion of their effect depends +upon accumulation of ornament; and many of those which have most +influence on the minds of men, have attained it by means of this +attribute alone. And although, by careful study of the school, it is +possible to arrive at a condition of taste which shall be better +contented by a few perfect lines than by a whole façade covered with +fretwork, the building which only satisfies such a taste is not to be +considered the best. For the very first requirement of Gothic +architecture being, as we saw above, that it shall both admit the aid, +and appeal to the admiration, of the rudest as well as the most refined +minds, the richness of the work is, paradoxical as the statement may +appear, a part of its humility. No architecture is so haughty as that +which is simple; which refuses to address the eye, except in a few +clear and forceful lines; which implies, in offering so little to our +regards, that all it has offered is perfect; and disdains, either by +the complexity of the attractiveness of its features, to embarrass our +investigation, or betray us into delight. That humility, which is the +very life of the Gothic school, is shown not only in the imperfection, +but in the accumulation, of ornament. The inferior rank of the workman +is often shown as much in the richness, as the roughness, of his work; +and if the co-operation of every hand, and the sympathy of every heart, +are to be received, we must be content to allow the redundance which +disguises the failure of the feeble, and wins the regard of the +inattentive. There are, however, far nobler interests mingling, in the +Gothic heart, with the rude love of decorative accumulation: a +magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough to +reach the fulness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, which +would rather cast fruitless labour before the altar than stand idle in +the market; and, finally, a profound sympathy with the fulness and +wealth of the material universe, rising out of that Naturalism whose +operation we have already endeavoured to define. The sculptor who +sought for his models among the forest leaves, could not but quickly +and deeply feel that complexity need not involve the loss of grace, nor +richness that of repose; and every hour which he spent in the study of +the minute and various work of Nature, made him feel more forcibly the +barrenness of what was best in that of man: nor is it to be wondered +at, that, seeing her perfect and exquisite creations poured forth in a +profusion which conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he +should think that it ill became him to be niggardly of his own rude +craftsmanship; and where he saw throughout the universe a faultless +beauty lavished on measureless spaces of broidered field and blooming +mountain, to grudge his poor and imperfect labour to the few stones +that he had raised one upon another, for habitation or memorial. The +years of his life passed away before his task was accomplished; but +generation succeeded generation with unwearied enthusiasm, and the +cathedral front was at last lost in the tapestry of its traceries, like +a rock among the thickets and herbage of spring. +</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="chapter"> +<a name="Lamps">Selections from The Seven Lamps of Architecture</a> +</p> + + +<p class="quote"> + This book began to assume shape in Ruskin's mind as early as 1846; + he actually wrote it in the six months between November, 1848, and + April, 1849. It is the first of five illustrated volumes embodying + the results of seven years devoted to the study of the principles + and ideals of Gothic Architecture, the other volumes being <i>The + Stones of Venice</i> and <i>Examples of the Architecture of Venice</i> + (1851). In the first edition of <i>The Seven Lamps</i> the plates were + not only all drawn but also etched by his own hand. Ruskin at a + later time wrote that the purpose of <i>The Seven Lamps</i> was "to + show that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were + the magic powers by which all good architecture had been + produced." He is really applying here the same tests of truth and + sincerity that he employed in <i>Modern Painters</i>. Chronologically, + this volume and the others treating of architecture come between + the composition of Volumes II and III of <i>Modern Painters</i>. + Professor Charles Eliot Norton writes that the <i>Seven Lamps</i> is + "the first treatise in English to teach the real significance of + architecture as the most trustworthy record of the life and faith + of nations." The following selections form the closing chapters of + the volume, and have a peculiar interest as anticipating the + social and political ideas which came to colour all his later + work. +</p> + +<p><a name="Memory"> </a></p> +<h3> +THE LAMP OF MEMORY +</h3> + + +<p> +Among the hours of his life to which the writer looks back with +peculiar gratitude, as having been marked by more than ordinary fulness +of joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some years ago, +near time of sunset, among the broken masses of pine forest which skirt +the course of the Ain, above the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. +It is a spot which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, +of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be +manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the rise +of the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterance of those +mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly +broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet +restrained; and the far reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed +each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet +waters from some far off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness +pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the stern +expression of the central ranges are alike withdrawn. No +frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient glacier fret the soft +Jura pastures; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her +forest; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and +changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear +green streams wind along their well-known beds; and under the dark +quietness of the undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such +company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the +blessings of the earth. It was spring time, too; and all were coming +forth in clusters crowded for very love; there was room enough for all, +but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to +be nearer each other. There was the wood anemone, star after star, +closing every now and then into nebulae; and there was the oxalis, +troop by troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie,<a href="#fn162"><sup>[162]</sup></a> the +dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy +snow, and touched with ivy on the edges—ivy as light and lovely as the +vine; and, ever and anon, a blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in +sunny places; and in the more open ground, the vetch, and comfrey, and +mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, and the +wild strawberry, just a blossom or two all showered amidst the golden +softness of deep, warm, amber-coloured moss. I came out presently on +the edge of the ravine: the solemn murmur of its waters rose suddenly +from beneath, mixed with the singing of the thrushes among the pine +boughs; and, on the opposite side of the valley, walled all along as it +was by grey cliffs of limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off +their brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and with the shadows +of the pines flickering upon his plumage from above; but with the fall +of a hundred fathoms under his breast, and the curling pools of the +green river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam +globes moving with him as he flew. It would be difficult to conceive a +scene less dependent upon any other interest than that of its own +secluded and serious beauty; but the writer well remembers the sudden +blankness and chill which were cast upon it when he endeavoured, in +order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impressiveness, to +imagine it, for a moment, a scene in some aboriginal forest of the New +Continent. The flowers in an instant lost their light, the river its +music; the hills became oppressively desolate; a heaviness in the +boughs of the darkened forest showed how much of their former power had +been dependent upon a life which was not theirs, how much of the glory +of the imperishable, or continually renewed, creation is reflected from +things more precious in their memories than it, in its renewing. Those +ever springing flowers and ever flowing streams had been dyed by the +deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue; and the crests of +the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper +worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron wall of +Joux, and the four-square keep of Granson. +</p> + +<p> +It is as the centralization and protectress of this sacred influence, +that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious +thought. We may live without her, and worship without her, but we +cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all +imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the +uncorrupted marble bears!—how many pages of doubtful record might we +not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The ambition +of the old Babel builders was well directed for this world:<a href="#fn163"><sup>[163]</sup></a> there +are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and +Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is +mightier in its reality: it is well to have, not only what men have +thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength +wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The age of +Homer is surrounded with darkness, his very personality with doubt. Not +so that of Pericles: and the day is coming when we shall confess, that +we have learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her +sculpture than even from her sweet singers or soldier historians. And +if indeed there be any profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joy +in the thought of being remembered hereafter, which can give strength +to present exertion, or patience to present endurance, there are two +duties respecting national architecture whose importance it is +impossible to overrate: the first, to render the architecture of the +day, historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious of +inheritances, that of past ages. +</p> + +<p> +It is in the first of these two directions that Memory may truly be +said to be the Sixth Lamp of Architecture; for it is in becoming +memorial or monumental that a true perfection is attained by civil and +domestic buildings; and this partly as they are, with such a view, +built in a more stable manner, and partly as their decorations are +consequently animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning. +</p> + +<p> +As regards domestic buildings, there must always be a certain +limitation to views of this kind in the power, as well as in the +hearts, of men; still I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people +when their houses are built to last for one generation only. There is a +sanctity in a good man's house which cannot be renewed in every +tenement that rises on its ruins: and I believe that good men would +generally feel this; and that having spent their lives happily and +honourably, they would be grieved, at the close of them, to think that +the place of their earthly abode, which had seen, and seemed almost to +sympathize in, all their honour, their gladness, or their +suffering,—that this, with all the record it bare of them, and of all +material things that they had loved and ruled over, and set the stamp +of themselves upon—was to be swept away, as soon as there was room +made for them in the grave; that no respect was to be shown to it, no +affection felt for it, no good to be drawn from it by their children; +that though there was a monument in the church, there was no warm +monument in the hearth and house to them; that all that they ever +treasured was despised, and the places that had sheltered and comforted +them were dragged down to the dust. I say that a good man would fear +this; and that, far more, a good son, a noble descendant, would fear +doing it to his father's house. I say that if men lived like men +indeed, their houses would be temples—temples which we should hardly +dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to +live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a +strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents +taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our +fathers' honour, or that our own lives are not such as would make our +dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to +himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only. +And I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring +up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our +capital—upon those thin, tottering, foundationless shells of splintered +wood and imitated stone—upon those gloomy rows of formalized +minuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, as +solitary as similar—not merely with the careless disgust of an +offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but +with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must +be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native +ground; that those comfortless and unhonoured dwellings are the signs +of a great and spreading spirit of popular discontent; that they mark +the time when every man's aim is to be in some more elevated sphere +than his natural one, and every man's past life is his habitual scorn; +when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, and +live in the hope of forgetting the years that they have lived; when the +comfort, the peace, the religion of home have ceased to be felt; and +the crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differ +only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy +openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of +earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of +stability without the luxury of change. +</p> + +<p> +This is no slight, no consequenceless evil; it is ominous, infectious, +and fecund of other fault and misfortune. When men do not love their +hearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have +dishonoured both, and that they have never acknowledged the true +universality of that Christian worship which was indeed to supersede +the idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household +God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's +dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly and pour out its +ashes. It is not a question of mere ocular delight, it is no question +of intellectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and +with what aspect of durability and of completeness, the domestic +buildings of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, +not with more impunity to be neglected because the perception of them +depends on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build our +dwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, and diligent +completion, and with a view to their duration at least for such a +period as, in the ordinary course of national revolutions, might be +supposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the direction of +local interests. This at the least; but it would be better if, in every +possible instance, men built their own houses on a scale commensurate +rather with their condition at the commencement, than their attainments +at the termination, of their worldly career; and built them to stand as +long as human work at its strongest can be hoped to stand; recording to +their children what they had been, and from what, if so it had been +permitted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may +have that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, which +does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the small +habitation as well as the large, and which invests with the dignity of +contented manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance. +</p> + +<p> +I look to this spirit of honourable, proud, peaceful self-possession, +this abiding wisdom of contented life, as probably one of the chief +sources of great intellectual power in all ages, and beyond dispute as +the very primal source of the great architecture of old Italy and +France. To this day, the interest of their fairest cities depends, not +on the isolated richness of palaces, but on the cherished and exquisite +decoration of even the smallest tenements of their proud periods. The +most elaborate piece of architecture in Venice is a small house at the +head of the Grand Canal, consisting of a ground floor with two storeys +above, three windows in the first, and two in the second. Many of the +most exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, and of no larger +dimensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fifteenth-century +architecture in North Italy, is a small house in a back street, behind +the market-place of Vicenza; it bears date 1481, and the motto, <i>Il. +n'est. rose. sans. épine</i>; it has also only a ground floor and two +storeys, with three windows in each, separated by rich flower-work, and +with balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with open wings, +the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopiæ. The idea +that a house must be large in order to be well built, is altogether of +modern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be +historical, except of a size admitting figures larger than life. +</p> + +<p> +I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and +built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be, within +and without; with what degree of likeness to each other in style and +manner, I will say presently, under another head;<a href="#fn164"><sup>[164]</sup></a> but, at all +events, with such differences as might suit and express each man's +character and occupation, and partly his history. This right over the +house, I conceive, belongs to its first builder, and is to be respected +by his children; and it would be well that blank stones should be left +in places, to be inscribed with a summary of his life and of its +experience, raising thus the habitation into a kind of monument, and +developing, into more systematic instructiveness, that good custom +which was of old universal, and which still remains among some of the +Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of God's permission to +build and possess a quiet resting-place, in such sweet words as may +well close our speaking of these things. I have taken them from the +front of a cottage lately built among the green pastures which descend +from the village of Grindelwald to the lower glacier:— +</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Mit herzlichem Vertrauen</p> +<p>Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi</p> +<p>Dieses Haus bauen lassen.</p> +<p>Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren</p> +<p>Vor allem Unglück und Gefahren,</p> +<p>Und es in Segen lassen stehn</p> +<p>Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit</p> +<p>Nach dem himmlischen Paradiese,</p> +<p>Wo alle Frommen wohnen,</p> +<p>Da wird Gott sie belohnen</p> +<p>Mil der Friedenskrone</p> +<p class="i4">Zu alle Ewigkeit.<a href="#fn165"><sup>[165]</sup></a></p></div></div> + +<p> +In public buildings the historical purpose should be still more +definite. It is one of the advantages of Gothic architecture,—I use +the word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly opposed to +classical,—that it admits of a richness of record altogether +unlimited. Its minute and multitudinous sculptural decorations afford +means of expressing, either symbolically or literally, all that need be +known of national feeling or achievement. More decoration will, indeed, +be usually required than can take so elevated a character; and much, +even in the most thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom of +fancy, or suffered to consist of mere repetitions of some national +bearing or symbol. It is, however, generally unwise, even in mere +surface ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of variety which +the spirit of Gothic architecture admits; much more in important +features—capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as of +course in all confessed has-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells +a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There +should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without +some intellectual intention. Actual representation of history has in +modern times been checked by a difficulty, mean indeed, but steadfast; +that of unmanageable costume: nevertheless, by a sufficiently bold +imaginative treatment, and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles may +be vanquished; not perhaps in the degree necessary to produce sculpture +in itself satisfactory, but at all events so as to enable it to become +a grand and expressive element of architectural composition. Take, for +example, the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice. +History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior, +but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning. The large +one, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted to +the symbolization of Abstract Justice; above it is a sculpture of the +Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful subjection in its +treatment to its decorative purpose. The figures, if the subject had +been entirely composed of them, would have awkwardly interrupted the +line of the angle, and diminished its apparent strength; and therefore +in the midst of them, entirely without relation to them, and indeed +actually between the executioner and interceding mother, there rises +the ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues the +shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and enrich the +whole. The capital below bears among its leafage a throned figure of +Justice, Trajan doing justice to the widow, Aristotle "che die legge," +and one or two other subjects now unintelligible from decay. The +capitals next in order represent the virtues and vices in succession, +as preservative or destructive of national peace and power, concluding +with Faith, with the inscription "Fides optima in Deo est." A figure is +seen on the opposite side of the capital, worshipping the sun. After +these, one or two capitals are fancifully decorated with birds, and +then come a series representing, first the various fruits, then the +national costumes, and then the animals of the various countries +subject to Venetian rule. +</p> + +<p> +Now, not to speak of any more important public building, let us imagine +our own India House adorned in this way, by historical or symbolical +sculpture: massively built in the first place; then chased with +has-reliefs of our Indian battles, and fretted with carvings of +Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental stones; and the more +important members of its decoration composed of groups of Indian life +and landscape, and prominently expressing the phantasms of Hindoo +worship in their subjection to the Cross. Would not one such work be +better than a thousand histories? If, however, we have not the +invention necessary for such efforts, or if, which is probably one of +the most noble excuses we can offer for our deficiency in such matters, +we have less pleasure in talking about ourselves, even in marble, than +the Continental nations, at least we have no excuse for any want of +care in the points which insure the building's endurance. And as this +question is one of great interest in its relations to the choice of +various modes of decoration, it will be necessary to enter into it at +some length. +</p> + +<p> +The benevolent regards and purposes of men in masses seldom can be +supposed to extend beyond their own generation. They may look to +posterity as an audience, may hope for its attention, and labour for +its praise: they may trust to its recognition of unacknowledged merit, +and demand its justice for contemporary wrong. But all this is mere +selfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, or +consideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers we would fain +swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would +gladly support our presently disputed claims. The idea of self-denial +for the sake of posterity, of practising present economy for the sake +of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants may +live under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations to +inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly +recognized motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less our duties; +nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the range of our +intended and deliberate usefulness include, not only the companions but +the successors, of our pilgrimage. God has lent us the earth for our +life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come +after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, +as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to +involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits +which it was in our power to bequeath. And this the more, because it is +one of the appointed conditions of the labour of men that, in +proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and the harvest, is the +fulness of the fruit; and that generally, therefore, the farther off we +place our aim, and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of +what we have laboured for, the more wide and rich will be the measure +of our success. Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they can +benefit those who come after them; and of all the pulpits from which +human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so +far as from the grave. +</p> + +<p> +Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect for futurity. +Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true magnificence, +by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the +quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, +separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no +action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test. +Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it +not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such +work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay +stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held +sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as +they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, "See! this our +fathers did for us." For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is +not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in +that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious +sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls +that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in +their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the +transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through +the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, +and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the +sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, +connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half +constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations: +it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real +light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not +until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted +with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have +been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of +death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the +natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much +as these possess, of language and of life. +</p> + +<p> +For that period, then, we must build; not, indeed, refusing to +ourselves the delight of present completion, nor hesitating to follow +such portions of character as may depend upon delicacy of execution to +the highest perfection of which they are capable, even although we may +know that in the course of years such details must perish; but taking +care that for work of this kind we sacrifice no enduring quality, and +that the building shall not depend for its impressiveness upon anything +that is perishable. This would, indeed, be the law of good composition +under any circumstances, the arrangement of the larger masses being +always a matter of greater importance than the treatment of the +smaller; but in architecture there is much in that very treatment which +is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the +probable effects of time: and (which is still more to be considered) +there is a beauty in those effects themselves, which nothing else can +replace, and which it is our wisdom to consult and to desire. For +though, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of age only, +there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, such and so great as to +have become not unfrequently the subject of especial choice among +certain schools of art, and to have impressed upon those schools the +character usually and loosely expressed by the term "picturesque.".... +</p> + +<p> +Now, to return to our immediate subject, it so happens that, in +architecture, the superinduced and accidental beauty is most commonly +inconsistent with the preservation of original character, and the +picturesque is therefore sought in ruin, and supposed to consist in +decay. Whereas, even when so sought, it consists in the mere sublimity +of the rents, or fractures, or stains, or vegetation, which assimilate +the architecture with the work of Nature, and bestow upon it those +circumstances of colour and form which are universally beloved by the +eye of man. So far as this is done, to the extinction of the true +characters of the architecture, it is picturesque, and the artist who +looks to the stem of the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar, is +carrying out in more daring freedom the debased sculptor's choice of +the hair instead of the countenance. But so far as it can be rendered +consistent with the inherent character, the picturesque or extraneous +sublimity of architecture has just this of nobler function in it than +that of any other object whatsoever, that it is an exponent of age, of +that in which, as has been said, the greatest glory of the building +consists; and, therefore, the external signs of this glory, having +power and purpose greater than any belonging to their mere sensible +beauty, may be considered as taking rank among pure and essential +characters; so essential to my mind, that I think a building cannot be +considered as in its prime until four or five centuries have passed +over it; and that the entire choice and arrangement of its details +should have reference to their appearance after that period, so that +none should be admitted which would suffer material injury either by +the weather-staining, or the mechanical degradation which the lapse of +such a period would necessitate. +</p> + +<p> +It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions which the +application of this principle involves. They are of too great interest +and complexity to be even touched upon within my present limits, but +this is broadly to be noticed, that those styles of architecture which +are picturesque in the sense above explained with respect to sculpture, +that is to say, whose decoration depends on the arrangement of points +of shade rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but commonly +gain in richness of effect when their details are partly worn away; +hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should always +be adopted when the materials to be employed are liable to degradation, +as brick, sandstone, or soft limestone; and styles in any degree +dependent on purity of line, as the Italian Gothic, must be practised +altogether in hard and undecomposing materials, granite, serpentine, or +crystalline marbles. There can be no doubt that the nature of the +accessible materials influenced the formation of both styles; and it +should still more authoritatively determine our choice of either. +</p> + +<p> +It does not belong to my present plan to consider at length the second +head of duty of which I have above spoken; the preservation of the +architecture we possess: but a few words may be forgiven, as especially +necessary in modern times. Neither by the public, nor by those who have +the care of public monuments, is the true meaning of the word +<i>restoration</i> understood. It means the most total destruction which a +building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be +gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing +destroyed. Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; it +is <i>impossible</i>, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore +anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That +which I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit +which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, never can be +recalled. Another spirit may be given by another time, and it is then a +new building; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be summoned up, +and commanded to direct other hands, and other thoughts. And as for +direct and simple copying, it is palpably impossible. What copying can +there be of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down? The whole +finish of the work was in the half inch that is gone; if you attempt to +restore that finish, you do it conjecturally; if you copy what is left, +granting fidelity to be possible (and what care, or watchfulness, or +cost can secure it,) how is the new work better than the old? There was +yet in the old <i>some</i> life, some mysterious suggestion of what it had +been, and of what it had lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines which +rain and sun had wrought. There can be none in the brute hardness of +the new carving. Look at the animals which I have given in Plate XIV., +as an instance of living work, and suppose the markings of the scales +and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who shall +ever restore them? The first step to restoration, (I have seen it, and +that again and again—seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on +the Casa d'Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux,) is to +dash the old work to pieces; the second is usually to put up the +cheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection, but in all +cases, however careful, and however laboured, an imitation still, a +cold model of such parts as <i>can</i> be modelled, with conjectural +supplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one +instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, +the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained, or +even attempted.<a href="#fn166"><sup>[166]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from +beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a +corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as +your cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see +nor care: but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and +mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a +mass of clay: more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever +will be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there may come a +necessity for restoration! Granted. Look the necessity full in the +face, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for +destruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its +stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you +will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place. And +look that necessity in the face before it comes, and you may prevent +it. The principle of modern times, (a principle which, I believe, at +least in France, to be <i>systematically acted on by the masons</i>, in +order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen was pulled down +by the magistrates of the town by way of giving work to some vagrants,) +is to neglect buildings first, and restore them afterwards. Take proper +care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. A few +sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks +swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from +ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you +may, and at <i>any</i> cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Count its +stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at +the gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where it +loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the +unsightliness of the aid: better a crutch than a lost limb; and do this +tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation will +still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its evil day must come +at last; but let it come declaredly and openly, and let no dishonouring +and false substitute deprive it of the funeral offices of memory. +</p> + +<p> +Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to speak; my words will +not reach those who commit them, and yet, be it heard or not, I must +not leave the truth unstated, that it is again no question of +expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past +times or not. <i>We have no right whatever to touch them</i>. They are not +ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the +generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead have still their +right in them: that which they laboured for, the praise of achievement +or the expression of religious feeling, or whatsoever else it might be +which in those buildings they intended to be permanent, we have no +right to obliterate. What we have ourselves built, we are at liberty to +throw down; but what other men gave their strength and wealth and life +to accomplish, their right over does not pass away with their death; +still less is the right to the use of what they have left vested in us +only. It belongs to all their successors. It may hereafter be a subject +of sorrow, or a cause of injury, to millions, that we have consulted +our present convenience by casting down such buildings as we choose to +dispense with. That sorrow, that loss, we have no right to inflict. Did +the cathedral of Avranches<a href="#fn167"><sup>[167]</sup></a> belong to the mob who destroyed it, any +more than it did to us, who walk in sorrow to and fro over its +foundation? Neither does any building whatever belong to those mobs who +do violence to it. For a mob it is, and must be always; it matters not +whether enraged, or in deliberate folly; whether countless, or sitting +in committees; the people who destroy anything causelessly are a mob, +and Architecture is always destroyed causelessly. A fair building is +necessarily worth the ground it stands upon, and will be so until +Central Africa and America shall have become as populous as Middlesex: +nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for its destruction. If +ever valid, certainly not now, when the place both of the past and +future is too much usurped in our minds by the restless and +discontented present. The very quietness of nature is gradually +withdrawn from us; thousands who once in their necessarily prolonged +travel were subjected to an influence, from the silent sky and +slumbering fields, more effectual than known or confessed, now bear +with them even there the ceaseless fever of their life; and along the +iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the +fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All +vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the +central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow +bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon the +city gates. The only influence which can in any wise <i>there</i> take the +place of that of the woods and fields, is the power of ancient +Architecture. Do not part with it for the sake of the formal square, or +of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly street nor opened +quay. The pride of a city is not in these. Leave them to the crowd; but +remember that there will surely be some within the circuit of the +disquieted walls who would ask for some other spots than these wherein +to walk; for some other forms to meet their sight familiarly: like +him<a href="#fn168"><sup>[168]</sup></a> who sat so often where the sun struck from the west to watch the +lines of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like those, his +Hosts, who could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, the +places where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of the dark +streets of Verona. +</p> + + +<p><a name="Obedience"> </a></p> +<h3>THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE +</h3> + + +<p> +It has been my endeavour to show in the preceding pages how every form +of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the Polity, +Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing +this, I have named a principle to which I would now assign a definite +place among those which direct that embodiment; the last place, not +only as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather as +belonging to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest; +that principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stability, Life its +happiness, Faith its acceptance, Creation its continuance,—Obedience. +</p> + +<p> +Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious satisfaction +which I have found in the pursuit of a subject that at first appeared +to bear but slightly on the grave interests of mankind, that the +conditions of material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to +consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the conception, how +frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call +Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest +ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but +its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. +There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the +sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only +for our heaviest punishment. +</p> + +<p> +In one of the noblest poems<a href="#fn169"><sup>[169]</sup></a> for its imagery and its music belonging +to the recent school of our literature, the writer has sought in the +aspect of inanimate nature the expression of that Liberty which, having +once loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes of darkness. But +with what strange fallacy of interpretation! since in one noble line of +his invocation he has contradicted the assumptions of the rest, and +acknowledged the presence of a subjection, surely not less severe +because eternal. How could he otherwise? since if there be any one +principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or +more sternly than another imprinted on every atom, of the visible +creation, that principle is not Liberty, but Law. +</p> + +<p> +The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the Law of Liberty. +Then why use the single and misunderstood word? If by liberty you mean +chastisement of the passions, discipline of the intellect, subjection +of the will; if you mean the fear of inflicting, the shame of +committing, a wrong; if you mean respect for all who are in authority, +and consideration for all who are in dependence; veneration for the +good, mercy to the evil, sympathy with the weak; if you mean +watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all pleasures, and +perseverance in all toils; if you mean, in a word, that Service which +is defined in the liturgy of the English church to be perfect Freedom, +why do you name this by the same word by which the luxurious mean +license, and the reckless mean change; by which the rogue means rapine, +and the fool, equality; by which the proud mean anarchy, and the +malignant mean violence? Call it by any name rather than this, but its +best and truest, is Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind +of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is +only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus, while a +measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of +things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all +consist in their Restraint. Compare a river that has burst its banks +with one that is bound by them, and the clouds that are scattered over +the face of the whole heaven with those that are marshalled into ranks +and orders by its winds. So that though restraint, utter and +unrelaxing, can never be comely, this is not because it is in itself an +evil, but only because, when too great, it overpowers the nature of the +thing restrained, and so counteracts the other laws of which that +nature is itself composed. And the balance wherein consists the +fairness of creation is between the laws of life and being in the +things governed, and the laws of general sway to which they are +subjected; and the suspension or infringement of either, kind of law, +or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and synonymous with, +disease; while the increase of both honour and beauty is habitually on +the side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than of +character (or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in the +catalogue of social virtue is "Loyalty," and the sweetest which men +have learned in the pastures of the wilderness is "Fold." +</p> + +<p> +Nor is this all; but we may observe, that exactly in proportion to the +majesty of things in the scale of being, is the completeness of their +obedience to the laws that are set over them. Gravitation is less +quietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than it is by the sun +and moon; and the ocean falls and flows under influences which the lake +and river do not recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of any +action or occupation of men, there is perhaps no better test than the +question "are its laws strait?" For their severity will probably be +commensurate with the greatness of the numbers whose labour it +concentrates or whose interest it concerns. +</p> + +<p> +This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art, +above all others, whose productions are the most vast and the most +common; which requires for its practice the co-operation of bodies of +men, and for its perfection the perseverance of successive generations. +And, taking into account also what we have before so often observed of +Architecture, her continual influence over the emotions of daily life, +and her realism, as opposed to the two sister arts which are in +comparison but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we might +beforehand expect that we should find her healthy state and action +dependent on far more severe laws than theirs: that the license which +they extend to the workings of individual mind would be withdrawn by +her; and that, in assertion of the relations which she holds with all +that is universally important to man, she would set forth, by her own +majestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man's social +happiness and power depend. We might, therefore, without the light of +experience, conclude, that Architecture never could flourish except +when it was subjected to a national law as strict and as minutely +authoritative as the laws which regulate religion, policy, and social +relations; nay, even more authoritative than these, because both +capable of more enforcement, as over more passive matter; and needing +more enforcement, as the purest type not of one law nor of another, but +of the common authority of all. But in this matter experience speaks +more loudly than reason. If there be any one condition which, in +watching the progress of architecture, we see distinct and general; if, +amidst the counter-evidence of success attending opposite accidents of +character and circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly and +indisputably drawn, it is this; that the architecture of a nation is +great only when it is as universal and as established as its language; +and when provincial differences of style are nothing more than so many +dialects. Other necessities are matters of doubt: nations have been +alike successful in their architecture in times of poverty and of +wealth; in times of war and of peace; in times of barbarism and of +refinement; under governments the most liberal or the most arbitrary; +but this one condition has been constant, this one requirement clear in +all places and at all times, that the work shall be that of a <i>school</i>, +that no individual caprice shall dispense with, or materially vary, +accepted types and customary decorations; and that from the cottage to +the palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from the garden +fence to the fortress wall, every member and feature of the +architecture of the nation shall be as commonly current, as frankly +accepted, as its language or its coin. +</p> + +<p> +A day never passes without our hearing our English architects called +upon to be original, and to invent a new style: about as sensible and +necessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had rags +enough on his back to keep out cold, to invent a new mode of cutting a +coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him concern himself about +the fashion of it afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Who +wants a new style of painting or sculpture? But we want some style. It +is of marvellously little importance, if we have a code of laws and +they be good laws, whether they be new or old, foreign or native, Roman +or Saxon, or Norman, or English laws. But it is of considerable +importance that we should have a code of laws of one kind or another, +and that code accepted and enforced from one side of the island to +another, and not one law made ground of judgment at York and another in +Exeter. And in like manner it does not matter one marble splinter +whether we have an old or new architecture, but it matters everything +whether we have an architecture truly so called or not; that is, +whether an architecture whose laws might be taught at our schools from +Cornwall to Northumberland, as we teach English spelling and English +grammar, or an architecture which is to be invented fresh every time we +build a workhouse or a parish school. There seems to me to be a +wonderful misunderstanding among the majority of architects at the +present day as to the very nature and meaning of Originality, and of +all wherein it consists. Originality in expression does not depend on +invention of new words; nor originality in poetry on invention of new +measures; nor, in painting, on invention of new colours, or new modes +of using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of colour, the +general principles of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have been +determined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to any +more than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, such +additions or alterations are much more the work of time and of +multitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck,<a href="#fn170"><sup>[170]</sup></a> +who will be known as the introducer of a new style once in ten +centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to some accidental +by-play or pursuit; and the use of that invention will depend +altogether on the popular necessities or instincts of the period. +Originality depends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the gift, +will take up any style that is going, the style of his day, and will +work in that, and be great in that, and make everything that he does in +it look as fresh as if every thought of it had just come down from +heaven. I do not say that he will not take liberties with his +materials, or with his rules: I do not say that strange changes will +not sometimes be wrought by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. But +those changes will be instructive, natural, facile, though sometimes +marvellous; they will never be sought after as things necessary to his +dignity or to his independence; and those liberties will be like the +liberties that a great speaker takes with the language, not a defiance +of its rules for the sake of singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated, +and brilliant consequences of an effort to express what the language, +without such infraction, could not. There may be times when, as I have +above described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, and +in its refusal of ancient limitations: so there are in the life of an +insect; and there is great interest in the state of both the art and +the insect at those periods when, by their natural progress and +constitutional power, such changes are about to be wrought. But as that +would be both an Uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, instead +of being contented with a caterpillar's life and feeding on +caterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself into a +chrysalis; and as that would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie +awake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn +itself prematurely into a moth; so will that art be unhappy and +unprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the food, and +contenting itself with the customs, which have been enough for the +support and guidance of other arts before it and like it, is struggling +and fretting under the natural limitations of its existence, and +striving to become something other than it is. And though it is the +nobility of the highest creatures to look forward to, and partly to +understand the changes which are appointed for them, preparing for them +beforehand; and if, as is usual with <i>appointed</i> changes, they be into +a higher state, even desiring them, and rejoicing in the hope of them, +yet it is the strength of every creature, be it changeful or not, to +rest for the time being, contented with the conditions of its +existence, and striving only to bring about the changes which it +desires, by fulfilling to the uttermost the duties for which its +present state is appointed and continued. +</p> + +<p> +Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though both may be, +and this is commonly a most merciful and enthusiastic supposition with +respect to either, is ever to be sought in itself, or can ever be +healthily obtained by any struggle or rebellion against common laws. We +want neither the one nor the other. The forms of architecture already +known are good enough for us, and for far better than any of us: and it +will be time enough to think of changing them for better when we can +use them as they are. But there are some things which we not only want, +but cannot do without; and which all the struggling and raving in the +world, nay more, which all the real talent and resolution in England, +will never enable us to do without: and these are Obedience, Unity, +Fellowship, and Order. And all our schools of design, and committees of +taste; all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and essays; all +the sacrifices which we are beginning to make, all the truth which +there is in our English nature, all the power of our English will, and +the life of our English intellect, will in this matter be as useless as +efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit +architecture and all art, like other things, to English law. +</p> + +<p> +I say architecture and all art; for I believe architecture must be the +beginning of arts, and that the others must follow her in their time +and order; and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting and +sculpture, in which no one will deny the life, though many the health, +depends upon that of our architecture. I think that all will languish +until that takes the lead, and (this I do not <i>think</i>, but I proclaim, +as confidently as I would assert the necessity, for the safety of +society, of an understood and strongly administered legal government) +our architecture <i>will</i> languish, and that in the very dust, until the +first principle of common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal +system of form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. It +may be said that this is impossible. It may be so—I fear it is so: I +have nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of it; I +simply know and assert the necessity of it. If it be impossible, +English art is impossible. Give it up at once. You are wasting time, +and money, and energy upon it, and though you exhaust centuries and +treasures, and break hearts for it, you will never raise it above the +merest dilettanteism. Think not of it. It is a dangerous vanity, a mere +gulph in which genius after genius will be swallowed up, and it will +not close. And so it will continue to be, unless the one bold and broad +step be taken at the beginning. We shall not manufacture art out of +pottery and printed stuffs; we shall not reason out art by our +philosophy; we shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, nor +create it by our fancies: I do not say that we can even build it out of +brick and stone; but there is a chance for us in these, and there is +none else; and that chance rests on the bare possibility of obtaining +the consent, both of architects and of the public, to choose a style, +and to use it universally. +</p> + +<p> +How surely its principles ought at first to be limited, we may easily +determine by the consideration of the necessary modes of teaching any +other branch of general knowledge. When we begin to teach children +writing, we force them to absolute copyism, and require absolute +accuracy in the formation of the letters; as they obtain command of the +received modes of literal expression, we cannot prevent their falling +into such variations as are consistent with their feeling, their +circumstances, or their characters. So, when a boy is first taught to +write Latin, an authority is required of him for every expression he +uses; as he becomes master of the language he may take a license, and +feel his right to do so without any authority, and yet write better +Latin than when he borrowed every separate expression. In the same way +our architects would have to be taught to write the accepted style. We +must first determine what buildings are to be considered Augustan in +their authority; their modes of construction and laws of proportion are +to be studied with the most penetrating care; then the different forms +and uses of their decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as a +German grammarian classes the powers of prepositions; and under this +absolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work; admitting +not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto,<a href="#fn171"><sup>[171]</sup></a> or the +breadth of a fillet. Then, when our sight is once accustomed to the +grammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the +expression of them all; when we can speak this dead language naturally, +and apply it to whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, to +every practical purpose of life; then, and not till then, a license +might be permitted, and individual authority allowed to change or to +add to the received forms, always within certain limits; the +decorations, especially, might be made subjects of variable fancy, and +enriched with ideas either original or taken from other schools. And +thus, in process of time and by a great national movement, it might +come to pass that a new style should arise, as language itself changes; +we might perhaps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak +modern instead of old English; but this would be a matter of entire +indifference, and a matter, besides, which no determination or desire +could either hasten or prevent. That alone which it is in our power to +obtain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous style of +some kind, and such comprehension and practice of it as would enable us +to adapt its features to the peculiar character of every several +building, large or small, domestic, civil or ecclesiastical. +</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="chapter"> +<a name="Lectures">Selections from Lectures on Art</a> +</p> + + +<p class="quote"> + Ruskin was first elected to the Slade Professorship of Fine Art in + Oxford in 1869, and held the chair continuously until 1878, when + he resigned because of ill-health, and again from 1883 to 1885. + The <i>Lectures on Art</i> were announced in the <i>Oxford University + Gazette</i> of January 28, 1870, the general subject of the course + being "The Limits and Elementary Practice of Art," with Leonardo's + <i>Trattato della Pittura</i> as the text-book. The lectures were + delivered between February 8 and March 23, 1870. They appeared in + book form in July of the same year. These lectures contain much of + his best and most mature thought, of his most painstaking research + and keenest analysis. Talking with a friend in later years, he + said: "I have taken more pains with the Oxford Lectures than with + anything else I have ever done": and in the preface to the edition + of 1887 he began: "The following lectures were the most important + piece of my literary work, done with unabated power, best motive, + and happiest concurrence of circumstance." Ruskin took his + professorship very seriously. He spent almost infinite labour in + composing his more formal lectures, and during the eight years + in which he held the chair he published six volumes of them, not + to mention three Italian guide-books, which came under his + interpretation of his professional duties;—"the real duty + involved in my Oxford Professorship cannot be completely done by + giving lectures in Oxford only, but ... I ought also to give what + guidance I may to travellers in Italy." Not only by lecturing and + writing did he fill the chair, but he taught individuals, founded + and endowed a Drawing mastership, and presented elaborately + catalogued collections to illustrate his subject. His lecture + classes were always large, and his work had a marked influence in + the University. +</p> + +<p><a name="Inaugural"> </a></p> +<h3>INAUGURAL +</h3> + + +<p> +We see lately a most powerful impulse given to the production of +costly works of art by the various causes which promote the sudden +accumulation of wealth in the hands of private persons. We have thus a +vast and new patronage, which, in its present agency, is injurious to +our schools; but which is nevertheless in a great degree earnest and +conscientious, and far from being influenced chiefly by motives of +ostentation. Most of our rich men would be glad to promote the true +interests of art in this country; and even those who buy for vanity, +found their vanity on the possession of what they suppose to be best. +</p> + +<p> +It is therefore in a great measure the fault of artists themselves if +they suffer from this partly unintelligent, but thoroughly +well-intended patronage. If they seek to attract it by eccentricity, +to deceive it by superficial qualities, or take advantage of it by +thoughtless and facile production, they necessarily degrade themselves +and it together, and have no right to complain afterwards that it will +not acknowledge better-grounded claims. But if every painter of real +power would do only what he knew to be worthy of himself, and refuse +to be involved in the contention for undeserved or accidental success, +there is indeed, whatever may have been thought or said to the +contrary, true instinct enough in the public mind to follow such firm +guidance. It is one of the facts which the experience of thirty years +enables me to assert without qualification, that a really good picture +is ultimately always approved and bought, unless it is wilfully +rendered offensive to the public by faults which the artist has been +either too proud to abandon or too weak to correct. +</p> + +<p> +The development of whatever is healthful and serviceable in the two +modes of impulse which we have been considering, depends however, +ultimately, on the direction taken by the true interest in art which +has lately been aroused by the great and active genius of many of our +living, or but lately lost, painters, sculptors, and architects. It +may perhaps surprise, but I think it will please you to hear me, or +(if you will forgive me, in my own Oxford, the presumption of fancying +that some may recognize me by an old name) to hear the author of +<i>Modern Painters</i> say, that his chief error in earlier days was not in +over-estimating, but in too slightly acknowledging the merit of living +men. The great painter whose power, while he was yet among us, I was +able to perceive,<a href="#fn172"><sup>[172]</sup></a> was the first to reprove me for my disregard of +the skill of his fellow-artists; and, with this inauguration of the +study of the art of all time,—a study which can only by true modesty +end in wise admiration,—it is surely well that I connect the record +of these words of his, spoken then too truly to myself, and true +always more or less for all who are untrained in that toil,—"You +don't know how difficult it is." +</p> + +<p> +You will not expect me, within the compass of this lecture, to give +you any analysis of the many kinds of excellent art (in all the three +great divisions) which the complex demands of modern life, and yet +more varied instincts of modern genius, have developed for pleasure or +service. It must be my endeavour, in conjunction with my colleagues in +other Universities, hereafter to enable you to appreciate these +worthily; in the hope that also the members of the Royal Academy, and +those of the Institute of British Architects, may be induced to +assist, and guide, the efforts of the Universities, by organizing such +a system of art education for their own students, as shall in future +prevent the waste of genius in any mistaken endeavours; especially +removing doubt as to the proper substance and use of materials; and +requiring compliance with certain elementary principles of right, in +every picture and design exhibited with their sanction. It is not +indeed possible for talent so varied as that of English artists to be +compelled into the formalities of a determined school; but it must +certainly be the function of every academical body to see that their +younger students are guarded from what must in every school be error; +and that they are practised in the best methods of work hitherto +known, before their ingenuity is directed to the invention of others. +</p> + +<p> +I need scarcely refer, except for the sake of completeness in my +statement, to one form of demand for art which is wholly +unenlightened, and powerful only for evil;—namely, the demand of the +classes occupied solely in the pursuit of pleasure, for objects and +modes of art that can amuse indolence or excite passion. There is no +need for any discussion of these requirements, or of their forms of +influence, though they are very deadly at present in their operation +on sculpture, and on jewellers' work. They cannot be checked by blame, +nor guided by instruction; they are merely the necessary results of +whatever defects exist in the temper and principles of a luxurious +society; and it is only by moral changes, not by art-criticism, that +their action can be modified. +</p> + +<p> +Lastly, there is a continually increasing demand for popular art, +multipliable by the printing-press, illustrative of daily events, of +general literature, and of natural science. Admirable skill, and some +of the best talent of modern times, are occupied in supplying this +want; and there is no limit to the good which may be effected by +rightly taking advantage of the powers we now possess of placing good +and lovely art within the reach of the poorest classes. Much has been +already accomplished; but great harm has been done also,—first, by +forms of art definitely addressed to depraved tastes; and, secondly, +in a more subtle way, by really beautiful and useful engravings which +are yet not good enough to retain their influence on the public +mind;—which weary it by redundant quantity of monotonous average +excellence, and diminish or destroy its power of accurate attention to +work of a higher order. +</p> + +<p> +Especially this is to be regretted in the effect produced on the +schools of line engraving, which had reached in England an executive +skill of a kind before unexampled, and which of late have lost much of +their more sterling and legitimate methods. Still, I have seen plates +produced quite recently, more beautiful, I think, in some qualities +than anything ever before attained by the burin:<a href="#fn173"><sup>[173]</sup></a> and I have not the +slightest fear that photography, or any other adverse or competitive +operation, will in the least ultimately diminish,—I believe they will, +on the contrary, stimulate and exalt—the grand old powers of the wood +and the steel. +</p> + +<p> +Such are, I think, briefly the present conditions of art with which +we have to deal; and I conceive it to be the function of this +Professorship, with respect to them, to establish both a practical and +critical school of fine art for English gentlemen: practical, so that, +if they draw at all, they may draw rightly; and critical, so that, +being first directed to such works of existing art as will best reward +their study, they may afterwards make their patronage of living +artists delightful to themselves in their consciousness of its +justice, and, to the utmost, beneficial to their country, by being +given only to the men who deserve it; in the early period of their +lives, when they both need it most and can be influenced by it to the +best advantage. +</p> + +<p> +And especially with reference to this function of patronage, I believe +myself justified in taking into account future probabilities as to the +character and range of art in England; and I shall endeavour at once to +organize with you a system of study calculated to develope chiefly the +knowledge of those branches in which the English schools have shown, +and are likely to show, peculiar excellence. +</p> + +<p> +Now, in asking your sanction both for the nature of the general plans I +wish to adopt, and for what I conceive to be necessary limitations of +them, I wish you to be fully aware of my reasons for both: and I will +therefore risk the burdening of your patience while I state the +directions of effort in which I think English artists are liable to +failure, and those also in which past experience has shown they are +secure of success. +</p> + +<p> +I referred, but now, to the effort we are making to improve the designs +of our manufactures. Within certain limits I believe this improvement +may indeed take effect: so that we may no more humour momentary +fashions by ugly results of chance instead of design; and may produce +both good tissues, of harmonious colours, and good forms and substance +of pottery and glass. But we shall never excel in decorative design. +Such design is usually produced by people of great natural powers of +mind, who have no variety of subjects to employ themselves on, no +oppressive anxieties, and are in circumstances either of natural +scenery or of daily life, which cause pleasurable excitement. <i>We</i> +cannot design because we have too much to think of, and we think of it +too anxiously. It has long been observed how little real anxiety exists +in the minds of the partly savage races which excel in decorative art; +and we must not suppose that the temper of the middle ages was a +troubled one, because every day brought its dangers or its changes. The +very eventfulness of the life rendered it careless, as generally is +still the case with soldiers and sailors. Now, when there are great +powers of thought, and little to think of, all the waste energy and +fancy are thrown into the manual work, and you have as much intellect +as would direct the affairs of a large mercantile concern for a day, +spent all at once, quite unconsciously, in drawing an ingenious spiral. +</p> + +<p> +Also, powers of doing fine ornamental work are only to be reached by a +perpetual discipline of the hand as well as of the fancy; discipline as +attentive and painful as that which a juggler has to put himself +through, to overcome the more palpable difficulties of his profession. +The execution of the best artists is always a splendid tour-de-force, +and much that in painting is supposed to be dependent on material is +indeed only a lovely and quite inimitable legerdemain. Now, when powers +of fancy, stimulated by this triumphant precision of manual dexterity, +descend uninterruptedly from generation to generation, you have at +last, what is not so much a trained artist as a new species of animal, +with whose instinctive gifts you have no chance of contending. And thus +all our imitations of other peoples' work are futile. We must learn +first to make honest English wares, and afterward to decorate them as +may please the then approving Graces. +</p> + +<p> +Secondly—and this is an incapacity of a graver kind, yet having its +own good in it also—we shall never be successful in the highest fields +of ideal or theological art. +</p> + +<p> +For there is one strange, but quite essential, character in us—ever +since the Conquest, if not earlier:—a delight in the forms of burlesque +which are connected in some degree with the foulness in evil. I think +the most perfect type of a true English mind in its best possible +temper, is that of Chaucer; and you will find that, while it is for +the most part full of thoughts of beauty, pure and wild like that of +an April morning, there are, even in the midst of this, sometimes +momentarily jesting passages which stoop to play with evil—while the +power of listening to and enjoying the jesting of entirely gross +persons, whatever the feeling may be which permits it, afterwards +degenerates into forms of humour which render some of quite the +greatest, wisest, and most moral of English writers now almost useless +for our youth. And yet you will find that whenever Englishmen are +wholly without this instinct, their genius is comparatively weak and +restricted. +</p> + +<p> +Now, the first necessity for the doing of any great work in ideal art, +is the looking upon all foulness with horror, as a contemptible though +dreadful enemy. You may easily understand what I mean, by comparing +the feelings with which Dante regards any form of obscenity or of base +jest, with the temper in which the same things are regarded by +Shakspere. And this strange earthly instinct of ours, coupled as it +is, in our good men, with great simplicity and common sense, renders +them shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual nature, +low or high; but precludes them from that speciality of art which is +properly called sublime. If ever we try anything in the manner of +Michael Angelo or of Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, as +Milton in the battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod:<a href="#fn174"><sup>[174]</sup></a> while in +art, every attempt in this style has hitherto been the sign either of +the presumptuous egotism of persons who had never really learned to be +workmen, or it has been connected with very tragic forms of the +contemplation of death,—it has always been partly insane, and never +once wholly successful. +</p> + +<p> +But we need not feel any discomfort in these limitations of our +capacity. We can do much that others cannot, and more than we have +ever yet ourselves completely done. Our first great gift is in the +portraiture of living people—a power already so accomplished in both +Reynolds and Gainsborough, that nothing is left for future masters but +to add the calm of perfect workmanship to their vigour and felicity of +perception. And of what value a true school of portraiture may become +in the future, when worthy men will desire only to be known, and +others will not fear to know them, for what they truly were, we cannot +from any past records of art influence yet conceive. But in my next +address it will be partly my endeavour to show you how much more +useful, because more humble, the labour of great masters might have +been, had they been content to bear record of the souls that were +dwelling with them on earth, instead of striving to give a deceptive +glory to those they dreamed of in heaven. +</p> + +<p> +Secondly, we have an intense power of invention and expression in +domestic drama; (King Lear and Hamlet being essentially domestic in +their strongest motives of interest). There is a tendency at this +moment towards a noble development of our art in this direction, +checked by many adverse conditions, which may be summed in one,—the +insufficiency of generous civic or patriotic passion in the heart of +the English people; a fault which makes its domestic affections +selfish, contracted, and, therefore, frivolous. +</p> + +<p> +Thirdly, in connection with our simplicity and good-humour, and partly +with that very love of the grotesque which debases our ideal, we have a +sympathy with the lower animals which is peculiarly our own; and which, +though it has already found some exquisite expression in the works of +Bewick and Landseer, is yet quite undeveloped. This sympathy, with the +aid of our now authoritative science of physiology, and in association +with our British love of adventure, will, I hope, enable us to give to +the future inhabitants of the globe an almost perfect record of the +present forms of animal life upon it, of which many are on the point of +being extinguished.... +</p> + +<p> +While I myself hold this professorship, I shall direct you in these +exercises very definitely to natural history, and to landscape; not +only because in these two branches I am probably able to show you +truths which might be despised by my successors; but because I think +the vital and joyful study of natural history quite the principal +element requiring introduction, not only into University, but into +national, education, from highest to lowest; and I even will risk +incurring your ridicule by confessing one of my fondest dreams, that I +may succeed in making some of you English youths like better to look at +a bird than to shoot it; and even desire to make wild creatures tame, +instead of tame creatures wild. And for the study of landscape, it is, +I think, now calculated to be of use in deeper, if not more important +modes, than that of natural science, for reasons which I will ask you +to let me state at some length. +</p> + +<p> +Observe first;—no race of men which is entirety bred in wild country, +far from cities, ever enjoys landscape. They may enjoy the beauty of +animals, but scarcely even that: a true peasant cannot see the beauty +of cattle; but only the qualities expressive of their serviceableness. +I waive discussion of this to-day; permit my assertion of it, under my +confident guarantee of future proof. Landscape can only be enjoyed by +cultivated persons; and it is only by music, literature, and painting, +that cultivation can be given. Also, the faculties which are thus +received are hereditary; so that the child of an educated race has an +innate instinct for beauty, derived from arts practised hundreds of +years before its birth. Now farther note this, one of the loveliest +things in human nature. In the children of noble races, trained by +surrounding art, and at the same time in the practice of great deeds, +there is an intense delight in the landscape of their country as +<i>memorial</i>; a sense not taught to them, nor teachable to any others; +but, in them, innate; and the seal and reward of persistence in great +national life;—the obedience and the peace of ages having extended +gradually the glory of the revered ancestors also to the ancestral +land; until the Motherhood of the dust, the mystery of the Demeter from +whose bosom we came, and to whose bosom we return, surrounds and +inspires, everywhere, the local awe of field and fountain; the +sacredness of landmark that none may remove, and of wave that none may +pollute; while records of proud days, and of dear persons, make every +rock monumental with ghostly inscription, and every path lovely with +noble desolateness. +</p> + +<p> +Now, however checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive love +of landscape in us has this deep root, which, in your minds, I will +pray you to disencumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and to +strive to feel with all the strength of your youth that a nation is +only worthy of the soil and the scenes that it has inherited, when, +by all its acts and arts, it is making them more lovely for its +children.... +</p> + +<p> +But if either our work, or our inquiries, are to be indeed successful +in their own field, they must be connected with others of a sterner +character. Now listen to me, if I have in these past details lost or +burdened your attention; for this is what I have chiefly to say to you. +The art of any country <i>is the exponent of its social and political +virtues</i>. I will show you that it is so in some detail, in the second +of my subsequent course of lectures; meantime accept this as one of the +things, and the most important of all things, I can positively declare +to you. The art, or general productive and formative energy, of any +country, is an exact exponent of its ethical life. You can have noble +art only from noble persons, associated under laws fitted to their time +and circumstances. And the best skill that any teacher of art could +spend here in your help, would not end in enabling you even so much as +rightly to draw the water-lilies in the Cherwell (and though it did, +the work when done would not be worth the lilies themselves) unless +both he and you were seeking, as I trust we shall together seek, in the +laws which regulate the finest industries, the clue to the laws which +regulate all industries, and in better obedience to which we shall +actually have henceforward to live: not merely in compliance with our +own sense of what is right, but under the weight of quite literal +necessity. For the trades by which the British people has believed it +to be the highest of destinies to maintain itself, cannot now long +remain undisputed in its hands; its unemployed poor are daily becoming +more violently criminal; and a certain distress in the middle classes, +arising, <i>partly from their vanity in living always up to their +incomes, and partly from, their folly in imagining that they can +subsist in idleness upon usury</i>, will at last compel the sons and +daughters of English families to acquaint themselves with the +principles of providential economy; and to learn that food can only be +got out of the ground, and competence only secured by frugality; and +that although it is not possible for all to be occupied in the highest +arts, nor for any, guiltlessly, to pass their days in a succession of +pleasures, the most perfect mental culture possible to men is founded +on their useful energies, and their best arts and brightest happiness +are consistent, and consistent only, with their virtue. +</p> + +<p> +This, I repeat, gentlemen, will soon become manifest to those among us, +and there are yet many, who are honest-hearted. And the future fate of +England depends upon the position they then take, and on their courage +in maintaining it. +</p> + +<p> +There is a destiny now possible to us—the highest ever set before a +nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a +race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in +temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. +We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now +betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an +inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of +noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with +splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, +should be the most offending souls alive.<a href="#fn175"><sup>[175]</sup></a> Within the last few years +we have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity +which has been blinding by its brightness; and means of transit and +communication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of the +habitable globe. One kingdom;—but who is to be its king? Is there to +be no king in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in +his own eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene empires of +Mammon and Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your country +again a royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle, for all the world a +source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of Learning and of the +Arts;—faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent +and ephemeral visions;—faithful servant of time-tried principles, +under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and +amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in +her strange valour of goodwill toward men?<a href="#fn176"><sup>[176]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +"Vexilla regis prodeunt."<a href="#fn177"><sup>[177]</sup></a> Yes, but of which king? There are the +two oriflammes; which shall we plant on the farthest islands—the one +that floats in heavenly fire, or that hangs heavy with foul tissue of +terrestrial gold? There is indeed a course of beneficent glory open to +us, such as never was yet offered to any poor group of mortal souls. +But it must be—it <i>is</i> with us, now. "Reign or Die." And if it shall +be said of this country, "Fece per viltate, il gran rifiuto,"<a href="#fn178"><sup>[178]</sup></a> +that refusal of the crown will be, of all yet recorded in history, +the shamefullest and most untimely. +</p> + +<p> +And this is what she must either do, or perish: she must found +colonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most +energetic and worthiest men;—seizing every piece of fruitful waste +ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching these her +colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, +and that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by +land and sea: and that, though they live on a distant plot of ground, +they are no more to consider themselves therefore disfranchised from +their native land, than the sailors of her fleets do, because they +float on distant waves. So that literally, these colonies must be +fastened fleets; and every man of them must be under authority of +captains and officers, whose better command is to be over fields and +streets instead of ships of the line; and England, in these her +motionless navies (or, in the true and mightiest sense, motionless +<i>churches</i>, ruled by pilots on the Galilean lake<a href="#fn179"><sup>[179]</sup></a> of all the +world), is to "expect every man to do his duty";<a href="#fn180"><sup>[180]</sup></a> recognizing +that duty is indeed possible no less in peace than war; and that if we +can get men, for little pay, to cast themselves against cannon-mouths +for love of England, we may find men also who will plough and sow for +her, who will behave kindly and righteously for her, who will bring up +their children to love her, and who will gladden themselves in the +brightness of her glory, more than in all the light of tropic skies. +</p> + +<p> +But that they may be able to do this, she must make her own majesty +stainless; she must give them thoughts of their home of which they can +be proud. The England who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannot +remain herself a heap of cinders, trampled by contending and miserable +crowds; she must yet again become the England she was once, and in all +beautiful ways,—more: so happy, so secluded, and so pure, that in her +sky—polluted by no unholy clouds—she may be able to spell rightly of +every star that heaven doth show; and in her fields, ordered and wide +and fair, of every herb that sips the dew;<a href="#fn181"><sup>[181]</sup></a> and under the green +avenues of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter of the +Sun, she must guide the human arts, and gather the divine knowledge, of +distant nations, transformed from savageness to manhood, and redeemed +from despairing into Peace. +</p> + +<p> +You think that an impossible ideal. Be it so; refuse to accept it if +you will; but see that you form your own in its stead. All that I ask +of you is to have a fixed purpose of some kind for your country and +yourselves; no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and +unselfish. I know what stout hearts are in you, to answer acknowledged +need; but it is the fatallest form of error in English youth to hide +their hardihood till it fades for lack of sunshine, and to act in +disdain of purpose, till all purpose is vain. It is not by deliberate, +but by careless selfishness; not by compromise with evil, but by dull +following of good, that the weight of national evil increases upon us +daily. Break through at least this pretence of existence; determine +what you will be, and what you would win. You will not decide wrongly +if you resolve to decide at all. Were even the choice between lawless +pleasure and loyal suffering, you would not, I believe, choose basely. +But your trial is not so sharp. It is between drifting in confused +wreck among the castaways of Fortune, who condemns to assured ruin +those who know not either how to resist her, or obey; between this, I +say, and the taking of your appointed part in the heroism of Rest; the +resolving to share in the victory which is to the weak rather than the +strong; and the binding yourselves by that law, which, thought on +through lingering night and labouring day, makes a man's life to be as +a tree planted by the water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in his +season;— +</p> + +<p class="quoteleft"> + "ET FOLIUM EJUS NON DEFLUET,<br> + ET OMNIA, QUÆCUNQUE FACIET, PROSPERABUNTUR."<a href="#fn182"><sup>[182]</sup></a></p> + + + +<p><a name="Morals"> </a></p> +<h3>THE RELATION OF ART TO MORALS +</h3> + + +<p> +And now I pass to the arts with which I have special concern, in +which, though the facts are exactly the same, I shall have more +difficulty in proving my assertion, because very few of us are as +cognizant of the merit of painting as we are of that of language; and +I can only show you whence that merit springs, after having thoroughly +shown you in what it consists. But, in the meantime, I have simply to +tell you, that the manual arts are as accurate exponents of ethical +state, as other modes of expression; first, with absolute precision, +of that of the workman; and then with precision, disguised by many +distorting influences, of that of the nation to which it belongs. +</p> + +<p> +And, first, they are a perfect exponent of the mind of the workman: +but, being so, remember, if the mind be great or complex, the art is +not an easy book to read; for we must ourselves possess all the mental +characters of which we are to read the signs. No man can read the +evidence of labour who is not himself laborious, for he does not know +what the work cost: nor can he read the evidence of true passion if he +is not passionate; nor of gentleness if he is not gentle: and the most +subtle signs of fault and weakness of character he can only judge by +having had the same faults to fight with. I myself, for instance, know +impatient work, and tired work, better than most critics, because I am +myself always impatient, and often tired:—so also, the patient and +indefatigable touch of a mighty master becomes more wonderful to me +than to others. Yet, wonderful in no mean measure it will be to you +all, when I make it manifest;—and as soon as we begin our real work, +and you have learned what it is to draw a true line, I shall be able +to make manifest to you,—and undisputably so,—that the day's work of +a man like Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists of an unfaltering, +uninterrupted, succession of movements of the hand more precise than +those of the finest fencer: the pencil leaving one point and arriving +at another, not only with unerring precision at the extremity of the +line, but with an unerring and yet varied course—sometimes over +spaces a foot or more in extent—yet a course so determined everywhere +that either of these men could, and Veronese often does, draw a +finished profile, or any other portion of the contour of the face, +with one line, not afterwards changed. Try, first, to realize to +yourselves the muscular precision of that action, and the intellectual +strain of it; for the movement of a fencer is perfect in practised +monotony; but the movement of the hand of a great painter is at every +instant governed by direct and new intention. Then imagine that +muscular firmness and subtlety, and the instantaneously selective and +ordinant energy of the brain, sustained all day long, not only without +fatigue, but with a visible joy in the exertion, like that which an +eagle seems to take in the wave of his wings; and this all life long, +and through long life, not only without failure of power, but with +visible increase of it, until the actually organic changes of old age. +And then consider, so far as you know anything of physiology, what +sort of an ethical state of body and mind that means!—ethic through +ages past! what fineness of race there must be to get it, what +exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers! And then, finally, +determine for yourselves whether a manhood like that is consistent +with any viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any gnawing lust, +any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of rebellion +against law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious violation +of even the least law to which obedience is essential for the glory of +life, and the pleasing of its Giver. +</p> + +<p> +It is, of course, true that many of the strong masters had deep faults +of character, but their faults always show in their work. It is true +that some could not govern their passions; if so, they died young, or +they painted ill when old. But the greater part of our misapprehension +in the whole matter is from our not having well known who the great +painters were, and taking delight in the petty skill that was bred in +the fumes of the taverns of the North, instead of theirs who breathed +empyreal air, sons of the morning, under the woods of Assisi and the +crags of Cadore. +</p> + +<p> +It is true however also, as I have pointed out long ago, that the +strong masters fall into two great divisions, one leading simple and +natural lives, the other restrained in a Puritanism of the worship of +beauty; and these two manners of life you may recognize in a moment +by their work. Generally the naturalists are the strongest; but there +are two of the Puritans, whose work if I can succeed in making +clearly understandable to you during my three years<a href="#fn183"><sup>[183]</sup></a> here, it is +all I need care to do. But of these two Puritans one I cannot name +to you, and the other I at present will not. One I cannot, for no one +knows his name, except the baptismal one, Bernard, or "dear little +Bernard"—Bernardino, called from his birthplace, (Luino, on the Lago +Maggiore,) Bernard of Luino. The other is a Venetian, of whom many of +you probably have never heard, and of whom, through me, you shall not +hear, until I have tried to get some picture by him over to England. +</p> + +<p> +Observe then, this Puritanism in the worship of beauty, though +sometimes weak, is always honourable and amiable, and the exact +reverse of the false Puritanism, which consists in the dread or +disdain of beauty. And in order to treat my subject rightly, I ought +to proceed from the skill of art to the choice of its subject, and +show you how the moral temper of the workman is shown by his seeking +lovely forms and thoughts to express, as well as by the force of his +hand in expression. But I need not now urge this part of the proof on +you, because you are already, I believe, sufficiently conscious of the +truth in this matter, and also I have already said enough of it in my +writings; whereas I have not at all said enough of the infallibleness +of fine technical work as a proof of every other good power. And +indeed it was long before I myself understood the true meaning of the +pride of the greatest men in their mere execution, shown for a +permanent lesson to us, in the stories which, whether true or not, +indicate with absolute accuracy the general conviction of great +artists;—the stories of the contest of Apelles and Protogenes<a href="#fn184"><sup>[184]</sup></a> in +a line only, (of which I can promise you, you shall know the meaning +to some purpose in a little while),—the story of the circle of +Giotto,<a href="#fn185"><sup>[185]</sup></a> and especially, which you may perhaps not have observed, +the expression of Dürer in his inscription on the drawings sent him by +Raphael. These figures, he says, "Raphael drew and sent to Albert +Dürer in Nurnberg, to show him"—What? Not his invention, nor his +beauty of expression, but "sein Hand zu weisen," "to show him his +<i>hand</i>." And you will find, as you examine farther, that all inferior +artists are continually trying to escape from the necessity of sound +work, and either indulging themselves in their delights in subject, or +pluming themselves on their noble motives for attempting what they +cannot perform; (and observe, by the way, that a great deal of what is +mistaken for conscientious motive is nothing but a very pestilent, +because very subtle, condition of vanity); whereas the great men +always understand at once that the first morality of a painter, as of +everybody else, is to know his business; and so earnest are they in +this, that many, whose lives you would think, by the results of their +work, had been passed in strong emotion, have in reality subdued +themselves, though capable of the very strongest passions, into a calm +as absolute as that of a deeply sheltered mountain lake, which +reflects every agitation of the clouds in the sky, and every change of +the shadows on the hills, but AS itself motionless. +</p> + +<p> +Finally, you must remember that great obscurity has been brought upon +the truth in this matter by the want of integrity and simplicity in +our modern life. I mean integrity in the Latin sense, wholeness. +Everything is broken up, and mingled in confusion, both in our habits +and thoughts; besides being in great part imitative: so that you not +only cannot tell what a man is, but sometimes you cannot tell whether +he <i>is</i>, at all!—whether you have indeed to do with a spirit, or +only with an echo. And thus the same inconsistencies appear now, +between the work of artists of merit and their personal characters, as +those which you find continually disappointing expectation in the +lives of men of modern literary power;—the same conditions of society +having obscured or misdirected the best qualities of the imagination, +both in our literature and art. Thus there is no serious question with +any of us as to the personal character of Dante and Giotto, of +Shakespeare and Holbein; but we pause timidly in the attempt to +analyze the moral laws of the art skill in recent poets, novelists, +and painters. +</p> + +<p> +Let me assure you once for all, that as you grow older, if you enable +yourselves to distinguish by the truth of your own lives, what is true +in those of other men, you will gradually perceive that all good has +its origin in good, never in evil; that the fact of either literature +or painting being truly fine of their kind, whatever their mistaken +aim, or partial error, is proof of their noble origin: and that, if +there is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come of a +sterling worth in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled by +conditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling or more strange +than those which all may detect in their own hearts, because they are +part of a personality altogether larger than ours, and as far beyond +our judgment in its darkness as beyond our following in its light. And +it is sufficient warning against what some might dread as the probable +effect of such a conviction on your own minds, namely, that you might +permit yourselves in the weaknesses which you imagined to be allied to +genius, when they took the form of personal temptations;—it is +surely, I say, sufficient warning against so mean a folly, to discern, +as you may with little pains, that, of all human existences, the lives +of men of that distorted and tainted nobility of intellect are +probably the most miserable. +</p> + +<p> +I pass to the second, and for us the more practically important +question, What is the effect of noble art upon other men; what has it +done for national morality in time past: and what effect is the +extended knowledge or possession of it likely to have upon us now? +And here we are at once met by the facts, which are as gloomy as +indisputable, that, while many peasant populations, among whom +scarcely the rudest practice of art has ever been attempted, have +lived in comparative innocence, honour, and happiness, the worst +foulness and cruelty of savage tribes have been frequently associated +with fine ingenuities of decorative design; also, that no people has +ever attained the higher stages of art skill, except at a period of +its civilization which was sullied by frequent, violent, and even +monstrous crime; and, lastly, that the attaining of perfection in art +power, has been hitherto, in every nation, the accurate signal of the +beginning of its ruin. +</p> + +<p> +Respecting which phenomena, observe first, that although good never +springs out of evil, it is developed to its highest by contention with +evil. There are some groups of peasantry, in far-away nooks of +Christian countries, who are nearly as innocent as lambs; but the +morality which gives power to art is the morality of men, not of +cattle. +</p> + +<p> +Secondly, the virtues of the inhabitants of many country districts are +apparent, not real; their lives are indeed artless, but not innocent; +and it is only the monotony of circumstances, and the absence of +temptation, which prevent the exhibition of evil passions not less +real because often dormant, nor less foul because shown only in petty +faults, or inactive malignities. +</p> + +<p> +But you will observe also that <i>absolute</i> artlessness, to men in any +kind of moral health, is impossible; they have always, at least, the +art by which they live—agriculture or seamanship; and in these +industries, skilfully practised, you will find the law of their moral +training; while, whatever the adversity of circumstances, every +rightly-minded peasantry, such as that of Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, or +Switzerland, has associated with its needful industry a quite studied +school of pleasurable art in dress; and generally also in song, and +simple domestic architecture. +</p> + +<p> +Again, I need not repeat to you here what I endeavoured to explain in +the first lecture in the book I called <i>The Two Paths</i>, respecting the +arts of savage races: but I may now note briefly that such arts are +the result of an intellectual activity which has found no room to +expand, and which the tyranny of nature or of man has condemned to +disease through arrested growth. And where neither Christianity, nor +any other religion conveying some moral help, has reached, the animal +energy of such races necessarily flames into ghastly conditions of +evil, and the grotesque or frightful forms assumed by their art are +precisely indicative of their distorted moral nature. +</p> + +<p> +But the truly great nations nearly always begin from a race possessing +this imaginative power; and for some time their progress is very slow, +and their state not one of innocence, but of feverish and faultful +animal energy. This is gradually subdued and exalted into bright human +life; the art instinct purifying itself with the rest of the nature, +until social perfectness is nearly reached; and then comes the period +when conscience and intellect are so highly developed, that new forms +of error begin in the inability to fulfil the demands of the one, or +to answer the doubts of the other. Then the wholeness of the people is +lost; all kinds of hypocrisies and oppositions of science develope +themselves; their faith is questioned on one side, and compromised +with on the other; wealth commonly increases at the same period to a +destructive extent; luxury follows; and the ruin of the nation is then +certain: while the arts, all this time, are simply, as I said at first, +the exponents of each phase of its moral state, and no more control it +in its political career than the gleam of the firefly guides its +oscillation. It is true that their most splendid results are usually +obtained in the swiftness of the power which is hurrying to the +precipice; but to lay the charge of the catastrophe to the art by +which it is illumined, is to find a cause for the cataract in the hues +of its iris. It is true that the colossal vices belonging to periods +of great national wealth (for wealth, you will find, is the real root +of all evil)<a href="#fn186"><sup>[186]</sup></a> can turn every good gift and skill of nature or of +man to evil purpose. If, in such times, fair pictures have been +misused, how much more fair realities? And if Miranda is immoral to +Caliban is that Miranda's fault? +</p> + + +<p><a name="Relation"> </a></p> +<h3>THE RELATION OF ART TO USE +</h3> + + +<p> +Our subject of inquiry to-day, you will remember, is the mode in +which fine art is founded upon, or may contribute to, the practical +requirements of human life. +</p> + +<p> +Its offices in this respect are mainly twofold: it gives Form to +knowledge, and Grace to utility; that is to say, it makes permanently +visible to us things which otherwise could neither be described by +our science, nor retained by our memory; and it gives delightfulness +and worth to the implements of daily use, and materials of dress, +furniture and lodging. In the first of these offices it gives +precision and charm to truth; in the second it gives precision and +charm to service. For, the moment we make anything useful thoroughly, +it is a law of nature that we shall be pleased with ourselves, and +with the thing we have made; and become desirous therefore to adorn +or complete it, in some dainty way, with finer art expressive of our +pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +And the point I wish chiefly to bring before you today is this close +and healthy connection of the fine arts with material use; but I must +first try briefly to put in clear light the function of art in giving +Form to truth. +</p> + +<p> +Much that I have hitherto tried to teach has been disputed on the +ground that I have attached too much importance to art as representing +natural facts, and too little to it as a source of pleasure. And I +wish, in the close of these four prefatory lectures, strongly to +assert to you, and, so far as I can in the time, convince you, that +the entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of +truth, or full of use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful, or +impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and +tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main +objects,—either to <i>state a true thing</i>, or to <i>adorn a serviceable +one</i>. It must never exist alone,—never for itself; it exists rightly +only when it is the means of knowledge, or the grace of agency for +life. +</p> + +<p> +Now, I pray you to observe—for though I have said this often before, +I have never yet said it clearly enough—every good piece of art, to +whichever of these ends it may be directed, involves first essentially +the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually +beautiful thing by it. +</p> + +<p> +Skill and beauty, always, then; and, beyond these, the formative arts +have always one or other of the two objects which I have just defined +to you—truth, or serviceableness; and without these aims neither +the skill nor their beauty will avail; only by these can either +legitimately reign. All the graphic arts begin in keeping the outline +of shadow that we have loved, and they end in giving to it the aspect +of life; and all the architectural arts begin in the shaping of the +cup and the platter, and they end in a glorified roof. +</p> + +<p> +Therefore, you see, in the graphic arts you have Skill, Beauty, and +Likeness; and in the architectural arts Skill, Beauty, and Use: and +you <i>must</i> have the three in each group, balanced and co-ordinate; and +all the chief errors of art consist in losing or exaggerating one of +these elements. +</p> + +<p> +For instance, almost the whole system and hope of modern life are +founded on the notion that you may substitute mechanism for skill, +photograph for picture, cast-iron for sculpture. That is your main +nineteenth-century faith, or infidelity. You think you can get +everything by grinding—music, literature, and painting. You will find +it grievously not so; you can get nothing but dust by mere grinding. +Even to have the barley-meal out of it, you must have the barley +first; and that comes by growth, not grinding. But essentially, we +have lost our delight in Skill; in that majesty of it which I was +trying to make clear to you in my last address, and which long +ago<a href="#fn187"><sup>[187]</sup></a> I tried to express, under the head of ideas of power. The +entire sense of that, we have lost, because we ourselves do not take +pains enough to do right, and have no conception of what the right +costs; so that all the joy and reverence we ought to feel in looking +at a strong man's work have ceased in us. We keep them yet a little in +looking at a honeycomb or a bird's-nest; we understand that these +differ, by divinity of skill, from a lump of wax or a cluster of +sticks. But a picture, which is a much more wonderful thing than a +honeycomb or a bird's-nest,—have we not known people, and sensible +people too, who expected to be taught to produce that, in six lessons? +</p> + +<p> +Well, you must have the skill, you must have the beauty, which is the +highest moral element; and then, lastly, you must have the verity or +utility, which is not the moral, but the vital element; and this +desire for verity and use is the one aim of the three that always +leads in great schools, and in the minds of great masters, without any +exception. They will permit themselves in awkwardness, they will +permit themselves in ugliness;—but they will never permit themselves +in uselessness or in unveracity. +</p> + +<p> +And farther, as their skill increases, and as their grace, so much +more their desire for truth. It is impossible to find the three +motives in fairer balance and harmony than in our own Reynolds. He +rejoices in showing you his skill; and those of you who succeed in +learning what painters' work really is, will one day rejoice also, +even to laughter—that highest laughter which springs of pure delight, +in watching the fortitude and the fire of a hand which strikes forth +its will upon the canvas as easily as the wind strikes it on the sea. +He rejoices in all abstract beauty and rhythm and melody of design; he +will never give you a colour that is not lovely, nor a shade that is +unnecessary, nor a line that is ungraceful. But all his power and all +his invention are held by him subordinate,—and the more obediently +because of their nobleness,-to his true leading purpose of setting +before you such likeness of the living presence of an English +gentleman or an English lady, as shall be worthy of being looked upon +for ever. +</p> + +<p> +But farther, you remember, I hope—for I said it in a way that I +thought would shock you a little, that you might remember it—my +statement, that art had never done more than this, never more than +given the likeness of a noble human being. Not only so, but it very +seldom does so much as this, and the best pictures that exist of the +great schools are all portraits, or groups of portraits, often of very +simple and nowise noble persons. You may have much more brilliant and +impressive qualities in imaginative pictures; you may have figures +scattered like clouds, or garlanded like flowers; you may have light +and shade as of a tempest, and colour, as of the rainbow; but all that +is child's play to the great men, though it is astonishment to us. +Their real strength is tried to the utmost, and as far as I know, it +is never elsewhere brought out so thoroughly, as in painting one man +or woman, and the soul that was in them; nor that always the highest +soul, but often only a thwarted one that was capable of height; or +perhaps not even that, but faultful and poor, yet seen through, to the +poor best of it, by the masterful sight. So that in order to put +before you in your Standard series the best art possible, I am +obliged, even from the very strongest men, to take the portraits, +before I take the idealism. Nay, whatever is best in the great +compositions themselves has depended on portraiture; and the study +necessary to enable you to understand invention will also convince you +that the mind of man never invented a greater thing than the form of +man, animated by faithful life. Every attempt to refine or exalt such +healthy humanity has weakened or caricatured it; or else consists only +in giving it, to please our fancy, the wings of birds, or the eyes of +antelopes. Whatever is truly great in either Greek or Christian art, +is also restrictedly human; and even the raptures of the redeemed +souls who enter "celestemente ballando,"<a href="#fn188"><sup>[188]</sup></a> the gate of Angelico's +Paradise, were seen first in the terrestrial, yet most pure, mirth of +Florentine maidens. +</p> + +<p> +I am aware that this cannot but at present appear gravely questionable +to those of my audience who are strictly cognizant of the phases of +Greek art; for they know that the moment of its decline is accurately +marked, by its turning from abstract form to portraiture. But the +reason of this is simple. The progressive course of Greek art was in +subduing monstrous conceptions to natural ones; it did this by general +laws; it reached absolute truth of generic human form, and if its +ethical force had remained, would have advanced into healthy +portraiture. But at the moment of change the national life ended in +Greece; and portraiture, there, meant insult to her religion, and +flattery to her tyrants. And her skill perished, not because she +became true in sight, but because she became vile in heart.... +</p> + +<p> +But I have told you enough, it seems to me, at least to-day, of this +function of art in recording fact; let me now finally, and with all +distinctness possible to me, state to you its main business of +all;—its service in the actual uses of daily life. +</p> + +<p> +You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me call this its main business. +That is indeed so, however. The giving brightness to picture is much, +but the giving brightness to life more. And remember, were it as +patterns only, you cannot, without the realities, have the pictures. +<i>You cannot have a landscape by Turner without a country for him to +paint; you cannot have a portrait by Titian, without a man to be +pourtrayed</i>. I need not prove that to you, I suppose, in these short +terms; but in the outcome I can get no soul to believe that the +beginning of art <i>is in getting our country clean, and our people +beautiful</i>. I have been ten years trying to get this very plain +certainty—I do not say believed—but even thought of, as anything but +a monstrous proposition. To get your country clean, and your people +lovely;—I assure you that is a necessary work of art to begin with! +There has indeed been art in countries where people lived in dirt to +serve God, but never in countries where they lived in dirt to serve +the devil. There has indeed been art where the people were not all +lovely,—where even their lips were thick—and their skins black, +because the sun had looked upon them;<a href="#fn189"><sup>[189]</sup></a> but never in a country +where the people were pale with miserable toil and deadly shade, and +where the lips of youth, instead of being full with blood, were +pinched by famine, or warped with poison. And now, therefore, note +this well, the gist of all these long prefatory talks. I said that the +two great moral instincts were those of Order and Kindness. Now, all +the arts are founded on agriculture by the hand, and on the graces and +kindness of feeding, and dressing, and lodging your people. Greek art +begins in the gardens of Alcinous—perfect order, leeks in beds, and +fountains in pipes.<a href="#fn190"><sup>[190]</sup></a> And Christian art, as it arose out of +chivalry, was only possible so far as chivalry compelled both kings +and knights to care for the right personal training of their people; +it perished utterly when those kings and knights became δημοβσροι, devourers of the people. And it will become possible +again only, when, literally, the sword is beaten into the +ploughshare,<a href="#fn191"><sup>[191]</sup></a> when your St. George of England shall justify his +name,<a href="#fn192"><sup>[192]</sup></a> and Christian art shall be known as its Master was, in +breaking of bread.<a href="#fn193"><sup>[193]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Now look at the working out of this broad principle in minor detail; +observe how, from highest to lowest, health of art has first depended +on reference to industrial use. There is first the need of cup and +platter, especially of cup; for you can put your meat on the +Harpies',<a href="#fn194"><sup>[194]</sup></a> or any other, tables; but you must have your cup to +drink from. And to hold it conveniently, you must put a handle to it; +and to fill it when it is empty you must have a large pitcher of some +sort; and to carry the pitcher you may most advisably have two +handles. Modify the forms of these needful possessions according to +the various requirements of drinking largely and drinking delicately; +of pouring easily out, or of keeping for years the perfume in; of +storing in cellars, or bearing from fountains; of sacrificial +libation, of Pan-athenaic treasure of oil, and sepulchral treasure of +ashes,—and you have a resultant series of beautiful form and +decoration, from the rude amphora of red earth up to Cellini's vases +of gems and crystal, in which series, but especially in the more +simple conditions of it, are developed the most beautiful lines and +most perfect types of severe composition which have yet been attained +by art. +</p> + +<p> +But again, that you may fill your cup with pure water, you must go to +the well or spring; you need a fence round the well; you need some +tube or trough, or other means of confining the stream at the spring. +For the conveyance of the current to any distance you must build +either enclosed or open aqueduct; and in the hot square of the city +where you set it free, you find it good for health and pleasantness to +let it leap into a fountain. On these several needs you have a school +of sculpture founded; in the decoration of the walls of wells in level +countries, and of the sources of springs in mountainous ones, and +chiefly of all, where the women of household or market meet at the +city fountain. +</p> + +<p> +There is, however, a farther reason for the use of art here than in +any other material service, so far as we may, by art, express our +reverence or thankfulness. Whenever a nation is in its right mind, it +always has a deep sense of divinity in the gift of rain from heaven, +filling its heart with food and gladness;<a href="#fn195"><sup>[195]</sup></a> and all the more when +that gift becomes gentle and perennial in the flowing of springs. It +literally is not possible that any fruitful power of the Muses should +be put forth upon a people which disdains their Helicon; still less is +it possible that any Christian nation should grow up "tanquam lignum +quod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum,"<a href="#fn196"><sup>[196]</sup></a> which cannot recognize +the lesson meant in their being told of the places where Rebekah was +met;—where Rachel,—where Zipporah,—and she who was asked for water +under Mount Gerizim by a Stranger, weary, who had nothing to draw +with.<a href="#fn197"><sup>[197]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +And truly, when our mountain springs are set apart in vale or craggy +glen, or glade of wood green through the drought of summer, far from +cities, then, it is best let them stay in their own happy peace; but +if near towns, and liable therefore to be defiled by common usage, we +could not use the loveliest art more worthily than by sheltering the +spring and its first pools with precious marbles: nor ought anything +to be esteemed more important, as a means of healthy education, than +the care to keep the streams of it afterwards, to as great a distance +as possible, pure, full of fish, and easily accessible to children. +There used to be, thirty years ago, a little rivulet of the Wandel, +about an inch deep, which ran over the carriage-road and under a +footbridge just under the last chalk hill near Croydon. Alas! men came +and went; and it—did <i>not</i> go on for ever. It has long since been +bricked over by the parish authorities; but there was more education +in that stream with its minnows than you could get out of a thousand +pounds spent yearly in the parish schools, even though you were to +spend every farthing of it in teaching the nature of oxygen and +hydrogen, and the names, and rate per minute, of all the rivers in +Asia and America. +</p> + +<p> +Well, the gist of this matter lies here then. Suppose we want a school +of pottery again in England, all we poor artists are ready to do the +best we can, to show you how pretty a line may be that is twisted first +to one side, and then to the other; and how a plain household-blue will +make a pattern on white; and how ideal art may be got out of the +spaniel's colours of black and tan. But I tell you beforehand, all that +we can do will be utterly useless, unless you teach your peasant to say +grace, not only before meat, but before drink; and having provided him +with Greek cups and platters, provide him also with something that is +not poisoned to put into them. +</p> + +<p> +There cannot be any need that I should trace for you the conditions of +art that are directly founded on serviceableness of dress, and of +armour; but it is my duty to affirm to you, in the most positive +manner, that after recovering, for the poor, wholesomeness of food, +your next step toward founding schools of art in England must be in +recovering, for the poor, decency and wholesomeness of dress; +thoroughly good in substance, fitted for their daily work, becoming to +their rank in life, and worn with order and dignity. And this order +and dignity must be taught them by the women of the upper and middle +classes, whose minds can be in nothing right, as long as they are so +wrong in this matter us to endure the squalor of the poor, while they +themselves dress gaily. And on the proper pride and comfort of both +poor and rich in dress, must be founded the true arts of dress; +carried on by masters of manufacture no less careful of the +perfectness and beauty of their tissues, and of all that in substance +and in design can be bestowed upon them, than ever the armourers of +Milan and Damascus were careful of their steel. +</p> + +<p> +Then, in the third place, having recovered some wholesome habits of +life as to food and dress, we must recover them as to lodging. I said +just now that the best architecture was but a glorified roof. Think of +it. The dome of the Vatican, the porches of Rheims or Chartres, the +vaults and arches of their aisles, the canopy of the tomb, and the +spire of the belfry, are all forms resulting from the mere requirement +that a certain space shall be strongly covered from heat and rain. +More than that—as I have tried all through <i>The Stones of Venice</i> to +show—the lovely forms of these were every one of them developed in +civil and domestic building, and only after their invention employed +ecclesiastically on the grandest scale. I think you cannot but have +noticed here in Oxford, as elsewhere, that our modern architects never +seem to know what to do with their roofs. Be assured, until the roofs +are right, nothing else will be; and there are just two ways of +keeping them right. Never build them of iron, but only of wood or +stone; and secondly, take care that in every town the little roofs are +built before the large ones, and that everybody who wants one has got +one. And we must try also to make everybody want one. That is to say, +at some not very advanced period of life, men should desire to have a +home, which they do not wish to quit any more, suited to their habits +of life, and likely to be more and more suitable to them until their +death. And men must desire to have these their dwelling-places built +as strongly as possible, and furnished and decorated daintily, and set +in pleasant places, in bright light, and good air, being able to +choose for themselves that at least as well as swallows. And when the +houses are grouped together in cities, men must have so much civic +fellowship as to subject their architecture to a common law, and so +much civic pride as to desire that the whole gathered group of human +dwellings should be a lovely thing, not a frightful one, on the face +of the earth. Not many weeks ago an English clergyman,<a href="#fn198"><sup>[198]</sup></a> a master of +this University, a man not given to sentiment, but of middle age, and +great practical sense, told me, by accident, and wholly without +reference to the subject now before us, that he never could enter +London from his country parsonage but with closed eyes, lest the sight +of the blocks of houses which the railroad intersected in the suburbs +should unfit him, by the horror of it, for his day's work. +</p> + +<p> +Now, it is not possible—and I repeat to you, only in more deliberate +assertion, what I wrote just twenty-two years ago in the last chapter +of the <i>Seven Lamps of Architecture</i>—it is not possible to have any +right morality, happiness, or art, in any country where the cities are +thus built, or thus, let me rather say, clotted and coagulated; spots +of a dreadful mildew, spreading by patches and blotches over the +country they consume. You must have lovely cities, crystallized, not +coagulated, into form; limited in size, and not casting out the scum +and scurf of them into an encircling eruption of shame, but girded +each with its sacred pomoerium, and with garlands of gardens full of +blossoming trees and softly guided streams. +</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="chapter"> +<a name="History"> +Art and History</a> +</p> + +<h4> +ATHENA ERGANE +</h4> + + +<p class="quote"> + This short selection is taken from the volume entitled <i>The Queen + of the Air</i>, in which Ruskin, fascinated by the deep significance + of the Greek myths and realizing the religious sincerity + underlying them, attempts to interpret those that cluster about + Athena. The book was published June 22, 1869. It is divided into + three "Lectures," parts of which actually were delivered as + lectures on different occasions, entitled respectively "Athena + Chalinitis" (Athena in the Heavens), "Athena Keramitis" (Athena + in the Earth), "Athena Ergane" (Athena in the Heart). The first + lecture is the only one which keeps to the title of the book; in + the others the legend is used merely as a starting-point for the + expression of various pregnant ideas on social and historical + problems. The book as a whole abounds in flashes of inspiration + and insight, and is a favourite with many readers of Ruskin. + Carlyle, in a letter to Froude, wrote: "Passages of that last + book, <i>Queen of the Air</i>, went into my heart like arrows." +</p> + +<p> +In different places of my writings, and through many years of +endeavour to define the laws of art, I have insisted on this Tightness +in work, and on its connection with virtue of character, in so many +partial ways, that the impression left on the reader's mind—if, +indeed, it was ever impressed at all—has been confused and uncertain. +In beginning the series of my corrected works, I wish this principle +(in my own mind the foundation of every other) to be made plain, if +nothing else is: and will try, therefore, to make it so, so far as, by +any effort, I can put it into unmistakable words. And, first, here is +a very simple statement of it, given lately in a lecture on the +Architecture of the Valley of the Somme,<a href="#fn199"><sup>[199]</sup></a> which will be better read +in this place than in its incidental connection with my account of the +porches of Abbeville. +</p> + +<p> +I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the expression, "by +what faults" this Gothic architecture fell. We continually speak thus +of works of art. We talk of their faults and merits, as of virtues and +vices. What do we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or the +merits of a piece of stone? +</p> + +<p> +The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, and its +virtues his virtues. +</p> + +<p> +Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, and mean art, +that of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish person builds +foolishly, and a wise one, sensibly; a virtuous one, beautifully; and +a vicious one, basely. If stone work is well put together, it means +that a thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an +honest man cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means that its +carver was too greedy of pleasure; if too little, that he was rude, or +insensitive, or stupid, and the like. So that when once you have +learned how to spell these most precious of all legends,—pictures +and buildings,—you may read the characters of men, and of nations, in +their art, as in a mirror;—nay, as in a microscope, and magnified a +hundredfold; for the character becomes passionate in the art, and +intensifies itself in all its noblest or meanest delights. Nay, not +only as in a microscope, but as under a scalpel, and in dissection; +for a man may hide himself from you, or misrepresent himself to you, +every other way; but he cannot in his work: there, be sure, you have +him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that he sees,—all that he +can do,—his imagination, his affections, his perseverance, his +impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If the +work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a honeycomb, by +a bee; a worm-cast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed by a +bird; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, and +ignobly, if he is ignoble. +</p> + +<p> +And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made thing is good +or bad, so is the maker of it. +</p> + +<p> +You all use this faculty of judgment more or less, whether you +theoretically admit the principle or not. Take that floral gable;<a href="#fn200"><sup>[200]</sup></a> +you don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, +or that the man who built that, <i>would</i> have built Stonehenge? Do you +think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or +that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems +of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a +burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill +Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? You +will find in the end, that <i>no man could have done it but exactly the +man who did it</i>; and by looking close at it, you may, if you know your +letters, read precisely the manner of man he was. +</p> + +<p> +Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. Of all facts +concerning art, this is the one most necessary to be known, that, +while manufacture is the work of hands only, art is the work of the +whole spirit of man; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it: and +by whatever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same vice +or virtue it reproduces and teaches. That which is born of evil begets +evil; and that which is born of valour and honour, teaches valour and +honour. Al art is either infection or education. It <i>must</i> be one or +other of these. +</p> + +<p> +This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of which +understanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. And I +assert it the more, because it has of late been repeatedly, expressly, +and with contumely denied; and that by high authority: and I hold it +one of the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the arts +among us, that English gentlemen, of high standing as scholars and +artists, should have been blinded into the acceptance, and betrayed +into the assertion of a fallacy which only authority such as theirs +could have rendered for an instant credible. For the contrary of it is +written in the history of all great nations; it is the one sentence +always inscribed on the steps of their thrones; the one concordant +voice in which they speak to us out of their dust. +</p> + +<p> +All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure and beautiful +animal race, with intense energy and imagination. They live lives of +hardship by choice, and by grand instinct of manly discipline: they +become fierce and irresistible soldiers; the nation is always its own +army, and their king, or chief head of government, is always their +first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or +Barbarossa, or Coeur de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandolo, or Frederick +the Great:—Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, French, +Venetian,—that is inviolable law for them all; their king must be +their first soldier, or they cannot be in progressive power. Then, +after their great military period, comes the domestic period; in +which, without betraying the discipline of war, they add to their +great soldiership the delights and possessions of a delicate and +tender home-life: and then, for all nations, is the time of their +perfect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of their +national ideal of character, developed by the finished care of the +occupations of peace. That is the history of all true art that ever +was, or can be: palpably the history of it,—unmistakably,—written on +the forehead of it in letters of light,—in tongues of fire, by which +the seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever iron burnt into a +convict's flesh the seal of crime. But always, hitherto, after the +great period, has followed the day of luxury, and pursuit of the arts +for pleasure only. And all has so ended. +</p> + +<p> +Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have here asserted two +things,—first, the foundation of art in moral character; next, the +foundation of moral character in war. I must make both these +assertions clearer, and prove them. +</p> + +<p> +First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course art-gift +and amiability of disposition are two different things. A good man is +not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for colour necessarily +imply an honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers: +it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is +not there, we can have no art at all; and if the soul—and a right +soul too—is not there, the art is bad, however dexterous. +</p> + +<p> +But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the result of the +moral character of generations. A bad woman may have a sweet voice; +but that sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race. +That she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of +laws of music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, +of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous +power, and vigour and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in +rightness of human conduct, renders, after a certain number of +generations, human art possible; every sin clouds it, be it ever so +little a one; and persistent vicious living and following of pleasure +render, after a certain number of generations, all art impossible. Men +are deceived by the long-suffering of the laws of nature; and mistake, +in a nation, the reward of the virtue of its sires for the issue of +its own sins. The time of their visitation will come, and that +inevitably; for, it is always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour +grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge.<a href="#fn201"><sup>[201]</sup></a> And for the +individual, as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I have +said, know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let his art-gift +be never so great, and cultivated to the height by the schools of a +great race of men; and it is still but a tapestry thrown over his own +being and inner soul; and the bearing of it will show, infallibly, +whether it hangs on a man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you +may not see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, but +learn how to look, and the folds themselves will become transparent, +and you shall see through them the death's shape, or the divine one, +making the tissue above it as a cloud of light, or as a winding-sheet. +</p> + +<p> +Then farther, observe, I have said (and you will find it true, and +that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is rooted in virtue, so +it bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic in its own nature. It is +often didactic also in actually expressed thought, as Giotto's, +Michael Angelo's, Dürer's, and hundreds more; but that is not its +special function,—it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful; but +beautiful with haunting thought, no less than with form, and full of +myths that can be read only with the heart. +</p> + +<p> +For instance, at this moment there is open beside me as I write, a +page of Persian manuscript, wrought with wreathed azure and geld, and +soft green, and violet, and ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure +resplendence. It is wrought to delight the eyes only; and does delight +them; and the man who did it assuredly had eyes in his head; but not +much more. It is not didactic art, but its author was happy: and it +will do the good, and the harm, that mere pleasure can do. But, +opposite me, is an early Turner drawing of the lake of Geneva, taken +about two miles from Geneva, on the Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc in +the distance. The old city is seen lying beyond the waveless waters, +veiled with a sweet misty veil of Athena's weaving: a faint light of +morning, peaceful exceedingly, and almost colourless, shed from behind +the Voirons, increases into soft amber along the slope of the Salève, +and is just seen, and no more, on the fair warm fields of its summit, +between the folds of a white cloud that rests upon the grass, but +rises, high and towerlike, into the zenith of dawn above. +</p> + +<p> +There is not as much colour in that low amber light upon the hill-side +as there is in the palest dead leaf. The lake is not blue, but grey in +mist, passing into deep shadow beneath the Voirons' pines; a few dark +clusters of leaves, a single white flower—scarcely seen—are all the +gladness given to the rocks of the shore. One of the ruby spots of the +eastern manuscript would give colour enough for all the red that is in +Turner's entire drawing. For the mere pleasure of the eye, there is +not so much in all those lines of his, throughout the entire +landscape, as in half an inch square of the Persian's page. What made +him take pleasure in the low colour that is only like the brown of a +dead leaf? in the cold grey of dawn—in the one white flower among the +rocks—in these—and no more than these? +</p> + +<p> +He took pleasure in them because he had been bred among English fields +and hills; because the gentleness of a great race was in his heart, +and its power of thought in his brain; because he knew the stories of +the Alps, and of the cities at their feet; because he had read the +Homeric legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods of dawn, and the +givers of dew to the fields; because he knew the faces of the crags, +and the imagery of the passionate mountains, as a man knows the face +of his friend; because he had in him the wonder and sorrow concerning +life and death, which are the inheritance of the Gothic soul from the +days of its first sea kings; and also the compassion and the joy that +are woven into the innermost fabric of every great imaginative spirit, +born now in countries that have lived by the Christian faith with any +courage or truth. And the picture contains also, for us, just this +which its maker had in him to give; and can convey it to us, just so +far as we are of the temper in which it must be received. It is +didactic if we are worthy to be taught, no otherwise. The pure heart, +it will make more pure; the thoughtful, more thoughtful. It has in it +no words for the reckless or the base. +</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="chapter"> +<a name="Traffic">Traffic</a> +</p> + + +<p class="quote"> + "Traffic" is the second of the three lectures published May, 1866, + in the volume entitled <i>The Crown of Wild Olive</i>. All these + lectures were delivered in the years 1864 and 1865, but the one + here printed was earliest. The occasion on which Ruskin addressed + the people of Bradford is made sufficiently clear from the opening + sentences. The lecture is important as emphasizing in a popular + way some of his most characteristic economic theories. +</p> + + + +<h3> +TRAFFIC<a href="#fn202"><sup>[202]</sup></a> +</h3> + + +<p> +My good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down here among your hills +that I might talk to you about this Exchange you are going to build: +but, earnestly and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to do +nothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can say very little, +about this same Exchange. I must talk of quite other things, though +not willingly;—I could not deserve your pardon, if, when you invited +me to speak on one subject, I <i>wilfully</i> spoke on another. But I +cannot speak, to purpose, of anything about which I do not care; and +most simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, that I +do <i>not</i> care about this Exchange of yours. +</p> + +<p> +If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had answered, "I +won't come, I don't care about the Exchange of Bradford," you would +have been justly offended with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt +a carelessness. So I have come down, hoping that you will patiently +let me tell you why, on this, and many other such occasions, I now +remain silent, when formerly I should have caught at the opportunity +of speaking to a gracious audience. +</p> + +<p> +In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange—because <i>you</i> +don't; and because you know perfectly well I cannot make you. Look at +the essential conditions of the case, which you, as business men, know +perfectly well, though perhaps you think I forget them. You are going +to spend £30,000, which to you, collectively, is nothing; the buying a +new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much more important matter of +consideration to me, than building a new Exchange is to you. But you +think you may as well have the right thing for your money. You know +there are a great many odd styles of architecture about; you don't +want to do anything ridiculous; you hear of me, among others, as a +respectable architectural man-milliner; and you send for me, that I +may tell you the leading fashion; and what is, in our shops, for the +moment, the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles. +</p> + +<p> +Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot have good +architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good +architecture is the expression of national life and character, and it +is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for +beauty. And I want you to think a little of the deep significance of +this word "taste"; for no statement of mine has been more earnestly or +oftener controverted than that good taste is essentially a moral +quality. "No," say many of my antagonists, "taste is one thing, +morality is another. Tell us what is pretty: we shall be glad to know +that; but we need no sermons—even were you able to preach them, which +may be doubted." +</p> + +<p> +Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine somewhat. +Taste is not only a part and an index of morality;—it is the ONLY +morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any +living creature is, "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, and +I'll tell you what you are. Go out into the street, and ask the first +man or woman you meet, what their "taste" is; and if they answer +candidly, you know them, body and soul. "You, my friend in the rags, +with the unsteady gait, what do <i>you</i> like?" "A pipe and a quartern of +gin." I know you. "You, good woman, with the quick step and tidy +bonnet, what do you like?" "A swept hearth, and a clean tea-table; and +my husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast." Good, I know you +also. "You, little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, what +do you like?" "My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths." "You, +little boy with the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do you +like?" "A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch farthing." Good; we +know them all now. What more need we ask? +</p> + +<p> +"Nay," perhaps you answer; "we need rather to ask what these people +and children do, than what they like. If they do right, it is no +matter that they like what is wrong; and if they <i>do</i> wrong, it is no +matter that they like what is right. Doing is the great thing; and it +does not matter that the man likes drinking, so that he does not +drink; nor that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she +will not learn her lessons; nor that the little boy likes throwing +stones at the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school." Indeed, for +a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. For if, +resolutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like doing +it. But they only are in a right moral state when they <i>have</i> come to +like doing it; and as long as they don't like it, they are still in a +vicious state. The man is not in health of body who is always thinking +of the bottle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst; but +the man who heartily enjoys water in the morning, and wine in the +evening, each in its proper quantity and time. And the entire object +of true education is to make people not merely <i>do</i> the right things, +but <i>enjoy</i> the right things:—not merely industrious, but to love +industry—not merely learned, but to love knowledge—not merely pure, +but to love purity—not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after +justice.<a href="#fn203"><sup>[203]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +But you may answer or think, "Is the liking for outside +ornaments,—for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or +architecture,—a moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a rightly set +liking. Taste for <i>any</i> pictures or statues is not a moral quality, +but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word +"good." I don't mean by "good," clever—or learned—or difficult in +the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their +dice; it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in its +kind has ever been done equal to it; but it is also an entirely base +and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolonged +contemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an "unmannered," +or "immoral" quality. It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense—it +is the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of Titian's, +or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, expresses +delight in the perpetual contemplation of a good and perfect thing. +That is an entirely moral quality—it is the taste of the angels And +all delight in art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple +love of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality which +we call "loveliness"—(we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness, +to be said of the things which deserve to be hated); and it is not an +indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is +just the vital function of all our being. What we <i>like</i> determines +what we <i>are</i>, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is +inevitably to form character. +</p> + +<p> +As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet Street the other day, +my eye caught the title of a book standing open in a bookseller's +window. It was—"On the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all +classes." "Ah," I thought to myself, "my classifying friend, when you +have diffused your taste, where will your classes be? The man who +likes what you like, belongs to the same class with you, I think. +Inevitably so. You may put him to other work if you choose; but, by +the condition you have brought him into, he will dislike the other +work as much as you would yourself. You get hold of a scavenger or a +costermonger, who enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and +'Pop goes the Weasel' for music. You think you can make him like Dante +and Beethoven? I wish you joy of your lessons; but if you do, you have +made a gentleman of him:—he won't like to go back to his +coster-mongering." +</p> + +<p> +And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, that, if I had time +to-night, I could show you that a nation cannot be affected by any +vice, or weakness, without expressing it, legibly, and for ever, +either in bad art, or by want of art; and that there is no national +virtue, small or great, which is not manifestly expressed in all the +art which circumstances enable the people possessing that virtue to +produce. Take, for instance, your great English virtue of enduring and +patient courage. You have at present in England only one art of any +consequence—that is, iron-working. You know thoroughly well how to +cast and hammer iron. Now, do you think, in those masses of lava which +you build volcanic cones to melt, and which you forge at the mouths of +the Infernos you have created; do you think, on those iron plates, +your courage and endurance are not written for ever,—not merely with +an iron pen, but on iron parchment? And take also your great English +vice—European vice—vice of all the world—vice of all other worlds +that roll or shine in heaven, bearing with them yet the atmosphere of +hell—the vice of jealousy, which brings competition into your +commerce, treachery into your councils, and dishonour into your +wars—that vice which has rendered for you, and for your next +neighbouring nation, the daily occupations of existence no longer +possible, but with the mail upon your breasts and the sword loose in +its sheath; so that at last, you have realized for all the multitudes +of the two great peoples who lead the so-called civilization of the +earth,—you have realized for them all, I say, in person and in +policy, what was once true only of the rough Border riders of your +Cheviot hills— +</p> + +<p class="quote"> + They carved at the meal<br> + With gloves of steel, +</p> + +<p> +And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd;<a href="#fn204"><sup>[204]</sup></a> do you +think that this national shame and dastardliness of heart are not +written as legibly on every rivet of your iron armour as the strength +of the right hands that forged it? +</p> + +<p> +Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more ludicrous or the +more melancholy. It is quite unspeakably both. Suppose, instead of +being now sent for by you, I had been sent for by some private +gentleman, living in a suburban house, with his garden separated only +by a fruit wall from his next door neighbour's; and he had called me +to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing-room. I begin +looking about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and +such a paper might be desirable—perhaps a little fresco here and +there on the ceiling—a damask curtain or so at the windows. "Ah," +says my employer, "damask curtains, indeed! That's all very fine, but +you know I can't afford that kind of thing just now!" "Yet the world +credits you with a splendid income!" "Ah, yes," says my friend, "but +do you know, at present I am obliged to spend it nearly all in +steel-traps?" "Steel-traps! for whom?" "Why, for that fellow on the +other side the wall, you know: we're very good friends, capital +friends; but we are obliged to keep our traps set on both sides of the +wall; we could not possibly keep on friendly terms without them, and +our spring guns. The worst of it is, we are both clever fellows +enough; and there's never a day passes that we don't find out a new +trap, or a new gun-barrel, or something; we spend about fifteen +millions a year each in our traps, take it altogether; and I don't see +how we're to do with less." A highly comic state of life for two +private gentlemen! but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly +comic. Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman +in it; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only one +clown in it; but when the whole world turns clown, and paints itself +red with its own heart's blood instead of vermilion, it is something +else than comic, I think. +</p> + +<p> +Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and willingly allow for +that. You don't know what to do with yourselves for a sensation: +fox-hunting and cricketing will not carry you through the whole of +this unendurably long mortal life: you liked pop-guns when you were +schoolboys, and rifles and Armstrongs are only the same things better +made: but then the worst of it is, that what was play to you when +boys, was not play to the sparrows; and what is play to you now, is +not play to the small birds of State neither; and for the black +eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking shots at them, if I mistake +not.<a href="#fn205"><sup>[205]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +I must get back to the matter in hand, however. Believe me, without +further instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation's +vice, or virtue, was written in its art: the soldiership of early +Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of +Tuscany; the splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. I have no +time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now);<a href="#fn206"><sup>[206]</sup></a> +but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in a more searching +manner. +</p> + +<p> +I notice that among all the new buildings that cover your once wild +hills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large +proportion, with your mills and mansions; and I notice also that the +churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and +mills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely the meaning +of this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When +Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and when +the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well +as houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of Antwerp, +there is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if Inigo +Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an +Italian St. Paul's.<a href="#fn207"><sup>[207]</sup></a> But now you live under one school of +architecture, and worship under another. What do you mean by doing +this? Am I to understand that you are thinking of changing your +architecture back to Gothic; and that you treat your churches +experimentally, because it does not matter what mistakes you make in a +church? Or am I to understand that you consider Gothic a pre-eminently +sacred and beautiful mode of building, which you think, like the fine +frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and reserved +for your religious services? For if this be the feeling, though it may +seem at first as if it were graceful and reverent, you will find that, +at the root of the matter, it signifies neither more nor less than +that you have separated your religion from your life. +</p> + +<p> +For consider what a wide significance this fact has: and remember that +it is not you only, but all the people of England, who are behaving +thus, just now. +</p> + +<p> +You have all got into the habit of calling the church "the house of +God." I have seen, over the doors of many churches, the legend +actually carved, "<i>This</i> is the house of God and this is the gate of +heaven."<a href="#fn208"><sup>[208]</sup></a> Now, note where that legend comes from, and of what +place it was first spoken. A boy leaves his father's house to go on a +long journey on foot, to visit his uncle: he has to cross a wild +hill-desert; just as if one of your own boys had to cross the wolds to +visit an uncle at Carlisle. The second or third day your boy finds +himself somewhere between Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the moors, +at sunset. It is stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go one foot +further that night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best +he may, gathering a few of the stones together to put under his +head;—so wild the place is, he cannot get anything but stones. And +there, lying under the broad night, he has a dream; and he sees a +ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and +the angels of God are ascending and descending upon it. And when he +wakes out of his sleep, he says, "How dreadful is this place; surely +this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of +heaven." This PLACE, observe; not this church; not this city; not this +stone, even, which he puts up for a memorial—the piece of flint on +which his head has lain. But this <i>place</i>; this windy slope of +Wharnside; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted! this +<i>any</i> place where God lets down the ladder. And how are you to know +where that will be? or how are you to determine where it may be, but +by being ready for it always? Do you know where the lightning is to +fall next? You <i>do</i> know that, partly; you can guide the lightning; +but you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit, which is that +lightning when it shines from the east to the west.<a href="#fn209"><sup>[209]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong verse to serve a +merely ecclesiastical purpose is only one of the thousand instances in +which we sink back into gross Judaism. We call our churches "temples." +Now, you know perfectly well they are <i>not</i> temples. They have never +had, never can have, anything whatever to do with temples. They are +"synagogues"—"gathering places"—where you gather yourselves together +as an assembly; and by not calling them so, you again miss the force +of another mighty text—"Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the +hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the churches" [we +should translate it], "that they may be seen of men. But thou, when +thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, +pray to thy Father"—which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but "in +secret."<a href="#fn210"><sup>[210]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Now, you feel, as I say this to you—I know you feel—as if I were +trying to take away the honour of your churches. Not so; I am trying +to prove to you the honour of your houses and your hills; not that the +Church is not sacred—but that the whole Earth is. I would have you +feel, what careless, what constant, what infectious sin there is in +all modes of thought, whereby, in calling your churches only "holy," +you call your hearths and homes "profane"; and have separated +yourselves from the heathen by casting all your household gods to the +ground, instead of recognizing, in the place of their many and feeble +Lares, the presence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. +</p> + +<p> +"But what has all this to do with our Exchange?" you ask me, +impatiently. My dear friends, it has just everything to do with it; on +these inner and great questions depend all the outer and little ones; +and if you have asked me down here to speak to you, because you had +before been interested in anything I have written, you must know that +all I have yet said about architecture was to show this. The book I +called <i>The Seven Lamps</i> was to show that certain right states of +temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good +architecture, without exception, had been produced. <i>The Stones of +Venice</i> had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that the +Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all +its features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue; +and that its Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in all +its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and +of domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what style is best to +build in, and how can I answer, knowing the meaning of the two styles, +but by another question—do you mean to build as Christians or as +Infidels? And still more—do you mean to build as honest Christians or +as honest Infidels? as thoroughly and confessedly either one or the +other? You don't like to be asked such rude questions. I cannot help +it; they are of much more importance than this Exchange business; and +if they can be at once answered, the Exchange business settles itself +in a moment. But before I press them farther, I must ask leave to +explain one point clearly. +</p> + +<p> +In all my past work, my endeavour has been to show that good +architecture is essentially religious—the production of a faithful +and virtuous, not of an infidel and corrupted people. But in the +course of doing this, I have had also to show that good architecture +is not <i>ecclesiastical</i>. People are so apt to look upon religion as +the business of the clergy, not their own, that the moment they hear +of anything depending on "religion," they think it must also have +depended on the priesthood; and I have had to take what place was to +be occupied between these two errors, and fight both, often with +seeming contradiction. Good architecture is the work of good and +believing men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, "Good +architecture must essentially have been the work of the clergy, not of +the laity." No—a thousand times no; good architecture<a href="#fn211"><sup>[211]</sup></a> has always +been the work of the commonalty, <i>not</i> of the clergy. "What," you say, +"those glorious cathedrals—the pride of Europe—did their builders +not form Gothic architecture?" No; they corrupted Gothic architecture. +Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, and the burgher's street. It +was formed by the thoughts, and hands, and powers of labouring +citizens and warrior kings. By the monk it was used as an instrument +for the aid of his superstition; when that superstition became a +beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly dreamed and +pined in the cloister, and vainly raged and perished in the +crusade,—through that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the +Gothic rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most +foolish dreams; and in those dreams, was lost. +</p> + +<p> +I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunderstanding me when I +come to the gist of what I want to say to-night;—when I repeat, that +every great national architecture has been the result and exponent of +a great national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits +there—you must have it everywhere or nowhere. It is not the monopoly +of a clerical company—it is not the exponent of a theological +dogma—it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood; +it is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common +purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible +laws of an undoubted God. +</p> + +<p> +Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools of European +architecture. I say, European, because Asiatic and African +architectures belong so entirely to other races and climates, that +there is no question of them here; only, in passing, I will simply +assure you that whatever is good or great in Egypt, and Syria, and +India, is just good or great for the same reasons as the buildings on +our side of the Bosphorus. We Europeans, then, have had three great +religions: the Greek, which was the worship of the God of Wisdom and +Power; the Mediæval, which was the worship of the God of Judgment and +Consolation; the Renaissance, which was the worship of the God of +Pride and Beauty: these three we have had—they are past,—and now, at +last, we English have got a fourth religion, and a God of our own, +about which I want to ask you. But I must explain these three old ones +first. +</p> + +<p> +I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God of Wisdom; +so that whatever contended against their religion,—to the Jews a +stumbling-block,—was, to the Greeks—<i>Foolishness</i>.<a href="#fn212"><sup>[212]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed in the word, of which +we keep the remnant in our words "<i>Di</i>-urnal" and "<i>Di</i>-vine"—the god +of <i>Day</i>, Jupiter the revealer. Athena is his daughter, but especially +daughter of the Intellect, springing armed from the head. We are only +with the help of recent investigation beginning to penetrate the depth +of meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly, +that her ægis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which she +often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her left +hand, for better guard; and the Gorgon, on her shield, are both +representative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men +to stone, as it were), of the outmost and superficial spheres of +knowledge—that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, +and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown man from the heart of the +child. For out of imperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension, +danger, and disdain; but from perfect knowledge, given by the +full-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign of which she is +crowned with the olive spray, and bears the resistless spear.<a href="#fn213"><sup>[213]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity; and every habit +of life, and every form of his art developed themselves from the +seeking this bright, serene, resistless wisdom; and setting himself, +as a man, to do things evermore rightly and strongly;<a href="#fn214"><sup>[214]</sup></a> not with +any ardent affection or ultimate hope; but with a resolute and +continent energy of will, as knowing that for failure there was no +consolation, and for sin there was no remission. And the Greek +architecture rose unerring, bright, clearly defined, and +self-contained. +</p> + +<p> +Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which was +essentially the religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is the +remission of sins; for which cause, it happens, too often, in certain +phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness themselves are partly +glorified, as if, the more you had to be healed of, the more divine +was the healing. The practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a +continual contemplation of sin and disease, and of imaginary states of +purification from them; thus we have an architecture conceived in a +mingled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, partly severe, partly +luxuriant, which will bend itself to every one of our needs, and every +one of our fancies, and be strong or weak with us, as we are strong or +weak ourselves. It is, of all architecture, the basest, when base +people build it—of all, the noblest, when built by the noble. +</p> + +<p> +And now note that both these religions—Greek and Mediæval—perished +by falsehood in their own main purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdom +perished in a false philosophy—"Oppositions of science, falsely so +called." The Mediæval religion of Consolation perished in false +comfort; in remission of sins given lyingly. It was the selling of +absolution that ended the Mediæval faith; and I can tell you more, it +is the selling of absolution which, to the end of time, will mark +false Christianity. Pure Christianity gives her remission of sins only +by <i>ending</i> them; but false Christianity gets her remission of sins by +<i>compounding for</i> them. And there are many ways of compounding for +them. We English have beautiful little quiet ways of buying +absolution, whether in low Church or high, far more cunning than any +of Tetzel's trading.<a href="#fn215"><sup>[215]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, in which all +Europe gave itself to luxury, ending in death. First, <i>bals masqués</i> +in every saloon, and then guillotines in every square. And all these +three worships issue in vast temple building. Your Greek worshipped +Wisdom, and built you the Parthenon—the Virgin's temple. The Mediæval +worshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples also—but to our +Lady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist worshipped beauty, of a sort, +and built you Versailles and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell +me what <i>we</i> worship, and what <i>we</i> build? +</p> + +<p> +You know we are speaking always of the real, active, continual, +national worship; that by which men act, while they live; not that +which they talk of, when they die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal +religion, to which we pay tithes of property and sevenths of time; but +we have also a practical and earnest religion, to which we devote +nine-tenths of our property and sixth-sevenths of our time. And we +dispute a great deal about the nominal religion: but we are all +unanimous about this practical one; of which I think you will admit +that the ruling goddess may be best generally described as the +"Goddess of Getting-on," or "Britannia of the Market." The Athenians +had an "Athena Agoraia," or Athena of the Market; but she was a +subordinate type of their goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is the +principal type of ours. And all your great architectural works are, of +course, built to her. It is long since you built a great cathedral; +and how you would laugh at me if I proposed building a cathedral on +the top of one of these hills of yours, taking it for an Acropolis! +But your railroad mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon; your +railroad stations, vaster than the temple of Ephesus, and innumerable; +your chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires! +your harbour-piers; your warehouses; your exchanges!—all these are +built to your great Goddess of "Getting-on"; and she has formed, and +will continue to form your architecture, as long as you worship her; +and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to <i>her</i>; you +know far better than I. +</p> + +<p> +There might, indeed, on some theories, be a conceivably good +architecture for Exchanges—that is to say, if there were any heroism +in the fact or deed of exchange which might be typically carved on the +outside of your building. For, you know, all beautiful architecture +must be adorned with sculpture or painting; and for sculpture or +painting, you must have a subject. And hitherto it has been a received +opinion among the nations of the world that the only right subjects +for either, were <i>heroisms</i> of some sort. Even on his pots and his +flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, or an Apollo slaying +serpents, or Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and earthborn +despondencies. On his temples, the Greek put contests of great +warriors in founding states, or of gods with evil spirits. On his +houses and temples alike, the Christian put carvings of angels +conquering devils; or of hero-martyrs exchanging this world for +another: subject inappropriate, I think, to our manner of exchange +here. And the Master of Christians not only left His followers without +any orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange on the outside +of buildings, but gave some strong evidence of His dislike of affairs +of exchange within them.<a href="#fn216"><sup>[216]</sup></a> And yet there might surely be a heroism +in such affairs; and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves, +not impious. The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism has +never been supposed to be in any wise consistent with the practice of +supplying people with food, or clothes; but rather with that of +quartering one's self upon them for food, and stripping them of their +clothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all ages; but the +selling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken any colour of +magnanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and clothing +the naked should ever become base businesses, even when engaged in on +a large scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion of conquest +to them anyhow! so that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinate +race, who refused to be comforted, one might take some pride in giving +them compulsory comfort! and, as it were, "<i>occupying</i> a country" with +one's gifts, instead of one's armies? If one could only consider it as +much a victory to get a barren field sown, as to get an eared field +stripped; and contend who should build villages, instead of who should +"carry" them! Are not all forms of heroism conceivable in doing these +serviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be ascertained +by push of spade, as well as push of sword. Who is wisest? There are +witty things to be thought of in planning other business than +campaigns. Who is bravest? There are always the elements to fight +with, stronger than men; and nearly as merciless. +</p> + +<p> +The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier's +work seems to be—that he is paid little for it—and regularly: while +you traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied in presumably +benevolent business, like to be paid much for it—and by chance. I +never can make out how it is that a <i>knight</i>-errant does not expect to +be paid for his trouble, but a <i>pedlar</i>-errant always does;—that +people are willing to take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell +ribands cheap; that they are ready to go on fervent crusades, to +recover the tomb of a buried God, but never on any travels to fulfil +the orders of a living one;—that they will go anywhere barefoot to +preach their faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, and are +perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and +fishes. +</p> + +<p> +If you chose to take the matter up on any such soldierly principle; to +do your commerce, and your feeding of nations, for fixed salaries; and +to be as particular about giving people the best food, and the best +cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the best gunpowder, I could +carve something for you on your exchange worth looking at. But I can +only at present suggest decorating its frieze with pendant purses; and +making its pillars broad at the base, for the sticking of bills. And +in the innermost chambers of it there might be a statue of Britannia +of the Market, who may have, perhaps advisably, a partridge for her +crest, typical at once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas, and +of her interest in game; and round its neck, the inscription in golden +letters, "Perdix fovit quæ non peperit."<a href="#fn217"><sup>[217]</sup></a> Then, for her spear, she +might have a weaver's beam; and on her shield, instead of St. George's +Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret +proper, in the field; and the legend, "In the best market,"<a href="#fn218"><sup>[218]</sup></a> and +her corslet, of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of a +purse, with thirty slits in it, for a piece of money to go in at, on +each day of the month. And I doubt not but that people would come to +see your exchange, and its goddess, with applause. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain strange characters in +this goddess of yours. She differs from the great Greek and Mediæval +deities essentially in two things—first, as to the continuance of her +presumed power; secondly, as to the extent of it. +</p> + +<p> +1st, as to the Continuance. +</p> + +<p> +The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual increase of wisdom, as the +Christian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual increase of +comfort. There was no question, with these, of any limit or cessation +of function. But with your Agora Goddess, that is just the most +important question. Getting on—but where to? Gathering together—but +how much? Do you mean to gather always—never to spend? If so, I wish +you joy of your goddess, for I am just as well off as you, without the +trouble of worshipping her at all. But if you do not spend, somebody +else will—somebody else must. And it is because of this (among many +other such errors) that I have fearlessly declared your so-called +science of Political Economy to be no science; because, namely, it has +omitted the study of exactly the most important branch of the +business—the study of <i>spending</i>. For spend you must, and as much as +you make, ultimately. You gather corn:—will you bury England under a +heap of grain; or will you, when you have gathered, finally eat? You +gather gold:—will you make your house-roofs of it, or pave your +streets with it? That is still one way of spending it. But if you keep +it, that you may get more, I'll give you more; I'll give you all the +gold you want—all you can imagine—if you can tell me what you'll do +with it. You shall have thousands of gold-pieces;—thousands of +thousands—millions—mountains, of gold: where will you keep them? +Will you put an Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelion—make Ossa like +a wart?<a href="#fn219"><sup>[219]</sup></a> Do you think the rain and dew would then come down to +you, in the streams from such mountains, more blessedly than they will +down the mountains which God has made for you, of moss and whinstone? +But it is not gold that you want to gather! What is it? greenbacks? +No; not those neither. What is it then—is it ciphers after a capital +I? Cannot you practise writing ciphers, and write as many as you want? +Write ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big book, and say every +evening, I am worth all those noughts more than I was yesterday. Won't +that do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is it you want? Not gold, +not greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital I? You will have to +answer, after all, "No; we want, somehow or other, money's <i>worth</i>." +Well, what is that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on discover it, and +let her learn to stay therein. +</p> + +<p> +2d. But there is yet another question to be asked respecting this +Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of the continuance of her power; +the second is of its extent. +</p> + +<p> +Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the world's Pallas, and +all the world's Madonna. They could teach all men, and they could +comfort all men. But, look strictly into the nature of the power of +your Goddess of Getting-on; and you will find she is the Goddess—not +of everybody's getting on—but only of somebody's getting on. This is +a vital, or rather deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal +of the state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke and +maintain. I asked you what it was, when I was last here;—you have +never told me.<a href="#fn220"><sup>[220]</sup></a> Now, shall I try to tell you? +</p> + +<p> +Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should be passed in +a pleasant undulating world, with iron and coal everywhere underneath +it. On each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, +with two wings; and stables, and coach-houses; a moderately-sized +park; a large garden and hot-houses; and pleasant carriage drives +through the shrubberies In this mansion are to live the favoured +votaries of the Goddess; the English gentleman, with his gracious +wife, and his beautiful family; always able to have the boudoir and +the jewels for the wife, and the beautiful ball dresses for the +daughters, and hunters for the sons, and a shooting in the Highlands +for himself. At the bottom of the bank, is to be the mill; not less +than a quarter of a mile long, with a steam engine at each end, and +two in the middle, and a chimney three hundred feet high. In this mill +are to be in constant employment from eight hundred to a thousand +workers, who never drink, never strike, always go to church on Sunday, +and always express themselves in respectful language. +</p> + +<p> +Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of thing you +propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed seen from above; not +at all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family +this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand families +she is the Goddess of <i>not</i> Getting-on. "Nay," you say, "they have all +their chance." Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must +always be the same number of blanks. "Ah! but in a lottery it is not +skill and intelligence which take the lead, but blind chance." What +then! do you think the old practice, that "they should take who have +the power, and they should keep who can,"<a href="#fn221"><sup>[221]</sup></a> is less iniquitous, +when the power has become power of brains instead of fist? and that, +though we may not take advantage of a child's or a woman's weakness, +we may of a man's foolishness? "Nay, but finally, work must be done, +and some one must be at the top, some one at the bottom." Granted, my +friends. Work must always be, and captains of work must always be; and +if you in the least remember the tone of any of my writings, you must +know that they are thought unfit for this age, because they are always +insisting on need of government, and speaking with scorn of liberty. +But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being +captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It does +not follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to take +all the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure or +land;) neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are to +consume all the profits of the nation's work. Real kings, on the +contrary, are known invariably by their doing quite the reverse of +this,—by their taking the least possible quantity of the nation's +work for themselves. There is no test of real kinghood so infallible +as that. Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely, +unostentatiously? probably he <i>is</i> a King. Does he cover his body with +jewels, and his table with delicates? in all probability he is <i>not</i> a +King. It is possible he may be, as Solomon was; but that is when the +nation shares his splendour with him. Solomon made gold, not only to +be in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones.<a href="#fn222"><sup>[222]</sup></a> +But, even so, for the most part, these splendid kinghoods expire in +ruin, and only the true king-hoods live, which are of royal labourers +governing loyal labourers; who, both leading rough lives, establish +the true dynasties. Conclusively you will find that because you are +king of a nation, it does not follow that you are to gather for +yourself all the wealth of that nation; neither, because you are king +of a small part of the nation, and lord over the means of its +maintenance—over field, or mill, or mine,—are you to take all the +produce of that piece of the foundation of national existence for +yourself. +</p> + +<p> +You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannot +mend them. No, good friends, I cannot; but you can, and you will; or +something else can and will. Even good things have no abiding +power—and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? All +history shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact thing they never +can do. Change <i>must</i> come; but it is ours to determine whether change +of growth, or change of death. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on its +rock, and Bolton priory<a href="#fn223"><sup>[223]</sup></a> in its meadow, but these mills of yours +be the consummation of the buildings of the earth, and their wheels be +as the wheels of eternity? Think you that "men may come, and men may +go," but—mills—go on for ever?<a href="#fn224"><sup>[224]</sup></a> Not so; out of these, better or +worse shall come; and it is for you to choose which. +</p> + +<p> +I know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate purpose. I +know, on the contrary, that you wish your workmen well; that you do +much for them, and that you desire to do more for them, if you saw +your way to such benevolence safely. I know that even all this wrong +and misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each of you +striving to do his best; but, unhappily, not knowing for whom this +best should be done. And all our hearts have been betrayed by the +plausible impiety of the modern economist, telling us that, "To do the +best for ourselves, is finally to do the best for others." Friends, +our great Master said not so; and most absolutely we shall find this +world is not made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, is finally to +do the best for ourselves; but it will not do to have our eyes fixed +on that issue. The Pagans had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says +of this matter; hear what were, perhaps, the last written words of +Plato,—if not the last actually written (for this we cannot know), +yet assuredly in fact and power his parting words—in which, +endeavouring to give full crowning and harmonious close to all his +thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by the imagined sentence of the +Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, and the words +cease, broken off for ever. They are at the close of the dialogue +called <i>Critias</i>, in which he describes, partly from real tradition, +partly in ideal dream, the early state of Athens; and the genesis, and +order, and religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis +he conceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy of man, +which in our own Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that the +Sons of God inter-married with the daughters of men,<a href="#fn225"><sup>[225]</sup></a> for he +supposes the earliest race to have been indeed the children of God; +and to have corrupted themselves, until "their spot was not the spot +of his children."<a href="#fn226"><sup>[226]</sup></a> And this, he says, was the end; that indeed +"through many generations, so long as the God's nature in them yet was +full, they were submissive to the sacred laws, and carried themselves +lovingly to all that had kindred with them in divineness; for their +uttermost spirit was faithful and true, and in every wise great; so +that, in <i>all meekness of wisdom, they dealt with each other</i>, and +took all the chances of life; and despising all things except virtue, +they cared little what happened day by day, and <i>bore lightly the +burden</i> of gold and of possessions; for they saw that, if <i>only their +common love and virtue increased, all these things would be increased +together with them</i>; but to set their esteem and ardent pursuit upon +material possession would be to lose that first, and their virtue and +affection together with it. And by such reasoning, and what of the +divine nature remained in them, they gained all this greatness of +which we have already told; but when the God's part of them faded and +became extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced by the +prevalent mortality; and the human nature at last exceeded, they then +became unable to endure the courses of fortune; and fell into +shapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him who could see, +having lost everything that was fairest of their honour; while to the +blind hearts which could not discern the true life, tending to +happiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy, +being filled with an iniquity of inordinate possession and power. +Whereupon, the God of Gods, whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a +once just nation thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay such +punishment upon them as might make them repent into restraining, +gathered together all the gods into his dwelling-place, which from +heaven's centre overlooks whatever has part in creation; and having +assembled them, he said "— +</p> + +<p> +The rest is silence. Last words of the chief wisdom of the heathen, +spoken of this idol of riches; this idol of yours; this golden image, +high by measureless cubits, set up where your green fields of England +are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura:<a href="#fn227"><sup>[227]</sup></a> this +idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and +faith; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, in any +age or people, been accounted of as able to speak according to the +purposes of God. Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal +one, and soon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be +possible. Catastrophe will come; or, worse than catastrophe, slow +mouldering and withering into Hades. But if you can fix some +conception of a true human state of life to be striven for—life, good +for all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest and +simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, +which are pleasantness,<a href="#fn228"><sup>[228]</sup></a> and seeking her quiet and withdrawn +paths, which are peace;—then, and so sanctifying wealth into +"commonwealth," all your art, your literature, your daily labours, +your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase +into one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build, well +enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples +not made with hands,<a href="#fn229"><sup>[229]</sup></a> but riveted of hearts; and that kind of +marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal. +</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="chapter"> +<a name="LifeandArts">Life and Its Arts</a> +</p> + + +<p class="quote"> + This lecture, the full title of which is "The Mystery of Life and + its Arts," was delivered in Dublin on May 13, 1868. It composed + one of a series of afternoon lectures on various subjects, + religion excepted, arranged by some of the foremost residents in + Dublin. The latter half of the lecture is included in the present + volume of selections. The first publication of the lecture was as + an additional part to a revised edition of <i>Sesame and Lilies</i> in + 1871. Ruskin took exceptional care in writing "The Mystery of + Life": he once said in conversation, "I put into it all that I + know," and in the preface to it when published he tells us that + certain passages of it "contain the best expression I have yet + been able to put in words of what, so far as is within my power, I + mean henceforward both to do myself, and to plead with all over + whom I have any influence to do according to their means." Sir + Leslie Stephen says this "is, to my mind, the most perfect of his + essays." In later editions of <i>Sesame and Lilies</i> this lecture was + withdrawn. At the time the lecture was delivered its tone was + characteristic of Ruskin's own thought and of the attitude he then + took toward the public. +</p> + +<p> +We have sat at the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, and they have +told us their dreams. We have listened to the poets who sang of earth, +and they have chanted to us dirges and words of despair. But there is +one class of men more:—men, not capable of vision, nor sensitive to +sorrow, but firm of purpose—practised in business; learned in all +that can be, (by handling,) known. Men, whose hearts and hopes are +wholly in this present world, from whom, therefore, we may surely +learn, at least, how, at present, conveniently to live in it. What +will <i>they</i> say to us, or show us by example? These kings—these +councillors—these statesmen and builders of kingdoms—these +capitalists and men of business, who weigh the earth, and the dust of +it, in a balance.<a href="#fn230"><sup>[230]</sup></a> They know the world, surely; and what is the +mystery of life to us, is none to them. They can surely show us how to +live, while we live, and to gather out of the present world what is +best. +</p> + +<p> +I think I can best tell you their answer, by telling you a dream I had +once. For though I am no poet, I have dreams sometimes:—I dreamed I +was at a child's May-day party, in which every means of entertainment +had been provided for them, by a wise and kind host. It was in a +stately house, with beautiful gardens attached to it; and the children +had been set free in the rooms and gardens, with no care whatever but +how to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know +much about what was to happen next day; and some of them, I thought, +were a little frightened, because there was a chance of their being +sent to a new school where there were examinations; but they kept the +thoughts of that out of their heads as well as they could, and +resolved to enjoy themselves. The house, I said, was in a beautiful +garden, and in the garden were all kinds of flowers; sweet, grassy +banks for rest; and smooth lawns for play; and pleasant streams and +woods; and rocky places for climbing. And the children were happy for +a little while, but presently they separated themselves into parties; +and then each party declared it would have a piece of the garden for +its own, and that none of the others should have anything to do with +that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently which pieces they would +have; and at last the boys took up the thing, as boys should do, +"practically," and fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly a +flower left standing; then they trampled down each other's bits of the +garden out of spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no more; +and so they all lay down at last breathless in the ruin, and waited +for the time when they were to be taken home in the evening.<a href="#fn231"><sup>[231]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, the children in the house had been making themselves happy +also in their manner. For them, there had been provided every kind of +in-door pleasure: there was music for them to dance to; and the +library was open, with all manner of amusing books; and there was a +museum full of the most curious shells, and animals, and birds; and +there was a workshop, with lathes and carpenters' tools, for the +ingenious boys; and there were pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls +to dress in; and there were microscopes, and kaleidoscopes; and +whatever toys a child could fancy; and a table, in the dining-room, +loaded with everything nice to eat. +</p> + +<p> +But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of the more +"practical" children, that they would like some of the brass-headed +nails that studded the chairs; and so they set to work to pull them +out. Presently, the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, +took a fancy to do the like; and, in a little while, all the children, +nearly, were spraining their fingers, in pulling out brass-headed +nails. With all that they could pull out, they were not satisfied; and +then, everybody wanted some of somebody else's. And at last, the +really practical and sensible ones declared, that nothing was of any +real consequence, that afternoon, except to get plenty of brass-headed +nails; and that the books, and the cakes, and the microscopes were of +no use at all in themselves, but only, if they could be exchanged for +nail-heads. And at last they began to fight for nail-heads, as the +others fought for the bits of garden. Only here and there, a despised +one shrank away into a corner, and tried to get a little quiet with a +book, in the midst of the noise; but all the practical ones thought of +nothing else but counting nail-heads all the afternoon—even though +they knew they would not be allowed to carry so much as one brass knob +away with them. But no—it was—"who has most nails? I have a hundred, +and you have fifty; or, I have a thousand, and you have two. I must +have as many as you before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly go +home in peace." At last, they made so much noise that I awoke, and +thought to myself, "What a false dream that is, of <i>children!</i>" The +child is the father of the man;<a href="#fn232"><sup>[232]</sup></a> and wiser. Children never do such +foolish things. Only men do. +</p> + +<p> +But there is yet one last class of persons to be interrogated. The +wise religious men we have asked in vain; the wise contemplative men, +in vain; the wise worldly men, in vain. But there is another group +yet. In the midst of this vanity of empty religion—of tragic +contemplation—of wrathful and wretched ambition, and dispute for +dust, there is yet one great group of persons, by whom all these +disputers live—the persons who have determined, or have had it by a +beneficent Providence determined for them, that they will do something +useful; that whatever may be prepared for them hereafter, or happen to +them here, they will, at least, deserve the food that God gives them +by winning it honourably: and that, however fallen from the purity, or +far from the peace, of Eden, they will carry out the duty of human +dominion, though they have lost its felicity; and dress and keep the +wilderness,<a href="#fn233"><sup>[233]</sup></a> though they no more can dress or keep the garden. +</p> + +<p> +These,—hewers of wood, and drawers of water,<a href="#fn234"><sup>[234]</sup></a>—these, bent under +burdens, or torn of scourges—these, that dig and weave—that plant +and build; workers in wood, and in marble, and in iron—by whom all +food, clothing, habitation, furniture, and means of delight are +produced, for themselves, and for all men beside; men, whose deeds are +good, though their words may be few; men, whose lives are serviceable, +be they never so short, and worthy of honour, be they never so +humble;—from these, surely, at least, we may receive some clear +message of teaching; and pierce, for an instant, into the mystery of +life, and of its arts. +</p> + +<p> +Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But I grieve to say, +or rather—for that is the deeper truth of the matter—I rejoice to +say—this message of theirs can only be received by joining them—not +by thinking about them. +</p> + +<p> +You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have obeyed you in +coming. But the main thing I have to tell you is,—that art must not +be talked about. The fact that there is talk about it at all, +signifies that it is ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter ever +speaks, or ever has spoken, much of his art. The greatest speak +nothing. Even Reynolds is no exception, for he wrote of all that he +could not himself do,<a href="#fn235"><sup>[235]</sup></a> and was utterly silent respecting all that he +himself did. +</p> + +<p> +The moment a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about +it. All words become idle to him—all theories. +</p> + +<p> +Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or boast of it +when built? All good work is essentially done that way—without +hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting; and in the doers of +the best, there is an inner and involuntary power which approximates +literally to the instinct of an animal—nay, I am certain that in the +most perfect human artists, reason does <i>not</i> supersede instinct, but +is added to an instinct as much more divine than that of the lower +animals as the human body is more beautiful than theirs; that a great +singer sings not with less instinct than the nightingale, but with +more—only more various, applicable, and governable; that a great +architect does not build with less instinct than the beaver or the +bee, but with more—with an innate cunning of proportion that embraces +all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises all +construction. But be that as it may—be the instinct less or more than +that of inferior animals—like or unlike theirs, still the human art +is dependent on that first, and then upon an amount of practice, of +science,—and of imagination disciplined by thought, which the true +possessor of it knows to be incommunicable, and the true critic of it, +inexplicable, except through long process of laborious years. That +journey of life's conquest, in which hills over hills, and Alps on +Alps arose, and sank,—do you think you can make another trace it +painlessly, by talking? Why, you cannot even carry us up an Alp, by +talking. You can guide us up it, step by step, no otherwise—even so, +best silently. You girls, who have been among the hills, know how the +bad guide chatters and gesticulates, and it is "put your foot here"; +and "mind how you balance yourself there"; but the good guide walks on +quietly, without a word, only with his eyes on you when need is, and +his arm like an iron bar, if need be. +</p> + +<p> +In that slow way, also, art can be taught—if you have faith in your +guide, and will let his arm be to you as an iron bar when need is. But +in what teacher of art have you such faith? Certainly not in me; for, +as I told you at first, I know well enough it is only because you +think I can talk, not because you think I know my business, that you +let me speak to you at all. If I were to tell you anything that seemed +to you strange, you would not believe it, and yet it would only be in +telling you strange things that I could be of use to you. I could be +of great use to you—infinite use—with brief saying, if you would +believe it; but you would not, just because the thing that would be of +real use would displease you. You are all wild, for instance, with +admiration of Gustave Doré. Well, suppose I were to tell you, in the +strongest terms I could use, that Gustave Doré's art was bad—bad, not +in weakness,—not in failure,—but bad with dreadful power—the power +of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, and polluting; that +so long as you looked at it, no perception of pure or beautiful art +was possible for you. Suppose I were to tell you that! What would be +the use? Would you look at Gustave Doré less? Rather, more, I fancy. +On the other hand, I could soon put you into good humour with me, if I +chose. I know well enough what you like, and how to praise it to your +better liking. I could talk to you about moonlight, and twilight, and +spring flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Raphael—how +motherly! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo—how majestic! and the +Saints of Angelico—how pious! and the Cherubs of Correggio—how +delicious! Old as I am, I could play you a tune on the harp yet, that +you would dance to. But neither you nor I should be a bit the better +or wiser; or, if we were, our increased wisdom could be of no +practical effect. For, indeed, the arts, as regards teachableness, +differ from the sciences also in this, that their power is founded not +merely on facts which can be communicated, but on dispositions which +require to be created. Art is neither to be achieved by effort of +thinking, nor explained by accuracy of speaking. It is the instinctive +and necessary result of power, which can only be developed through the +mind of successive generations, and which finally burst into life +under social conditions as slow of growth as the faculties they +regulate. Whole æras of mighty history are summed, and the passions of +dead myriads are concentrated, in the existence of a noble art; and if +that noble art were among us, we should feel it and rejoice; not +caring in the least to hear lectures on it; and since it is not among +us, be assured we have to go back to the root of it, or, at least, to +the place where the stock of it is yet alive, and the branches began +to die. +</p> + +<p> +And now, may I have your pardon for pointing out, partly with +reference to matters which are at this time of greater moment than the +arts—that if we undertook such recession to the vital germ of +national arts that have decayed, we should find a more singular arrest +of their power in Ireland than in any other European country. For in +the eighth century Ireland possessed a school of art in her +manuscripts and sculpture, which, in many of its qualities—apparently +in all essential qualities of decorative invention—was quite without +rival; seeming as if it might have advanced to the highest triumphs in +architecture and in painting. But there was one fatal flaw in its +nature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a conspicuousness of +pause to which there is no parallel: so that, long ago, in tracing the +progress of European schools from infancy to strength, I chose for the +students of Kensington, in a lecture since published, two +characteristic examples of early art, of equal skill; but in the one +case, skill which was progressive—in the other, skill which was at +pause. In the one case, it was work receptive of correction—hungry +for correction; and in the other, work which inherently rejected +correction. I chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible +Angel, and I grieve to say<a href="#fn236"><sup>[236]</sup></a> that the incorrigible Angel was also an +Irish angel! +</p> + +<p> +And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. In both pieces of art +there was an equal falling short of the needs of fact; but the +Lombardic Eve knew she was in the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought +himself all right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmly +insisting on his childish idea, yet showed in the irregular broken +touches of the features, and the imperfect struggle for softer lines +in the form, a perception of beauty and law that he could not render; +there was the strain of effort, under conscious imperfection, in every +line. But the Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel with no sense +of failure, in happy complacency, and put red dots into the palms of +each hand, and rounded the eyes into perfect circles, and, I regret to +say, left the mouth out altogether, with perfect satisfaction to +himself. +</p> + +<p> +May I without offence ask you to consider whether this mode of arrest +in ancient Irish art may not be indicative of points of character +which even yet, in some measure, arrest your national power? I have +seen much of Irish character, and have watched it closely, for I have +also much loved it. And I think the form of failure to which it is +most liable is this,—that being generous-hearted, and wholly +intending always to do right, it does not attend to the external laws +of right, but thinks it must necessarily do right because it means to +do so, and therefore does wrong without finding it out; and then, when +the consequences of its wrong come upon it, or upon others connected +with it, it cannot conceive that the wrong is in any wise of its +causing or of its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange agony of +desire for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, which leads it +farther astray, until there is nothing that it is not capable of doing +with a good conscience. +</p> + +<p> +But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past or present relations +between Ireland and England, you have been wrong, and we right. Far +from that, I believe that in all great questions of principle, and in +all details of administration of law, you have been usually right, and +we wrong; sometimes in misunderstanding you, sometimes in resolute +iniquity to you. Nevertheless, in all disputes between states, though +the strongest is nearly always mainly in the wrong, the weaker is +often so in a minor degree; and I think we sometimes admit the +possibility of our being in error, and you never do.<a href="#fn237"><sup>[237]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +And now, returning to the broader question, what these arts and +labours of life have to teach us of its mystery, this is the first of +their lessons—that the more beautiful the art, the more it is +essentially the work of people who <i>feel themselves wrong</i>;—who are +striving for the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness, +which they have not yet attained, which they feel even farther and +farther from attaining the more they strive for it. And yet, in still +deeper sense, it is the work of people who know also that they are +right. The very sense of inevitable error from their purpose marks the +perfectness of that purpose, and the continued sense of failure arises +from the continued opening of the eyes more clearly to all the +sacredest laws of truth. +</p> + +<p> +This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and greatly precious +one: namely,—that whenever the arts and labours of life are fulfilled +in this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have +to do, honourably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, as +much as seems possible to the nature of man. In all other paths by +which that happiness is pursued there is disappointment, or +destruction: for ambition and for passion there is no rest—no +fruition; the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greater +than their past light; and the loftiest and purest love too often does +but inflame the cloud of life with endless fire of pain. But, +ascending from lowest to highest, through every scale of human +industry, that industry worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the +labourer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the patient, +delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted worker +in bronze, and in marble, and in the colours of light; and none of +these, who are true workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found +the law of heaven an unkind one—that in the sweat of their face they +should eat bread, till they return to the ground;<a href="#fn238"><sup>[238]</sup></a> nor that they +ever found it an unrewarded obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered +faithfully to the command—"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do—do it +with thy might."<a href="#fn239"><sup>[239]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +These are the two great and constant lessons which our labourers teach +us of the mystery of life. But there is another, and a sadder one, +which they cannot teach us, which we must read on their tombstones. +</p> + +<p> +"Do it with thy might." There have been myriads upon myriads of human +creatures who have obeyed this law—who have put every breath and +nerve of their being into its toil—who have devoted every hour, and +exhausted every faculty—who have bequeathed their unaccomplished +thoughts at death—who, being dead, have yet spoken,<a href="#fn240"><sup>[240]</sup></a> by majesty of +memory, and strength of example. And, at last, what has all this +"Might" of humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of labour and +sorrow? What has it <i>done</i>? Take the three chief occupations and arts +of men, one by one, and count their achievements. Begin with the +first—the lord of them all—Agriculture. Six thousand years have +passed since we were sent to till the ground, from which we were +taken. How much of it is tilled? How much of that which is, wisely or +well? In the very centre and chief garden of Europe—where the two +forms of parent Christianity have had their fortresses—where the +noble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, and the noble Protestants of +the Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for dateless ages, their faiths +and liberties—there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild in +devastation; and the marshes, which a few hundred men could redeem +with a year's labour, still blast their helpless inhabitants into +fevered idiotism. That is so, in the centre of Europe! While, on the +near coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab +woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for famine. And, with +all the treasures of the East at our feet, we, in our own dominion, +could not find a few grains of rice, for a people that asked of us no +more; but stood by, and saw five hundred thousand of them perish of +hunger.<a href="#fn241"><sup>[241]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take the next head of +human arts—weaving; the art of queens, honoured of all noble +Heathen women, in the person of their virgin goddess<a href="#fn242"><sup>[242]</sup></a>—honoured +of all Hebrew women, by the word of their wisest king—"She layeth +her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; she +stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid of the snow +for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. +She maketh herself covering of tapestry; her clothing is silk and +purple. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth +girdles unto the merchant."<a href="#fn243"><sup>[243]</sup></a> What have we done in all these +thousands of years with this bright art of Greek maid and Christian +matron? Six thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to weave? +Might not every naked wall have been purple with tapestry, and every +feeble breast fenced with sweet colours from the cold? What have we +done? Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some poor +covering for our bodies. We set our streams to work for us, and +choke the air with fire, to turn our pinning-wheels—and,—<i>are we +yet clothed</i>? Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe foul +with the sale of cast clouts and rotten rags?<a href="#fn244"><sup>[244]</sup></a> Is not the beauty +of your sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, with +better honour, nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest, and +the suckling of the wolf in her den? And does not every winter's +snow robe what you have not robed, and shroud what you have not +shrouded; and every winter's wind bear up to heaven its wasted +souls, to witness against you hereafter, by the voice of their +Christ,—"I was naked, and ye clothed me not"?<a href="#fn245"><sup>[245]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Lastly—take the Art of Building—the strongest—proudest—most +orderly—most enduring of the arts of man; that of which the produce +is in the surest manner accumulative, and need not perish, or be +replaced; but if once well done, will stand more strongly than the +unbalanced rocks—more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art +which is associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; with +which men record their power—satisfy their enthusiasm—make sure +their defence—define and make dear their habitation. And in six +thousand years of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of +all that skill and strength, <i>no</i> vestige is left, but fallen stones, +that encumber the fields and impede the streams. But, from this waste +of disorder, and of time, and of rage, what <i>is</i> left to us? +Constructive and progressive creatures that we are, with ruling +brains, and forming hands, capable of fellowship, and thirsting for +fame, can we not contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, +or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea? The white surf rages in +vain against the ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent +life; but only ridges of formless ruin mark the places where once +dwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells for each +of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in homes +that consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners of +our streets, rises up the cry of the homeless—"I was a stranger, and +ye took me not in."<a href="#fn246"><sup>[246]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +Must it be always thus? Is our life for ever to be without +profit—without possession? Shall the strength of its generations be +as barren as death; or cast away their labour, as the wild fig-tree +casts her untimely figs?<a href="#fn247"><sup>[247]</sup></a> Is it all a dream then—the desire of the +eyes and the pride of life—or, if it be, might we not live in nobler +dream than this? The poets and prophets, the wise men, and the +scribes, though they have told us nothing about a life to come, have +told us much about the life that is now. They have had—they +also,—their dreams, and we have laughed at them. They have dreamed of +mercy, and of justice; they have dreamed of peace and good-will; they +have dreamed of labour undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed; they +have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in store; they +have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of providence in law; of +gladness of parents, and strength of children, and glory of grey +hairs. And at these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held them +for idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we +accomplished with our realities? Is this what has come of our worldly +wisdom, tried against their folly? this, our mightiest possible, +against their impotent ideal? or, have we only wandered among the +spectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of the tombs, instead +of visions of the Almighty; and walked after the imaginations of our +evil hearts,<a href="#fn248"><sup>[248]</sup></a> instead of after the counsels of Eternity, until our +lives—not in the likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of +hell—have become "as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and +then vanisheth away"?<a href="#fn249"><sup>[249]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> +<i>Does</i> it vanish then? Are you sure of that?—sure, that the +nothingness of the grave will be a rest from this troubled +nothingness; and that the coiling shadow, which disquiets itself in +vain, cannot change into the smoke of the torment that ascends for +ever?<a href="#fn250"><sup>[250]</sup></a> Will any answer that they <i>are</i> sure of it, and that there +is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither they go?<a href="#fn251"><sup>[251]</sup></a> Be +it so: will you not, then, make as sure of the Life that now is, as +you are of the Death that is to come? Your hearts are wholly in this +world—will you not give them to it wisely, as well as perfectly? And +see, first of all, that you <i>have</i> hearts, and sound hearts, too, to +give. Because you have no heaven to look for, is that any reason that +you should remain ignorant of this wonderful and infinite earth, which +is firmly and instantly given you in possession? Although your days +are numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary that +you should share the degradation of the brute, because you are +condemned to its mortality; or live the life of the moth, and of the +worm, because you are to companion them in the dust? Not so; we may +have but a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds +only—perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our time and best, looked back +on, will be but as a moment, as the twinkling of an eye; still we are +men, not insects; we are living spirits, not passing clouds. "He +maketh the winds His messengers; the momentary fire, His minister";<a href="#fn252"><sup>[252]</sup></a> +and shall we do less than <i>these</i>? Let us do the work of men while +we bear the form of them; and, as we snatch our narrow portion of +time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance of passion +out of Immortality—even though our lives <i>be</i> as a vapour, that +appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. +</p> + +<p> +But there are some of you who believe not this—who think this +cloud of life has no such close—that it is to float, revealed and +illumined, upon the floor of heaven, in the day when He cometh with +clouds, and every eye shall see Him.<a href="#fn253"><sup>[253]</sup></a> Some day, you believe, +within these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us the +judgment will be set, and the books opened.<a href="#fn254"><sup>[254]</sup></a> If that be true, +far more than that must be true. Is there but one day of judgment? +Why, for us every day is a day of judgment—every day is a Dies +Iræ,<a href="#fn255"><sup>[255]</sup></a> and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its +West. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave are +opened? It waits at the doors of your houses—it waits at the +corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment—the +insects that we crush are our judges—the moments that we fret away +are our judges—the elements that feed us, judge, as they +minister—and the pleasures that deceive us, judge as they indulge. +Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear the form of +them, if indeed those lives are <i>Not</i> as a vapour, and do <i>Not</i> +vanish away. +</p> + +<p> +"The work of men"—and what is that? Well, we may any of us know very +quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of +us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of +what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of +Ananias,<a href="#fn256"><sup>[256]</sup></a> and it is a mortal one—we want to keep back part of the +price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only +harm in a cross was the <i>weight</i> of it—as if it was only a thing to +be carried, instead of to be—crucified upon. "They that are His have +crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."<a href="#fn257"><sup>[257]</sup></a> Does that +mean, think you, that in time of national distress, of religious +trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of humanity—none of us +will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put themselves to any +wholesome work, none take so much as a tag of lace off their footmen's +coats, to save the world? Or does it rather mean, that they are ready +to leave houses, lands, and kindreds—yes, and life, if need be? +Life!—some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless as we +have made it. But "<i>station</i> in Life"—how many of us are ready to +quit <i>that</i>? Is it not always the great objection, where there is +question of finding something useful to do—"We cannot leave our +stations in Life"? +</p> + +<p> +Those of us who really cannot—that is to say, who can only maintain +themselves by continuing in some business or salaried office, have +already something to do; and all that they have to see to is, that +they do it honestly and with all their might. But with most people who +use that apology, "remaining in the station of life to which +Providence has called them" means keeping all the carriages, and all +the footmen and large houses they can possibly pay for; and, once for +all, I say that if ever Providence <i>did</i> put them into stations of +that sort—which is not at all a matter of certainty—Providence is +just now very distinctly calling them out again. Levi's station in +life was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and +Paul's, the antechambers of the High Priest,—which "station in life" +each had to leave, with brief notice. +</p> + +<p> +And, whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, those of us +who mean to fulfil our duty ought first to live on as little as we +can; and, secondly, to do all the wholesome work for it we can, and to +spend all we can spare in doing all the sure good we can. +</p> + +<p> +And sure good is, first in feeding people, then in dressing people, +then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly pleasing people, with +arts, or sciences, or any other subject of thought. +</p> + +<p> +I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let yourselves be +deceived by any of the common talk of "indiscriminate charity." The +order to us is not to feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious +hungry, nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply to +feed the hungry.<a href="#fn258"><sup>[258]</sup></a> It is quite true, infallibly true, that if any +man will not work, neither should he eat<a href="#fn259"><sup>[259]</sup></a> —think of that, and every +time you sit down to your dinner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, +before you ask a blessing, "How much work have I done to-day for my +dinner?" But the proper way to enforce that order on those below you, +as well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest people +to starve together, but very distinctly to discern and seize your +vagabond; and shut your vagabond up out of honest people's way, and +very sternly then see that, until he has worked, he does <i>not</i> eat. +But the first thing is to be sure you have the food to give; and, +therefore, to enforce the organization of vast activities in +agriculture and in commerce, for the production of the wholesomest +food, and proper storing and distribution of it, so that no famine +shall any more be possible among civilized beings There is plenty of +work in this business alone, and at once, for any number of people who +like to engage in it. +</p> + +<p> +Secondly, dressing people—that is to say, urging every one within +reach of your influence to be always neat and clean, and giving them +means of being so. In so far as they absolutely refuse, you must give +up the effort with respect to them, only taking care that no children +within your sphere of influence shall any more be brought up with such +habits; and that every person who is willing to dress with propriety +shall have encouragement to do so. And the first absolutely necessary +step towards this is the gradual adoption of a consistent dress for +different ranks of persons, so that their rank shall be known by their +dress; and the restriction of the changes of fashion within certain +limits. All which appears for the present quite impossible; but it is +only so far even difficult as it is difficult to conquer our vanity, +frivolity, and desire to appear what we are not. And it is not, nor +ever shall be, creed of mine, that these mean and shallow vices are +unconquerable by Christian women. +</p> + +<p> +And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may think should have +been put first, but I put it third, because we must feed and clothe +people where we find them, and lodge them afterwards. And providing +lodgment for them means a great deal of vigorous legislation, and +cutting down of vested interests that stand in the way, and after +that, or before that, so far as we can get it, thorough sanitary and +remedial action in the houses that we have; and then the building of +more, strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, kept in +proportion to their streams, and walled round, so that there may be no +festering and wretched suburb anywhere, but clean and busy street +within, and the open country without, with a belt of beautiful garden +and orchard round the walls, so that from any part of the city +perfectly fresh air and grass, and the sight of far horizon, might be +reachable in a few minutes' walk. This is the final aim; but in +immediate action every minor and possible good to be instantly done, +when, and as, we can; roofs mended that have holes in them—fences +patched that have gaps in them—walls buttressed that totter—and +floors propped that shake; cleanliness and order enforced with our own +hands and eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all the fine +arts will healthily follow. I myself have washed a flight of stone +stairs all down, with bucket and broom, in a Savoy inn, where they +hadn't washed their stairs since they first went up them; and I never +made a better sketch than that afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +These, then, are the three first needs of civilized life; and the law +for every Christian man and woman is, that they shall be in direct +service towards one of these three needs, as far as is consistent with +their own special occupation, and if they have no special business, +then wholly in one of these services. And out of such exertion in +plain duty all other good will come; for in this direct contention +with material evil, you will find out the real nature of all evil; you +will discern by the various kinds of resistance, what is really the +fault and main antagonism to good; also you will find the most +unexpected helps and profound lessons given, and truths will come thus +down to us which the speculation of all our lives would never have +raised us up to. You will find nearly every educational problem +solved, as soon as you truly want to do something; everybody will +become of use in their own fittest way, and will learn what is best +for them to know in that use. Competitive examination will then, and +not till then, be wholesome, because it will be daily, and calm, and +in practice; and on these familiar arts, and minute, but certain and +serviceable knowledges, will be surely edified and sustained the +greater arts and splendid theoretical sciences. +</p> + +<p> +But much more than this. On such holy and simple practice will be +founded, indeed, at last, an infallible religion. The greatest of all +the mysteries of life, and the most terrible, is the corruption of +even the sincerest religion, which is not daily founded on rational, +effective, humble, and helpful action. Helpful action, observe! for +there is just one law, which obeyed, keeps all religions +pure—forgotten, makes them all false. Whenever in any religious +faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points in +which we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the devil's +power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's thanksgiving—"Lord, I +thank Thee that I am not as other men are."<a href="#fn260"><sup>[260]</sup></a> At every moment of our +lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with +other people, but in what we agree with them; and the moment we find +we can agree as to anything that should be done, kind or good, (and +who but fools couldn't?) then do it; push at it together: you can't +quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the moment that even the best men +stop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity for +piety, and if's all over. I will not speak of the crimes which in past +times have been committed in the name of Christ, nor of the follies +which are at this hour held to be consistent with obedience to Him; +but I <i>will</i> speak of the morbid corruption and waste of vital power +in religious sentiment, by which the pure strength of that which +should be the guiding soul of every nation, the splendour of its +youthful manhood, and spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted or +cast away. You may see continually girls who have never been taught to +do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, +who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole life +has been passed either in play or in pride; you will find girls like +these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of +religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them through the +irksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over the +meaning of the great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to be +understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of +their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences +warped into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws of +common serviceable life would have either solved for them in an +instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a girl any true work that +will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the +consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better +for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform +itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace. +</p> + +<p> +So with our youths. We once taught them to make Latin verses, and +called them educated; now we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a +ball with a bat, and call them educated. Can they plough, can they +sow, can they plant at the right time, or build with a steady hand? Is +it the effort of their lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in +thought, lovely in word and deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay with +many, and the strength of England is in them, and the hope; but we +have to turn their courage from the toil of war to the toil of mercy; +and their intellect from dispute of words to discernment of things; +and their knighthood from the errantry of adventure to the state and +fidelity of a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall abide, for them, +and for us, an incorruptible felicity, and an infallible religion; +shall abide for us Faith, no more to be assailed by temptation, no +more to be defended by wrath and by fear;—shall abide with us Hope, +no more to be quenched by the years that overwhelm, or made ashamed by +the shadows that betray:—shall abide for us, and with us, the +greatest of these; the abiding will, the abiding name of our Father. +For the greatest of these is Charity.<a href="#fn261"><sup>[261]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="chapter"> +<a name="Biblio"> +Bibliographical Note</a> +</p> + + +<p class="noindent"><i>Editions</i>. The standard edition of Ruskin is that of Cook and +Wedderburn in 34 volumes. Most of his better-known works may +be had in cheap and convenient forms. +</p> + +<p class="noindent">The best lives are: +</p> + +<p class="noindent">COLLINGWOOD, W.G. The Life and Work of John Ruskin Houghton Mifflin +Company, 1893. (2 vols.) The standard biography. +</p> + +<p class="noindent">HARRISON, P. John Ruskin (English Men of Letters). The Macmillan +Company, 1902. A short and readable biography. +</p> + +<hr class="long"> +<p class="chapter">Footnotes</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> <i>Præterita</i>. He was born February 8, 1819. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> Ruskin himself quotes a not very brilliant specimen in <i>Modern + Painters</i>, III, in "Moral of Landscape." +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> <i>Præterita</i>, § 53. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> <i>The Mystery of Life.</i> +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> See Harrison's <i>Life</i>, p. 111. Cf. the opening of <i>The Mystery + of Life</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> Part 2, sec. 1, chap. 4. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> See p. 159. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> <i>Modern Painters</i>, vol. 1, part 2, sec. 1, chap. 7. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> <i>Unto This Last</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> See p. 262. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> See p. 162. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> See p. 139. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> See p. 147. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn14"><sup>[14]</sup></a> See p. 121. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn15"><sup>[15]</sup></a> See p. 122. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> See p. 149. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> See p. 122. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn18"><sup>[18]</sup></a> <i>The Mystery of Life</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn19"><sup>[19]</sup></a> <i>Sesame and Lilies</i>, "Kings' Treasuries," §§ 25, 31. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn20"><sup>[20]</sup></a> <i>The Crown of Wild Olive</i>, "War." +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn21"><sup>[21]</sup></a> "Kings' Treasuries," § 32. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn22"><sup>[22]</sup></a> <i>Genesis</i> ii, 15; iii 24. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn23"><sup>[23]</sup></a> "In our own National Gallery. It is quaint and imperfect, but + of great interest." [Ruskin.] Paolo Uccello (c. 1397-1475), a + Florentine painter of the Renaissance, the first of the naturalists. + His real name was Paolo di Dono, but he was called Uccello from his + fondness for birds. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn24"><sup>[24]</sup></a> In tracing the <i>whole</i> of the deep enjoyment to mountain + association, I of course except whatever feelings are connected with + the observance of rural life, or with that of architecture. None of + these feelings arise out of the landscape properly so called: the + pleasure with which we see a peasant's garden fairly kept, or a + ploughman doing his work well, or a group of children playing at a + cottage door, being wholly separate from that which we find in the + fields or commons around them; and the beauty of architecture, or the + associations connected with it, in like manner often ennobling the + most tame scenery;—yet not so but that we may always distinguish + between the abstract character of the unassisted landscape, and the + charm which it derives from the architecture. Much of the majesty of + French landscape consists in its grand and grey village churches and + turreted farmhouses, not to speak of its cathedrals, castles, and + beautifully placed cities. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn25"><sup>[25]</sup></a> One of the principal reasons for the false supposition that + Switzerland is not picturesque, is the error of most sketchers and + painters in representing pine forest in middle distance as dark green, + or grey green, whereas its true colour is always purple, at distances + of even two or three miles. Let any traveller coming down the + Montanvert look for an aperture, three or four inches wide, between + the near pine branches, through which, standing eight or ten feet + from it, he can see the opposite forests on the Breven or Flegère. + Those forests are not above two or two and a half miles from him; + but he will find the aperture is filled by a tint of nearly pure + azure or purple, not by green. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn26"><sup>[26]</sup></a> The Savoyard's name for its flower, "Pain du Bon Dieu," is very + beautiful; from, I believe, the supposed resemblance of its white + and scattered blossom to the fallen manna, [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn27"><sup>[27]</sup></a> <i>Ezekiel</i> vii, 10; <i>Hosea</i> vi, 3. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn28"><sup>[28]</sup></a> In "The Mountain Gloom," the chapter immediately preceding. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn29"><sup>[29]</sup></a> Ruskin refers to <i>The Fulfilling of the Scripture</i>, a book by + Robert Fleming [1630-94]. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn30"><sup>[30]</sup></a> Some sentences of an argumentative nature have been omitted from + this selection. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn31"><sup>[31]</sup></a> A mythical island in the Atlantic. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn32"><sup>[32]</sup></a> I have often seen the white, thin, morning cloud, edged with + the seven colours of the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this + phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to + the sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over + indefinite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. + The colours are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic + lustre upon them. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn33"><sup>[33]</sup></a> Lake Lucerne. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn34"><sup>[34]</sup></a> The implication is that Turner has best delivered it. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn35"><sup>[35]</sup></a> The full title of this chapter is "Of the Received Opinions + touching the 'Grand Style.'" +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn36"><sup>[36]</sup></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." [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn37"><sup>[37]</sup></a> Stanza 6 of Byron's <i>Prisoner of Chillon</i>, quoted with a slight + inaccuracy. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn38"><sup>[38]</sup></a> "Messrs. Mallet and Pictet, being on the lake, in front of the + Castle of Chillon, on August 6, 1774, sunk a thermometer to the + depth of 312 feet." ... —SAUSSURE, <i>Voyages dans les Alpes</i>, chap. + ii, § 33. It appears from the next paragraph, that the thermometer + was at the bottom of the lake. [Ruskin, altered.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn39"><sup>[39]</sup></a> Ruskin later wrote: "It leaves out rhythm, which I now consider + a defect in said definition; otherwise good." +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn40"><sup>[40]</sup></a> Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the <i>Affliction of + Margaret</i>: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>I look for ghosts, but none will force</p> +<p class="i2">Their way to me. 'T is falsely said</p> +<p>That ever there was intercourse</p> +<p class="i2">Between the living and the dead;</p> +<p>For, surely, then, I should have sight</p> +<p>Of him I wait for, day and night.</p> +<p>With love and longing infinite.</p></div></div> + +<p class="footnote"> + This we call Poetry, because it is invented or <i>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 class="footnote"> + "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>.'"—SAUSSURE, <i>Voyages dans les Alpes</i>, chap. + xxiv. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> + This we do not call Poetry, merely because it is not invented, but + the true utterance of a real person. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn41"><sup>[41]</sup></a> The closing lines of Wordsworth's <i>Childless Father</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn42"><sup>[42]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 1. 463 ff., 2. 425 ff.; <i>Odyssey</i>, 3. 455 ff., etc. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn43"><sup>[43]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 6. 468 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn44"><sup>[44]</sup></a> 1625-1713. Known also as Carlo delle Madonne. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn45"><sup>[45]</sup></a> Claude Gelée [1600-82], usually called Claude Lorrain, a French + landscape painter and etcher. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn46"><sup>[46]</sup></a> Vasari, in his <i>Lives of the Painters</i>, tells how Giotto, + when a student under Cimabue, once painted a fly on the nose of a + figure on which the master was working, the fly being so realistic + that Cimabue on returning to the painting attempted to brush it + away. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn47"><sup>[47]</sup></a> Guercino's Hagar in the Brera gallery in Milan. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn48"><sup>[48]</sup></a> Gerard Dow [1613-75], a Dutch genre painter; Hobbima [1638-1709], + a Dutch landscape painter; Walpole [1717-97], a famous English + litterateur; Vasari [1511-74], an Italian painter, now considered + full of mannerisms and without originality, mainly famous as author + of <i>The Lives of the Painters</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn49"><sup>[49]</sup></a> Giotto. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn50"><sup>[50]</sup></a> <i>Purgatorio</i>, 12. 31. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn51"><sup>[51]</sup></a> The Society of Painters in Water-Colours, often referred to as + the Old Water-Colour Society. Ruskin was elected an honorary member + in 1873. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn52"><sup>[52]</sup></a> Three short sections discussing the use of the terms "Objective" + and "Subjective" have been omitted from the beginning of this chapter. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn53"><sup>[53]</sup></a> Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her + <i>Recollections of a Literary Life</i>. [Ruskin.] From <i>Astræa, a Poem + delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College</i>. The + passage in which these lines are found was later published as + <i>Spring</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn54"><sup>[54]</sup></a> Kingsley's <i>Alton Locke</i>, chap. 26. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn55"><sup>[55]</sup></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,—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. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn56"><sup>[56]</sup></a> <i>Inferno</i>, 3. 112. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn57"><sup>[57]</sup></a> <i>Christabel</i>, 1. 49-50. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn58"><sup>[58]</sup></a> "Well said, old mole! can'st work i' the ground so + fast?"—[Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn59"><sup>[59]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 11. 57-58. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn60"><sup>[60]</sup></a> It is worth while comparing the way a similar question is put + by the exquisite sincerity of Keats:— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class=i4>He wept, and his bright tears</p> +<p>Went trickling down the golden bow he held.</p> +<p>Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood;</p> +<p>While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by</p> +<p>With solemn step an awful goddess came,</p> +<p>And there was purport in her looks for him,</p> +<p>Which he with eager guess began to read</p> +<p>Perplex'd, the while melodiously he said,</p> +<p><i>"How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?"</i></p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class=i18><i>Hyperion</i>, 3. 42.—[Ruskin.]</p></div></div> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn61"><sup>[61]</sup></a> See Wordsworth's <i>Peter Bell</i>, Part I:— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>A primrose by a river's brim</p> +<p>A yellow primrose was to him,</p> +<p>And it was nothing more.</p></div></div> + + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn62"><sup>[62]</sup></a> <i>Jude</i> 13. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn63"><sup>[63]</sup></a> <i>Kings</i> xxiii, 18, and <i>Hosea</i> x, 7. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn64"><sup>[64]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 3. 243. In the MS. Ruskin notes, "The insurpassably + tender irony in the epithet—'life-giving earth'—of the grave"; + and then adds another illustration:—"Compare the hammer-stroke at + the close of the [32d] chapter of <i>Vanity Fair</i>—'The darkness came + down on the field and city, and Amelia was praying for George, who + was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart. A + great deal might have been said about it. The writer is very sorry + for Amelia, neither does he want faith in prayer. He knows as well + as any of us that prayer must be answered in some sort; but those + are the facts. The man and woman sixteen miles apart—-one on her + knees on the floor, the other on his face in the clay. So much love + in her heart, so much lead in his. Make what you can of it." [Cook + and Wedderburn.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn65"><sup>[65]</sup></a> The poem may be crudely paraphrased as follows:— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p> "Quick, Anna, quick! to the mirror! It is late,</p> +<p>And I'm to dance at the ambassador's ...</p> +<p>I'm going to the ball ...</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18">"They're faded, see,</p> +<p>These ribbons—they belong to yesterday.</p> +<p>Heavens, how all things pass! Now gracefully hang</p> +<p>The blue tassels from the net that holds my hair.</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Higher!—no, lower!—you get nothing right!...</p> +<p>Now let this sapphire sparkle on my brow.</p> +<p>You're pricking me, you careless thing! That's good!</p> +<p>I love you, Anna dear. How fair I am....</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"I hope he'll be there, too—the one I've tried</p> +<p>To forget! no use! (Anna, my gown!) he too ...</p> +<p>(O fie, you wicked girl! my necklace, <i>this?</i></p> +<p>These golden beads the Holy Father blessed?)</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"He'll be there—Heavens! suppose he takes my hand—</p> +<p>I scarce can draw my breath for thinking of it!</p> +<p>And I confess to Father Anselmo</p> +<p>To-morrow—how can I ever tell him <i>all</i>?...</p> +<p>One last glance at the mirror. O, I'm sure</p> +<p>That they'll adore me at the ball to-night."</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Before the fire she stands admiringly.</p> +<p>O God! a spark has leapt into her gown.</p> +<p>Fire, fire!—O run!—Lost thus when mad with hope?</p> +<p>What, die? and she so fair? The hideous flames</p> +<p>Rage greedily about her arms and breast,</p> +<p>Envelop her, and leaping ever higher,</p> +<p>Swallow up all her beauty, pitiless—</p> +<p>Her eighteen years, alas! and her sweet dream.</p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Adieu to ball, to pleasure, and to love!</p> +<p>"Poor Constance!" said the dancers at the ball,</p> +<p>"Poor Constance!"—and they danced till break of day.</p></div></div> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn66"><sup>[66]</sup></a> <i>Isaiah</i> xiv, 8. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn67"><sup>[67]</sup></a> <i>Isaiah</i> lv, 12. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn68"><sup>[68]</sup></a> <i>Night Thoughts</i>, 2. 345. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn69"><sup>[69]</sup></a> Pastorals: <i>Summer, or Alexis</i>, 73 ff., with the omission of + two couplets after the first. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn70"><sup>[70]</sup></a> From the poem beginning <i>'T is said that some have died for + love</i>, Ruskin evidently quoted from memory, for there are several + verbal slips in the passage quoted. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn71"><sup>[71]</sup></a> Stanza 16, of Shenstone's twenty-sixth Elegy. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn72"><sup>[72]</sup></a> <i>The Excursion</i>, 6. 869 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn73"><sup>[73]</sup></a> I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, + both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come + upon, in Maud:— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i16">For a great speculation had fail'd;</p> +<p>And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair;</p> +<p>And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd,</p> +<p>And the <i>flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air.</i></p></div> + +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">There has fallen a splendid tear</p> +<p class="i12">From the passion-flower at the gate.</p> +<p class="i10"><i>The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near!"</i></p> +<p class="i12"><i>And the white rose weeps, "She is late."</i></p> +<p class="i10"><i>The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear!"</i></p> +<p class="i12"><i>And the lily whispers, "I wait."</i> +[Ruskin.]</p></div></div> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn74"><sup>[74]</sup></a> <i>Endymion</i>, 2. 349-350. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn75"><sup>[75]</sup></a> See p. 68. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn76"><sup>[76]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 21. 212-360. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn77"><sup>[77]</sup></a> Compare <i>Lay of the Last Minstrel</i>, 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. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn78"><sup>[78]</sup></a> <i>The Excursion</i>, 4. 861-871. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn79"><sup>[79]</sup></a> <i>Genesis</i> xxviii, 12; xxxii, 1; xxii, 11; <i>Joshua</i> v, 13 ff.; + <i>Judges</i> xiii, 3 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn80"><sup>[80]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 5. 846. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn81"><sup>[81]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 1. 43. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn82"><sup>[82]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 21. 489 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn83"><sup>[83]</sup></a> Compare the exquisite lines of Longfellow on the sunset in + <i>The Golden Legend</i>:— +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>The day is done; and slowly from the scene</p> +<p>The stooping sun up-gathers his spent shafts.</p> +<p>And puts them back into his golden quiver. [Ruskin.]</p></div></div> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn84"><sup>[84]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 3. 365. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn85"><sup>[85]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 3. 406 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn86"><sup>[86]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 4. 141. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn87"><sup>[87]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 5. 63-74. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn88"><sup>[88]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 2. 776. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn89"><sup>[89]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i> 7. 112-132. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn90"><sup>[90]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 24. 334 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn91"><sup>[91]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 6. 162. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn92"><sup>[92]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 6. 291-292. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn93"><sup>[93]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 10. 510. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn94"><sup>[94]</sup></a> Compare the passage in Dante referred to above, p. 60. + [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn95"><sup>[95]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 4. 482-487. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn96"><sup>[96]</sup></a> Pollards, trees polled or cut back at some height above the + ground, producing a thick growth of young branches in a rounded + mass. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn97"><sup>[97]</sup></a> Quoted, with some omission, from chapter 12. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn98"><sup>[98]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 11. 572; 24. 13. The couch of Ceres, with Homer's + usual faithfulness, is made of a <i>ploughed</i> field, 5. 127. + [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn99"><sup>[99]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 12. 45. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn100"><sup>[100]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 4. 605. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn101"><sup>[101]</sup></a> <i>Iliad</i>, 21. 351. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn102"><sup>[102]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 5. 398, 463. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn103"><sup>[103]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 12. 357. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn104"><sup>[104]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 5. 481-493. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn105"><sup>[105]</sup></a> +<i>Odyssey</i>, 9. 132, etc. Hence Milton's +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>From haunted spring, and dale,</p> +<p>Edged with poplar pale. [Ruskin.]</p></div></div> + +<p> + <i>Hymn on The Morning of Christ's Nativity</i>, 184-185. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn106"><sup>[106]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 9. 182. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn107"><sup>[107]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 10. 87-88. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn108"><sup>[108]</sup></a> <i>Odyssey</i>, 13. 236, etc. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn109"><sup>[109]</sup></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. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn110"><sup>[110]</sup></a> Flodden, Flodden Field, a plain in Northumberland, famous as + the battlefield where James IV of Scotland was defeated by an + English army under the Earl of Surrey, Sept. 9, 1513. The sixth + canto of Scott's <i>Marmion</i> gives a fairly accurate description of + the action. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> + <i>Chevy-Chase</i>, a famous old English ballad recounting the incidents + of the battle of Otterburn [Aug. 19, 1388] in which the Scots under + the Earl of Douglas defeated the English under the Percies. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn111"><sup>[111]</sup></a> Shenstone's <i>Rural Elegance</i>, 201 ff., quoted with some + slight inaccuracies. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn112"><sup>[112]</sup></a> <i>Clouds</i>, 316-318; 380 ff.; 320-321. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn113"><sup>[113]</sup></a> <i>Ephesians</i> ii, 12. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn114"><sup>[114]</sup></a> Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us." +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn115"><sup>[115]</sup></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. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn116"><sup>[116]</sup></a> Gower Street, a London street selected as typical of modern + ugliness. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> + Gaspar Poussin [1613-75], a French landscape painter, of the + pseudo-classical school. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn117"><sup>[117]</sup></a> Of course this is meant only 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, <i>without</i> art, we seem, with God's help, + able still to wage nobly. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn118"><sup>[118]</sup></a> See <i>David Copperfield</i>, chap. 55 and 58. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn119"><sup>[119]</sup></a> Ruskin proceeds to discuss Scott as he has discussed Homer. + The chapter on Turner that follows here is an almost equally good + illustration of Ruskin's ideas. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn120"><sup>[120]</sup></a> c. 1478-1511. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn121"><sup>[121]</sup></a> Dante, alluding to Florence, <i>Paradiso</i>, 25. 5. "From the + fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered." Longfellow's tr. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn122"><sup>[122]</sup></a> Allusions to pictures by Turner, The Garden of the + Hesperides, and The Meuse: Orange-Merchantman going to pieces on + the Bar. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn123"><sup>[123]</sup></a> The pictures referred to are: The Death of Nelson, The Battle + of Trafalgar, and The Fighting Téméraire being towed to its Last + Berth (see cut). The first and third are in the National Gallery, + London. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn124"><sup>[124]</sup></a> <i>Matthew</i> xxiii, 14. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn125"><sup>[125]</sup></a> Santa Maria della Salute, a church conspicuously situated at + the junction of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn126"><sup>[126]</sup></a> <i>Liber Studiorum</i>. "Interior of a church." It is worthy of + remark that Giorgione and Titian are always delighted to have an + opportunity of drawing priests. The English Church may, perhaps, + accept it as matter of congratulation that this is the only + instance in which Turner drew a clergyman. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn127"><sup>[127]</sup></a> 1785. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn128"><sup>[128]</sup></a> Wolsey's famous palace, twelve miles from London. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn129"><sup>[129]</sup></a> I do not mean that this is his first acquaintance with the + country, but the first impressive and touching one, after his mind + was formed. The earliest sketches I found in the National + Collection are at Clifton and Bristol; the next, at Oxford. + [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn130"><sup>[130]</sup></a> The reference is to the two famous ruined abbeys of + Yorkshire—Whitby and Bolton. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn131"><sup>[131]</sup></a> The Tenth Plague of Egypt. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn132"><sup>[132]</sup></a> Rizpah, the Daughter of Aiah. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn133"><sup>[133]</sup></a> Dürer [1471-1528], German painter, engraver, and designer. + Salvator [1615-73], Italian painter, etcher, satirical poet, and + musical composer. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn134"><sup>[134]</sup></a> <i>I.e.</i>, between November 17, 1796, and June 18, 1815. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn135"><sup>[135]</sup></a> <i>Joel</i> iii, 13. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn136"><sup>[136]</sup></a> The palace of the Camerlenghi, beside the Rialto, is a + graceful work of the early Renaissance (1525) passing into Roman + Renaissance. [Adapted from Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn137"><sup>[137]</sup></a> Signifying approximately "Keep to the right." +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn138"><sup>[138]</sup></a> See note 1, p. 129. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn139"><sup>[139]</sup></a> <i>Childe Harold</i>, 4. 1. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn140"><sup>[140]</sup></a> <i>Marino Faliero</i>, 3. 1. 22 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn141"><sup>[141]</sup></a> Dandolo [c. 1108-1205] and Foscari [1372-1457] were among the + most famous of Venetian Doges. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn142"><sup>[142]</sup></a> In the battle of Custozza, 1848, the Austrians defeated the + Piedmontese. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn143"><sup>[143]</sup></a> <i>Acts</i> xiii, 13 and xv, 38, 39. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn144"><sup>[144]</sup></a> The reader who desires to investigate it may consult + Galliciolli, <i>Delle Memorie Venete</i> (Venice, 1795), tom. 2, p. 332, + and the authorities quoted by him. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn145"><sup>[145]</sup></a> <i>Venice</i>, 1761 tom. 1, p. 126. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn146"><sup>[146]</sup></a> A wonderful City, such as was never seen before. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn147"><sup>[147]</sup></a> St. Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a + few trees; and on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or + Broglio, that is to say, Garden." The canal passed through it, over + which is built the bridge of the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. I, + cap. viii. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn148"><sup>[148]</sup></a> My authorities for this statement are given below, in the + chapter on the Ducal Palace. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn149"><sup>[149]</sup></a> In the Chronicles, <i>Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappdla</i>. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn150"><sup>[150]</sup></a> "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the + Protector St. Mark."—Corner, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the + reader with the various authorities for the above statements: I + have consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on + the church itself: +</p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p class="quote"> + Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno Desuper undecimo fuit facta + primo, +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much + probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro." [Ruskin.] +</p></div> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn151"><sup>[151]</sup></a> Signed Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn152"><sup>[152]</sup></a> An obvious slip. The mosaic is on the west wall of the south + transept. [Cook and Wedderburn.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn153"><sup>[153]</sup></a> <i>Guida di Venezia</i>, p. 6. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn154"><sup>[154]</sup></a> Fritters and liquors for sale. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn155"><sup>[155]</sup></a> <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, 2. 5. 29. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn156"><sup>[156]</sup></a> Matthew xxi, 12 and <i>John</i> ii, 16. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn157"><sup>[157]</sup></a> The third kind of ornament, the Renaissance, is that in which + the inferior detail becomes principal, the executor of every minor + portion being required to exhibit skill and possess knowledge as + great as that which is possessed by the master of the design; and + in the endeavour to endow him with this skill and knowledge, his + own original power is overwhelmed, and the whole building becomes a + wearisome exhibition of well-educated imbecility. We must fully + inquire into the nature of this form of error, when we arrive at + the examination of the Renaissance schools. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn158"><sup>[158]</sup></a> Job xix, 26. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn159"><sup>[159]</sup></a> <i>Matthew</i> viii, 9. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn160"><sup>[160]</sup></a> Vide Preface to <i>Fair Maid of Perth</i>. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn161"><sup>[161]</sup></a> The Elgin marbles are supposed by many persons to be "perfect". + In the most important portions they indeed approach perfection, + but only there. The draperies are unfinished, the hair and wool + of the animals are unfinished, and the entire bas-reliefs of the + frieze are roughly cut. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn162"><sup>[162]</sup></a> May-day processions in honour of the Virgin. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn163"><sup>[163]</sup></a> <i>Genesis</i> xi, 4. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn164"><sup>[164]</sup></a> See pp. 225 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn165"><sup>[165]</sup></a> In heartfelt trust Johannes Mooter and Maria Rubi had this + house erected. May dear God shield us from all perils and + misfortune; and let His blessing rest upon it during the journey + through this wretched life up to heavenly Paradise where the pious + dwell. There will God reward them with the Crown of Peace to all + eternity. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn166"><sup>[166]</sup></a> Baptistery of Pisa, circular, of marble, with dome two + hundred feet high, embellished with numerous columns, is a notable + work of the twelfth century. The pulpit is a masterpiece of Nicola + Pisano. Casa d'Oro at Venice is noted for its elegance. It was + built in the fourteenth century. The Cathedral of Lisieux dates + chiefly from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and contains + many works of art. The Palais de Justice is of the fifteenth + century. It was built for the Parliament of the Province. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn167"><sup>[167]</sup></a> This cathedral, destroyed in 1799, was one of the most + beautiful in all Normandy. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn168"><sup>[168]</sup></a> Dante. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn169"><sup>[169]</sup></a> Coleridge's <i>Ode to France</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn170"><sup>[170]</sup></a> Hubert Van Eyck [1366-1440]. The great Flemish master. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn171"><sup>[171]</sup></a> A hollowed moulding. [New Eng. Dict.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn172"><sup>[172]</sup></a> Turner. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn173"><sup>[173]</sup></a> The tool of the engraver on copper. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn174"><sup>[174]</sup></a> See <i>Paradise Lost</i>, 6. 207 ff., and Hesiod's <i>Theogony</i>, 676 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn175"><sup>[175]</sup></a> <i>Henry V</i>, 4. 3. 29. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn176"><sup>[176]</sup></a> <i>Luke</i> ii, 14. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn177"><sup>[177]</sup></a> "Forward go the banners of the King," or more commonly, "The + royal banners forward go." One of the seven great hymns of the Church. + See the Episcopal Hymnal, 94. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn178"><sup>[178]</sup></a> Dante, <i>Inferno</i>, 3. 60. "Who made through cowardice the great + refusal." Longfellow's tr. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn179"><sup>[179]</sup></a> <i>Lyridas</i>, 109. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn180"><sup>[180]</sup></a> Nelson's famous signal at Trafalgar. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn181"><sup>[181]</sup></a> Milton's <i>Il Penseroso</i>, 170 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn182"><sup>[182]</sup></a> <i>Psalms</i> i, 3. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn183"><sup>[183]</sup></a> As Slade Professor, Ruskin held a three years' appointment at + Oxford. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn184"><sup>[184]</sup></a> This story comes from Pliny, <i>Natural History</i>, 35. 36; the + two rival painters alternately showing their skill by the drawing + of lines of increasing fineness. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn185"><sup>[185]</sup></a> This story comes from Vasari's <i>Lives of the Painters</i>. See + Blashfield and Hopkins's ed. vol. 1, p. 61. Giotto was asked by a + messenger of the Pope for a specimen of his work, and sent a perfect + circle, drawn free hand. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn186"><sup>[186]</sup></a> <i>Timothy</i> vi, 10. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn187"><sup>[187]</sup></a> In <i>Modern Painters</i>, vol. 1. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn188"><sup>[188]</sup></a> The quotation is from Vasari's account of Angelico's Last + Judgment (now in the Accademia at Florence). [Cook and Wedderbum.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn189"><sup>[189]</sup></a> <i>Song of Solomon</i> i, 6. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn190"><sup>[190]</sup></a> Cf. <i>Classical Landscape</i>, pp. 92-93. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn191"><sup>[191]</sup></a> <i>Isaiah</i>, ii, 4; <i>Micah</i> iv, 3; <i>Joel</i> iii, 10. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn192"><sup>[192]</sup></a> The name of St. George, the "Earthworker," or "Husbandman." + [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn193"><sup>[193]</sup></a> <i>Luke</i> xxiv, 35. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn194"><sup>[194]</sup></a> Virgil, <i>Æneid</i>, 3, 209. <i>seqq</i>. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn195"><sup>[195]</sup></a> <i>Acts</i> xiv, 17. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn196"><sup>[196]</sup></a> <i>Psalms</i> i, 3. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn197"><sup>[197]</sup></a> <i>Genesis</i> xxiv, 15, 16 and xxix, 10; <i>Exodus</i> ii, 16; <i>John</i> + iv, 11. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn198"><sup>[198]</sup></a> Osborne Gordon. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn199"><sup>[199]</sup></a> <i>The Flamboyant Architecture of the Valley of the Somme</i>, a + lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, January 29, 1869. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn200"><sup>[200]</sup></a> The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west + end of Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, + and enriched with a border of "twisted eglantine." [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn201"><sup>[201]</sup></a> <i>Jeremiah</i> xxxi, 29. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn202"><sup>[202]</sup></a> Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford, April 21, 1864. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn203"><sup>[203]</sup></a> <i>Matthew</i> v, 6. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn204"><sup>[204]</sup></a> Scott's <i>Lay of the Last Minstrel</i>, canto 1, stanza 4. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn205"><sup>[205]</sup></a> The reference was to the reluctance of this country to take + arms in defence of Denmark against Prussia and Austria. [Cook and + Wedderburn.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn206"><sup>[206]</sup></a> See, e.g., pp. 167 ff. and 270 ff. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn207"><sup>[207]</sup></a> Inigo Jones [1573-1652] and Sir Christopher Wren [1632-1723] + were the best known architects of their respective generations. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn208"><sup>[208]</sup></a> <i>Genesis</i> xxviii, 17. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn209"><sup>[209]</sup></a> <i>Matthew</i> xxiv, 27. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn210"><sup>[210]</sup></a> <i>Matthew</i> vi, 6. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn211"><sup>[211]</sup></a> And all other arts, for the most part; even of incredulous + and secularly-minded commonalties. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn212"><sup>[212]</sup></a> 1 <i>Corinthians</i> i, 23. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn213"><sup>[213]</sup></a> For further interpretation of Greek mythology see Ruskin's + <i>Queen of the Air</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn214"><sup>[214]</sup></a> It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, + was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Rightness and + Strength, founded on Forethought: the principal character of Greek + art is not beauty, but design: and the Dorian Apollo-worship and + Athenian Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine + wisdom and purity. Next to these great deities, rank, in power over + the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength + and life; then, for heroic example, Hercules. There is no + Venus-worship among the Greeks in the great times: and the Muses + are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn215"><sup>[215]</sup></a> Tetzel's trading in Papal indulgences aroused Luther to the + protest which ended in the Reformation. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn216"><sup>[216]</sup></a> <i>Matthew</i> xxi, 12. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn217"><sup>[217]</sup></a> <i>Jeremiah</i> xvii, 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As the + partridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth + riches not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days, and + at his end shall be a fool." [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn218"><sup>[218]</sup></a> Meaning, fully, "We have brought our pigs to it." [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn219"><sup>[219]</sup></a> Cf. <i>Hamlet</i>, 5. 1. 306. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn220"><sup>[220]</sup></a> Referring to a lecture on <i>Modern Manufacture and Design</i>, + delivered at Bradford, March 1, 1859 published later as Lecture III + in <i>The Two Paths</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn221"><sup>[221]</sup></a> See Wordsworth's <i>Rob Roy's Grave</i>, 39-40. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn222"><sup>[222]</sup></a> 1 Kings x, 27. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn223"><sup>[223]</sup></a> A beautiful ruin in Yorkshire. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn224"><sup>[224]</sup></a> Cf. Tennyson's <i>The Brook</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn225"><sup>[225]</sup></a> <i>Genesis</i> vi, 2. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn226"><sup>[226]</sup></a> <i>Deuteronomy</i> xxxii, 5. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn227"><sup>[227]</sup></a> <i>Daniel</i> iii, 1. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn228"><sup>[228]</sup></a> <i>Proverbs</i> iii, 17. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn229"><sup>[229]</sup></a> <i>Acts</i> vii, 48. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn230"><sup>[230]</sup></a> <i>Isaiah</i> xl, 12. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn231"><sup>[231]</sup></a> I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to + set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and + what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for + wealth. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn232"><sup>[232]</sup></a> See Wordsworth's poem, <i>My heart leaps up when I behold</i>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn233"><sup>[233]</sup></a> See <i>Genesis</i> ii, 15, and the opening lines of the first + selection in this volume. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn234"><sup>[234]</sup></a> <i>Joshua</i> ix, 21. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn235"><sup>[235]</sup></a> In his <i>Discourses on Art</i>. Cf. pp. 24 ff. above. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn236"><sup>[236]</sup></a> See <i>The Two Paths</i>, §§ 28 <i>et seq</i>. [Ruskin.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn237"><sup>[237]</sup></a> References mainly to the Irish Land Question, on which Ruskin + agreed with Mill and Gladstone in advocating the establishment of a + peasant-proprietorship in Ireland. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn238"><sup>[238]</sup></a> <i>Genesis</i> iii, 19. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn239"><sup>[239]</sup></a> <i>Ecclesiastes</i> ix, 10. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn240"><sup>[240]</sup></a> <i>Hebrews</i> xi, 4. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn241"><sup>[241]</sup></a> During the famine in the Indian province of Orissa. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn242"><sup>[242]</sup></a> Athena, goddess of weaving. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn243"><sup>[243]</sup></a> <i>Proverbs</i> xxxi, 19-22, 24. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn244"><sup>[244]</sup></a> <i>Jeremiah</i> xxxviii, 11. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn245"><sup>[245]</sup></a> <i>Matthew</i> xxv, 43. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn246"><sup>[246]</sup></a> <i>Matthew</i> xxv, 43. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn247"><sup>[247]</sup></a> <i>Revelation</i> vi, 13. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn248"><sup>[248]</sup></a> <i>Jeremiah</i> xi, 8. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn249"><sup>[249]</sup></a> <i>James</i> iv, 14. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn250"><sup>[250]</sup></a> <i>Psalms</i> xxxix, 6 and <i>Revelation</i> xiv, 11. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn251"><sup>[251]</sup></a> <i>Ecclesiastes</i> ix, 10. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn252"><sup>[252]</sup></a> <i>Psalms</i> civ, 4. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn253"><sup>[253]</sup></a> <i>Revelation</i> i, 7. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn254"><sup>[254]</sup></a> <i>Daniel</i> vii, 10. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn255"><sup>[255]</sup></a> <i>Dies Iræ</i>, the name generally given (from the opening words) + to the most famous of the mediæval hymns, usually ascribed to the + Franciscan Thomas of Celano (died c. 1255). It is composed in + triplets of rhyming trochaic tetrameters, and describes the Last + Judgment in language of magnificent grandeur, passing into a + plaintive plea for the souls of the dead. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn256"><sup>[256]</sup></a> <i>Acts</i> v, 1, 2. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn257"><sup>[257]</sup></a> <i>Galatians</i> v. 24. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn258"><sup>[258]</sup></a> <i>Isaiah</i> lviii, 7. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn259"><sup>[259]</sup></a> 2 <i>Thessalonians</i> iii, 10. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn260"><sup>[260]</sup></a> <i>Luke</i> xviii, 11. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn261"><sup>[261]</sup></a> 1 <i>Corinthians</i> xiii, 13. +</p> + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Selections From the Works of John +Ruskin, by John Ruskin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN *** + +***** This file should be named 15200-h.htm or 15200-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/2/0/15200/ + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: Selections From the Works of John Ruskin + +Author: John Ruskin + +Release Date: February 28, 2005 [EBook #15200] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +Riverside College Classics + + +SELECTIONS + +FROM THE WORKS OF + +JOHN RUSKIN + + + +EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY + +CHAUNCEY B. TINKER, Ph.D. +_Professor of English in Yale College_ + +BOSTON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO--SAN FRANCISCO +HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY +The Riverside Press Cambridge + + + +1908 + +BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY + +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + +The Riverside Press +CAMBRIDGE--MASSACHUSETTS +PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. + + + + +PREFACE + + +In making the following selections, I have tried to avoid the +appearance of such a volume as used to be entitled _Elegant Extracts_. +Wherever practicable, entire chapters or lectures are given, or at +least passages of sufficient length to insure a correct notion of the +general complexion of Ruskin's work. The text is in all cases that of +the first editions, unless these were later revised by Ruskin himself. +The original spelling and punctuation are preserved, but a few minor +changes have been made for the sake of uniformity among the various +extracts. For similar reasons, Ruskin's numbering of paragraphs is +dispensed with. + +I have aimed not to multiply notes. Practically all Ruskin's own +annotation is given, with the exception of one or two very long and +somewhat irrelevant notes from _Stones of Venice_. It has not been +deemed necessary to give the dates of every painter or to explain +every geographical reference. On the other hand, the sources of most +of the quotations are indicated. In the preparation of these notes, +the magnificent library edition of Messrs. Cook and Wedderburn has +inevitably been of considerable assistance; but all their references +have been verified, many errors have been corrected, and much has of +course been added. + +In closing I wish to express my obligation to my former colleague, Dr. +Lucius H. Holt, without whose assistance this volume would never have +appeared. He wrote a number of the notes, including the short prefaces +to the various selections, and prepared the manuscript for the +printer. + +C.B.T. + +_September, 1908_. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +INTRODUCTION + The Life of Ruskin + The Unity of Ruskin's Writings + Ruskin's Style + +SELECTIONS FROM MODERN PAINTERS + The Earth-Veil + The Mountain Glory + Sunrise on the Alps + The Grand Style + Of Realization + Of the Novelty of Landscape + Of the Pathetic Fallacy + Of Classical Landscape + Of Modern Landscape + The Two Boyhoods + +SELECTIONS FROM THE STONES OF VENICE + The Throne + St. Mark's + Characteristics of Gothic Architecture + +SELECTIONS FROM THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE + The Lamp of Memory + The Lamp of Obedience + +SELECTIONS FROM LECTURES ON ART + Inaugural + The Relation of Art to Morals + The Relation of Art to Use + + ART AND HISTORY + + TRAFFIC + + LIFE AND ITS ARTS + + BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +JOHN RUSKIN IN 1857 +TURNER'S FIGHTING TEMERAIRE +CHURCH OF ST. MARK, VENICE +ST. MARK'S: CENTRAL ARCH OF FACADE + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +[Sidenote: Two conflicting tendencies in Ruskin.] + +It is distinctive of the nineteenth century that in its passion for +criticising everything in heaven and earth it by no means spared to +criticise itself. Alike in Carlyle's fulminations against its +insincerity, in Arnold's nice ridicule of Philistinism, and in +Ruskin's repudiation of everything modern, we detect that fine +dissatisfaction with the age which is perhaps only proof of its +idealistic trend. For the various ills of society, each of these men +had his panacea. What Carlyle had found in hero-worship and Arnold in +Hellenic culture, Ruskin sought in the study of art; and it is of the +last importance to remember that throughout his work he regarded +himself not merely as a writer on painting or buildings or myths or +landscape, but as the appointed critic of the age. For there existed +in him, side by side with his consuming love of the beautiful, a +rigorous Puritanism which was constantly correcting any tendency +toward a mere cult of the aesthetic. It is with the interaction of +these two forces that any study of the life and writings of Ruskin +should be primarily concerned. + + + + +I + +THE LIFE OF RUSKIN + + +[Sidenote: Ancestry.] + +It is easy to trace in the life of Ruskin these two forces tending +respectively toward the love of beauty and toward the contempt of mere +beauty. They are, indeed, present from the beginning. He inherited +from his Scotch parents that upright fearlessness which has always +characterized the race. His stern mother "devoted him to God before he +was born,"[1] and she guarded her gift with unremitting but perhaps +misguided caution. The child was early taught to find most of his +entertainment within himself, and when he did not, he was whipped. He +had no playmates and few toys. His chief story-book was the Bible, +which he read many times from cover to cover at his mother's knee. +His father, the "perfectly honest wine-merchant," seems to have been +the one to foster the boy's aesthetic sense; he was in the habit of +reading aloud to his little family, and his son's apparently genuine +appreciation of Scott, Pope, and Homer dates from the incredibly early +age of five. It was his father, also, to whom he owed his early +acquaintance with the finest landscape, for the boy was his companion +in yearly business trips about Britain, and later visited, in his +parents' company, Belgium, western Germany, and the Alps. + +[Sidenote: Early education.] + +All this of course developed the child's precocity. He was early +suffered and even encouraged to compose verses;[2] by ten he had +written a play, which has unfortunately been preserved. The hot-house +rearing which his parents believed in, and his facility in teaching +himself, tended to make a regular course of schooling a mere +annoyance; such schooling as he had did not begin till he was fifteen, +and lasted less than two years, and was broken by illness. But the +chief effect of the sheltered life and advanced education to which he +was subjected was to endow him with depth at the expense of breadth, +and to deprive him of a possibly vulgar, but certainly healthy, +contact with his kind, which, one must believe, would have checked a +certain disposition in him to egotism, sentimentality, and dogmatic +vehemence. "The bridle and blinkers were never taken off me," he +writes.[3] + +[Sidenote: Student at Oxford.] + +[Sidenote: Traveling in Europe.] + +At Oxford--whither his cautious mother pursued him--Ruskin seems to +have been impressed in no very essential manner by curriculum or +college mates. With learning _per se_ he was always dissatisfied and +never had much to do; his course was distinguished not so much by +erudition as by culture. He easily won the Newdigate prize in poetry; +his rooms in Christ Church were hung with excellent examples of +Turner's landscapes,--the gift of his art-loving father,--of which he +had been an intimate student ever since the age of thirteen. But his +course was interrupted by an illness, apparently of a tuberculous +nature, which necessitated total relaxation and various trips in Italy +and Switzerland, where he seems to have been healed by walking among +his beloved Alps. For many years thereafter he passed months of his +time in these two countries, accompanied sometimes by his parents and +sometimes rather luxuriously, it seems, by valet and guide. + +[Sidenote: Career as an author begins.] + +Meanwhile he had commenced his career as author with the first volume +of _Modern Painters_, begun, the world knows, as a short defense of +Turner, originally intended for nothing more than a magazine article. +But the role of art-critic and law-giver pleased the youth,--he was +only twenty-four when the volume appeared,--and having no desire to +realize the ambition of his parents and become a bishop, and even less +to duplicate his father's career as vintner, he gladly seized the +opportunity thus offered him to develop his aesthetic vein and to +redeem the public mind from its vulgar apathy thereby. He continued +his work on _Modern Painters_, with some intermissions, for eighteen +years, and supplemented it with the equally famous _Seven Lamps of +Architecture_ in 1849, and _The Stones of Venice_ in 1853. + +[Sidenote: Domestic troubles.] + +This life of zealous work and brilliant recognition was interrupted in +1848 by Ruskin's amazing marriage to Miss Euphemia Gray, a union into +which he entered at the desire of his parents with a docility as +stupid as it was stupendous. Five years later the couple were quietly +divorced, that Mrs. Ruskin might marry Millais. All the author's +biographers maintain an indiscreet reserve in discussing the affair, +but there can be no concealment of the fact that its effect upon +Ruskin was profound in its depression. Experiences like this and his +later sad passion for Miss La Touche at once presage and indicate his +mental disorder, and no doubt had their share--a large one--in +causing Ruskin's dissatisfaction with everything, and above all with +his own life and work. Be this as it may, it is at this time in the +life of Ruskin that we must begin to reckon with the decline of his +aesthetic and the rise of his ethical impulse; his interest passes +from art to conduct. It is also the period in which he began his +career as lecturer, his chief interest being the social life of his +age. + +[Sidenote: Ruskin's increasing interest in social questions.] + +By 1860, he was publishing the papers on political economy, later +called _Unto this Last_, which roused so great a storm of protest +when they appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_ that their publication +had to be suspended. The attitude of the public toward such works +as these,--its alternate excitement and apathy,--the death of his +parents, combined with the distressing events mentioned above, +darkened Ruskin's life and spoiled his interest in everything that +did not tend to make the national life more thoughtfully solemn. + + "It seems to me that now ... the thoughts of the true nature of + our life, and of its powers and responsibilities should present + themselves with absolute sadness and sternness."[4] + +His lectures as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, a post which he +held at various times from 1870 to 1883, failed to re-establish his +undistracted interest in things beautiful. + +[Sidenote: Triumph of the reformer over the art-critic.] + +The complete triumph of the reformer over the art-critic is marked by +_Fors Clavigera_, a series of letters to workingmen, begun New Year's +Day, 1871, in which it was proposed to establish a model colony of +peasants, whose lives should be made simple, honest, happy, and even +cultured, by a return to more primitive methods of tilling the soil +and of making useful and beautiful objects. The Guild of St. George, +established to "slay the dragon of industrialism," to dispose of +machinery, slums, and discontent, consumed a large part of Ruskin's +time and money. He had inherited a fortune of approximately a million +dollars, and he now began to dispose of it in various charitable +schemes,--establishing tea-shops, supporting young painters, planning +model tenements, but, above all, in elaborating his ideas for the +Guild. The result of it all--whatever particular reforms were effected +or manual industries established--was, to Ruskin's view, failure, and +his mind, weakening under the strain of its profound disappointments, +at last crashed in ruin. + +[Sidenote: Death in 1900.] + +It is needless to follow the broken author through the desolation +of his closing years to his death in 1900. Save for his charming +reminiscences, _Praeterita_, his work was done; the long struggle was +over, the struggle of one man to reduce the complexities of a national +life to an apostolic simplicity, to make it beautiful and good, + + Till the high God behold it from beyond, + And enter it. + + + [1] _Praeterita_. He was born February 8, 1819. + + [2] Ruskin himself quotes a not very brilliant specimen in _Modern + Painters_, III, in "Moral of Landscape." + + [3] _Praeterita_, Sec. 53. + + [4] _The Mystery of Life._ + + + + +II + +THE UNITY OF RUSKIN'S WRITINGS + + +[Sidenote: Diversity of his writings.] + +Ruskin is often described as an author of bewildering variety, whose +mind drifted waywardly from topic to topic--from painting to political +economy, from architecture to agriculture--with a license as +illogical as it was indiscriminating. To this impression, Ruskin +himself sometimes gave currency. He was, for illustration, once +announced to lecture on crystallography, but, as we are informed by +one present,[5] he opened by asserting that he was really about to +lecture on Cistercian architecture; nor did it greatly matter what the +title was; "for," said he, "if I had begun to speak about Cistercian +abbeys, I should have been sure to get on crystals presently; and if +I had begun upon crystals, I should soon have drifted into +architecture." Those who conceive of Ruskin as being thus a kind of +literary Proteus like to point to the year 1860, that of the +publication of his tracts on economics, as witnessing the greatest +and suddenest of his changes, that from reforming art to reforming +society; and it is true that this year affords a simple dividing-line +between Ruskin's earlier work, which is sufficiently described by the +three titles, _Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and +_The Stones of Venice_, and his later work, chiefly on social subjects +such as are discussed in _Unto This Last, The Crown of Wild Olive_, +and _Fors Clavigera_. And yet we cannot insist too often on the +essential unity of this work, for, viewed in the large, it betrays one +continuous development. The seeds of _Fors_ are in _The Stones of +Venice_. + +[Sidenote: Underlying idea in all his works.] + +The governing idea of Ruskin's first published work, _Modern Painters, +Volume I_, was a moral idea. The book was dedicated to the principle +that that art is greatest which deals with the greatest number of +greatest ideas,--those, we learn presently, which reveal divine +truth; the office of the painter, we are told,[6] is the same as that +of the preacher, for "the duty of both is to take for each discourse +one essential truth." As if recalling this argument that the painter +is a preacher, Carlyle described _The Stones of Venice_ as a "sermon +in stones." In the idea that all art, when we have taken due account +of technique and training, springs from a moral character, we find the +unifying principle of Ruskin's strangely diversified work. The very +title _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, with its chapters headed +"Sacrifice," "Obedience," etc., is a sufficient illustration of +Ruskin's identification of moral principles with aesthetic principles. +A glance at the following pages of this book will show how Ruskin is +for ever halting himself to demand the moral significance of some fair +landscape, gorgeous painting, heaven-aspiring cathedral. In "Mountain +Glory," for example, he refers to the mountains as "kindly in simple +lessons to the workman," and inquires later at what times mankind has +offered worship in these mountain churches; of the English cathedral +he says, "Weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who have +passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries";[7] of +St. Mark's, "And what effect has this splendour on those who pass +beneath it?"--and it will be noticed on referring to "The Two +Boyhoods," that, in seeking to define the difference between Giorgione +and Turner, the author instinctively has recourse to distinguishing +the _religious_ influences exerted on the two in youth. + +[Sidenote: Underlying idea a moral one.] + +Now it is clear that a student of the relation of art to life, of work +to the character of the workman and of his nation, may, and in fact +inevitably must, be led in time to attend to the producer rather than +to the product, to the cause rather than to the effect; and if we +grant, with Ruskin, that the sources of art, namely, the national +life, are denied, it will obviously be the part, not only of humanity +but of common sense, for such a student to set about purifying the +social life of the nation. Whether the reformation proposed by Ruskin +be the proper method of attack is not the question we are here +concerned with; our only object at present being to call attention to +the fact that such a lecture as that on "Traffic" in _The Crown of +Wild Olive_ is the logical outgrowth of such a chapter as "Ideas of +Beauty" in the first volume of _Modern Painters_. Between the author +who wrote in 1842, of the necessity of revealing new truths in +painting, "This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done, +for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to +his race. God appoints to every one of his creatures a separate +mission, and if they discharge it honourably ... there will assuredly +come of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall +shine before men, and be of service constant and holy,"[8] and the +author who wrote, "That country is the richest which nourishes the +greatest number of noble and happy human beings,"[9] or, "The +beginning of art is in getting our country clean, and our people +beautiful,"[10]--between these two, I say, there is no essential +difference. They are not contradictory but consistent. + +[Sidenote: Art dependent upon personal and national greatness.] + +Amidst the maze of subjects, then, which Ruskin, with kaleidoscopic +suddenness and variety, brings before the astonished gaze of his +readers, let them confidently hold this guiding clue. They will find +that Ruskin's "facts" are often not facts at all; they will discover +that many of Ruskin's choicest theories have been dismissed to the +limbo of exploded hypotheses; but they will seek long before they find +a more eloquent and convincing plea for the proposition that all great +art reposes upon a foundation of personal and national greatness. +Critics of Ruskin will show you that he began _Modern Painters_ while +he was yet ignorant of the classic Italians; that he wrote _The Stones +of Venice_ without realizing the full indebtedness of the Venetian to +the Byzantine architecture; that he proposed to unify the various +religious sects although he had no knowledge of theology; that he +attempted a reconstruction of society though he had had no scientific +training in political economy; but in all this neglect of mere fact +the sympathetic reader will discover that contempt for the letter +of the law which was characteristic of the nineteenth-century +prophet,--of Carlyle, of Arnold, and of Emerson,--and which, if it +be blindness, is that produced by an excess of light. + + + [5] See Harrison's _Life_, p. 111. Cf. the opening of _The Mystery + of Life_. + + [6] Part 2, sec. 1, chap. 4. + + [7] See p. 159. + + [8] _Modern Painters_, vol. 1, part 2, sec. 1, chap. 7. + + [9] _Unto This Last_. + + [10] See p. 262. + + + + +III + +RUSKIN'S STYLE + + +[Sidenote: Sensuousness of his style.] + +Many people regard the style of Ruskin as his chief claim to +greatness. If the time ever come when men no longer study him for +sermons in stones, they will nevertheless turn to his pages to enjoy +one of the most gorgeous prose styles of the nineteenth century. For a +parallel to the sensuous beauties of Ruskin's essays on art, one turns +instinctively to poetry; and of all the poets Ruskin is perhaps likest +Keats. His sentences, like the poet's, are thick-set with jeweled +phrases; they are full of subtle harmonies that respond, like a +Stradivarius, to the player's every mood. In its ornateness Ruskin's +style is like his favorite cathedral of Amiens, in the large stately, +in detail exquisite, profuse, and not without a touch of the +grotesque. It is the style of an artist. + +[Sidenote: Ruskin's method of construction in description.] + +A critical fancy may even discover in the construction of his finest +descriptions a method not unlike that of a painter at work upon his +canvas. He blocks them out in large masses, then sketches and colors +rapidly for general effects, treating detail at first more or less +vaguely and collectively, but passing in the end to the elaboration of +detail in the concrete, touching the whole with an imaginative gleam +that lends a momentary semblance of life to the thing described, after +the manner of the "pathetic fallacy." Thus it is in the famous +description of St. Mark's:[11] we are given first the largest general +impression, the "long, low pyramid of coloured light," which the +artist proceeds to "hollow beneath into five great vaulted porches," +whence he leads the eye slowly upwards amidst a mass of bewildering +detail--"a confusion of delight"--from which there slowly emerge those +concrete details with which the author particularly wishes to impress +us, "the breasts of the Greek horses blazing in their breadth of +golden strength and St. Mark's lion lifted on a blue field covered +with stars." In lesser compass we are shown the environs of Venice,[12] +the general impression of the "long, low, sad-coloured line," being +presently broken by the enumeration of unanalyzed detail, "tufted +irregularly with brushwood and willows," and passing to concrete +detail in the hills of Arqua, "a dark cluster of purple pyramids." In +the still more miniature description of the original site of Venice[13] +we have the same method: + + "The black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath + the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor + and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the + tideless pools and the sea-birds flit from their margins with a + questioning cry." + +[Sidenote: His love of color.] + +Equally characteristic of the painter is the ever-present use of +color. It is interesting merely to count the number and variety of +colors used in the descriptions. It will serve at least to call the +reader's attention to the felicitous choice of words used in +describing the opalescence of St. Mark's or the skillful combination +of the colors characteristic of the great Venetians in such a sentence +as, "the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armor shot angrily under +their blood-red mantle-folds"[14]--a glimpse of a Giorgione. + +[Sidenote: His love of prose rhythm.] + +He is even more attentive to the ear than to the eye. He loves the +sentence of stately rhythms and long-drawn harmonies, and he omits no +poetic device that can heighten the charm of sound,--alliteration, as +in the famous description of the streets of Venice, + + "Far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless + waters proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor + the thistle could grow in those glancing fields";[15] + +the balanced close for some long period, + + "to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges and + to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in the + world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from + the burning heart of her Fortitude and splendour";[16] + +and the tendency, almost a mannerism, to add to the music of his own +rhythm, the deep organ-notes of Biblical text and paraphrase. But if +we wish to see how aptly Ruskin's style responds to the tone of his +subject, we need but remark the rich liquid sentence descriptive of +Giorgione's home, + + "brightness out of the north and balm from the south, and the stars + of evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched + heaven and circling sea,"[17] + +which he has set over against the harsh explosiveness of + + "Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit + or wall is formed by a close-set block of house to the back + windows of which it admits a few rays of light--" + +the birthplace of Turner. + +[Sidenote: His beauty of style often distracts from the thought.] + +But none knew better than Ruskin that a style so stiff with ornament +was likely to produce all manner of faults. In overloading his +sentences with jewelry he frequently obscures the sense; his beauties +often degenerate into mere prettiness; his sweetness cloys. His free +indulgence of the emotions, often at the expense of the intellect, +leads to a riotous extravagance of superlative. But, above all, his +richness distracts attention from matter to manner. In the case of an +author so profoundly in earnest, this could not but be unfortunate; +nothing enraged him more than to have people look upon the beauties of +his style rather than ponder the substance of his book. In a passage +of complacent self-scourging he says: + + "For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the + misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not + without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing + so, until I was heavily punished for this pride by finding that + many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their + meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such language--if + indeed it ever were mine--is passing away from me; and whatever I + am now able to say at all I find myself forced to say with great + plainness."[18] + +[Sidenote: His picturesque extravagance of style.] + +But Ruskin's decision to speak with "great plainness" by no means made +the people of England attend to what he said rather than the way he +said it. He could be, and in his later work he usually was, strong +and clear; but the old picturesqueness and exuberance of passion were +with him still. The public discovered that it enjoyed Ruskin's +denunciations of machinery much as it had enjoyed his descriptions of +mountains, and, without obviously mending its ways, called loudly for +more. Lecture-rooms were crowded and editions exhausted by the ladies +and gentlemen of England, whose nerves were pleasantly thrilled with a +gentle surprise on being told that they had despised literature, art, +science, nature, and compassion, and that what they thought upon any +subject was "a matter of no serious importance"; that they could not +be said to have any thoughts at all--indeed, no right to think.[19] +The fiercer his anathemas, the greater the applause; the louder he +shouted, the better he pleased. Let him split the ears of the +groundlings, let him out-Herod Herod,--the judicious might grieve, but +all would be excitedly attentive. Their Jeremiah seemed at times like +to become a jester,--there was a suggestion of the ludicrous in the +sudden passage from birds to Greek coins, to mills, to Walter Scott, +to millionaire malefactors,--a suggestion of acrobatic tumbling and +somersault; but he always got a hearing. In lecturing to the students +of a military academy he had the pleasing audacity to begin: + + "Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came + unwillingly to-night, and many of you in merely contemptuous + curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting could possibly say, + or would venture to say, respecting your great art of war";[20] + +after which stinging challenge, one has no doubt, any feeling of +offense was swallowed up in admiration of the speaker's physical +courage. + +[Sidenote: Influence of Carlyle upon Ruskin.] + +[Sidenote: The unity of Ruskin's style.] + +There can be little doubt that this later manner in which Ruskin +allowed his Puritan instincts to defeat his aestheticism, and indulged +to an alarming degree his gift of vituperation, was profoundly +influenced by his "master," Carlyle, who had long since passed into +his later and raucous manner. Carlyle's delight in the disciple's +diatribes probably encouraged the younger man in a vehemence of +invective to which his love of dogmatic assertion already rendered +him too prone. At his best, Ruskin, like Carlyle, reminds us of a +major prophet; at his worst he shrieks and heats the air. His high +indignations lead him into all manner of absurdity and self-contradiction. +An amusing instance of this may be given from _Sesame and Lilies_. In +the first lecture, which, it will be recalled, was given in aid of a +library fund, we find[21] the remark, "We are filthy and foolish enough +to thumb one another's books out of circulating libraries." His friends +and his enemies, the clergy (who "teach a false gospel for hire") and +the scientists, the merchants and the universities, Darwin and Dante, +all had their share in the indignant lecturer's indiscriminate abuse. +And yet in all the tropical luxuriance of his inconsistency, one can +never doubt the man's sincerity. He never wrote for effect. He may +dazzle us, but his fire is never pyrotechnical; it always springs from +the deep volcanic heart of him. His was a fervor too easily stirred and +often ill-directed, but its wild brilliance cannot long be mistaken for +the sky-rocket's; it flares madly in all directions, now beautifying, +now appalling, the night, the fine ardor of the painter passing into +the fierce invective of the prophet. But in the end it is seen that +Ruskin's style, like his subject-matter, is a unity,--an emanation from +a divine enthusiasm making for "whatsoever things are lovely, +whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report." + + + [11] See p. 162. + + [12] See p. 139. + + [13] See p. 147. + + [14] See p. 121. + + [15] See p. 122. + + [16] See p. 149. + + [17] See p. 122. + + [18] _The Mystery of Life_. + + [19] _Sesame and Lilies_, "Kings' Treasuries," Sec.Sec. 25, 31. + + [20] _The Crown of Wild Olive_, "War." + + [21] "Kings' Treasuries," Sec. 32. + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM MODERN PAINTERS + + +The five volumes of _Modern Painters_ appeared at various intervals +between 1843 and 1860, from the time Ruskin was twenty-four until he +was forty. The first volume was published in May, 1843; the second, in +April, 1846; the third, January 15, 1856; the fourth, April 14, 1856; +the last, in June, 1860. As his knowledge of his subject broadened and +deepened, we find the later volumes differing greatly in viewpoint +and style from the earlier; but, as stated in the preface to the last +volume, "in the main aim and principle of the book there is no +variation, from its first syllable to its last." Ruskin himself +maintained that the most important influence upon his thought in +preparation for his work in _Modern Painters_ was not from his "love +of art, but of mountains and seas"; and all the power of judgment he +had obtained in art, he ascribed to his "steady habit of always +looking for the subject principally, and for the art only as the means +of expressing it." The first volume was published as the work of "a +graduate of Oxford," Ruskin "fearing that I might not obtain fair +hearing if the reader knew my youth." The author's proud father did +not allow the secret to be kept long. The title Ruskin originally +chose for the volume was _Turner and the Ancients_. To this Smith, +Elder & Co., his publishers, objected, and the substitution of _Modern +Painters_ was their suggestion The following is the title-page of the +first volume in the original edition: + + MODERN PAINTERS: + _Their Superiority_ + _In the Art of Landscape Painting_ + _To_ all + _The Ancient Masters_ + proved by examples of + The True, the Beautiful, and the Intellectual, + From the + Works of Modern Artists, especially + From those of J.M.W. Turner, Esq., R.A. + By a Graduate of Oxford + (Quotation from Wordsworth) + London: Smith, Elder & Co., 65 Cornhill. + 1843. + + + + +THE EARTH-VEIL + +VOLUME V, CHAPTER I + + +"To dress it and to keep it."[22] + +That, then, was to be our work. Alas! what work have we set ourselves +upon instead! How have we ravaged the garden instead of kept +it--feeding our war-horses with its flowers, and splintering its trees +into spear-shafts! + +"And at the East a flaming sword."[22] + +Is its flame quenchless? and are those gates that keep the way indeed +passable no more? or is it not rather that we no more desire to enter? +For what can we conceive of that first Eden which we might not yet win +back, if we chose? It was a place full of flowers, we say. Well: the +flowers are always striving to grow wherever we suffer them; and the +fairer, the closer. There may, indeed, have been a Fall of Flowers, as +a Fall of Man; but assuredly creatures such as we are can now fancy +nothing lovelier than roses and lilies, which would grow for us side +by side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the Earth was white and red with +them, if we cared to have it so. And Paradise was full of pleasant +shades and fruitful avenues. Well: what hinders us from covering as +much of the world as we like with pleasant shade, and pure blossom, +and goodly fruit? Who forbids its valleys to be covered over with corn +till they laugh and sing? Who prevents its dark forests, ghostly and +uninhabitable, from being changed into infinite orchards, wreathing +the hills with frail-floreted snow, far away to the half-lighted +horizon of April, and flushing the face of all the autumnal earth with +glow of clustered food? But Paradise was a place of peace, we say, and +all the animals were gentle servants to us. Well: the world would yet +be a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and gentle service +should we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But so +long as we make sport of slaying bird and beast, so long as we choose +to contend rather with our fellows than with our faults, and make +battlefield of our meadows instead of pasture--so long, truly, the +Flaming Sword will still turn every way, and the gates of Eden remain +barred close enough, till we have sheathed the sharper flame of our +own passions, and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts. + +I have been led to see and feel this more and more, as I consider the +service which the flowers and trees, which man was at first appointed +to keep, were intended to render to him in return for his care; and +the services they still render to him, as far as he allows their +influence, or fulfils his own task towards them. For what infinite +wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, considered, as indeed it +is, as the means by which the earth becomes the companion of man--his +friend and his teacher! In the conditions which we have traced in its +rocks, there could only be seen preparation for his existence;--the +characters which enable him to live on it safely, and to work with it +easily--in all these it has been inanimate and passive; but vegetation +is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man. The +earth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except of +slow crystalline change; but at its surface, which human beings look +upon and deal with, it ministers to them through a veil of strange +intermediate being: which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but +cannot leave its appointed place; passes through life without +consciousness, to death without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth, +without its passion; and declines to the weakness of age, without its +regret. + +And in this mystery of intermediate being, entirely subordinate to us, +with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power as +we have the less responsibility for our treatment of the unsuffering +creature, most of the pleasures which we need from the external world +are gathered, and most of the lessons we need are written, all kinds +of precious grace and teaching being united in this link between the +Earth and Man; wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, +and discipline; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with +beautiful means of life. First, a carpet to make it soft for him; +then, a coloured fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading +of foliage to shade him from sun heat, and shade also the fallen rain; +that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish +the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage: easily to +be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments +(lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless, it +had been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less +elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the +sun warm the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of +winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable +according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into +infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his +service: cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening +oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling +charm: and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility +or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring +uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided wandering of feeble +tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to +the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of +summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the +transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or +hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in +entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing, with +variegated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, +or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest +joy of humanity. + +Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good +for food, and for building, and for instruments in our hands, this +race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, +becomes, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of +our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can +be far wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one is +assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has +brought them in his way. It is clearly possible to do without them, +for the great companionship of the sea and sky are all that sailors +need; and many a noble heart has been taught the best it had to learn +between dark stone walls. Still if human life be cast among trees at +all, the love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is a +sorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the "country," +in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been +the source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the words +"countryman, rustic, clown, paysan, villager," still signify a rude +and untaught person, as opposed to the words "townsman" and "citizen". +We accept this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, +somewhat too quietly; as if it were quite necessary and natural that +country-people should be rude, and townspeople gentle. Whereas I +believe that the result of each mode of life may, in some stages of +the world's progress, be the exact reverse; and that another use of +words may be forced upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we may +find ourselves saying: "Such and such a person is very gentle and +kind--he is quite rustic; and such and such another person is very +rude and ill-taught--he is quite urbane." + +At all events, cities have hitherto gained the better part of their +good report through our evil ways of going on in the world generally; +chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of fighting with each +other. No field, in the Middle Ages, being safe from devastation, and +every country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders, +peacefully-minded men necessarily congregated in cities, and walled +themselves in, making as few cross-country roads as possible: while +the men who sowed and reaped the harvests of Europe were only the +servants or slaves of the barons. The disdain of all agricultural +pursuits by the nobility, and of all plain facts by the monks, kept +educated Europe in a state of mind over which natural phenomena could +have no power; body and intellect being lost in the practice of war +without purpose, and the meditation of words without meaning. Men +learned the dexterity with sword and syllogism, which they mistook for +education, within cloister and tilt-yard; and looked on all the broad +space of the world of God mainly as a place for exercise of horses, or +for growth of food. + +There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of the +Earth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture of +Paul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio,[23] in which the armies +meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses; the tender red +flowers tossing above the helmets, and glowing beneath the lowered +lances. For in like manner the whole of Nature only shone hitherto for +man between the tossing of helmet-crests; and sometimes I cannot but +think of the trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, in +that imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves in +the warm springtime, in vain for men; and all along the dells of +England her beeches cast their dappled shade only where the outlaw +drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase; and by the sweet +French rivers their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only +to show the flames of burning cities on the horizon, through the +tracery of their stems; amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the +twisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery; and on their +valley meadows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn +were washed with crimson at sunset. + +And indeed I had once purposed, in this work, to show what kind of +evidence existed respecting the possible influence of country life on +men; it seeming to me, then, likely that here and there a reader would +perceive this to be a grave question, more than most which we contend +about, political or social, and might care to follow it out with me +earnestly. + +The day will assuredly come when men will see that it _is_ a +grave question; at which period, also, I doubt not, there will arise +persons able to investigate it. For the present, the movements of the +world seem little likely to be influenced by botanical law; or by any +other considerations respecting trees, than the probable price of +timber. I shall limit myself, therefore, to my own simple woodman's +work, and try to hew this book into its final shape, with the limited +and humble aim that I had in beginning it, namely, to prove how far +the idle and peaceable persons, who have hitherto cared about leaves +and clouds, have rightly seen, or faithfully reported of them. + + + [22] _Genesis_ ii, 15; iii 24. + + [23] "In our own National Gallery. It is quaint and imperfect, but + of great interest." [Ruskin.] Paolo Uccello (c. 1397-1475), a + Florentine painter of the Renaissance, the first of the naturalists. + His real name was Paolo di Dono, but he was called Uccello from his + fondness for birds. + + + + +THE MOUNTAIN GLORY + +VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 20 + + +I have dwelt, in the foregoing chapter, on the sadness of the hills +with the greater insistence that I feared my own excessive love for +them might lead me into too favourable interpretation of their +influences over the human heart; or, at least, that the reader might +accuse me of fond prejudice, in the conclusions to which, finally, I +desire to lead him concerning them. For, to myself, mountains are the +beginning and the end of all natural scenery; in them, and in the +forms of inferior landscape that lead to them, my affections are +wholly bound up; and though I can look with happy admiration at the +lowland flowers, and woods, and open skies, the happiness is tranquil +and cold, like that of examining detached flowers in a conservatory, +or reading a pleasant book; and if the scenery be resolutely level, +insisting upon the declaration of its own flatness in all the detail +of it, as in Holland, or Lincolnshire, or Central Lombardy, it appears +to me like a prison, and I cannot long endure it. But the slightest +rise and fall in the road,--a mossy bank at the side of a crag of +chalk, with brambles at its brow, overhanging it,--a ripple over three +or four stones in the stream by the bridge,--above all, a wild bit of +ferny ground under a fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one might +see a hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will instantly +give me intense delight, because the shadow, or the hope, of the hills +is in them. + +And thus, although there are few districts of Northern Europe, however +apparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure, though the +whole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to most +travellers, is to me a perpetual Paradise; and, putting Lincolnshire, +Leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districts +aside, there is not an English county which I should not find +entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot; yet all +my best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills, +colouring, with their far-away memories, every lowland stone and herb. +The pleasant French coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me, either +by what real mountain character it has in itself (for in extent and +succession of promontory the flanks of the French valleys have quite +the sublimity of true mountain distances), or by its broken ground +and rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above, +against the blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not +a wave of the Seine but is associated in my mind with the first rise +of the sandstones and forest pines of Fontaine-bleau; and with the +hope of the Alps, as one leaves Paris with the horses' heads to the +south-west, the morning sun flashing on the bright waves at Charenton. +If there be _no_ hope or association of this kind, and if I cannot +deceive myself into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the road +there may be seen the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the +horizon, the landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind +of sickness and pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or Windsor +Terrace,--nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual +summer,--or of the Hesperides (if they were flat, and not close to +Atlas), golden apples and all,--I would give away in an instant, for +one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady-fern.[24] + +I know that this is in great part idiosyncrasy; and that I must not +trust to my own feelings, in this respect, as representative of the +modern landscape instinct: yet I know it is not idiosyncrasy, in so +far as there may be proved to be indeed an increase of the absolute +beauty of all scenery in exact proportion to its mountainous +character, providing that character be _healthily_ mountainous. I do +not mean to take the Col de Bonhomme as representative of hills, any +more than I would take Romney Marsh as representative of plains; but +putting Leicestershire or Staffordshire fairly beside Westmoreland, +and Lombardy or Champagne fairly beside the Pays de Vaud or the Canton +Berne, I find the increase in the calculable sum of elements of beauty +to be steadily in proportion to the increase of mountainous character; +and that the best image which the world can give of Paradise is in the +slope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a +great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal snows above; this +excellence not being in any wise a matter referable to feeling, or +individual preferences, but demonstrable by calm enumeration of the +number of lovely colours on the rocks, the varied grouping of the +trees, and quantity of noble incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, +presented to the eye at any given moment. + +For consider, first, the difference produced in the whole tone of +landscape colour by the introductions of purple, violet, and deep +ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. In an ordinary lowland +landscape we have the blue of the sky; the green of grass, which I +will suppose (and this is an unnecessary concession to the lowlands) +entirely fresh and bright; the green of trees; and certain elements of +purple, far more rich and beautiful than we generally should think, in +their bark and shadows (bare hedges and thickets, or tops of trees, in +subdued afternoon sunshine, are nearly perfect purple, and of an +exquisite tone), as well as in ploughed fields, and dark ground in +general. But among mountains, in _addition_ to all this, large +unbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are introduced in their +distances; and even near, by films of cloud passing over the darkness +of ravines or forests, blues are produced of the most subtle +tenderness; these azures and purples[25] passing into rose-colour of +otherwise wholly unattainable delicacy among the upper summits, the +blue of the sky being at the same time purer and deeper than in the +plains. Nay, in some sense, a person who has never seen the +rose-colour of the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve or +fifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what _tenderness_ in +colour means at all; _bright_ tenderness he may, indeed, see in the +sky or in a flower, but this grave tenderness of the far-away +hill-purples he cannot conceive. + +Together with this great source of pre-eminence in _mass_ of colour, +we have to estimate the influence of the finished inlaying and +enamel-work of the colour-jewellery on every stone; and that of the +continual variety in species of flower; most of the mountain flowers +being, besides, separately lovelier than the lowland ones. The wood +hyacinth and wild rose are, indeed, the only _supreme_ flowers that +the lowlands can generally show; and the wild rose is also a +mountaineer, and more fragrant in the hills, while the wood hyacinth, +or grape hyacinth, at its best cannot match even the dark +bell-gentian, leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncontested +queenliness, and the Alpine rose and Highland heather wholly without +similitude. The violet, lily of the valley, crocus, and wood anemone +are, I suppose, claimable partly by the plains as well as the hills; +but the large orange lily and narcissus I have never seen but on hill +pastures, and the exquisite oxalisis pre-eminently a mountaineer.[26] + +To this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add an +inestimable gain in the continual presence and power of water. Neither +in its clearness, its colour, its fantasy of motion, its calmness of +space, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can water be conceived by +a lowlander, out of sight of sea. A sea wave is far grander than any +torrent--but of the sea and its influences we are not now speaking; +and the sea itself, though it _can_ be clear, is never calm, among our +shores, in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. The sea seems +only to pause; the mountain lake to sleep, and to dream. Out of sight +of the ocean a lowlander cannot be considered ever to have seen water +at all. The mantling of the pools in the rock shadows, with the golden +flakes of light sinking down through them like falling leaves, the +ringing of the thin currents among the shallows, the flash and the +cloud of the cascade, the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, +the long lines of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery of +the hills reversed in the blue of morning,--all these things belong to +those hills as their undivided inheritance. + +To this supremacy in wave and stream is joined a no less manifest +pre-eminence in the character of trees. It is possible among plains, +in the species of trees which properly belong to them, the poplars of +Amiens, for instance, to obtain a serene simplicity of grace, which, +as I said, is a better help to the study of gracefulness, as such, +than any of the wilder groupings of the hills; so, also, there are +certain conditions of symmetrical luxuriance developed in the park and +avenue, rarely rivalled in their way among mountains; and yet the +mountain superiority in foliage is, on the whole, nearly as complete +as it is in water: for exactly as there are some expressions in the +broad reaches of a navigable lowland river, such as the Loire or +Thames, not, in their way, to be matched among the rock rivers, and +yet for all that a lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen the +element of water at all; so even in the richest parks and avenues he +cannot be said to have truly seen trees. For the resources of trees +are not developed until they have difficulty to contend with; neither +their tenderness of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced +to choose their ways of various life where there is contracted room +for them, talking to each other with their restrained branches. The +various action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, +stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of glacier +winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down +together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand among the +difficult slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls, +gathering into companies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in +grave procession over the heavenward ridges--nothing of this can be +conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the lowland +forest: while to all these direct sources of greater beauty are added, +first the power of redundance,--the mere quantity of foliage visible +in the folds and on the promontories of a single Alp being greater +than that of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view from some +cathedral tower); and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer +_visibility_,--tree after tree being constantly shown in successive +height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and flanks of +masses, as in the plains; and the forms of multitudes of them +continually defined against the clear sky, near and above, or against +white clouds entangled among their branches, instead of being confused +in dimness of distance. + +Finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the still less +questionable supremacy in clouds. There is no effect of sky possible +in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among the +hills; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible +and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among +the hills in the course of one day. The mere power of familiarity with +the clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and renders +clear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky; +and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single wreath of early +cloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the +points of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill the +arched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. And of the +nobler cloud manifestations,--the breaking of their troublous seas +against the crags, their black spray sparkling with lightning; or the +going forth of the morning[27] along their pavements of moving marble, +level-laid between dome and dome of snow;--of these things there can +be as little imagination or understanding in an inhabitant of the +plains as of the scenery of another planet than his own. + +And, observe, all these superiorities are matters plainly measurable +and calculable, not in any wise to be referred to estimate of +_sensation_. Of the grandeur or expression of the hills I have not +spoken; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, I do not for +the moment consider, because vastness, and strength, and terror, are +not to all minds subjects of desired contemplation. It may make no +difference to some men whether a natural object be large or small, +whether it be strong or feeble. But loveliness of colour, perfectness +of form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure, are +precious to all undiseased human minds; and the superiority of the +mountains in all these things to the lowland is, I repeat, as +measurable as the richness of a painted window matched with a white +one, or the wealth of a museum compared with that of a simply +furnished chamber. They seem to have been built for the human race, as +at once their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminated +manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, +quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the +worshipper. And of these great cathedrals of the earth, with their +gates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars +of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars,--of +these, as we have seen,[28] it was written, nor long ago, by one of the +best of the poor human race for whom they were built, wondering in +himself for whom their Creator _could_ have made them, and thinking to +have entirely discerned the Divine intent in them--"They are inhabited +by the Beasts."[29] + +Was it then indeed thus with us, and so lately? Had mankind offered no +worship in their mountain churches? Was all that granite sculpture and +floral painting done by the angels in vain? + +Not so. It will need no prolonged thought to convince us that in the +hills the purposes of their Maker have indeed been accomplished in +such measure as, through the sin or folly of men, He ever permits them +to be accomplished. It may not seem, from the general language held +concerning them, or from any directly traceable results, that +mountains have had serious influence on human intellect; but it will +not, I think, be difficult to show that their occult influence has +been both constant and essential to the progress of the race. + + + [24] In tracing the _whole_ of the deep enjoyment to mountain + association, I of course except whatever feelings are connected with + the observance of rural life, or with that of architecture. None of + these feelings arise out of the landscape properly so called: the + pleasure with which we see a peasant's garden fairly kept, or a + ploughman doing his work well, or a group of children playing at a + cottage door, being wholly separate from that which we find in the + fields or commons around them; and the beauty of architecture, or the + associations connected with it, in like manner often ennobling the + most tame scenery;--yet not so but that we may always distinguish + between the abstract character of the unassisted landscape, and the + charm which it derives from the architecture. Much of the majesty of + French landscape consists in its grand and grey village churches and + turreted farmhouses, not to speak of its cathedrals, castles, and + beautifully placed cities. [Ruskin.] + + [25] One of the principal reasons for the false supposition that + Switzerland is not picturesque, is the error of most sketchers and + painters in representing pine forest in middle distance as dark green, + or grey green, whereas its true colour is always purple, at distances + of even two or three miles. Let any traveller coming down the + Montanvert look for an aperture, three or four inches wide, between + the near pine branches, through which, standing eight or ten feet + from it, he can see the opposite forests on the Breven or Flegere. + Those forests are not above two or two and a half miles from him; + but he will find the aperture is filled by a tint of nearly pure + azure or purple, not by green. [Ruskin.] + + [26] The Savoyard's name for its flower, "Pain du Bon Dieu," is very + beautiful; from, I believe, the supposed resemblance of its white + and scattered blossom to the fallen manna, [Ruskin.] + + [27] _Ezekiel_ vii, 10; _Hosea_ vi, 3. + + [28] In "The Mountain Gloom," the chapter immediately preceding. + + [29] Ruskin refers to _The Fulfilling of the Scripture_, a book by + Robert Fleming [1630-94]. + + + + +SUNRISE ON THE ALPS[30] + +VOLUME I, SECTION 3, PART 2, CHAPTER 4 + + +Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the +night mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white and +lake-like fields, as they float in level bays and winding gulfs about +the islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than +dawn, colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of +midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver +channels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passes +away, and down under their depths the glittering city and green +pasture lie like Atlantis,[31] between the white paths of winding +rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader +among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above +them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten +their grey shadows upon the plain.... Wait a little longer, and you +shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating +up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet +masses, iridescent with the morning light,[32] upon the broad breasts +of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back +and back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost +in its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene heaven, like a +wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless and inaccessible, their +very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep +lake below.[33]... Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those +mists gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortresses +along the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every +instant higher and higher into the sky, and casting longer shadows +athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you will +see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapours, +which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their grey network, and +take the light off the landscape with an eclipse which will stop the +singing of the birds and the motion of the leaves, together; and then +you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and +lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, along the shoulders +of the hills; you never see them form, but when you look back to a +place which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging +by the precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey.... And then you +will hear the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those +watch-towers of vapour swept away from their foundations, and waving +curtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swinging from the +burdened clouds in black bending fringes, or pacing in pale columns +along the lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. And +then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm drift for an instant, +from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded yet +with snow-white, torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapour, now gone, +now gathered again; while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, +but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach +it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong +fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with +blood.... And then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the +hollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on the +summit of the eastern hills, brighter--brighter yet, till the large +white circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds, +step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her +kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable, +fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move +together, hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so +measured in their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll +with them, and the earth to reel under them.... And then wait yet for +one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving +mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, +are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning: watch the white +glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty +serpents with scales of fire: watch the columnar peaks of solitary +snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new +morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than +the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like +altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes +flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer +light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on +every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet +canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault +beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels: +and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are +bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me +who has best delivered this His message unto men![34] + + + [30] Some sentences of an argumentative nature have been omitted from + this selection. + + [31] A mythical island in the Atlantic. + + [32] I have often seen the white, thin, morning cloud, edged with + the seven colours of the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this + phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to + the sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over + indefinite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. + The colours are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic + lustre upon them. [Ruskin.] + + [33] Lake Lucerne. [Ruskin.] + + [34] The implication is that Turner has best delivered it. + + + + +THE GRAND STYLE[35] + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER I + + +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 endeavoured, 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 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 merely 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. + +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 labour 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. + +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 endeavoured 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 characterizing 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 +vapour, on which the sun of praise so long has risen and set? It will +be well at once to consider this. + +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, October 20, 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 consequence of which is, +that everyone 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 merely 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 characterize History; but the +very being of Poetry consists in departing from this plain narrative, +and adopting every ornament that will warm the imagination.)[36] To +desire to see the excellences 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." + +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 is 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. + +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. + +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 a 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." + +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.[37] + +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.[38] 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. + +"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! + +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. + +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. + +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. + +I come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion, that poetry is +"the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble +emotions."[39] 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 warehouses. 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. + +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."[40] + +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.[41] + +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. + +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 colours 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. + +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. + +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. + +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.[42] 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;[43] 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 armour, 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. + +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,[44] 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. + + + [35] The full title of this chapter is "Of the Received Opinions + touching the 'Grand Style.'" + + [36] 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." [Ruskin.] + + [37] Stanza 6 of Byron's _Prisoner of Chillon_, quoted with a slight + inaccuracy. + + [38] "Messrs. Mallet and Pictet, being on the lake, in front of the + Castle of Chillon, on August 6, 1774, sunk a thermometer to the + depth of 312 feet." ... --SAUSSURE, _Voyages dans les Alpes_, chap. + ii, Sec. 33. It appears from the next paragraph, that the thermometer + was at the bottom of the lake. [Ruskin, altered.] + + [39] Ruskin later wrote: "It leaves out rhythm, which I now consider + a defect in said definition; otherwise good." + + [40] Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the _Affliction of + Margaret_: + + I look for ghosts, but none will force + Their way to me. 'T is 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. [Ruskin.] + + [41] The closing lines of Wordsworth's _Childless Father_. + + [42] _Iliad_, 1. 463 ff., 2. 425 ff.; _Odyssey_, 3. 455 ff., etc. + + [43] _Iliad_, 6. 468 ff. + + [44] 1625-1713. Known also as Carlo delle Madonne. + + + + +OF REALIZATION + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 2 + + +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." + +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 +colour, interested by the liveliness of its story, and touched by +certain countenances or details which remind him of friends whom he +loved, or 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 colours 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. + +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[45] and Titians; and +the only merit which many persons can either see or conceive in them +is, that they must be "like nature." + +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,[46] and in dew which he endeavours 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.[47] + +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[48] 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. + +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,[49] 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, chi' 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. + + --CARY. + +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 colours that had flashed upon it for an +instant,--would we not part with our picture--Titian's or Veronese's +though it might be? + +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 favour. 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 round +me, utterly inexpressible by the highest human skill." Now, it is +evident that to persons of this temper the only valuable picture +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?[50] + +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. + +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 endeavour 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 labours, 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 colour 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. + + + [45] Claude Gelee [1600-82], usually called Claude Lorrain, a French + landscape painter and etcher. + + [46] Vasari, in his _Lives of the Painters_, tells how Giotto, + when a student under Cimabue, once painted a fly on the nose of a + figure on which the master was working, the fly being so realistic + that Cimabue on returning to the painting attempted to brush it + away. + + [47] Guercino's Hagar in the Brera gallery in Milan. + + [48] Gerard Dow [1613-75], a Dutch genre painter; Hobbima [1638-1709], + a Dutch landscape painter; Walpole [1717-97], a famous English + litterateur; Vasari [1511-74], an Italian painter, now considered + full of mannerisms and without originality, mainly famous as author + of _The Lives of the Painters_. + + [49] Giotto. + + [50] _Purgatorio_, 12. 31. + + + + +OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER II + + +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. + +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. + +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-Colour +Society:[51] 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 fogs, 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 armour did +not get too hot in the sun!" + +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, not 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 honour 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 honour 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. + +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. + +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 +honour, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to help him to imagine +them, or temples raised to their honour, 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 specially devoted to +illustration of their lives and nature. + +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; honouring 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. + +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 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 nature +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. + +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 il 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. + +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 endeavour +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; 2dly, 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 endeavour to do in the next chapter. + + + [51] The Society of Painters in Water-Colours, often referred to as + the Old Water-Colour Society. Ruskin was elected an honorary member + in 1873. + + + + +OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 12 + + +Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words[52] 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; 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.[53] + +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 favourite poetry, we shall find it full +of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being +so. + +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.[54] + +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." + +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.[55] + +Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of +Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough,"[56] 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,[57] + +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,[58] 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?"[59] + +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? + +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 anywise +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.[60] + +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 endeavour to state the main bearings of this +matter. + +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,[61] 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. + +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. + +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 +stedfast; 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. + +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";[62] but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of +the sea without talking of "raging waves," "remorseless floods," +"ravenous billows," etc.; 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 +conies 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.[63] + +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. + +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."[64] + +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. + +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, maladroite. 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!) + II y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main, + En y pensant a peine je respire: + Frere 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 dix-huit ans, helas, et son doux reve! + + Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour! + On disait, Pauvre Constance! + Et l'on dansa, jusqu'au jour, + Chez l'ambassadeur de France.[65] + +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!" + +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.'"[66] 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 field shall clap their hands."[67] + +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?[68] + +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.[69] + +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."[70] + +Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a water-fall 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! + +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."[71] + +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."[72] + +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.[73] + +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. + + + [52] Three short sections discussing the use of the terms "Objective" + and "Subjective" have been omitted from the beginning of this chapter. + + [53] Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her + _Recollections of a Literary Life_. [Ruskin.] From _Astraea, a Poem + delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College_. The + passage in which these lines are found was later published as + _Spring_. + + [54] Kingsley's _Alton Locke_, chap. 26. + + [55] 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. [Ruskin.] + + [56] _Inferno_, 3. 112. + + [57] _Christabel_, 1. 49-50. + + [58] "Well said, old mole! can'st work i' the ground so + fast?"--[Ruskin.] + + [59] _Odyssey_, 11. 57-58. + + [60] 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 cumbrous 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 + Perplex'd, the while melodiously he said, + _"How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?"_ + + _Hyperion_, 3. 42.--[Ruskin.] + + [61] See Wordsworth's _Peter Bell_, Part I:-- + + A primrose by a river's brim + A yellow primrose was to him, + And it was nothing more. + + [62] _Jude_ 13. + + [63] _Kings_ xxiii, 18, and _Hosea_ x, 7. + + [64] _Iliad_, 3. 243. In the MS. Ruskin notes, "The insurpassably + tender irony in the epithet--'life-giving earth'--of the grave"; + and then adds another illustration:--"Compare the hammer-stroke at + the close of the [32d] chapter of _Vanity Fair_--'The darkness came + down on the field and city, and Amelia was praying for George, who + was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart. A + great deal might have been said about it. The writer is very sorry + for Amelia, neither does he want faith in prayer. He knows as well + as any of us that prayer must be answered in some sort; but those + are the facts. The man and woman sixteen miles apart---one on her + knees on the floor, the other on his face in the clay. So much love + in her heart, so much lead in his. Make what you can of it." [Cook + and Wedderburn.] + + [65] The poem may be crudely paraphrased as follows:-- + + "Quick, Anna, quick! to the mirror! It is late, + And I'm to dance at the ambassador's ... + I'm going to the ball ... + + "They're faded, see, + These ribbons--they belong to yesterday. + Heavens, how all things pass! Now gracefully hang + The blue tassels from the net that holds my hair. + + "Higher!--no, lower!--you get nothing right!... + Now let this sapphire sparkle on my brow. + You're pricking me, you careless + thing! That's good! + I love you, Anna dear. How fair I am.... + + "I hope he'll be there, too--the one I've tried + To forget! no use! (Anna, my gown!) he too ... + (O fie, you wicked girl! my necklace, _this?_ + These golden beads the Holy Father blessed?) + + "He'll be there--Heavens! suppose he takes my hand + --I scarce can draw my breath for thinking of it! + And I confess to Father Anselmo + To-morrow--how can I ever tell him _all_?... + One last glance at the mirror. + O, I'm sure That they'll adore me at the ball to-night." + + Before the fire she stands admiringly. + O God! a spark has leapt into her gown. + Fire, fire!--O run!--Lost thus when mad with hope? + What, die? and she so fair? The hideous flames + Rage greedily about her arms and breast, + Envelop her, and leaping ever higher, + Swallow up all her beauty, pitiless-- + Her eighteen years, alas! and her sweet dream. + + Adieu to ball, to pleasure, and to love! + "Poor Constance!" said the dancers at the ball, + "Poor Constance!"--and they danced till break of day. + + [66] _Isaiah_ xiv, 8. + + [67] _Isaiah_ lv, 12. + + [68] _Night Thoughts_, 2. 345. + + [69] Pastorals: _Summer, or Alexis_, 73 ff., with the omission of + two couplets after the first. + + [70] From the poem beginning _'T is said that some have died for + love_, Ruskin evidently quoted from memory, for there are several + verbal slips in the passage quoted. + + [71] Stanza 16, of Shenstone's twenty-sixth Elegy. + + [72] _The Excursion_, 6. 869 ff. + + [73] I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, + both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come + upon, in Maud:-- + + 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."_ [Ruskin.] + + + + +OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 13 + + +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 endeavouring 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. + +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.[74] + +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-coloured," "wine-coloured," 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-coloured, cold salt +water it is always, and nothing but that. + +"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. + +I do not think we ever enough endeavour 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. + +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. + +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,[75] 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 with 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 +invisible--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." + +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 of 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 dishonourable 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.[76] 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."[77] Achilles refuses to +obey its commands; and from the human form it returns instantly into +its natural or divine one, and endeavours 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,[78] 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. + +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.[79] 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 endeavouring 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;[80] or else, +dealing with him in a more retired spirituality, as Apollo sending the +plague upon the Greeks,[81] 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. + +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,[82] 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 unlady-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. + +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.[83] + +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 endeavouring 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!"[84] 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."[85] + +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 honourable, 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 god's 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. + +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. + +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 no wise 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 entirely 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. + +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;[86] 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. + +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."[87] +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[88]); 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. + +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." + +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;[89] 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.[90] + +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.[91] 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. + +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,"[92] 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[93] 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.[94] 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."[95] 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;[96] 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 +disfavour; 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's vloor, for vorty mile on end--there's the country +to live in!"[97] + +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. + +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-eminently 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.[98] So the sirens sing in a +meadow; [99] 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";[100] 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";[101] 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.[102] + +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 no +wise 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_,[103] where the sailors in a desert +island, having no flour of corn to offer as a meat offering with their +sacrifices, take the leaves of the trees, and scatter them over the +burnt offering instead. + +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."[104] + +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 chambermaid at the +Bull aired the four-poster, and put on two extra blankets. + +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 +protecting 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 erst +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_."[105] + +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,"[106] 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";[107] 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 truck roads. + +And thus, in general, whenever the landscape is intended to be lovely, +it verges towards the ploughed lands 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 _Odyssey_ xi. 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. + +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 +uncharacteristially 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:[108]--"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.[109] + +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. + +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,[110] 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.[111] + + + [74] _Endymion_, 2. 349-350. + + [75] See p. 68. + + [76] _Iliad_, 21. 212-360. + + [77] 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. [Ruskin.] + + [78] _The Excursion_, 4. 861-871. + + [79] _Genesis_ xxviii, 12; xxxii, 1; xxii, 11; _Joshua_ v, 13 ff.; + _Judges_ xiii, 3 ff. + + [80] _Iliad_, 5. 846. + + [81] _Iliad_, 1. 43. + + [82] _Iliad_, 21. 489 ff. + + [83] 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 up-gathers his spent shafts. + And puts them back into his golden quiver. [Ruskin.] + + [84] _Iliad_, 3. 365. + + [85] _Iliad_, 3. 406 ff. + + [86] _Iliad_, 4. 141. [Ruskin.] + + [87] _Odyssey_, 5. 63-74. + + [88] _Iliad_, 2. 776. [Ruskin.] + + [89] _Odyssey_ 7. 112-132. + + [90] _Odyssey_, 24. 334 ff. + + [91] _Odyssey_, 6. 162. + + [92] _Odyssey_, 6. 291-292. + + [93] _Odyssey_, 10. 510. [Ruskin.] + + [94] Compare the passage in Dante referred to above, p. 60. + [Ruskin.] + + [95] _Iliad_, 4. 482-487. + + [96] Pollards, trees polled or cut back at some height above the + ground, producing a thick growth of young branches in a rounded + mass. + + [97] Quoted, with some omission, from chapter 12. + + [98] _Odyssey_, 11. 572; 24. 13. The couch of Ceres, with Homer's + usual faithfulness, is made of a _ploughed_ field, 5. 127. + [Ruskin.] + + [99] _Odyssey_, 12. 45. + + [100] _Odyssey_, 4. 605. + + [101] _Iliad_, 21. 351. + + [102] _Odyssey_, 5. 398, 463. [Ruskin.] + + [103] _Odyssey_, 12. 357. [Ruskin.] + + [104] _Odyssey_, 5. 481-493. + + [105] _Odyssey_, 9. 132, etc. Hence Milton's + + From haunted spring, and dale, Edged with poplar pale. [Ruskin.] + + _Hymn on The Morning of Christ's Nativity_, 184-185. + + [106] _Odyssey_, 9. 182. + + [107] _Odyssey_, 10. 87-88. + + [108] _Odyssey_, 13. 236, etc. [Ruskin.] + + [109] 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. [Ruskin.] + + [110] Flodden, Flodden Field, a plain in Northumberland, famous as + the battlefield where James IV of Scotland was defeated by an + English army under the Earl of Surrey, Sept. 9, 1513. The sixth + canto of Scott's _Marmion_ gives a fairly accurate description of + the action. + + _Chevy-Chase_, a famous old English ballad recounting the incidents + of the battle of Otterburn [Aug. 19, 1388] in which the Scots under + the Earl of Douglas defeated the English under the Percies. + + [111] Shenstone's _Rural Elegance_, 201 ff., quoted with some + slight inaccuracies. + + + + +OF MODERN LANDSCAPE + +VOLUME III, CHAPTER 16 + + +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 it is impossible to +arrest, and difficult to comprehend. + +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." + +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 unfavourable), 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."[112] + +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." + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a strong tendency +to deny the sacred element of colour, and make our boast in blackness. +For though occasionally glaring or violent, modern colour 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 inwoven 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. + +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,"[113] 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 favourable 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.[114] + +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.[115] + +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. + +There is, however, another, and a more innocent root of our delight in +wild scenery. + +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.[116] + +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 colour, 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 armour +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. + +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. + +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 splendours 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 honoured, but did not imitate their +forefathers; we imitate, but do not honour. + +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,[117] 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. + +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. + +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 colour 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 colouring of Scott and Byron is full +and pure; that of Keats and Tennyson rich even to excess. Our +practical failures in colouring 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 colouring, 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. + +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 labours, 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. + +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.[118] It is only the dull, the uneducated, +or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet on the hillsides; 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. + +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. + +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.[119] + + + [112] _Clouds_, 316-318; 380 ff.; 320-321. + + [113] _Ephesians_ ii, 12. + + [114] Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us." + + [115] 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. [Ruskin.] + + [116] Gower Street, a London street selected as typical of modern + ugliness. + + Gaspar Poussin [1613-75], a French landscape painter, of the + pseudo-classical school. + + [117] Of course this is meant only 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. [Ruskin.] + + [118] See _David Copperfield_, chap. 55 and 58. [Ruskin.] + + [119] Ruskin proceeds to discuss Scott as he has discussed Homer. + The chapter on Turner that follows here is an almost equally good + illustration of Ruskin's ideas. + + + + +THE TWO BOYHOODS + +VOLUME V, PART 9, CHAPTER 9 + + +Born half-way between the mountains and the sea--that young George of +Castelfranco--of the Brave Castle:--Stout George they called him, +George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was--Giorgione.[120] + +Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on--fair, searching +eyes of youth? What a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots +to the shore;--of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to +the marble city--and became himself as a fiery heart to it? + +A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with +emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, +overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea +drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. +Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,--the men of Venice moved +in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her +mothers and maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights; +the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armour shot angrily under their +blood-red mantle-folds. Fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, +implacable,--every word a fate--sate her senate. In hope and honour, +lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each with +his name written and the cross graved at his side, lay her dead. A +wonderful piece of world. Rather, itself a world. It lay along the face +of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at +evening, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away; but for its +power, it must have seemed to them as if they were sailing in the +expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened +through ether. A world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts +were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. No +foulness, nor tumult, in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, +beneath the moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or thrilling +silence. No weak walls could rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, +nor straw-built shed. Only the strength as of rock, and the finished +setting of stones most precious. And around them, far as the eye could +reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as not +the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle, could grow in the +glancing fields. Ethereal strength of Alps, dreamlike, vanishing in +high procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue islands of Paduan +hills, poised in the golden west. Above, free winds and fiery clouds +ranging at their will;--brightness out of the north, and balm from the +south, and the stars of the evening and morning clear in the limitless +light of arched heaven and circling sea. + +Such was Giorgione's school--such Titian's home. + +Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or well +is formed by a close-set block of houses, to the back windows of which +it admits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom of it is obtained +out of Maiden Lane, through a low archway and an iron gate; and if you +stand long enough under the archway to accustom your eyes to the +darkness you may see on the left hand a narrow door, which formerly +gave quiet access to a respectable barber's shop, of which the front +window, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant, filled, in this year +(1860), with a row of bottles, connected, in some defunct manner, with +a brewer's business. A more fashionable neighbourhood, it is said, +eighty years ago than now--never certainly a cheerful one--wherein a +boy being born on St. George's day, 1775, began soon after to take +interest in the world of Covent Garden, and put to service such +spectacles of life as it afforded. + +No knights to be seen there, nor, I imagine, many beautiful ladies; +their costume at least disadvantageous, depending much on incumbency of +hat and feather, and short waists; the majesty of men founded similarly +on shoebuckles and wigs;--impressive enough when Reynolds will do his +best for it; but not suggestive of much ideal delight to a boy. + +"Bello ovile dov' io dormii agnello";[121] of things beautiful, besides +men and women, dusty sunbeams up or down the street on summer mornings; +deep furrowed cabbage-leaves at the greengrocer's; magnificence of +oranges in wheelbarrows round the corner; and Thames' shore within +three minutes' race. + +None of these things very glorious; the best, however, that England, it +seems, was then able to provide for a boy of gift: who, such as they +are, loves them--never, indeed, forgets them. The short waists modify +to the last his visions of Greek ideal. His foregrounds had always a +succulent cluster or two of greengrocery at the corners. Enchanted +oranges gleam in Covent Gardens of the Hesperides; and great ships go +to pieces in order to scatter chests of them on the waves.[122] That mist +of early sunbeams in the London dawn crosses, many and many a time, the +clearness of Italian air; and by Thames' shore, with its stranded +barges and glidings of red sail, dearer to us than Lucerne lake or +Venetian lagoon,--by Thames' shore we will die. + +With such circumstance round him in youth, let us note what necessary +effects followed upon the boy. I assume him to have had Giorgione's +sensibility (and more than Giorgione's, if that be possible) to colour +and form. I tell you farther, and this fact you may receive trustfully, +that his sensibility to human affection and distress was no less keen +than even his sense for natural beauty--heart-sight deep as eyesight. + +Consequently, he attaches himself with the faithfullest child-love to +everything that bears an image of the place he was born in. No matter +how ugly it is,--has it anything about it like Maiden Lane, or like +Thames' shore? If so, it shall be painted for their sake. Hence, to the +very close of life, Turner could endure ugliness which no one else, of +the same sensibility, would have borne with for an instant. Dead brick +walls, blank square windows, old clothes, market-womanly types of +humanity--anything fishy and muddy, like Billingsgate or Hungerford +Market, had great attraction for him; black barges, patched sails, and +every possible condition of fog. + +You will find these tolerations and affections guiding or sustaining +him to the last hour of his life; the notablest of all such endurances +being that of dirt. No Venetian ever draws anything foul; but Turner +devoted picture after picture to the illustration of effects of +dinginess, smoke, soot, dust, and dusty texture; old sides of boats, +weedy roadside vegetation, dunghills, straw-yards, and all the soilings +and stains of every common labour. + +And more than this, he not only could endure, but enjoyed and looked +for _litter_, like Covent Garden wreck after the market. His pictures +are often full of it, from side to side; their foregrounds differ from +all others in the natural way that things have of lying about in them. +Even his richest vegetation, in ideal work, is confused; and he +delights in shingle, debris, and heaps of fallen stones. The last words +he ever spoke to me about a picture were in gentle exultation about his +St. Gothard: "that _litter_ of stones which I endeavoured to +represent." + +The second great result of this Covent Garden training was understanding +of and regard for the poor, whom the Venetians, we saw, despised; whom, +contrarily, Turner loved, and more than loved--understood. He got no +romantic sight of them, but an infallible one, as he prowled about the +end of his lane, watching night effects in the wintry streets; nor +sight of the poor alone, but of the poor in direct relations with the +rich. He knew, in good and evil, what both classes thought of, and how +they dwelt with, each other. + +Reynolds and Gainsborough, bred in country villages, learned there the +country boy's reverential theory of "the squire," and kept it. They +painted the squire and the squire's lady as centres of the movements of +the universe, to the end of their lives. But Turner perceived the +younger squire in other aspects about his lane, occurring prominently +in its night scenery, as a dark figure, or one of two, against the +moonlight. He saw also the working of city commerce, from endless +warehouse, towering over Thames, to the back shop in the lane, with its +stale herrings--highly interesting these last; one of his father's best +friends, whom he often afterwards visited affectionately at Bristol, +being a fishmonger and glue-boiler; which gives us a friendly turn of +mind towards herring-fishing, whaling, Calais poissardes, and many +other of our choicest subjects in after life; all this being connected +with that mysterious forest below London Bridge on one side;--and, on +the other, with these masses of human power and national wealth which +weigh upon us, at Covent Garden here, with strange compression, and +crush us into narrow Hand Court. + +"That mysterious forest below London Bridge"--better for the boy than +wood of pine, or grove of myrtle. How he must have tormented the +watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch anywhere in the bows, +quiet as a log, so only that he might get floated down there among the +ships, and round and round the ships, and with the ships, and by the +ships, and under the ships, staring, and clambering;--these the only +quite beautiful things he can see in all the world, except the sky; +but these, when the sun is on their sails, filling or falling, +endlessly disordered by sway of tide and stress of anchorage, +beautiful unspeakably; which ships also are inhabited by glorious +creatures--red-faced sailors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales, +true knights, over their castle parapets--the most angelic beings in +the whole compass of London world. And Trafalgar happening long before +we can draw ships, we, nevertheless, coax all current stories out of +the wounded sailors, do our best at present to show Nelson's funeral +streaming up the Thames; and vow that Trafalgar shall have its tribute +of memory some day. Which, accordingly, is accomplished--once, with +all our might, for its death; twice, with all our might, for its +victory; thrice, in pensive farewell to the old Temeraire, and, with +it, to that order of things.[123] + +Now this fond companying with sailors must have divided his time, it +appears to me, pretty equally between Covent Garden and Wapping +(allowing for incidental excursions to Chelsea on one side, and +Greenwich on the other), which time he would spend pleasantly, but not +magnificently, being limited in pocket-money, and leading a kind of +"Poor-Jack" life on the river. + +In some respects, no life could be better for a lad. But it was not +calculated to make his ear fine to the niceties of language, nor form +his moralities on an entirely regular standard. Picking up his first +scraps of vigorous English chiefly at Deptford and in the markets, and +his first ideas of female tenderness and beauty among nymphs of the +barge and the barrow,--another boy might, perhaps, have become what +people usually term "vulgar." But the original make and frame of +Turner's mind being not vulgar, but as nearly as possible a combination +of the minds of Keats and Dante, joining capricious waywardness, and +intense openness to every fine pleasure of sense, and hot defiance of +formal precedent, with a quite infinite tenderness, generosity, and +desire of justice and truth--this kind of mind did not become vulgar, +but very tolerant of vulgarity, even fond of it in some forms; and on +the outside, visibly infected by it, deeply enough; the curious result, +in its combination of elements, being to most people wholly +incomprehensible. It was as if a cable had been woven of blood-crimson +silk, and then tarred on the outside. People handled it, and the tar +came off on their hands; red gleams were seen through the black, +underneath, at the places where it had been strained. Was it +ochre?--said the world--or red lead? + +Schooled thus in manners, literature, and general moral principles at +Chelsea and Wapping, we have finally to inquire concerning the most +important point of all. We have seen the principal differences between +this boy and Giorgione, as respects sight of the beautiful, +understanding of poverty, of commerce, and of order of battle; then +follows another cause of difference in our training--not slight,--the +aspect of religion, namely, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. I +say the aspect; for that was all the lad could judge by. Disposed, for +the most part, to learn chiefly by his eyes, in this special matter he +finds there is really no other way of learning. His father had taught +him "to lay one penny upon another." Of mother's teaching, we hear of +none; of parish pastoral teaching, the reader may guess how much. + +I chose Giorgione rather than Veronese to help me in carrying out this +parallel; because I do not find in Giorgione's work any of the early +Venetian monarchist element. He seems to me to have belonged more to an +abstract contemplative school. I may be wrong in this; it is no +matter;--suppose it were so, and that he came down to Venice somewhat +recusant, or insentient, concerning the usual priestly doctrines of his +day,--how would the Venetian religion, from an outer intellectual +standing-point, have _looked_ to him? + +He would have seen it to be a religion indisputably powerful in human +affairs; often very harmfully so; sometimes devouring widows' +houses,[124] and consuming the strongest and fairest from among the +young; freezing into merciless bigotry the policy of the old: also, on +the other hand, animating national courage, and raising souls, +otherwise sordid, into heroism: on the whole, always a real and great +power; served with daily sacrifice of gold, time, and thought; putting +forth its claims, if hypocritically, at least in bold hypocrisy, not +waiving any atom of them in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in large +measure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed: a goodly system, +moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, harmonious, mysterious;--a thing which +had either to be obeyed or combated, but could not be scorned. A +religion towering over all the city--many-buttressed--luminous in +marble stateliness, as the dome of our Lady of Safety[125] shines over +the sea; many-voiced also, giving, over all the eastern seas, to the +sentinel his watchword, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips of +all who died for Venice, shaping the whisper of death. + +I suppose the boy Turner to have regarded the religion of his city also +from an external intellectual standing-point. + +What did he see in Maiden Lane? + +Let not the reader be offended with me; I am willing to let him +describe, at his own pleasure, what Turner saw there; but to me, it +seems to have been this. A religion maintained occasionally, even the +whole length of the lane, at point of constable's staff; but, at other +times, placed under the custody of the beadle, within certain black and +unstately iron railings of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Among the +wheelbarrows and over the vegetables, no perceptible dominance of +religion; in the narrow, disquieted streets, none; in the tongues, +deeds, daily ways of Maiden Lane, little. Some honesty, indeed, and +English industry, and kindness of heart, and general idea of justice; +but faith, of any national kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next, +not artistically beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibitions; its +paraphernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and cold +grimness of behaviour. + +What chiaroscuro belongs to it--(dependent mostly on candlelight),--we +will, however, draw considerately; no goodliness of escutcheon, nor +other respectability being omitted, and the best of their results +confessed, a meek old woman and a child being let into a pew, for whom +the reading by candlelight will be beneficial.[126] + +For the rest, this religion seems to him +discreditable--discredited--not believing in itself; putting forth its +authority in a cowardly way, watching how far it might be tolerated, +continually shrinking, disclaiming, fencing, finessing; divided against +itself, not by stormy rents, but by thin fissures, and splittings of +plaster from the walls. Not to be either obeyed, or combated, by an +ignorant, yet clear-sighted youth: only to be scorned. And scorned not +one whit the less, though also the dome dedicated to it looms high over +distant winding of the Thames; as St. Mark's campanile rose, for goodly +landmark, over mirage of lagoon. For St. Mark ruled over life; the +Saint of London over death; St. Mark over St. Mark's Place, but St. +Paul over St. Paul's Churchyard. + +Under these influences pass away the first reflective hours of life, +with such conclusion as they can reach. In consequence of a fit of +illness, he was taken--I cannot ascertain in what year[127]--to live with +an aunt, at Brentford; and here, I believe, received some schooling, +which he seems to have snatched vigorously; getting knowledge, at least +by translation, of the more picturesque classical authors, which he +turned presently to use, as we shall see. Hence also, walks about +Putney and Twickenham in the summer time acquainted him with the look +of English meadow-ground in its restricted states of paddock and park; +and with some round-headed appearances of trees, and stately entrances +to houses of mark: the avenue at Bushy, and the iron gates and carved +pillars of Hampton,[128] impressing him apparently with great awe and +admiration; so that in after life his little country house is,--of all +places in the world,--at Twickenham! Of swans and reedy shores he now +learns the soft motion and the green mystery, in a way not to be +forgotten. + +And at last fortune wills that the lad's true life shall begin; and one +summer's evening, after various wonderful stage-coach experiences on +the north road, which gave him a love of stage-coaches ever after, he +finds himself sitting alone among the Yorkshire hills.[129] For the +first time, the silence of Nature round him, her freedom sealed to him, +her glory opened to him. Peace at last; no roll of cart-wheel, nor +mutter of sullen voices in the back shop; but curlew-cry in space of +heaven, and welling of bell-toned streamlet by its shadowy rock. +Freedom at last. Dead-wall, dark railing, fenced field, gated garden, +all passed away like the dream, of a prisoner; and behold, far as foot +or eye can race or range, the moor, and cloud. Loveliness at last. It +is here, then, among these deserted vales! Not among men. Those pale, +poverty-struck, or cruel faces;--that multitudinous, marred +humanity--are not the only things that God has made. Here is something +He has made which no one has marred. Pride of purple rocks, and river +pools of blue, and tender wilderness of glittering trees, and misty +lights of evening on immeasurable hills. + +Beauty, and freedom, and peace; and yet another teacher, graver than +these. Sound preaching at last here, in Kirkstall crypt, concerning +fate and life. Here, where the dark pool reflects the chancel pillars, +and the cattle lie in unhindered rest, the soft sunshine on their +dappled bodies, instead of priests' vestments; their white furry hair +ruffled a little, fitfully, by the evening wind deep-scented from the +meadow thyme. + +Consider deeply the import to him of this, his first sight of ruin, and +compare it with the effect of the architecture that was around +Giorgione. There were indeed aged buildings, at Venice, in his time, +but none in decay. All ruin was removed, and its place filled as +quickly as in our London; but filled always by architecture loftier and +more wonderful than that whose place it took, the boy himself happy to +work upon the walls of it; so that the idea of the passing away of the +strength of men and beauty of their works never could occur to him +sternly. Brighter and brighter the cities of Italy had been rising and +broadening on hill and plain, for three hundred years. He saw only +strength and immortality, could not but paint both; conceived the form +of man as deathless, calm with power, and fiery with life. + +Turner saw the exact reverse of this. In the present work of men, +meanness, aimlessness, unsightliness: thin-walled, lath-divided, +narrow-garreted houses of clay; booths of a darksome Vanity Fair, +busily base. + +But on Whitby Hill, and by Bolton Brook,[130] remained traces of other +handiwork. Men who could build had been there; and who also had +wrought, not merely for their own days. But to what purpose? Strong +faith, and steady hands, and patient souls--can this, then, be all you +have left! this the sum of your doing on the earth!--a nest whence the +night-owl may whimper to the brook, and a ribbed skeleton of consumed +arches, looming above the bleak banks of mist, from its cliff to the +sea? + +As the strength of men to Giorgione, to Turner their weakness and +vileness, were alone visible. They themselves, unworthy or ephemeral; +their work, despicable, or decayed. In the Venetian's eyes, all beauty +depended on man's presence and pride; in Turner's, on the solitude he +had left, and the humiliation he had suffered. + +And thus the fate and issue of all his work were determined at once. He +must be a painter of the strength of nature, there was no beauty +elsewhere than in that; he must paint also the labour and sorrow and +passing away of men: this was the great human truth visible to him. + +Their labour, their sorrow, and their death. Mark the three. Labour; by +sea and land, in field and city, at forge and furnace, helm and plough. +No pastoral indolence nor classic pride shall stand between him and the +troubling of the world; still less between him and the toil of his +country,--blind, tormented, unwearied, marvellous England. + +Also their Sorrow; Ruin of all their glorious work, passing away of +their thoughts and their honour, mirage of pleasure, FALLACY OF HOPE; +gathering of weed on temple step; gaining of wave on deserted strand; +weeping of the mother for the children, desolate by her breathless +first-born in the streets of the city,[131] desolate by her last sons +slain, among the beasts of the field.[132] + +And their Death. That old Greek question again;--yet unanswered. The +unconquerable spectre still flitting among the forest trees at +twilight; rising ribbed out of the sea-sand;--white, a strange +Aphrodite,--out of the sea-foam; stretching its grey, cloven wings +among the clouds; turning the light of their sunsets into blood. This +has to be looked upon, and in a more terrible shape than ever Salvator +or Duerer saw it.[133] The wreck of one guilty country does not infer the +ruin of all countries, and need not cause general terror respecting the +laws of the universe. Neither did the orderly and narrow succession of +domestic joy and sorrow in a small German community bring the question +in its breadth, or in any unresolvable shape, before the mind of Duerer. +But the English death--the European death of the nineteenth +century--was of another range and power; more terrible a thousandfold +in its merely physical grasp and grief; more terrible, incalculably, in +its mystery and shame. What were the robber's casual pang, or the range +of the flying skirmish, compared to the work of the axe, and the sword, +and the famine, which was done during this man's youth on all the hills +and plains of the Christian earth, from Moscow to Gibraltar? He was +eighteen years old when Napoleon came down on Arcola. Look on the map +of Europe and count the blood-stains on it, between Arcola and +Waterloo.[134] + +Not alone those blood-stains on the Alpine snow, and the blue of the +Lombard plain. The English death was before his eyes also. No decent, +calculable, consoled dying; no passing to rest like that of the aged +burghers of Nuremberg town. No gentle processions to churchyards among +the fields, the bronze crests bossed deep on the memorial tablets, and +the skylark singing above them from among the corn. But the life +trampled out in the slime of the street, crushed to dust amidst the +roaring of the wheel, tossed countlessly away into howling winter wind +along five hundred leagues of rock-fanged shore. Or, worst of all, +rotted down to forgotten graves through years of ignorant patience, and +vain seeking for help from man, for hope in God--infirm, imperfect +yearning, as of motherless infants starving at the dawn; oppressed +royalties of captive thought, vague ague-fits of bleak, amazed despair. + +A goodly landscape this, for the lad to paint, and under a goodly +light. Wide enough the light was, and clear; no more Salvator's lurid +chasm on jagged horizon, nor Duerer's spotted rest of sunny gleam on +hedgerow and field; but light over all the world. Full shone now its +awful globe, one pallid charnel-house,--a ball strewn bright with human +ashes, glaring in poised sway beneath the sun, all blinding-white with +death from pole to pole,--death, not of myriads of poor bodies only, +but of will, and mercy, and conscience; death, not once inflicted on +the flesh, but daily, fastening on the spirit; death, not silent or +patient, waiting his appointed hour, but voiceful, venomous; death with +the taunting word, and burning grasp, and infixed sting. + +"Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe."[135] The word is spoken +in our ears continually to other reapers than the angels,--to the busy +skeletons that never tire for stooping. When the measure of iniquity is +full, and it seems that another day might bring repentance and +redemption,--"Put ye in the sickle." When the young life has been +wasted all away, and the eyes are just opening upon the tracks of ruin, +and faint resolution rising in the heart for nobler things,--"Put ye in +the sickle." When the roughest blows of fortune have been borne long +and bravely, and the hand is just stretched to grasp its goal,--"Put ye +in the sickle." And when there are but a few in the midst of a nation, +to save it, or to teach, or to cherish; and all its life is bound up in +those few golden ears,--"Put ye in the sickle, pale reapers, and pour +hemlock for your feast of harvest home." + +This was the sight which opened on the young eyes, this the watchword +sounding within the heart of Turner in his youth. + +So taught, and prepared for his life's labour, sate the boy at last +alone among his fair English hills; and began to paint, with cautious +toil, the rocks, and fields, and trickling brooks, and soft white +clouds of heaven. + + + [120] c. 1478-1511. + + [121] Dante, alluding to Florence, _Paradiso_, 25. 5. "From the + fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered." Longfellow's tr. + + [122] Allusions to pictures by Turner, The Garden of the + Hesperides, and The Meuse: Orange-Merchantman going to pieces on + the Bar. + + [123] The pictures referred to are: The Death of Nelson, The Battle + of Trafalgar, and The Fighting Temeraire being towed to its Last + Berth (see cut). The first and third are in the National Gallery, + London. + + [124] _Matthew_ xxiii, 14. + + [125] Santa Maria della Salute, a church conspicuously situated at + the junction of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca. + + [126] _Liber Studiorum_. "Interior of a church." It is worthy of + remark that Giorgione and Titian are always delighted to have an + opportunity of drawing priests. The English Church may, perhaps, + accept it as matter of congratulation that this is the only + instance in which Turner drew a clergyman. [Ruskin.] + + [127] 1785. + + [128] Wolsey's famous palace, twelve miles from London. + + [129] I do not mean that this is his first acquaintance with the + country, but the first impressive and touching one, after his mind + was formed. The earliest sketches I found in the National + Collection are at Clifton and Bristol; the next, at Oxford. + [Ruskin.] + + [130] The reference is to the two famous ruined abbeys of + Yorkshire--Whitby and Bolton. + + [131] The Tenth Plague of Egypt. [Ruskin.] + + [132] Rizpah, the Daughter of Aiah. [Ruskin.] + + [133] Duerer [1471-1528], German painter, engraver, and designer. + Salvator [1615-73], Italian painter, etcher, satirical poet, and + musical composer. + + [134] _I.e._, between November 17, 1796, and June 18, 1815. + + [135] _Joel_ iii, 13. + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM + +THE STONES OF VENICE + + +The first volume of _The Stones of Venice_ appeared in March, 1851; the +first day of May of the same year we find the following entry in +Ruskin's diary: "About to enter on the true beginning of the second +part of my Venetian work. May God help me to finish it--to His glory, +and man's good." The main part of the volume was composed at Venice in +the winter of 1851-52, though it did not appear until the end of July, +1853. His work on architecture, including _The Seven Lamps_, it will be +noted, intervenes between the composition of the second and third +volumes of _Modern Painters_; and Ruskin himself always looked upon +the work as an interlude, almost as an interruption. But he also came +to believe that this digression had really led back to the heart of +the truth for all art. Its main theme, as in _The Seven Lamps of +Architecture_, is its illustration of the principle that architecture +expresses certain states in the moral temper of the people by and for +whom it is produced. It may surprise us to-day to know that when Ruskin +wrote of the glories of Venetian architecture, the common "professional +opinion was that St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace were as ugly and +repulsive as they were contrary to rule and order." In a private letter +Gibbon writes of the Square of St. Mark's as "a large square decorated +with the worst architecture I ever saw." The architects of his own time +regarded Ruskin's opinions as dictated by wild caprice, and almost +evincing an unbalanced mind. Probably the core of all this +architectural work is to be found in his chapter "On the Nature of +Gothic," in the main reproduced in this volume. And we find here again +a point of fundamental significance--that his artistic analysis led him +inevitably on to social inquiries. He proved to himself that the main +virtue of Gothic lay in the unrestricted play of the individual +imagination; that the best results were produced when every artist was +a workman and every workman an artist. Twenty years after the +publication of this book, he wrote in a private letter that his main +purpose "was to show the dependence of (architectural) beauty on the +happiness and fancy of the workman, and to show also that no architect +could claim the title to authority of _Magister_ unless he himself +wrought at the head of his men, captain of manual skill, as the best +knight is captain of armies." He himself called the chapter "precisely +and accurately the most important in the whole book." Mr. Frederic +Harrison says that in it is "the creed, if it be not the origin, of a +new industrial school of thought." + + + + +THE THRONE + +VOLUME II, CHAPTER I + + +In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which +distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil +was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries +through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the +evening hours, when from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, +the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered +among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long hoped for +turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, +the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset--hours of +peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in +the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an +equivalent,--in those days, I say, when there was something more to be +anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive +halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, +there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly +cherished by the traveller, than that which, as I endeavoured to +describe in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of +Venice, as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of +Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the +source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its +buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other great +towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, +and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers +out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible +that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of +the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling +lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets +bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, +the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in +knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all +proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city +rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the +Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, +but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subdued +into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a +field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of +the lonely island church, fitly named "St. George of the Seaweed." As +the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had +just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-coloured line, tufted +irregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed its +northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple +pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or three +smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, +and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the +chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north--a wall of +jagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of +misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and +itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite +upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up +behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the +crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, +to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the +great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick +silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when +its walls were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was +entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep +inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the +traveller's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces,--each +with its black boat moored at the portal,--each with its image cast +down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze +broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the +extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal +curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi;[136] that +strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, +graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike +circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali,"[137] +struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty +cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the splash of the +water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's +side; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of +silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed with +its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of +Salvation,[138] it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply +entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so +strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. +Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to +the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the +waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, +rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature +was wild or merciless,--Time and Decay, as well as the waves and +tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might +still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed +for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea. + +And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the +face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on +Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the noble +landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a +glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though +many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated ruins, +there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried +traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect +has been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her +origin, and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at +least, are little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of +the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to +repress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is +ignoble, and disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its +remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the +imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before +us. The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of +this century, may indeed gild, but never save, the remains of those +mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; and +they must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see +them as they stood in their own strength. Those feelings, always as +fruitless as they are fond, are in Venice not only incapable of +protecting, but even of discerning, the objects to which they ought to +have been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing +of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the +first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name +is worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossed +that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of +Venice;[139] no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which +the traveller now passes with breathless interest: the statue which +Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors was +erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after +Faliero's death;[140] and the most conspicuous parts of the city have +been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries, +that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari[141] could be summoned from +their tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance +of the Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favourite +subject, the novelist's favourite scene, where the water first narrows +by the steps of the Church of La Salute,--the mighty Doges would not +know in what part of the world they stood, would literally not +recognize one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and by whose +ingratitude, their grey hairs had been brought down with bitterness to +the grave. The remains of _their_ Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous +masses which were the delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in +many a grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal, +where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred +years, and must soon prevail over them for ever. It must be our task to +glean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some faint image +of the lost city; more gorgeous a thousandfold than that which now +exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince, nor by the +ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, +contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that +its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, +but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and +solitary scene, whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed +shelter the birth of the city, but long denied her dominion. + +When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no feature by +which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange sweeping loop +formed by the junction of the Alps and Apennines, and enclosing the +great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain upon itself +causes a vast difference in the character of the distribution of its +debris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and sediment which the +torrents on the other side of the Alps bear into the plains are +distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here and there +lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm substrata to +appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which descend from +the southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern slope of the +Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain bay which the +two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks out of their +battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain washes from +their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of the +Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky +barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences +which continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the +accumulation of the ruins of ages. + +I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by insisting on the +singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which appears for many +centuries to have taken place steadily and continually; the main fact +with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the Po and its +great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment to the +sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressed +by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part of large +rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick; and +was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these same +pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to check +the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona.[142] The +finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the +rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, +however pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the +foot of the great chain, they become of the colour and opacity of clay +before they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once +thrown down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land +along the eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of +course builds forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, +there is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable +to rapid change than the delta of the central river. In one of these +tracts is built RAVENNA, and in the other VENICE. + +What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this great belt +of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place to inquire. +It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the Adige to those +of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three to +five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long +islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the +true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and other +rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighbourhood +of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most places of a +foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, +but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, +from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to the run +of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, +some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to be built +upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the contrary, +it has not reached the sea level; so that, at the average low water, +shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of +seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance +by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the +openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a +crowded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which +appear to the north and south of this central cluster, have at +different periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according +to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents +and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and +encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the +metropolis. + +The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet (varying +considerably with the seasons); but this fall, on so flat a shore, is +enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main +canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At +high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of +Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or +gleaming with villages: there is a channel, some three miles wide, +between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide +between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the +lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the +impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, +although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, +betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deepwater channels, +which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge +sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded +waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the uplifted +level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low +tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over +the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is +seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of sea-weed, of gloomy +green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its +associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this +salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by +tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, and often +so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till +their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea water like the +ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground +at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the +banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the +uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly +oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears +some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what it was once, +let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some +unfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain; let +him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city that +still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the +islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture and +sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black +desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, +pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful +silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, +or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he +will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with +which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. +They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and +strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be +the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in the +great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be +remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things which +no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existence +and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, by +the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had +deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and +again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surges +beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of the Venetian +architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an +ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the +Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, +and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only +a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the +doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there +is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without +setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps; and the highest tides +sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. +Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood and +ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a +treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of +water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily +intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city +would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the +peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed. + +The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between this +faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the romantic +conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he have +felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the +instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the +wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been +permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid +rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh +waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little +could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were +shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their +desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than +of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the +glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all +the corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which +were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and +feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a +preparation, and _the only preparation possible_, for the founding of a +city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the +earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, and +to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in +world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the +burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendour. + + + [136] The palace of the Camerlenghi, beside the Rialto, is a + graceful work of the early Renaissance (1525) passing into Roman + Renaissance. [Adapted from Ruskin.] + + [137] Signifying approximately "Keep to the right." + + [138] See note 1, p. 129. + + [139] _Childe Harold_, 4. 1. + + [140] _Marino Faliero_, 3. 1. 22 ff. + + [141] Dandolo [c. 1108-1205] and Foscari [1372-1457] were among the + most famous of Venetian Doges. + + [142] In the battle of Custozza, 1848, the Austrians defeated the + Piedmontese. + + + + +ST. MARK'S + +VOLUME II, CHAPTER 4 + + +"And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as the shores +of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had entered +into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his hand +was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of Christ's +captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the work,[143] +how wonderful would he have thought it, that by the lion symbol in +future ages he was to be represented among men! how woful, that the +war-cry of his name should so often reanimate the rage of the soldier, +on those very plains where he himself had failed in the courage of the +Christian, and so often dye with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, +over whose waves, in repentance and shame, he was following the Son of +Consolation! + +That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the ninth +century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it was +principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose him +for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that before +he went into Egypt he had founded the church at Aquileia, and was thus +in some sort the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I +believe that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of +St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome[144]; but, as usual, it is +enriched by various later additions and embellishments, much resembling +the stories told respecting the church of Murano. Thus we find it +recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the _Vife de' Santi spettanti +alle Chiese di Venezia_,[145] that "St. Mark having seen the people of +Aquileia well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. +Peter, before setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and +went in a small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that +period some houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and +the boat being driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when +St. Mark, snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to +him: 'Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel +goes on to foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne piu veduta +Citta"[146]; but the fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther +relation. + +But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not, St. Theodore +was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be considered as +having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue, standing on a +crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the opposing pillar of +the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said to have occupied, +before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and the traveller, +dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not to leave it +without endeavouring to imagine its aspect in that early time, when it +was a green field cloister-like and quiet,[147] divided by a small canal, +with a line of trees on each side; and extending between the two +churches of St. Theodore and St. Gemanium, as the little piazza of +Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral. + +But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally removed to +the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the present one +stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it,[148] gave a very different +character to the Square of St. Mark; and fifteen years later, the +acquisition of the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the Ducal +Chapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned the investiture of that +chapel with all possible splendour. St. Theodore was deposed from his +patronship, and his church destroyed, to make room for the +aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, and +thenceforward known as "St. Mark's."[149] + +This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the Ducal Palace +was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was partly +rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and, with +the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on under +successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building being +completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till +considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085,[150] +according to Sansovino and the author of the _Chiesa Ducale di S. +Marco_, in 1094 according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and +1096, those years being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I +incline to the supposition that it was soon after his accession to the +throne in 1085, though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead +of Vital Falier. But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh +century the great consecration of the church took place. It was again +injured by fire in 1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall +of Venice there was probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree +embellish or alter the fabric, so that few parts of it can be +pronounced boldly to be of any given date. Two periods of interference +are, however, notable above the rest: the first, that in which the +Gothic school had superseded the Byzantine towards the close of the +fourteenth century, when the pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window +traceries were added to the exterior, and the great screen with various +chapels and tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the +Renaissance school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian +and Tintoret substituted, over one half of the church, their own +compositions for the Greek mosaics with which it was originally +decorated;[151] happily, though with no good will, having left enough +to enable us to imagine and lament what they destroyed. Of this +irreparable loss we shall have more to say hereafter; meantime, I wish +only to fix in the reader's mind the succession of periods of +alterations as firmly and simply as possible. + +We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly stated to +be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the fourteenth, and +the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no difficulty in +distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the Byzantine; but +there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how long, during the +course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, additions were made to +the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily distinguished from the +work of the eleventh century, being purposely executed in the same +manner. Two of the most important pieces of evidence on this point are, +a mosaic in the south transept, and another over the northern door of +the facade; the first representing the interior, the second the +exterior, of the ancient church. + +It has just been stated that the existing building was consecrated by +the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to that act of +consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what appears to +have been one of the best arranged and most successful impostures ever +attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body of St. Mark had, +without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976; but the revenues +of the church depended too much upon the devotion excited by these +relics to permit the confession of their loss. The following is the +account given by Corner, and believed to this day by the Venetians, of +the pretended miracle by which it was concealed. + +"After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which +the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten; +so that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the +venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious +Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by +confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer +and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not +now depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore +proclaimed, and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, +while the people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent +prayers for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as +joy, a slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where +the altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth, +exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in +which the body of the Evangelist was laid." + +Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They were embellished +afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as, for instance, +that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark extended his hand +out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which he permitted a +noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint and delightful story +was further invented of this ring, which I shall not repeat here, as it +is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian Nights. But the fast +and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means effected, are facts; +and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved mosaics of the +north[152] transept, executed very certainly not long after the event +had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of the Bayeux +tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior of the +church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer, then in +thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the Doge, in +the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet embroidered with +gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux" over his head, as +uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most other pictorial +works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely represented, and +the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in order to form a +background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of picture history +which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand things besides, +never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or two, of the real +or perspective size, and subdued it into a vague background: the old +workman crushed the church together that he might get it all in, up to +the cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some useful notes of its +ancient form, though any one who is familiar with the method of drawing +employed at the period will not push the evidence too far. The two +pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day, and the fringe of +mosaic flowerwork which then encompassed the whole church, but which +modern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment still left in the +south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the other mosaics on the +roof, the scale being too small to admit of their being represented +with any success; but some at least of those mosaics had been executed +at that period, and their absence in the representation of the entire +church is especially to be observed, in order to show that we must not +trust to any negative evidence in such works. M. Lazari has rashly +concluded that the central archivolt of St. Mark's _must_ be posterior +to the year 1205, because it does not appear in the representation of +the exterior of the church over the northern door;[153] but he justly +observes that this mosaic (which is the other piece of evidence we +possess respecting the ancient form of the building) cannot itself be +earlier than 1205, since it represents the bronze horses which were +brought from Constantinople in that year. And this one fact renders it +very difficult to speak with confidence respecting the date of any part +of the exterior of St. Mark's; for we have above seen that it was +consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet here is one of its most +important exterior decorations assuredly retouched, if not entirely +added, in the thirteenth, although its style would have led us to +suppose it had been an original part of the fabric. However, for all +our purposes, it will be enough for the reader to remember that the +earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh, twelfth, and +first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions to the +fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the fifteenth and +sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the seventeenth. + +This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I may speak +generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without leading +him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated by +Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the +seventeenth-century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to +the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a +Byzantine building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely +necessary, direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the +reader with anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the +eye, or affects the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified +by Byzantine influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits +need not therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or +arrested by the obscurities of chronology. + +And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St. Mark's +Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English +cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. +Let us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we +can see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low +grey gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in +the centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing +goes in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the +chapter, and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by +neat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and +excessively trim houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out +here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream colour +and white, and small porches to their doors in the shape of +cockle-shells, or little, crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables +warped a little on one side; and so forward till we come to larger +houses, also old-fashioned, but of red brick, and with gardens behind +them, and fruit walls, which show here and there, among the nectarines, +the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on +the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of smooth +grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, especially on the sunny +side, where the canons' children are walking with their nursery-maids. +And so, taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go along the +straight walk to the west front, and there stand for a time, looking up +at its deep-pointed porches and the dark places between their pillars +where there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, +of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the likeness of a +king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps a saintly king long ago +in heaven; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering wall of +rugged sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and grey, and grisly +with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirling +winds into yet unseemlier shape, and coloured on their stony scales by +the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, higher still, +to the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the +bosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only +sees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scattering, +and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and +flowers, the crowd of restless birds that fill the whole square with +that strange clangour of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like the +cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and sea. + +Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of all its +small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its +secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense +and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by +the cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on +all who have passed through the lonely square at their feet for +centuries, and on all who have seen them rising far away over the +wooded plain, or catching on their square masses the last rays of the +sunset, when the city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at +the bend of the river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in +Venice, and land at the extremity of the Calla Lunga San Moise, which +may be considered as there answering to the secluded street that led us +to our English cathedral gateway. + +We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide where it is +widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant +salesmen,--a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of +brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high +houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over-head, +an inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and +chimney flues, pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows +with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here +and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some +inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high +over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be, +occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about +eight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which one +is narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectable +shops, wainscotted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but +in those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares +laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases +entering at the front only, and fading away in a few feet from the +threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but +which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the +back of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less +pious shopkeeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented +with a penny print; the more religious one has his print coloured and +set in a little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a +faded flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. +Here, at the fruiterer's, where the dark-green water-melons are heaped +upon the counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of +fresh laurel leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, +and there is nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the +studded patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the +darkness. Next comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori,"[154] where the +Virgin, enthroned in a very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a +back shelf, presides over certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too +ambiguous to be defined or enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at +the regular wine-shop of the calle, where we are offered "Vino +Nostrani a Soldi 28-32," the Madonna is in great glory, enthroned above +ten or a dozen large red casks of three-year-old vintage, and flanked +by goodly ranks of bottles of Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and +for the evening, when the gondoliers will come to drink out, under her +auspices, the money they have gained during the day, she will have a +whole chandelier. + +A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle, and, +glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply moulded, +in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting +on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side; and so +presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moise, whence to the +entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of +the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the +frightful facade of San Moise, which we will pause at another time to +examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near the +piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging +groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them into +the shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and then +we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great +light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of +St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of +chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong +themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses +that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back +into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements +and broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly +sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone. + +And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches +there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems +to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far +away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long +low pyramid of coloured light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of +gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into +five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with +sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture +fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and +pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all +twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the +midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the +feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures +indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves +beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded +back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were +angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are +set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green +serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse +and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to +kiss"[155]--the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line +after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved +sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of +herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, +all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broad +archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life--angels, and the +signs of heaven, and the labours of men, each in its appointed season +upon the earth; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, +mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers,--a confusion of +delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing +in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on +a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the +crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far +into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the +breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and +the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. + +Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! +There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead +of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the +bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle +among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their +living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less +lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years. + +And what effect has this splendour on those who pass beneath it? You +may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St. +Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance +brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and +poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the +porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, +the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them +that sell doves"[156] for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and +caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is +almost a continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the +middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the +Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music +jarring with the organ notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the +sullen crowd thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its +will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the +recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest +classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; +and unregarded children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full +of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with +cursing,--gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, +clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church +porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it +continually. + + + [143] _Acts_ xiii, 13 and xv, 38, 39. [Ruskin.] + + [144] The reader who desires to investigate it may consult + Galliciolli, _Delle Memorie Venete_ (Venice, 1795), tom. 2, p. 332, + and the authorities quoted by him. [Ruskin.] + + [145] _Venice_, 1761 tom. 1, p. 126. [Ruskin.] + + [146] A wonderful City, such as was never seen before. + + [147] St. Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a + few trees; and on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or + Broglio, that is to say, Garden." The canal passed through it, over + which is built the bridge of the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. I, + cap. viii. [Ruskin.] + + [148] My authorities for this statement are given below, in the + chapter on the Ducal Palace. [Ruskin.] + + [149] In the Chronicles, _Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappdla_. [Ruskin.] + + [150] "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the + Protector St. Mark."--Corner, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the + reader with the various authorities for the above statements: I + have consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on + the church itself: + + Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno Desuper undecimo fuit facta + primo, + + is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much + probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro." [Ruskin.] + + [151] Signed Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc. [Ruskin.] + + [152] An obvious slip. The mosaic is on the west wall of the south + transept. [Cook and Wedderburn.] + + [153] _Guida di Venezia_, p. 6. [Ruskin.] + + [154] Fritters and liquors for sale. + + [155] _Antony and Cleopatra_, 2. 5. 29. + + [156] Matthew xxi, 12 and _John_ ii, 16. + + + + +CHARACTERISTICS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE + +VOLUME II, CHAPTER 6 + + +I believe, then, that the characteristic or moral elements of Gothic +are the following, placed in the order of their importance: + + 1. Savageness. + 2. Changefulness. + 3. Naturalism. + 4. Grotesqueness. + 5. Rigidity. + 6. Redundance. + +These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building; as +belonging to the builder, they would be expressed thus:--1. Savageness, +or Rudeness. 2. Love of Change. 3. Love of Nature. 4. Disturbed +Imagination. 5. Obstinacy. 6. Generosity. And I repeat, that the +withdrawal of any one, or any two, will not at once destroy the Gothic +character of a building, but the removal of a majority of them will. I +shall proceed to examine them in their order. + +1. SAVAGENESS. I am not sure when the word "Gothic" was first +generically applied to the architecture of the North; but I presume +that, whatever the date of its original usage, it was intended to imply +reproach, and express the barbaric character of the nations among whom +that architecture arose. It never implied that they were literally of +Gothic lineage, far less that their architecture had been originally +invented by the Goths themselves; but it did imply that they and their +buildings together exhibited a degree of sternness and rudeness, which, +in contradistinction to the character of Southern and Eastern nations, +appeared like a perpetual reflection of the contrast between the Goth +and the Roman in their first encounter. And when that fallen Roman, in +the utmost impotence of his luxury, and insolence of his guilt, became +the model for the imitation of civilized Europe, at the close of the +so-called Dark Ages, the word Gothic became a term of unmitigated +contempt, not unmixed with aversion. From that contempt, by the +exertion of the antiquaries and architects of this century, Gothic +architecture has been sufficiently vindicated; and perhaps some among +us, in our admiration of the magnificent science of its structure, and +sacredness of its expression, might desire that the term of ancient +reproach should be withdrawn, and some other, of more apparent +honourableness, adopted in its place. There is no chance, as there is +no need, of such a substitution. As far as the epithet was used +scornfully, it was used falsely; but there is no reproach in the word, +rightly understood; on the contrary, there is a profound truth, which +the instinct of mankind almost unconsciously recognizes. It is true, +greatly and deeply true, that the architecture of the North is rude and +wild; but it is not true, that, for this reason, we are to condemn it, +or despise. Far otherwise: I believe it is in this very character that +it deserves our profoundest reverence. + +The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern science have +thrown into a narrow space the expression of a vast amount of +knowledge, but I have never yet seen any one pictorial enough to enable +the spectator to imagine the kind of contrast in physical character +which exists between Northern and Southern countries. We know the +differences in detail, but we have not that broad glance and grasp +which would enable us to feel them in their fulness. We know that +gentians grow on the Alps, and olives on the Apennines; but we do not +enough conceive for ourselves that variegated mosaic of the world's +surface which a bird sees in its migration, that difference between the +district of the gentian and of the olive which the stork and the +swallow see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let us, for a +moment, try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight, +and imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, +and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun: here and there an +angry spot of thunder, a grey stain of storm, moving upon the burning +field; and here and there a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, +surrounded by its circle of ashes; but for the most part a great +peacefulness of light, Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like +pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop +nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing +softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, +mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate +with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of +the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass +farther towards the north, until we see the orient colours change +gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of +Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the +Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of +the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flaky +veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands: +and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave into mighty +masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste of +gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into +irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm, +and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending +tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill +ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into +barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, +deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And, +having once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned iris of +the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it, +and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life; the +multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and +sea, or tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and +spotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and +scarlet. Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of colour, and +swiftness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy +covering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the +Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf +and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of paradise with the +osprey: and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by which +the earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being. Let +us not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in +the statutes of the lands that gave him birth. Let us watch him with +reverence as he sets side by side the burning gems, and smooths with +soft sculpture the jasper pillars, that are to reflect a ceaseless +sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but not with less reverence +let us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried stroke, he +smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn from +among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air the +pile of iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with work of an +imagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creations of +ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as the +winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them. + +There is, I repeat, no degradation, no reproach in this, but all +dignity and honourableness: and we should err grievously in refusing +either to recognize as an essential character of the existing +architecture of the North, or to admit as a desirable character in that +which it yet may be, this wildness of thought, and roughness of work; +this look of mountain brotherhood between the cathedral and the Alp; +this magnificence of sturdy power, put forth only the more +energetically because the fine finger-touch was chilled away by the +frosty wind, and the eye dimmed by the moor-mist, or blinded by the +hail; this outspeaking of the strong spirit of men who may not gather +redundant fruitage from the earth, nor bask in dreamy benignity of +sunshine, but must break the rock for bread, and cleave the forest for +fire, and show, even in what they did for their delight, some of the +hard habits of the arm and heart that grew on them as they swung the +axe or pressed the plough. + +If, however, the savageness of Gothic architecture, merely as an +expression of its origin among Northern nations, may be considered, in +some sort, a noble character, it possesses a higher nobility still, +when considered as an index, not of climate, but of religious +principle. + +In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXL of the first volume of +this work, it was noticed that the systems of architectural ornament, +properly so called, might be divided into three:--1. Servile ornament, +in which the execution or power of the inferior workman is entirely +subjected to the intellect of the higher;--2. Constitutional ornament, +in which the executive inferior power is, to a certain point, +emancipated and independent, having a will of its own, yet confessing +its inferiority and rendering obedience to higher powers;--and 3. +Revolutionary ornament, in which no executive inferiority is admitted +at all. I must here explain the nature of these divisions at somewhat +greater length. + +Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, and +Egyptian; but their servility is of different kinds. The Greek +master-workman was far advanced in knowledge and power above the +Assyrian or Egyptian. Neither he nor those for whom he worked could +endure the appearance of imperfection in anything; and, therefore, what +ornament he appointed to be done by those beneath him was composed of +mere geometrical forms,--balls, ridges, and perfectly symmetrical +foliage,--which could be executed with absolute precision by line and +rule, and were as perfect in their way, when completed, as his own +figure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, less +cognizant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow their +figure sculpture to be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered the +method of its treatment to a standard which every workman could reach, +and then trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chance +of his falling beneath the standard appointed. The Greek gave to the +lower workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute. The +Assyrian gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, but +fixed a legal standard for his imperfection. The workman was, in both +systems, a slave.[157] + +But in the mediaeval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this +slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized, +in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul. +But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, in +only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness. That +admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite +felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether +refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly contemplating the fact of +it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God's greater glory. +Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service, +her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are +unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, +nor your confession silenced for fear of shame. And it is, perhaps, the +principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that +they thus receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out +of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in +every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole. + +But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of the +Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion +or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble character +in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget the +relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness +of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher; not considering +that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would be +preferable to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind, +and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of man, +those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those +which are, in their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. For +the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness +of it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall be +seldomest seen in their best form. The wild grass grows well and +strongly, one year with another; but the wheat is, according to the +greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. And +therefore, while in all things that we see or do, we are to desire +perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the +meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in +its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered +majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower +the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency +of success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other +men, we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrow +caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; and, +still more, how we withhold our admiration from great excellencies, +because they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in the make and nature +of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labour, +there are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid +capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are, even at the +worst; and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are tardy or +torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take +them in their feebleness, and unless we prize and honour them in their +imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this is +what we have to do with all our labourers; to look for the _thoughtful_ +part of them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it, +whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. For the best +that is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error. +Understand this clearly; You can teach a man to draw a straight line, +and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy +and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and +perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if +you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot +find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes +hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he +makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking +being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a +machine before, an animated tool. + +And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must +either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make +both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be +precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that +precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like +cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must +unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make +cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must +go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be +bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the +invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err +from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the +whole human being be lost at last--a heap of sawdust, so far as its +intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, +which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after +the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if +you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. +Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth +doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all +his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, +failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole +majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the +clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, +there will be transfiguration behind and within them. + +And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about which you +have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good and +strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those +accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of +the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over +them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was +done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are +signs of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more +degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be +beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer +flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to +smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting +pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the +flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God,[158] +into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with,--this it is to be +slave-masters indeed; and there might be more freedom in England, +though her feudal lords' lightest words were worth men's lives, and +though the blood of the vexed husbandman dropped in the furrows of her +fields, than there is while the animation of her multitudes is sent +like fuel to feed the factory smoke, and the strength of them is given +daily to be wasted into the fineness of a web, or racked into the +exactness of a line. + +And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral +front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of the +old sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins, and formless +monsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid; but do not mock at +them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman who +struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, +such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which it +must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her +children. + +Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is verily +this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than any +other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere +into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which +they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry +against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them either by +the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These do much, +and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society were +never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are ill +fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make +their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of +pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper +classes, but they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind +of labour to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and +makes them less than men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathy +with the lower, or charity for them, as they have at this day, and yet +never were they so much hated by them: for, of old, the separation +between the noble and the poor was merely a wall built by law; now it +is a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice between +upper and lower grounds in the field of humanity, and there is +pestilential air at the bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to +come when the nature of right freedom will be understood, and when men +will see that to obey another man, to labour for him, yield reverence +to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of +liberty,--liberty from care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth, +and to another, Come, and he cometh,[159] has, in most cases, more sense +of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. The movements +of the one are hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by +the bridle on his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be +lightened; but we need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at +it. To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at +his disposal, is not slavery; often it is the noblest state in which a +man can live in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence which is +servile, that is to say irrational or selfish: but there is also noble +reverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never so +noble as when he is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the feeling +pass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised +by it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him,--the +Irish peasant who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with +his musket muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain +servant, who 200 years ago, at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and +the lives of his seven sons for his chief?--as each fell, calling forth +his brother to the death, "Another for Hector!"[160] And therefore, in +all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice made +by men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and +famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been +borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts +of the heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who +received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But +to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their +whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a +heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its +hammer strokes;--this nature bade not,--this God blesses not,--this +humanity for no long time is able to endure. + +We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized +invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It +is not, truly speaking; the labour that is divided; but the +men:--Divided into mere segments of men--broken into small fragments +and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that +is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts +itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a +good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we +could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished,--sand +of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what +it is,--we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the +great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than +their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,--that we manufacture +everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, +and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to +refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our +estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging +our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, +for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach to +them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be +met only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what +kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; +by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness +as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally +determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling +labour. + +And how, it will be asked, are these products to be recognized, and +this demand to be regulated? Easily: by the observance of three broad +and simple rules: + + 1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely + necessary, in the production of which _Invention_ has no share. + + 2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some + practical or noble end. + + 3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the + sake of preserving record of great works. + +The second of these principles is the only one which directly rises out +of the consideration of our immediate subject; but I shall briefly +explain the meaning and extent of the first also, reserving the +enforcement of the third for another place. + + 1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not necessary, in the + production of which invention has no share. + +For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, and there is no +design or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed by +first drawing out the glass into rods; these rods are chopped up into +fragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fragments are +then rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at their +work all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely +timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like hail. +Neither they, nor the men who draw out the rods or fuse the fragments, +have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human faculty; and +every young lady, therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the +slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have so +long been endeavouring to put down. + +But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisite +invention; and if in buying these we pay for the invention, that is to +say for the beautiful form, or colour, or engraving, and not for mere +finish of execution, we are doing good to humanity. + +So, again, the cutting of precious stones, in all ordinary cases, +requires little exertion of any mental faculty; some tact and judgment +in avoiding flaws, and so on, but nothing to bring out the whole mind. +Every person who wears cut jewels merely for the sake of their value +is, therefore, a slave-driver. + +But the working of the goldsmith, and the various designing of grouped +jewellery and enamel-work, may become the subject of the most noble +human intelligence. Therefore, money spent in the purchase of +well-designed plate, of precious engraved vases, cameos, or enamels, +does good to humanity; and, in work of this kind, jewels may be +employed to heighten its splendour; and their cutting is then a price +paid for the attainment of a noble end, and thus perfectly allowable. + +I shall perhaps press this law farther elsewhere, but our immediate +concern is chiefly with the second, namely, never to demand an exact +finish, when it does not lead to a noble end. For observe, I have only +dwelt upon the rudeness of Gothic, or any other kind of imperfectness, +as admirable, where it was impossible to get design or thought without +it. If you are to have the thought of a rough and untaught man, you +must have it in a rough and untaught way; but from an educated man, who +can without effort express his thoughts in an educated way, take the +graceful expression, and be thankful. Only _get_ the thought, and do +not silence the peasant because he cannot speak good grammar, or until +you have taught him his grammar. Grammar and refinement are good +things, both, only be sure of the better thing first. And thus in art, +delicate finish is desirable from the greatest masters, and is always +given by them. In some places Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Phidias, +Perugino, Turner, all finished with the most exquisite care; and the +finish they give always leads to the fuller accomplishment of their +noble purpose. But lower men than these cannot finish, for it requires +consummate knowledge to finish consummately, and then we must take +their thoughts as they are able to give them. So the rule is simple: +Always look for invention first, and after that, for such execution as +will help the invention, and as the inventor is capable of without +painful effort, and _no more_. Above all, demand no refinement of +execution where there is no thought, for that is slaves' work, +unredeemed. Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only that the +practical purpose be answered, and never imagine there is reason to be +proud of anything that may be accomplished by patience and sand-paper. + +I shall only give one example, which however will show the reader what +I mean, from the manufacture already alluded to, that of glass. Our +modern glass is exquisitely clear in its substance, true in its form, +accurate in its cutting. We are proud of this. We ought to be ashamed +of it. The old Venice glass was muddy, inaccurate in all its forms, and +clumsily cut, if at all. And the old Venetian was justly proud of it. +For there is this difference between the English and Venetian workman, +that the former thinks only of accurately matching his patterns, and +getting his curves perfectly true and his edges perfectly sharp, and +becomes a mere machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges; while +the old Venetian cared not a whit whether his edges were sharp or not, +but he invented a new design for every glass that he made, and never +moulded a handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And therefore, +though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy enough when made by +clumsy and uninventive workmen, other Venetian glass is so lovely in +its forms that no price is too great for it; and we never see the same +form in it twice. Now you cannot have the finish and the varied form +too. If the workman is thinking about his edges, he cannot be thinking +of his design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose +whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and +choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a +grindstone. + +Nay, but the reader interrupts me,--"If the workman can design +beautifully, I would not have him kept at the furnace. Let him be taken +away and made a gentleman, and have a studio, and design his glass +there, and I will have it blown and cut for him by common workmen, and +so I will have my design and my finish too." + +All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mistaken suppositions: the +first, that one man's thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed by +another man's hands; the second, that manual labour is a degradation, +when it is governed by intellect. + +On a large scale, and in work determinable by line and rule, it is +indeed both possible and necessary that the thoughts of one man should +be carried out by the labour of others; in this sense I have already +defined the best architecture to be the expression of the mind of +manhood by the hands of childhood. But on a smaller scale, and in a +design which cannot be mathematically defined, one man's thoughts can +never be expressed by another: and the difference between the spirit of +touch of the man who is inventing, and of the man who is obeying +directions, is often all the difference between a great and a common +work of art. How wide the separation is between original and +second-hand execution, I shall endeavour to show elsewhere; it is not +so much to our purpose here as to mark the other and more fatal error +of despising manual labour when governed by intellect; for it is no +less fatal an error to despise it when thus regulated by intellect, +than to value it for its own sake. We are always in these days +endeavouring to separate the two; we want one man to be always +thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a +gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often +to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be +gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one +envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is +made up of morbid thinkers, and miserable workers. Now it is only by +labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that +labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with +impunity. It would be well if all of us were good handicraftsmen in +some kind, and the dishonour of manual labour done away with +altogether; so that though there should still be a trenchant +distinction of race between nobles and commoners, there should not, +among the latter, be a trenchant distinction of employment, as between +idle and working men, or between men of liberal and illiberal +professions. All professions should be liberal, and there should be +less pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and more in excellence of +achievement. And yet more, in each several profession, no master should +be too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind his own +colours; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; the +master-manufacturer be himself a more skilful operative than any man in +his mills; and the distinction between one man and another be only in +experience and skill, and the authority and wealth which these must +naturally and justly obtain. + +I should be led far from the matter in hand, if I were to pursue this +interesting subject. Enough, I trust, has been said to show the reader +that the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the term +"Gothic" one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one of the +most noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a noble +but an _essential_ one. It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is +nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly +noble which is not imperfect. And this is easily demonstrable. For +since the architect, whom we will suppose capable of doing all in +perfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must either +make slaves of his workmen in the old Greek, and present English +fashion, and level his work to a slave's capacities, which is to +degrade it; or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, and let +them show their weaknesses together with their strength, which will +involve the Gothic imperfection, but render the whole work as noble as +the intellect of the age can make it. + +But the principle may be stated more broadly still. I have confined the +illustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true +of architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and +perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work +executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading +that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the +labourer's mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no +good work whatever can be perfect, and _the demand for perfection is +always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art_. + +This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that +no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of +failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his +powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in +trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior +portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and +according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of +dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude +or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be +dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not +acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, +Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take +ten years to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we +are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the +work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what +is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.[161] + +The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to +all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that +is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or +can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The +foxglove blossom,--a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in +full bloom,--is a type of the life of this world. And in all things +that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are +not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly +the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no +branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; +and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, +to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and +more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, +that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human +judgment, Mercy. + +Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any +other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us +be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern +clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first +cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of +perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for +greatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity. + +Thus far then of the Rudeness or Savageness, which is the first mental +element of Gothic architecture. It is an element in many other healthy +architectures also, as in Byzantine and Romanesque; but true Gothic +cannot exist without it. + +The second mental element above named was CHANGEFULNESS, or Variety. + +I have already enforced the allowing independent operation to the +inferior workman, simply as a duty _to him_, and as ennobling the +architecture by rendering it more Christian. We have now to consider +what reward we obtain for the performance of this duty, namely, the +perpetual variety of every feature of the building. + +Wherever the workman is utterly enslaved, the parts of the building +must of course be absolutely like each other; for the perfection of his +execution can only be reached by exercising him in doing one thing, and +giving him nothing else to do. The degree in which the workman is +degraded may be thus known at a glance, by observing whether the +several parts of the building are similar or not; and if, as in Greek +work, all the capitals are alike, and all the mouldings unvaried, then +the degradation is complete; if, as in Egyptian or Ninevite work, +though the manner of executing certain figures is always the same, the +order of design is perpetually varied, the degradation is less total; +if, as in Gothic work, there is perpetual change both in design and +execution, the workman must have been altogether set free. + +How much the beholder gains from the liberty of the labourer may +perhaps be questioned in England, where one of the strongest instincts +in nearly every mind is that Love of Order which makes us desire that +our house windows should pair like our carriage horses, and allows us +to yield our faith unhesitatingly to architectural theories which fix a +form for everything, and forbid variation from it. I would not impeach +love of order: it is one of the most useful elements of the English +mind; it helps us in our commerce and in all purely practical matters; +and it is in many cases one of the foundation stones of morality. Only +do not let us suppose that love of order is love of art. It is true +that order, in its highest sense, is one of the necessities of art, +just as time is a necessity of music; but love of order has no more to +do with our right enjoyment of architecture or painting, than love of +punctuality with the appreciation of an opera. Experience, I fear, +teaches us that accurate and methodical habits in daily life are seldom +characteristic of those who either quickly perceive, or richly possess, +the creative powers of art; there is, however, nothing inconsistent +between the two instincts, and nothing to hinder us from retaining our +business habits, and yet fully allowing and enjoying the noblest gifts +of Invention. We already do so, in every other branch of art except +architecture, and we only do _not_ so there because we have been taught +that it would be wrong. Our architects gravely inform us that, as there +are four rules of arithmetic, there are five orders of architecture; +we, in our simplicity, think that this sounds consistent, and believe +them. They inform us also that there is one proper form for Corinthian +capitals, another for Doric, and another for Ionic. We, considering +that there is also a proper form for the letters A, B, and C, think +that this also sounds consistent, and accept the proposition. +Understanding, therefore, that one form of the said capitals is proper, +and no other, and having a conscientious horror of all impropriety, we +allow the architect to provide us with the said capitals, of the proper +form, in such and such a quantity, and in all other points to take care +that the legal forms are observed; which having done, we rest in forced +confidence that we are well housed. + +But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no pleasure in the +building provided for us, resembling that which we take in a new book +or a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in its +correctness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the same +pleasure in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, or +a skilful piece of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all the +pleasure that architecture was ever intended to give us. The idea of +reading a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the +same kind of delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never +enters our minds for a moment. And for good reason;--There is indeed +rhythm in the verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of +the architecture, and a thousand times more beautiful, but there is +something else than rhythm. The verses were neither made to order, nor +to match, as the capitals were; and we have therefore a kind of +pleasure in them other than a sense of propriety. But it requires a +strong effort of common sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we +have been taught for the last two centuries, and wake to the perception +of a truth just as simple and certain as it is new: that great art, +whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does _not_ say +the same thing over and over again; that the merit of architectural, as +of every other art, consists in its saying new and different things; +that to repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in marble +than it is of genius in print; and that we may, without offending any +laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, +that he should be not only correct, but entertaining. + +Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden from us, as many +other self-evident things are, by false teaching. Nothing is a great +work of art, for the production of which either rules or models can be +given. Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, and from +given models, it is not an art, but a manufacture; and it is, of the +two procedures, rather less rational (because more easy) to copy +capitals or mouldings from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than +to copy heads and hands from Titian, and call ourselves painters. + +Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a +necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that +there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; +and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit +from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose +pillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a universe in +which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one size. + +And this we confess in deeds, though not in words. All the pleasure +which the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in pictures, +sculpture, minor objects of virtu, or mediaeval architecture, which we +enjoy under the term picturesque: no pleasure is taken anywhere in +modern buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting to +escape out of modern cities into natural scenery: hence, as I shall +hereafter show, that peculiar love of landscape, which is +characteristic of the age. It would be well, if, in all other matters, +we were as ready to put up with what we dislike, for the sake of +compliance with established law, as we are in architecture. + +How so debased a law ever came to be established, we shall see when we +come to describe the Renaissance schools; here we have only to note, as +the second most essential element of the Gothic spirit, that it broke +through that law wherever it found it in existence; it not only dared, +but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle; and +invented a series of forms of which the merit was, not merely that they +were new, but that they were _capable of perpetual novelty_. The +pointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the round, but it +admitted of millions of variations in itself; for the proportions of a +pointed arch are changeable to infinity, while a circular arch is +always the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from +the single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in its +grouping, and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. The +introduction of tracery was not only a startling change in the +treatment of window lights, but admitted endless changes in the +interlacement of the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in all +living Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the Gothic +schools exhibited that love in culminating energy; and their influence, +wherever it extended itself, may be sooner and farther traced by this +character than by any other; the tendency to the adoption of Gothic +types being always first shown by greater irregularity, and richer +variation in the forms of the architecture it is about to supersede, +long before the appearance of the pointed arch or of any other +recognizable _outward_ sign of the Gothic mind. + +We must, however, herein note carefully what distinction there is +between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in +healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly +in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. In +order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the +different ways in which change and monotony are presented to us in +nature; both having their use, like darkness and light, and the one +incapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being most +delightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light appears most +brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed. + +I believe that the true relations of monotony and change may be most +simply understood by observing them in music. We may therein notice +first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony, which there +is not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout all +nature. The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its +monotony; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and +especially the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall and +rise of an engine beam. So also there is sublimity in darkness which +there is not in light. + +Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain degree, +becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is +obliged to break it in one or two ways: either while the air or passage +is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and +harmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, an +entirely new passage is introduced, which is more or less delightful +according to the length of the previous monotony. Nature, of course, +uses both these kinds of variation perpetually. The sea-waves, +resembling each other in general mass, but none like its brother in +minor divisions and curves, are a monotony of the first kind; the great +plain, broken by an emergent rock or clump of trees, is a monotony of +the second. + +Farther: in order to the enjoyment of the change in either case, a +certain degree of patience is required from the hearer or observer. In +the first case, he must be satisfied to endure with patience the +recurrence of the great masses of sound or form, and to seek for +entertainment in a careful watchfulness of the minor details. In the +second case, he must bear patiently the infliction of the monotony for +some moments, in order to feel the full refreshment of the change. This +is true even of the shortest musical passage in which the element of +monotony is employed. In cases of more majestic monotony, the patience +required is so considerable that it becomes a kind of pain,--a price +paid for the future pleasure. + +Again: the talent of the composer is not in the monotony, but in the +changes: he may show feeling and taste by his use of monotony in +certain places or degrees; that is to say, by his _various_ employment +of it; but it is always in the new arrangement or invention that his +intellect is shown, and not in the monotony which relieves it. + +Lastly: if the pleasure of change be too often repeated, it ceases to +be delightful, for then change itself becomes monotonous, and we are +driven to seek delight in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This is +the diseased love of change of which we have above spoken. + +From these facts we may gather generally that monotony is, and ought to +be, in itself painful to us, just as darkness is; that an architecture +which is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead architecture; and of +those who love it, it may be truly said, "they love darkness rather +than light." But monotony in certain measure, used in order to give +value to change, and above all, that _transparent_ monotony, which, +like the shadows of a great painter, suffers all manner of dimly +suggested form to be seen through the body of it, is an essential in +architectural as in all other composition; and the endurance of +monotony has about the same place in a healthy mind that the endurance +of darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect will have +pleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the broken +and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in mere +brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow and +the storm; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness of +fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, while +an inferior man will not pay the price; exactly in like manner a great +mind will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisome +to an inferior intellect, because it has more patience and power of +expectation, and is ready to pay the full price for the great future +pleasure of change. But in all cases it is not that the noble nature +loves monotony, anymore than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bear +with it, and receives a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, a +pleasure necessary to the well-being of this world; while those who +will not submit to the temporary sameness, but rush from one change to +another, gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a shadow +and weariness over the whole world from which there is no more escape. + +From these general uses of variety in the economy of the world, we may +at once understand its use and abuse in architecture. The variety of +the Gothic schools is the more healthy and beautiful, because in many +cases it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from the mere love of +change, but from practical necessities. For in one point of view Gothic +is not only the best, but the _only rational_ architecture, as being +that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. +Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, or +disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a +hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded +grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change +in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of +loss either to its unity or majesty,--subtle and flexible like a fiery +serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one +of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered +ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the +real use and value of what they did. If they wanted a window, they +opened one; a room, they added one; a buttress, they built one; utterly +regardless of any established conventionalities of external appearance, +knowing (as indeed it always happened) that such daring interruptions +of the formal plan would rather give additional interest to its +symmetry than injure it. So that, in the best times of Gothic, a +useless window would rather have been opened in an unexpected place for +the sake of the surprise, than a useful one forbidden for the sake of +symmetry. Every successive architect, employed upon a great work, built +the pieces he added in his own way, utterly regardless of the style +adopted by his predecessors; and if two towers were raised in nominal +correspondence at the sides of a cathedral front, one was nearly sure +to be different from the other, and in each the style at the top to be +different from the style at the bottom. + +These marked variations were, however, only permitted as part of the +great system of perpetual change which ran through every member of +Gothic design, and rendered it as endless a field for the beholder's +inquiry as for the builder's imagination: change, which in the best +schools is subtle and delicate, and rendered more delightful by +intermingling of a noble monotony; in the more barbaric schools is +somewhat fantastic and redundant; but, in all, a necessary and constant +condition of the life of the school. Sometimes the variety is in one +feature, sometimes in another; it may be in the capitals or crockets, +in the niches or the traceries, or in all together, but in some one or +other of the features it will be found always. If the mouldings are +constant, the surface sculpture will change; if the capitals are of a +fixed design, the traceries will change; if the traceries are +monotonous, the capitals will change; and if even, as in some fine +schools, the early English for example, there is the slightest +approximation to an unvarying type of mouldings, capitals, and floral +decoration, the variety is found in the disposition of the masses, and +in the figure sculpture. + +I must now refer for a moment, before we quit the consideration of +this, the second mental element of Gothic, to the opening of the third +chapter of the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, in which the distinction +was drawn (Sec. 2) between man gathering and man governing; between his +acceptance of the sources of delight from nature, and his development +of authoritative or imaginative power in their arrangement: for the two +mental elements, not only of Gothic, but of all good architecture, +which we have just been examining, belong to it, and are admirable in +it, chiefly as it is, more than any other subject of art, the work of +man, and the expression of the average power of man. A picture or poem +is often little more than a feeble utterance of man's admiration of +something out of himself; but architecture approaches more to a +creation of his own, born of his necessities, and expressive of his +nature. It is also, in some sort, the work of the whole race, while the +picture or statue are the work of one only, in most cases more highly +gifted than his fellows. And therefore we may expect that the first two +elements of good architecture should be expressive of some great truths +commonly belonging to the whole race, and necessary to be understood or +felt by them in all their work that they do under the sun. And observe +what they are: the confession of Imperfection, and the confession of +Desire of Change. The building of the bird and the bee needs not +express anything like this. It is perfect and unchanging. But just +because we are something better than birds or bees, our building must +confess that we have not reached the perfection we can imagine, and +cannot rest in the condition we have attained. If we pretend to have +reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves +and our work. God's work only may express that; but ours may never have +that sentence written upon it,--"And behold, it was very good." And, +observe again, it is not merely as it renders the edifice a book of +various knowledge, or a mine of precious thought, that variety is +essential to its nobleness. The vital principle is not the love of +_Knowledge_, but the love of _Change_. It is that strange _disquietude_ +of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; that restlessness of the +dreaming mind, that wanders hither and thither among the niches, and +flickers feverishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in +labyrinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not +satisfied, nor shall be satisfied. The Greek could stay in his triglyph +furrow, and be at peace; but the work of the Gothic heart is fretwork +still, and it can neither rest in, nor from, its labour, but must pass +on, sleeplessly, until its love of change shall be pacified for ever in +the change that must come alike on them that wake and them that +sleep.... + +Last, because the least essential, of the constituent elements of this +noble school, was placed that of REDUNDANCE,--the uncalculating +bestowal of the wealth of its labour. There is, indeed, much Gothic, +and that of the best period, in which this element is hardly traceable, +and which depends for its effect almost exclusively on loveliness of +simple design and grace of uninvolved proportion; still, in the most +characteristic buildings, a certain portion of their effect depends +upon accumulation of ornament; and many of those which have most +influence on the minds of men, have attained it by means of this +attribute alone. And although, by careful study of the school, it is +possible to arrive at a condition of taste which shall be better +contented by a few perfect lines than by a whole facade covered with +fretwork, the building which only satisfies such a taste is not to be +considered the best. For the very first requirement of Gothic +architecture being, as we saw above, that it shall both admit the aid, +and appeal to the admiration, of the rudest as well as the most refined +minds, the richness of the work is, paradoxical as the statement may +appear, a part of its humility. No architecture is so haughty as that +which is simple; which refuses to address the eye, except in a few +clear and forceful lines; which implies, in offering so little to our +regards, that all it has offered is perfect; and disdains, either by +the complexity of the attractiveness of its features, to embarrass our +investigation, or betray us into delight. That humility, which is the +very life of the Gothic school, is shown not only in the imperfection, +but in the accumulation, of ornament. The inferior rank of the workman +is often shown as much in the richness, as the roughness, of his work; +and if the co-operation of every hand, and the sympathy of every heart, +are to be received, we must be content to allow the redundance which +disguises the failure of the feeble, and wins the regard of the +inattentive. There are, however, far nobler interests mingling, in the +Gothic heart, with the rude love of decorative accumulation: a +magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough to +reach the fulness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, which +would rather cast fruitless labour before the altar than stand idle in +the market; and, finally, a profound sympathy with the fulness and +wealth of the material universe, rising out of that Naturalism whose +operation we have already endeavoured to define. The sculptor who +sought for his models among the forest leaves, could not but quickly +and deeply feel that complexity need not involve the loss of grace, nor +richness that of repose; and every hour which he spent in the study of +the minute and various work of Nature, made him feel more forcibly the +barrenness of what was best in that of man: nor is it to be wondered +at, that, seeing her perfect and exquisite creations poured forth in a +profusion which conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he +should think that it ill became him to be niggardly of his own rude +craftsmanship; and where he saw throughout the universe a faultless +beauty lavished on measureless spaces of broidered field and blooming +mountain, to grudge his poor and imperfect labour to the few stones +that he had raised one upon another, for habitation or memorial. The +years of his life passed away before his task was accomplished; but +generation succeeded generation with unwearied enthusiasm, and the +cathedral front was at last lost in the tapestry of its traceries, like +a rock among the thickets and herbage of spring. + + + [157] The third kind of ornament, the Renaissance, is that in which + the inferior detail becomes principal, the executor of every minor + portion being required to exhibit skill and possess knowledge as + great as that which is possessed by the master of the design; and + in the endeavour to endow him with this skill and knowledge, his + own original power is overwhelmed, and the whole building becomes a + wearisome exhibition of well-educated imbecility. We must fully + inquire into the nature of this form of error, when we arrive at + the examination of the Renaissance schools. [Ruskin.] + + [158] Job xix, 26. + + [159] _Matthew_ viii, 9. + + [160] Vide Preface to _Fair Maid of Perth_. [Ruskin.] + + [161] The Elgin marbles are supposed by many persons to be "perfect". + In the most important portions they indeed approach perfection, + but only there. The draperies are unfinished, the hair and wool + of the animals are unfinished, and the entire bas-reliefs of the + frieze are roughly cut. [Ruskin.] + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE + + + This book began to assume shape in Ruskin's mind as early as 1846; + he actually wrote it in the six months between November, 1848, and + April, 1849. It is the first of five illustrated volumes embodying + the results of seven years devoted to the study of the principles + and ideals of Gothic Architecture, the other volumes being _The + Stones of Venice_ and _Examples of the Architecture of Venice_ + (1851). In the first edition of _The Seven Lamps_ the plates were + not only all drawn but also etched by his own hand. Ruskin at a + later time wrote that the purpose of _The Seven Lamps_ was "to + show that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were + the magic powers by which all good architecture had been + produced." He is really applying here the same tests of truth and + sincerity that he employed in _Modern Painters_. Chronologically, + this volume and the others treating of architecture come between + the composition of Volumes II and III of _Modern Painters_. + Professor Charles Eliot Norton writes that the _Seven Lamps_ is + "the first treatise in English to teach the real significance of + architecture as the most trustworthy record of the life and faith + of nations." The following selections form the closing chapters of + the volume, and have a peculiar interest as anticipating the + social and political ideas which came to colour all his later + work. + + + + +THE LAMP OF MEMORY + + +Among the hours of his life to which the writer looks back with +peculiar gratitude, as having been marked by more than ordinary fulness +of joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some years ago, +near time of sunset, among the broken masses of pine forest which skirt +the course of the Ain, above the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. +It is a spot which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, +of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be +manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the rise +of the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterance of those +mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly +broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet +restrained; and the far reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed +each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet +waters from some far off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness +pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the stern +expression of the central ranges are alike withdrawn. No +frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient glacier fret the soft +Jura pastures; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her +forest; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and +changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear +green streams wind along their well-known beds; and under the dark +quietness of the undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such +company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the +blessings of the earth. It was spring time, too; and all were coming +forth in clusters crowded for very love; there was room enough for all, +but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to +be nearer each other. There was the wood anemone, star after star, +closing every now and then into nebulae; and there was the oxalis, +troop by troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie,[162] the +dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy +snow, and touched with ivy on the edges--ivy as light and lovely as the +vine; and, ever and anon, a blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in +sunny places; and in the more open ground, the vetch, and comfrey, and +mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, and the +wild strawberry, just a blossom or two all showered amidst the golden +softness of deep, warm, amber-coloured moss. I came out presently on +the edge of the ravine: the solemn murmur of its waters rose suddenly +from beneath, mixed with the singing of the thrushes among the pine +boughs; and, on the opposite side of the valley, walled all along as it +was by grey cliffs of limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off +their brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and with the shadows +of the pines flickering upon his plumage from above; but with the fall +of a hundred fathoms under his breast, and the curling pools of the +green river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam +globes moving with him as he flew. It would be difficult to conceive a +scene less dependent upon any other interest than that of its own +secluded and serious beauty; but the writer well remembers the sudden +blankness and chill which were cast upon it when he endeavoured, in +order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impressiveness, to +imagine it, for a moment, a scene in some aboriginal forest of the New +Continent. The flowers in an instant lost their light, the river its +music; the hills became oppressively desolate; a heaviness in the +boughs of the darkened forest showed how much of their former power had +been dependent upon a life which was not theirs, how much of the glory +of the imperishable, or continually renewed, creation is reflected from +things more precious in their memories than it, in its renewing. Those +ever springing flowers and ever flowing streams had been dyed by the +deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue; and the crests of +the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper +worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron wall of +Joux, and the four-square keep of Granson. + +It is as the centralization and protectress of this sacred influence, +that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious +thought. We may live without her, and worship without her, but we +cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all +imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the +uncorrupted marble bears!--how many pages of doubtful record might we +not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The ambition +of the old Babel builders was well directed for this world:[163] there +are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and +Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is +mightier in its reality: it is well to have, not only what men have +thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength +wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The age of +Homer is surrounded with darkness, his very personality with doubt. Not +so that of Pericles: and the day is coming when we shall confess, that +we have learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her +sculpture than even from her sweet singers or soldier historians. And +if indeed there be any profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joy +in the thought of being remembered hereafter, which can give strength +to present exertion, or patience to present endurance, there are two +duties respecting national architecture whose importance it is +impossible to overrate: the first, to render the architecture of the +day, historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious of +inheritances, that of past ages. + +It is in the first of these two directions that Memory may truly be +said to be the Sixth Lamp of Architecture; for it is in becoming +memorial or monumental that a true perfection is attained by civil and +domestic buildings; and this partly as they are, with such a view, +built in a more stable manner, and partly as their decorations are +consequently animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning. + +As regards domestic buildings, there must always be a certain +limitation to views of this kind in the power, as well as in the +hearts, of men; still I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people +when their houses are built to last for one generation only. There is a +sanctity in a good man's house which cannot be renewed in every +tenement that rises on its ruins: and I believe that good men would +generally feel this; and that having spent their lives happily and +honourably, they would be grieved, at the close of them, to think that +the place of their earthly abode, which had seen, and seemed almost to +sympathize in, all their honour, their gladness, or their +suffering,--that this, with all the record it bare of them, and of all +material things that they had loved and ruled over, and set the stamp +of themselves upon--was to be swept away, as soon as there was room +made for them in the grave; that no respect was to be shown to it, no +affection felt for it, no good to be drawn from it by their children; +that though there was a monument in the church, there was no warm +monument in the hearth and house to them; that all that they ever +treasured was despised, and the places that had sheltered and comforted +them were dragged down to the dust. I say that a good man would fear +this; and that, far more, a good son, a noble descendant, would fear +doing it to his father's house. I say that if men lived like men +indeed, their houses would be temples--temples which we should hardly +dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to +live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a +strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents +taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our +fathers' honour, or that our own lives are not such as would make our +dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to +himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only. +And I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring +up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our +capital--upon those thin, tottering, foundationless shells of splintered +wood and imitated stone--upon those gloomy rows of formalized +minuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, as +solitary as similar--not merely with the careless disgust of an +offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but +with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must +be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native +ground; that those comfortless and unhonoured dwellings are the signs +of a great and spreading spirit of popular discontent; that they mark +the time when every man's aim is to be in some more elevated sphere +than his natural one, and every man's past life is his habitual scorn; +when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, and +live in the hope of forgetting the years that they have lived; when the +comfort, the peace, the religion of home have ceased to be felt; and +the crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differ +only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy +openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of +earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of +stability without the luxury of change. + +This is no slight, no consequenceless evil; it is ominous, infectious, +and fecund of other fault and misfortune. When men do not love their +hearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have +dishonoured both, and that they have never acknowledged the true +universality of that Christian worship which was indeed to supersede +the idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household +God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's +dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly and pour out its +ashes. It is not a question of mere ocular delight, it is no question +of intellectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and +with what aspect of durability and of completeness, the domestic +buildings of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, +not with more impunity to be neglected because the perception of them +depends on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build our +dwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, and diligent +completion, and with a view to their duration at least for such a +period as, in the ordinary course of national revolutions, might be +supposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the direction of +local interests. This at the least; but it would be better if, in every +possible instance, men built their own houses on a scale commensurate +rather with their condition at the commencement, than their attainments +at the termination, of their worldly career; and built them to stand as +long as human work at its strongest can be hoped to stand; recording to +their children what they had been, and from what, if so it had been +permitted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may +have that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, which +does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the small +habitation as well as the large, and which invests with the dignity of +contented manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance. + +I look to this spirit of honourable, proud, peaceful self-possession, +this abiding wisdom of contented life, as probably one of the chief +sources of great intellectual power in all ages, and beyond dispute as +the very primal source of the great architecture of old Italy and +France. To this day, the interest of their fairest cities depends, not +on the isolated richness of palaces, but on the cherished and exquisite +decoration of even the smallest tenements of their proud periods. The +most elaborate piece of architecture in Venice is a small house at the +head of the Grand Canal, consisting of a ground floor with two storeys +above, three windows in the first, and two in the second. Many of the +most exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, and of no larger +dimensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fifteenth-century +architecture in North Italy, is a small house in a back street, behind +the market-place of Vicenza; it bears date 1481, and the motto, _Il. +n'est. rose. sans. epine_; it has also only a ground floor and two +storeys, with three windows in each, separated by rich flower-work, and +with balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with open wings, +the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopiae. The idea +that a house must be large in order to be well built, is altogether of +modern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be +historical, except of a size admitting figures larger than life. + +I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and +built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be, within +and without; with what degree of likeness to each other in style and +manner, I will say presently, under another head;[164] but, at all +events, with such differences as might suit and express each man's +character and occupation, and partly his history. This right over the +house, I conceive, belongs to its first builder, and is to be respected +by his children; and it would be well that blank stones should be left +in places, to be inscribed with a summary of his life and of its +experience, raising thus the habitation into a kind of monument, and +developing, into more systematic instructiveness, that good custom +which was of old universal, and which still remains among some of the +Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of God's permission to +build and possess a quiet resting-place, in such sweet words as may +well close our speaking of these things. I have taken them from the +front of a cottage lately built among the green pastures which descend +from the village of Grindelwald to the lower glacier:-- + + Mit herzlichem Vertrauen + Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi + Dieses Haus bauen lassen. + Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren + Vor allem Unglueck und Gefahren, + Und es in Segen lassen stehn + Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit + Nach dem himmlischen Paradiese, + Wo alle Frommen wohnen, + Da wird Gott sie belohnen + Mil der Friedenskrone + Zu alle Ewigkeit.[165] + +In public buildings the historical purpose should be still more +definite. It is one of the advantages of Gothic architecture,--I use +the word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly opposed to +classical,--that it admits of a richness of record altogether +unlimited. Its minute and multitudinous sculptural decorations afford +means of expressing, either symbolically or literally, all that need be +known of national feeling or achievement. More decoration will, indeed, +be usually required than can take so elevated a character; and much, +even in the most thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom of +fancy, or suffered to consist of mere repetitions of some national +bearing or symbol. It is, however, generally unwise, even in mere +surface ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of variety which +the spirit of Gothic architecture admits; much more in important +features--capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as of +course in all confessed has-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells +a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There +should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without +some intellectual intention. Actual representation of history has in +modern times been checked by a difficulty, mean indeed, but steadfast; +that of unmanageable costume: nevertheless, by a sufficiently bold +imaginative treatment, and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles may +be vanquished; not perhaps in the degree necessary to produce sculpture +in itself satisfactory, but at all events so as to enable it to become +a grand and expressive element of architectural composition. Take, for +example, the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice. +History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior, +but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning. The large +one, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted to +the symbolization of Abstract Justice; above it is a sculpture of the +Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful subjection in its +treatment to its decorative purpose. The figures, if the subject had +been entirely composed of them, would have awkwardly interrupted the +line of the angle, and diminished its apparent strength; and therefore +in the midst of them, entirely without relation to them, and indeed +actually between the executioner and interceding mother, there rises +the ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues the +shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and enrich the +whole. The capital below bears among its leafage a throned figure of +Justice, Trajan doing justice to the widow, Aristotle "che die legge," +and one or two other subjects now unintelligible from decay. The +capitals next in order represent the virtues and vices in succession, +as preservative or destructive of national peace and power, concluding +with Faith, with the inscription "Fides optima in Deo est." A figure is +seen on the opposite side of the capital, worshipping the sun. After +these, one or two capitals are fancifully decorated with birds, and +then come a series representing, first the various fruits, then the +national costumes, and then the animals of the various countries +subject to Venetian rule. + +Now, not to speak of any more important public building, let us imagine +our own India House adorned in this way, by historical or symbolical +sculpture: massively built in the first place; then chased with +has-reliefs of our Indian battles, and fretted with carvings of +Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental stones; and the more +important members of its decoration composed of groups of Indian life +and landscape, and prominently expressing the phantasms of Hindoo +worship in their subjection to the Cross. Would not one such work be +better than a thousand histories? If, however, we have not the +invention necessary for such efforts, or if, which is probably one of +the most noble excuses we can offer for our deficiency in such matters, +we have less pleasure in talking about ourselves, even in marble, than +the Continental nations, at least we have no excuse for any want of +care in the points which insure the building's endurance. And as this +question is one of great interest in its relations to the choice of +various modes of decoration, it will be necessary to enter into it at +some length. + +The benevolent regards and purposes of men in masses seldom can be +supposed to extend beyond their own generation. They may look to +posterity as an audience, may hope for its attention, and labour for +its praise: they may trust to its recognition of unacknowledged merit, +and demand its justice for contemporary wrong. But all this is mere +selfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, or +consideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers we would fain +swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would +gladly support our presently disputed claims. The idea of self-denial +for the sake of posterity, of practising present economy for the sake +of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants may +live under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations to +inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly +recognized motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less our duties; +nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the range of our +intended and deliberate usefulness include, not only the companions but +the successors, of our pilgrimage. God has lent us the earth for our +life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come +after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, +as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to +involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits +which it was in our power to bequeath. And this the more, because it is +one of the appointed conditions of the labour of men that, in +proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and the harvest, is the +fulness of the fruit; and that generally, therefore, the farther off we +place our aim, and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of +what we have laboured for, the more wide and rich will be the measure +of our success. Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they can +benefit those who come after them; and of all the pulpits from which +human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so +far as from the grave. + +Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect for futurity. +Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true magnificence, +by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the +quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, +separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no +action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test. +Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it +not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such +work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay +stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held +sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as +they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, "See! this our +fathers did for us." For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is +not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in +that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious +sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls +that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in +their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the +transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through +the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, +and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the +sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, +connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half +constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations: +it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real +light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not +until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted +with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have +been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of +death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the +natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much +as these possess, of language and of life. + +For that period, then, we must build; not, indeed, refusing to +ourselves the delight of present completion, nor hesitating to follow +such portions of character as may depend upon delicacy of execution to +the highest perfection of which they are capable, even although we may +know that in the course of years such details must perish; but taking +care that for work of this kind we sacrifice no enduring quality, and +that the building shall not depend for its impressiveness upon anything +that is perishable. This would, indeed, be the law of good composition +under any circumstances, the arrangement of the larger masses being +always a matter of greater importance than the treatment of the +smaller; but in architecture there is much in that very treatment which +is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the +probable effects of time: and (which is still more to be considered) +there is a beauty in those effects themselves, which nothing else can +replace, and which it is our wisdom to consult and to desire. For +though, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of age only, +there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, such and so great as to +have become not unfrequently the subject of especial choice among +certain schools of art, and to have impressed upon those schools the +character usually and loosely expressed by the term "picturesque.".... + +Now, to return to our immediate subject, it so happens that, in +architecture, the superinduced and accidental beauty is most commonly +inconsistent with the preservation of original character, and the +picturesque is therefore sought in ruin, and supposed to consist in +decay. Whereas, even when so sought, it consists in the mere sublimity +of the rents, or fractures, or stains, or vegetation, which assimilate +the architecture with the work of Nature, and bestow upon it those +circumstances of colour and form which are universally beloved by the +eye of man. So far as this is done, to the extinction of the true +characters of the architecture, it is picturesque, and the artist who +looks to the stem of the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar, is +carrying out in more daring freedom the debased sculptor's choice of +the hair instead of the countenance. But so far as it can be rendered +consistent with the inherent character, the picturesque or extraneous +sublimity of architecture has just this of nobler function in it than +that of any other object whatsoever, that it is an exponent of age, of +that in which, as has been said, the greatest glory of the building +consists; and, therefore, the external signs of this glory, having +power and purpose greater than any belonging to their mere sensible +beauty, may be considered as taking rank among pure and essential +characters; so essential to my mind, that I think a building cannot be +considered as in its prime until four or five centuries have passed +over it; and that the entire choice and arrangement of its details +should have reference to their appearance after that period, so that +none should be admitted which would suffer material injury either by +the weather-staining, or the mechanical degradation which the lapse of +such a period would necessitate. + +It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions which the +application of this principle involves. They are of too great interest +and complexity to be even touched upon within my present limits, but +this is broadly to be noticed, that those styles of architecture which +are picturesque in the sense above explained with respect to sculpture, +that is to say, whose decoration depends on the arrangement of points +of shade rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but commonly +gain in richness of effect when their details are partly worn away; +hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should always +be adopted when the materials to be employed are liable to degradation, +as brick, sandstone, or soft limestone; and styles in any degree +dependent on purity of line, as the Italian Gothic, must be practised +altogether in hard and undecomposing materials, granite, serpentine, or +crystalline marbles. There can be no doubt that the nature of the +accessible materials influenced the formation of both styles; and it +should still more authoritatively determine our choice of either. + +It does not belong to my present plan to consider at length the second +head of duty of which I have above spoken; the preservation of the +architecture we possess: but a few words may be forgiven, as especially +necessary in modern times. Neither by the public, nor by those who have +the care of public monuments, is the true meaning of the word +_restoration_ understood. It means the most total destruction which a +building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be +gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing +destroyed. Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; it +is _impossible_, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore +anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That +which I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit +which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, never can be +recalled. Another spirit may be given by another time, and it is then a +new building; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be summoned up, +and commanded to direct other hands, and other thoughts. And as for +direct and simple copying, it is palpably impossible. What copying can +there be of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down? The whole +finish of the work was in the half inch that is gone; if you attempt to +restore that finish, you do it conjecturally; if you copy what is left, +granting fidelity to be possible (and what care, or watchfulness, or +cost can secure it,) how is the new work better than the old? There was +yet in the old _some_ life, some mysterious suggestion of what it had +been, and of what it had lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines which +rain and sun had wrought. There can be none in the brute hardness of +the new carving. Look at the animals which I have given in Plate XIV., +as an instance of living work, and suppose the markings of the scales +and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who shall +ever restore them? The first step to restoration, (I have seen it, and +that again and again--seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on +the Casa d'Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux,) is to +dash the old work to pieces; the second is usually to put up the +cheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection, but in all +cases, however careful, and however laboured, an imitation still, a +cold model of such parts as _can_ be modelled, with conjectural +supplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one +instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, +the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained, or +even attempted.[166] + +Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from +beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a +corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as +your cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see +nor care: but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and +mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a +mass of clay: more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever +will be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there may come a +necessity for restoration! Granted. Look the necessity full in the +face, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for +destruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its +stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you +will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place. And +look that necessity in the face before it comes, and you may prevent +it. The principle of modern times, (a principle which, I believe, at +least in France, to be _systematically acted on by the masons_, in +order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen was pulled down +by the magistrates of the town by way of giving work to some vagrants,) +is to neglect buildings first, and restore them afterwards. Take proper +care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. A few +sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks +swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from +ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you +may, and at _any_ cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Count its +stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at +the gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where it +loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the +unsightliness of the aid: better a crutch than a lost limb; and do this +tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation will +still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its evil day must come +at last; but let it come declaredly and openly, and let no dishonouring +and false substitute deprive it of the funeral offices of memory. + +Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to speak; my words will +not reach those who commit them, and yet, be it heard or not, I must +not leave the truth unstated, that it is again no question of +expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past +times or not. _We have no right whatever to touch them_. They are not +ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the +generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead have still their +right in them: that which they laboured for, the praise of achievement +or the expression of religious feeling, or whatsoever else it might be +which in those buildings they intended to be permanent, we have no +right to obliterate. What we have ourselves built, we are at liberty to +throw down; but what other men gave their strength and wealth and life +to accomplish, their right over does not pass away with their death; +still less is the right to the use of what they have left vested in us +only. It belongs to all their successors. It may hereafter be a subject +of sorrow, or a cause of injury, to millions, that we have consulted +our present convenience by casting down such buildings as we choose to +dispense with. That sorrow, that loss, we have no right to inflict. Did +the cathedral of Avranches[167] belong to the mob who destroyed it, any +more than it did to us, who walk in sorrow to and fro over its +foundation? Neither does any building whatever belong to those mobs who +do violence to it. For a mob it is, and must be always; it matters not +whether enraged, or in deliberate folly; whether countless, or sitting +in committees; the people who destroy anything causelessly are a mob, +and Architecture is always destroyed causelessly. A fair building is +necessarily worth the ground it stands upon, and will be so until +Central Africa and America shall have become as populous as Middlesex: +nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for its destruction. If +ever valid, certainly not now, when the place both of the past and +future is too much usurped in our minds by the restless and +discontented present. The very quietness of nature is gradually +withdrawn from us; thousands who once in their necessarily prolonged +travel were subjected to an influence, from the silent sky and +slumbering fields, more effectual than known or confessed, now bear +with them even there the ceaseless fever of their life; and along the +iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the +fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All +vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the +central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow +bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon the +city gates. The only influence which can in any wise _there_ take the +place of that of the woods and fields, is the power of ancient +Architecture. Do not part with it for the sake of the formal square, or +of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly street nor opened +quay. The pride of a city is not in these. Leave them to the crowd; but +remember that there will surely be some within the circuit of the +disquieted walls who would ask for some other spots than these wherein +to walk; for some other forms to meet their sight familiarly: like +him[168] who sat so often where the sun struck from the west to watch the +lines of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like those, his +Hosts, who could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, the +places where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of the dark +streets of Verona. + + + [162] May-day processions in honour of the Virgin. + + [163] _Genesis_ xi, 4. + + [164] See pp. 225 ff. + + [165] In heartfelt trust Johannes Mooter and Maria Rubi had this + house erected. May dear God shield us from all perils and + misfortune; and let His blessing rest upon it during the journey + through this wretched life up to heavenly Paradise where the pious + dwell. There will God reward them with the Crown of Peace to all + eternity. + + [166] Baptistery of Pisa, circular, of marble, with dome two + hundred feet high, embellished with numerous columns, is a notable + work of the twelfth century. The pulpit is a masterpiece of Nicola + Pisano. Casa d'Oro at Venice is noted for its elegance. It was + built in the fourteenth century. The Cathedral of Lisieux dates + chiefly from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and contains + many works of art. The Palais de Justice is of the fifteenth + century. It was built for the Parliament of the Province. + + [167] This cathedral, destroyed in 1799, was one of the most + beautiful in all Normandy. + + [168] Dante. + + + + +THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE + + +It has been my endeavour to show in the preceding pages how every form +of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the Polity, +Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing +this, I have named a principle to which I would now assign a definite +place among those which direct that embodiment; the last place, not +only as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather as +belonging to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest; +that principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stability, Life its +happiness, Faith its acceptance, Creation its continuance,--Obedience. + +Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious satisfaction +which I have found in the pursuit of a subject that at first appeared +to bear but slightly on the grave interests of mankind, that the +conditions of material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to +consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the conception, how +frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call +Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest +ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but +its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. +There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the +sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only +for our heaviest punishment. + +In one of the noblest poems[169] for its imagery and its music belonging +to the recent school of our literature, the writer has sought in the +aspect of inanimate nature the expression of that Liberty which, having +once loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes of darkness. But +with what strange fallacy of interpretation! since in one noble line of +his invocation he has contradicted the assumptions of the rest, and +acknowledged the presence of a subjection, surely not less severe +because eternal. How could he otherwise? since if there be any one +principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or +more sternly than another imprinted on every atom, of the visible +creation, that principle is not Liberty, but Law. + +The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the Law of Liberty. +Then why use the single and misunderstood word? If by liberty you mean +chastisement of the passions, discipline of the intellect, subjection +of the will; if you mean the fear of inflicting, the shame of +committing, a wrong; if you mean respect for all who are in authority, +and consideration for all who are in dependence; veneration for the +good, mercy to the evil, sympathy with the weak; if you mean +watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all pleasures, and +perseverance in all toils; if you mean, in a word, that Service which +is defined in the liturgy of the English church to be perfect Freedom, +why do you name this by the same word by which the luxurious mean +license, and the reckless mean change; by which the rogue means rapine, +and the fool, equality; by which the proud mean anarchy, and the +malignant mean violence? Call it by any name rather than this, but its +best and truest, is Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind +of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is +only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus, while a +measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of +things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all +consist in their Restraint. Compare a river that has burst its banks +with one that is bound by them, and the clouds that are scattered over +the face of the whole heaven with those that are marshalled into ranks +and orders by its winds. So that though restraint, utter and +unrelaxing, can never be comely, this is not because it is in itself an +evil, but only because, when too great, it overpowers the nature of the +thing restrained, and so counteracts the other laws of which that +nature is itself composed. And the balance wherein consists the +fairness of creation is between the laws of life and being in the +things governed, and the laws of general sway to which they are +subjected; and the suspension or infringement of either, kind of law, +or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and synonymous with, +disease; while the increase of both honour and beauty is habitually on +the side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than of +character (or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in the +catalogue of social virtue is "Loyalty," and the sweetest which men +have learned in the pastures of the wilderness is "Fold." + +Nor is this all; but we may observe, that exactly in proportion to the +majesty of things in the scale of being, is the completeness of their +obedience to the laws that are set over them. Gravitation is less +quietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than it is by the sun +and moon; and the ocean falls and flows under influences which the lake +and river do not recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of any +action or occupation of men, there is perhaps no better test than the +question "are its laws strait?" For their severity will probably be +commensurate with the greatness of the numbers whose labour it +concentrates or whose interest it concerns. + +This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art, +above all others, whose productions are the most vast and the most +common; which requires for its practice the co-operation of bodies of +men, and for its perfection the perseverance of successive generations. +And, taking into account also what we have before so often observed of +Architecture, her continual influence over the emotions of daily life, +and her realism, as opposed to the two sister arts which are in +comparison but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we might +beforehand expect that we should find her healthy state and action +dependent on far more severe laws than theirs: that the license which +they extend to the workings of individual mind would be withdrawn by +her; and that, in assertion of the relations which she holds with all +that is universally important to man, she would set forth, by her own +majestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man's social +happiness and power depend. We might, therefore, without the light of +experience, conclude, that Architecture never could flourish except +when it was subjected to a national law as strict and as minutely +authoritative as the laws which regulate religion, policy, and social +relations; nay, even more authoritative than these, because both +capable of more enforcement, as over more passive matter; and needing +more enforcement, as the purest type not of one law nor of another, but +of the common authority of all. But in this matter experience speaks +more loudly than reason. If there be any one condition which, in +watching the progress of architecture, we see distinct and general; if, +amidst the counter-evidence of success attending opposite accidents of +character and circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly and +indisputably drawn, it is this; that the architecture of a nation is +great only when it is as universal and as established as its language; +and when provincial differences of style are nothing more than so many +dialects. Other necessities are matters of doubt: nations have been +alike successful in their architecture in times of poverty and of +wealth; in times of war and of peace; in times of barbarism and of +refinement; under governments the most liberal or the most arbitrary; +but this one condition has been constant, this one requirement clear in +all places and at all times, that the work shall be that of a _school_, +that no individual caprice shall dispense with, or materially vary, +accepted types and customary decorations; and that from the cottage to +the palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from the garden +fence to the fortress wall, every member and feature of the +architecture of the nation shall be as commonly current, as frankly +accepted, as its language or its coin. + +A day never passes without our hearing our English architects called +upon to be original, and to invent a new style: about as sensible and +necessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had rags +enough on his back to keep out cold, to invent a new mode of cutting a +coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him concern himself about +the fashion of it afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Who +wants a new style of painting or sculpture? But we want some style. It +is of marvellously little importance, if we have a code of laws and +they be good laws, whether they be new or old, foreign or native, Roman +or Saxon, or Norman, or English laws. But it is of considerable +importance that we should have a code of laws of one kind or another, +and that code accepted and enforced from one side of the island to +another, and not one law made ground of judgment at York and another in +Exeter. And in like manner it does not matter one marble splinter +whether we have an old or new architecture, but it matters everything +whether we have an architecture truly so called or not; that is, +whether an architecture whose laws might be taught at our schools from +Cornwall to Northumberland, as we teach English spelling and English +grammar, or an architecture which is to be invented fresh every time we +build a workhouse or a parish school. There seems to me to be a +wonderful misunderstanding among the majority of architects at the +present day as to the very nature and meaning of Originality, and of +all wherein it consists. Originality in expression does not depend on +invention of new words; nor originality in poetry on invention of new +measures; nor, in painting, on invention of new colours, or new modes +of using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of colour, the +general principles of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have been +determined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to any +more than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, such +additions or alterations are much more the work of time and of +multitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck,[170] +who will be known as the introducer of a new style once in ten +centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to some accidental +by-play or pursuit; and the use of that invention will depend +altogether on the popular necessities or instincts of the period. +Originality depends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the gift, +will take up any style that is going, the style of his day, and will +work in that, and be great in that, and make everything that he does in +it look as fresh as if every thought of it had just come down from +heaven. I do not say that he will not take liberties with his +materials, or with his rules: I do not say that strange changes will +not sometimes be wrought by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. But +those changes will be instructive, natural, facile, though sometimes +marvellous; they will never be sought after as things necessary to his +dignity or to his independence; and those liberties will be like the +liberties that a great speaker takes with the language, not a defiance +of its rules for the sake of singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated, +and brilliant consequences of an effort to express what the language, +without such infraction, could not. There may be times when, as I have +above described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, and +in its refusal of ancient limitations: so there are in the life of an +insect; and there is great interest in the state of both the art and +the insect at those periods when, by their natural progress and +constitutional power, such changes are about to be wrought. But as that +would be both an Uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, instead +of being contented with a caterpillar's life and feeding on +caterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself into a +chrysalis; and as that would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie +awake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn +itself prematurely into a moth; so will that art be unhappy and +unprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the food, and +contenting itself with the customs, which have been enough for the +support and guidance of other arts before it and like it, is struggling +and fretting under the natural limitations of its existence, and +striving to become something other than it is. And though it is the +nobility of the highest creatures to look forward to, and partly to +understand the changes which are appointed for them, preparing for them +beforehand; and if, as is usual with _appointed_ changes, they be into +a higher state, even desiring them, and rejoicing in the hope of them, +yet it is the strength of every creature, be it changeful or not, to +rest for the time being, contented with the conditions of its +existence, and striving only to bring about the changes which it +desires, by fulfilling to the uttermost the duties for which its +present state is appointed and continued. + +Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though both may be, +and this is commonly a most merciful and enthusiastic supposition with +respect to either, is ever to be sought in itself, or can ever be +healthily obtained by any struggle or rebellion against common laws. We +want neither the one nor the other. The forms of architecture already +known are good enough for us, and for far better than any of us: and it +will be time enough to think of changing them for better when we can +use them as they are. But there are some things which we not only want, +but cannot do without; and which all the struggling and raving in the +world, nay more, which all the real talent and resolution in England, +will never enable us to do without: and these are Obedience, Unity, +Fellowship, and Order. And all our schools of design, and committees of +taste; all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and essays; all +the sacrifices which we are beginning to make, all the truth which +there is in our English nature, all the power of our English will, and +the life of our English intellect, will in this matter be as useless as +efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit +architecture and all art, like other things, to English law. + +I say architecture and all art; for I believe architecture must be the +beginning of arts, and that the others must follow her in their time +and order; and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting and +sculpture, in which no one will deny the life, though many the health, +depends upon that of our architecture. I think that all will languish +until that takes the lead, and (this I do not _think_, but I proclaim, +as confidently as I would assert the necessity, for the safety of +society, of an understood and strongly administered legal government) +our architecture _will_ languish, and that in the very dust, until the +first principle of common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal +system of form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. It +may be said that this is impossible. It may be so--I fear it is so: I +have nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of it; I +simply know and assert the necessity of it. If it be impossible, +English art is impossible. Give it up at once. You are wasting time, +and money, and energy upon it, and though you exhaust centuries and +treasures, and break hearts for it, you will never raise it above the +merest dilettanteism. Think not of it. It is a dangerous vanity, a mere +gulph in which genius after genius will be swallowed up, and it will +not close. And so it will continue to be, unless the one bold and broad +step be taken at the beginning. We shall not manufacture art out of +pottery and printed stuffs; we shall not reason out art by our +philosophy; we shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, nor +create it by our fancies: I do not say that we can even build it out of +brick and stone; but there is a chance for us in these, and there is +none else; and that chance rests on the bare possibility of obtaining +the consent, both of architects and of the public, to choose a style, +and to use it universally. + +How surely its principles ought at first to be limited, we may easily +determine by the consideration of the necessary modes of teaching any +other branch of general knowledge. When we begin to teach children +writing, we force them to absolute copyism, and require absolute +accuracy in the formation of the letters; as they obtain command of the +received modes of literal expression, we cannot prevent their falling +into such variations as are consistent with their feeling, their +circumstances, or their characters. So, when a boy is first taught to +write Latin, an authority is required of him for every expression he +uses; as he becomes master of the language he may take a license, and +feel his right to do so without any authority, and yet write better +Latin than when he borrowed every separate expression. In the same way +our architects would have to be taught to write the accepted style. We +must first determine what buildings are to be considered Augustan in +their authority; their modes of construction and laws of proportion are +to be studied with the most penetrating care; then the different forms +and uses of their decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as a +German grammarian classes the powers of prepositions; and under this +absolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work; admitting +not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto,[171] or the +breadth of a fillet. Then, when our sight is once accustomed to the +grammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the +expression of them all; when we can speak this dead language naturally, +and apply it to whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, to +every practical purpose of life; then, and not till then, a license +might be permitted, and individual authority allowed to change or to +add to the received forms, always within certain limits; the +decorations, especially, might be made subjects of variable fancy, and +enriched with ideas either original or taken from other schools. And +thus, in process of time and by a great national movement, it might +come to pass that a new style should arise, as language itself changes; +we might perhaps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak +modern instead of old English; but this would be a matter of entire +indifference, and a matter, besides, which no determination or desire +could either hasten or prevent. That alone which it is in our power to +obtain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous style of +some kind, and such comprehension and practice of it as would enable us +to adapt its features to the peculiar character of every several +building, large or small, domestic, civil or ecclesiastical. + + + [169] Coleridge's _Ode to France_. + + [170] Hubert Van Eyck [1366-1440]. The great Flemish master. + + [171] A hollowed moulding. [New Eng. Dict.] + + + + +SELECTIONS FROM LECTURES ON ART + + + Ruskin was first elected to the Slade Professorship of Fine Art in + Oxford in 1869, and held the chair continuously until 1878, when + he resigned because of ill-health, and again from 1883 to 1885. + The _Lectures on Art_ were announced in the _Oxford University + Gazette_ of January 28, 1870, the general subject of the course + being "The Limits and Elementary Practice of Art," with Leonardo's + _Trattato della Pittura_ as the text-book. The lectures were + delivered between February 8 and March 23, 1870. They appeared in + book form in July of the same year. These lectures contain much of + his best and most mature thought, of his most painstaking research + and keenest analysis. Talking with a friend in later years, he + said: "I have taken more pains with the Oxford Lectures than with + anything else I have ever done": and in the preface to the edition + of 1887 he began: "The following lectures were the most important + piece of my literary work, done with unabated power, best motive, + and happiest concurrence of circumstance." Ruskin took his + professorship very seriously. He spent almost infinite labour in + composing his more formal lectures, and during the eight years + in which he held the chair he published six volumes of them, not + to mention three Italian guide-books, which came under his + interpretation of his professional duties;--"the real duty + involved in my Oxford Professorship cannot be completely done by + giving lectures in Oxford only, but ... I ought also to give what + guidance I may to travellers in Italy." Not only by lecturing and + writing did he fill the chair, but he taught individuals, founded + and endowed a Drawing mastership, and presented elaborately + catalogued collections to illustrate his subject. His lecture + classes were always large, and his work had a marked influence in + the University. + + + +INAUGURAL + + +We see lately a most powerful impulse given to the production of +costly works of art by the various causes which promote the sudden +accumulation of wealth in the hands of private persons. We have thus a +vast and new patronage, which, in its present agency, is injurious to +our schools; but which is nevertheless in a great degree earnest and +conscientious, and far from being influenced chiefly by motives of +ostentation. Most of our rich men would be glad to promote the true +interests of art in this country; and even those who buy for vanity, +found their vanity on the possession of what they suppose to be best. + +It is therefore in a great measure the fault of artists themselves if +they suffer from this partly unintelligent, but thoroughly +well-intended patronage. If they seek to attract it by eccentricity, +to deceive it by superficial qualities, or take advantage of it by +thoughtless and facile production, they necessarily degrade themselves +and it together, and have no right to complain afterwards that it will +not acknowledge better-grounded claims. But if every painter of real +power would do only what he knew to be worthy of himself, and refuse +to be involved in the contention for undeserved or accidental success, +there is indeed, whatever may have been thought or said to the +contrary, true instinct enough in the public mind to follow such firm +guidance. It is one of the facts which the experience of thirty years +enables me to assert without qualification, that a really good picture +is ultimately always approved and bought, unless it is wilfully +rendered offensive to the public by faults which the artist has been +either too proud to abandon or too weak to correct. + +The development of whatever is healthful and serviceable in the two +modes of impulse which we have been considering, depends however, +ultimately, on the direction taken by the true interest in art which +has lately been aroused by the great and active genius of many of our +living, or but lately lost, painters, sculptors, and architects. It +may perhaps surprise, but I think it will please you to hear me, or +(if you will forgive me, in my own Oxford, the presumption of fancying +that some may recognize me by an old name) to hear the author of +_Modern Painters_ say, that his chief error in earlier days was not in +over-estimating, but in too slightly acknowledging the merit of living +men. The great painter whose power, while he was yet among us, I was +able to perceive,[172] was the first to reprove me for my disregard of +the skill of his fellow-artists; and, with this inauguration of the +study of the art of all time,--a study which can only by true modesty +end in wise admiration,--it is surely well that I connect the record +of these words of his, spoken then too truly to myself, and true +always more or less for all who are untrained in that toil,--"You +don't know how difficult it is." + +You will not expect me, within the compass of this lecture, to give +you any analysis of the many kinds of excellent art (in all the three +great divisions) which the complex demands of modern life, and yet +more varied instincts of modern genius, have developed for pleasure or +service. It must be my endeavour, in conjunction with my colleagues in +other Universities, hereafter to enable you to appreciate these +worthily; in the hope that also the members of the Royal Academy, and +those of the Institute of British Architects, may be induced to +assist, and guide, the efforts of the Universities, by organizing such +a system of art education for their own students, as shall in future +prevent the waste of genius in any mistaken endeavours; especially +removing doubt as to the proper substance and use of materials; and +requiring compliance with certain elementary principles of right, in +every picture and design exhibited with their sanction. It is not +indeed possible for talent so varied as that of English artists to be +compelled into the formalities of a determined school; but it must +certainly be the function of every academical body to see that their +younger students are guarded from what must in every school be error; +and that they are practised in the best methods of work hitherto +known, before their ingenuity is directed to the invention of others. + +I need scarcely refer, except for the sake of completeness in my +statement, to one form of demand for art which is wholly +unenlightened, and powerful only for evil;--namely, the demand of the +classes occupied solely in the pursuit of pleasure, for objects and +modes of art that can amuse indolence or excite passion. There is no +need for any discussion of these requirements, or of their forms of +influence, though they are very deadly at present in their operation +on sculpture, and on jewellers' work. They cannot be checked by blame, +nor guided by instruction; they are merely the necessary results of +whatever defects exist in the temper and principles of a luxurious +society; and it is only by moral changes, not by art-criticism, that +their action can be modified. + +Lastly, there is a continually increasing demand for popular art, +multipliable by the printing-press, illustrative of daily events, of +general literature, and of natural science. Admirable skill, and some +of the best talent of modern times, are occupied in supplying this +want; and there is no limit to the good which may be effected by +rightly taking advantage of the powers we now possess of placing good +and lovely art within the reach of the poorest classes. Much has been +already accomplished; but great harm has been done also,--first, by +forms of art definitely addressed to depraved tastes; and, secondly, +in a more subtle way, by really beautiful and useful engravings which +are yet not good enough to retain their influence on the public +mind;--which weary it by redundant quantity of monotonous average +excellence, and diminish or destroy its power of accurate attention to +work of a higher order. + +Especially this is to be regretted in the effect produced on the +schools of line engraving, which had reached in England an executive +skill of a kind before unexampled, and which of late have lost much of +their more sterling and legitimate methods. Still, I have seen plates +produced quite recently, more beautiful, I think, in some qualities +than anything ever before attained by the burin:[173] and I have not the +slightest fear that photography, or any other adverse or competitive +operation, will in the least ultimately diminish,--I believe they will, +on the contrary, stimulate and exalt--the grand old powers of the wood +and the steel. + +Such are, I think, briefly the present conditions of art with which +we have to deal; and I conceive it to be the function of this +Professorship, with respect to them, to establish both a practical and +critical school of fine art for English gentlemen: practical, so that, +if they draw at all, they may draw rightly; and critical, so that, +being first directed to such works of existing art as will best reward +their study, they may afterwards make their patronage of living +artists delightful to themselves in their consciousness of its +justice, and, to the utmost, beneficial to their country, by being +given only to the men who deserve it; in the early period of their +lives, when they both need it most and can be influenced by it to the +best advantage. + +And especially with reference to this function of patronage, I believe +myself justified in taking into account future probabilities as to the +character and range of art in England; and I shall endeavour at once to +organize with you a system of study calculated to develope chiefly the +knowledge of those branches in which the English schools have shown, +and are likely to show, peculiar excellence. + +Now, in asking your sanction both for the nature of the general plans I +wish to adopt, and for what I conceive to be necessary limitations of +them, I wish you to be fully aware of my reasons for both: and I will +therefore risk the burdening of your patience while I state the +directions of effort in which I think English artists are liable to +failure, and those also in which past experience has shown they are +secure of success. + +I referred, but now, to the effort we are making to improve the designs +of our manufactures. Within certain limits I believe this improvement +may indeed take effect: so that we may no more humour momentary +fashions by ugly results of chance instead of design; and may produce +both good tissues, of harmonious colours, and good forms and substance +of pottery and glass. But we shall never excel in decorative design. +Such design is usually produced by people of great natural powers of +mind, who have no variety of subjects to employ themselves on, no +oppressive anxieties, and are in circumstances either of natural +scenery or of daily life, which cause pleasurable excitement. _We_ +cannot design because we have too much to think of, and we think of it +too anxiously. It has long been observed how little real anxiety exists +in the minds of the partly savage races which excel in decorative art; +and we must not suppose that the temper of the middle ages was a +troubled one, because every day brought its dangers or its changes. The +very eventfulness of the life rendered it careless, as generally is +still the case with soldiers and sailors. Now, when there are great +powers of thought, and little to think of, all the waste energy and +fancy are thrown into the manual work, and you have as much intellect +as would direct the affairs of a large mercantile concern for a day, +spent all at once, quite unconsciously, in drawing an ingenious spiral. + +Also, powers of doing fine ornamental work are only to be reached by a +perpetual discipline of the hand as well as of the fancy; discipline as +attentive and painful as that which a juggler has to put himself +through, to overcome the more palpable difficulties of his profession. +The execution of the best artists is always a splendid tour-de-force, +and much that in painting is supposed to be dependent on material is +indeed only a lovely and quite inimitable legerdemain. Now, when powers +of fancy, stimulated by this triumphant precision of manual dexterity, +descend uninterruptedly from generation to generation, you have at +last, what is not so much a trained artist as a new species of animal, +with whose instinctive gifts you have no chance of contending. And thus +all our imitations of other peoples' work are futile. We must learn +first to make honest English wares, and afterward to decorate them as +may please the then approving Graces. + +Secondly--and this is an incapacity of a graver kind, yet having its +own good in it also--we shall never be successful in the highest fields +of ideal or theological art. + +For there is one strange, but quite essential, character in us--ever +since the Conquest, if not earlier:--a delight in the forms of burlesque +which are connected in some degree with the foulness in evil. I think +the most perfect type of a true English mind in its best possible +temper, is that of Chaucer; and you will find that, while it is for +the most part full of thoughts of beauty, pure and wild like that of +an April morning, there are, even in the midst of this, sometimes +momentarily jesting passages which stoop to play with evil--while the +power of listening to and enjoying the jesting of entirely gross +persons, whatever the feeling may be which permits it, afterwards +degenerates into forms of humour which render some of quite the +greatest, wisest, and most moral of English writers now almost useless +for our youth. And yet you will find that whenever Englishmen are +wholly without this instinct, their genius is comparatively weak and +restricted. + +Now, the first necessity for the doing of any great work in ideal art, +is the looking upon all foulness with horror, as a contemptible though +dreadful enemy. You may easily understand what I mean, by comparing +the feelings with which Dante regards any form of obscenity or of base +jest, with the temper in which the same things are regarded by +Shakspere. And this strange earthly instinct of ours, coupled as it +is, in our good men, with great simplicity and common sense, renders +them shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual nature, +low or high; but precludes them from that speciality of art which is +properly called sublime. If ever we try anything in the manner of +Michael Angelo or of Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, as +Milton in the battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod:[174] while in +art, every attempt in this style has hitherto been the sign either of +the presumptuous egotism of persons who had never really learned to be +workmen, or it has been connected with very tragic forms of the +contemplation of death,--it has always been partly insane, and never +once wholly successful. + +But we need not feel any discomfort in these limitations of our +capacity. We can do much that others cannot, and more than we have +ever yet ourselves completely done. Our first great gift is in the +portraiture of living people--a power already so accomplished in both +Reynolds and Gainsborough, that nothing is left for future masters but +to add the calm of perfect workmanship to their vigour and felicity of +perception. And of what value a true school of portraiture may become +in the future, when worthy men will desire only to be known, and +others will not fear to know them, for what they truly were, we cannot +from any past records of art influence yet conceive. But in my next +address it will be partly my endeavour to show you how much more +useful, because more humble, the labour of great masters might have +been, had they been content to bear record of the souls that were +dwelling with them on earth, instead of striving to give a deceptive +glory to those they dreamed of in heaven. + +Secondly, we have an intense power of invention and expression in +domestic drama; (King Lear and Hamlet being essentially domestic in +their strongest motives of interest). There is a tendency at this +moment towards a noble development of our art in this direction, +checked by many adverse conditions, which may be summed in one,--the +insufficiency of generous civic or patriotic passion in the heart of +the English people; a fault which makes its domestic affections +selfish, contracted, and, therefore, frivolous. + +Thirdly, in connection with our simplicity and good-humour, and partly +with that very love of the grotesque which debases our ideal, we have a +sympathy with the lower animals which is peculiarly our own; and which, +though it has already found some exquisite expression in the works of +Bewick and Landseer, is yet quite undeveloped. This sympathy, with the +aid of our now authoritative science of physiology, and in association +with our British love of adventure, will, I hope, enable us to give to +the future inhabitants of the globe an almost perfect record of the +present forms of animal life upon it, of which many are on the point of +being extinguished.... + +While I myself hold this professorship, I shall direct you in these +exercises very definitely to natural history, and to landscape; not +only because in these two branches I am probably able to show you +truths which might be despised by my successors; but because I think +the vital and joyful study of natural history quite the principal +element requiring introduction, not only into University, but into +national, education, from highest to lowest; and I even will risk +incurring your ridicule by confessing one of my fondest dreams, that I +may succeed in making some of you English youths like better to look at +a bird than to shoot it; and even desire to make wild creatures tame, +instead of tame creatures wild. And for the study of landscape, it is, +I think, now calculated to be of use in deeper, if not more important +modes, than that of natural science, for reasons which I will ask you +to let me state at some length. + +Observe first;--no race of men which is entirety bred in wild country, +far from cities, ever enjoys landscape. They may enjoy the beauty of +animals, but scarcely even that: a true peasant cannot see the beauty +of cattle; but only the qualities expressive of their serviceableness. +I waive discussion of this to-day; permit my assertion of it, under my +confident guarantee of future proof. Landscape can only be enjoyed by +cultivated persons; and it is only by music, literature, and painting, +that cultivation can be given. Also, the faculties which are thus +received are hereditary; so that the child of an educated race has an +innate instinct for beauty, derived from arts practised hundreds of +years before its birth. Now farther note this, one of the loveliest +things in human nature. In the children of noble races, trained by +surrounding art, and at the same time in the practice of great deeds, +there is an intense delight in the landscape of their country as +_memorial_; a sense not taught to them, nor teachable to any others; +but, in them, innate; and the seal and reward of persistence in great +national life;--the obedience and the peace of ages having extended +gradually the glory of the revered ancestors also to the ancestral +land; until the Motherhood of the dust, the mystery of the Demeter from +whose bosom we came, and to whose bosom we return, surrounds and +inspires, everywhere, the local awe of field and fountain; the +sacredness of landmark that none may remove, and of wave that none may +pollute; while records of proud days, and of dear persons, make every +rock monumental with ghostly inscription, and every path lovely with +noble desolateness. + +Now, however checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive love +of landscape in us has this deep root, which, in your minds, I will +pray you to disencumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and to +strive to feel with all the strength of your youth that a nation is +only worthy of the soil and the scenes that it has inherited, when, +by all its acts and arts, it is making them more lovely for its +children.... + +But if either our work, or our inquiries, are to be indeed successful +in their own field, they must be connected with others of a sterner +character. Now listen to me, if I have in these past details lost or +burdened your attention; for this is what I have chiefly to say to you. +The art of any country _is the exponent of its social and political +virtues_. I will show you that it is so in some detail, in the second +of my subsequent course of lectures; meantime accept this as one of the +things, and the most important of all things, I can positively declare +to you. The art, or general productive and formative energy, of any +country, is an exact exponent of its ethical life. You can have noble +art only from noble persons, associated under laws fitted to their time +and circumstances. And the best skill that any teacher of art could +spend here in your help, would not end in enabling you even so much as +rightly to draw the water-lilies in the Cherwell (and though it did, +the work when done would not be worth the lilies themselves) unless +both he and you were seeking, as I trust we shall together seek, in the +laws which regulate the finest industries, the clue to the laws which +regulate all industries, and in better obedience to which we shall +actually have henceforward to live: not merely in compliance with our +own sense of what is right, but under the weight of quite literal +necessity. For the trades by which the British people has believed it +to be the highest of destinies to maintain itself, cannot now long +remain undisputed in its hands; its unemployed poor are daily becoming +more violently criminal; and a certain distress in the middle classes, +arising, _partly from their vanity in living always up to their +incomes, and partly from, their folly in imagining that they can +subsist in idleness upon usury_, will at last compel the sons and +daughters of English families to acquaint themselves with the +principles of providential economy; and to learn that food can only be +got out of the ground, and competence only secured by frugality; and +that although it is not possible for all to be occupied in the highest +arts, nor for any, guiltlessly, to pass their days in a succession of +pleasures, the most perfect mental culture possible to men is founded +on their useful energies, and their best arts and brightest happiness +are consistent, and consistent only, with their virtue. + +This, I repeat, gentlemen, will soon become manifest to those among us, +and there are yet many, who are honest-hearted. And the future fate of +England depends upon the position they then take, and on their courage +in maintaining it. + +There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a +nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a +race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in +temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. +We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now +betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an +inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of +noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with +splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, +should be the most offending souls alive.[175] Within the last few years +we have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity +which has been blinding by its brightness; and means of transit and +communication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of the +habitable globe. One kingdom;--but who is to be its king? Is there to +be no king in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in +his own eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene empires of +Mammon and Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your country +again a royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle, for all the world a +source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of Learning and of the +Arts;--faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent +and ephemeral visions;--faithful servant of time-tried principles, +under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and +amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in +her strange valour of goodwill toward men?[176] + +"Vexilla regis prodeunt."[177] Yes, but of which king? There are the +two oriflammes; which shall we plant on the farthest islands--the one +that floats in heavenly fire, or that hangs heavy with foul tissue of +terrestrial gold? There is indeed a course of beneficent glory open to +us, such as never was yet offered to any poor group of mortal souls. +But it must be--it _is_ with us, now. "Reign or Die." And if it shall +be said of this country, "Fece per viltate, il gran rifiuto,"[178] +that refusal of the crown will be, of all yet recorded in history, +the shamefullest and most untimely. + +And this is what she must either do, or perish: she must found +colonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most +energetic and worthiest men;--seizing every piece of fruitful waste +ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching these her +colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, +and that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by +land and sea: and that, though they live on a distant plot of ground, +they are no more to consider themselves therefore disfranchised from +their native land, than the sailors of her fleets do, because they +float on distant waves. So that literally, these colonies must be +fastened fleets; and every man of them must be under authority of +captains and officers, whose better command is to be over fields and +streets instead of ships of the line; and England, in these her +motionless navies (or, in the true and mightiest sense, motionless +_churches_, ruled by pilots on the Galilean lake[179] of all the +world), is to "expect every man to do his duty";[180] recognizing +that duty is indeed possible no less in peace than war; and that if we +can get men, for little pay, to cast themselves against cannon-mouths +for love of England, we may find men also who will plough and sow for +her, who will behave kindly and righteously for her, who will bring up +their children to love her, and who will gladden themselves in the +brightness of her glory, more than in all the light of tropic skies. + +But that they may be able to do this, she must make her own majesty +stainless; she must give them thoughts of their home of which they can +be proud. The England who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannot +remain herself a heap of cinders, trampled by contending and miserable +crowds; she must yet again become the England she was once, and in all +beautiful ways,--more: so happy, so secluded, and so pure, that in her +sky--polluted by no unholy clouds--she may be able to spell rightly of +every star that heaven doth show; and in her fields, ordered and wide +and fair, of every herb that sips the dew;[181] and under the green +avenues of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter of the +Sun, she must guide the human arts, and gather the divine knowledge, of +distant nations, transformed from savageness to manhood, and redeemed +from despairing into Peace. + +You think that an impossible ideal. Be it so; refuse to accept it if +you will; but see that you form your own in its stead. All that I ask +of you is to have a fixed purpose of some kind for your country and +yourselves; no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and +unselfish. I know what stout hearts are in you, to answer acknowledged +need; but it is the fatallest form of error in English youth to hide +their hardihood till it fades for lack of sunshine, and to act in +disdain of purpose, till all purpose is vain. It is not by deliberate, +but by careless selfishness; not by compromise with evil, but by dull +following of good, that the weight of national evil increases upon us +daily. Break through at least this pretence of existence; determine +what you will be, and what you would win. You will not decide wrongly +if you resolve to decide at all. Were even the choice between lawless +pleasure and loyal suffering, you would not, I believe, choose basely. +But your trial is not so sharp. It is between drifting in confused +wreck among the castaways of Fortune, who condemns to assured ruin +those who know not either how to resist her, or obey; between this, I +say, and the taking of your appointed part in the heroism of Rest; the +resolving to share in the victory which is to the weak rather than the +strong; and the binding yourselves by that law, which, thought on +through lingering night and labouring day, makes a man's life to be as +a tree planted by the water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in his +season;-- + + "ET FOLIUM EJUS NON DEFLUET, + ET OMNIA, QUAECUNQUE FACIET, PROSPERABUNTUR."[182] + + + [172] Turner. + + [173] The tool of the engraver on copper. + + [174] See _Paradise Lost_, 6. 207 ff., and Hesiod's _Theogony_, 676 ff. + + [175] _Henry V_, 4. 3. 29. + + [176] _Luke_ ii, 14. + + [177] "Forward go the banners of the King," or more commonly, "The + royal banners forward go." One of the seven great hymns of the Church. + See the Episcopal Hymnal, 94. + + [178] Dante, _Inferno_, 3. 60. "Who made through cowardice the great + refusal." Longfellow's tr. + + [179] _Lyridas_, 109. + + [180] Nelson's famous signal at Trafalgar. + + [181] Milton's _Il Penseroso_, 170 ff. + + [182] _Psalms_ i, 3. + + + +THE RELATION OF ART TO MORALS + + +And now I pass to the arts with which I have special concern, in +which, though the facts are exactly the same, I shall have more +difficulty in proving my assertion, because very few of us are as +cognizant of the merit of painting as we are of that of language; and +I can only show you whence that merit springs, after having thoroughly +shown you in what it consists. But, in the meantime, I have simply to +tell you, that the manual arts are as accurate exponents of ethical +state, as other modes of expression; first, with absolute precision, +of that of the workman; and then with precision, disguised by many +distorting influences, of that of the nation to which it belongs. + +And, first, they are a perfect exponent of the mind of the workman: +but, being so, remember, if the mind be great or complex, the art is +not an easy book to read; for we must ourselves possess all the mental +characters of which we are to read the signs. No man can read the +evidence of labour who is not himself laborious, for he does not know +what the work cost: nor can he read the evidence of true passion if he +is not passionate; nor of gentleness if he is not gentle: and the most +subtle signs of fault and weakness of character he can only judge by +having had the same faults to fight with. I myself, for instance, know +impatient work, and tired work, better than most critics, because I am +myself always impatient, and often tired:--so also, the patient and +indefatigable touch of a mighty master becomes more wonderful to me +than to others. Yet, wonderful in no mean measure it will be to you +all, when I make it manifest;--and as soon as we begin our real work, +and you have learned what it is to draw a true line, I shall be able +to make manifest to you,--and undisputably so,--that the day's work of +a man like Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists of an unfaltering, +uninterrupted, succession of movements of the hand more precise than +those of the finest fencer: the pencil leaving one point and arriving +at another, not only with unerring precision at the extremity of the +line, but with an unerring and yet varied course--sometimes over +spaces a foot or more in extent--yet a course so determined everywhere +that either of these men could, and Veronese often does, draw a +finished profile, or any other portion of the contour of the face, +with one line, not afterwards changed. Try, first, to realize to +yourselves the muscular precision of that action, and the intellectual +strain of it; for the movement of a fencer is perfect in practised +monotony; but the movement of the hand of a great painter is at every +instant governed by direct and new intention. Then imagine that +muscular firmness and subtlety, and the instantaneously selective and +ordinant energy of the brain, sustained all day long, not only without +fatigue, but with a visible joy in the exertion, like that which an +eagle seems to take in the wave of his wings; and this all life long, +and through long life, not only without failure of power, but with +visible increase of it, until the actually organic changes of old age. +And then consider, so far as you know anything of physiology, what +sort of an ethical state of body and mind that means!--ethic through +ages past! what fineness of race there must be to get it, what +exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers! And then, finally, +determine for yourselves whether a manhood like that is consistent +with any viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any gnawing lust, +any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of rebellion +against law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious violation +of even the least law to which obedience is essential for the glory of +life, and the pleasing of its Giver. + +It is, of course, true that many of the strong masters had deep faults +of character, but their faults always show in their work. It is true +that some could not govern their passions; if so, they died young, or +they painted ill when old. But the greater part of our misapprehension +in the whole matter is from our not having well known who the great +painters were, and taking delight in the petty skill that was bred in +the fumes of the taverns of the North, instead of theirs who breathed +empyreal air, sons of the morning, under the woods of Assisi and the +crags of Cadore. + +It is true however also, as I have pointed out long ago, that the +strong masters fall into two great divisions, one leading simple and +natural lives, the other restrained in a Puritanism of the worship of +beauty; and these two manners of life you may recognize in a moment +by their work. Generally the naturalists are the strongest; but there +are two of the Puritans, whose work if I can succeed in making +clearly understandable to you during my three years[183] here, it is +all I need care to do. But of these two Puritans one I cannot name +to you, and the other I at present will not. One I cannot, for no one +knows his name, except the baptismal one, Bernard, or "dear little +Bernard"--Bernardino, called from his birthplace, (Luino, on the Lago +Maggiore,) Bernard of Luino. The other is a Venetian, of whom many of +you probably have never heard, and of whom, through me, you shall not +hear, until I have tried to get some picture by him over to England. + +Observe then, this Puritanism in the worship of beauty, though +sometimes weak, is always honourable and amiable, and the exact +reverse of the false Puritanism, which consists in the dread or +disdain of beauty. And in order to treat my subject rightly, I ought +to proceed from the skill of art to the choice of its subject, and +show you how the moral temper of the workman is shown by his seeking +lovely forms and thoughts to express, as well as by the force of his +hand in expression. But I need not now urge this part of the proof on +you, because you are already, I believe, sufficiently conscious of the +truth in this matter, and also I have already said enough of it in my +writings; whereas I have not at all said enough of the infallibleness +of fine technical work as a proof of every other good power. And +indeed it was long before I myself understood the true meaning of the +pride of the greatest men in their mere execution, shown for a +permanent lesson to us, in the stories which, whether true or not, +indicate with absolute accuracy the general conviction of great +artists;--the stories of the contest of Apelles and Protogenes[184] in +a line only, (of which I can promise you, you shall know the meaning +to some purpose in a little while),--the story of the circle of +Giotto,[185] and especially, which you may perhaps not have observed, +the expression of Duerer in his inscription on the drawings sent him by +Raphael. These figures, he says, "Raphael drew and sent to Albert +Duerer in Nurnberg, to show him"--What? Not his invention, nor his +beauty of expression, but "sein Hand zu weisen," "to show him his +_hand_." And you will find, as you examine farther, that all inferior +artists are continually trying to escape from the necessity of sound +work, and either indulging themselves in their delights in subject, or +pluming themselves on their noble motives for attempting what they +cannot perform; (and observe, by the way, that a great deal of what is +mistaken for conscientious motive is nothing but a very pestilent, +because very subtle, condition of vanity); whereas the great men +always understand at once that the first morality of a painter, as of +everybody else, is to know his business; and so earnest are they in +this, that many, whose lives you would think, by the results of their +work, had been passed in strong emotion, have in reality subdued +themselves, though capable of the very strongest passions, into a calm +as absolute as that of a deeply sheltered mountain lake, which +reflects every agitation of the clouds in the sky, and every change of +the shadows on the hills, but AS itself motionless. + +Finally, you must remember that great obscurity has been brought upon +the truth in this matter by the want of integrity and simplicity in +our modern life. I mean integrity in the Latin sense, wholeness. +Everything is broken up, and mingled in confusion, both in our habits +and thoughts; besides being in great part imitative: so that you not +only cannot tell what a man is, but sometimes you cannot tell whether +he _is_, at all!--whether you have indeed to do with a spirit, or +only with an echo. And thus the same inconsistencies appear now, +between the work of artists of merit and their personal characters, as +those which you find continually disappointing expectation in the +lives of men of modern literary power;--the same conditions of society +having obscured or misdirected the best qualities of the imagination, +both in our literature and art. Thus there is no serious question with +any of us as to the personal character of Dante and Giotto, of +Shakespeare and Holbein; but we pause timidly in the attempt to +analyze the moral laws of the art skill in recent poets, novelists, +and painters. + +Let me assure you once for all, that as you grow older, if you enable +yourselves to distinguish by the truth of your own lives, what is true +in those of other men, you will gradually perceive that all good has +its origin in good, never in evil; that the fact of either literature +or painting being truly fine of their kind, whatever their mistaken +aim, or partial error, is proof of their noble origin: and that, if +there is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come of a +sterling worth in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled by +conditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling or more strange +than those which all may detect in their own hearts, because they are +part of a personality altogether larger than ours, and as far beyond +our judgment in its darkness as beyond our following in its light. And +it is sufficient warning against what some might dread as the probable +effect of such a conviction on your own minds, namely, that you might +permit yourselves in the weaknesses which you imagined to be allied to +genius, when they took the form of personal temptations;--it is +surely, I say, sufficient warning against so mean a folly, to discern, +as you may with little pains, that, of all human existences, the lives +of men of that distorted and tainted nobility of intellect are +probably the most miserable. + +I pass to the second, and for us the more practically important +question, What is the effect of noble art upon other men; what has it +done for national morality in time past: and what effect is the +extended knowledge or possession of it likely to have upon us now? +And here we are at once met by the facts, which are as gloomy as +indisputable, that, while many peasant populations, among whom +scarcely the rudest practice of art has ever been attempted, have +lived in comparative innocence, honour, and happiness, the worst +foulness and cruelty of savage tribes have been frequently associated +with fine ingenuities of decorative design; also, that no people has +ever attained the higher stages of art skill, except at a period of +its civilization which was sullied by frequent, violent, and even +monstrous crime; and, lastly, that the attaining of perfection in art +power, has been hitherto, in every nation, the accurate signal of the +beginning of its ruin. + +Respecting which phenomena, observe first, that although good never +springs out of evil, it is developed to its highest by contention with +evil. There are some groups of peasantry, in far-away nooks of +Christian countries, who are nearly as innocent as lambs; but the +morality which gives power to art is the morality of men, not of +cattle. + +Secondly, the virtues of the inhabitants of many country districts are +apparent, not real; their lives are indeed artless, but not innocent; +and it is only the monotony of circumstances, and the absence of +temptation, which prevent the exhibition of evil passions not less +real because often dormant, nor less foul because shown only in petty +faults, or inactive malignities. + +But you will observe also that _absolute_ artlessness, to men in any +kind of moral health, is impossible; they have always, at least, the +art by which they live--agriculture or seamanship; and in these +industries, skilfully practised, you will find the law of their moral +training; while, whatever the adversity of circumstances, every +rightly-minded peasantry, such as that of Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, or +Switzerland, has associated with its needful industry a quite studied +school of pleasurable art in dress; and generally also in song, and +simple domestic architecture. + +Again, I need not repeat to you here what I endeavoured to explain in +the first lecture in the book I called _The Two Paths_, respecting the +arts of savage races: but I may now note briefly that such arts are +the result of an intellectual activity which has found no room to +expand, and which the tyranny of nature or of man has condemned to +disease through arrested growth. And where neither Christianity, nor +any other religion conveying some moral help, has reached, the animal +energy of such races necessarily flames into ghastly conditions of +evil, and the grotesque or frightful forms assumed by their art are +precisely indicative of their distorted moral nature. + +But the truly great nations nearly always begin from a race possessing +this imaginative power; and for some time their progress is very slow, +and their state not one of innocence, but of feverish and faultful +animal energy. This is gradually subdued and exalted into bright human +life; the art instinct purifying itself with the rest of the nature, +until social perfectness is nearly reached; and then comes the period +when conscience and intellect are so highly developed, that new forms +of error begin in the inability to fulfil the demands of the one, or +to answer the doubts of the other. Then the wholeness of the people is +lost; all kinds of hypocrisies and oppositions of science develope +themselves; their faith is questioned on one side, and compromised +with on the other; wealth commonly increases at the same period to a +destructive extent; luxury follows; and the ruin of the nation is then +certain: while the arts, all this time, are simply, as I said at first, +the exponents of each phase of its moral state, and no more control it +in its political career than the gleam of the firefly guides its +oscillation. It is true that their most splendid results are usually +obtained in the swiftness of the power which is hurrying to the +precipice; but to lay the charge of the catastrophe to the art by +which it is illumined, is to find a cause for the cataract in the hues +of its iris. It is true that the colossal vices belonging to periods +of great national wealth (for wealth, you will find, is the real root +of all evil)[186] can turn every good gift and skill of nature or of +man to evil purpose. If, in such times, fair pictures have been +misused, how much more fair realities? And if Miranda is immoral to +Caliban is that Miranda's fault? + + + [183] As Slade Professor, Ruskin held a three years' appointment at + Oxford. + + [184] This story comes from Pliny, _Natural History_, 35. 36; the + two rival painters alternately showing their skill by the drawing + of lines of increasing fineness. + + [185] This story comes from Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_. See + Blashfield and Hopkins's ed. vol. 1, p. 61. Giotto was asked by a + messenger of the Pope for a specimen of his work, and sent a perfect + circle, drawn free hand. + + [186] _Timothy_ vi, 10. + + + +THE RELATION OF ART TO USE + + +Our subject of inquiry to-day, you will remember, is the mode in +which fine art is founded upon, or may contribute to, the practical +requirements of human life. + +Its offices in this respect are mainly twofold: it gives Form to +knowledge, and Grace to utility; that is to say, it makes permanently +visible to us things which otherwise could neither be described by +our science, nor retained by our memory; and it gives delightfulness +and worth to the implements of daily use, and materials of dress, +furniture and lodging. In the first of these offices it gives +precision and charm to truth; in the second it gives precision and +charm to service. For, the moment we make anything useful thoroughly, +it is a law of nature that we shall be pleased with ourselves, and +with the thing we have made; and become desirous therefore to adorn +or complete it, in some dainty way, with finer art expressive of our +pleasure. + +And the point I wish chiefly to bring before you today is this close +and healthy connection of the fine arts with material use; but I must +first try briefly to put in clear light the function of art in giving +Form to truth. + +Much that I have hitherto tried to teach has been disputed on the +ground that I have attached too much importance to art as representing +natural facts, and too little to it as a source of pleasure. And I +wish, in the close of these four prefatory lectures, strongly to +assert to you, and, so far as I can in the time, convince you, that +the entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of +truth, or full of use; and that, however pleasant, wonderful, or +impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of inferior kind, and +tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main +objects,--either to _state a true thing_, or to _adorn a serviceable +one_. It must never exist alone,--never for itself; it exists rightly +only when it is the means of knowledge, or the grace of agency for +life. + +Now, I pray you to observe--for though I have said this often before, +I have never yet said it clearly enough--every good piece of art, to +whichever of these ends it may be directed, involves first essentially +the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually +beautiful thing by it. + +Skill and beauty, always, then; and, beyond these, the formative arts +have always one or other of the two objects which I have just defined +to you--truth, or serviceableness; and without these aims neither +the skill nor their beauty will avail; only by these can either +legitimately reign. All the graphic arts begin in keeping the outline +of shadow that we have loved, and they end in giving to it the aspect +of life; and all the architectural arts begin in the shaping of the +cup and the platter, and they end in a glorified roof. + +Therefore, you see, in the graphic arts you have Skill, Beauty, and +Likeness; and in the architectural arts Skill, Beauty, and Use: and +you _must_ have the three in each group, balanced and co-ordinate; and +all the chief errors of art consist in losing or exaggerating one of +these elements. + +For instance, almost the whole system and hope of modern life are +founded on the notion that you may substitute mechanism for skill, +photograph for picture, cast-iron for sculpture. That is your main +nineteenth-century faith, or infidelity. You think you can get +everything by grinding--music, literature, and painting. You will find +it grievously not so; you can get nothing but dust by mere grinding. +Even to have the barley-meal out of it, you must have the barley +first; and that comes by growth, not grinding. But essentially, we +have lost our delight in Skill; in that majesty of it which I was +trying to make clear to you in my last address, and which long +ago[187] I tried to express, under the head of ideas of power. The +entire sense of that, we have lost, because we ourselves do not take +pains enough to do right, and have no conception of what the right +costs; so that all the joy and reverence we ought to feel in looking +at a strong man's work have ceased in us. We keep them yet a little in +looking at a honeycomb or a bird's-nest; we understand that these +differ, by divinity of skill, from a lump of wax or a cluster of +sticks. But a picture, which is a much more wonderful thing than a +honeycomb or a bird's-nest,--have we not known people, and sensible +people too, who expected to be taught to produce that, in six lessons? + +Well, you must have the skill, you must have the beauty, which is the +highest moral element; and then, lastly, you must have the verity or +utility, which is not the moral, but the vital element; and this +desire for verity and use is the one aim of the three that always +leads in great schools, and in the minds of great masters, without any +exception. They will permit themselves in awkwardness, they will +permit themselves in ugliness;--but they will never permit themselves +in uselessness or in unveracity. + +And farther, as their skill increases, and as their grace, so much +more their desire for truth. It is impossible to find the three +motives in fairer balance and harmony than in our own Reynolds. He +rejoices in showing you his skill; and those of you who succeed in +learning what painters' work really is, will one day rejoice also, +even to laughter--that highest laughter which springs of pure delight, +in watching the fortitude and the fire of a hand which strikes forth +its will upon the canvas as easily as the wind strikes it on the sea. +He rejoices in all abstract beauty and rhythm and melody of design; he +will never give you a colour that is not lovely, nor a shade that is +unnecessary, nor a line that is ungraceful. But all his power and all +his invention are held by him subordinate,--and the more obediently +because of their nobleness,-to his true leading purpose of setting +before you such likeness of the living presence of an English +gentleman or an English lady, as shall be worthy of being looked upon +for ever. + +But farther, you remember, I hope--for I said it in a way that I +thought would shock you a little, that you might remember it--my +statement, that art had never done more than this, never more than +given the likeness of a noble human being. Not only so, but it very +seldom does so much as this, and the best pictures that exist of the +great schools are all portraits, or groups of portraits, often of very +simple and nowise noble persons. You may have much more brilliant and +impressive qualities in imaginative pictures; you may have figures +scattered like clouds, or garlanded like flowers; you may have light +and shade as of a tempest, and colour, as of the rainbow; but all that +is child's play to the great men, though it is astonishment to us. +Their real strength is tried to the utmost, and as far as I know, it +is never elsewhere brought out so thoroughly, as in painting one man +or woman, and the soul that was in them; nor that always the highest +soul, but often only a thwarted one that was capable of height; or +perhaps not even that, but faultful and poor, yet seen through, to the +poor best of it, by the masterful sight. So that in order to put +before you in your Standard series the best art possible, I am +obliged, even from the very strongest men, to take the portraits, +before I take the idealism. Nay, whatever is best in the great +compositions themselves has depended on portraiture; and the study +necessary to enable you to understand invention will also convince you +that the mind of man never invented a greater thing than the form of +man, animated by faithful life. Every attempt to refine or exalt such +healthy humanity has weakened or caricatured it; or else consists only +in giving it, to please our fancy, the wings of birds, or the eyes of +antelopes. Whatever is truly great in either Greek or Christian art, +is also restrictedly human; and even the raptures of the redeemed +souls who enter "celestemente ballando,"[188] the gate of Angelico's +Paradise, were seen first in the terrestrial, yet most pure, mirth of +Florentine maidens. + +I am aware that this cannot but at present appear gravely questionable +to those of my audience who are strictly cognizant of the phases of +Greek art; for they know that the moment of its decline is accurately +marked, by its turning from abstract form to portraiture. But the +reason of this is simple. The progressive course of Greek art was in +subduing monstrous conceptions to natural ones; it did this by general +laws; it reached absolute truth of generic human form, and if its +ethical force had remained, would have advanced into healthy +portraiture. But at the moment of change the national life ended in +Greece; and portraiture, there, meant insult to her religion, and +flattery to her tyrants. And her skill perished, not because she +became true in sight, but because she became vile in heart.... + +But I have told you enough, it seems to me, at least to-day, of this +function of art in recording fact; let me now finally, and with all +distinctness possible to me, state to you its main business of +all;--its service in the actual uses of daily life. + +You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me call this its main business. +That is indeed so, however. The giving brightness to picture is much, +but the giving brightness to life more. And remember, were it as +patterns only, you cannot, without the realities, have the pictures. +_You cannot have a landscape by Turner without a country for him to +paint; you cannot have a portrait by Titian, without a man to be +pourtrayed_. I need not prove that to you, I suppose, in these short +terms; but in the outcome I can get no soul to believe that the +beginning of art _is in getting our country clean, and our people +beautiful_. I have been ten years trying to get this very plain +certainty--I do not say believed--but even thought of, as anything but +a monstrous proposition. To get your country clean, and your people +lovely;--I assure you that is a necessary work of art to begin with! +There has indeed been art in countries where people lived in dirt to +serve God, but never in countries where they lived in dirt to serve +the devil. There has indeed been art where the people were not all +lovely,--where even their lips were thick--and their skins black, +because the sun had looked upon them;[189] but never in a country +where the people were pale with miserable toil and deadly shade, and +where the lips of youth, instead of being full with blood, were +pinched by famine, or warped with poison. And now, therefore, note +this well, the gist of all these long prefatory talks. I said that the +two great moral instincts were those of Order and Kindness. Now, all +the arts are founded on agriculture by the hand, and on the graces and +kindness of feeding, and dressing, and lodging your people. Greek art +begins in the gardens of Alcinous--perfect order, leeks in beds, and +fountains in pipes.[190] And Christian art, as it arose out of +chivalry, was only possible so far as chivalry compelled both kings +and knights to care for the right personal training of their people; +it perished utterly when those kings and knights became [Greek: +daemoboroi], devourers of the people. And it will become possible +again only, when, literally, the sword is beaten into the +ploughshare,[191] when your St. George of England shall justify his +name,[192] and Christian art shall be known as its Master was, in +breaking of bread.[193] + +Now look at the working out of this broad principle in minor detail; +observe how, from highest to lowest, health of art has first depended +on reference to industrial use. There is first the need of cup and +platter, especially of cup; for you can put your meat on the +Harpies',[194] or any other, tables; but you must have your cup to +drink from. And to hold it conveniently, you must put a handle to it; +and to fill it when it is empty you must have a large pitcher of some +sort; and to carry the pitcher you may most advisably have two +handles. Modify the forms of these needful possessions according to +the various requirements of drinking largely and drinking delicately; +of pouring easily out, or of keeping for years the perfume in; of +storing in cellars, or bearing from fountains; of sacrificial +libation, of Pan-athenaic treasure of oil, and sepulchral treasure of +ashes,--and you have a resultant series of beautiful form and +decoration, from the rude amphora of red earth up to Cellini's vases +of gems and crystal, in which series, but especially in the more +simple conditions of it, are developed the most beautiful lines and +most perfect types of severe composition which have yet been attained +by art. + +But again, that you may fill your cup with pure water, you must go to +the well or spring; you need a fence round the well; you need some +tube or trough, or other means of confining the stream at the spring. +For the conveyance of the current to any distance you must build +either enclosed or open aqueduct; and in the hot square of the city +where you set it free, you find it good for health and pleasantness to +let it leap into a fountain. On these several needs you have a school +of sculpture founded; in the decoration of the walls of wells in level +countries, and of the sources of springs in mountainous ones, and +chiefly of all, where the women of household or market meet at the +city fountain. + +There is, however, a farther reason for the use of art here than in +any other material service, so far as we may, by art, express our +reverence or thankfulness. Whenever a nation is in its right mind, it +always has a deep sense of divinity in the gift of rain from heaven, +filling its heart with food and gladness;[195] and all the more when +that gift becomes gentle and perennial in the flowing of springs. It +literally is not possible that any fruitful power of the Muses should +be put forth upon a people which disdains their Helicon; still less is +it possible that any Christian nation should grow up "tanquam lignum +quod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum,"[196] which cannot recognize +the lesson meant in their being told of the places where Rebekah was +met;--where Rachel,--where Zipporah,--and she who was asked for water +under Mount Gerizim by a Stranger, weary, who had nothing to draw +with.[197] + +And truly, when our mountain springs are set apart in vale or craggy +glen, or glade of wood green through the drought of summer, far from +cities, then, it is best let them stay in their own happy peace; but +if near towns, and liable therefore to be defiled by common usage, we +could not use the loveliest art more worthily than by sheltering the +spring and its first pools with precious marbles: nor ought anything +to be esteemed more important, as a means of healthy education, than +the care to keep the streams of it afterwards, to as great a distance +as possible, pure, full of fish, and easily accessible to children. +There used to be, thirty years ago, a little rivulet of the Wandel, +about an inch deep, which ran over the carriage-road and under a +footbridge just under the last chalk hill near Croydon. Alas! men came +and went; and it--did _not_ go on for ever. It has long since been +bricked over by the parish authorities; but there was more education +in that stream with its minnows than you could get out of a thousand +pounds spent yearly in the parish schools, even though you were to +spend every farthing of it in teaching the nature of oxygen and +hydrogen, and the names, and rate per minute, of all the rivers in +Asia and America. + +Well, the gist of this matter lies here then. Suppose we want a school +of pottery again in England, all we poor artists are ready to do the +best we can, to show you how pretty a line may be that is twisted first +to one side, and then to the other; and how a plain household-blue will +make a pattern on white; and how ideal art may be got out of the +spaniel's colours of black and tan. But I tell you beforehand, all that +we can do will be utterly useless, unless you teach your peasant to say +grace, not only before meat, but before drink; and having provided him +with Greek cups and platters, provide him also with something that is +not poisoned to put into them. + +There cannot be any need that I should trace for you the conditions of +art that are directly founded on serviceableness of dress, and of +armour; but it is my duty to affirm to you, in the most positive +manner, that after recovering, for the poor, wholesomeness of food, +your next step toward founding schools of art in England must be in +recovering, for the poor, decency and wholesomeness of dress; +thoroughly good in substance, fitted for their daily work, becoming to +their rank in life, and worn with order and dignity. And this order +and dignity must be taught them by the women of the upper and middle +classes, whose minds can be in nothing right, as long as they are so +wrong in this matter us to endure the squalor of the poor, while they +themselves dress gaily. And on the proper pride and comfort of both +poor and rich in dress, must be founded the true arts of dress; +carried on by masters of manufacture no less careful of the +perfectness and beauty of their tissues, and of all that in substance +and in design can be bestowed upon them, than ever the armourers of +Milan and Damascus were careful of their steel. + +Then, in the third place, having recovered some wholesome habits of +life as to food and dress, we must recover them as to lodging. I said +just now that the best architecture was but a glorified roof. Think of +it. The dome of the Vatican, the porches of Rheims or Chartres, the +vaults and arches of their aisles, the canopy of the tomb, and the +spire of the belfry, are all forms resulting from the mere requirement +that a certain space shall be strongly covered from heat and rain. +More than that--as I have tried all through _The Stones of Venice_ to +show--the lovely forms of these were every one of them developed in +civil and domestic building, and only after their invention employed +ecclesiastically on the grandest scale. I think you cannot but have +noticed here in Oxford, as elsewhere, that our modern architects never +seem to know what to do with their roofs. Be assured, until the roofs +are right, nothing else will be; and there are just two ways of +keeping them right. Never build them of iron, but only of wood or +stone; and secondly, take care that in every town the little roofs are +built before the large ones, and that everybody who wants one has got +one. And we must try also to make everybody want one. That is to say, +at some not very advanced period of life, men should desire to have a +home, which they do not wish to quit any more, suited to their habits +of life, and likely to be more and more suitable to them until their +death. And men must desire to have these their dwelling-places built +as strongly as possible, and furnished and decorated daintily, and set +in pleasant places, in bright light, and good air, being able to +choose for themselves that at least as well as swallows. And when the +houses are grouped together in cities, men must have so much civic +fellowship as to subject their architecture to a common law, and so +much civic pride as to desire that the whole gathered group of human +dwellings should be a lovely thing, not a frightful one, on the face +of the earth. Not many weeks ago an English clergyman,[198] a master of +this University, a man not given to sentiment, but of middle age, and +great practical sense, told me, by accident, and wholly without +reference to the subject now before us, that he never could enter +London from his country parsonage but with closed eyes, lest the sight +of the blocks of houses which the railroad intersected in the suburbs +should unfit him, by the horror of it, for his day's work. + +Now, it is not possible--and I repeat to you, only in more deliberate +assertion, what I wrote just twenty-two years ago in the last chapter +of the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_--it is not possible to have any +right morality, happiness, or art, in any country where the cities are +thus built, or thus, let me rather say, clotted and coagulated; spots +of a dreadful mildew, spreading by patches and blotches over the +country they consume. You must have lovely cities, crystallized, not +coagulated, into form; limited in size, and not casting out the scum +and scurf of them into an encircling eruption of shame, but girded +each with its sacred pomoerium, and with garlands of gardens full of +blossoming trees and softly guided streams. + + + [187] In _Modern Painters_, vol. 1. + + [188] The quotation is from Vasari's account of Angelico's Last + Judgment (now in the Accademia at Florence). [Cook and Wedderbum.] + + [189] _Song of Solomon_ i, 6. + + [190] Cf. _Classical Landscape_, pp. 92-93. + + [191] _Isaiah_, ii, 4; _Micah_ iv, 3; _Joel_ iii, 10. + + [192] The name of St. George, the "Earthworker," or "Husbandman." + [Ruskin.] + + [193] _Luke_ xxiv, 35. + + [194] Virgil, _AEneid_, 3, 209. _seqq_. [Ruskin.] + + [195] _Acts_ xiv, 17. + + [196] _Psalms_ i, 3. + + [197] _Genesis_ xxiv, 15, 16 and xxix, 10; _Exodus_ ii, 16; _John_ + iv, 11. + + [198] Osborne Gordon. [Ruskin.] + + + + +ART AND HISTORY + +ATHENA ERGANE + + + This short selection is taken from the volume entitled _The Queen + of the Air_, in which Ruskin, fascinated by the deep significance + of the Greek myths and realizing the religious sincerity + underlying them, attempts to interpret those that cluster about + Athena. The book was published June 22, 1869. It is divided into + three "Lectures," parts of which actually were delivered as + lectures on different occasions, entitled respectively "Athena + Chalinitis" (Athena in the Heavens), "Athena Keramitis" (Athena + in the Earth), "Athena Ergane" (Athena in the Heart). The first + lecture is the only one which keeps to the title of the book; in + the others the legend is used merely as a starting-point for the + expression of various pregnant ideas on social and historical + problems. The book as a whole abounds in flashes of inspiration + and insight, and is a favourite with many readers of Ruskin. + Carlyle, in a letter to Froude, wrote: "Passages of that last + book, _Queen of the Air_, went into my heart like arrows." + +In different places of my writings, and through many years of +endeavour to define the laws of art, I have insisted on this Tightness +in work, and on its connection with virtue of character, in so many +partial ways, that the impression left on the reader's mind--if, +indeed, it was ever impressed at all--has been confused and uncertain. +In beginning the series of my corrected works, I wish this principle +(in my own mind the foundation of every other) to be made plain, if +nothing else is: and will try, therefore, to make it so, so far as, by +any effort, I can put it into unmistakable words. And, first, here is +a very simple statement of it, given lately in a lecture on the +Architecture of the Valley of the Somme,[199] which will be better read +in this place than in its incidental connection with my account of the +porches of Abbeville. + +I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the expression, "by +what faults" this Gothic architecture fell. We continually speak thus +of works of art. We talk of their faults and merits, as of virtues and +vices. What do we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or the +merits of a piece of stone? + +The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, and its +virtues his virtues. + +Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, and mean art, +that of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish person builds +foolishly, and a wise one, sensibly; a virtuous one, beautifully; and +a vicious one, basely. If stone work is well put together, it means +that a thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an +honest man cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means that its +carver was too greedy of pleasure; if too little, that he was rude, or +insensitive, or stupid, and the like. So that when once you have +learned how to spell these most precious of all legends,--pictures +and buildings,--you may read the characters of men, and of nations, in +their art, as in a mirror;--nay, as in a microscope, and magnified a +hundredfold; for the character becomes passionate in the art, and +intensifies itself in all its noblest or meanest delights. Nay, not +only as in a microscope, but as under a scalpel, and in dissection; +for a man may hide himself from you, or misrepresent himself to you, +every other way; but he cannot in his work: there, be sure, you have +him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that he sees,--all that he +can do,--his imagination, his affections, his perseverance, his +impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If the +work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a honeycomb, by +a bee; a worm-cast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed by a +bird; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, and +ignobly, if he is ignoble. + +And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made thing is good +or bad, so is the maker of it. + +You all use this faculty of judgment more or less, whether you +theoretically admit the principle or not. Take that floral gable;[200] +you don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, +or that the man who built that, _would_ have built Stonehenge? Do you +think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or +that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems +of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a +burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill +Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? You +will find in the end, that _no man could have done it but exactly the +man who did it_; and by looking close at it, you may, if you know your +letters, read precisely the manner of man he was. + +Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. Of all facts +concerning art, this is the one most necessary to be known, that, +while manufacture is the work of hands only, art is the work of the +whole spirit of man; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it: and +by whatever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same vice +or virtue it reproduces and teaches. That which is born of evil begets +evil; and that which is born of valour and honour, teaches valour and +honour. Al art is either infection or education. It _must_ be one or +other of these. + +This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of which +understanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. And I +assert it the more, because it has of late been repeatedly, expressly, +and with contumely denied; and that by high authority: and I hold it +one of the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the arts +among us, that English gentlemen, of high standing as scholars and +artists, should have been blinded into the acceptance, and betrayed +into the assertion of a fallacy which only authority such as theirs +could have rendered for an instant credible. For the contrary of it is +written in the history of all great nations; it is the one sentence +always inscribed on the steps of their thrones; the one concordant +voice in which they speak to us out of their dust. + +All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure and beautiful +animal race, with intense energy and imagination. They live lives of +hardship by choice, and by grand instinct of manly discipline: they +become fierce and irresistible soldiers; the nation is always its own +army, and their king, or chief head of government, is always their +first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or +Barbarossa, or Coeur de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandolo, or Frederick +the Great:--Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, French, +Venetian,--that is inviolable law for them all; their king must be +their first soldier, or they cannot be in progressive power. Then, +after their great military period, comes the domestic period; in +which, without betraying the discipline of war, they add to their +great soldiership the delights and possessions of a delicate and +tender home-life: and then, for all nations, is the time of their +perfect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of their +national ideal of character, developed by the finished care of the +occupations of peace. That is the history of all true art that ever +was, or can be: palpably the history of it,--unmistakably,--written on +the forehead of it in letters of light,--in tongues of fire, by which +the seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever iron burnt into a +convict's flesh the seal of crime. But always, hitherto, after the +great period, has followed the day of luxury, and pursuit of the arts +for pleasure only. And all has so ended. + +Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have here asserted two +things,--first, the foundation of art in moral character; next, the +foundation of moral character in war. I must make both these +assertions clearer, and prove them. + +First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course art-gift +and amiability of disposition are two different things. A good man is +not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for colour necessarily +imply an honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers: +it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is +not there, we can have no art at all; and if the soul--and a right +soul too--is not there, the art is bad, however dexterous. + +But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the result of the +moral character of generations. A bad woman may have a sweet voice; +but that sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race. +That she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of +laws of music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, +of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous +power, and vigour and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in +rightness of human conduct, renders, after a certain number of +generations, human art possible; every sin clouds it, be it ever so +little a one; and persistent vicious living and following of pleasure +render, after a certain number of generations, all art impossible. Men +are deceived by the long-suffering of the laws of nature; and mistake, +in a nation, the reward of the virtue of its sires for the issue of +its own sins. The time of their visitation will come, and that +inevitably; for, it is always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour +grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge.[201] And for the +individual, as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I have +said, know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let his art-gift +be never so great, and cultivated to the height by the schools of a +great race of men; and it is still but a tapestry thrown over his own +being and inner soul; and the bearing of it will show, infallibly, +whether it hangs on a man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you +may not see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, but +learn how to look, and the folds themselves will become transparent, +and you shall see through them the death's shape, or the divine one, +making the tissue above it as a cloud of light, or as a winding-sheet. + +Then farther, observe, I have said (and you will find it true, and +that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is rooted in virtue, so +it bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic in its own nature. It is +often didactic also in actually expressed thought, as Giotto's, +Michael Angelo's, Duerer's, and hundreds more; but that is not its +special function,--it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful; but +beautiful with haunting thought, no less than with form, and full of +myths that can be read only with the heart. + +For instance, at this moment there is open beside me as I write, a +page of Persian manuscript, wrought with wreathed azure and geld, and +soft green, and violet, and ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure +resplendence. It is wrought to delight the eyes only; and does delight +them; and the man who did it assuredly had eyes in his head; but not +much more. It is not didactic art, but its author was happy: and it +will do the good, and the harm, that mere pleasure can do. But, +opposite me, is an early Turner drawing of the lake of Geneva, taken +about two miles from Geneva, on the Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc in +the distance. The old city is seen lying beyond the waveless waters, +veiled with a sweet misty veil of Athena's weaving: a faint light of +morning, peaceful exceedingly, and almost colourless, shed from behind +the Voirons, increases into soft amber along the slope of the Saleve, +and is just seen, and no more, on the fair warm fields of its summit, +between the folds of a white cloud that rests upon the grass, but +rises, high and towerlike, into the zenith of dawn above. + +There is not as much colour in that low amber light upon the hill-side +as there is in the palest dead leaf. The lake is not blue, but grey in +mist, passing into deep shadow beneath the Voirons' pines; a few dark +clusters of leaves, a single white flower--scarcely seen--are all the +gladness given to the rocks of the shore. One of the ruby spots of the +eastern manuscript would give colour enough for all the red that is in +Turner's entire drawing. For the mere pleasure of the eye, there is +not so much in all those lines of his, throughout the entire +landscape, as in half an inch square of the Persian's page. What made +him take pleasure in the low colour that is only like the brown of a +dead leaf? in the cold grey of dawn--in the one white flower among the +rocks--in these--and no more than these? + +He took pleasure in them because he had been bred among English fields +and hills; because the gentleness of a great race was in his heart, +and its power of thought in his brain; because he knew the stories of +the Alps, and of the cities at their feet; because he had read the +Homeric legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods of dawn, and the +givers of dew to the fields; because he knew the faces of the crags, +and the imagery of the passionate mountains, as a man knows the face +of his friend; because he had in him the wonder and sorrow concerning +life and death, which are the inheritance of the Gothic soul from the +days of its first sea kings; and also the compassion and the joy that +are woven into the innermost fabric of every great imaginative spirit, +born now in countries that have lived by the Christian faith with any +courage or truth. And the picture contains also, for us, just this +which its maker had in him to give; and can convey it to us, just so +far as we are of the temper in which it must be received. It is +didactic if we are worthy to be taught, no otherwise. The pure heart, +it will make more pure; the thoughtful, more thoughtful. It has in it +no words for the reckless or the base. + + + [199] _The Flamboyant Architecture of the Valley of the Somme_, a + lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, January 29, 1869. + + [200] The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west + end of Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, + and enriched with a border of "twisted eglantine." [Ruskin.] + + [201] _Jeremiah_ xxxi, 29. + + + + +TRAFFIC + + + "Traffic" is the second of the three lectures published May, 1866, + in the volume entitled _The Crown of Wild Olive_. All these + lectures were delivered in the years 1864 and 1865, but the one + here printed was earliest. The occasion on which Ruskin addressed + the people of Bradford is made sufficiently clear from the opening + sentences. The lecture is important as emphasizing in a popular + way some of his most characteristic economic theories. + + + +TRAFFIC[202] + + +My good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down here among your hills +that I might talk to you about this Exchange you are going to build: +but, earnestly and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to do +nothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can say very little, +about this same Exchange. I must talk of quite other things, though +not willingly;--I could not deserve your pardon, if, when you invited +me to speak on one subject, I _wilfully_ spoke on another. But I +cannot speak, to purpose, of anything about which I do not care; and +most simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, that I +do _not_ care about this Exchange of yours. + +If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had answered, "I +won't come, I don't care about the Exchange of Bradford," you would +have been justly offended with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt +a carelessness. So I have come down, hoping that you will patiently +let me tell you why, on this, and many other such occasions, I now +remain silent, when formerly I should have caught at the opportunity +of speaking to a gracious audience. + +In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange--because _you_ +don't; and because you know perfectly well I cannot make you. Look at +the essential conditions of the case, which you, as business men, know +perfectly well, though perhaps you think I forget them. You are going +to spend L30,000, which to you, collectively, is nothing; the buying a +new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much more important matter of +consideration to me, than building a new Exchange is to you. But you +think you may as well have the right thing for your money. You know +there are a great many odd styles of architecture about; you don't +want to do anything ridiculous; you hear of me, among others, as a +respectable architectural man-milliner; and you send for me, that I +may tell you the leading fashion; and what is, in our shops, for the +moment, the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles. + +Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot have good +architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good +architecture is the expression of national life and character, and it +is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for +beauty. And I want you to think a little of the deep significance of +this word "taste"; for no statement of mine has been more earnestly or +oftener controverted than that good taste is essentially a moral +quality. "No," say many of my antagonists, "taste is one thing, +morality is another. Tell us what is pretty: we shall be glad to know +that; but we need no sermons--even were you able to preach them, which +may be doubted." + +Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine somewhat. +Taste is not only a part and an index of morality;--it is the ONLY +morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any +living creature is, "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, and +I'll tell you what you are. Go out into the street, and ask the first +man or woman you meet, what their "taste" is; and if they answer +candidly, you know them, body and soul. "You, my friend in the rags, +with the unsteady gait, what do _you_ like?" "A pipe and a quartern of +gin." I know you. "You, good woman, with the quick step and tidy +bonnet, what do you like?" "A swept hearth, and a clean tea-table; and +my husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast." Good, I know you +also. "You, little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, what +do you like?" "My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths." "You, +little boy with the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do you +like?" "A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch farthing." Good; we +know them all now. What more need we ask? + +"Nay," perhaps you answer; "we need rather to ask what these people +and children do, than what they like. If they do right, it is no +matter that they like what is wrong; and if they _do_ wrong, it is no +matter that they like what is right. Doing is the great thing; and it +does not matter that the man likes drinking, so that he does not +drink; nor that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she +will not learn her lessons; nor that the little boy likes throwing +stones at the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school." Indeed, for +a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. For if, +resolutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like doing +it. But they only are in a right moral state when they _have_ come to +like doing it; and as long as they don't like it, they are still in a +vicious state. The man is not in health of body who is always thinking +of the bottle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst; but +the man who heartily enjoys water in the morning, and wine in the +evening, each in its proper quantity and time. And the entire object +of true education is to make people not merely _do_ the right things, +but _enjoy_ the right things:--not merely industrious, but to love +industry--not merely learned, but to love knowledge--not merely pure, +but to love purity--not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after +justice.[203] + +But you may answer or think, "Is the liking for outside +ornaments,--for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or +architecture,--a moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a rightly set +liking. Taste for _any_ pictures or statues is not a moral quality, +but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word +"good." I don't mean by "good," clever--or learned--or difficult in +the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their +dice; it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in its +kind has ever been done equal to it; but it is also an entirely base +and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolonged +contemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an "unmannered," +or "immoral" quality. It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense--it +is the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of Titian's, +or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, expresses +delight in the perpetual contemplation of a good and perfect thing. +That is an entirely moral quality--it is the taste of the angels And +all delight in art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple +love of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality which +we call "loveliness"--(we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness, +to be said of the things which deserve to be hated); and it is not an +indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is +just the vital function of all our being. What we _like_ determines +what we _are_, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is +inevitably to form character. + +As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet Street the other day, +my eye caught the title of a book standing open in a bookseller's +window. It was--"On the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all +classes." "Ah," I thought to myself, "my classifying friend, when you +have diffused your taste, where will your classes be? The man who +likes what you like, belongs to the same class with you, I think. +Inevitably so. You may put him to other work if you choose; but, by +the condition you have brought him into, he will dislike the other +work as much as you would yourself. You get hold of a scavenger or a +costermonger, who enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and +'Pop goes the Weasel' for music. You think you can make him like Dante +and Beethoven? I wish you joy of your lessons; but if you do, you have +made a gentleman of him:--he won't like to go back to his +coster-mongering." + +And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, that, if I had time +to-night, I could show you that a nation cannot be affected by any +vice, or weakness, without expressing it, legibly, and for ever, +either in bad art, or by want of art; and that there is no national +virtue, small or great, which is not manifestly expressed in all the +art which circumstances enable the people possessing that virtue to +produce. Take, for instance, your great English virtue of enduring and +patient courage. You have at present in England only one art of any +consequence--that is, iron-working. You know thoroughly well how to +cast and hammer iron. Now, do you think, in those masses of lava which +you build volcanic cones to melt, and which you forge at the mouths of +the Infernos you have created; do you think, on those iron plates, +your courage and endurance are not written for ever,--not merely with +an iron pen, but on iron parchment? And take also your great English +vice--European vice--vice of all the world--vice of all other worlds +that roll or shine in heaven, bearing with them yet the atmosphere of +hell--the vice of jealousy, which brings competition into your +commerce, treachery into your councils, and dishonour into your +wars--that vice which has rendered for you, and for your next +neighbouring nation, the daily occupations of existence no longer +possible, but with the mail upon your breasts and the sword loose in +its sheath; so that at last, you have realized for all the multitudes +of the two great peoples who lead the so-called civilization of the +earth,--you have realized for them all, I say, in person and in +policy, what was once true only of the rough Border riders of your +Cheviot hills-- + + They carved at the meal + With gloves of steel, + +And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd;[204] do you +think that this national shame and dastardliness of heart are not +written as legibly on every rivet of your iron armour as the strength +of the right hands that forged it? + +Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more ludicrous or the +more melancholy. It is quite unspeakably both. Suppose, instead of +being now sent for by you, I had been sent for by some private +gentleman, living in a suburban house, with his garden separated only +by a fruit wall from his next door neighbour's; and he had called me +to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing-room. I begin +looking about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and +such a paper might be desirable--perhaps a little fresco here and +there on the ceiling--a damask curtain or so at the windows. "Ah," +says my employer, "damask curtains, indeed! That's all very fine, but +you know I can't afford that kind of thing just now!" "Yet the world +credits you with a splendid income!" "Ah, yes," says my friend, "but +do you know, at present I am obliged to spend it nearly all in +steel-traps?" "Steel-traps! for whom?" "Why, for that fellow on the +other side the wall, you know: we're very good friends, capital +friends; but we are obliged to keep our traps set on both sides of the +wall; we could not possibly keep on friendly terms without them, and +our spring guns. The worst of it is, we are both clever fellows +enough; and there's never a day passes that we don't find out a new +trap, or a new gun-barrel, or something; we spend about fifteen +millions a year each in our traps, take it altogether; and I don't see +how we're to do with less." A highly comic state of life for two +private gentlemen! but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly +comic. Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman +in it; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only one +clown in it; but when the whole world turns clown, and paints itself +red with its own heart's blood instead of vermilion, it is something +else than comic, I think. + +Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and willingly allow for +that. You don't know what to do with yourselves for a sensation: +fox-hunting and cricketing will not carry you through the whole of +this unendurably long mortal life: you liked pop-guns when you were +schoolboys, and rifles and Armstrongs are only the same things better +made: but then the worst of it is, that what was play to you when +boys, was not play to the sparrows; and what is play to you now, is +not play to the small birds of State neither; and for the black +eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking shots at them, if I mistake +not.[205] + +I must get back to the matter in hand, however. Believe me, without +further instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation's +vice, or virtue, was written in its art: the soldiership of early +Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of +Tuscany; the splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. I have no +time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now);[206] +but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in a more searching +manner. + +I notice that among all the new buildings that cover your once wild +hills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large +proportion, with your mills and mansions; and I notice also that the +churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and +mills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely the meaning +of this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When +Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and when +the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well +as houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of Antwerp, +there is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if Inigo +Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an +Italian St. Paul's.[207] But now you live under one school of +architecture, and worship under another. What do you mean by doing +this? Am I to understand that you are thinking of changing your +architecture back to Gothic; and that you treat your churches +experimentally, because it does not matter what mistakes you make in a +church? Or am I to understand that you consider Gothic a pre-eminently +sacred and beautiful mode of building, which you think, like the fine +frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and reserved +for your religious services? For if this be the feeling, though it may +seem at first as if it were graceful and reverent, you will find that, +at the root of the matter, it signifies neither more nor less than +that you have separated your religion from your life. + +For consider what a wide significance this fact has: and remember that +it is not you only, but all the people of England, who are behaving +thus, just now. + +You have all got into the habit of calling the church "the house of +God." I have seen, over the doors of many churches, the legend +actually carved, "_This_ is the house of God and this is the gate of +heaven."[208] Now, note where that legend comes from, and of what +place it was first spoken. A boy leaves his father's house to go on a +long journey on foot, to visit his uncle: he has to cross a wild +hill-desert; just as if one of your own boys had to cross the wolds to +visit an uncle at Carlisle. The second or third day your boy finds +himself somewhere between Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the moors, +at sunset. It is stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go one foot +further that night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best +he may, gathering a few of the stones together to put under his +head;--so wild the place is, he cannot get anything but stones. And +there, lying under the broad night, he has a dream; and he sees a +ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and +the angels of God are ascending and descending upon it. And when he +wakes out of his sleep, he says, "How dreadful is this place; surely +this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of +heaven." This PLACE, observe; not this church; not this city; not this +stone, even, which he puts up for a memorial--the piece of flint on +which his head has lain. But this _place_; this windy slope of +Wharnside; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted! this +_any_ place where God lets down the ladder. And how are you to know +where that will be? or how are you to determine where it may be, but +by being ready for it always? Do you know where the lightning is to +fall next? You _do_ know that, partly; you can guide the lightning; +but you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit, which is that +lightning when it shines from the east to the west.[209] + +But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong verse to serve a +merely ecclesiastical purpose is only one of the thousand instances in +which we sink back into gross Judaism. We call our churches "temples." +Now, you know perfectly well they are _not_ temples. They have never +had, never can have, anything whatever to do with temples. They are +"synagogues"--"gathering places"--where you gather yourselves together +as an assembly; and by not calling them so, you again miss the force +of another mighty text--"Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the +hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the churches" [we +should translate it], "that they may be seen of men. But thou, when +thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, +pray to thy Father"--which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but "in +secret."[210] + +Now, you feel, as I say this to you--I know you feel--as if I were +trying to take away the honour of your churches. Not so; I am trying +to prove to you the honour of your houses and your hills; not that the +Church is not sacred--but that the whole Earth is. I would have you +feel, what careless, what constant, what infectious sin there is in +all modes of thought, whereby, in calling your churches only "holy," +you call your hearths and homes "profane"; and have separated +yourselves from the heathen by casting all your household gods to the +ground, instead of recognizing, in the place of their many and feeble +Lares, the presence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. + +"But what has all this to do with our Exchange?" you ask me, +impatiently. My dear friends, it has just everything to do with it; on +these inner and great questions depend all the outer and little ones; +and if you have asked me down here to speak to you, because you had +before been interested in anything I have written, you must know that +all I have yet said about architecture was to show this. The book I +called _The Seven Lamps_ was to show that certain right states of +temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good +architecture, without exception, had been produced. _The Stones of +Venice_ had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that the +Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all +its features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue; +and that its Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in all +its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and +of domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what style is best to +build in, and how can I answer, knowing the meaning of the two styles, +but by another question--do you mean to build as Christians or as +Infidels? And still more--do you mean to build as honest Christians or +as honest Infidels? as thoroughly and confessedly either one or the +other? You don't like to be asked such rude questions. I cannot help +it; they are of much more importance than this Exchange business; and +if they can be at once answered, the Exchange business settles itself +in a moment. But before I press them farther, I must ask leave to +explain one point clearly. + +In all my past work, my endeavour has been to show that good +architecture is essentially religious--the production of a faithful +and virtuous, not of an infidel and corrupted people. But in the +course of doing this, I have had also to show that good architecture +is not _ecclesiastical_. People are so apt to look upon religion as +the business of the clergy, not their own, that the moment they hear +of anything depending on "religion," they think it must also have +depended on the priesthood; and I have had to take what place was to +be occupied between these two errors, and fight both, often with +seeming contradiction. Good architecture is the work of good and +believing men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, "Good +architecture must essentially have been the work of the clergy, not of +the laity." No--a thousand times no; good architecture[211] has always +been the work of the commonalty, _not_ of the clergy. "What," you say, +"those glorious cathedrals--the pride of Europe--did their builders +not form Gothic architecture?" No; they corrupted Gothic architecture. +Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, and the burgher's street. It +was formed by the thoughts, and hands, and powers of labouring +citizens and warrior kings. By the monk it was used as an instrument +for the aid of his superstition; when that superstition became a +beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly dreamed and +pined in the cloister, and vainly raged and perished in the +crusade,--through that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the +Gothic rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most +foolish dreams; and in those dreams, was lost. + +I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunderstanding me when I +come to the gist of what I want to say to-night;--when I repeat, that +every great national architecture has been the result and exponent of +a great national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits +there--you must have it everywhere or nowhere. It is not the monopoly +of a clerical company--it is not the exponent of a theological +dogma--it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood; +it is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common +purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible +laws of an undoubted God. + +Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools of European +architecture. I say, European, because Asiatic and African +architectures belong so entirely to other races and climates, that +there is no question of them here; only, in passing, I will simply +assure you that whatever is good or great in Egypt, and Syria, and +India, is just good or great for the same reasons as the buildings on +our side of the Bosphorus. We Europeans, then, have had three great +religions: the Greek, which was the worship of the God of Wisdom and +Power; the Mediaeval, which was the worship of the God of Judgment and +Consolation; the Renaissance, which was the worship of the God of +Pride and Beauty: these three we have had--they are past,--and now, at +last, we English have got a fourth religion, and a God of our own, +about which I want to ask you. But I must explain these three old ones +first. + +I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God of Wisdom; +so that whatever contended against their religion,--to the Jews a +stumbling-block,--was, to the Greeks--_Foolishness_.[212] + +The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed in the word, of which +we keep the remnant in our words "_Di_-urnal" and "_Di_-vine"--the god +of _Day_, Jupiter the revealer. Athena is his daughter, but especially +daughter of the Intellect, springing armed from the head. We are only +with the help of recent investigation beginning to penetrate the depth +of meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly, +that her aegis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which she +often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her left +hand, for better guard; and the Gorgon, on her shield, are both +representative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men +to stone, as it were), of the outmost and superficial spheres of +knowledge--that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, +and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown man from the heart of the +child. For out of imperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension, +danger, and disdain; but from perfect knowledge, given by the +full-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign of which she is +crowned with the olive spray, and bears the resistless spear.[213] + +This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity; and every habit +of life, and every form of his art developed themselves from the +seeking this bright, serene, resistless wisdom; and setting himself, +as a man, to do things evermore rightly and strongly;[214] not with +any ardent affection or ultimate hope; but with a resolute and +continent energy of will, as knowing that for failure there was no +consolation, and for sin there was no remission. And the Greek +architecture rose unerring, bright, clearly defined, and +self-contained. + +Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which was +essentially the religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is the +remission of sins; for which cause, it happens, too often, in certain +phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness themselves are partly +glorified, as if, the more you had to be healed of, the more divine +was the healing. The practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a +continual contemplation of sin and disease, and of imaginary states of +purification from them; thus we have an architecture conceived in a +mingled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, partly severe, partly +luxuriant, which will bend itself to every one of our needs, and every +one of our fancies, and be strong or weak with us, as we are strong or +weak ourselves. It is, of all architecture, the basest, when base +people build it--of all, the noblest, when built by the noble. + +And now note that both these religions--Greek and Mediaeval--perished +by falsehood in their own main purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdom +perished in a false philosophy--"Oppositions of science, falsely so +called." The Mediaeval religion of Consolation perished in false +comfort; in remission of sins given lyingly. It was the selling of +absolution that ended the Mediaeval faith; and I can tell you more, it +is the selling of absolution which, to the end of time, will mark +false Christianity. Pure Christianity gives her remission of sins only +by _ending_ them; but false Christianity gets her remission of sins by +_compounding for_ them. And there are many ways of compounding for +them. We English have beautiful little quiet ways of buying +absolution, whether in low Church or high, far more cunning than any +of Tetzel's trading.[215] + +Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, in which all +Europe gave itself to luxury, ending in death. First, _bals masques_ +in every saloon, and then guillotines in every square. And all these +three worships issue in vast temple building. Your Greek worshipped +Wisdom, and built you the Parthenon--the Virgin's temple. The Mediaeval +worshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples also--but to our +Lady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist worshipped beauty, of a sort, +and built you Versailles and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell +me what _we_ worship, and what _we_ build? + +You know we are speaking always of the real, active, continual, +national worship; that by which men act, while they live; not that +which they talk of, when they die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal +religion, to which we pay tithes of property and sevenths of time; but +we have also a practical and earnest religion, to which we devote +nine-tenths of our property and sixth-sevenths of our time. And we +dispute a great deal about the nominal religion: but we are all +unanimous about this practical one; of which I think you will admit +that the ruling goddess may be best generally described as the +"Goddess of Getting-on," or "Britannia of the Market." The Athenians +had an "Athena Agoraia," or Athena of the Market; but she was a +subordinate type of their goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is the +principal type of ours. And all your great architectural works are, of +course, built to her. It is long since you built a great cathedral; +and how you would laugh at me if I proposed building a cathedral on +the top of one of these hills of yours, taking it for an Acropolis! +But your railroad mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon; your +railroad stations, vaster than the temple of Ephesus, and innumerable; +your chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires! +your harbour-piers; your warehouses; your exchanges!--all these are +built to your great Goddess of "Getting-on"; and she has formed, and +will continue to form your architecture, as long as you worship her; +and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to _her_; you +know far better than I. + +There might, indeed, on some theories, be a conceivably good +architecture for Exchanges--that is to say, if there were any heroism +in the fact or deed of exchange which might be typically carved on the +outside of your building. For, you know, all beautiful architecture +must be adorned with sculpture or painting; and for sculpture or +painting, you must have a subject. And hitherto it has been a received +opinion among the nations of the world that the only right subjects +for either, were _heroisms_ of some sort. Even on his pots and his +flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, or an Apollo slaying +serpents, or Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and earthborn +despondencies. On his temples, the Greek put contests of great +warriors in founding states, or of gods with evil spirits. On his +houses and temples alike, the Christian put carvings of angels +conquering devils; or of hero-martyrs exchanging this world for +another: subject inappropriate, I think, to our manner of exchange +here. And the Master of Christians not only left His followers without +any orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange on the outside +of buildings, but gave some strong evidence of His dislike of affairs +of exchange within them.[216] And yet there might surely be a heroism +in such affairs; and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves, +not impious. The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism has +never been supposed to be in any wise consistent with the practice of +supplying people with food, or clothes; but rather with that of +quartering one's self upon them for food, and stripping them of their +clothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all ages; but the +selling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken any colour of +magnanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and clothing +the naked should ever become base businesses, even when engaged in on +a large scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion of conquest +to them anyhow! so that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinate +race, who refused to be comforted, one might take some pride in giving +them compulsory comfort! and, as it were, "_occupying_ a country" with +one's gifts, instead of one's armies? If one could only consider it as +much a victory to get a barren field sown, as to get an eared field +stripped; and contend who should build villages, instead of who should +"carry" them! Are not all forms of heroism conceivable in doing these +serviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be ascertained +by push of spade, as well as push of sword. Who is wisest? There are +witty things to be thought of in planning other business than +campaigns. Who is bravest? There are always the elements to fight +with, stronger than men; and nearly as merciless. + +The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier's +work seems to be--that he is paid little for it--and regularly: while +you traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied in presumably +benevolent business, like to be paid much for it--and by chance. I +never can make out how it is that a _knight_-errant does not expect to +be paid for his trouble, but a _pedlar_-errant always does;--that +people are willing to take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell +ribands cheap; that they are ready to go on fervent crusades, to +recover the tomb of a buried God, but never on any travels to fulfil +the orders of a living one;--that they will go anywhere barefoot to +preach their faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, and are +perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and +fishes. + +If you chose to take the matter up on any such soldierly principle; to +do your commerce, and your feeding of nations, for fixed salaries; and +to be as particular about giving people the best food, and the best +cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the best gunpowder, I could +carve something for you on your exchange worth looking at. But I can +only at present suggest decorating its frieze with pendant purses; and +making its pillars broad at the base, for the sticking of bills. And +in the innermost chambers of it there might be a statue of Britannia +of the Market, who may have, perhaps advisably, a partridge for her +crest, typical at once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas, and +of her interest in game; and round its neck, the inscription in golden +letters, "Perdix fovit quae non peperit."[217] Then, for her spear, she +might have a weaver's beam; and on her shield, instead of St. George's +Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret +proper, in the field; and the legend, "In the best market,"[218] and +her corslet, of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of a +purse, with thirty slits in it, for a piece of money to go in at, on +each day of the month. And I doubt not but that people would come to +see your exchange, and its goddess, with applause. + +Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain strange characters in +this goddess of yours. She differs from the great Greek and Mediaeval +deities essentially in two things--first, as to the continuance of her +presumed power; secondly, as to the extent of it. + +1st, as to the Continuance. + +The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual increase of wisdom, as the +Christian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual increase of +comfort. There was no question, with these, of any limit or cessation +of function. But with your Agora Goddess, that is just the most +important question. Getting on--but where to? Gathering together--but +how much? Do you mean to gather always--never to spend? If so, I wish +you joy of your goddess, for I am just as well off as you, without the +trouble of worshipping her at all. But if you do not spend, somebody +else will--somebody else must. And it is because of this (among many +other such errors) that I have fearlessly declared your so-called +science of Political Economy to be no science; because, namely, it has +omitted the study of exactly the most important branch of the +business--the study of _spending_. For spend you must, and as much as +you make, ultimately. You gather corn:--will you bury England under a +heap of grain; or will you, when you have gathered, finally eat? You +gather gold:--will you make your house-roofs of it, or pave your +streets with it? That is still one way of spending it. But if you keep +it, that you may get more, I'll give you more; I'll give you all the +gold you want--all you can imagine--if you can tell me what you'll do +with it. You shall have thousands of gold-pieces;--thousands of +thousands--millions--mountains, of gold: where will you keep them? +Will you put an Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelion--make Ossa like +a wart?[219] Do you think the rain and dew would then come down to +you, in the streams from such mountains, more blessedly than they will +down the mountains which God has made for you, of moss and whinstone? +But it is not gold that you want to gather! What is it? greenbacks? +No; not those neither. What is it then--is it ciphers after a capital +I? Cannot you practise writing ciphers, and write as many as you want? +Write ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big book, and say every +evening, I am worth all those noughts more than I was yesterday. Won't +that do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is it you want? Not gold, +not greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital I? You will have to +answer, after all, "No; we want, somehow or other, money's _worth_." +Well, what is that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on discover it, and +let her learn to stay therein. + +2d. But there is yet another question to be asked respecting this +Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of the continuance of her power; +the second is of its extent. + +Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the world's Pallas, and +all the world's Madonna. They could teach all men, and they could +comfort all men. But, look strictly into the nature of the power of +your Goddess of Getting-on; and you will find she is the Goddess--not +of everybody's getting on--but only of somebody's getting on. This is +a vital, or rather deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal +of the state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke and +maintain. I asked you what it was, when I was last here;--you have +never told me.[220] Now, shall I try to tell you? + +Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should be passed in +a pleasant undulating world, with iron and coal everywhere underneath +it. On each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, +with two wings; and stables, and coach-houses; a moderately-sized +park; a large garden and hot-houses; and pleasant carriage drives +through the shrubberies In this mansion are to live the favoured +votaries of the Goddess; the English gentleman, with his gracious +wife, and his beautiful family; always able to have the boudoir and +the jewels for the wife, and the beautiful ball dresses for the +daughters, and hunters for the sons, and a shooting in the Highlands +for himself. At the bottom of the bank, is to be the mill; not less +than a quarter of a mile long, with a steam engine at each end, and +two in the middle, and a chimney three hundred feet high. In this mill +are to be in constant employment from eight hundred to a thousand +workers, who never drink, never strike, always go to church on Sunday, +and always express themselves in respectful language. + +Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of thing you +propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed seen from above; not +at all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family +this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand families +she is the Goddess of _not_ Getting-on. "Nay," you say, "they have all +their chance." Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must +always be the same number of blanks. "Ah! but in a lottery it is not +skill and intelligence which take the lead, but blind chance." What +then! do you think the old practice, that "they should take who have +the power, and they should keep who can,"[221] is less iniquitous, +when the power has become power of brains instead of fist? and that, +though we may not take advantage of a child's or a woman's weakness, +we may of a man's foolishness? "Nay, but finally, work must be done, +and some one must be at the top, some one at the bottom." Granted, my +friends. Work must always be, and captains of work must always be; and +if you in the least remember the tone of any of my writings, you must +know that they are thought unfit for this age, because they are always +insisting on need of government, and speaking with scorn of liberty. +But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being +captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It does +not follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to take +all the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure or +land;) neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are to +consume all the profits of the nation's work. Real kings, on the +contrary, are known invariably by their doing quite the reverse of +this,--by their taking the least possible quantity of the nation's +work for themselves. There is no test of real kinghood so infallible +as that. Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely, +unostentatiously? probably he _is_ a King. Does he cover his body with +jewels, and his table with delicates? in all probability he is _not_ a +King. It is possible he may be, as Solomon was; but that is when the +nation shares his splendour with him. Solomon made gold, not only to +be in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones.[222] +But, even so, for the most part, these splendid kinghoods expire in +ruin, and only the true king-hoods live, which are of royal labourers +governing loyal labourers; who, both leading rough lives, establish +the true dynasties. Conclusively you will find that because you are +king of a nation, it does not follow that you are to gather for +yourself all the wealth of that nation; neither, because you are king +of a small part of the nation, and lord over the means of its +maintenance--over field, or mill, or mine,--are you to take all the +produce of that piece of the foundation of national existence for +yourself. + +You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannot +mend them. No, good friends, I cannot; but you can, and you will; or +something else can and will. Even good things have no abiding +power--and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? All +history shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact thing they never +can do. Change _must_ come; but it is ours to determine whether change +of growth, or change of death. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on its +rock, and Bolton priory[223] in its meadow, but these mills of yours +be the consummation of the buildings of the earth, and their wheels be +as the wheels of eternity? Think you that "men may come, and men may +go," but--mills--go on for ever?[224] Not so; out of these, better or +worse shall come; and it is for you to choose which. + +I know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate purpose. I +know, on the contrary, that you wish your workmen well; that you do +much for them, and that you desire to do more for them, if you saw +your way to such benevolence safely. I know that even all this wrong +and misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each of you +striving to do his best; but, unhappily, not knowing for whom this +best should be done. And all our hearts have been betrayed by the +plausible impiety of the modern economist, telling us that, "To do the +best for ourselves, is finally to do the best for others." Friends, +our great Master said not so; and most absolutely we shall find this +world is not made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, is finally to +do the best for ourselves; but it will not do to have our eyes fixed +on that issue. The Pagans had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says +of this matter; hear what were, perhaps, the last written words of +Plato,--if not the last actually written (for this we cannot know), +yet assuredly in fact and power his parting words--in which, +endeavouring to give full crowning and harmonious close to all his +thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by the imagined sentence of the +Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, and the words +cease, broken off for ever. They are at the close of the dialogue +called _Critias_, in which he describes, partly from real tradition, +partly in ideal dream, the early state of Athens; and the genesis, and +order, and religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis +he conceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy of man, +which in our own Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that the +Sons of God inter-married with the daughters of men,[225] for he +supposes the earliest race to have been indeed the children of God; +and to have corrupted themselves, until "their spot was not the spot +of his children."[226] And this, he says, was the end; that indeed +"through many generations, so long as the God's nature in them yet was +full, they were submissive to the sacred laws, and carried themselves +lovingly to all that had kindred with them in divineness; for their +uttermost spirit was faithful and true, and in every wise great; so +that, in _all meekness of wisdom, they dealt with each other_, and +took all the chances of life; and despising all things except virtue, +they cared little what happened day by day, and _bore lightly the +burden_ of gold and of possessions; for they saw that, if _only their +common love and virtue increased, all these things would be increased +together with them_; but to set their esteem and ardent pursuit upon +material possession would be to lose that first, and their virtue and +affection together with it. And by such reasoning, and what of the +divine nature remained in them, they gained all this greatness of +which we have already told; but when the God's part of them faded and +became extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced by the +prevalent mortality; and the human nature at last exceeded, they then +became unable to endure the courses of fortune; and fell into +shapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him who could see, +having lost everything that was fairest of their honour; while to the +blind hearts which could not discern the true life, tending to +happiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy, +being filled with an iniquity of inordinate possession and power. +Whereupon, the God of Gods, whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a +once just nation thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay such +punishment upon them as might make them repent into restraining, +gathered together all the gods into his dwelling-place, which from +heaven's centre overlooks whatever has part in creation; and having +assembled them, he said "-- + +The rest is silence. Last words of the chief wisdom of the heathen, +spoken of this idol of riches; this idol of yours; this golden image, +high by measureless cubits, set up where your green fields of England +are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura:[227] this +idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and +faith; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, in any +age or people, been accounted of as able to speak according to the +purposes of God. Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal +one, and soon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be +possible. Catastrophe will come; or, worse than catastrophe, slow +mouldering and withering into Hades. But if you can fix some +conception of a true human state of life to be striven for--life, good +for all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest and +simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, +which are pleasantness,[228] and seeking her quiet and withdrawn +paths, which are peace;--then, and so sanctifying wealth into +"commonwealth," all your art, your literature, your daily labours, +your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase +into one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build, well +enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples +not made with hands,[229] but riveted of hearts; and that kind of +marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal. + + + [202] Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford, April 21, 1864. + + [203] _Matthew_ v, 6. + + [204] Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, canto 1, stanza 4. + + [205] The reference was to the reluctance of this country to take + arms in defence of Denmark against Prussia and Austria. [Cook and + Wedderburn.] + + [206] See, e.g., pp. 167 ff. and 270 ff. + + [207] Inigo Jones [1573-1652] and Sir Christopher Wren [1632-1723] + were the best known architects of their respective generations. + + [208] _Genesis_ xxviii, 17. + + [209] _Matthew_ xxiv, 27. + + [210] _Matthew_ vi, 6. + + [211] And all other arts, for the most part; even of incredulous + and secularly-minded commonalties. [Ruskin.] + + [212] 1 _Corinthians_ i, 23. + + [213] For further interpretation of Greek mythology see Ruskin's + _Queen of the Air_. + + [214] It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, + was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Rightness and + Strength, founded on Forethought: the principal character of Greek + art is not beauty, but design: and the Dorian Apollo-worship and + Athenian Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine + wisdom and purity. Next to these great deities, rank, in power over + the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength + and life; then, for heroic example, Hercules. There is no + Venus-worship among the Greeks in the great times: and the Muses + are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. [Ruskin.] + + [215] Tetzel's trading in Papal indulgences aroused Luther to the + protest which ended in the Reformation. + + [216] _Matthew_ xxi, 12. + + [217] _Jeremiah_ xvii, 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As the + partridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth + riches not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days, and + at his end shall be a fool." [Ruskin.] + + [218] Meaning, fully, "We have brought our pigs to it." [Ruskin.] + + [219] Cf. _Hamlet_, 5. 1. 306. + + [220] Referring to a lecture on _Modern Manufacture and Design_, + delivered at Bradford, March 1, 1859 published later as Lecture III + in _The Two Paths_. + + [221] See Wordsworth's _Rob Roy's Grave_, 39-40. + + [222] 1 Kings x, 27. + + [223] A beautiful ruin in Yorkshire. + + [224] Cf. Tennyson's _The Brook_. + + [225] _Genesis_ vi, 2. + + [226] _Deuteronomy_ xxxii, 5. + + [227] _Daniel_ iii, 1. + + [228] _Proverbs_ iii, 17. + + [229] _Acts_ vii, 48. + + + + +LIFE AND ITS ARTS + + + This lecture, the full title of which is "The Mystery of Life and + its Arts," was delivered in Dublin on May 13, 1868. It composed + one of a series of afternoon lectures on various subjects, + religion excepted, arranged by some of the foremost residents in + Dublin. The latter half of the lecture is included in the present + volume of selections. The first publication of the lecture was as + an additional part to a revised edition of _Sesame and Lilies_ in + 1871. Ruskin took exceptional care in writing "The Mystery of + Life": he once said in conversation, "I put into it all that I + know," and in the preface to it when published he tells us that + certain passages of it "contain the best expression I have yet + been able to put in words of what, so far as is within my power, I + mean henceforward both to do myself, and to plead with all over + whom I have any influence to do according to their means." Sir + Leslie Stephen says this "is, to my mind, the most perfect of his + essays." In later editions of _Sesame and Lilies_ this lecture was + withdrawn. At the time the lecture was delivered its tone was + characteristic of Ruskin's own thought and of the attitude he then + took toward the public. + +We have sat at the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, and they have +told us their dreams. We have listened to the poets who sang of earth, +and they have chanted to us dirges and words of despair. But there is +one class of men more:--men, not capable of vision, nor sensitive to +sorrow, but firm of purpose--practised in business; learned in all +that can be, (by handling,) known. Men, whose hearts and hopes are +wholly in this present world, from whom, therefore, we may surely +learn, at least, how, at present, conveniently to live in it. What +will _they_ say to us, or show us by example? These kings--these +councillors--these statesmen and builders of kingdoms--these +capitalists and men of business, who weigh the earth, and the dust of +it, in a balance.[230] They know the world, surely; and what is the +mystery of life to us, is none to them. They can surely show us how to +live, while we live, and to gather out of the present world what is +best. + +I think I can best tell you their answer, by telling you a dream I had +once. For though I am no poet, I have dreams sometimes:--I dreamed I +was at a child's May-day party, in which every means of entertainment +had been provided for them, by a wise and kind host. It was in a +stately house, with beautiful gardens attached to it; and the children +had been set free in the rooms and gardens, with no care whatever but +how to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know +much about what was to happen next day; and some of them, I thought, +were a little frightened, because there was a chance of their being +sent to a new school where there were examinations; but they kept the +thoughts of that out of their heads as well as they could, and +resolved to enjoy themselves. The house, I said, was in a beautiful +garden, and in the garden were all kinds of flowers; sweet, grassy +banks for rest; and smooth lawns for play; and pleasant streams and +woods; and rocky places for climbing. And the children were happy for +a little while, but presently they separated themselves into parties; +and then each party declared it would have a piece of the garden for +its own, and that none of the others should have anything to do with +that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently which pieces they would +have; and at last the boys took up the thing, as boys should do, +"practically," and fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly a +flower left standing; then they trampled down each other's bits of the +garden out of spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no more; +and so they all lay down at last breathless in the ruin, and waited +for the time when they were to be taken home in the evening.[231] + +Meanwhile, the children in the house had been making themselves happy +also in their manner. For them, there had been provided every kind of +in-door pleasure: there was music for them to dance to; and the +library was open, with all manner of amusing books; and there was a +museum full of the most curious shells, and animals, and birds; and +there was a workshop, with lathes and carpenters' tools, for the +ingenious boys; and there were pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls +to dress in; and there were microscopes, and kaleidoscopes; and +whatever toys a child could fancy; and a table, in the dining-room, +loaded with everything nice to eat. + +But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of the more +"practical" children, that they would like some of the brass-headed +nails that studded the chairs; and so they set to work to pull them +out. Presently, the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, +took a fancy to do the like; and, in a little while, all the children, +nearly, were spraining their fingers, in pulling out brass-headed +nails. With all that they could pull out, they were not satisfied; and +then, everybody wanted some of somebody else's. And at last, the +really practical and sensible ones declared, that nothing was of any +real consequence, that afternoon, except to get plenty of brass-headed +nails; and that the books, and the cakes, and the microscopes were of +no use at all in themselves, but only, if they could be exchanged for +nail-heads. And at last they began to fight for nail-heads, as the +others fought for the bits of garden. Only here and there, a despised +one shrank away into a corner, and tried to get a little quiet with a +book, in the midst of the noise; but all the practical ones thought of +nothing else but counting nail-heads all the afternoon--even though +they knew they would not be allowed to carry so much as one brass knob +away with them. But no--it was--"who has most nails? I have a hundred, +and you have fifty; or, I have a thousand, and you have two. I must +have as many as you before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly go +home in peace." At last, they made so much noise that I awoke, and +thought to myself, "What a false dream that is, of _children!_" The +child is the father of the man;[232] and wiser. Children never do such +foolish things. Only men do. + +But there is yet one last class of persons to be interrogated. The +wise religious men we have asked in vain; the wise contemplative men, +in vain; the wise worldly men, in vain. But there is another group +yet. In the midst of this vanity of empty religion--of tragic +contemplation--of wrathful and wretched ambition, and dispute for +dust, there is yet one great group of persons, by whom all these +disputers live--the persons who have determined, or have had it by a +beneficent Providence determined for them, that they will do something +useful; that whatever may be prepared for them hereafter, or happen to +them here, they will, at least, deserve the food that God gives them +by winning it honourably: and that, however fallen from the purity, or +far from the peace, of Eden, they will carry out the duty of human +dominion, though they have lost its felicity; and dress and keep the +wilderness,[233] though they no more can dress or keep the garden. + +These,--hewers of wood, and drawers of water,[234]--these, bent under +burdens, or torn of scourges--these, that dig and weave--that plant +and build; workers in wood, and in marble, and in iron--by whom all +food, clothing, habitation, furniture, and means of delight are +produced, for themselves, and for all men beside; men, whose deeds are +good, though their words may be few; men, whose lives are serviceable, +be they never so short, and worthy of honour, be they never so +humble;--from these, surely, at least, we may receive some clear +message of teaching; and pierce, for an instant, into the mystery of +life, and of its arts. + +Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But I grieve to say, +or rather--for that is the deeper truth of the matter--I rejoice to +say--this message of theirs can only be received by joining them--not +by thinking about them. + +You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have obeyed you in +coming. But the main thing I have to tell you is,--that art must not +be talked about. The fact that there is talk about it at all, +signifies that it is ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter ever +speaks, or ever has spoken, much of his art. The greatest speak +nothing. Even Reynolds is no exception, for he wrote of all that he +could not himself do,[235] and was utterly silent respecting all that he +himself did. + +The moment a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about +it. All words become idle to him--all theories. + +Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or boast of it +when built? All good work is essentially done that way--without +hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting; and in the doers of +the best, there is an inner and involuntary power which approximates +literally to the instinct of an animal--nay, I am certain that in the +most perfect human artists, reason does _not_ supersede instinct, but +is added to an instinct as much more divine than that of the lower +animals as the human body is more beautiful than theirs; that a great +singer sings not with less instinct than the nightingale, but with +more--only more various, applicable, and governable; that a great +architect does not build with less instinct than the beaver or the +bee, but with more--with an innate cunning of proportion that embraces +all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises all +construction. But be that as it may--be the instinct less or more than +that of inferior animals--like or unlike theirs, still the human art +is dependent on that first, and then upon an amount of practice, of +science,--and of imagination disciplined by thought, which the true +possessor of it knows to be incommunicable, and the true critic of it, +inexplicable, except through long process of laborious years. That +journey of life's conquest, in which hills over hills, and Alps on +Alps arose, and sank,--do you think you can make another trace it +painlessly, by talking? Why, you cannot even carry us up an Alp, by +talking. You can guide us up it, step by step, no otherwise--even so, +best silently. You girls, who have been among the hills, know how the +bad guide chatters and gesticulates, and it is "put your foot here"; +and "mind how you balance yourself there"; but the good guide walks on +quietly, without a word, only with his eyes on you when need is, and +his arm like an iron bar, if need be. + +In that slow way, also, art can be taught--if you have faith in your +guide, and will let his arm be to you as an iron bar when need is. But +in what teacher of art have you such faith? Certainly not in me; for, +as I told you at first, I know well enough it is only because you +think I can talk, not because you think I know my business, that you +let me speak to you at all. If I were to tell you anything that seemed +to you strange, you would not believe it, and yet it would only be in +telling you strange things that I could be of use to you. I could be +of great use to you--infinite use--with brief saying, if you would +believe it; but you would not, just because the thing that would be of +real use would displease you. You are all wild, for instance, with +admiration of Gustave Dore. Well, suppose I were to tell you, in the +strongest terms I could use, that Gustave Dore's art was bad--bad, not +in weakness,--not in failure,--but bad with dreadful power--the power +of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, and polluting; that +so long as you looked at it, no perception of pure or beautiful art +was possible for you. Suppose I were to tell you that! What would be +the use? Would you look at Gustave Dore less? Rather, more, I fancy. +On the other hand, I could soon put you into good humour with me, if I +chose. I know well enough what you like, and how to praise it to your +better liking. I could talk to you about moonlight, and twilight, and +spring flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Raphael--how +motherly! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo--how majestic! and the +Saints of Angelico--how pious! and the Cherubs of Correggio--how +delicious! Old as I am, I could play you a tune on the harp yet, that +you would dance to. But neither you nor I should be a bit the better +or wiser; or, if we were, our increased wisdom could be of no +practical effect. For, indeed, the arts, as regards teachableness, +differ from the sciences also in this, that their power is founded not +merely on facts which can be communicated, but on dispositions which +require to be created. Art is neither to be achieved by effort of +thinking, nor explained by accuracy of speaking. It is the instinctive +and necessary result of power, which can only be developed through the +mind of successive generations, and which finally burst into life +under social conditions as slow of growth as the faculties they +regulate. Whole aeras of mighty history are summed, and the passions of +dead myriads are concentrated, in the existence of a noble art; and if +that noble art were among us, we should feel it and rejoice; not +caring in the least to hear lectures on it; and since it is not among +us, be assured we have to go back to the root of it, or, at least, to +the place where the stock of it is yet alive, and the branches began +to die. + +And now, may I have your pardon for pointing out, partly with +reference to matters which are at this time of greater moment than the +arts--that if we undertook such recession to the vital germ of +national arts that have decayed, we should find a more singular arrest +of their power in Ireland than in any other European country. For in +the eighth century Ireland possessed a school of art in her +manuscripts and sculpture, which, in many of its qualities--apparently +in all essential qualities of decorative invention--was quite without +rival; seeming as if it might have advanced to the highest triumphs in +architecture and in painting. But there was one fatal flaw in its +nature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a conspicuousness of +pause to which there is no parallel: so that, long ago, in tracing the +progress of European schools from infancy to strength, I chose for the +students of Kensington, in a lecture since published, two +characteristic examples of early art, of equal skill; but in the one +case, skill which was progressive--in the other, skill which was at +pause. In the one case, it was work receptive of correction--hungry +for correction; and in the other, work which inherently rejected +correction. I chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible +Angel, and I grieve to say[236] that the incorrigible Angel was also an +Irish angel! + +And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. In both pieces of art +there was an equal falling short of the needs of fact; but the +Lombardic Eve knew she was in the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought +himself all right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmly +insisting on his childish idea, yet showed in the irregular broken +touches of the features, and the imperfect struggle for softer lines +in the form, a perception of beauty and law that he could not render; +there was the strain of effort, under conscious imperfection, in every +line. But the Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel with no sense +of failure, in happy complacency, and put red dots into the palms of +each hand, and rounded the eyes into perfect circles, and, I regret to +say, left the mouth out altogether, with perfect satisfaction to +himself. + +May I without offence ask you to consider whether this mode of arrest +in ancient Irish art may not be indicative of points of character +which even yet, in some measure, arrest your national power? I have +seen much of Irish character, and have watched it closely, for I have +also much loved it. And I think the form of failure to which it is +most liable is this,--that being generous-hearted, and wholly +intending always to do right, it does not attend to the external laws +of right, but thinks it must necessarily do right because it means to +do so, and therefore does wrong without finding it out; and then, when +the consequences of its wrong come upon it, or upon others connected +with it, it cannot conceive that the wrong is in any wise of its +causing or of its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange agony of +desire for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, which leads it +farther astray, until there is nothing that it is not capable of doing +with a good conscience. + +But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past or present relations +between Ireland and England, you have been wrong, and we right. Far +from that, I believe that in all great questions of principle, and in +all details of administration of law, you have been usually right, and +we wrong; sometimes in misunderstanding you, sometimes in resolute +iniquity to you. Nevertheless, in all disputes between states, though +the strongest is nearly always mainly in the wrong, the weaker is +often so in a minor degree; and I think we sometimes admit the +possibility of our being in error, and you never do.[237] + +And now, returning to the broader question, what these arts and +labours of life have to teach us of its mystery, this is the first of +their lessons--that the more beautiful the art, the more it is +essentially the work of people who _feel themselves wrong_;--who are +striving for the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness, +which they have not yet attained, which they feel even farther and +farther from attaining the more they strive for it. And yet, in still +deeper sense, it is the work of people who know also that they are +right. The very sense of inevitable error from their purpose marks the +perfectness of that purpose, and the continued sense of failure arises +from the continued opening of the eyes more clearly to all the +sacredest laws of truth. + +This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and greatly precious +one: namely,--that whenever the arts and labours of life are fulfilled +in this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have +to do, honourably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, as +much as seems possible to the nature of man. In all other paths by +which that happiness is pursued there is disappointment, or +destruction: for ambition and for passion there is no rest--no +fruition; the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greater +than their past light; and the loftiest and purest love too often does +but inflame the cloud of life with endless fire of pain. But, +ascending from lowest to highest, through every scale of human +industry, that industry worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the +labourer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the patient, +delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted worker +in bronze, and in marble, and in the colours of light; and none of +these, who are true workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found +the law of heaven an unkind one--that in the sweat of their face they +should eat bread, till they return to the ground;[238] nor that they +ever found it an unrewarded obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered +faithfully to the command--"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do--do it +with thy might."[239] + +These are the two great and constant lessons which our labourers teach +us of the mystery of life. But there is another, and a sadder one, +which they cannot teach us, which we must read on their tombstones. + +"Do it with thy might." There have been myriads upon myriads of human +creatures who have obeyed this law--who have put every breath and +nerve of their being into its toil--who have devoted every hour, and +exhausted every faculty--who have bequeathed their unaccomplished +thoughts at death--who, being dead, have yet spoken,[240] by majesty of +memory, and strength of example. And, at last, what has all this +"Might" of humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of labour and +sorrow? What has it _done_? Take the three chief occupations and arts +of men, one by one, and count their achievements. Begin with the +first--the lord of them all--Agriculture. Six thousand years have +passed since we were sent to till the ground, from which we were +taken. How much of it is tilled? How much of that which is, wisely or +well? In the very centre and chief garden of Europe--where the two +forms of parent Christianity have had their fortresses--where the +noble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, and the noble Protestants of +the Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for dateless ages, their faiths +and liberties--there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild in +devastation; and the marshes, which a few hundred men could redeem +with a year's labour, still blast their helpless inhabitants into +fevered idiotism. That is so, in the centre of Europe! While, on the +near coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab +woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for famine. And, with +all the treasures of the East at our feet, we, in our own dominion, +could not find a few grains of rice, for a people that asked of us no +more; but stood by, and saw five hundred thousand of them perish of +hunger.[241] + +Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take the next head of +human arts--weaving; the art of queens, honoured of all noble +Heathen women, in the person of their virgin goddess[242]--honoured +of all Hebrew women, by the word of their wisest king--"She layeth +her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; she +stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid of the snow +for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. +She maketh herself covering of tapestry; her clothing is silk and +purple. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth +girdles unto the merchant."[243] What have we done in all these +thousands of years with this bright art of Greek maid and Christian +matron? Six thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to weave? +Might not every naked wall have been purple with tapestry, and every +feeble breast fenced with sweet colours from the cold? What have we +done? Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some poor +covering for our bodies. We set our streams to work for us, and +choke the air with fire, to turn our pinning-wheels--and,--_are we +yet clothed_? Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe foul +with the sale of cast clouts and rotten rags?[244] Is not the beauty +of your sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, with +better honour, nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest, and +the suckling of the wolf in her den? And does not every winter's +snow robe what you have not robed, and shroud what you have not +shrouded; and every winter's wind bear up to heaven its wasted +souls, to witness against you hereafter, by the voice of their +Christ,--"I was naked, and ye clothed me not"?[245] + +Lastly--take the Art of Building--the strongest--proudest--most +orderly--most enduring of the arts of man; that of which the produce +is in the surest manner accumulative, and need not perish, or be +replaced; but if once well done, will stand more strongly than the +unbalanced rocks--more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art +which is associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; with +which men record their power--satisfy their enthusiasm--make sure +their defence--define and make dear their habitation. And in six +thousand years of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of +all that skill and strength, _no_ vestige is left, but fallen stones, +that encumber the fields and impede the streams. But, from this waste +of disorder, and of time, and of rage, what _is_ left to us? +Constructive and progressive creatures that we are, with ruling +brains, and forming hands, capable of fellowship, and thirsting for +fame, can we not contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, +or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea? The white surf rages in +vain against the ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent +life; but only ridges of formless ruin mark the places where once +dwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells for each +of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in homes +that consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners of +our streets, rises up the cry of the homeless--"I was a stranger, and +ye took me not in."[246] + +Must it be always thus? Is our life for ever to be without +profit--without possession? Shall the strength of its generations be +as barren as death; or cast away their labour, as the wild fig-tree +casts her untimely figs?[247] Is it all a dream then--the desire of the +eyes and the pride of life--or, if it be, might we not live in nobler +dream than this? The poets and prophets, the wise men, and the +scribes, though they have told us nothing about a life to come, have +told us much about the life that is now. They have had--they +also,--their dreams, and we have laughed at them. They have dreamed of +mercy, and of justice; they have dreamed of peace and good-will; they +have dreamed of labour undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed; they +have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in store; they +have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of providence in law; of +gladness of parents, and strength of children, and glory of grey +hairs. And at these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held them +for idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we +accomplished with our realities? Is this what has come of our worldly +wisdom, tried against their folly? this, our mightiest possible, +against their impotent ideal? or, have we only wandered among the +spectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of the tombs, instead +of visions of the Almighty; and walked after the imaginations of our +evil hearts,[248] instead of after the counsels of Eternity, until our +lives--not in the likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of +hell--have become "as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and +then vanisheth away"?[249] + +_Does_ it vanish then? Are you sure of that?--sure, that the +nothingness of the grave will be a rest from this troubled +nothingness; and that the coiling shadow, which disquiets itself in +vain, cannot change into the smoke of the torment that ascends for +ever?[250] Will any answer that they _are_ sure of it, and that there +is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither they go?[251] Be +it so: will you not, then, make as sure of the Life that now is, as +you are of the Death that is to come? Your hearts are wholly in this +world--will you not give them to it wisely, as well as perfectly? And +see, first of all, that you _have_ hearts, and sound hearts, too, to +give. Because you have no heaven to look for, is that any reason that +you should remain ignorant of this wonderful and infinite earth, which +is firmly and instantly given you in possession? Although your days +are numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary that +you should share the degradation of the brute, because you are +condemned to its mortality; or live the life of the moth, and of the +worm, because you are to companion them in the dust? Not so; we may +have but a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds +only--perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our time and best, looked back +on, will be but as a moment, as the twinkling of an eye; still we are +men, not insects; we are living spirits, not passing clouds. "He +maketh the winds His messengers; the momentary fire, His minister";[252] +and shall we do less than _these_? Let us do the work of men while +we bear the form of them; and, as we snatch our narrow portion of +time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance of passion +out of Immortality--even though our lives _be_ as a vapour, that +appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. + +But there are some of you who believe not this--who think this +cloud of life has no such close--that it is to float, revealed and +illumined, upon the floor of heaven, in the day when He cometh with +clouds, and every eye shall see Him.[253] Some day, you believe, +within these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us the +judgment will be set, and the books opened.[254] If that be true, +far more than that must be true. Is there but one day of judgment? +Why, for us every day is a day of judgment--every day is a Dies +Irae,[255] and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its +West. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave are +opened? It waits at the doors of your houses--it waits at the +corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment--the +insects that we crush are our judges--the moments that we fret away +are our judges--the elements that feed us, judge, as they +minister--and the pleasures that deceive us, judge as they indulge. +Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear the form of +them, if indeed those lives are _Not_ as a vapour, and do _Not_ +vanish away. + +"The work of men"--and what is that? Well, we may any of us know very +quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of +us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of +what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of +Ananias,[256] and it is a mortal one--we want to keep back part of the +price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only +harm in a cross was the _weight_ of it--as if it was only a thing to +be carried, instead of to be--crucified upon. "They that are His have +crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."[257] Does that +mean, think you, that in time of national distress, of religious +trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of humanity--none of us +will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put themselves to any +wholesome work, none take so much as a tag of lace off their footmen's +coats, to save the world? Or does it rather mean, that they are ready +to leave houses, lands, and kindreds--yes, and life, if need be? +Life!--some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless as we +have made it. But "_station_ in Life"--how many of us are ready to +quit _that_? Is it not always the great objection, where there is +question of finding something useful to do--"We cannot leave our +stations in Life"? + +Those of us who really cannot--that is to say, who can only maintain +themselves by continuing in some business or salaried office, have +already something to do; and all that they have to see to is, that +they do it honestly and with all their might. But with most people who +use that apology, "remaining in the station of life to which +Providence has called them" means keeping all the carriages, and all +the footmen and large houses they can possibly pay for; and, once for +all, I say that if ever Providence _did_ put them into stations of +that sort--which is not at all a matter of certainty--Providence is +just now very distinctly calling them out again. Levi's station in +life was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and +Paul's, the antechambers of the High Priest,--which "station in life" +each had to leave, with brief notice. + +And, whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, those of us +who mean to fulfil our duty ought first to live on as little as we +can; and, secondly, to do all the wholesome work for it we can, and to +spend all we can spare in doing all the sure good we can. + +And sure good is, first in feeding people, then in dressing people, +then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly pleasing people, with +arts, or sciences, or any other subject of thought. + +I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let yourselves be +deceived by any of the common talk of "indiscriminate charity." The +order to us is not to feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious +hungry, nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply to +feed the hungry.[258] It is quite true, infallibly true, that if any +man will not work, neither should he eat[259]--think of that, and every +time you sit down to your dinner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, +before you ask a blessing, "How much work have I done to-day for my +dinner?" But the proper way to enforce that order on those below you, +as well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest people +to starve together, but very distinctly to discern and seize your +vagabond; and shut your vagabond up out of honest people's way, and +very sternly then see that, until he has worked, he does _not_ eat. +But the first thing is to be sure you have the food to give; and, +therefore, to enforce the organization of vast activities in +agriculture and in commerce, for the production of the wholesomest +food, and proper storing and distribution of it, so that no famine +shall any more be possible among civilized beings There is plenty of +work in this business alone, and at once, for any number of people who +like to engage in it. + +Secondly, dressing people--that is to say, urging every one within +reach of your influence to be always neat and clean, and giving them +means of being so. In so far as they absolutely refuse, you must give +up the effort with respect to them, only taking care that no children +within your sphere of influence shall any more be brought up with such +habits; and that every person who is willing to dress with propriety +shall have encouragement to do so. And the first absolutely necessary +step towards this is the gradual adoption of a consistent dress for +different ranks of persons, so that their rank shall be known by their +dress; and the restriction of the changes of fashion within certain +limits. All which appears for the present quite impossible; but it is +only so far even difficult as it is difficult to conquer our vanity, +frivolity, and desire to appear what we are not. And it is not, nor +ever shall be, creed of mine, that these mean and shallow vices are +unconquerable by Christian women. + +And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may think should have +been put first, but I put it third, because we must feed and clothe +people where we find them, and lodge them afterwards. And providing +lodgment for them means a great deal of vigorous legislation, and +cutting down of vested interests that stand in the way, and after +that, or before that, so far as we can get it, thorough sanitary and +remedial action in the houses that we have; and then the building of +more, strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, kept in +proportion to their streams, and walled round, so that there may be no +festering and wretched suburb anywhere, but clean and busy street +within, and the open country without, with a belt of beautiful garden +and orchard round the walls, so that from any part of the city +perfectly fresh air and grass, and the sight of far horizon, might be +reachable in a few minutes' walk. This is the final aim; but in +immediate action every minor and possible good to be instantly done, +when, and as, we can; roofs mended that have holes in them--fences +patched that have gaps in them--walls buttressed that totter--and +floors propped that shake; cleanliness and order enforced with our own +hands and eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all the fine +arts will healthily follow. I myself have washed a flight of stone +stairs all down, with bucket and broom, in a Savoy inn, where they +hadn't washed their stairs since they first went up them; and I never +made a better sketch than that afternoon. + +These, then, are the three first needs of civilized life; and the law +for every Christian man and woman is, that they shall be in direct +service towards one of these three needs, as far as is consistent with +their own special occupation, and if they have no special business, +then wholly in one of these services. And out of such exertion in +plain duty all other good will come; for in this direct contention +with material evil, you will find out the real nature of all evil; you +will discern by the various kinds of resistance, what is really the +fault and main antagonism to good; also you will find the most +unexpected helps and profound lessons given, and truths will come thus +down to us which the speculation of all our lives would never have +raised us up to. You will find nearly every educational problem +solved, as soon as you truly want to do something; everybody will +become of use in their own fittest way, and will learn what is best +for them to know in that use. Competitive examination will then, and +not till then, be wholesome, because it will be daily, and calm, and +in practice; and on these familiar arts, and minute, but certain and +serviceable knowledges, will be surely edified and sustained the +greater arts and splendid theoretical sciences. + +But much more than this. On such holy and simple practice will be +founded, indeed, at last, an infallible religion. The greatest of all +the mysteries of life, and the most terrible, is the corruption of +even the sincerest religion, which is not daily founded on rational, +effective, humble, and helpful action. Helpful action, observe! for +there is just one law, which obeyed, keeps all religions +pure--forgotten, makes them all false. Whenever in any religious +faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points in +which we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the devil's +power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's thanksgiving--"Lord, I +thank Thee that I am not as other men are."[260] At every moment of our +lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with +other people, but in what we agree with them; and the moment we find +we can agree as to anything that should be done, kind or good, (and +who but fools couldn't?) then do it; push at it together: you can't +quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the moment that even the best men +stop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity for +piety, and if's all over. I will not speak of the crimes which in past +times have been committed in the name of Christ, nor of the follies +which are at this hour held to be consistent with obedience to Him; +but I _will_ speak of the morbid corruption and waste of vital power +in religious sentiment, by which the pure strength of that which +should be the guiding soul of every nation, the splendour of its +youthful manhood, and spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted or +cast away. You may see continually girls who have never been taught to +do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, +who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole life +has been passed either in play or in pride; you will find girls like +these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of +religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them through the +irksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over the +meaning of the great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to be +understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of +their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences +warped into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws of +common serviceable life would have either solved for them in an +instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a girl any true work that +will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the +consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better +for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform +itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace. + +So with our youths. We once taught them to make Latin verses, and +called them educated; now we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a +ball with a bat, and call them educated. Can they plough, can they +sow, can they plant at the right time, or build with a steady hand? Is +it the effort of their lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in +thought, lovely in word and deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay with +many, and the strength of England is in them, and the hope; but we +have to turn their courage from the toil of war to the toil of mercy; +and their intellect from dispute of words to discernment of things; +and their knighthood from the errantry of adventure to the state and +fidelity of a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall abide, for them, +and for us, an incorruptible felicity, and an infallible religion; +shall abide for us Faith, no more to be assailed by temptation, no +more to be defended by wrath and by fear;--shall abide with us Hope, +no more to be quenched by the years that overwhelm, or made ashamed by +the shadows that betray:--shall abide for us, and with us, the +greatest of these; the abiding will, the abiding name of our Father. +For the greatest of these is Charity.[261] + + + [230] _Isaiah_ xl, 12. + + [231] I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to + set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and + what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for + wealth. [Ruskin.] + + [232] See Wordsworth's poem, _My heart leaps up when I behold_. + + [233] See _Genesis_ ii, 15, and the opening lines of the first + selection in this volume. + + [234] _Joshua_ ix, 21. + + [235] In his _Discourses on Art_. Cf. pp. 24 ff. above. + + [236] See _The Two Paths_, Sec.Sec. 28 _et seq_. [Ruskin.] + + [237] References mainly to the Irish Land Question, on which Ruskin + agreed with Mill and Gladstone in advocating the establishment of a + peasant-proprietorship in Ireland. + + [238] _Genesis_ iii, 19. + + [239] _Ecclesiastes_ ix, 10. + + [240] _Hebrews_ xi, 4. + + [241] During the famine in the Indian province of Orissa. + + [242] Athena, goddess of weaving. + + [243] _Proverbs_ xxxi, 19-22, 24. + + [244] _Jeremiah_ xxxviii, 11. + + [245] _Matthew_ xxv, 43. + + [246] _Matthew_ xxv, 43. + + [247] _Revelation_ vi, 13. + + [248] _Jeremiah_ xi, 8. + + [249] _James_ iv, 14. + + [250] _Psalms_ xxxix, 6 and _Revelation_ xiv, 11. + + [251] _Ecclesiastes_ ix, 10. + + [252] _Psalms_ civ, 4. + + [253] _Revelation_ i, 7. + + [254] _Daniel_ vii, 10. + + [255] _Dies Irae_, the name generally given (from the opening words) + to the most famous of the mediaeval hymns, usually ascribed to the + Franciscan Thomas of Celano (died c. 1255). It is composed in + triplets of rhyming trochaic tetrameters, and describes the Last + Judgment in language of magnificent grandeur, passing into a + plaintive plea for the souls of the dead. + + [256] _Acts_ v, 1, 2. + + [257] _Galatians_ v. 24. + + [258] _Isaiah_ lviii, 7. + + [259] 2 _Thessalonians_ iii, 10. + + [260] _Luke_ xviii, 11. + + [261] 1 _Corinthians_ xiii, 13. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + + +_Editions_. The standard edition of Ruskin is that of Cook and + Wedderburn in 34 volumes. Most of his better-known works may + be had in cheap and convenient forms. + +The best lives are: + +COLLINGWOOD, W.G. The Life and Work of John Ruskin Houghton Mifflin + Company, 1893. (2 vols.) The standard biography. + +HARRISON, P. John Ruskin (English Men of Letters). The Macmillan + Company, 1902. A short and readable biography. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Selections From the Works of John +Ruskin, by John Ruskin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN *** + +***** This file should be named 15200.txt or 15200.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/2/0/15200/ + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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