THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 ALSO 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS 
 PRE-RAPHAEL1TISM— ARATRA PENTELICI 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST 
 FICTION, FAIR AND FOUL 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE," u THE STONES OF VENICE," 
 44 SESAME AND LILIES," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON 
 ALDINE BOOK PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Work, 
 
 Traffic, 
 
 War, 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 LECTURE 1. 
 LECTURE II. 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 PAGE 
 17 
 
 44 
 
 66 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 Preface, 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. Definitions, 
 
 II. Store-Keeping, 
 
 III. Coin-Keeping, 
 
 IV. Commerce, 
 V. Government, 
 
 VI. Mastership, . 
 Aptendices, 
 
 97 
 
 in 
 
 "5 
 151 
 170 
 181 
 
 204 
 
 222 
 
PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 
 
 PAGH 
 
 PREEACE, 235 
 
 Pre-Raphaelitism, ...... 237 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICI. 
 
 Preface, ...... . 283 
 
 LECTURE 
 
 I. Of the Division of Arts, .... 287 
 
 II. Idolatry, ....... 304 
 
 III. Imagination, ...... 322 
 
 IV. Likeness, ....... 350 
 
 V. Structure, ...... 372 
 
 VI. The School of Athens, ..... 395 
 
 The Future of England, ..... 415 
 
 Notes on Political Economy of Prussia, . , . 435 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICI. 
 
 PLATES 
 
 FACING 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. 
 
 Porch of San Zenone. Verona, . , 
 
 300 
 
 II. 
 
 The Arethusa of Syracuse, 
 
 302 
 
 III. 
 
 The Warning to the Kings, 
 
 302 
 
 V. 
 
 Tomb of the Doges Jacopo and Lorenzo Tiepolo, 
 
 333 
 
 VI. 
 
 Archaic Athena of Athens and Corinth, 
 
 
 VII. 
 
 Archaic, Central and Declining Art of Greece, 
 
 355 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Apollo of Syracuse and the Self-made Man, 
 
 366 
 
 IX. 
 
 Apollo Chrysocomes of Clazomence, 
 
 368 
 
 X. 
 
 Marble Masonry in the Duoma of Verona, 
 
 33i 
 
 XI. 
 
 The First Elements of Sculpture, 
 
 382 
 
 XII. 
 
 Branch of Phillyrea. Dark Purple, , 
 
 39o 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Greek Flat Relief and Sculpture by Edged 
 
 
 
 Incision, ...... 
 
 392 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Apollo and the Python. Heracles' and the 
 
 
 
 Nemean Lion, ..... 
 
 400 
 
 XV. 
 
 Hera of Argos. Zeus of Syracuse, 
 
 401 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Demeter of Messene. Hera of Crossus, . 
 
 402 
 
PLATES FACING PAGE 
 
 XVII. Athena of Thurium. Sereie Ligeia of Terina, 402 
 
 XVIII. Artemis of Syracuse. Hera of Lacinian Cape, 404 
 
 XIX. Zeus of Messene. Ajax of Opus, . . . 405 
 
 XX. Greek and Barbarian Sculpture, . . 407 
 
 XXI. The Beginnings of Chivalry, . . . 409 
 
 FIGURE PAGE 
 
 1. Specimen of Plate, ..... 293 
 
 2. Woodcut, ....... 323 
 
 3. Figure on Greek Type of Vases. . . w 326 
 
 4. Early Drawing of the Myth, .... 330 
 9. Cut, "Give It to Me," . 332 
 6- Engraving on Coin, • 335 
 
 7. Drawing of Fish. By Turner, . a 36a 
 
 8. Iron Bar, . ,...«• 379 
 
 9. Diagram of Leaf, „ • « « « 391 
 
CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 THREH LECTURES ON 
 
 WORK, TRAFFIC AND WAR 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Twenty years ago, there was no lovelier piece of lowland 
 scenery in South England, nor any more pathetic in the world, 
 by its expression of sweet human character and life, than that 
 immediately bordering on the sources of the Wandle, and in- 
 cluding the lower moors of Addington, and the villages of 
 Beddington and Garshalton, with all their pools and streams. 
 No clearer or diviner waters ever sang with constant lips of 
 the hand which ' giveth rain from heaven ; ' no pastures ever 
 lightened in spring time with more passionate blossoming ; 
 no sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer-by 
 with their pride of peaceful gladness — fain-hidden — yet fall- 
 confessed. The place remains, or, until a few months ago, 
 remained, nearly unchanged in its larger features ; but, with 
 deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so 
 ghastly in its inner tragic meaning, — not in Pisan Maremma — 
 not by Campagna tomb, — not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan 
 shore, — as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, 
 animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of that English 
 scene : nor is any blasphemy or impiety — any fmntic saying or 
 godless thought — more appalling to me, using the best power of 
 judgment I have to discern its sense and scope, than the insolent 
 defilings of those springs by the human herds that drink of 
 them. Just where the welling of stainless water, trembling and 
 pure, like a body of light, enters the pool of Garshalton, cutting 
 itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, through warp oi 
 feathery weeds, all waving, which it traverses with its deep 
 threads of clearness, like the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred 
 here and there with white grenouillette ; just in the very rush 
 and murmur of the first spreading currents, the human 
 
6 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 wretches of the place cast their street and house foulness ; 
 heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, and 
 rags of putrid clothes ; they having neither energy to cart it 
 away, nor decency enough to dig it into the ground, thus shed 
 into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and 
 melt, far away, in all places where God meant those waters to 
 bring joy and health. And, in a little pool, behind some 
 houses farther in the village, where another spring rises, the 
 shattered stones of the well, and of the little fretted channel 
 which was long ago built and traced for it by gentler hands, 
 lie scattered, each from each, under a ragged bank of mortar, 
 and scoria ; and bricklayers' refuse, on one side, which the 
 clean w T ater nevertheless chastises to purity ; but it cannot 
 conquer the dead earth beyond ; and there, circled and coiled 
 under festering scum, the stagnant edge of the pool effaces 
 itself into a slope of black slime, the accumulation of indolent 
 years. Half-a-dozen men, with one day's w T ork, could cleanse 
 those pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, and make 
 every breath of summer air above them rich with cool balm ; 
 and every glittering w T ave medicinal, as if it ran, troubled of 
 angels, from the porch of Bethesda. But that days work is 
 never given, nor will be ; nor will any joy be possible to heart 
 of man, for evermore, about those wells of English waters. 
 
 When I last left them, I walked up slowly through the back 
 streets of Croydon, from the old church to the hospital ; and, 
 just on the left, before coming up to the crossing of the High 
 Street, there was a new public-house built. And the front of 
 it was built in so wise manner, that a recess of two feet w r as 
 left below its front windows, between them and the street- 
 pavement — a recess too narrow for any possible use (for even 
 if it had been occupied by a seat, as in old time it might have 
 been, everybody walking along the street would have fallen 
 over the legs of the reposing wayfarers). But, by way of 
 making this two feet depth of freehold land more expressive 
 of the dignity of an establishment for the sale of spirituous 
 liquors, it was fenced from the pavement by an imposing iron 
 railing, having four or five spearheads to the yard of it, and 
 &ix feet high ; containing as much iron and iron- work, indeed, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 7 
 
 as could well be put into the space ; and by this stately ar* 
 rangement, the little piece of dead ground within, between 
 wall and street, became a protective receptacle of refuse ; cigar 
 ends, and oyster shells, and the like, such as an open-handed 
 English street-populace habitually scatters from its presence, 
 and was thus left, unsweepable by any ordinary methods. 
 Now the iron bars which, uselessly (or in great degree worse 
 than uselessly), enclosed this bit of ground, and made it pesti- 
 lent, represented a quantity of work which would have cleansed 
 the Ccrshalton pools three times over ; — of work, partly 
 cramped and deadly, in the mine ; partly fierce * and exhaus- 
 tive, at the furnace ; partly foolish and sedentary, of ill- taught 
 students making bad designs : w T ork from the beginning to 
 the last fruits of it, and in all the branches of it, venomous, 
 deathful, and miserable. Nov/, how did it come to pass that 
 this work was done instead of the other ; that the strength 
 and life of the English operative were spent in defiling ground, 
 instead of redeeming it ; and in producing an entirely (in that 
 place) valueless piece of metal, which can neither be eaten nor 
 breathed, instead of medicinal fresh air, and pure water? 
 
 There is but one reason for it, and at present a conclusive 
 one, — that the capitalist can charge per-centage on the work 
 
 * * A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, Dear W olverh amp- 
 ton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as the " keeper'' of a 
 blast furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John Gardner, aged eighteen, and 
 Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. The furnace contained four tons of 
 molten iron, and an equal amount of cinders, and ought to have been 
 run out at 7.30 p.m. But Snape and his mates, engaged in talking and 
 drinking, neglected their duty, and, in the meantime, the iron rose in 
 the furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was contained. Just 
 as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the furnace, the 
 water in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down its front and let 
 loose on them the molten metal, which instantaneously consumed Gard<? 
 ner ; Snape, terribly burnt, and mad with pain, leaped into the canal 
 and then ran home and fell dead on the threshold, Swift survived to 
 reach the hospital, where he died too. 
 
 In further illustration of this matter, I beg the reader to look at the 
 article on the ' Decay of the English Race,' in the ' Pall-Mall Gazette * of 
 April 17, of this year ; and at the articles on the * Report of the Thames 
 Commission,' in any journals of the same date. 
 
8 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 in the one case, and cannot in the other. If, having certain 
 funds for supporting labour at my disposal, I pay men merely 
 to keep my ground in order, my money is, in that function, 
 spent once for all ; but if I pay them to dig iron out of my 
 ground, and work it, and sell it, I can charge rent for the 
 ground, and per-centage both on the manufacture and the 
 sale, and make my capital profitable in these three bye- ways. 
 The greater part of the profitable investment of capital, in the 
 present day, is in operations of this kind, in which the public 
 is persuaded to buy something of no use to it, on production, 
 or sale, of which, the capitalist may charge per-centage ; the 
 said public remaining all the while under the persuasion that 
 the per-centages thus obtained are real national gains, where- 
 as, they are merely filchings out of partially light pockets, to 
 swell heavy ones. 
 
 Thus, the Croydon publican buys the iron railing, to make 
 himself more conspicuous to drunkards. The public-house- 
 keeper on the other side of the way presently buys another 
 railing, to out-rail him with. Both are, as to their relative at- 
 tractiveness to customers of taste, just where they were before ; 
 but they have lost the price of the railings ; which they must 
 either themselves finally lose, or make their aforesaid customers 
 of taste pay, by raising the price of their beer, or adulterating 
 it. Either the publicans, or their customers, are thus poorer 
 by precisely what the capitalist has gained ; and the value of 
 the work itself, meantime, has been lost to the nation ; the 
 iron bars in that form and place being wholly useless. It is 
 this mode of taxation of the poor by the rich which is referred 
 to in the text (page 31), in comparing the modern acquisitive 
 power of capital with that of the lance and sword ; the only 
 difference .being that the levy of black mail in old times was 
 by force, and is now by cozening. The old rider and reiver 
 frankly quartered himself on the publican for the night ; the 
 modern one merely makes his lance into an iron spike, and 
 persuades his host to buy it. One comes as an open robber, 
 the other as a cheating pedlar ; but the result, to the injured 
 person's pocket, is absolutely the same. Of course many use- 
 ful industries mingle with, and disguise the useless ones ; and 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 9 
 
 in the habits of energy aroused by the struggle, there is a 
 certain direct good. It is far better to spend four thousand 
 pounds in making a good gun, and then to blow it to pieces, 
 than to pass life in idleness. Only do not let it be called 
 ' political economy/ There is also a confused notion in the 
 minds of many persons, that the gathering of the property of 
 the poor into the hands of the rich does no ultimate harm ; 
 since, in whosesoever hands it may be, it must be spent at last, 
 and thus, they think, return to the poor again. This fallacy 
 has been again and again exposed ; but grant the plea true, 
 and the same apology may, of course, be made for black mail, 
 or any other form of robbery. It might be (though practically 
 it never is) as advantageous for the nation that the robber 
 should have the spending of the money he extorts, as that the 
 person robbed should have spent it. But this is no excuse 
 for the theft. If I were to put a turnpike on the road where 
 it passes my own gate, and endeavour to exact a shilling from 
 every passenger, the public would soon do away with my gate, 
 without listening to any plea on my part that * it was as ad- 
 vantageous to them, in the end, that I should spend their 
 shillings, as that they themselves should.' But if, instead of 
 out-facing them with a turnpike, I can only persuade them to 
 come in and buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless 
 thing, out of my ground, I may rob them to the same extent, 
 and be, moreover, thanked as a public benefactor, and pro- 
 moter of commercial prosperity. And this main question for 
 the poor of England — for the poor of all countries — is wholly 
 omitted in every common treatise on the subject of wealth 
 Even by the labourers themselves, the operation of capital is 
 regarded only in its effect on their immediate interests ; never 
 in the far more terrific power of its appointment of the kind 
 and the object of labour. It matters little, ultimately, how 
 much a labourer is paid for making anything ; but it matters 
 fearfully what the thing is, which he is compelled to make. If 
 his labour is so ordered as to produce food, and fresh air, and 
 fresh water, no matter that his wages are low ; — the food and 
 fresh air and water will be at last there ; and he will at last 
 get them. But if he is paid to destroy food and fresh air, ot 
 
10 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 to produce iron bars instead of them, — the food and air will 
 finally not be there, and he will not get them, to his great and 
 final inconvenience. So that, conclusively, in political as in 
 household economy, the great question is, not so much what 
 money you have in your pocket, as what you will buy with it, 
 and do with it. 
 
 I have been long accustomed, as all men engaged in work 
 of investigation must be, to hear my statements laughed at 
 for years, before they are examined or believed ; and I am 
 generally content to wait the public's time. But it has not 
 been without displeased surprise that I have found myself 
 totally unable, as yet, by any repetition, or illustration, to 
 force this plain thought into my readers' heads, — that the 
 wealth of nations, as of men, consists in substance, not in 
 ciphers ; and that the real good of all work, and of all com- 
 merce, depends on the final worth of the thing you make, or 
 get by it. This is a practical enough statement, one w r ould 
 think : but the English public has been so possessed by its 
 modern school of economists with the notion that Business is 
 always good, whether it be busy in mischief or in benefit ; 
 and that buying and selling are always salutary, whatever 
 the intrinsic worth of what you buy or sell, — that it seems 
 impossible to gain so much as a patient hearing for any in- 
 quiry respecting the substantial result of our eager modern 
 labours. I have never felt more checked by the sense of this 
 impossibility than in arranging the heads of the following 
 three lectures, which, though delivered at considerable inter- 
 vals of time, and in different places, were not prepared with- 
 out reference to each other. Their connection w r ould, how- 
 ever, have been made far more distinct, if I had not been 
 prevented, by what I feel to be another great difficulty in 
 addressing English audiences, from enforcing, with any de- 
 cision, the common, and to me the most important, part of 
 their subjects. I chiefly desired (as I have just said) to 
 question my hearers — operatives, merchants, and soldiers, as 
 to the ultimate meaning of the business they had in hand *, 
 and to know from them what they expected or intended their 
 manufacture to come to, their selling to come to, and their 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ii 
 
 killing to come to. That appeared the first point needing 
 determination before I could speak to them with any real 
 utility or effect. 'You craftsmen — salesmen — swordsmen, — ■ 
 do but tell me clearly what you want, then, if I can say any- 
 thing to help you, I will ; and if not, I will account to you as 
 I best may for my inability.' But in order to put this ques- 
 tion into any terms, one had first of all to face the difficulty 
 just spoken of — to me for the present insuperable, — the diffi- 
 culty of knowing whether to address one's audience as believ- 
 ing, or not believing, in any other world than this. For if you 
 address any average modern English company as believing in 
 an Eternal life, and endeavour to draw any conclusions, from 
 this assumed belief, as to their present business, they will 
 forthwith tell you that what you say is very beautiful, but it 
 is not practical. If, on the contrary, you frankly address 
 them as unbelievers in Eternal life, and try to draw any con- 
 sequences from that unbelief, — they immediately hold you 
 for an accursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet 
 at you. And the more I thought over what I had got to say, 
 the less I found I could say it, without some reference to this 
 intangible or intractable part of the subject. It made all the 
 difference, in asserting any principle of war, whether one 
 assumed that a discharge of artillery would merely knead 
 down a certain quantity of red clay into a level line, as in a 
 brick field ; or whether, out of every separately Christian- 
 named portion of the ruinous heap, there went out, into the 
 smoke and dead-fallen air of battle, some astonished condi- 
 tion of soul, unwillingly released. It made all the difference, 
 in speaking of the possible range of commerce, whether one 
 assumed that all bargains related only to visible property — or 
 whether property, for the present invisible, but nevertheless 
 real, was elsewhere purchasable on other terms. It made all 
 the difference, in addressing a body of men subject to consid- 
 erable hardship, and having to find some way out of it — 
 whether one could confidentially say to them, c My friends, — 
 you have only to die, and all will be right ; ' or whether one 
 had any secret misgiving that such advice was more blessed 
 to him that gave, than to him that took it. And therefore 
 
12 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 the deliberate reader will find, throughout these lectures, a 
 hesitation in driving points home, and a pausing short of con- 
 clusions which he will feel I would fain have come to ; hesita- 
 tion which arises wholly from this uncertainty of my hearers' 
 temper. t For I do not now speak, nor have I ever spoken, 
 since the time of my first forward youth, in any proselyting 
 temper, as desiring to persuade any one of what, in such 
 .matters, I thought myself ; but, whomsoever I venture to ad- 
 dress, I take for the time his creed as I find it ; and endeav- 
 our to push it into such vital fruit as it seems capable of. 
 Thus, it is a creed with a great part of the existing English 
 people, that they are in possession of a book which tells them, 
 straight from the lips of God all they ought to do, and need 
 to know. I have read that book, with as much care as most 
 of them, for some forty years ; and am thankful that, on those 
 who trust it, I can press its pleadings. My endeavour has 
 been uniformly to make them trust it more deeply than they 
 do ; trust it, not in their own favourite verses only, but in the 
 sum of all ; trust it not as a fetish or talisman, which they 
 are to be saved by daily repetitions of ; but as a Captain's 
 order, to be heard and obeyed at their peril. I was always 
 encouraged by supposing my hearers to hold such belief. To 
 these, if to any, I once had hope of addressing, with accept- 
 ance, words which insisted on the guilt of pride, and the 
 futility of avarice ; from these, if from any, I once expected 
 ratification of a political economy, which asserted that the life 
 was more than the meat, and the body than raiment ; and 
 these, it once seemed to me, I might ask without accusation 
 or fanaticism, not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the 
 bestowal of their heart's treasure, to separate themselves from 
 the crowd of whom it is written, ' After all these things do 
 the Gentiles seek.' 
 
 It cannot, however, be assumed, with any semblance of 
 reason, that a general audience is now wholly, or even in 
 majority, composed of these religious persons. A large por- 
 tion must always consist of men who admit no such creed ; or 
 who, at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. And 
 as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for honest 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 n 
 
 declaration and fulfilment of his belief in life, — with the so- 
 called Infidel, I desired to plead for an honest declaration and 
 fulfilment of his belief in death. The dilemma is inevitable. 
 Men must either hereafter live, or hereafter die ; fate may be 
 bravely met, and conduct wisely ordered, on either expecta- 
 tion; but never in hesitation between ungrasped hope, and 
 unconfronted fear. We usually believe in immortality, so far 
 as to avoid preparation for death ; and in mortality, so far as 
 to avoid preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a 
 wise man will at least hold himself prepared for one or other 
 of two events, of which one or other is inevitable ; and will 
 have all things in order, for his sleep, or in readiness, for his 
 awakening. 
 
 Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judgment, if he 
 determine to put them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief 
 in life is indeed an enviable state of mind, but, as far as I can 
 discern, an unusual one. I know few Christians so convinced 
 of the splendour of the rooms in their Father's house, as to 
 be happier when their friends are called to those mansions, 
 than they would have been if the Queen had sent for them to 
 live at Court : nor has the Church's most ardent ' desire to 
 depart, and be with Christ,' ever cured it of the singular habit 
 of putting on mourning for every person summoned to such 
 departure. On the contrary, a brave belief in death has been 
 assuredly held by many not ignoble persons, and it is a sign 
 of the last depravity in the Church itself, when it assumes 
 that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of charac- 
 ter, or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any 
 rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of 
 it which may be granted him ; nor does the anticipation of 
 death to-morrow suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the ex- 
 pediency of drunkenness to-day. To teach that there is no 
 device in the grave, may indeed make the deviceless person 
 more contented in his dulness ; but it will make the deviser 
 only more earnest in devising, nor is human conduct likely, in 
 every case, to be purer under the conviction that all its evil 
 may in a moment be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in n 
 moment redeemed ; and that the sigh of repentance, which 
 
14 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 purges the guilt of the past, will waft the soul into a felicity 
 which forgets its pain, — than it may be under the sterner, and 
 to many not unwise minds, more probable, apprehension, that 
 ' what a man soweth that shall he also reap ' — or others reap, — 
 when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more in 
 darkness, but lies down therein. 
 
 But to men whose feebleness of sight, or bitterness of soul, 
 or the offence given by the conduct of those who claim higher- 
 hope, may have rendered this painful creed the only possible 
 one, there is an appeal to be made, more secure in its ground 
 than any which can be addressed to happier persons. I would 
 fain, if I might offencelessly, have spoken to them as if none 
 others heard ; and have said thus : Hear me, you dying men, 
 who will soon be deaf for ever. For these others, at your 
 right hand and your left, who look forward to a state of in- 
 finite existence, in which all their errors will be overruled, 
 and all their faults forgiven ; for these, who, stained and 
 blackened in the battle smoke of mortality, have but to dip 
 themselves for an instant in the font of death, and to rise re- 
 newed of plumage, as a dove that is covered with silver, and 
 her feathers like gold ; for these, indeed, it may be permis- 
 sible to waste their numbered moments, through faith in a 
 future of innumerable hours ; to these, in their weakness, it 
 may be conceded that they should tamper with sin which can 
 only bring forth fruit of righteousness, and profit by the in- 
 iquity which, one day, will be remembered no more. In them, 
 it may be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the poor, 
 over whom they know their Master is watching ; and to leave 
 those to perish temporarily, who cannot perish eternally. 
 But, for you, there is no such hope, and therefore no such 
 excuse. This fate, which you ordain for the wretched, you 
 believe to be all their inheritance ; you may crush them, be- 
 fore the moth, and they will never rise to rebuke you ; — their 
 breath, which fails for lack of food, once expiring, will never 
 be recalled to whisper against you a word of accusing ; — they 
 and you, as you think, shall lie down together in the dust, 
 and the worms cover you ; — and for them there shall be no 
 consolation, and on you no vengeance, — only the question 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 15 
 
 murmured above your grave : ' Who shall repay him what he 
 hath done ? ' Is it therefore easier for you in your heart to 
 inflict the sorrow for which there is no remedy ? Will you 
 take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your poor broth- 
 er, and make his brief hours long to him with pain ? Will 
 you be readier to the injustice which can never be redressed ; 
 and niggardly of mercy which you can bestow but once, and 
 which, refusing, you refuse for ever ? I think better of you, 
 even of the most selfish, than that you would do this, well 
 understood. And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question 
 becomes not less grave, in these curt limits. Jf your life were 
 but a fever fit, — the madness of a night, whose follies were 
 ail to be forgotten in the dawn, it might matter little how you 
 fretted away the sickly hours, — what toys you snatched at, or 
 let fall — what visions you followed wistfully with the de- 
 ceived eyes of sleepless phrenzy. Is the earth only an hos- 
 pital ? Play, if you care to play, on the floor of the hospital 
 dens. Knit its straw into what crowns please you ; gather 
 the dust of it for treasure, and die rich in that, clutching at 
 the black motes in the air with your dying hands ; — and yet, 
 it may be well with you. But if this life be no dream, and 
 the world no hospital ; if all the peace and power and joy 
 you can ever win, must be won now ; and all fruit of victory 
 gathered here, or never ; — will you still, throughout the puny 
 totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire for vanity ? 
 If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none you 
 might presently take ? was this grass of the earth made green 
 for your shroud only, not for your bed ? and can you never 
 lie down upon it, but only under it? The heathen, to whose 
 creed you have returned, thought not so. They knew that 
 life brought its contest, but they expected from it also the 
 crown of all contest : No proud one ! no jewelled circlet flam- 
 ing through Heaven above the height of the unmerited throne ; 
 only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, 
 through a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, 
 they thought ; but Jupiter was poor ; this was the best the 
 god could give them, Seeking a greater than this, they had 
 known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not in tyr- 
 
16 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 anny, was there any happiness to be found for them— only 
 in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was to be of 
 wild olive, mark you : — the tree that grows carelessly, tufting 
 the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch ; only 
 with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed 
 with grey leaf and thornset stem ; no fastening of diadem 
 for you but with such sharp embroidery ! But this, such as 
 it is, you may win while yet you live ; type of grey honour 
 and sweet rest.* Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and 
 undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the 
 peace of others, and the ministry to their pain ;— these, and 
 the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters and flowers of 
 the earth beneath ; and mysteries and presences, innumer- 
 able, of living things, — these may yet be here your riches ; 
 untormenting and divine : serviceable for the life that now is 
 nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come. 
 
THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 LECTURE L 
 WORK. 
 
 {Delivered before the Working Men's Institute^ at Camberwell.) 
 
 My Friends, — I have not come among you to-night to en* 
 deavour to give you an entertaining lecture ; but to tell you 
 a few plain facts, and ask you some plain, but necessary 
 questions. I have seen and known too much of the struggle 
 for life among our labouring population, to feel at ease, even 
 under any circumstances, in inviting them to dwell on the 
 trivialities of my own studies ; but, much more, as I meet to- 
 night, for the first time, the members of a working Institute 
 established in the district in which I have passed the greater 
 part of my life, I am desirous that we should at once under- 
 stand each other, on graver matters. I would fain tell you, 
 with what feelings, and with what hope, I regard this Insti- 
 tution, as one of many such, now happily established through- 
 out England, as well as in other countries ; — Institutions 
 which are preparing the way for a great change in all the 
 circumstances of industrial life ; but of which the success 
 must wholly depend upon our clearly understanding the cir- 
 cumstances and necessary limits of this change. No teacher 
 can truly promote the cause of education, until he knows the 
 conditions of the life for which that education is to prepare 
 his pupil. And the fact that he is called upon to address 
 you nominally, as a 'Working Class,' must compel him, if he 
 is in any wise earnest or thoughtful, to inquire in the outset. 
 
18 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 on what you yourselves suppose this class distinction has 
 been founded in the past, and must be founded in the future. 
 The manner of the amusement, and the matter of the teach- 
 ing, which any of us can offer you, must depend wholly on 
 our first understanding from you, whether you think the dis- 
 tinction heretofore drawn between working men and others, 
 is tzruly or falsely founded. Do you accept it as it stands ? 
 do you wish ifc to be modified ? or do you think the object of 
 education is to efface it, and make us forget it for ever ? 
 
 Let me make myself more distinctly understood. We call 
 this — you and I — a ' W orking Men's ' Institute, and our col- 
 lege in London, a ' Working Men's ' College. Now, how do 
 you consider that these several institutes differ, or ought to 
 differ, from ' idle men's • institutes and ' idle men's 9 colleges ? 
 Or by what other w r ord than ' idle ' shall I distinguish those 
 whom the happiest and wisest of working men do not object 
 to call the ' Upper Classes ? ' Are there really upper classes, 
 — are there lower? How much should they always be ele- 
 vated, how much always depressed? And, gentlemen and 
 ladies — I pray those of you who are here to forgive me the 
 offence there may be in w T hat I am going to say. It is not 1 
 w T ho wish to say it. Bitter voices say it ; voices of battle and 
 of famine through all the world, which must be heard some 
 day, w T hoever keeps silence. Neither is it to you specially 
 that I say it. I am sure that most now present know their 
 duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps than I do 
 mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class, 
 which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not there- 
 fore the less terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but 
 what limit is there to that of which we are unconscious ? 
 
 Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen, 
 and ask them, also as representing a great multitude, what 
 they think the ' upper classes • are, and ought to be, in rela- 
 tion to them. Answer, you workmen who are here, as you 
 would among yourselves, frankly ; and tell me how you would 
 have me call those classes. Am I to call them — would you 
 think me right in calling them — the idle classes ? I think you 
 would feel somewhat uneasy, and as if I were not treating 
 
WORK 
 
 19 
 
 my subject honestly, or speaking from my heart, if I went on 
 under the supposition that all rich people were idle. You 
 would be both unjust and unwise if you allowed me to say 
 that ; — not less unjust than the rich people who say that all 
 the poor are idle, and will never work if they can help it, or 
 more than they can help. 
 
 For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and idle 
 rich ; and there are busy poor and busy rich. Many a beggar 
 is as lazy as if he had ten thousand a year ; and many a man 
 of large fortune is busier than his errand-boy, and never 
 would think of stopping in the street to play marbles. So 
 that, in a large view, the distinction between workers and 
 idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the 
 very heart and innermost economies of men of all ranks and 
 in all positions. There is a working class — strong and happy 
 — among both rich and poor ; there is an idle class — weak, 
 wicked, and miserable — among both rich and poor. And the 
 worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orders 
 come of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class habitually 
 contemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people 
 watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all w r ould be right ; 
 and if the busy poor people watched and rebuked the idle 
 poor people, all would be right. But each class has a tendency 
 to look for the faults of the other. A hard-working man of 
 property is particularly offended by an idle beggar ; and an 
 orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of the licen- 
 tious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the 
 minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity 
 in the unjust — but among the unjust only. None but the dis- 
 solute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural 
 enemies, or desire to pillage their houses and divide their 
 property. None but the dissolute among the rich speak in 
 opprobrious terms of the vices and follies of the poor. 
 
 There is, then, no class distinction between idle and indus- 
 trious people ; and I am going to-night to speak only of the 
 industrious. The idle people we will put out of our thoughts 
 at once — they are mere nuisances — what ought to be done with 
 them, we'll talk of at another time. But there are class dis* 
 
20 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 tinctions, among the industrious themselves ; tremendous dis- 
 tinctions, which rise and fall to every degree in the infinite 
 thermometer of human pain and of human power — distinc- 
 tions of high and low, of lost and won, to the whole reach of 
 man's soul and body. 
 
 These separations we will study, and the laws of them, 
 dmong energetic men only, who, whether they work or whether 
 they play, put their strength into the work, and their strength 
 into the game ; being in the full sense of the word ' industri- 
 ous,' one way or another — with a purpose, or without. And 
 these distinctions are mainly four : 
 
 I. Between those who work, and those who play. 
 
 II. Between those who produce the means of life, and those 
 who consume them. 
 
 HI. Between those who work with the head, and those who 
 work with the hand. 
 
 IV. Between those who work wisely, and who work fool- 
 ishly. 
 
 For easier memory, let us say we are going to oppose, in 
 our examination. — 
 
 I. Work to play ; 
 II. Production to consumption ; 
 HI. Head to Hand ; and, 
 IV. Sense to nonsense. 
 
 I. First, then, of the distinction between the classes who 
 work and the classes who play. Of course we must agree 
 upon a definition of these terms, — work and play, — before 
 going farther. Now, roughly, not with vain subtlety of defi- 
 nition, but for plain use of the words, ' play 9 is an exertion of 
 body or mind, made to please ourselves, and with no deter- 
 mined end ; and work is a thing done because it ought to be 
 done, and with a determined end. You play, as you call it, 
 at cricket, for instance. That is as hard work as anything 
 else ; but it amuses you, and it has no result but the amuse- 
 ment If it were done as an ordered form of exercise, for 
 health's sake, it would become work directly. So, in like 
 manner, whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the 
 sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is 'play,' the 
 
WORK. 
 
 21 
 
 ^pleasing thing/ not the useful thing. Play may be useful in 
 
 a secondary sense (nothing is indeed more useful or necessary) ; 
 but the use of it depends on its being spontaneous. 
 
 Let us. then, enquire together what sort of games the play- 
 ing class in England spend their lives in playing at. 
 
 The first of all English games is making money. That is 
 an all-absorbing game ; and we knock each other dow T n often- 
 er in playing at that than at foot-ball, or any other roughest 
 sport ; and it is absolutely without purpose ; no one who en- 
 gages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great 
 money-maker what he wants to do with his money — he never 
 knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets 
 it only that he may get it. ' What will you make of w 7 hat you 
 have got? ■ you ask. " Well, I'll get more,' he says. Just as, 
 at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but 
 to get more of them than other people is the game. And 
 there's no use in the money, but to have more of it than other 
 people is the game. So all that great foul city of London 
 there, — rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, — a ghastly heap 
 of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore,— 
 you fancy it is a city of work ? Not a street of it ! It is a 
 great city of play ; very nasty play, and very hard play, but 
 still play. It is only Lord's cricket ground without the turf, — 
 a huge billiard table without the cloth, and with pockets as deep 
 as the bottomless pit ; but mainly a billiard table, after all. 
 
 Well, the first great English game is this playing at coun- 
 ters. It differs from the rest in that it appears always to be 
 producing money, while every other game is expensive. But 
 it does not always produce money. There's a great difference 
 between ' winning ' money and ' making ' it ; a great difference 
 between getting it out of another man's pocket into ours, or 
 filling both. Collecting money is by no means the same thing 
 as making it ; the tax-gatherer's house is not the Mint ; and 
 much of the apparent gain (so called), in commerce, is only a 
 form of taxation on carriage or exchange. 
 
 Our next great English game, however, hunting and shoot- 
 ing, is costly altogether ; and how much we are fined for it 
 annually in land, horses, gamekeepers, and game laws, and all 
 
22 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 else that accompanies that beautiful and special English game, 
 I will not endeavour to count now : but note only that, except 
 for exercise, this is not merely a useless game, but a deadly 
 one, to all connected with it. For through horse-racing, you 
 get every form of what the higher classes everywhere call 
 'Play,' in distinction from all other plays ; that is — gambling; 
 by no means a beneficial or recreative game : and, through 
 game-preserving, you get also some curious laying out of 
 ground ; that beautiful arrangement of dwelling-house for 
 man and beast, by which we have grouse and black-cock — so 
 many brace to the acre, and men and women — so many brace 
 to the garret. I often wonder what the angelic builders and 
 surveyors— the angelic builders who build the c many man- 
 sions ' up above there ; and the angelic surveyors, who meas- 
 ured that four-square city with their measuring reeds — I won- 
 der what they think, or are supposed to think, of the laying 
 out of ground by this nation, which has set itself, as it seems, 
 literally to accomplish, word for word, or rather fact for word, 
 in the persons of those poor whom its Master left to represent 
 him, what that Master said of himself — that foxes and birds 
 had homes, but He none. 
 
 Then, next to the gentlemen's game of hunting, we must 
 put the ladies' game of dressing. It is not the cheapest of 
 games. I saw a brooch at a jeweller's in Bond Street a fort- 
 night ago, not an inch wide, and without any singular jewel 
 in it, yet worth 3,000Z. And I wish I could tell you what this 
 'play' costs, altogether, in England, France, and Russia an- 
 nually. But it is a pretty game, and on certain terms, 1 likp 
 it ; nay, I don't see it played quite as much as I would fail 
 have it. You ladies like to lead the fashion : — by all mean3 
 lead it — lead it thoroughly, lead it far enough. Dress your- 
 selves nicely, and dress every body else nicely. Lead the fash- 
 ions for the poor first ; make them look well, and you yourselves 
 will look, in ways of which you have now no conception, all 
 the better. The fashions you have set for some time among 
 your peasantry are not pretty ones ; their doublets are too 
 irregularly slashed, and the wind blows too frankly through 
 them. 
 
WORK. 
 
 23 
 
 Then there are other games, wild enough, as I could show 
 you if I had time. 
 
 There's playing at literature, and playing at art — very dif- 
 ferent, both, from working at literature, or working at art, 
 but I've no time to speak of these. I pass to the greatest of 
 all — the play of plays, the great gentlemen's game, which 
 ladies like them best to play at, — the game of War. It is en- 
 trancingly pleasant to the imagination ; the facts of it, not 
 always so pleasant. We dress for it, however, more finely 
 than for any other sport ; and go out to it, not merely in scar- 
 let, as to hunt, but in scarlet and gold, and all manner of fine 
 colours : of course we could fight better in grey, and without 
 feathers ; but all nations have agreed that it is good to be 
 well dressed at this play. Then the bats and balls are very 
 costly ; our English and French bats, with the balls and 
 wickets, even those which we don't make any use of, costing, 
 I suppose, now about fifteen millions of money annually to 
 each nation ; all of which, you know is paid for by hard la- 
 bourer's work in the furrow and furnace. A costly game ! — 
 not to speak of its consequences ; I will say at present nothing 
 of these. The mere immediate cost of all these plays is what 
 I want you to consider ; they all cost deadly work somewhere, 
 as many of us know too well. The jewel-cutter, whose 
 sight fails over the diamonds ; the weaver, whose arm fails 
 over the web ; the iron -forger, whose breath fails before the 
 furnace — they know what work is — they, who have all the 
 work, and none of the play, except a kind they have named 
 for themselves down in the black north country, where c play ' 
 means being laid up by sickness. It is a pretty example foi 
 philologists, of varying dialect, this change in the sense oi 
 the word ' play,' as used in the black country of Birmingham, 
 and the red and black country of Baden Baden. Yes. gentle- 
 men, and gentlewomen, of England, who think ' one moment 
 unamused a misery, not made for feeble man/ this is what 
 you have brought the word 'play' to mean, in the heart of 
 merry England ! You may have your fluting and piping ; 
 but there are sad children sitting in the market-place, wIig 
 indeed cannot say to you, ( We have piped unto you, and ye 
 
24 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 have not danced : ' but eternally shall say to you, ' We have 
 mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented/ 
 
 This, then, is the first distinction between the c upper and 
 lower' classes. And this is one which is by no means neces- 
 sary ; which indeed must, in process of good time, be by all 
 honest men's consent abolished. Men will be taught that an 
 existence of play, sustained by the blood of other creatures, 
 is a good existence for gnats and sucking fish ; but not for 
 men : that neither days, nor lives, can be made holy by doing 
 nothing in them : that the best prayer at the beginning of a 
 day is that we may not lose its moments ; and the best grace 
 before meat, the consciousness that we have justly earned our 
 dinner. And when we have this much of plain Christianity 
 preached to us again, and enough respect for what we regard 
 as inspiration, as not to think that £ Son, go work to-day in my 
 vineyard,' means ' Fool, go play to-day in my vineyard,' w T e 
 shall all be w T orkers, in one way or another ; and this much at 
 least of the distinction between ' upper 9 and ' lower ' forgotten. 
 
 II. I pass then to our second distinction ; between the 
 rich and poor, between Dives and Lazarus, — distinction 
 which exists more sternly, I suppose, in this day, than ever 
 in the world, Pagan or Christian, till now. I will put it 
 sharply before you, to begin with, merely by reading two 
 paragraphs which I cut from two papers that lay on my 
 breakfast table on the same morning, the 25th of November, 
 18G4. The piece about the rich Kussian at Paris is common- 
 place enough, and stupid besides (for fifteen francs, — 
 12s. 6d, — is nothing for a rich man to give for a couple of 
 peaches, out of season). Still, the two paragraphs printed 
 on the same day are worth putting side by side. 
 
 £ Such a man is now here. He is a Russian, and, with 
 your permission, we will call him Count Teufelskine. In 
 dress he is sublime ; art is considered in that toilet, the har- 
 mony of colour respected, the chiar oscuro evident in well- 
 selected contrast. In manners he is dignified — nay, perhaps 
 apathetic : nothing disturbs the placid serenity of that calm 
 exterior. One day our friend breakfasted chez Bignon. 
 When the bill came he read, "Two peaches, 15f.* He paid 
 
WORK. 
 
 25 
 
 "Peaches scarce, I presume ?" was his sole remark. "No. 
 sir," replied the waiter, "but Teufelskines are."' Telegraph, 
 November 25, 1864. 
 
 ' Yesterday morning, at eight o'olock, a woman, passing a 
 dung heap in the stone yard near the recently-erected alms- 
 houses in Shadwell Gap, High Street, Shadwell, called the at- 
 tention of a Thames police-constable to a man in a sitting 
 position on the dung heap, and said she was afraid he was 
 dead. Her fears proved to be true. The wretched creature 
 appeared to have been dead several hours. He had perished 
 of cold and wet, and the rain had been beating down on him 
 all night. The deceased was a bone-picker. He was in the 
 lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and half-starved. The 
 police had frequently driven him away from the stone yard, 
 between sunset and sunrise, and told him to go home. He 
 selected a most desolate spot for his wretched death. A 
 penny and some bones were found in his pockets. The de- 
 ceased was between fifty and sixty years of age. Inspector 
 Eoberts, of the K division, has given directions for inquiries 
 to be made at the lodging-houses respecting the deceased, to 
 ascertain his identity if possible.' — Morning Post, November 
 25, 1864. 
 
 You have the separation thus in brief compass ; and I want 
 you to take notice of the ' a penny and some bones were found 
 in his pockets/ and to compare it with this third statement, 
 from the Telegraph of January 16th of this year : — 
 
 'Again, the dietary scale for adult and juvenile paupers was 
 drawn up by the most conspicuous political economists in 
 England. It is low in quantity, but it is sufficient to support 
 nature ; yet within ten years of the passing of the Poor Law 
 Act, we heard of the paupers in the Andover Union gnawing 
 the scraps of putrid flesh and sucking the marrow from the 
 bones of horses which they were employed to crush.' 
 
 You see my reason for thinking that our Lazarus of Chris- 
 tianity has some advantage over the Jewish one. Jewish 
 Lazarus expected, or at least prayed, to be fed with crumbs 
 from the rich man's table ; but our Lazarus is fed with crumbs 
 from the dog's table. 
 
26 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Now this distinction between rich and poor rests on two 
 bases. Within its proper limits, on a basis which is lawful 
 and everlastingly necessary ; beyond them, on a basis unlaw- 
 ful, and everlastingly corrupting the frame-work of society. 
 The lawful basis of wealth is, that a man who works should 
 be paid the fair value of his work ; and that if he does not 
 choose to spend it to-day, he should have free leave to keep 
 it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an industrious man work- 
 ing daily, and laying by daily, attains at last the possession 
 of an accumulated sum of wealth, to which he has absolute 
 right. The idle person who will not work, and the wasteful 
 person who lays nothing by, at the end of the same time will 
 be doubly poor — poor in possession, and dissolute in moral 
 habit ; and he will then naturally covet the money which the 
 other has saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the 
 other, and rob him of his well-earned wealth, there is no more 
 any motive for saving, or any reward for good conduct ; and 
 all society is thereupon dissolved, or exists only in systems of 
 rapine. Therefore the first necessity of social life is the clear- 
 ness of national conscience in enforcing the law — that he 
 should keep who has justly earned. 
 
 That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction between 
 rich and poor. But there is also a false basis of distinction ; 
 namely, the power held over those who earn wealth by those 
 who levy or exact it. There will be always a number of men 
 who would fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth 
 as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily, that class of 
 men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, and more or 
 less cowardly. It is physically impossible for a well-educated, 
 intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of 
 his thoughts ; as physically impossible as it is for him to make 
 his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy people 
 like their dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of 
 their lives. So all healthily minded people like making money 
 — ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it; 
 but the main object of their life is not money ; it is some- 
 thing better than money. A good soldier, for instance, mainly 
 wishes to do his fighting well, He is glad of his pay — very 
 
WOEK 
 
 21 
 
 properly so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten 
 years without it— still, his main notion of life is to win battles, 
 not to be paid for winning them. So of clergymen. They 
 like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of course ; but yet, if they 
 are brave and well educated, the pew-rent is not the sole ob- 
 ject of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole pur- 
 pose of the baptism ; the clergyman's object is essentially to 
 baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doc- 
 tors. They like fees no doubt, — ought to like them ; yet if 
 they are brave and well educated, the entire object of their 
 lives is not fees. They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick ; 
 and, — if they are good doctors, and the choice were fairly put 
 to them, — would rather cure their patient, and lose their fee, 
 than kill him, and get it. And so with all other brave and 
 rightly trained men ; their work is first, their fee second — 
 very important always, but still second. But in every nation, 
 as I said, there are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly, 
 and more or less stupid. And with these people, just as cer- 
 tainly the fee is first, and the work second, as with brave 
 people the work is first and the fee second. And this is no 
 small distinction. It is the whole distinction in a man ; dis- 
 tinction between life and death in him, between heaven and 
 hell for him. You cannot serve two masters ; — you must serve 
 one or other. If your work is first with you, and your fee 
 second, work is your master, and the lord of work, who is 
 God. But if your fee is first with you, and your work 
 second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee, who is the 
 Devil ; and not only the Devil, but the lowest of devils — the 
 ' least erected fiend that fell/ So there you have it in brief 
 terms ; Work first — you are God's servants ; Fee first — you 
 are the Fiend's. And it makes a difference, now and ever, 
 believe me, whether you serve Him who has on His vesture 
 and thigh written, 'King of Kings,' and whose service is per- 
 fect freedom ; or him on whose vesture and thigh the name is 
 written, 'Slave of Slaves,' and whose service is perfect slavery. 
 
 However, in every nation there are, and must always be, a 
 certain number of these Fiend's servants, who have it princi- 
 pally for the object of their lives to make money. They are 
 
28 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 always, as I said, more or less stupid, and cat] not conceive of 
 anything else so nice as money. Stupidity is always the 
 basis of the Judas bargain. We do great injustice to Iscariot, 
 in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness. He 
 was only a common money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, 
 didn't understand Christ ; — couldn't make out the worth of 
 Him, or meaning of Him. He didn't want Him to be killed. 
 He was horror-struck when he found that Christ would be 
 killed ; threw his money away instantly, and hanged himself. 
 How many of our present money-seekers, think you, would 
 have the grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed ? But 
 Judas was a common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fel- 
 low ; his hand always in the bag of the poor, not caring for 
 them. He didn't understand Christ ; — yet believed in Him, 
 much more than most of us do ; had seen Him do miracles, 
 thought He was quite strong enough to shift for Himself, and 
 he, Judas, might as well make his own little bye-perquisites 
 out of the affair. Christ would come out of it well enough, 
 and he have his thirty pieces. Now, that is the money-seek- 
 er's idea, all over the world. He doesn't hate Christ, but 
 can't understand Him — doesn't care for him — sees no good 
 in that benevolent business ; makes his own little job out of 
 it at all events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass 
 of men, you have a certain number of bag-men — your * fee- 
 first ' men, whose main object is to make money. And they 
 do make it — make it in all sorts of unfair ways, chiefly by the 
 weight and force of money itself, or what is called the power 
 of capital ; that is to say, the power which money, once ob- 
 tained, has over the labour of the poor, so that the capitalist 
 can take all its produce to himself, except the labourer's food. 
 That is the modern Judas's way of 6 carrying the bag,' and 
 £ bearing what is put therein.' 
 
 Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair advantage? 
 Has not the man who has worked for the money a right to 
 use it as he best can ? No ; in this respect, money is now 
 exactly what mountain promontories over public roads were 
 in old times. The barons fought for them fairly :-— the strong- 
 est and cunningest got them ; then fortified them, and made 
 
WORK. 
 
 29 
 
 everyone who passed below pay toll. Well, capital now is 
 exactly what crags were then. Men fight fairly (we will, at 
 least, grant so much, though it is more than we ought) for 
 their money ; but, once having got it, the fortified millionaire 
 can make everybody who passes below pay toll to his million, 
 and build another tower of his money castle. And I can tell 
 you, the poor vagrants by the roadside suffer now quite as 
 much from the bag-baron, as ever they did from the crag- 
 baron. Bags and crags have just the same result on rags. I 
 have not time, however, to-night to show you In how many 
 ways the power of capital is unjust ; but this one great prin- 
 ciple I have to assert — you will find it quite indisputably true 
 — that whenever money is the principal object of life with 
 either man or nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill ; and 
 does harm both in the getting and spending ; but when it is 
 not the principal object, it and all other things will be well 
 got, and well spent. And here is the test, with every man, 
 of whether money is the principal object with him, or not. 
 If in mid-life he could pause and say, " Now I have enough to 
 live upon, I'll live upon it ; and having well earned it, I will 
 also well spend it, and go out of the world poor, as I came 
 into it," then money is not principal with him ; but if, having 
 enough to live upon in the manner befitting his character and 
 rank, he still wants to make more, and to die rich, then 
 money is the principal object with him, and it becomes a 
 curse to himself, and generally to those who spend it after 
 him. For you know it must be spent some day ; the only 
 question is whether the man who makes it shall spend it, or 
 some one else. And generally it is better for the maker to 
 spend it, for he will know best its value and use. This is the 
 true law of life. And if a man does not choose thus to spend 
 his money, he must either hoard it or lend it, and the worst 
 thing he can generally do is to lend it ; for borrowers are 
 nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all 
 evil is mainly done, and all unjust war protracted. 
 
 For observe what the real fact is, respecting loans to for- 
 eign military governments, and how strange it is. If your 
 little boy came to you to ask for money to spend in squibs 
 
30 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 and crackers, you would think twice before you gave it him ; 
 and you would have some idea that it was wasted, when you 
 saw it fly off in fireworks, even though he did no mischief 
 with it. But the Russian children, and Austrian children, 
 come to you, borrowing money, not to spend in innocent 
 squibs, but in cartridges and bayonets to attack you in India 
 with, and to keep down all noble life in Italy with, and to 
 murder Polish women and children with ; and that you will 
 give at once, because they pay you interest for it. Now, in 
 order to pay you that interest, they must tax every working 
 peasant in their dominions ; and on that work you live. You 
 therefore at once rob the Austrian peasant, assassinate or 
 banish the Polish peasant, and you live on the produce of 
 the theft, and the bribe for the assassination ! That is the 
 broad fact — that is the practical meaning of your foreign loans, 
 and of most large interest of money ; and then you quarrel 
 with Bishop Colenso, forsooth, as if he denied the Bible, and 
 you believed it ! though, wretches as you are, every deliberate 
 act of your lives is a new defiance of its primary orders ; and 
 as if, for most of the rich men of England at this moment, it 
 were not indeed to be desired, as the best thing at least for 
 them, that the Bible should not be true, since against them 
 these words are written in it : ' The rust of your gold and 
 silver shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh, 
 as it were fire/ 
 
 III. I pass now to our third condition of separation, be- 
 tween the men who work with the hand, and those who work 
 with the head. 
 
 And here we have at last an inevitable distinction. There 
 must be work done by the arms, or none of us could live. 
 There must be work done by the brains, or the life we get 
 would not be worth having. And the same men cannot do 
 both. There is rough work to be done, and rough men must 
 do it ; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do 
 it ; and it is physically impossible that one class should 
 do, or divide, the work of the other. And it is of no use to 
 try to conceal this sorrowful fact by fine words, and to talk to 
 the workman about the honourableness of manual labour. 
 
WORK. 
 
 31 
 
 and the dignify of humanity. That is a grand old proverh 
 of Sancho Panza's, ' Fine words butter no parsnips ; ' and I 
 cap tell you that, all over England just now, you workmen 
 are buying a great deal too much butter at that dairy. Kough 
 work, honourable or not, takes the life out of us ; and the man 
 who has been heaving clay out of a ditch all day, or driving 
 an express train against the north wind all night, or hold- 
 ing a collier's helm in a gale on a lee-shore, or whirling white 
 hot iron at a furnace mouth, that man is not the same at the 
 end of his day, or night, as one who has been sitting in a quiet 
 room, with everything comfortable about him, reading books, 
 or classing butterflies, or painting pictures. If it is any com- 
 fort to you to be told that the rough work is the more hon- 
 ourable of the two, I should be sorry to take that much of 
 consolation from you ; and in some sense I need not. The 
 rough work is at all events real, honest, and, generally, though 
 not always, useful ; while the fine work is, a great deal of it, 
 foolish and false as well as fine, and therefore dishonourable ; 
 but when both kinds are equally well and worthily done, the 
 head's is the noble work, and the hand's the ignoble ; and of 
 all hand work whatsoever, necessary for the maintenance of 
 life, those old words, ' In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat 
 bread/ indicate that the inherent nature of it is one of calam- 
 ity ; and that the ground, cursed for our sake, casts also 
 some shadow of degradation into our contest with its thorn 
 and its thistle ; so that all nations have held their days hon- 
 ourable, or £ holy,' and constituted them 'holy days' or 'holi- 
 days,' by making them days of rest ; and the promise, which, 
 among all our distant hopes, seems to cast the chief bright- 
 ness over death, is that blessing of the dead who die in the 
 Lord, that ' they rest from their labours, and their works do 
 follow them.' 
 
 And thus the perpetual question and contest must arise, 
 who is to do this rough work ? and how is the worker of it 
 to be comforted, redeemed, and rewarded ? and what kind of 
 play should he have, and what rest, in this world, sometimes, 
 as well as in the next ? Well, my good working friends, 
 these questions will take a little time to answer yet. They 
 
32 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 must be answered : all good men are occupied with them, 
 and all honest thinkers. There's grand head work doing 
 about them ; but much must be discovered, and much at- 
 tempted in vain, before anything decisive can be told you. 
 Only note these few particulars, which are already sure. 
 
 As to the distribution of the hard work. None of us, or 
 very few of us, do either hard or soft work because w r e think 
 we ought ; but because we have chanced to fall into the way 
 of it, and cannot help ourselves. Now, nobody does anything 
 well that they cannot help doing : work is only done well 
 when it is done with a will ; and no man has a thoroughly 
 sound will unless he knows he is doing what he should, and 
 is in his place. And, depend upon it, all work must be done 
 at last, not in a disorderly, scrambling, doggish wa}^, but in 
 an ordered, soldierly, human way — a lawful way. Men are en- 
 listed for the labour that kills — the labour of war : they are 
 counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Let them 
 be enlisted also for the labour that feeds : let them be counted, 
 trained, fed, dressed, praised for that. Teach the plough ex- 
 ercise as carefully as you do the sword exercise, and let the 
 officers of troops of life be held as much gentlemen as the 
 officers of troops of death ; and all is done : but neither this, 
 nor any other right thing, can be accomplished — you can't 
 even see your way to it — unless, first of all, both servant and 
 master are resolved that, come w 7 hat will of it, they will do 
 each other justice. People are perpetually squabbling about 
 what will be best to do, or easiest to do, or adviseablest to do, 
 or profitablest to do ; but they nover, so far as I hear them 
 talk, ever ask what it is just to do. And it is the law of 
 heaven that you shall not be able to judge what is wise or 
 easy, unless you are first resolved to judge what is just, and 
 to do it. That is the one thing constantly reiterated by our 
 Master — the order of all others that is given oftenest — c Do 
 justice and judgment.' That's your Bible order ; that's the 
 'Service of God,' not praying nor psalm-singing. You are 
 told, indeed, to sing psalms when you are merry, and to pray 
 when you need anything ; and, by the perversion of the Evil 
 Spirit, we get to t>*^k that praying and psalm-singing are 
 
WORK 
 
 S3 
 
 service/ If a child finds itself in want of anything, it runs 
 in and asks its father for it — does it call that, doing its father 
 a service ? If it begs for a toy or a piece of cake — does it 
 call that serving its father? That, with God, is prayer, and 
 He likes to hear it : He likes you to ask Him for cake when 
 you want it ; but He doesn't call that Serving ffim. 1 Beg- 
 ging is not serving : God likes mere beggars as little as you 
 do — He likes honest servants, not beggars. So when a child 
 loves its father very much, and is very happy, it may sing 
 little songs about him ; but it doesn't call that serving its 
 father ; neither is singing songs about God, serving God. It 
 is enjoying ourselves, if it's anything ; most probably it is 
 nothing ; but if it's anything, it is serving ourselves, not God. 
 And yet we are impudent enough to call our beggings and 
 chauntings £ Divine Service : ' we say 6 Divine service will bo 
 " performed " ' (that's our word — the form of it gone through) 
 'at eleven o'clock.' Alas ! — unless we perform Divine service 
 in every willing act of our life, we never perform it at all. 
 The one Divine work — the one ordered sacrifice — is to do 
 justice ; and it is the last we are ever inclined to do. Any- 
 thing rather than that ! As much charity as you choose, but 
 no justice. 6 Nay,' you will say, ( charity is greater than jus- 
 tice.' Yes, it is greater ; it is the summit of justice — it is the 
 temple of which justice is the foundation. But you can't have 
 the top without the bottom ; you cannot build upon charity. 
 You must build upon j ustice, for this main reason, that you 
 have not, at first, charity to build with. It is the last reward 
 of good work. Do justice to your brother (you can do that, 
 whether you love him or not), and you will come to love him. 
 But do injustice to him, because you don't love him ; and 
 you will come to hate him. It is all very fine to think you 
 can build upon charity to begin with ; but you will find all 
 you have got to begin with, begins at home, and is essentially 
 love of yourself. You well-to-do people, for instance, who* 
 are here to night, will go to ' Divine service ' next Sunday, 
 all nice and tidy, and your little children will have their tight 
 little Sunday boots on, and lovely little Sunday feathers in 
 their hats ; and you'll think, complacently and piously, how 
 3 
 
34 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 lovely they look ! So tliey do : and you love them heartily, 
 and you like sticking feathers in their hats. That's all right', 
 that is charity ; but it is charity beginning at home. Then 
 you will come to the poor little crossing-sweeper, got up also, 
 — it, in its Sunday dress, — the dirtiest rags it has, — that it: 
 may beg the better : we shall give it a penny, and think how 
 good we are. That's charity going abroad. But what does 
 J astice say, walking and watching near us ? Christian Jus* 
 tice has been strangely mute, and seemingly blind ; and, if 
 not blind, decrepit, this many a day : she keeps her accounts 
 still, however — quite steadily — doing them at nights, care- 
 fully, with her bandage off, and through acutest spectacles 
 (the only modern scientific invention she cares about). You 
 must put your ear down ever so close to" her lips to hear her 
 speak ; and then you will start at what she first w T hispers, for 
 it will certainly be, * Why shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper 
 have a feather on its head, as well as your own child ? ' Then 
 you may ask Justice, in an amazed manner, ' How she can 
 possibly be so foolish as to think children could sweep cross- 
 ings with feathers on their heads ? ' Then you stoop again, 
 and Justice says — still in her dull, stupid way — 'Then, why 
 don't you, every other Sunday, leave your child to sweep the 
 crossing, and take the little sweeper to church in a hat and 
 feather ? ' Mercy on us (you think), what will she say next ? 
 And you answer, of course, that 'you don't, because every 
 body ought to remain content in the position in which Prov- 
 idence has placed them.' Ah, my friends, that's the gist of 
 the whole question. Did Providence put them in that posi- 
 tion, or did you f You knock a man into a ditch, and then 
 you tell him to remain content in the \ position in which 
 Providence has placed him.' That's modern Christianity. 
 You say — ' We did not knock him into the ditch.' How do 
 you know what you have done, or are doing? That's just 
 what we have all got to know, and what w T e shall never know, 
 until the question with us every morning, is, not how to do 
 the gainful thing, but how to do the just thing ; nor until we 
 are at least so far on the way to being Christian, as to have 
 Understood that in^un of the poor half-way Mahometan, 
 
WORK. 
 
 'One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years 
 of prayer/ 
 
 Supposing, then, we have it determined with appropriate 
 justice, who is to do the hand work, the next questions must 
 be how the hand- workers are to be paid, and how Tthey are 
 to be refreshed, and what play they are to have. Now, the 
 possible quantity of play depends on the possible quantity of 
 pay ; and the quantity of pay is not a matter for considera- 
 tion to hand- workers only, but to all workers. Generally, 
 good, useful work, whether of the hand or head, is either ill- 
 paid, or not paid at all. I don't say it should be so, but it 
 always is so. People, as a rule, only pay for being amused or 
 being cheated, not for being served. Five thousand a year 
 to your talker, and a shilling a day to your fighter, digger, 
 and thinker, is the rule. None of the best head work in art, 
 literature, or science, is ever paid for. How much do you 
 think Homer got for his Iliad ? or Dante for his Paradise ? 
 only bitter bread and salt, and going up and down other peo- 
 ple's stairs. In science, the man who discovered the tele- 
 scope, and first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon ; the 
 man who invented the microscope, and first saw earth, died 
 of starvation, driven from his home : it is indeed very clear 
 that God means all thoroughly good work and talk to be 
 done for nothing. Baruch, the scribe, did not get a penny a 
 line for writing Jeremiah's second roll for him, I fancy ; and 
 St. Stephen did not get bishop's pay for that long sermon of 
 his to the Pharisees ; nothing but stones. For indeed that is 
 the world-father's proper payment. So surely as any of the 
 world's children work for the world's good, honestly, with 
 head and heart ; and come to it, saying, c Give us a little 
 bread, just to keep the life in us,' the world-father answers 
 them, ' No, my children, not bread ; a stone, if you like, or as 
 many as you need, to keep you quiet.' But the hand- workers 
 are not so ill off as ail this comes to. The worst that can hap- 
 pen to you is to break stones ; not be broken by them. And 
 for you there will come a time for better payment ; some day, 
 assuredly, more pence will be paid to Peter the Fisherman, 
 and fewer to Peter the Pope ; we shall pay people not quite 
 
36 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE, 
 
 so much for talking in Parliament and doing nothing, as for 
 holding their tongues out of it and doing something ; we 
 shall pay our ploughman a little more and our lawyer a little 
 less, and^ so on : but, at least, we may even now take care 
 that whatever work is done shall be fully paid for ; and the 
 man who does it paid for it, not somebody else ; and that it 
 shall be done in an orderly, soldierly, well-guided, wholesome 
 way, under good captains and lieutenants of labour ; and that 
 it shall have its appointed times of rest, and enough of them ; 
 and that in those times the play shall be wholesome play, not 
 in theatrical gardens, with tin flowers and gas sunshine, and 
 girls dancing because of their misery ; but in true gardens, 
 with real flowers, and real sunshine, and children dancing be- 
 cause of their gladness ; so that truly the streets shall be full 
 (the * streets,' mind you, not the gutters) of children, playing 
 in the midst thereof. We may take care that working-men 
 shall have at least as good books to read as anybody else, 
 when they've time to read them ; and as comfortable firesides 
 to sit at as anybody else, when they've time to sit at them. 
 This, I think, can be managed for you, my working friends, 
 in the good time. 
 
 IV. I must go on, however, to our last head, concerning 
 ourselves all, as workers. What is wise work, and what is 
 foolish work ? What the difference between sense and non- 
 sense, in daily occupation ? 
 
 Well, wise work is, briefly, work with God. Foolish work 
 is work against God. And work done with God, which He 
 will help, may be briefly described as ' Putting in Order '— 
 that is, enforcing God's law of order, spiritual and material, 
 over men and things. The first thing you have to do, essen- 
 tially ; the real 6 good work ' is, with respect to men, to en- 
 force justice, and with respect to things, to enforce tidiness, 
 and fruitfulness. And against these two great human deeds, 
 justice and order, there are perpetually two great demons 
 contending, — the devil of iniquity, or inequity, and the devil 
 of disorder, or of death ; for death is only consummation of 
 disorder. You have to fight these two fiends daily. So far 
 as you don't fight against the fiend of iniquity, you work fox 
 
WORK. 
 
 37 
 
 him, You 'work iniquity/ and the judgment upon you, foi 
 all your ' Lord, Lord's/ will be ■ Depart from me, ye that work 
 iniquity.' And so far as you do not resist the fiend of disor- 
 der, you work disorder, and you yourself do the work of 
 Death, which is sin, and has for its wages, Death himself. 
 
 Observe then, all wise work is mainly threefold in charac- 
 ter. It is honest, useful, and cheerful. 
 
 I. It is honest. I hardly know anything more strange than 
 that you recognise honesty in play, and you do not in work. 
 In your lightest games, you have always some one to see 
 what you call 'fair-play.' In boxing, you must hit fair ; in 
 racing, start fair. Your English watchword is fair-play, your 
 English hatred, foul-play. Did it ever strike you that you 
 wanted another watchword also, fair-work, and another hatred 
 also, foul-work ? Your prize-fighter has some honour in him 
 yet ; and so have the men in the ring round him : they will 
 judge him to lose the match, by foul hitting. But your 
 prize-merchant gains his match by foul selling, and no one 
 cries out against that. You drive a gambler out of the gam- 
 bling-room who loads dice, but you leave a tradesman in flour- 
 ishing business, who loads scales ! For observe, all dishonest 
 dealing is loading scales. What does it matter whether I get 
 short weight, adulterate substance, or dishonest fabric ? The 
 fault in the fabric is incomparably the worst of the two. 
 Give me short measure of food, and I only lose by you ; but 
 give me adulterate food, and I die by you. Here, then, is 
 your chief duty, you workmen and tradesmen — to be true to 
 yourselves, and to us who would help you. We can do nothing 
 for you, nor you for yourselves, Avithout honesty. Get that, 
 you get all ; without that, your suffrages, your reforms, your 
 free-trade measures, your institutions of science, are all in 
 vain. It is useless to put your heads together, if you can't 
 put your hearts together. Shoulder to shoulder, right hand 
 to right hand, among yourselves, and no wrong hand to any- 
 body else, and you'll win the world } r et. 
 
 II. Then, secondly, wise work is useful. No man mind% 
 or ought to mind, its being hard, if only it comes to some* 
 thing ; but when it is hard, and comes to nothing ; when al] 
 
THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE, 
 
 our bees' business turns to spiders' ; and for honey-comb we 
 have only resultant cobweb, blown aw T ay by the next breeze — 
 that is the cruel thing for the worker. Yet do we ever ask 
 ourselves, personally, or even nationally, whether our work is 
 coming to anything or not ? We don't care to keep what has 
 been nobly done ; still less do we care to do nobly what 
 others would keep ; and, least of all, to make the work itself 
 useful instead of deadly to the doer, so as to use his life in- 
 deed, but not to waste it. Of all wastes, the greatest waste 
 that you can commit is the waste of labour. If you went 
 down in the morning into yt>ur dairy, and } t ou found that 
 your youngest child had got down before you ; and that he 
 and the cat were at play together, and that he had poured out 
 all the cream on the floor for the cat to lap up, you would 
 scold the child, and be sorry the milk was wasted. But if, 
 instead of wooden bowls with milk in them, there are golden 
 bowls with human life in them, and instead of the cat to play 
 with — the devil to play with ; and you yourself the player ; 
 and instead of leaving that golden bowl to be broken by God 
 at the fountain, you break it in the dust yourself, and pour 
 the human blood out on the ground for the-fiend to lick up — • 
 that is no waste ! What ! you perhaps think, 6 to waste the la- 
 bour of men is not to kill them.' Is it not ? I should like in 
 know how you could kill them more utterly — kill them with 
 second deaths, seventh deaths, hundredfold deaths ? It is the 
 slightest way of killing to stop a man's breath. Nay, the hun- 
 ger, and the cold, and the little whistling bullets — our love-mes- 
 sengers between nation and nation — have brought pleasant 
 messages from us to many a man before now ; orders of sweet 
 release, and leave at last to go where he will be most welcome 
 and most happy. At the worst you do but shorten his life, 
 you do not corrupt his life. But if you put him to base la- 
 bour, if you bind his thoughts, if you blind his eyes, if you 
 blunt his hopes, if you steal his joys, if you stunt his body, 
 and blast his soul, and at last leave him not so much as to 
 reap the poor fruit of his degradation, but gather that fox 
 yourself, and dismiss him to the grave, when you have dono 
 with him, having, so far as in you lay, made the walls of that 
 
WORK. 
 
 39 
 
 grave everlasting (though, indeed, I fancy the goodly bricks 
 of some of our family vaults will hold closer in the resurrec* 
 tion day than the sod over the labourer's head), this you thin!* 
 is no waste, and no sin ! 
 
 III. Then, lastly, wise work is cheerful, as a child's work 
 is. And now I want you to take one thought home with you* 
 and let it stay with you. 
 
 Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, 4 Thy 
 kingdom come.' Now, if we hear a man swear in the streets, 
 we think it very wrong, and say he 'takes God's name in vain.' 
 But there's a twenty times worse way of taking His name in 
 vain, than that. It is to ask God for what we don't want. He 
 doesn't like that sort of prayer. If you don't want a thing, 
 don't ask for it : such asking is the worst mockery of your 
 King you can mock Him with ; the soldiers striking Him on 
 the head with the reed was nothing to that. If you do not 
 wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you 
 must do more than pray for it ; you must work for it. And, 
 to work for it, you must know what it is : we have all prayed 
 for it many a day without thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom 
 that is to come to us ; we are not to go to it. Also, it is not to 
 be a kingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also, it is not 
 to come all at once, but quietly ; nobody knows how. ' The 
 kingdom of God cometh not with observation.' Also, it is not 
 to come outside of us, but in the hearts of us : 'the kingdom 
 of God is within you.' And, being within us, it is not a thing 
 to be seen, but to be felt ; and though it brings all substance 
 of good with it, it does not consist in that : ' the kingdom of 
 God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy 
 in the Holy Ghost : ' joy, that is to say, in the holy, healthful, 
 and helpful Spirit. Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, 
 and to bring it, and enter into it, there's just one condition to 
 be first accepted. You must enter it as children, or not at 
 all ; ' "Whosoever will not receive it as a little child shall not 
 enter therein.' And again, 'Suffer little children to come 
 unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven.' 
 
 Of such, observe. Not of children themselves, but of such 
 
*0 TEE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 as children. I believe most mothers who read that text thini 
 that all heaven is to be full of babies. But that's not so. 
 There will be children there, but the hoary head is the crown. 
 'Length of days, and long life and peace/ that is the blessing, 
 not to die in babyhood. Children die but for their parentar 
 sins ; God means them to live, but He can't let them always ; 
 then they have their earlier place in heaven : and the little 
 child of David, vainly prayed for ; — the little child of Jero- 
 boam, killed b} r its mother's step on its own threshold, — they 
 will be there. But weary old David, and weary old Barzillai, 
 having learned children's lessons at last, will be there too : 
 and the one question for us all, young or old, is, have we 
 learned our child's lesson? it is the character of children we 
 want, and must gain at our peril ; let us see, briefly, in what 
 it consists. 
 
 The first character of right childhood is that it is Modest. A 
 well-bred child does not think it can teach its parents, or that 
 it knows everything. It may think its father and mother 
 know everything, — perhaps that all grown-up people know 
 everything ; very certainly it is sure that it does not. And it 
 is always asking questions, and wanting to know more. Well, 
 that is the first character of a good and wise man at his work. 
 To know that he knows very little ; — to perceive that there 
 are many above him wiser than he ; and to be always asking 
 questions, wanting to learn, not to teach. No one ever teaches 
 well who wants to teach, or governs well w T ho wants to govern ; 
 it is an old saying (Plato's, but I know not if his, first), and as 
 wise as old. 
 
 Then, the second character of right childhood is to be Faith- 
 ful. Perceiving that its father knows best what is good for it, 
 and having found always, when it has tried its own way against 
 his, that he was right and it was wrong, a noble child trusts 
 him at last wholly, gives him its hand, and will walk blindfold 
 with him, if he bids it. And that is the true character of all 
 good men also, as obedient workers, or soldiers under cap- 
 tains. They must trust their captains ; — they are bound iox 
 their lives to choose none but those whom they can trust. 
 Then, they are not always to be thinking that what seems 
 
WORK. 
 
 41 
 
 strange to them, or wrong in what they are desired to do, is 
 strange or wrong. They know their captain : where he leads 
 they must follow, what he bids, they must do ; and without 
 this trust and faith, without this captainship and soldiership, 
 no great deed, no great salvation, is possible to man. Among 
 all the nations it is only when this faith is attained by them 
 that they become great : the Jew, the Greek, and the Mahome- 
 tan, agree at least in testifying to this. It was a deed of this 
 absolute trust which made Abraham the father of the faithful ; 
 it was the declaration of the power of God as captain over all 
 men, and the acceptance of a leader appointed by Him as 
 commander of the faithful, which laid the foundation of what- 
 ever national power yet exists in the East ; and the deed of 
 the Greeks, which has become the type of unselfish and noble 
 soldiership to all lands, and to all times, was commemorated, 
 on the tomb of those who gave their lives to do it, in the most 
 pathetic, so far as I know, or can feel, of all human utterances : 
 ' Oh, stranger, go and tell our people that we are lying here, 
 having obeyed their words.' 
 
 Then the third character of right childhood is to be Loving 
 and Generous. Give a little love to a child, and you get a 
 great deal back. It loves everything near it, when it is a right 
 kind of child — would hurt nothing, would give the best it has 
 away, always, if you need it — does not lay plans for getting 
 everything in the house for itself, and delights in helping- 
 people ; you cannot please it so much as by giving it a chance 
 of being useful, in ever so little a way. 
 
 And because of all these characters, lastly, it is Cheerful. 
 Putting its trust in its father, it is careful for nothing — be- 
 ing full of love to every creature, it is happy always, whether 
 in its play or in its duty. Well, that's the great worker's 
 character also. Taking no thought for the morrow ; taking 
 thought only for the duty of the day ; trusting somebody else 
 to take care of to-morrow ; knowing indeed what labour is, 
 but not what sorrow is ; and always ready for play — beautiful 
 play, — for lovely human play is like the play of the Sun. 
 There's a worker for you. He, steady to his time, is set as 
 a strong man to run his course, but also, he rejoiceth as a 
 
12 THE CROWJV OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 strong man to run his course. See how he plays in the 
 morning, with the mists below, and the clouds above, with a 
 ray here and a flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere ; 
 that's the Sun's play ; and great human play is like his — all 
 various — all full of light and life, and tender, as the dew of 
 the morning. 
 
 So then, you have the child's character in these four things 
 — Humility, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. That's what 
 you have got to be converted to. ' Except ye be converted 
 and become as little children ' — You hear much of conversion 
 now-a-days ; but people always seem to think they have got 
 to be made wretched by conversion, — to be converted to long 
 faces. No, friends, you have got to be converted to short 
 ones ; you have to repent into childhood, to repent into de- 
 light, and delightsomeness. You can't go into a conventicle 
 but you'll hear plenty of talk of backsliding. Backsliding, 
 indeed ! I can tell you, on the ways most of us go, the faster 
 we slide back the better. Slide back into the cradle, if going 
 on is into the grave — back, I tell you ; back — out of your 
 long faces, and into your long clothes. It is among children 
 only, and as children only, that you will find medicine for 
 your healing and true wisdom for your teaching. There is 
 poison in the counsels of the men of this world ; the words 
 they speak are all bitterness, ' the poison of asps is under 
 their lips,' but, ' the sucking child shall play by the hole of 
 the asp.' There is death in the looks of men. ' Their eyes 
 are privily set against the poor ; ■ they are as the uncharmable 
 serpent, the cockatrice, which slew by seeing. But ' the weaned 
 child shall lay his hand on the cockatrice den.' There is 
 death in the steps of men : ' their feet are swift to shed 
 blood ; they have compassed us in our steps like the lion that 
 is greedy of his prey, and the young lion lurking in secret 
 places,' but, in that kingdom, the wolf shall lie down with the 
 lamb, and the fatling with the lion, and £ a little child shall 
 lead them.' There is death in the thoughts of men : the 
 world is one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as it 
 draws to a close ; but the secret of it is known to the child, 
 and the Lord of heaven and earth is most to be thanked in 
 
WORK 
 
 43 
 
 that 1 He has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, 
 and has revealed them unto babes/ Yes, and there is death 
 — infinitude of death in the principalities and powers of men. 
 As far as the east is from the west, so far our sins are — not 
 set from us, but multiplied around us : the San himself, 
 think you he now 'rejoices' to run his course, when he 
 plunges westward to the horizon, so widely red, not with 
 clouds, but blood? And it will be red more widely yet 
 Whatever drought of the early and latter rain may be, there 
 will be none of that red rain. You fortify yourselves, you 
 arm yourselves against it in vain ; the enemy and avenger 
 will be upon you also, unless you learn that it is not out of the 
 mouths of the knitted gun, or the smoothed rifle, but £ out of 
 the mouths of babes and sucklings ' that the strength is or- 
 dained, which shall ' still the enemy and avenger.' 
 
LECTURE XX. 
 
 TRAFFIC. 
 
 (Delivered in the Town Hall y Bradford.) 
 
 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 an- 
 swered, ' 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, — be- 
 cause you don't ; and because you know perfectly well I can- 
 not make you. Look at the essential circumstances of the 
 case, which you, as business men, know perfectly well, though 
 perhaps you think I forget them. You are going to spend 
 30,000Z., 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 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 45 
 
 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 any- 
 thing ridiculous ; you hear of me, among others, as a respect- 
 able 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 occa- 
 sion. Ail 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 contro- 
 verted than that good taste is essentially a moral quality. 
 ' No/ say many of my antagonists, * taste is one thing, moral- 
 ity is another. Tell us what is pretty ; we shall be glad to 
 know that ; but preach no sermons to us.' 
 
 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 9 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. 6 You, little girl with 
 the golden hair and the soft eyes, what do you like ? ' ' My 
 canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths.' c You, little 
 boy with the dirty hands and the low forehead, what do you 
 like V ' 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 w T hat they like. If they do 
 
46 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 right, it is no matter that they like what is wrong ; and ii 
 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 thirsting for 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* know- 
 ledge — not merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, 
 but to hunger and thirst after justice. 
 
 But you may answer or think, ' Is the liking for outside 
 ornaments, — for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or archi- 
 tecture, — 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 con- 
 templation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an ' unman- 
 nered,' or 6 immoral ' quality. It is ' bad taste ' in the pro- 
 foundest 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 per- 
 petual contemplation of a good and perfect thing. That ia 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 47 
 
 an entirely moral quality — it is the taste of the angels. Anc! 
 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 de- 
 serve 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 in- 
 evitably 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.' 
 L 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 costermongering.' 
 
 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, legi- 
 bly, 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 en- 
 able the people possessing that virtue to produce. Take, for 
 instance, your great English virtue of enduring and patient 
 Eourage. You have at present in England only one art of 
 any consequence — that is, iron-working. You know thor- 
 oughly 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 
 
43 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 you liavo created ; do you think, on those iron plates, youi 
 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 realised for all the multi- 
 tudes of the two great peoples who lead the so-called civilisa- 
 tion of the earth, — you have realised 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 ; — 
 
 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. Sup- 
 pose, 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 win- 
 dows. c 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 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 49 
 
 present, I am obliged to spend it nearly all in steel-traps? 1 
 * Steel-traps ! for whom ? ■ ' Why, for that fellow on the 
 other side the wall, you know : we're very good friends, capi- 
 tal 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-bar- 
 rel, or something ; we spend about fifteen millions a year each 
 in our traps, take it all together ; 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 
 *!me madman in it ; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, 
 ^hen there is only one clown in it ; but when the whole 
 R r orld turns clown, and paints itself red with its own heart's 
 Dlood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic, 
 > think. 
 
 Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and willingly al- 
 low 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 
 J iked 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. 
 
 I must get back to the matter in hand, however. Believe 
 me, without farther 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) ; but I proceed to apply 
 the principle to ourselves in a more searching manner. 
 
 I notice that among all the new buildings *hat cover your 
 4 
 
50 
 
 THE CROWJV OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 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 9 
 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 W ren builds an Italian St. Paul's. 
 But now you live under one school of architecture, and wor- 
 ship under another. What do you mean by doing this ? Am 
 I to understand that you are thinking of changing your archi- 
 tecture back to Gothic ; and that you treat your churches ex- 
 perimentally, because it does not matter w T hat mistakes you 
 make in a church? Or am I to understand that you con- 
 sider 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 reli- 
 gious 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 re* 
 meinber 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.' Nov/, note where that legend 
 comes from, and of what place it was first spoken. A boy 
 ieaves his fathers 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 wo]ds of Westmore- 
 land, to visit an uncle at Carlisle. The second or third day 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 51 
 
 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 farther that 
 night. Down he Hes, 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 descend- 
 ing 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. 
 
 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, or ought 
 to know, 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 your* 
 selves 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 trans- 
 late it], 6 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 m 
 aisle, but 4 in secret.' 
 
52 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 New, you feel, as I say tins 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 5 I am trying to show you — not that 
 the Church is not sacred — but that the whole Earth is. I 
 would have you feel, what careless, what constant, what in- 
 fectious 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 recognising, 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 ail 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 Renais- 
 sance architecture had arisen out of, and in all its features in- 
 dicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and of domes- 
 tic 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 thor, 
 oughly 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, 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 53 
 
 1 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 vir^ 
 tuous, not of an infidel and corrupted people. But in the 
 course of doing this, I have had also to show that good archi- 
 tecture 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 1 
 have had to - take what place was to be occupied between 
 these two errors, and fight both, often with seeming contra- 
 diction. Good architecture is the work of good and believ- 
 ing men ; therefore, you say, at least some people say, ' Good 
 architecture must essentially have been the work of the cler- 
 gy, not of the laity/ No — a thousand times no ; good archi- 
 tecture 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 archi- 
 tecture ? 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 
 free citizens and soldier kings. By the monk it was used as 
 an instrument 'for the aid of his superstition ; when that su- 
 perstition 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 per- 
 verted faith and wasted war, the Gothic rose also to its love- 
 liest, 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 every- 
 where, or nowhere. It is not the monopoly of a clerical com* 
 pany — 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 
 
54 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to thfl 
 legible laws of an undoubted God. 
 
 Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools of Eu- 
 ropean 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 pass- 
 ing, 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, w r e 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 reli- 
 gion, — -to the Jews a stumbling block, — was, to the Greeks — 
 Foolishness. 
 
 The first Greek idea of Deity was that expressed in the 
 word, of which we keep the remnant in our words 'Z^-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 segis, 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 knowl- 
 edge 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, 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 65 
 
 danger, and disdain ; but from perfect knowledge, given by 
 the full-revealed Atliena, strength and peace, in sign of which 
 she is crowned with the olive spray, and bears the resistless 
 spear. 
 
 This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity, and 
 every habit of life, and every form of his art developed them- 
 selves from the seeking this bright, serene, resistless wisdom ; 
 and setting himself, as a man, to do things evermore rightly 
 and strongly ; * 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 
 ail 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 Medi- 
 
 * It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, was 
 chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Brightness 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 ex- 
 ample, Hercules. There is no Venus- worship among the Greek in the 
 great times: and the Muses are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its 
 harmonies. 
 
THE CRO WN OF WILD OLIVft. 
 
 seval — 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 remis- 
 sion 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 Tetzels 
 trading. 
 
 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 Mediae- 
 val worshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples 
 also. — but to our Lady of Salvation. Then the Kevivalist 
 worshipped beauty, of a sort, and built you Versailles, and 
 the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell me what ive worship, 
 and w r hat ive build ? 
 
 You know we are speaking always of the real, active, con- 
 tinual, 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 six-sevenths of our time. And we dispute a 
 great deal about the nominal religion ; but we are all unani- 
 mous 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 Minerva of the 
 Market ; but she was a subordinate type of their goddess^ 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 57 
 
 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 Acrop- 
 olis ! But your railroad mounds, prolonged masses of Acrop- 
 olis ; your railroad stations, vaster than the Parthenon, and 
 innumerable ; your chimneys, how much more mighty and 
 costly than cathedral spires ! your harbour-piers ; your ware- 
 houses ; your exchanges ! — all these are built to your great 
 Goddess of 6 Getting-on ; ' and she has formed, and will con- 
 tinue 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 sculp- 
 ture 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 earth-born 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 in- 
 appropriate, 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. 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 
 
S8 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 supposed to be in anywise consistent with the practice oi 
 supplying people with food, or clothes ; but rather with that 
 of quartering oneself 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 feed- 
 ing 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, 
 6 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 ab- 
 solutely 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, never on any travels to fulfil the 
 orders of a living God ;— 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 you* 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 59 
 
 feeding of nations, for fixed salaries ; and to be as particular* 
 about giving people the best food, and the best cloth, as sol* 
 diers 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 qune non peperit.' * Then, for her 
 spear, she might have a weaver's beam : and on her shield, 
 instead of her Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with 
 the town of Gennesaret proper, in the field and the legend 
 'In the best market,' 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 ex- 
 change, 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 
 
 * Jerem. xvii. 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). 4 As the partridge, 
 fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth riches, not by 
 right shall leave theiu in the midst of his days, and at his end shall ha 
 a fool.' 
 
60 
 
 THE GROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 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 ? 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 whins tone ? 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 ? Weil, 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. 
 
 II. 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 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 61 
 
 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. 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 lan- 
 guage. 
 
 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 pretfcy, 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, 6 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 
 * Two Paths, p. 98. 
 
62 
 
 TL.E CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 take who have the power, and they should keep who can/ 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 fool- 
 ishness? '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. But even so, for the most part, 
 these splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, and only the true 
 kinghoods 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 
 ure king of a small part of the nation, and lord over the means; 
 of its maintenance — over field, or mill, or mine, are you its 
 take all the produce of that piece of the foundation of na* 
 tional existence for yourself. 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 63 
 
 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. Do you 
 think these phenomena are to stay always in their present 
 power or aspect ? 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 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 forever? 
 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 pur- 
 pose. 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 it safely. I know that 
 many of you have done, and are every day doing, whatever 
 you feel to be in your power ; and that even all this wrong 
 and misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each 
 of you striving to do his best, without noticing that this best 
 is essentially and centrally the best for himself, not for others. 
 And all this has come of the spreading of that thrice accursed, 
 thrice impious doctrine of the modern economist, that f To do 
 the best for yourself, 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, en- 
 deavouring 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. It is the close 
 
64 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 of the dialogue called 6 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 
 intermarried with the daughters of men, 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.' 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 pur- 
 suit 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 hon- 
 our ; 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 all iniquity of inor^ 
 dinate possession and power. Whereupon, the God of God's, 
 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 
 
TRAFFIC. 
 
 65 
 
 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. So ended are the 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 fur- 
 nace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura : 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 ac* 
 cording to the purposes of God. Continue to make that for- 
 bidden deity your principal one, and soon no more art, no 
 more science, no more pleasure will be possible. Catastro- 
 phe will come ; or worse than catastrophe, slow mouldering 
 and withering into Hades. Bat if you can fix some concep- 
 tion of a true human state of life to be striven for- — life 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, 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, but riveted of hearts ; and that kind of marble, 
 crimson-veined ? is indeed eternal 
 5 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 WAR. 
 
 {Delivered at the Royal Military Acadi my, Woolwich.) 
 
 Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came 
 unwillingly to-night, and many 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. 
 You may well think within yourselves, that a painter might, 
 perliaps without immodesty, lecture younger painters upon 
 painting, but not young lawyers upon law, nor young physi- 
 cians upon medicine — least of all, it may seem to you, young 
 warriors upon war. And, indeed, when I was asked to address 
 you, I declined at first, and declined long ; for I felt that you 
 would not be interested in my special business, and would cer- 
 tainly think there was small need for me to come to teach you 
 yours. Nay, I knew that there ought to be no such need, for 
 the great veteran soldiers of England are now men every way 
 so thoughtful, so noble, and so good, that no other teaching 
 than their knightly example, and their few words of grave 
 and tried counsel should be either necessary for you, or even, 
 without assurance of due modesty in the offerer, endured by 
 you. 
 
 But being asked, not once nor twice, I have not ventured 
 persistently to refuse ; and I will try, in very few words, to 
 lay before you some reason why you should accept my excuse, 
 and hear me patiently. You may imagine that your work is 
 wholly foreign to, and separate from mine. So far from that, 
 all the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war ; no 
 great art ever yet rose on earth, but among a nation of sol- 
 diers. There is no art among a shepherd people, if it remains 
 
WAR. 
 
 at peace. There is no art among an agricultural people, if it 
 remains at peace. Commerce is barely consistent with fine art ; 
 but cannot produce it. Manufacture not only is unable to 
 produce it, but invariably destroys whatever seeds of it exist. 
 There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is 
 based on battle. 
 
 Now, though I hope you love fighting for its own sake, you 
 must, I imagine, be surprised at my assertion that there is 
 any such good fruit of fighting. You supposed, probably, 
 that your office was to defend the works of peace, but cer- 
 tainly not to found them : nay, the common course of war, 
 you may have thought, was only to destroy them. And truly, 
 I who tell you this of the use of war, should have been the 
 last of men to tell you so, had I trusted my own experience 
 only. Hear why : I have given a considerable part of my life 
 to the investigation of Venetian painting and the result of that 
 enquiry was my fixing upon one man as the greatest of all 
 Venetians, and therefore, as I believed, of all painters what- 
 soever. I formed this faith, (whether right or wrong matters 
 at present nothing,) in the supremacy of the painter Tin tore t, 
 under a roof covered with his pictures ; and of those pictures, 
 three of the noblest were then in the form of shreds of ragged 
 canvas, mixed up with the laths cf the roof, rent through by 
 three Austrian shells. Now it is not every lecturer who could 
 tell you that he had seen three of his favourite pictures torn 
 to rags by bombshells. And after such a sight, it is not every 
 lecturer who ivould tell }^ou that, nevertheless, war was the 
 foundation of all great art. 
 
 Yet the conclusion is inevitable, from any careful compari- 
 son of the states of great historic races at different periods. 
 Merely to show you what I mean, I will sketch for you, very 
 briefly, the broad steps of the advance of the best art of the 
 world. The tirst dawn of it is in Egypt ; and the power of it 
 is founded on the perpetual contemplation of death, and of 
 future judgment, by the mind of a nation of which the ruling 
 caste were priests, and the second, soldiers. The greatest 
 works produced by them are sculptures of their kings going 
 out to battle, or receiving the homage of conquered armiea 
 
68 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 And you must remember also, as one of the great keys to the 
 splendour of the Egyptian nation, that the priests were not 
 occupied in theology only. Their theology was the basis of 
 practical government and law, so that they were not so much 
 priests as religious judges, the office of Samuel, among the 
 Jews, being as nearly as possible correspondent to theirs. 
 
 All the rudiments of art then, and much more than the 
 rudiments of all science, are laid first by this great warrior- 
 nation, which held in contempt all mechanical trades, and in 
 absolute hatred the peaceful life of shepherds. From Egypt 
 art passes directly into Greece, where all poetry, and all 
 painting, are nothing else than the description, praise, or 
 dramatic representation of war, or of the exercises which 
 prepare for it, in their connection with offices of religion. 
 All Greek institutions had first respect to war ; and their con- 
 ception of it, as one necessary office of all human and divine 
 life, is expressed simply by the images of their guiding gods. 
 Apollo is the god of all wisdom of the intellect ; he bears the 
 arrow and the bow, before he bears the lyre. Again, Athena 
 is the goddess of all wisdom in conduct It is by the helmet 
 and the shield, oftener than by the shuttle, that she is distin- 
 guished from other deities. 
 
 There were, however, two great differences in principle be- 
 tween the Greek and the Egyptian theories of policy. In 
 Greece there was no soldier caste ; every citizen was neces- 
 sarily a soldier. And, again, while the Greeks rightly de- 
 spised mechanical arts as much as the Egyptians, they did 
 not make the fatal mistake of despising agricultural and pas- 
 toral life ; but perfectly honoured both. These two conditions 
 of truer thought raise them quite into the highest rank of wise 
 manhood that has yet been reached ; for all our great arts, 
 and nearly all our great thoughts, have been borrowed or de- 
 rived from them. Take away from us what they have given ; 
 and I hardly can imagine how low the modern European 
 would stand. 
 
 Now, you are to remember, in passing to the next phase of 
 history, that though you must have war to produce art — you 
 must also have much more than war ; namely, an art-instinct 
 
WAR 
 
 69 
 
 or genius in the people ; and that, though all the talent foi 
 painting in the world won't make painters of you, unless you 
 have a gift for fighting as well, you may have the gift for 
 fighting, and none for painting. Now, in the next great dj- 
 nasty of soldiers, the art-instinct is wholly wanting. I have 
 not yet investigated the Eoman character enough to tell you 
 the causes of this ; but I believe, paradoxical as it may seem 
 to you, that, however truly the Roman might say of himself 
 that he was born of Mars, and suckled by the wolf, he was 
 nevertheless, at heart, more of a farmer than a soldier. The 
 exercises of war were with him practical, not poetical ; his 
 poetry was in domestic life only, and the object of battle, 
 'pacis imponere morem.' And the arts are extinguished in 
 his hands, and do not rise again, until, with Gothic chivalry, 
 there comes back into the mind of Europe a passionate de- 
 light in war itself, for the sake of war. And then, with the 
 romantic knighthood which can imagine no other noble em- 
 ployment, — under the fighting kings of France, England, and 
 Spain ; and under the fighting dukeships and citizenships of 
 Italy, art is born again, and rises to her height in the great 
 valleys of Lombardy and Tuscany, through which there flows 
 not a single stream, from all their Alps or Apennines, that did 
 not once run dark red from battle : and it reaches its culmi- 
 nating glory in the city which gave to history the most in- 
 tense type of soldiership yet seen among men ; — the city 
 whose armies were led in their assault by their king, led 
 through it to victory by their king, and so led, though that 
 king of theirs was blind, and in the extremity of his age. 
 
 And from this time forward, as peace is established or ex- 
 tended in Europe, the arts decline. They reach an un- 
 paralleled pitch of costliness, but lose their life, enlist them- 
 selves at last on the side of luxury and various corruption, 
 and, among wholly tranquil nations, wither utterly away ; 
 remaining only in partial practice among races who, like the 
 French and us, have still the minds, though we cannot all 
 live the lives, of soldiers. 
 
 'It may be so/ I can suppose that a philanthropist might 
 exclaim. 'Perish then the arts, if they can flourish only at 
 
70 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE, 
 
 such a cost. What worth is there in toys of canvas and stone, 
 if compared to the joy and peace of artless domestic life?* 
 And the answer is — truly, in themselves, none. But as expres- 
 sions of the highest state of the human spirit, their worth is in- 
 finite. As results they may be worthless, but, as signs, they 
 are above price. For it is an assured truth that, whenever 
 the faculties of men are at their fulness, they must express 
 themselves by art ; and to say that a state is without such ex- 
 pression, is to say that it is sunk from its proper level of 
 manly nature. So that, when I tell you that war is the foun- 
 dation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of 
 all the high virtues and faculties of men. 
 
 It was very strange to me to discover this ; and very dread- 
 ful — but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The com- 
 mon notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished 
 together, I found, to be wholly untenable. Peace and the 
 vices of civil life only flourish together. We talk of peace 
 and learning, and of peace and plenty, and of peace and civil- 
 isation ; but I found that those were not the words which the 
 Muse of History coupled together : that on her lips, the words 
 were — peace and sensuality, peace and selfishness, peace and 
 corruption, peace and death. I found, in brief, that all great 
 nations learned their truth of word, and strength of thought, 
 in war ; that they were nourished in war, and wasted by peace ; 
 taught by war, and deceived by peace ; trained by war, and 
 betrayed by peace ; — in a word, that they were born in war, 
 and expired in peace. 
 
 Yet now note carefully, in the second place, it is not all war 
 of which this can be said — nor all dragon's teeth, which, 
 sown, will start up into men. It is not the ravage of a bar- 
 barian wolf-flock, as under Genseric or Suwarrow ; nor the 
 habitual restlessness and rapine of mountaineers, as on the 
 old borders of Scotland ; nor the occasional struggle of a 
 strong peaceful nation for its life, as in the wars of the Swiss 
 with Austria ; nor the contest of merely ambitious nations 
 for extent of power, as in the wars of France under Napoleon, 
 or the just terminated war in America, None of these forms 
 of war build anything but tombs. But the creative or foun- 
 
WAR 
 
 71 
 
 dational war is that in which the natural restlessness and love 
 of contest among men are disciplined, by consent, into modes 
 of beautiful — though it may be fatal — play : in which the nat- 
 ural ambition and love of power of men are disciplined into 
 the aggressive conquest of surrounding evil : and in which the 
 natural instincts of self-defence are sanctified by the nobleness 
 of the institutions, and purity of the households, which they 
 are appointed to defend. To such war as this all men are 
 born ; in such war as this any man may happily die ; and forth 
 from such war as this have arisen throughout the extent of 
 past ages, all the highest sanctities and virtues of humanity. 
 
 I shall therefore divide the war of which I would speak to 
 you into three heads. War for exercise or play ; war for do- 
 minion ; and, war for defence. 
 
 I. And first, of war for exercise or play. I speak of it pri- 
 marily in this light, because, through all past history, manly 
 w T ar has been more an exercise than anything else, among the 
 classes who cause, and proclaim it. It is not a game to the con- 
 script, or the pressed sailor ; but neither of these are the 
 causers of it. To the governor who determines that war shall 
 be, and to the youths who voluntarily adopt it as their pro- 
 fession, it has always been a grand pastime ; and chiefly pur- 
 sued because they had nothing else to do. And this is true 
 without any exception. No king whose mind was fully occu- 
 pied with the development of the inner resources of his king- 
 dom, or with any other sufficing subject of thought, ever en- 
 tered into war but on compulsion. No youth who was 
 earnestly busy with any peaceful subject of study, or set on 
 any serviceable course of action, ever voluntarily became a 
 soldier. Occupy him early, and wisely, in agriculture or 
 business, in science or in literature, and he will never think of 
 war otherwise than as a calamity. But leave him idle ; and, 
 the more brave and active and capable he is by nature, the 
 more he will thirst for some appointed field for action ; and 
 find, in the passion and peril of battle, the only satisfying ful- 
 filment of his unoccupied being. And from the earliest in- 
 cipient civilisation until now, the population of the earth 
 divides itself, when you look at it widely, into two races ; one 
 
72 
 
 TEE CBOWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 of workers, and the other of players — one tilling the ground, 
 manufacturing, building, and otherwise providing for the 
 necessities of life ; — the other part proudly idle, and continu- 
 ally therefore needing recreation, in which they use the pro- 
 ductive and laborious orders partly as their cattle, and partly 
 as their puppets or pieces in the game of death. 
 
 Now, remember, whatever virtue or goodliness there may be 
 in this game of war, rightly played, there is none when you 
 thus play it with a multitude of small human pawns. 
 
 If you, the gentlemen of this or any other kingdom, choose 
 to make your pastime of contest, do so, and welcome ; but 
 set not up these unhappy peasant-pieces upon the green 
 fielded board. If the wager is to be of death, lay it on your 
 own heads, not theirs. A goodly struggle in the Olympic 
 dust, though it be the dust of the grave, the gods will look 
 upon, and be with you in ; but they will not be with you, if 
 you sit on the sides of the amphitheatre, whose steps are the 
 mountains of earth, whose arena its valleys, to urge your 
 peasant millions into gladiatorial war. You also, you tender 
 and delicate women, for whom, and by whose command, all 
 true battle has been, and must ever be ; you would perhaps 
 shrink now, though you need not, from the thought of sitting 
 as queens above set lists where the jousting game might be 
 mortal. How much more, then, ought you to shrink from 
 the thought of sitting above a theatre pit in which even a 
 few condemned slaves were slaying each other only for your 
 delight ! And do you not shrink from the fact of sitting 
 above a theatre pit, where, — not condemned slaves, — but the 
 best and bravest of the poor sons of your people, slay each 
 other, — not man to man, — as the coupled gladiators ; but 
 race to race, in duel of generations? You would tell me, 
 perhaps, that you do not sit to see this ; and it is indeed 
 true, that the women of Europe — those who have no heart- 
 interests of their own at peril in the contest — draw the cur- 
 tains of their boxes, and muffle the openings ; so that from 
 the pit of the circus of slaughter there may reach them only 
 at intervals a half -heard cry and a murmur as of the wind's 
 sighing, when myriads of souls expire. They shut out the 
 
WAR. 
 
 73 
 
 death-cries ; and are happy, and talk wittily among them- 
 selves. That is the utter literal fact of what our ladies do in 
 their pleasant lives. 
 
 Nay, you might answer, speaking for them— 'We do not 
 let these wars come to pass for our play, nor by our careless- 
 ness; we cannot help them. How can any final quarrel of 
 nations be settled otherwise than by war ? ' I cannot now 
 delay, to tell you how political quarrels might be otherwise 
 settled. But grant that they cannot. Grant that no law of 
 reason can be understood by nations ; no law of justice sub- 
 mitted to by them : and that, while questions of a few acres, 
 and of petty cash, can be determined by truth and equity, 
 the questions which are to issue in the perishing or saving of 
 kingdoms can be determined only by the truth of the sword, 
 and the equity of the rifle. Grant this, and even then, judge 
 if it will always be necessary for you to put your quarrel into 
 the hearts of your poor, and sign your treaties with peasants' 
 blood. You would be ashamed to do this in your own private 
 position and power. Why should you not be ashamed also 
 to do it in public place and power ? If you quarrel with your 
 neighbour, and the quarrel be indeterminable by law, and 
 mortal, you and he do not send your footmen to Battersea 
 fields to fight it out ; nor do you set fire to his tenants' cot- 
 tages, nor spoil their goods. You fight out your quarrel 
 yourselves, and at your own danger, if at all. And you do 
 not think it materially affects the arbitrement that one of you 
 has a larger household than the other ; so that, if the servants 
 or tenants were brought into the field with their masters, the 
 issue of the contest could not be doubtful? You either 
 refuse the private duel, or you practise it under laws of 
 honour, not of physical force ; that so it may be, in a manner, 
 justly concluded. Now the just or unjust conclusion of the 
 private feud is of little moment, while the just or unjust con- 
 clusion of the public feud is of eternal moment : and yet, in 
 this public quarrel, you take your servants' sons from thei>, 
 arms to fight for it, and your servants' food from their lips to 
 support it ; and the black seals on the parchment of your 
 treaties of peace are the deserted hearth and the fruitless field 
 
74 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 There is a ghastly ludicrousness in this, as there is mostly iii 
 these wide and universal crimes. Hear the statement of the 
 very fact of it in the most literal words of the greatest of ouir 
 English thinkers : — 
 
 4 What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-purport and 
 upshot of war ? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and 
 toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred 
 souls. From these, by certain M natural enemies" of the French, there 
 are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied 
 men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them ; 
 she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, 
 and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, 
 another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoir- 
 dupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are se- 
 lected ; all dressed in red ; and shipped away, at the public charges, 
 some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain ; and fed 
 there till wanted. 
 
 4 And now to that same spot in the south of Spain are thirty similar 
 French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending ; 
 till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual 
 juxtaposition ; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in 
 his hand. 
 
 'Straightway the word " Fire ! " is given, and they blow the souls 
 out of one another, and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the 
 world has sixty dead carcases, which it must bury, and anon shed tears 
 for. Had these men any quarrel ? Busy as the devil is, not the small- 
 est ! They lived far enough apart ; were the entirest strangers ; nay, 
 in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, 
 some mutual helpfulness between them. How then ? Simpleton ! 
 their governors had fallen out ; and instead of shooting one another , 
 had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.' (Sartor Be- 
 sartus.) 
 
 Positively, then, gentlemen, the game of battle must not, 
 and shall not, ultimately be played this way. But should it 
 be played anyway? Should it, if not by your servants, b(% 
 practised by yourselves? I think, yes. Both history and 
 human instinct seem alike to say, yes. All healthy men like 
 fighting, and like the sense of danger ; all brave women like 
 to hear of their fighting, and of their facing danger. This is 
 a fixed instinct in the fine race of them ; and I cannot help 
 
I 
 
 WAR 
 
 75 
 
 fancying that fair fight is the best play for them ; and that a 
 tournament was a better game than a steeple-chase. The 
 time may perhaps come in France as well as here, for univer- 
 sal hurdle-races and cricketing : but I do not think universal 
 ' crickets ' will bring out the best qualities of the nobles of 
 either country. I use, hi such question, the test which I have 
 adopted, of the connection of w T ar with other arts ; and I re* 
 fleet how, as a sculptor, I should feel, if I were asked to de- 
 sign a monument for a dead knight, in Westminster abbey, 
 with a carving of a bat at one end, and a ball at the other. 
 It may be the remains in me only of savage Gothic prejudice ; 
 but I had rather carve it with a shield at one end, and a 
 sword at the other. And this, observe, with no reference 
 whatever to any story of duty done, or cause defended. As- 
 sume the knight merely to have ridden out occasionally to 
 fight his neighbour for exercise ; assume him even a soldier 
 of fortune, and to have gained his bread, and filled his purse, 
 at the sword's point. Still, I feel as if it were, somehow, 
 grander and worthier in him to have made his bread by sword 
 play than any other play ; * had rather he had made it by 
 thrusting than by batting ; — much more, than by betting. 
 Much rather that he should ride war horses, than back race 
 horses ; and — I say it sternly and deliberately — much rather 
 would I have him slay his neighbour, than cheat him. 
 
 But remember, so far as this may be true, the game of war 
 is only that in which the f ull personal power of the human 
 creature is brought out in management of its weapons. And 
 this for three reasons : — 
 
 First, the great justification of this game is that it truly, 
 when well played, determines who is the best man ; — who is 
 the highest bred, the most self-denying, the most fearless, 
 the coolest of nerve, the swiftest of eye and hand. You can- 
 not test these qualities wholly, unless there is a clear possi- 
 bility of the struggle's ending in death. It is only in the 
 fronting of that condition that the full trial of the man, soul 
 and body, comes out. You may go to your game of wickets, 
 or of hurdles, or of cards, and any knavery that is in you may 
 stay unchallenged all the while* But if the play may fos 
 
re 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 ended at any moment by a lance-thrust, a man will probably 
 make up his accounts a little before he enters it. Whatever 
 is rotten and evil in him will weaken his hand mors in hold- 
 ing a sword hilt, than in balancing a billiard cue ; and on the 
 whole, the habit of living lightly hearted, in daily presence ot 
 death, always has had, and must have, a tendency both to the 
 making and testing of honest men. But for the final testings 
 observe, you must make the issue of battle strictly dependent 
 on fineness of frame, and firmness of hand. You must not 
 make it the question, which of the combatants has the longest 
 gun, or which has got bohind the biggest tree, or which has 
 the wind in his face, or which has gunpowder made by the 
 best chemist, or iron smelted with the best coal, or the 
 angriest mob at his back. Decide your battle, whether of 
 nations, or individuals, on those terms ; — and you have only 
 multiplied confusion, and added slaughter to iniquity. But 
 decide your battle by pure trial which has the strongest arm, 
 and steadiest heart, — and you have gone far to decide a great 
 many matters besides, and to decide them rightly. 
 
 And the other reasons for this mode of decision of cause, 
 are the diminution both of the material destructiveness, or 
 cost, and of the physical distress of w T ar. For you must not 
 think that in speaking to you in this (as you may imagine), 
 fantastic praise of battle, I have overlooked the conditions 
 weighing against me. I pray all of you, who have not read, 
 to read with the most earnest attention, Mr. Helps's two essays 
 on War and Government, in the first volume of the last series 
 of ' Friends in Council/ Everything that can be urged against 
 war is there simply, exhaustively, and most graphically stated. 
 And all, there urged, is true. But the two great counts of 
 evil alleged against war by that most thoughtful writer, hold 
 only against modern war. If you have to take away masses 
 of men from all industrial employment, — to feed them by the 
 labour of others, — to move them and provide them with de- 
 structive machines, varied daily in national rivalship of invent- 
 ive cost ; if you have to ravage the country which you attack, — 
 to destroy for a score of future years, its roads, its woods, its 
 cities, and its harbours ; — and if, finally, having brought masses 
 
WAR. 
 
 77 
 
 of men, counted by hundreds of thousands, face to face, you 
 tear those masses to pieces with jagged shot, and leave the frag- 
 ments of living creatures countlessly beyond all help of sur- 
 gery, to starve and parch, through days of torture, down into 
 clots of clay — what book of accounts shall record the cost of 
 your work ; — What book of judgment sentence the guilt of it? 
 
 That, I say, is modern war, — scientific war, — chemical and 
 mechanic war, worse even than the savage's poisoned arrow. 
 And yet you will tell me, perhaps, that any other war than 
 this is impossible now. It may be so ; the progress of science 
 cannot, perhaps, be otherwise registered than by new facilities 
 of destruction ; and the brotherly love of our enlarging Chris- 
 tianity be only proved by multiplication of murder. Yet hear, 
 for a moment, what war was, in Pagan and ignorant days ; — 
 what war might yet be, if we could extinguish our science in 
 darkness, and join the heathen's practice to the Christian's 
 theory. I read you this from a book which probably most of 
 you know well, and all ought to know — Muller's ' Dorians ; 9 — 
 but I have put the points I wish you to remember in closer 
 connection than in his text. 
 
 'The chief characteristic of the warriors of Sparta was great 
 composure and subdued strength ; the violence (kvaaa) of 
 Aristodemus and Xsaclas being considered as deserving rather 
 of blame than praise ; and these qualities in general distin- 
 guished the Greeks from the northern Barbarians, whose bold- 
 ness always consisted in noise and tumulfc. For the same rea- 
 son the Spartans sacrificed to the Muses before an action ; these 
 goddesses being expected to produce regularity and order in 
 battle ; as they sacrificed on the same occasion in Crete to the 
 god of love, as the confirmer of mutual esteem and shame. 
 Every man put on a crown, when the band of flute-players 
 gave the signal for attack ; all the shields of the line glittered 
 with their high polish, and mingled their splendour with the 
 dark red of the purple mantles, which were meant both to 
 adorn the combatant, and to conceal the blood of the wounded ; 
 to fall well and decorously being an incentive the more to the 
 most heroic valour. The conduct of the Spartans in battle 
 denotes a high and noble disposition, which rejected all the 
 
78 
 
 THE GROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 extremes of brutal rage. The pursuit of the enemy ceased 
 when the victory was completed ; and after the signal for retreat 
 had been given, all hostilities ceased. The spoiling of arms, 
 at least during the battle, was also interdicted ; and the con- 
 secration of the spoils of slain enemies to the gods, as, in gen- 
 eral, all rejoicings for victory, were considered as ill-omened,' 
 
 Such was the war of the greatest soldiers w T ho prayed to 
 heathen gods. What Christian war is, preached by Christian 
 ministers, let any one tell you, who saw the sacred crowning, 
 and heard the sacred flute-playing, and w T as inspired and 
 sanctified by the divinely-measured and musical language, of 
 any North American regiment preparing for its charge. And 
 what is the relative cost of life in pagan and Christian wars, 
 let this one fact tell you : — the Spartans won the decisive bat- 
 tle of Corinth with the loss of eight men ; the victors at in- 
 decisive Gettysburg confess to the loss of 30,000. 
 
 II. I pass now to our second order of war, the commonest 
 among men, that undertaken in desire of dominion. And let 
 me ask you to think for a few moments what the real mean- 
 ing of this desire of dominion is — first in the minds of kings 
 — then in that of nations. 
 
 Now, mind you this first, — that I speak either about kings, 
 or masses of men, with a fixed conviction that human nature 
 is a noble and beautiful thing ; not a foul nor a base thing. 
 All the sin of men I esteem as their disease, not their nature ; 
 as a folly which may be prevented, not a necessity which 
 must be accepted. And my wonder, even when things are at 
 their w T orst, is always at the height which this human nature 
 can attain. Thinking it high, I find it always a higher thing 
 than I thought it ; while those who think it low, find it, and 
 will find it, always lower than they thought it : the fact being, 
 that it is infinite, and capable of infinite height and infinite 
 fall ; but the nature of it — and here is the faith which I w T ould 
 have you hold with me — the nature of it is in the nobleness, 
 not in the catastrophe. 
 
 Take the faith in its utmost terms. When the captain of 
 the ' London ' shook hands with his mate, saying ' God speed 
 you ! I will go down with my passengers/ that I believe to be 
 
WAR 
 
 79 
 
 'human nature.' He does not do it from any religious motive 
 —from any hope of reward, or any fear of punishment ; ho 
 does it because he is a man. Bat when a mother, living among 
 the fair fields of merry England, gives her two-year-old child 
 to be suffocated under a mattress in her inner room, while the 
 said mother waits and talks outside ; that I believe to be not 
 human nature. You have the two extremes there, shortly. 
 And you, men, and mothers, who are here face to face with * 
 me to-night, I call upon you to say which of these is human, 
 and which inhuman — which 'natural' and which 'unnat- 
 ural?' Choose your creed at once, I beseech you : — choose it 
 with unshaken choice — choose it forever. Will you take, for 
 foundation of act and hope, the faith that this man was such 
 as God made him, or that this woman was such as God made 
 her ? Which of them has failed from their nature — from their 
 present, possible, actual nature ; — not their nature of long 
 ago, but their nature of now ? Which has betrayed it — falsi- 
 fied it ? Did the guardian who died in his trust, die inhu- 
 manly, and as a fool ; and did the murderess of her child 
 fulfil the law of her being? Choose, I say ; infinitude of 
 choices hang upon this. You have had false prophets among 
 you — for centuries you have had them — solemnly warned 
 against them though you were ; false prophets, who have told 
 you that all men are nothing but fiends or wolves, half beast, 
 half devil. Believe that and indeed you may sink to that. 
 But refuse that, and have faith that God £ made you upright,' 
 though you have sought out many inventions ; so, you will 
 strive daily to become more wnat vour Maker meant and 
 means you to be, and daily gives y^ou also the power to be — 
 and you will cling more and more to the nobleness and virtue 
 that is in you, saying, ' My righteousness I hold fast, and will 
 not let it go.' 
 
 I have put this to you as a choice, as if you might hold 
 either of these creeds you liked best. But there is in reality 
 no choice for you ; the facts being quite easily ascertainable. 
 You have no business to think about this matter, or to choose 
 in it. The broad fact is, that a human creature of the highest 
 race, and most perfect as a human thing, is invariably both 
 
80 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 kind and true ; and that as you lower the race, you get cruelty 
 and falseness, as you get deformity : and this so steadily and 
 assuredly, that the two great words which, in their first use, 
 meant only perfection of race, have come, by consequence of 
 the invariable connection of virtue with the fine human nature, 
 both to signify benevolence of disposition. The word gener- 
 ous, and the word gentle, both, in their origin, meant only 
 'of pure race/ but because charity and tenderness are insep- 
 arable from this purity of blood, the words which once stood 
 only for pride, now stand as synonyms for virtue. 
 
 Now, this being the true power of our inherent humanity, 
 and seeing that all the aim of education should be to develop 
 this ; — and seeing also what magnificent self sacrifice the 
 higher classes of men are capable of, for any cause that they 
 understand or feel, — it is wholly inconceivable to me how well- 
 educated princes, who ought to be of all gentlemen the gen- 
 tlest, and of all nobles the most generous, and whose title of 
 royalty means only their function of doing every man 6 right 1 
 — how these, I say, throughout history, should so rarely pro- 
 nounce themselves on the side of the poor and of justice, but 
 continually maintain themselves and their own interests by 
 oppression of the poor, and by wresting of justice ; and. how 
 this should be accepted as so natural, that the word loyalty, 
 which means faithfulness to law, is used as if it were only the 
 duty of a people to be loyal to their king, and not the duty of 
 a king to be infinitely more loyal to his people. How comes 
 it to pass that a captain will die with his passengers, and lean 
 over the gunwale to give the parting boat its course ; but that 
 a king will not usually die with, much less for, his passengers, 
 — thinks it rather incumbent on his passengers, in any nura- 
 ber, to die for him ? Think, I beseech you, of the wonder of 
 this. The sea captain, not captain by divine right, but only 
 by company's appointment ; — not a man of royal descent, but 
 only a plebeian w T ho can steer ; — not with the eyes of the world 
 upon him, but with feeble chance, depending on one poor 
 boat, of his name being ever heard above the wash of the fatal 
 waves ; — not with the cause of a nation resting on his act, but 
 helpless to save so much as a child from among the lost crowd 
 
WAR. 
 
 81 
 
 with whom ne resolves to be lost, — yet goes down quietly to 
 his grave, rather than break his faith to these few emigrants. 
 But your captain by divine right, — your captain with the hues 
 of a hundred shields of kings upon his breast, — your captain 
 whose every deed, brave or base, will be illuminated or 
 branded for ever before unescapable eyes of men, — your cap- 
 tain whose every thought and act are beneficent, or fatal, from 
 bunrislng to setting, blessing as the sunshine, or shadowing 
 as the night, — this captain, as you find him in history, for the 
 most part thinks only how he may tax his passengers, and 
 sit at most ease in his state cabin ! 
 
 For observe, if there had been indeed in the hearts of the 
 rulers of great multitudes of men any such conception of 
 work for the good of those under their command, as there m 
 in the good and thoughtful masters of any small company ol 
 men, not only wars for the sake of mere increase of power 
 could never take place, but our idea of power itself would be 
 entirely altered. Do you suppose that to think and act even 
 for a million of men, to hear their complaints, watch their 
 weaknesses, restrain their vices, make laws for them, lead 
 ihem, day by day, to purer life,' is not enough for one man's 
 work ? If any of us were absolute lord only of a district of 
 a hundred miles square, and were resolved on doing our ut- 
 most for it ; making it feed as large a number of people as 
 possible ; making every clod productive, and every rock de- 
 fensive, and every human being happy ; should we not have 
 enough on our hands think you ? But if the ruler has any 
 other aim than this ; if, careless of the result of his interfer- 
 ence, he desire only the authority to interfere ; and, regard- 
 less of what is ill-done or well-done, cares only that it shall 
 be done at his bidding , — if he would rather do two hundred 
 miles' space of mischief, than one hundred miles' space of 
 good, of course he will try to add to his territory ; and to add 
 inimitably. But does he add to his power ? Do you call it 
 power in a child, if he is allowed to play with the wheels and 
 bands of some vast engine, pleased wdth their murmur and 
 whirl, till his unwise touch, wandering where it ought noi 
 scatters beam and wheel into ruin ? Yet w T hat machine is so 
 
82 
 
 THE CRO WN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 vast, so incognisable, as the working of the mind of a nation , 
 what child's touch so wanton, as the word of a selfish king ? 
 And yet, how long have we allowed the historian to speak of 
 the extent of the calamity a man causes, as a just ground for 
 his pride ; and to extol him as the greatest prince, who is 
 only the centre of the widest error. Follow out this thought 
 by yourselves : and you will find that all power, properly so 
 called, is wise and benevolent. There may be capacity in a 
 drifting fire-ship to destroy a fleet ; there may be venom 
 enough in a dead body to infect a nation : — but which of you, 
 the most ambitious, would desire a drifting kinghood, robed 
 in consuming fire, or a poison-dipped sceptre whose touch 
 was mortal ? There is no true potency, remember, but that of 
 help ; nor true ambition, but ambition to save. 
 
 And then, observe farther, this true power, the power of 
 saving, depends neither on multitude of men, nor on extent 
 of territory. We are continually assuming that nations be- 
 come strong according to their numbers. They indeed be- 
 come so, if those numbers can be made of one mind ; but 
 how are you sure you can stay them in one mind, and keep 
 them from having north and south minds? Grant them 
 unanimous, how know you they will be unanimous in right ? 
 If they are unanimous in wrong, the more they are, essentially 
 the weaker they are. Or, suppose that they can neither be of 
 one mind, nor of two minds, but can only be of no mind ? 
 Suppose they are a mere helpless mob ; tottering into precipi- 
 tant catastrophe, like a waggon load of stones when the wheel 
 comes off. Dangerous enough for their neighbours, certainly, 
 but not £ powerful. 5 
 
 Neither does strength depend on extent of territory, any 
 more than upon number of population. Take up your maps 
 when you go home this evening, — put the cluster of British 
 Isles beside the mass of South America ; and then consider 
 whether any race of men need care how much ground they 
 stand upon. The strength is in the men, and in their unity 
 and virtue, not in their standing room : a little group of wise 
 hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools ; and only thai 
 nation gains true territory, which gains itself. 
 
WAR 
 
 83 
 
 And now for the brief practical outcome of all this. Re- 
 member, no government is ultimately strong, but in propor- 
 tion to its kindness and justice ; and that a nation does not 
 strengthen, by merely multiplying and diffusing itself. We 
 have not strengthened as yet, by multiplying into America. 
 Nay, even when it has not to encounter the separating condi 
 tions of emigration, a nation need not boast itself of multiply- 
 ing on its own ground, if it multiplies only as flies or locusts 
 do, with the god of flies for its god. It multiplies its strength 
 only by increasing as one great family, in perfect fellowship 
 and brotherhood. And lastly, it does not strengthen itself 
 by seizing dominion over races whom it cannot benefit. Aus- 
 tria is not strengthened, but weakened, by her grasp of Lom- 
 bardy ; and whatever apparent increase of majesty and of 
 wealth may have accrued to us from the possession of India, 
 whether these prove to us ultimately power or weakness, de- 
 pends wholly on the degree in which our influence on the 
 native race shall be benevolent and exalting. But, as it is at 
 their own peril that any race extends their dominion in mere 
 desire of power, so it is at their own still greater peril that 
 they refuse to undertake aggressive war, according to their 
 force, whenever they are assured that their authority would 
 be helpful and protective. Nor need you listen to any sophis- 
 tical objection of the impossibility of knowing when a people's 
 help is needed, or when not. Make your national conscience 
 clean, and your national eyes will soon be clear. No man 
 who is truly ready to take part in a noble quarrel will ever 
 stand long in doubt by whom, or in what cause, his aid is 
 needed. I hold it my duty to make no political statement of 
 any special bearing in this presence ; but I tell you broadly 
 and boldly, that, within these last ten years, we English have, 
 as a knightly nation, lost our spurs : we have fought where 
 we should not have fought, for gain ; and we have been pas- 
 sive where we should not have been passive, for fear. I tell 
 you that the principle of non-intervention, as now preached 
 among us, is as selfish and cruel as the worst frenzy of con- 
 quest, and differs from it only by being not only malignant, 
 but dastardly. 
 
84 
 
 TEE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 I know, however, that my opinions on this subject differ too 
 widely from those ordinarily held, to be any farther intruded 
 upon you ; and therefore I pass lastly to examine the condi- 
 tions of the third kind of noble war ; — war waged simply for 
 defence of the country in which w r e were born, and for the 
 maintenance and execution of her laws, by whomsoever threat- 
 ened or defied. It is to this duty that I suppose most men 
 entering the army consider themselves in reality to be bound, 
 and I want you now to reflect what the laws of mere defence 
 are ; and w T hat the soldier's duty, as now understood, or sup- 
 posed to be understood. You have solemnly devoted your- 
 selves to be English soldiers, for the guardianship of England. 
 I want you to feel what this vow of yours indeed means, or is 
 gradually coming to mean. You take it upon you, first, while 
 you are sentimental schoolboys ; you go into your military 
 convent, or barracks, just as a girl goes into her convent while 
 she is a sentimental schoolgirl ; neither of you then know 
 what you are about, though both the good soldiers and good 
 nuns make the best of it afterwards. You don't understand 
 perhaps why I call you c sentimental 9 schoolboys, when you 
 go into the army ? Because, on the whole, it is love of adven- 
 ture, of excitement, of fine dress and of the pride of fame, all 
 which are sentimental motives, which chiefly make a boy like 
 going into the Guards better than into a counting-house. 
 You fancy, perhaps, that there is a severe sense of duty mixed 
 with these peacocky motives ? And in the best of you, there 
 is ; but do not think that it is principal. If you cared to do 
 your duty to your country in a prosaic and unsentimental 
 way, depend upon it, there is now truer duty to be done in 
 raising harvests than in burning them ; more in building 
 houses, than in shelling them — more in winning money by 
 your -own work, wherewith to help men, than in taxing other 
 people's work, for money wherewith to slay men ; more duty 
 finally, in honest and unselfish living than in honest and un- 
 selfish dying, though that seems to your boys' eyes the brav- 
 est. So far then, as for your own honour, and the honour of 
 your families, you choose brave death in a red coat before 
 brave life in a black one, you are sentimental ; and now see 
 
WAR. 
 
 85 
 
 what this passionate vow of yours comes to. For a little 
 while you ride, and you hunt tigers or savages, you shoot, and 
 are shot ; you are happy, and proud, always, and honoured 
 and wept if you die ; and you are satisfied with your life, and 
 with the end of it ; believing, on the whole, that good rather 
 than harm of it comes to others, and much pleasure to 3-011. 
 But as the sense of duty enters into your forming minds, the 
 vow takes another aspect. You find that you have put your- 
 selves into the hand of your country as a weapon. You have 
 vowed to strike, when she bids you, and to stay scabbarded 
 when she bids you ; all that you need answer for is, that you 
 fail not in her grasp. And there is goodness in this, and 
 greatness, if you can trust the hand and heart of the Brito- 
 mart who has braced you to her side, and are assured that 
 when she leaves you sheathed in darkness, there is no need 
 for your flash to the sun. But remember, good and noble as 
 this state may be, it is a state of slavery. There are different 
 kinds of slaves and different masters. Some slaves are 
 scourged to their work by w T hips, others are scourged to it by 
 restlessness or ambition. It does not matter what the whip 
 is ; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs 
 for it out of your own souls : the fact, so far, of slavery, is in 
 being driven to your work without thought, at another's bid- 
 ding. Again, some slaves are bought with money, and others 
 with praise. It matters not what the purchase-money is. 
 The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and be 
 bought for it. Again, it matters not what kind of work you 
 are set on ; some slaves are set to forced diggings, others to 
 forced marches ; some dig furrows, others field-works, and 
 others graves. Some press the juice of reeds, and some the 
 juice of vines, and some the blood of men. The fact of the 
 captivity is the same whatever work we are set upon, though 
 the fruits of the toil may be different. But, remember, in 
 thus vowing ourselves to be the slaves of any master, it ought 
 to be some subject of forethought with us, what work he is 
 likely to put us upon. You may think that the whole duty 
 of a soldier is to be passive, that it is the country you have left 
 behind who is to command, and you have only to obey. But 
 
66 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 are you sure that you have left; all your country behind, 01 
 that the part of it you have so left is indeed the best part of 
 it? Suppose — and, remember, it is quite conceivable — that 
 you yourselves are indeed the best part of England ; that you, 
 who have become the slaves, ought to have been the masters ; 
 and that those who are the masters, ought to have been the 
 slaves ! If it is a noble and whole-hearted England, whose 
 bidding you are bound to do, it is well ; but if you are your- 
 selves the best of her heart, and the England you have left be 
 but a half-hearted England, how say you of your obedience ? 
 You were too proud to become shopkeepers : are you satisfied 
 then to become the servants of shopkeepers ? You were too 
 proud to become merchants or farmers yourselves : will you 
 have merchants or farmers then for your field marshals ? You 
 had no gifts of special grace for Exeter Hall : will you have 
 some gifted person thereat for your commander-in-chief, to 
 judge of your work, and reward it? You imagine yourselves 
 to be the army of England : how if you should find yourselves, 
 at last, only the police of her manufacturing towns, and the 
 beadles of her little Bethels ? 
 
 It is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, for ever ; but what 
 I want you to see, and to be assured of, is, that the ideal of 
 soldiership is not mere passive obedience and bravery ; that, 
 so far from this, no country is in a healthy state which has 
 separated, even in a small degree, her civil from her military 
 power. All states of the world, however great, fall at once 
 when they use mercenary armies ; and although it is a less in- 
 stant form of error (because involving no national taint of 
 cowardice), it is yet an error no less ultimately fatal — it is the 
 error especially of modern times, of which we cannot yet 
 know all the calamitous consequences — to take away the best 
 blood and strength of the nation, all the soul- substance of it 
 that is brave, and careless of rew r ard, and scornful of pain, and 
 faithful in trust ; and to cast that into steel, and make a mere 
 sword of it ; taking away its voice and will ; but to keep the 
 worst part of the nation — whatever is cowardly, avaricious, 
 sensual, and faithless— and to give to this the voice, to this 
 the authority, to this the chief privilege, where there is least 
 
WAR 
 
 61 
 
 capacity, of thought. The fulfilment of your vow for the de- 
 fence of England will by no means consist in carrying out 
 such a system. You are not true soldiers, if you only mean 
 to stand at a shop door, to protect shop-boys who are cheating 
 inside. A soldier's vow to his country is that he will die for 
 the guardianship of her domestic virtue, of her righteous laws, 
 and of her anyway challenged or endangered honour. A 
 state without virtue, without laws, and without honour, he 
 is bound not to defend ; nay, bound to redress by his own 
 right hand that which he sees to be base in her. So sternly 
 is this the law of Nature and life, that a nation once utterly 
 corrupt can only be redeemed by a military despotism — never 
 by talking, nor by its free effort. And the health of any state 
 consists simply in this : that in it, those who are wisest shall 
 also be strongest ; its rulers should be also its soldiers ; or, 
 rather, by force of intellect more than of sword, its soldiers 
 its rulers. Whatever the hold which the aristocracy of Eng- 
 land has on the heart of England, in that they are still always 
 in front of her battles, this hold will not be enough, unless 
 they are also in front of her thoughts. And truly her thoughts 
 need good captain's leading now, if ever ! Do you know what, 
 by this beautiful division of labour (her brave men fighting, 
 and her cowards thinking), she has come at last to think? 
 Here is a bit of paper in my hand,* a good one too, and an 
 honest one ; quite representative of the best common public 
 thought of England at this moment ; and it is holding forth % 
 
 * I do not care to refer to the journal quoted, because the article was 
 unworthy of its general tone, though in order to enable the audience to 
 verify the quoted sentence, I left the number containing it on the table, 
 when I delivered this lecture. But a saying of Baron Liebig's, quoted at 
 the head of a leader on the same subject in the 4 Daily Telegraph * of Jan- 
 uary 11, 1866, summarily digests and presents the maximum folly of 
 modern thought in this respect. ' Civilization,' says the Baron, ' is the 
 economy of power, and English power is coal.' Not altogether so, my 
 chemical friend. Civilization is the making of civil persons, which is a 
 kind of distillation of which alembics are incapable, and does not at all 
 imply the turning of a small company of gentlemen into a large company 
 of ironmongers. And English power (what little of it may be left), is by 
 no means coal, but, indeed, of that which, 1 when the whole world turns 
 to coal, then chiefly lives.' /" 
 
88 
 
 THE CNOWJT OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 in one of its leaders upon our Social welfare/ — upon ouf 
 1 vivid life ' — upon the ' political supremacy of Great Britainc 1 
 And what do you think all these are owing to ? To what our 
 English sires have done for us, and taught us, age after age? 
 No : . not to that. To our honesty of heart, or coolness of head, 
 or steadiness of will? No: not to these. To our thinkers, or 
 our statesmen, or our poets, or our captains, or our martyrs, 
 or the patient labour of our poor ? No : not to these ; or at 
 least not to these in any chief measure. Nay, says the journal, 
 ■ more than any agency, it is the cheapness and abundance of 
 our coal which have made us what we are.' If it be so, then 
 ' ashes to ashes ' be our epitaph ! and the sooner the better. 
 I tell you, gentlemen of England, if ever you would have your 
 country breathe the pure breath of heaven again, and receive 
 again a soul into her body, instead of rotting into a carcase, 
 blown up in the belly with carbonic acid (and great that way), 
 you must think, and feel, for your England, as well as fight 
 for her : you must teach her that all the true greatness she 
 ever had, or ever can have, she won while her fields were green 
 and her faces ruddy ; — that greatness is still possible for Eng- 
 lishmen, even though the ground be not hollow under their 
 feet, nor the sky black over their heads ; — and that, when the 
 day comes for their country to lay her honours in the dust, her 
 crest will not rise from it more loftily because it is dust of 
 goal. Gentlemen, I tell you, solemnly, that the day is coming 
 when the soldiers of England must be her tutors and the cap- 
 tains of her army, captains also of her mind. 
 
 And now, remember, you soldier youths, who are thus in 
 all ways the hope of your country ; or must be, if she have 
 any hope : remember that your fitness for all future trust de- 
 pends upon w r hat you are now. No good soldier in his old 
 age was ever careless or indolent in his youth. Many a giddy 
 and thoughtless boy has become a good bishop, or a good 
 lawyer, or a good merchant ; but no such an one ever be- 
 came a good general. I challenge you, in all history, to find 
 a record of a good soldier who was not grave and earnest in 
 his youth. And, in general, I have no patience with people 
 who talk about ' the thoughtlessness of youth ' indulgently, 
 
WAR 
 
 80 
 
 i had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless old age, and the in- 
 dulgence due to that. When a man has done his work, and 
 nothing can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him 
 forget his toil, and jest with his fate, if he will ; but what 
 excuse can you find for wilfulness of thought, at the very 
 time when every crisis of future fortune hangs on your de- 
 cisions? A youth thoughtless ! when all the happiness of his 
 home for ever depends on the chances, or the passions, of an 
 hour ! A youth thoughtless ! when the career of all his days 
 depends on the opportunity of a moment ! A youth thought- 
 less ! when his every act is a foundation-stone of future con- 
 duct, and every imagination a fountain of life or death ! Be 
 thoughtless in any after years, rather than now — though, in- 
 deed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly 
 thoughtless, — his deathbed. No thinking should ever be 
 left to be done there. 
 
 Having, then, resolved that you will not waste recklessly, 
 but earnestly use, these early days of yours, remember that 
 all the duties of her children to England maybe summed in 
 two words — industry, and honour. I say first, industry, for 
 it is in this that soldier youth are especially tempted to fail. 
 Yet surely, there is no reason because your life may possibly 
 or probably be shorter than other men's, that you should 
 therefore waste more recklessly the portion of it that is 
 granted you ; neither do the duties of your profession, which 
 require you to keep your bodies strong, in any wise involve 
 the keeping of your minds w r eak. So far from that, the ex- 
 perience, the hardship, and the activity of a soldier's life ren- 
 der his powers of thought more accurate than those of other 
 men ; and while, for others, all knowledge is often little more 
 than a means of amusement, there is no form of science 
 which a soldier may not at some time or other find bearing 
 on business of life and death. A young mathematician may 
 be excused for langour in shelving curves to be described 
 only with a pencil ; but not in tracing those which are to be 
 described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome 
 herb may involve the feeding of an army ; and acquaintance 
 with an obscure point of geography, the success of a cam 
 
90 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 paign. Never waste an instant's time, therefore ; the sin c3 
 idleness is a thousandfold greater in you than in other 
 youths ; for the fates of those who will one day be under 
 your command hang upon your knowledge ; lost moments 
 now will be lost lives then, and every instant which you care- 
 lessly take for play, you buy with blood. But there is one 
 way of wasting time, of ail the vilest, because it wastes, not 
 lime only, but the interest and energy of your minds. Of all 
 the un gentlemanly habits into which you can fail, the vilest is 
 betting, or interesting yourselves in the issues of betting. It 
 unites nearly every condition of folly and vice ; you concen- 
 trate your interest upon a matter of chance, instead of upon a 
 subject of true knowledge ; and you back opinions which you 
 have no grounds for forming, merely because they are your 
 own. All the insolence of egotism is in this ; and so far as 
 the love of excitement is complicated with the hope of win- 
 ning money, you turn yourselves into the basest sort of trades- 
 men — those who live by speculation. Were there no other 
 ground for industry, this would be a sufficient one ; that it 
 protected you from the temptation to so scandalous a vice. 
 Work faithfully, and you will put yourselves in possession of 
 a glorious and enlarging happiness : not such as can be won 
 by the speed of a horse, or marred by the obliquity of a ball. 
 
 First, then, by industry you must fulfil your vow to your 
 country ; but all industry and earnestness will be useless un- 
 less they are consecrated by your resolution to be in all things 
 men of honour ; not honour in the common sense only, but in 
 the highest. Rest on the force of the two main words in the 
 great verse, integer vitae, scelerisque pur us. You have vowed 
 your life to England ; give it her wholly — a bright, stainless, 
 perfect life — a knightly life. Because you have to fight with 
 machines instead of lances, there may be a necessity for more 
 ghastly danger, but there is none for less worthiness of char- 
 acter, than in olden time. You may be true knights yet, 
 though perhaps not equites; you may have to call yourselvea 
 'earmonry' instead of * chivalry,' but that is no reason why 
 you should not call yourselves true men. So the firrst thing 
 you have to see to in becoming soldiers is that you make your- 
 
WAR. 
 
 91 
 
 selves wholly true. Courage is a mere mattei of course among 
 any ordinarily well-born youths ; but neither truth nor gentle- 
 ness is matter of course. You must bind them like shields 
 about your necks ; you must write them on the tables of your 
 hearts. Though it be not exacted of you, yet exact it of your- 
 selves, this vow of stainless truth. Your hearts are, if you 
 leave them unstirred, as tombs in w^hich a god lies buried. 
 Vow yourselves crusaders to redeem that sacred sepulchre. 
 And remember, before all things — for no other memory will 
 be so protective of you — that the highest law of this knightly 
 trut'k is that under which it is vowed to women. Whomso- 
 ever else you deceive, whomsoever you injure, whomsoever 
 you leave unaided, you must not deceive, nor injure, nor leave 
 unaided according to your power, any woman of whatever 
 rank. Believe me, every virtue of the higher phases of manly 
 character begins in this ; — in truth and modesty before the 
 face of all maidens ; in truth and pity, or truth and reverence, 
 to all womanhood. 
 
 And now let me turn for a moment to you, — wives and 
 maidens, who are the souls of soldiers ; to you, — mothers, 
 who have devoted your children to the great hierarchy of war. 
 Let me ask you to consider what part you have to take for 
 the aid of those who love you ; for if you fail in your part 
 they cannot fulfil theirs ; such absolute helpmates you are 
 that *io man can stand without that help, nor labour in his 
 own strength. 
 
 I know your hearts, and that the truth of them never fails 
 when an hour of trial comes which you recognise for such. 
 But you know not when the hour of trial first finds you, nor 
 when it verily finds you. You imagine that you are only 
 called upon to wait and to suffer ; to surrender and to mourn. 
 You know that }^ou must not weaken the hearts of your hus- 
 bands and lovers, even by the one fear of which those hearts 
 are capable, — the fear of parting from you, or of causing you 
 grief. Through weary years of separation, through fearful 
 expectancies of unknown fate ; through the tenfold bitterness 
 of the sorrow which might so easily have been joy, and the 
 tenfold yearning for glorious life struck down in its prime— 
 
92 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 through all these agonies you fail not, and never will fail. 
 But your trial is not in these. To be heroic in danger is little ; 
 
 you are Englishwomen. To be heroic in change and sway of 
 
 fortune is little ; — for do you not love ? To be patient through 
 the great chasm and pause of loss is little ; — for do you not 
 still love in heaven ? But to be heroic in happiness ; to bear 
 yourselves gravely and righteously in the dazzling of the sun- 
 shine of morning ; not to forget the God in whom you trust, 
 when He gives you most ; not to fail those who trust you, 
 when they seem to need you least ; this is the difficult forti- 
 tude. It is not in the pining of absence, not in the peril of 
 battle, not in the wasting of sickness, that your pt&yer should 
 be most passionate, or 3'our guardianship most tender. Pray, 
 mothers and maidens, for your young soldiers in the bloom of 
 their pride ; pray for them, while the only dangers round 
 them are in their own wayward wills ; watch you, and pray, 
 when they have to face, not death, but temptation. But it 
 is this fortitude also for which there is the crowning reward. 
 Believe me, the whole course and character of your lovers' lives 
 is in your hands ; what you would have them be, they shall be, 
 if you not only desire to have them so, but deserve to have 
 them so ; for they are but mirrors in which you will see your- 
 selves imaged. If you are frivolous, they will be so also ; if 
 you have no understanding of the scope of their duty, they also 
 will forget it ; they will listen, — they can listen, — to no other 
 interpretation of it than that uttered from your lips. Bid 
 them be brave ; — they will be brave for you ; bid them be 
 cowards ; and how noble soever they be ; — they will quail for 
 you. Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you ; mock 
 at their counsel, they will be fools for you : such and so ab- 
 solute is your rule over them. You fancy, perhaps, as you 
 have been told so often, that a wife's rule should only be over 
 her husbands house, not over his mind. Ah, no ! the true 
 rule is just the reverse of that ; a true wife, in her husbands 
 house, is his servant ; it is in his heart that she is queen. 
 Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be ; 
 whatever of highest he can hope, it is hers to promise ; all 
 that is dark in him she must purge into purity ; all that is fail- 
 
WAR. 
 
 93 
 
 ing in him she must strengthen into truth : from her, through 
 all the world s clamour, he must win his praise ; in her, through 
 all the world's warfare, he must find his peace. 
 
 And, now, but one word more. You may wonder, perhaps, 
 that I have spoken all this night in praise of war. Yet, truly, 
 if it might be, I, for one, would fain join in the cadence 
 of hammer-strokes that should beat swords into plough- 
 shares : and that this cannot be, is not the fault of us men. 
 It is your fault. Wholly yours. Only by your command, 
 or by your permission, can any contest take place among us. 
 And the real, final, reason for all the poverty, misery, and 
 rage of battle, throughout Europe, is simply that you women, 
 however good, however religious, however self-sacrificing for 
 those whom you love, are too selfish and too thoughtless to 
 take pains for any creature out of your own immediate circles. 
 You fancy that you are sorry for the pain of others. Now I 
 just tell you this, that if the usual course of war, instead of 
 unroofing peasants' houses, and ravaging peasants 5 fields, 
 merely broke the china upon your own drawing-room tables, 
 no war in civilised countries would last a week. I tell you 
 more, that at whatever moment you chose to put a period to 
 war, you could do it with less trouble than you take any dr.y 
 to go out to dinner. You know, or at least you might know if 
 you would think, that every battle you hear of has made many 
 widows and orphans. We have, none of us, heart enough 
 truly to mourn with these. But at least we might put on the 
 outer symbols of mourning with them. Let but every Chris- 
 tian lady who has conscience toward God, vow that she will 
 mourn, at least outwardly, for His killed creatures. Your 
 praying is useless, and your churchgoing mere mockery of 
 God, if you have not plain obedience in you enough for this. 
 Let every lady in the upper classes of civilised Europe simpljj 
 vow that, while any cruel war proceeds, she will wear black ; — 
 a mute's black, — with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse for, or 
 evasion into, prettiness. — I tell you again, no war would last a 
 .week. 
 
 And lastly. You women of England are all now shrieking 
 with one voice, - you and your clergymen together, — because 
 
84: THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 you hear of your Bibles being attacked. If you choose ta 
 obey your Bibles, you will never care who attacks them. It 
 is just because you never fulfil a single downright precept of 
 the Book, that you are so careful for its credit : and just be- 
 cause you don't care to obey its whole words, that you are 
 so particular about the letters of them. The Bible tells you 
 to dress plainly, — and you are mad for finery ; the Bible tells 
 you to have pity on the poor, — and you crush them under your 
 carriage-wheels ; the Bible tells you to do judgment and jus- 
 tice, — and you do not know, nor care to know, so much as 
 what the Bible word 'justice means.' Do but learn so much 
 of God's truth as that comes to ; know what He means when 
 He tells you to be just : and teach your sons, that their 
 bravery is but a fool's boast, and their deeds but a firebrand's 
 tossing, unless they are indeed Just men, and Perfect in the 
 Pear of God ; — and you will soon have no more war, unless 
 it be indeed such as is willed by Him, of whom, though 
 Prince of Peace, it is also written, * In Righteousness He doth 
 judge, and make war.' 
 
M UN ERA PULVERIS 
 
 SIX ESSAYS 
 ON THE ELEMENTS OF 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
PEE FACE. 
 
 The following pages contain, I believe, the first accurate 
 analysis of the laws of Political Economy which has been 
 published in England. Many treatises, within their scope, 
 correct, have appeared in contradiction of the views popu- 
 larly received ; but no exhaustive examination of the subject 
 was possible to any person unacquainted with the value of 
 the products of the highest industries, commonly called the 
 " Fine Arts ; " and no one acquainted with the nature of 
 those industries has, so far as I know, attempted, or even ap- 
 proached, the task. 
 
 So that, to the date (1863) when these Essays were pub- 
 lished, not only the chief conditions of the production of 
 wealth had remained unstated, but the nature of w r ealth itself 
 had never been defined. "Every one has a notion, sufficiently 
 correct for common purposes, of what is meant by wealth, " 
 wrote Mr. Mill, in the outset of his treatise ; and contentedly 
 proceeded, as if a chemist should proceed to investigate the 
 laws of chemistry without endeavouring to ascertain the nat- 
 ure of fire or water, because every one had a notion of them, 
 " sufficiently correct for common purposes." 
 
 But even that apparently indisputable statement was un- 
 true. There is not one person in ten thousand who has a 
 notion sufficiently correct, even for the commonest purposes, 
 of " what is meant " by wealth ; still less of what wealth ever- 
 lastingly is, whether we mean it or not ; which it is the busi- 
 ness of every student of economy to ascertain. We, indeed, 
 know (either by experience or in imagination) what it is to be 
 able to provide ourselves wdth luxurious food, and handsome 
 clothes ; and if Mr. Mill had thought that wealth consisted 
 
93 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 only in these, or in the means of obtaining these, it would 
 have been easy for him to have so defined it with perfect 
 scientific accuracy. But he knew better : he knew that some 
 kinds of wealth consisted in the possession, or power of ob- 
 taining, other things than these ; but, having, in the studies 
 of his life, no clue to the principles of essential value, he was 
 compelled to take public opinion as the ground of his science ; 
 and the public, of course, willingly accepted the notion of a 
 science founded on their opinions. 
 
 I had, on the contrary, a singular advantage, not only in 
 the greater extent of the field of investigation opened to me 
 by my daily pursuits, but in the severity of some lessons I 
 accidentally received in the course of them. 
 
 When, in the winter of 1851, I was collecting materials for 
 my work on Venetian architecture, three of the pictures of 
 Tintoret on the roof of the School of St. Eoch were hanging 
 down in ragged fragments, mixed with lath and plaster, round 
 the aperturejs made by the fall of three Austrian heavy shot. 
 The city of Venice was not, it appeared, rich enough to repair 
 the damage that winter ; and buckets were set on the floor of 
 the upper room of the school to catch the rain, which not 
 only fell directly through the shot holes, but found its way, 
 owing to the generally pervious state of the roof, through 
 many of the canvases of Tintoret's in other parts of the 
 ceiling. 
 
 It was a lesson to me, as I have just said, no less direct 
 than severe ; for I knew already at that time (though I have 
 not ventured to assert, until recently at Oxford,) that the pict- 
 ures of Tintoret in Venice were accurately the most precious 
 articles of wealth in Europe, being the best existing produc- 
 tions of human industry. Now at the time that three of them 
 were thus fluttering in moist rags from the roof they had 
 adorned, the shops of the Rue Rivoli at Paris were, in obe- 
 dience to a steadily-increasing public Demand, beginning to 
 show a steadily-increasing Supply of elaborately-finished and 
 coloured lithographs, representing the modern dances of de- 
 light, among which the cancan has since taken a distinguished 
 place. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 99 
 
 The labour employed on the stone of one of these litho* 
 graphs is very much more than Tintoret was in the habit of 
 giving to a picture of average size. Considering labour as 
 the origin of value, therefore, the stone so highly wrought 
 would be of greater value than the picture ; and since also it 
 is capable of producing a large number of immediately sale- 
 able or exchangeable impressions, for which the " demand " 
 is constant, the city of Paris naturally supposed itself, and on 
 all*hitherto believed or stated principles of political economy, 
 was, infinitely richer in the possession of a large number of 
 these lithographic stones, (not to speak of countless oil pict- 
 ures and marble carvings of similar character), than Venice 
 in the possession of those rags of mildewed canvas, flaunting 
 in the south wind and its salt rain. And, accordingly, Paris 
 provided (without thought of the expense) lofty arcades of 
 shops, and rich recesses of innumerable private apartments, 
 for the protection of these better treasures of hers from the 
 weather. 
 
 Yet, all the while, Paris was not the richer for these pos- 
 sessions. Intrinsically, the delightful lithographs were not 
 wealth, but polar contraries of wealth. She was, by the exact 
 quantity of labour she had given to produce these, sunk be- 
 low, instead of above, absolute Poverty. They not only were 
 false Riches — they were true Debt, which had to be paid at 
 last — and the present aspect of the Rue Rivoli shows in what 
 manner. 
 
 And the faded stains of the Venetian ceiling, all the while, 
 were absolute and inestimable wealth. Useless to their pos- 
 sessors as forgotten treasure in a buried city, they had in 
 them, nevertheless, the intrinsic and eternal nature of w T ealth ; 
 and Venice, still possessing the ruins of them, was a rich city ; 
 only, the Venetians had not a notion sufficiently correct even 
 for the very common purpose of inducing them to put slates 
 on a roof, of what was "meant by wealth." 
 
 The vulgar economist would reply that his science had 
 nothing to do with the qualities of pictures, but with their 
 exchange-value only ; and that his business was, exclusively, 
 to consider whether the remains of Tintoret were worth as 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 many fen-and-sixpences as the impressions which might be 
 taken from the lithographic stones. 
 
 But he would not venture, without reserve, to make such 
 an answer, if the example be taken in horses, instead of pict- 
 ures. The most dull economist would perceive, and admit, 
 that a gentleman who had a fine stud of horses was absolute- 
 ly richer than one who had only ill-bred and broken-winded 
 ones, He would instinctively feel, though his pseudo-science 
 had never taught him, that the price paid for the animals, in 
 either case, did not alter the fact of their worth : that the 
 good horse, though it might have been bought by chance for 
 a few guineas, was not therefore less valuable, nor the owner 
 of the galled jade any the richer, because he had given a hun- 
 dred for it. 
 
 So that the economist, in saying that his science takes no 
 account of the qualities of pictures, merely signifies that he 
 cannot conceive of any quality of essential badness or good- 
 ness existing in pictures ; and that he is incapable of investi- 
 gating the laws of wealth in such articles. Which is the fact. 
 But, being incapable of defining intrinsic value in pictures, it 
 follows that he must be equally helpless to define the nature 
 of intrinsic value in painted glass, or in painted pottery, or in 
 patterned stuffs, or in any other national produce requiring 
 true human ingenuity. Nay, though capable of conceiving 
 the idea of intrinsic value with respect to beasts of burden, 
 no economist has endeavoured to state the general princi- 
 ples of National Economy, even with regard to the horse or 
 the ass. And, in fine, the modern political economists have 
 been, ivithout exception, incapable of apprehending the nature of 
 intrinsic value at all. 
 
 And the first specialty of the following treatise consists in 
 its giving at the outset, and maintaining as the foundation of 
 all subsequent reasoning, a definition of Intrinsic Value, and 
 Intrinsic Contrary-of- Value ; the negative power having been 
 left by former writers entirely out of account, and the positive 
 power left entirely undefined. 
 
 But, secondly : the modern economist, ignoring intrinsic 
 value, and accepting the popular estimate of things as the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 101 
 
 only ground of his science, has imagined himself to have as* 
 certain ed the constant laws regulating the relation of this 
 popular demand to its supply ; or, at least, to have proved 
 that demand and supply were connected by heavenly balance, 
 over which human foresight had no power. I chanced, by 
 singular coincidence, lately to see this theory of the law of 
 demand and supply brought to as sharp practical issue in an- 
 other great siege, as I had seen the theories of intrinsic value 
 brought, in the siege of Venice. 
 
 I had the honour of being on the committee under the 
 presidentship of the Lord Mayor of London, for the victual- 
 ling of Paris after her surrender. It became, at one period of 
 our sittings, a question of vital importance at what moment 
 the law of demand and supply would come into operation, and 
 what the operation of it would exactly be : the demand, on 
 this occasion, being very urgent indeed ; that of several mill- 
 ions of people within a few hours of utter starvation, for any 
 kind of food whatsoever. Nevertheless, it was admitted, in 
 the course of debate, to be probable that the divine principle 
 of demand and supply might find itself at the eleventh hour, 
 and some minutes over, in want of carts and horses ; and we 
 ventured so far to interfere with the divine principle as to 
 provide carts and horses, with haste which proved, happily, 
 in time for the need ; but not a moment in advance of it It 
 was farther recognized by the committee that the divine prin- 
 ciple of demand and supply would commence its operations 
 by charging the poor of Paris twelve-pence for a penny's 
 worth of whatever they wanted ; and would end its operations 
 by offering them twelve-pence worth for a penny, of whatever 
 they didn't want Whereupon it w r as concluded by the com- 
 mittee that the tiny knot, on this special occasion, w r as scarcely 
 " dignus vindice" by the divine principle of demand and sup- 
 ply : and that we would venture, for once, in a profane man- 
 ner, to provide for the poor of Paris what they wanted, when 
 they wanted it. Which, to the^ value of the sums entrusted 
 to us, it will be remembered we succeeded in doing. 
 
 But the fact is x ,hat the so-called "law," which was felt to 
 be false in this case of extreme exigence, is alike false in cases 
 
102 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 of less exigence. It is false always, and everywhere. Nay 
 to such an extent is its existence imaginary, that the vulgar 
 economists are not even agreed in their account of it ; for 
 some of them mean by it, only that prices are regulated by 
 the relation between demand and supply, which is partly 
 true ; and others mean that the relation itself is one with the 
 process of which it is unwise to interfere ; a statement which 
 is not only, as in the above instance, untrue ; but accurately 
 the reverse of the truth : for all wise economy, political or 
 domestic, consists in the resolved maintenance of a given re- 
 lation between supply and demand, other than the instinctive, 
 or (directly) natural, one* 
 
 Similarly, vulgar political economy asserts for a " law " that 
 w r ages are determined by competition. 
 
 Now I pay my servants exactly what wages I think neces- 
 sary to make them comfortable. The sum is not determined 
 at all by competition ; but sometimes by my notions of their 
 comfort and deserving, and sometimes by theirs. If I were 
 to become penniless to-morrow, several of them would cer- 
 tainly still serve me for nothing. 
 
 In both the real and supposed cases the so-called " law " of 
 vulgar political economy is absolutely set at defiance. But I 
 cannot set the law of gravitation at defiance, nor determine 
 that in my house I will not allow ice to melt, when the tem- 
 perature is above thirty-two degrees. A true law outside of 
 my house, will remain a true one inside of it. It is not, there- 
 fore, a law of Nature that wages are determined by competi- 
 tion. Still less is it a law of State, or we should not now be 
 disputing about it publicly, to the loss of many millions of 
 pounds to the country. The fact which vulgar economists 
 have been weak enough to imagine a law, is only that, for the 
 last twenty years a number of very senseless persons have at- 
 tempted to determine wages in that manner ; and have, in a 
 measure, succeeded in occasionally doing so. 
 
 Both in definition of the elements of wealth, and in state- 
 ment of the laws which govern its distribution, modern politi- 
 cal economy has been thus absolutely incompetent, or abso- 
 lutely false. And the following treatise is not, as it has been 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 103 
 
 asserted with dull pertinacity, an endeavour to put sentiment 
 in the place of science ; but it contains the exposure of what 
 insolently pretended to be a science ; and the definition, 
 hitherto unassailed — and I do not fear to assert, unassailable 
 — of the material elements with which political economy has 
 to deal, and the moral principles in which it consists ; being 
 not itself a science, but " a system of conduct founded on the 
 sciences, and impossible, except under certain conditions of 
 moral culture." "Which is only to say, that industry, frugality, 
 and discretion, the three foundations of economy, are moral 
 qualities, and cannot be attained without moral discipline : a 
 flat truism, the reader may think, thus stated, yet a truism 
 which is denied both vociferously, and in all endeavour, by 
 the entire populace of Europe ; who are at present hopeful of 
 obtaining wealth by tricks of trade, without industry ; who, 
 possessing wealth, have lost in the use of it even the concep- 
 tion, — how much more the habit ? — of frugality ; and who, in 
 the choice of the elements of wealth, cannot so much as lose 
 — since they have never hitherto at any time possessed, — the 
 faculty of discretion. 
 
 Now if the teachers of the pseudo-science of economy had 
 ventured to state distinctly even the poor conclusions they 
 had reached on the subjects respecting which it is most dan- 
 gerous for a populace to be indiscreet, they would have soon 
 found, by the use made of them, which were true, and which 
 false. 
 
 But on main and vital questions, no political economist has 
 hitherto ventured to state one guiding principle. I will in- 
 stance three subjects of universal importance. National 
 Dress. National Eent. National Debt. 
 
 Now if we are to look in any quarter for a systematic and 
 exhaustive statement of the principles of a given science, it 
 must certainly be from its Professor at Cambridge. 
 
 Take the last edition of Professor Fawcett's Manual of Po- 
 litical Economy, and forming, first clearly in your mind these 
 three following questions, see if you can find an answer to 
 them. 
 
 I. Does expenditure of capital on the production of luxu> 
 
101 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 rious dress and furniture tend to make a nation rich or poor? 
 
 II. Does the payment, by the nation, of a tax on its land, 
 or on the produce of it, to a certain number of private per- 
 sons, to be expended by them as they please, tend to make 
 the nation rich or poor ? 
 
 III. Does the payment, by the . nation, for an indefinite 
 period, of interest on money borrowed from private persons, 
 tend to make the nation rich or poor ? 
 
 These three questions are, all of them, perfectly simple, 
 and primarily vital. Determine these, and you have at once 
 a basis for national conduct in all important particulars. 
 Leave them undetermined, and there is no limit to the dis- 
 tress which may be brought upon the people by the cunning 
 of its knaves, and the folly of its multitudes. 
 
 I will take the three in their order. 
 
 I. Dress. The general impression on the public mind at 
 this day is, that the luxury of the rich in dress and furniture 
 is a benefit to the poor. Probably not even the blindest of 
 our political economists would venture to assert this in so 
 many words. But where do they assert the contrary ? Dur- 
 ing the entire period of the reign of the late Emperor it was 
 assumed in France, as the first principle of fiscal government, 
 that a large portion of the funds received as rent from the 
 provincial labourer should be expended in the manufacture 
 of ladies' dresses in Paris. Where is the political economist 
 in France, or England, who ventured to assert the conclu- 
 sions of his science as adverse to this system ? As early as 
 the year 1857 I had done my best to show the nature of the 
 error, and to give warning of its danger ; * but not one of the 
 men who had the foolish ears of the people intent on their 
 words, dared to follow me in speaking what would have been 
 an offence to the powers of trade ; and the powers of trade in 
 Paris had their full way for fourteen years more, — with this 
 result, to-day, — as told us in precise and curt terms by the 
 Minister of Public Instruction, — f 
 
 * Political Economy of Art (Smith and Elder, 1857, pp. 65-76.) 
 
 f See report of speech of M. Jules Simon, in Pall Mall Gazette oi 
 October 27, 1871. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 105 
 
 <c We have replaced glory by gold, work by speculation, 
 !aith and honour by scepticism. To absolve or glorify im- 
 morality ; to make much of loose women ; to gratify our eyes 
 with luxury, our ears with the tales of orgies ; to aid in the 
 manoeuvres of public robbers, or to applaud them ; to laugh 
 at morality, and only believe in success ; to love nothing but 
 pleasure, adore nothing but force ; to replace w r ork with a 
 fecundity of fancies ; to speak without thinking ; to prefer 
 noise to glory ; to erect sneering into a system, and lying into 
 an institution — is this the spectacle that we have seen ? — is 
 this the society that we have been ? " 
 
 Of course, other causes, besides the desire of luxury in fur- 
 niture and dress, have been at work to produce such conse- 
 quences ; but the most active cause of all has been the pas- 
 sion for these ; passion unrebuked by the clergy, and, for the 
 most part, provoked by economists, as advantageous to com- 
 merce ; nor need we think that such results have been ar- 
 rived at in France only ; we are ourselves following rapidly 
 on the same road. France, in her old wars with us, never 
 was so fatally our enemy as she has been in the fellowship of 
 fashion, and the freedom of trade : nor, to my mind, is any 
 fact recorded of Assyrian or Roman luxury more ominous, or 
 ghastly, than one which came to my knowledge a few weeks 
 ago, in England ; a respectable and well-to-do father and 
 mother, in a quiet north country town, being turned into the 
 streets in their old age, at the suit of their only daughter's 
 milliner. 
 
 II. Rent. The following account of the real nature of rent 
 is given, quite accurately, by Professor Fawcett, at page 112 
 of the last edition of his Political Economy: — 
 
 "Every country has probably been subjugated, and grants 
 of vanquished territory were the ordinary rewards which the 
 conquering chief bestowed upon his more distinguished fol- 
 lowers. Lands obtained by force had to be defended by 
 force ; and before law had asserted her supremacy, and prop- 
 erty was made secure, no baron was able to retain his posses- 
 sions, unless those who lived on his estates were prepared to 
 
10G 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 defend them. . . .* As property became secure, and lan<5* 
 lords felt that the power of the State would protect them in 
 all the rights of property, every vestige of these feudal ten- 
 ures was abolished, and the relation between landlord and 
 tenant has thus become purely commercial. A landlord offers 
 his land to any one who is willing to take it ; he is anxious tc 
 receive the highest rent he can obtain. "What are the prin 
 ciples which regulate the rent which may thus be paid r " 
 
 These principles the Professor goes on contentedly to in- 
 vestigate, never appearing to contemplate for an instant the 
 possibility of the first principle in the whole business — the 
 maintenance, by force, of the possession of land obtained by 
 force, being ever called in question by any human mind. It 
 is, nevertheless, the nearest task of our day to discover how 
 far original theft may be justly encountered by reactionary 
 theft, or whether reactionary theft be indeed theft at all ; and 
 farther, what, excluding either original or corrective theft, are 
 the just conditions of the possession of land. 
 
 HI. Debt. Long since, when, a mere boy, I used to sit 
 silently listening to the conversation of the London merchants 
 who, all of them good and sound men of business, were wont 
 occasionally to meet round my father's dining-table ; nothing 
 used to surprise me more than the conviction openly expressed 
 by some of the soundest and most cautious of them, that " if 
 there were no National debt they would not know what to do 
 with their money, or where to place it safely." At the 399th 
 page of his Manual, you will find Professor Fawcett giving ex- 
 actly the same statement. 
 
 " In our own country, this certainty against risk of loss is 
 provided by the public funds ; " 
 
 and again, as on the question of rent, the Professor proceeds, 
 without appearing for an instant to be troubled by any mis- 
 giving that there may be an essential difference between the 
 effects on national prosperity of a Government paying interest 
 
 * The omitted sentences merely amplify the statement ; they in m 
 frise modify it. 
 
I 3 HE FACE. 
 
 107 
 
 on money which it spent in fire works fifty years ago, and of a 
 Government paying interest on money to be employed to-day 
 on productive labour. 
 
 That difference, which the reader will find stated and ex« 
 amined at length, in §§ 127-129 of this volume, it is the busi- 
 ness of economists, before approaching any other question re*, 
 lating to government, fully to explain. And the paragraphs 
 to which I refer, contain, I believe, the only definite statement 
 of it hitherto made. 
 
 The practical result of the absence of any such statement is, 
 that capitalists, when they do not know what to do with their 
 money, persuade the peasants, in various countries, that the 
 said peasants want guns to shoot each other with. The peas- 
 ants accordingly borrow guns, out of the manufacture of which 
 the capitalists get a percentage, and men of science much 
 amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain 
 number of each other, until they get tired ; and burn each 
 other's homes down in various places. Then they put the 
 guns back into towers, arsenals, &c, in ornamental patterns ; 
 (and the victorious party put also some ragged flags in 
 churches). And then the capitalists tax both, annually, ever 
 afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of the guns and gun- 
 powder. And that is w T hat capitalists call " knowing what to 
 do with their money ; " and what commercial men in general 
 call " practical " as opposed to " sentimental " Political Econ- 
 omy. 
 
 Eleven years ago, in the summer of 1860, perceiving then 
 fully, (as Carlyle had done long before), what distress was 
 about to come on the said populace of Europe through these 
 errors of their teachers, I began to do the best I might, to 
 combat them, in the series of papers for the Cornhill Magazine, 
 since published under the title of Unto this Last. The editor 
 of the Magazine was my friend, and ventured the insertion of 
 the three first essays ; but the outcry against them became 
 then too strong for any editor to endure, and he wrote to me, 
 with great discomfort to himself, and man}' apologies to me, 
 that the Magazine must only admit one Economical Essay 
 more. 
 
V RE FACE. 
 
 I made, with his permission, the last one longer than ths 
 rest, and gave it blunt conclusion as well as I could — and so 
 the book now stands ; but, as I had taken not a little pain a 
 with the Essays, and knew that they contained better work 
 than most of my former writings, and more important truths 
 than all of them put together, this violent reprobation of 
 them by the Cornhill public set me still more gravely think- 
 ing ; and, after turning the matter hither and thither in my 
 mind for two years more, I resolved to make it the central 
 w r ork of my life to write an exhaustive treatise on Political 
 Economy. It would not have been begun, at that time, how- 
 ever, had not the editor of Frasei's Magazine written to me, 
 saying that he believed there was something in my theories, 
 and would risk the admission of what I chose to write on this 
 dangerous subject ; whereupon, cautiously, and at intervals, 
 during the winter of 1862-63, I sent him, and he ventured to 
 print, the preface of the intended work, divided into four 
 chapters. Then, though the Editor had not wholly lost cour- 
 age, the Publisher indignantly interfered ; and the readers of 
 Fraser, as those of the Cornhill, were protected, for that time, 
 from farther disturbance on my part. Subsequently, loss of 
 health, family distress, and various untoward chances, pre- 
 vented my proceeding with the body of the book ; — seven 
 years have passed ineffectually ; and I am now fain to reprint 
 the Preface by itself, under the title which I intended for the 
 whole. 
 
 Not discontentedly ; being, at this time of life, resigned to 
 the sense of failure ; and also, because the preface is com- 
 plete in itself as a body of definitions, which I now require 
 for reference in the course of my Letters to Workmen ; by 
 which also, in time, I trust less formally to accomplish the 
 chief purpose of Munera Palveris, practically summed in the 
 two paragraphs 27 and 28 : namely, to examine the moral 
 results and possible rectifications of the laws of distribution 
 of wealth, which have prevailed hitherto without debate 
 among men. Laws which ordinary economists assume to be 
 inviolable, and which ordinary socialists imagine to be on the 
 eve of total abrogation, But they are both alike deceived 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 109 
 
 The laws which at present regulate the possession of wealth 
 are unjust, because the motives which provoke to its attain- 
 ment are impure ; but no socialism can effect their abroga- 
 tion, unless it can abrogate also covetousness and pride, which 
 it is by no means yet in the way of doing. Nor can the 
 change be, in any case, to the extent that has been imaginedc 
 Extremes of luxury may be forbidden, and agony of penury 
 relieved ; but nature intends, and the utmost efforts of social- 
 ism will not hinder the fulfilment of her intention, that a 
 provident person shall always be richer than a spendthrift ; 
 and an ingenious one more comfortable than a fool. But, 
 indeed, the adjustment of the possession of the products of 
 industry depends more on their nature than their quantity, 
 and on wise determination therefore of the aims of industry. 
 A nation which desires true wealth, desires it moderately, 
 and can therefore distribute it with kindness, and possess it 
 with pleasure ; but one which desires false wealth, desires it 
 immoderately, and can neither dispense it with justice, nor 
 enjoy it in peace. 
 
 Therefore, needing, constantly in my present work, to refei 
 to the definitions of true and false wealth given in the fol- 
 lowing Essays, I republish them with careful revisal. They 
 were written abroad ; partly at Milan, partly during a winter 
 residence on the south-eastern slope of the Mont Saleve, near 
 Geneva ; and sent to London in as legible MS. as I could 
 write ; but I never revised the press sheets, and have been 
 obliged, accordingly, now to amend the text here and there, 
 or correct it in unimportant particulars. Wherever any 
 modification has involved change in the sense, it is enclosed 
 in square brackets ; and what few explanatory comments 1 
 have felt it necessary to add, have been indicated in the same 
 manner. No explanatory comments, I regret to perceive, will 
 suffice to remedy the mischief of my affected concentration of 
 language, into the habit of which I fell by thinking too long- 
 over particular passages, in many and many a solitary walk 
 towards the mountains of Bonneville or Annecy. But I never 
 intended the book for anything else than a dictionary of 
 reference, and that for earnest readers ; who will, I have good 
 
110 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 hope, if they find what they want in it, forgive the affectedlj 
 
 curt expressions. 
 
 The Essays, as originally published, were, as I have just 
 stated, four in number. I have now, more conveniently, 
 divided the whole into six chapters ; and (as I purpose 
 throughout this edition of my works) numbered the para- 
 graphs. 
 
 I inscribed the first volume of this series to the friend who 
 aided me in chief sorrow. Let me inscribe the second to 
 the friend and guide who has urged me to all chief labour, 
 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 I would that some better means were in my power of 
 showing reverence to the man who alone, of all our masters 
 of literature, has written, without thought of himself, what 
 he knew it to be needful for the people of his time to hear, if 
 the w T ill to hear were in them : whom, therefore, as the time 
 draws near when his task must be ended, Republican and 
 Free-thoughted England assaults with impatient reproach ; 
 and out of the abyss of her cowardice in policy and dis- 
 honour in trade, sets the hacks of her literature to speak evil, 
 grateful to her ears, of the Solitary Teacher who has asked 
 her to be brave for the help of Man, and just, for the love 
 of God. 
 
 Denmark Hill, 
 
MIINERA PULYERIS. 
 
 Te maris et terrae numeroqute carentis arenas 
 
 Mensorem cohibent, Areliyta, 
 Pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum 
 
 Munera." 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DEFINITIONS. 
 
 L As domestic economy regulates the acts and habits of a 
 household, Political economy regulates those of a society or 
 State, with reference to the means of its maintenance. 
 
 Political economy is neither an art nor a science ; but a 
 system of conduct and legislature, founded on the sciences, 
 directing the arts, and impossible, except under certain con- 
 ditions of moral culture. 
 
 2. The study which lately in England has been called Po- 
 litical Economy is in reality nothing more than the investiga- 
 tion of some accidental phenomena of modern commercial 
 operations, nor has it been true in its investigation even of 
 these. It has no connection whatever with political economy, 
 as understood and treated of by the great thinkers of past 
 ages ; and as long as its unscholarly and undefined statements 
 are allowed to pass under the same name, every word written 
 on the subject by those thinkers — and chiefly the v/ords of 
 Plato, Xenophon, Cicero and Bacon — must be nearly useless 
 to mankind. The reader must not, therefore, be surprised at 
 the care and insistance with w r hich I have retained the literal 
 and earliest sense of all important terms used in these papers i 
 
112 
 
 M'JNEUA PUL VERTS. 
 
 for a word is usually well made at the time it is first wanted » 
 its youngest meaning has in it the full strength of its youth ; 
 subsequent senses are commonly warped or weakened ; ancl 
 as all careful thinkers are sure to have used their words ao« 
 curately, the first condition, in order to be able to avail our- 
 selves of their sayings at all, is firm definition of terms. 
 
 3. By the " maintenance " of a State is to be understood 
 the support of its population in healthy and happy life ; and 
 the increase of their numbers, so far as that increase is con- 
 sistent with their happiness. It is not the object of political 
 economy to increase the numbers of a nation at the cost of 
 common health or comfort ; nor to increase indefinitely the 
 comfort of individuals, by sacrifice of surrounding lives, or 
 possibilities of life. 
 
 4. The assumption which lies at the root of nearly all er- 
 roneous reasoning on political economy, — namely, that its 
 object is to accumulate money or exchangeable property, — 
 may be shown in a feww r ords to be without foundation. For 
 no economist would admit national economy to be legitimate 
 which proposed to itself only the building of a pyramid of 
 gold. He would declare the gold to be wasted, were it to re- 
 main in the monumental form, and would say it ought to be 
 employed. But to what end ? Either it must be used only to 
 gain more gold, and build a larger pyramid, or for some pur- 
 pose other than the gaining of gold. And this other purpose, 
 however at first apprehended, will be found to resolve itself 
 finally into the service of man ; — that is to say, the extension, 
 defence, or comfort of his life. The golden pyramid may per- 
 haps be providently built, perhaps improvidently ; but the 
 wisdom or folly of the accumulation can only be determined 
 by our having first clearly stated the aim of all economy, 
 namely, the extension of life. 
 
 If the accumulation df money, or of exchangeable property, 
 were a certain means of extending existence, it would be use- 
 less, in discussing economical questions, to fix our attention 
 upon the more distent object — life — instead of the immediate 
 one — money. But it is not so. Money may sometimes be 
 accumulated at the cost of life, or by limitations of it ; that ia 
 
MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 113 
 
 to say, either by hastening the deaths of men, or preventing 
 their births. It is therefore necessary to keep clearly in view 
 the ultimate object of economy ; and to determine the expe- 
 diency of minor operations with reference to that ulterior end» 
 
 5. It has been just stated that the object of political economy 
 is the continuance not only of life, but of healthy and happy 
 life. But all true happiness is both a consequence and cause 
 of life : it is a sign of its vigor, and source of its continuance. 
 All true suffering is in like manner a consequence and cause 
 of death. I shall therefore, in future, use the word " Life 99 
 singly : but let it be understood to include in its signification 
 the happiness and power of the entire human nature, body 
 and soul. 
 
 6. That human nature, as its Creator made it, and main- 
 tains it wherever His laws are observed, is entirely harmoni- 
 ous. No physical error can be more profound, no moral error 
 more dangerous, than that involved in the monkish doctrine 
 of the opposition of body to soul. No soul can be perfect 
 in an imperfect body : no body perfect without perfect soul. 
 Every right action and true thought sets the seal of its beauty 
 on person and face ; every wrong action and foul thought its 
 seal of distortion ; and the various aspects of humanity might 
 be read as plainly as a printed history, were it not that the 
 impressions are so complex that it must always in some cases 
 (and, in the present state of our knowledge, in all cases) be 
 impossible to decipher them completely. Nevertheless, the 
 face of a consistently just, and of a consistently unjust person, 
 may always be rightly distinguished at a glance ; and if the 
 qualities are continued by descent through a generation or 
 two, there arises a complete distinction of race. Both moral 
 and physical qualities are communicated by descent, far more 
 than they can be developed by education ; (though both may 
 be destroyed by want of education), and there is as yet no as- 
 certained limit to the nobleness of person and mind which the 
 human creature may attain, by persevering observance of the 
 laws of God respecting its birth and training. 
 
 7. We must therefore yet farther define the aim of political 
 economy to be " The multiplication of human life at the high* 
 
114 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 est standard." It might at first seem questionable whethei 
 we should endeavour to maintain a small number of persona 
 of the highest type of beauty and intelligence, or a larger 
 number of an inferior class. But I shall be able to show in 
 the sequel, that the way to maintain the largest number is 
 first to aim at the highest standard. Determine the noblest 
 type of man, and aim simply at maintaining the largest possi- 
 ble number of persons of that class, and it will be found that 
 the largest possible number of every healthy subordinate class 
 must necessarily be produced also. 
 
 8. The perfect type of manhood, as just stated, involves 
 the perfections (whatever we may hereafter determine these 
 to be) of his body, affections, and intelligence. The material 
 things, therefore, which it is the object of political economy 
 to produce and use, (or accumulate for use,) are things which 
 serve either to sustain and comfort the body, or exercise 
 rightly the affections and form the intelligence.* Whatever 
 truly serves either of these purposes is " useful " to man, 
 wholesome, healthful, helpful, or holy. By seeking such 
 things, man prolongs and increases his life upon the earth. 
 
 On the other hand, whatever does not serve either of these 
 purposes, — much more whatever counteracts them, — is in like 
 manner useless to man, unwholesome, unhelpful, or unholy ; 
 and by seeking such things man shortens and diminishes his 
 life upon the earth. 
 
 9. And neither with respect to things useful or useless can 
 man's estimate of them alter their nature. Certain sub- 
 stances being good for his food, and others noxious to him, 
 what he thinks or wishes respecting them can neither change, 
 nor prevent, their power. If he eats corn, he will live ; if 
 nightshade, he will die. If he produce or make good and 
 beautiful things, they will Re-Create him ; (note the solemnity 
 and weight of the word) ; if bad and ugly things, they will 
 "corrupt" or "break in pieces" — that is, in the exact degree 
 of their power, Kill him. For every hour of labour, however 
 enthusiastic or well intended, which he spends for that which 
 is not bread, so much possibility of life is lost to him. His 
 
 * See Appendix I. 
 
MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 115 
 
 fancies, likings, beliefs, however brilliant, eager, or obstinate, 
 are of no avail if they are set on a false object. Of all that 
 he has laboured for, the eternal law of heaven and earth meas- 
 ures out to him for reward, to the utmost atom, that part 
 which he ought to have laboured for, and withdraws from 
 him (or enforces on him, it may be) inexorably, that part 
 which he ought not to have laboured for until, on his summer 
 threshing-floor, stands his heap of corn ; little or much, not 
 according to his labour, but to his discretion. No " com- 
 mercial arrangements, " no painting of surfaces, nor alloying 
 of substances, will avail him a pennyweight. Nature asks of 
 him calmly and inevitably, What have you found, or formed— 
 the right thing or the wrong ? By the right thing you shall 
 live ; by the wrong you shall die. 
 
 10. To thoughtless persons it seems otherwise. The world 
 looks to them as if they could cozen it out of some ways and 
 means of life. But they cannot cozen it : they can only cozen 
 their neighbours. The world is not to be cheated of a grain ; 
 not so much as a breath of its air can be drawn surreptitiously. 
 For every piece of wise work done, so much life is granted ; 
 for every piece of foolish work, nothing ; for every piece of 
 wicked work, so much death is allotted. This is as sure as 
 the courses of day and night. But when the means of life 
 are once produced, men, by their various struggles and in- 
 dustries of accumulation or exchange, may variously gather, 
 waste, restrain, or distribute them ; necessitating, in propor- 
 tion to the waste or restraint, accurately, so much more death. 
 The rate and range of additional death are measured by the 
 rate and range of waste ; and are inevitable ; — the only ques- 
 tion (determined mostly by fraud in peace, and force in war) 
 is, Who is to die, and how ? 
 
 11. Such being the everlasting law of human existence, the 
 essential work of the political economist is to determine what 
 are in reality useful or life-giving things, and by what degrees 
 and kinds of labour they are attainable and distributable. • 
 This investigation divides itself under three great heads ; — 
 the studies, namely, of the phenomena, first, of Wealth ; sec- 
 ondly, of Money ; and thirdly, of Kiohe& 
 
116 
 
 JM UN ERA PULVERIS. 
 
 These terms are often used as synonymous, but they sig* 
 nify entirely different things. " Wealth" consists of things 
 in themselves valuable ; " Money/' of documentary claims to 
 the possession of such things ; and " Riches " is a relative 
 term, expressing the magnitude of the possessions of one 
 person or society as compared with those of other persons or 
 societies. 
 
 The study of Wealth is a province of natural science :— it 
 deals with the essential properties of things. 
 
 The study or Money is a province of commercial science : — 
 it deals with conditions of engagement and exchange. 
 
 The study of Eiches is a province of moral science : —it 
 deals with the due relations of men to each other in regard of 
 material possessions ; and with the just laws of their associa- 
 tion for purposes of labour. 
 
 I shall in this first chapter shortly sketch out the range of 
 subjects which will come before us as we follow th*se three 
 branches of inquiry. 
 
 12. And first of Wealth, which, it has been said, consists 
 of things essentially valuable. We now, therefore, need a 
 definition of " value." 
 
 " Value" signifies the strength, or "availing" of anything 
 towards the sustaining of life, and is always two-fold ; that is 
 to say, primarily, intrinsic, and secondarily, effectual. 
 
 The reader must, by anticipation, be warned against confus- 
 ing value with cost, or with price. Value is the life-giving 
 power of anything ; cost, the quantity of labour required to pro- 
 duce it ; price, the quantity of labour which its possessor will 
 take in exchange for it* Cost and price are commercial condi- 
 tions, to be studied under the head of money. 
 
 13. Intrinsic value is the absolute power of anything to 
 support life. A sheaf of wheat of given quality and weight 
 has in it a measurable power of sustaining the substance of 
 the body ; a cubic foot of pure air, a fixed power of sustain- 
 
 • ing its warmth ; and a cluster of flowers of given beauty a fixed 
 power of enlivening or animating the senses and heart. 
 
 [* Observe these definitions,— they are of much importance,— and coa 
 nect with them the sentences in italics on this and the next page.] 
 
MUNERA PULVER1S. 
 
 117 
 
 It does not in the least affect the intrinsic value of the 
 Wheat, the air, or the flowers, that men refuse or despise them. 
 Used or not, their own power is in them, and that particular 
 power is in nothing else. 
 
 14. But in order that this value of theirs may become ef- 
 fectual, a certain state is necessary in the recipient of it. The 
 digesting, breathing, and perceiving functions must be perfect 
 in the human creature before the food, air, or flowers can be- 
 come of their full value to it. The production of effectual val- 
 ue, therefore, always involves two needs : first, the production of 
 a thing essentially useful ; then the production of the capacity 
 to use it. Where the intrinsic value and acceptant capacity 
 come together there is Effectual value, or wealth ; where 
 there is either no intrinsic value, or no acceptant capacity, 
 there is no effectual value ; that is to say, no wealth. A horse 
 is no wealth to us if we cannot ride, nor a picture if we can- 
 not see, nor can any noble thing be wealth, except to a noble per- 
 son. As the aptness of the user increases, the effectual value 
 of the thing used increases ; and in its entirety can co-exist 
 only with perfect skill of use, and fitness of nature. 
 
 15. Valuable material things may be conveniently referred 
 to five heads : 
 
 (i.) Land, with its associated air, water, and organisms, 
 (ii.) Houses, furniture, and instruments, 
 (iii.) Stored or prepared food, medicine, and articles of bod- 
 ily luxury, including clothing, 
 (iv.) Books, 
 (v.) Works of art. 
 
 The conditions of value in these things are briefly as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 16. (i.) Land. Its value is twofold ; first, as producing 
 food and mechanical power ; secondly, as an object of sight 
 and thought, producing intellectual power. 
 
 Its value, as a means of producing food and mechanical 
 power, varies with its form (as mountain or plain), with its 
 substance (in soil or mineral contents), and with its climate. 
 All these conditions of intrinsic value must be known and com* 
 $lied with by the men who have to deal with it, in order to 
 
US 
 
 ML N ERA pul verts. 
 
 give effectual value ; but at any given time and place, the in* 
 trinsic value is fixed : such and such a piece of land, with its 
 'issociated lakes and seas, rightly treated in surface and sub* 
 fetance, can produce precisely so much food and power, and 
 no more. 
 
 The second element of value in land being its beauty, 
 united with such conditions of space and form as are neces- 
 sary for exercise, and for fullness of animal life, land of the 
 highest value in these respects will be that lying in temperate 
 climates, and boldly varied in form ; removed from unhealthy 
 or dangerous influences (as of miasm or volcano) ; and capa- 
 ble of sustaining a rich fauna and flora. Such land, care- 
 fully tended by the hand of man, so far as to remove from 
 it unsightlinesses and evidences of decay, guarded from via* 
 lence, and inhabited, under man's affectionate protection, 
 by every kind of living creature that can occupy it in peace, 
 is the most precious " property " that human beings can pos- 
 sess. 
 
 17. (ii.) Buildings, furniture, and instruments. 
 
 The value of buildings consists, first, in permanent strength, 
 with convenience of form, of size, and of position ; so as to 
 render employment peaceful, social intercourse easy, tempera- 
 ture and air healthy. The advisable or possible magnitude of 
 cities and mode of their distribution in squares, streets, 
 courts, &c. ; the relative value of sites of land, and the modes 
 of structure which are healthiest and most permanent, have to 
 be studied under this head. 
 
 The value of buildings consists secondly in historical asso- 
 ciation, and architectural beauty, of which we have to examine 
 the influence on manners and life. 
 
 The value of instruments consists, first, in their power of 
 shortening labour, or otherwise accomplishing what human 
 strength unaided could not. The kinds of work which are 
 severally best accomplished by hand or by machine ; — the ef- 
 fect of machinery in gathering and multiplying population, 
 and its influence on the minds and bodies of such population ; 
 together with the conceivable uses of machinery on a colossal 
 Bcale in accomplishing mighty and useful works, hitherto un* 
 
MUNERA PUL VERIS. 
 
 119 
 
 thought of, such as the deepening of large river channels ;— « 
 changing the surface of mountainous districts ; — irrigating 
 tracts of desert in the torrid zone ; — breaking up, and thus 
 rendering capable of quicker fusion, edges of ice in the north- 
 ern and southern Arctic seas, &c, so rendering parts of the 
 earth habitable which hitherto have been lifeless, are to be 
 studied under this head. 
 
 The value of instruments is, secondarily, in their aid to ab- 
 stract sciences. The degree in which the multiplication of 
 such instruments should be encouraged, so as to make them, 
 if large, easy of access to numbers (as costly telescopes), or so 
 cheap as that they might, in a serviceable form, become a 
 common part of the furniture of households, is to be consid- 
 ered under this head.* 
 
 18. (iii.) Food, medicine, and articles of luxury. Under 
 this head we shall have to examine the possible methods of 
 obtaining pure food in such security and equality of supply 
 as to avoid both waste and famine : then the economy of 
 medicine and just range of sanitary law : finally the economy 
 of luxury, partly an aesthetic and partly an ethical question. 
 
 19. (iv.) Books. The value of these consists, 
 
 First, in their power of preserving and communicating the 
 knowledge of facts. 
 
 Secondly, in their power of exciting vital or noble emotion 
 and intellectual action. They have also their corresponding 
 negative powers of disguising and effacing the memory of 
 facts, and killing the noble emotions, or exciting base ones. 
 Under these two heads we have to consider the economical 
 and educational value, positive and negative, of literature ; — 
 the means of producing and educating good authors, and the 
 means and advisability of rendering good books generally ac- 
 cessible, and directing the reader's choice to them. 
 
 [* I cannot now recast these sentences, pedantic in their generaliza- 
 tion, and intended more for index than statement, but I must guard 
 the reader from thinking that I ever wish for cheapness by bad quality. 
 A poor boy need not always learn mathematics ; but, if you set him ta 
 do so, have the farther kindness to give him good compasses, not cheaj 
 »nes, whose points bend like lead. ] 
 
120 
 
 M UN ERA PULVEUIS. 
 
 20. (v. ) Works of art. The value of these is of the sarna 
 nature as that of books ; but the laws of their production and 
 possible modes of distribution are very different, and require 
 separate examination. 
 
 21. II. — Money. Under this head, we shall have to ex- 
 amine the laws of currency and exchange ; of which I will 
 note here the first principles. 
 
 Money has been inaccurately spoken of as merely a means 
 of exchange. But it is far more than this. It is a document- 
 ary expression of legal claim. It is not wealth, but a docu- 
 mentary claim to wealth, being the sign of the relative quan- 
 tities of it, or of the labour producing it, to which, at a given 
 time, persons, or societies, are entitled. 
 
 If all the money in the world, notes and gold, were de- 
 stroyed in an instant, it would leave the world neither richer 
 nor poorer than it was. But it would leave the individual 
 inhabitants of it in different relations. 
 
 Money is, therefore, correspondent in its nature to the 
 title-deed of an estate. Though the deed be burned, the 
 estate still exists, but the right to it has become dispu- 
 table. 
 
 22. The real worth of money remains unchanged, as long 
 as the proportion of the quantity of existing money to the 
 quantity of existing wealth or available labour remains un- 
 changed. 
 
 If the wealth increases, but not the money, the worth of 
 the money increases ; if the money increases, but not the 
 wealth, the worth of the money diminishes. 
 
 23. Money, therefore, cannot be arbitrarily multiplied, any 
 more than title-deeds can. So long as the existing wealth or 
 available labour is not fully represented by the currency, the 
 currency may be increased without diminution of the assigned 
 worth of its pieces. But when the existing wealth, or avail- 
 able labour is once fully represented, every piece of money 
 thrown into circulation diminishes the worth of every other 
 existing piece, in the proportion it bears to the number of 
 them, provided the new piece be received with equal credit ; 
 
MUNERA rULVERIS. 
 
 121 
 
 if not, the depreciation of worth takes place, according to the 
 degree of its credit. 
 
 24. When, however, new money, composed of some sub- 
 stance of supposed intrinsic value (as of gold), is brought into 
 the market, or when new notes are issued which are sup- 
 posed to be deserving of credit, the desire to obtain the money 
 will, under certain circumstances, stimulate industry : an ad- 
 ditional quantity of wealth is immediately produced, and if 
 this be in proportion to the new claims advanced, the value 
 of the existing currency is undepreciated. If the stimulus 
 given be so great as to produce more goods than are pro- 
 portioned to the additional coinage, the worth of the exist- 
 ing currency will be raised. 
 
 Arbitrary control and issues of currency affect the produc- 
 tion of wealth, by acting on the hopes and fears of men, and 
 are, under certain circumstances, wise. But the issue of ad- 
 ditional currency to meet the exigencies of immediate ex- 
 pense, is merely one of the disguised forms of borrowing or 
 taxing. It is, however, in the present low state of economical 
 knowledge, often possible for governments to venture on an 
 issue of currency, when they could not venture on an addi- 
 tional loan or tax, because the real operation of such issue is 
 not understood by the people, and the pressure of it is irreg- 
 ularly distributed, and with an unperceived gradation. 
 
 25. The use of substances of intrinsic value as the materials 
 of a currency, is a barbarism ; — a remnant of the conditions of 
 barter, which alone render commerce possible among savage 
 nations. It is, however, still necessary, partly as a mechanical 
 check on arbitrary issues ; partly as a means of exchanges 
 with foreign nations. In proportion to the extension of civi- 
 lization, and increase of trustworthiness in Governments, it will 
 cease. So long as it exists, the phenomena of the cost and 
 price of the articles used for currency are mingled with those 
 proper to currency itself, in an almost inextricable manner : 
 and the market worth of bullion is affected by multitudinous 
 accidental circumstances, which have been traced, with more 
 or less success, by writers on commercial operations : but 
 with these variations the true political economist has no more 
 
122 
 
 MUNERA PULVER1S. 
 
 to do than an engineer, fortifying k harbour of refuge against 
 Atlantic tide, has to concern himself with the cries or quarrels 
 of children who dig pools with their fingers for its streams 
 among the sand. 
 
 26. III. — Eiches. According to the various industry, ca- 
 pacity, good fortune, and desires of men, they obtain greater 
 or smaller share of, and claim upon, the wealth of the world. 
 
 The inequalities between these shares, always in some de- 
 gree just and necessary, may be either restrained by law or 
 circumstance within certain limits ; or may increase indefi- 
 nitely. 
 
 "Where no moral or legal restraint is put upon the exercise 
 of the will and intellect of the stronger, shrewder, or more 
 covetous men, these differences become ultimately enormous. 
 But as soon as they become so distinct in their extremes as 
 that, on one side, there shall be manifest redundance of pos- 
 session, and on the other manifest pressure of need, — the 
 terms " riches " and " poverty " are used to express the op- 
 posite states; being contrary only as the terms "warmth" 
 and " cold " are contraries, of which neither implies an actual 
 degree, but only a relation to other degrees, of temperature. 
 
 27. Eespecting riches, the economist has to inquire, first, 
 into the advisable modes of their collection ; secondly, into 
 the advisable modes of their administration. 
 
 Eespecting the collection of national riches, he has to in- 
 quire, first, whether he is justified in calling the nation rich, if 
 the quantity of wealth it possesses relatively to the wealth of 
 other nations, be large ; irrespectively of the manner of its 
 distribution. Or does the mode of distribution in any wise 
 affect the nature of the riches ? Thus, if the king alone be 
 rich — suppose Croesus or Mausolus — are the Lydians or 
 Carians therefore a rich nation? Or if a few slave-masters 
 are rich, and the nation is otherwise composed of slaves, is it 
 to be called a rich nation ? For if not, and the ideas of a cer- 
 tain mode of distribution or operation in the riches, and of a 
 certain degree of freedom in the people, enter into our idea of 
 riches as attributed to a people, we shall have to define the 
 degree of fluency, or circulative character which is essential tc 
 
MUNERA rULVERIS, 
 
 123 
 
 the nature of common wealth ; and the degree of indepen* 
 dence of action required in its possessors. Questions which 
 look as if they would take time in answering.* 
 
 28. And farther. Since the inequality, which is the condi* 
 tion of riches, may be established in two opposite modes — - 
 namely, by increase of possession on the one side, and by de- 
 crease of it on the other — we have to inquire, with respect to 
 any given state of riches, precisely in what manner the cor- 
 relative poverty was produced : that is to say, whether by 
 being surpassed only, or being depressed also ; and if by be- 
 ing depressed, what are the advantages, or the contrary, con- 
 ceivable in the depression. For instance, it being one of the 
 commonest advantages of being rich to entertain a number of 
 servants, we have to inquire, on the one side, what economical 
 process produced the riches of the master ; and on the other, 
 what economical process produced the poverty of the persons 
 who serve him ; and what advantages each, on his own side, 
 derives from the result. 
 
 29. These being the main questions touching the collection 
 of riches, the next, or last, part of the inquiry is into their 
 administration. 
 
 Their possession involves three great economical powers 
 which require separate examination : namely, the powers of 
 selection, direction, and provision. 
 
 The power of Selection relates to things of which the sup- 
 ply is limited (as the supply of best things is always). "When 
 it becomes matter of question to whom such things are to be- 
 long, the richest person has necessarily the first choice, unless 
 some arbitrary mode of distribution be otherwise determined 
 upon. The business of the economist is to show how this 
 choice may be a wise one. 
 
 The power of Direction arises out of the necessary relation 
 of rich men to poor, which ultimately, in one way or another, 
 
 [* I regret the ironical manner in which this passage, one of great im- 
 portance in the matter of it, was written. The gist of it is, that the first 
 of all inquiries respecting the wealth of any nation is not, how much it 
 lias ; but whether it is in a form that can be used, and in the possession 
 of persons who can use it. ] 
 
124 
 
 M UN ERA PULVERIS. 
 
 involves the direction of, or authority over, the labour ©f the 
 poor ; and this nearly as much over their mental as their 
 bodily labour. The business of the economist is to show how 
 this direction may be a Just one. 
 
 The power of Provision is dependent upon the redundance 
 of wealth, which may of course by active persons be made 
 available in preparation for future work or future profit ; in 
 which function riches have generally received the name of 
 capital ; that is to say, of head-, or source-material. The 
 business of the economist is to show how this provision may 
 be a Distant one. 
 
 30. The examination of these three functions of riches will 
 embrace every final problem of political economy ; — and, 
 above, or before all, this curious and vital problem, — whether, 
 since the wholesome action of riches in these three functions 
 will depend (it appears), on the Wisdom, Justice, and Far- 
 sightedness of the holders ; and it is by no means to be as- 
 sumed that persons primarily rich, must therefore be just and 
 wise, — it may not be ultimately possible so, or somewhat so, to 
 arrange matters, as that persons primarily just and wise, should 
 therefore be rich ? 
 
 Such being the general plan of the inquiry before us, I 
 shall not limit myself to any consecutive following of it, having 
 hardly any good hope of being able to complete so laborious 
 a work as it must prove to me ; but from time to time, as I 
 have leisure, shall endeavour to carry forward this part or that, 
 as may be immediately possible ; indicating always with ac- 
 curacy the place which the particular essay will or should take 
 in the completed system. 
 
CHAPTEE It 
 
 STORE-KEEPING. 
 
 81. The first chapter having consisted of little more than def- 
 inition of terms, I purpose, in this, to expand and illustrate 
 the given definitions. 
 
 The view which has here been taken of the nature of wealth, 
 namely, that it consists in an intrinsic value developed by a 
 vital power, is directly opposed to two nearly universal con- 
 ceptions of wealth. In the assertion that value is primarily 
 intrinsic, it opposes the idea that anything which is an object 
 of desire to numbers, and is limited in quantity, so as to have 
 rated worth in exchange, may be called, or virtually become, 
 wealth. And in the assertion that value is, secondarily, de- 
 pendent upon power in the possessor, it opposes the idea that 
 the worth of things depends on the demand for them, instead 
 of on the use of them. Before going farther, we will make 
 these two positions clearer. 
 
 32. I. First. All wealth is intrinsic, and is not constituted 
 by the judgment of men. This is easily seen in the case of 
 things affecting the body ; we know, that no force of fantasy 
 will make stones nourishing, or poison innocent ; but it is less 
 apparent in things affecting the mind. We are easily — per- 
 haps willingly — misled by the appearance of beneficial results 
 obtained by industries addressed wholly to the gratification 
 of fanciful desire ; and apt to suppose that whatever is widely 
 coveted, dearly bought, and pleasurable in possession, must 
 be included in our definition of wealth. It is the more diffi- 
 cult to quit ourselves of this error because many things which 
 are true wealth in moderate use, become false wealth in im- 
 moderate ; and many things are mixed of good and evil, — as 
 mostly, books, and works of art, — out of which one person 
 will get the good, and another the evil ; so that it seems as if 
 
126 
 
 MUNERA FULVER1S. 
 
 there were no fixed good or evil in the things themselves, but 
 only in the view taken, and use made of them. 
 
 But that is not so. The evil and good are fixed ; in es- 
 sence, and in proportion. And in things in which evil de- 
 pends upon excess, the point of excess, though indefinable, is 
 fixed ; and the power of the thing is on the hither side for 
 good, and on the farther side for evil. And in all cases this 
 power is inherent, not dependent on opinion or choice. Our 
 thoughts of things neither make, nor mar their eternal force ; 
 nor — which is the most serious point for future consideration 
 — can they prevent the effect of it (within certain limits) upon 
 ourselves. 
 
 33. Therefore, the object of any special analysis of wealth 
 will be not so much to enumerate what is serviceable, as to 
 distinguish what is destructive ; and to show that it is inevi- 
 tably destructive ; that to receive pleasure from an evil thing 
 is not to escape from, or alter the evil of it, but to be altered 
 by it ; that is, to suffer from it to the utmost, having our own 
 nature, in that degree, made evil also. And it may be shown 
 farther, that, through whatever length of time or subtleties of 
 connexion the harm is accomplished, (being also less or more 
 according to the fineness and worth of the humanity on which 
 it is wrought), still, nothing but harm ever comes of a bad 
 thing. 
 
 34. So that, in sum, the term wealth is never to be attached 
 to the accidental object of a morbid desire, but only to the con- 
 slant object of a legitimate one* By the fury of ignorance, 
 and fitfulness of caprice, large interests may be continually 
 attached to things unserviceable or hurtful ; if their nature 
 could be altered by our passions, the science of Political Econ- 
 omy would remain, what it has been hitherto among us, the 
 weighing of clouds, and the portioning out of shadows. But 
 of ignorance there is no science ; and of caprice no law. Their 
 disturbing forces interfere with the operations of faithful 
 
 [* Remember carefully this statement, that Wealth consists only in 
 the things which the nature of humanity has rendered in all ages, and 
 must render in all ages to come, (that is what T meant by il constant"), 
 the objects of legitimate desire. And see Appendix XL] 
 
MUNERA PULVEEIS. 
 
 127 
 
 Economy, but have nothing in common with them : she, the 
 calm arbiter of national destiny, regards only essential power 
 for good in all that she accumulates, and alike disdains the 
 wanderings * of imagination, and the thirsts of disease. 
 
 35. II. Secondly. The assertion that wealth is not only in- 
 trinsic, but dependent, in order to become effectual, on a given 
 degree of vital power in its possessor, is opposed to another 
 popular view of wealth ; — namely, that though it may always be 
 constituted by caprice, it is, when so constituted, a substantial 
 thing, of which given quantities may be counted as existing 
 here, or there, and exchangeable at rated prices. 
 
 In this view there are three errors. The first and chief is 
 the overlooking the fact that all exchangeableness of commod- 
 ity, or effective demand for it, depends on the sum of capacity 
 for its use existing, here or elsewhere. The book we cannot 
 read, or picture we take no delight in, may indeed be called 
 part of our wealth, in so far as w r e have power of exchanging 
 either for something we like better. But our power of effect- 
 ing such exchange, and yet more, of effecting it to advantage, 
 depends absolutely on the number of accessible persons who 
 can understand the boc k, or enjoy the painting, and who will 
 dispute the possession of them. Thus the actual worth of 
 either, even to us, depends no more on their essential good- 
 ness than on the capacity existing somewhere for the perception 
 cf it ; and it is vain in any completed system of production to 
 think of obtaining one without the other. So that, though 
 the true political economist knows that co-existence of capac- 
 ity for use with temporary possession cannot be always se- 
 cured, the final fact, on which he bases all action and admin- 
 istration, is that, in the whole nation, or group of nations, he 
 has to deal with, for every atom of intrinsic value produced 
 he must with exactest chemistry produce its twin atom of ac- 
 ceptant digestion, or understanding capacity ; or, in the de- 
 gree of his failure, he has no wealth. Nature's challenge to 
 us is, in earnest, as the Assyrians mock ; "I will give thee 
 two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders 
 
 [* The Wanderinas, observe, not the Right goings, of Jm agin ati oil 
 £he is very far from despising these,] 
 
128 
 
 MUNERA PULVER18. 
 
 upon them." Bavieca's paces are brave, if the Cid backs 
 him ; but woe to us, if we take the dust of capacity, wearing 
 the armour of it, for capacity itself, for so all procession, how- 
 ever goodly in the show of it, is to the tomb. 
 
 38. The second error in this popular view of wealth is, that 
 in giving the name of wealth to things which w T e cannot use, 
 we in reality confuse wealth with money. The land we have 
 no skill to cultivate, the book which is sealed to us, or dress 
 which is superfluous, may indeed be exchangeable, but as 
 such are nothing more than a cumbrous form of bank-note, of 
 doubtful or slow convertibility. As long as we retain pos- 
 session of them, we merely keep our bank-notes in the shape 
 of gravel or clay, of book-leaves, or of embroidered tissue. 
 Circumstances may, perhaps, render such forms the safest, 
 or a certain complacency may attach to the exhibition of 
 them ; into both these advantages we shall inquire after- 
 wards ; I wish the reader only to observe here, that exchange- 
 able property which we cannot use is, to us personally, merely 
 one of the forms of money, not of wealth. 
 
 37. The third error in the popular view is the confusion of 
 Guardianship with Possession ; the real state of men of prop- 
 erty being, too commonly, that of curators, not possessors, 
 of wealth. 
 
 A man's power over his property is at the widest range of 
 it, fivefold ; it is power of Use, for himself, Administration, to 
 others, Ostentation, Destruction, or Bequest : and possession 
 is in use only, which for each man is sternly limited ; so that 
 such things, and so much of them as he can use, are, indeed, 
 well for him, or Wealth ; and more of them, or any other 
 things, are ill for him, or Illth.* Plunged to the lips in 
 Orinoco, he shall drink to his thirst measure ; more, at his 
 peril : with a thousand oxen on his lands, he shall eat to his 
 hunger measure ; more, at his peril. He cannot live in two 
 houses at once ; a few bales of silk or wool will suffice for the 
 fabric of all the clothes he can ever wear, and a few books 
 will probably hold all the furniture good for his brain. Be- 
 yond these, in the best of us but narrow, capacities, we have 
 * See Appendix TIL 
 
MVNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 129 
 
 but the power of administering, or wiaZ-administering, wealth : 
 (that is to say, distributing, lending, or increasing it) ; — of ex- 
 hibiting it (as in magnificence of retinue or furniture),— of 
 destroying, or, finally, of bequeathing it. And with multi- 
 tudes of rich men, administration degenerates into curator- 
 ship ; they merely hold their property in charge, as Trustees, 
 for the benefit of some person or persons to whom it is to be 
 delivered upon their death ; and the position, explained in 
 clear terms, would hardly seem a covetable one. What 
 would be the probable feelings of a youth, on his entrance 
 into life, to whom the career hoped for him was proposed in 
 terms such as these : " You must work unremittingly, and 
 with your utmost intelligence, during all your available years, 
 you will thus accumulate wealth to a large amount ; but you 
 must touch none of it, beyond what is needful for your sup- 
 port. Whatever sums you gain, beyond those required for 
 your decent and moderate maintenance, and whatever beauti- 
 ful things you may obtain possession of, shall be properly 
 taken care of by servants, for whose maintenance you will be 
 charged, and whom you will have the trouble of superintend- 
 ing, and on your death-bed you shall have the power of de- 
 termining to whom the accumulated property shall belong, or 
 to what purposes be applied. " 
 
 38. The labour of life, under such conditions, would prob- 
 ably be neither zealous nor cheerful ; yet the only difference 
 between this position and that of the ordinary capitalist is the 
 power which the latter supposes himself to possess, and which 
 is attributed to him by others, of spending his money at any 
 moment. This pleasure, taken in the imagination of power to 
 part with that with which we have no intention of parting, is one 
 of the most curious, though commonest forms of the Eidolon, 
 or Phantasm of Wealth. But the political economist has 
 nothing to do with this idealism, and looks only to the practi- 
 cal issue of it— namely, that the holder of wealth, in such 
 temper, may be regarded simply as a mechanical means of 
 collection ; or as a money-chest with a slit in it, not only re- 
 ceptant but suctional, set in the public thoroughfare ; — chest 
 of which only Death has the key, and evil Chance the distri- 
 
M UN ERA PULVER1S. 
 
 bulion of the contents. In his function of Lender (which, 
 however; is one of administration, not use, as far as he is him- 
 self concerned), the capitalist takes, indeed, a more interest- 
 ing aspect ; but even in that function, his relations with the 
 state are apt to degenerate into a mechanism for the conven- 
 ient contraction of debt ; — a function the more mischievous, 
 because a nation invariably appeases its conscience with re- 
 spect to an unjustifiable expense, by meeting it with borrowed 
 funds, expresses its repentance of a foolish piece of business, 
 by letting its tradesmen wait for their money, and always 
 leaves its descendants to pay for the work which will be of 
 the least advantage to them.* 
 
 39. Quit of these three sources of misconception, the 
 reader will have little farther difficulty in apprehending the 
 real nature of Effectual value. He may, however, at first not 
 without surprise, perceive the consequences involved in his 
 acceptance of the definition. For if the actual existence of 
 wealth be dependent on the power of its possessor, it follows 
 that the sum of wealth held by the nation, instead of being- 
 constant, or calculable, varies hourly, nay, momentarily, with 
 the number and character of its holders ! and that in chang- 
 ing hands, it changes in quantity. And farther, since the 
 worth of the currency is proportioned to the sum of material 
 wealth which it represents, if the sum of the wealth changes, 
 the worth of the currency changes. And thus both the sum 
 of the property, and power of the currency, of the state, vary 
 momentarily as the character and number of the holders. 
 And not only so, but different rates and kinds of variation 
 are caused by the character cf the holders of different kinds 
 of wealth. The transitions of value caused by the character 
 of the holders of land differ in mode from those caused by 
 character in holders of works of art ; and these again from 
 those caused by character in holders of machinery or other 
 working capital. But we cannot examine these special phe- 
 
 [* I would beg the reader's very close attention to these 37th and 
 38th paragraphs. It would be well if a dogged conviction could be en 
 forced on nations, as on individuals, that, with few exceptions, wha* 
 they cannot at present pay for, they should not at present have.] 
 
M UN ERA PULVER1S. 
 
 131 
 
 fiomena of any kind of wealth until we have a clear idea of 
 the way in which true currency expresses them ; and of the 
 resulting modes in which the cost and price of any article are 
 related to its value. To obtain this we must approach the 
 subject in its first elements. 
 
 40. Let us suppose a national store of wealth, composed of 
 material things either useful, or believed to be so, taken charge 
 of by the Government,* and that every workman, having pro- 
 duced any article involving labour in its prod action, and for 
 which he has no immediate use, brings it to add to this store, 
 receiving from the Government, in exchange, an order either 
 for the return of the thing itself, or of its equivalent in other 
 things, such as he may choose out of the store, at any time 
 when he needs them. The question of equivalence itself 
 (how much wine a man is to receive in return for so much 
 corn, or how much coal in return for so much iron) is a quite 
 separate one, which we will examine presently. For the time, 
 let it be assumed that this equivalence has been determined, 
 and that the Government order, in exchange for a fixed weight 
 of any article (called, suppose a), is either for the return of 
 that weight of the article itself, or of another fixed weight of 
 the article b, or another of the article c, and so on. 
 
 Now, supposing that the labourer speedily and continu- 
 ally presents these general orders, or, in common language, 
 " spends the money," he has neither changed the circum- 
 stances of the nation, nor his own, except in so far as he may 
 have produced useful and consumed useless articles, or vice 
 versa. But if he does not use, or uses in part only, the orders 
 he receives, and lays aside some portion of them ; and thus 
 every day bringing his contribution to the national store, lays 
 by some per-centage of the orders received in exchange for it, 
 he increases the national wealth daily by as much as he does 
 not use of the received order, and to the same amount accu- 
 mulates a monetary claim on the Government. It is, of course, 
 always in his power, as it is his legal right, to bring forward 
 this accumulation of claim, and at once to consume, destroy, 
 or distribute, the sum of his wealth. Supposing he neve* 
 * See Appendix IV. 
 
132 
 
 MVNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 does so, but dies, leaving his claim to others, he has enriched 
 the State during his life by the quantity of wealth over which 
 that claim extends, or has, in other words, rendered so much 
 additional life possible in the State, of which additional life 
 he bequeaths the immediate possibility to those whom he in- 
 vests with his claim. Supposing him to cancel the claim, he- 
 would distribute this possibility of life among the nation at 
 large. 
 
 41. We hitherto consider the Government itself as simply 
 a conservative power, taking charge of the wealth entrusted 
 to it. 
 
 But a Government may be more or less than a conservative 
 power. It may be either an improving, or destructive one. 
 
 If it be an improving power, using all the wealth entrusted 
 to it to the best advantage, the nation is enriched in root and 
 branch at once, and the Government is enabled, for every 
 order presented, to return a quantity of wealth greater than 
 the order was written for, according to the fructification ob- 
 tained in the interim. This ability may be either concealed, 
 in which case the currency does not completely represent the 
 wealth of the country, or it may be manifested by the contin- 
 ual payment of the excess of value on each order, in which 
 case there is (irrespectively, observe, of collateral results after- 
 wards to be examined) a perpetual rise in the worth of the 
 currency, that is to say, a fall in the price of all articles repre- 
 sented by it. 
 
 42. But if the Government be destructive, or a consuming 
 power, it becomes unable to return the value received on the 
 presentation of the order. 
 
 This inability may either be concealed by meeting demands 
 to the full, until it issue in bankruptcy, or in some form of 
 national debt ; — or it may be concealed during oscillatory 
 movements between destructiveness and productiveness, which 
 result on the whole in stability ; — or it may be manifested by 
 the consistent return of less than value received on each pre- 
 sented order, in which case there is a consistent fall in the 
 worth of the currency, or rise in the price of the things repre» 
 rented by it 
 
MUNEEA PULVERIS. 
 
 133 
 
 43. Now, if for this conception of a central Government, 
 we substitute that of a body of persons occupied in industrial 
 pursuits, of whom each adds in his private capacity to the 
 common store, we at once obtain an approximation to the 
 actual condition of a civilized mercantile community, from 
 which approximation we might easily proceed into still com- 
 pleter analysis. I purpose, however, to arrive at every result 
 by the gradual expansion of the simpler conception ; but I 
 wish the reader to observe, in the meantime, that both the 
 social conditions thus supposed (and I will by anticipation say 
 also, all possible social conditions), agree in two great points ; 
 namely, in the primal importance of the supposed national 
 store or stock, and in its destructibility or improveability by 
 the holders of it. 
 
 44. I. Observe that in both conditions, that of central 
 Government-holding, and diffused private-holding, the quan- 
 tity of stock is of the same national moment. In the one 
 case, indeed, its amount may be known by examination of 
 the persons to whom it is confided ; in the other it cannot be 
 known but by exposing the private affairs of every individual. 
 But, known or unknown, its significance is the same under 
 each condition. The riches of the nation consist in the 
 abundance, and their wealth depends on the nature, of this 
 store. 
 
 45. II. In the second place, both conditions, (and all other 
 possible ones) agree in the destructibility or improveability 
 of the store by its holders. Whether in private hands, or 
 under Government charge, the national store may be daily 
 consumed, or daily enlarged, by its possessors ; and while 
 the currency remains apparently unaltered, the property it 
 represents may diminish or increase. 
 
 46. The first question, then, which we have to put under 
 our simple conception of central Government, namely, "What 
 store has it ? " is one of equal importance, whatever may be 
 the constitution of the State ; while the second question- 
 namely, " Who are the holders of the store ? " involves the 
 discussion of the constitution of the State itself. 
 
 The first inquiry .resolves itself into three heads : 
 
13* 
 
 MUNERA PULVE11IS. 
 
 1. What is the nature of the store ? 
 
 2. What is its quantity in relation to the population ? 
 
 3. What is its quantity in relation to the currency ? 
 The second inquiry into two : 
 
 1. Who are the Holders of the store, and in what propor* 
 tions ? 
 
 2. Who are the Claimants of the store, (that is to say, the 
 holders of the currency, ) and in what proportions ? 
 
 We will examine the range of the first three questions in 
 the present paper ; of the tw r o following, in the sequel. 
 
 47. L Question First. What is the nature of the store ? 
 Has the nation hitherto worked for and gathered the right 
 thing or the wrong ? On that issue rest the possibilities of 
 its life. 
 
 For example, let us imagine a society, of no great extent, 
 occupied in procuring and laying up store of corn, wine, 
 wool, silk, and other such preservable materials of food and 
 clothing ; and that it has a currency representing them. 
 Imagine farther, that on days of festivity, the society, discov- 
 ering itself to derive satisfaction from pyrotechnics, gradually 
 turns its attention more and more to the manufacture of gun- 
 powder ; so that an increasing number of labourers, giving 
 what time they can spare to this branch of industry, bring in- 
 creasing quantities of combustibles into the store, and use 
 the general orders received in exchange to obtain such wine, 
 wool, or corn, as they may have need of. The currency re- 
 mains the same, and represents precisely the same amount of 
 material in the store, and of labour spent in producing it. But 
 the corn and wine gradually vanish, and in their place, as gradu- 
 ally, appear sulphur and saltpetre, till at last the labourers 
 who have consumed corn and supplied nitre, presenting on a 
 festal morning some of their currency to obtain materials for 
 the feast, discover that no amount of currency will command 
 anything Festive, except Fire. The supply of rockets is un- 
 limited, but that of food, limited, in a quite final manner ; 
 and the whole currency in the hands of the society repre- 
 sents an infinite power of detonation, but none of existence. 
 
 48. This statement, caricatured as it may seem, is only ex- 
 
MUNEBA PULVERIS. 
 
 135 
 
 aggeratcd in assuming the persistence of the folly to extrem- 
 ity, unchecked, as in reality it would be, by the gradual rise 
 in price of food. But it falls short of the actual facts of 
 human life in expression of the depth and intensity of the 
 folly itself. For a great part (the reader would not believe 
 how great until he saw the statistics in detail) of the most 
 earnest and ingenious industry of the world is spent in pro- 
 ducing munitions of war ; gathering, that is to say the mate- 
 rials, not of festive, but of consuming fire ; filling its stores 
 with all })ower of the instruments of pain, and all affluence of 
 the ministries of death. It was no true Trionfo delta Morte* 
 which men have seen and feared (sometimes scarcely feared) 
 so long ; wherein he brought them rest from their labours. 
 We see, and share, another and higher form of his triumph 
 now. Task-master, instead of Releaser, he rules the dust of 
 the arena no less than of the tomb ; and, content once in the 
 grave whither man went, to make his works to cease and his 
 devices to vanish, — now, in the busy city and on the service- 
 able sea, makes his work to increase, and his devices to mul- 
 tiply. 
 
 49. To this doubled loss, or negative power of labour, 
 spent in producing means of destruction, we have to add, in 
 our estimate of the consequences of human folly, whatever 
 more insidious waste of toil there is in production of unnec- 
 essary luxury. Such and such an occupation (it is said) sup- 
 ports so many labourers, because so many obtain wages in 
 following it ; but it is never considered that unless there be a 
 supporting power in the product of the occupation, the wages 
 given to one man are merely withdrawn from another. We 
 cannot say of any trade that it maintains such and such a 
 number of persons, unless we know how and where the 
 money, now spent in the purchase of its produce, would have 
 been spent, if that produce had not been manufactured. The 
 purchasing funds truly support a number of people in making 
 
 [* I little thought, what Trionfo della Morte would be, for tin's very 
 cause, and in literal fulfilment of the closing words of the 47th para- 
 graph, over the fields and houses of Europe, and over its fairest city — 
 within seven years from the day I wrote it.] 
 
136 
 
 M UN ERA PULVER1S. 
 
 This ; but (probably) leave unsupported an equal number who 
 are making, or could have made That. The manufacturers 
 of small watches thrive at Geneva ; — it is well ; — but where 
 would the money spent on small watches have gone, had 
 there been no small watches to buy ? 
 
 50. If the so frequently uttered aphorism of mercantile 
 economy — " labour is limited by capital," were true, this ques- 
 tion would be a definite one. But it is untrue ; and that 
 widely. Out of a given quantity of funds for wages, more or 
 less labour is to be had, according to the quantity of will with 
 which we can inspire the workman ; and the true limit of 
 labour is only in the limit of this moral stimulus of the will, 
 and of the bodily power. In an ultimate, but entirely unprac- 
 tical sense, labour is limited by capital, as it is by matter — 
 that is to say, where there is no material, there can be no 
 work, — but in the practical sense, labour is limited only by 
 the great original capital of head, heart, and hand. Even in 
 the most artificial relations of commerce, labour is to capital 
 as fire to fuel : out of so much fuel, you can have only so much 
 fire ; but out of so much fuel, you shall have so much fire, — 
 not in proportion to the mass of combustible, but to the force 
 of wind that fans and water that quenches ; and the appliance 
 of both. And labour is furthered, as conflagration is, not so 
 much by added fuel, as by admitted air.* 
 
 51. For which reasons, I had to insert, in § 49, the qualify- 
 ing " probably for it can never be said positively that the 
 purchase-money, or wages fund of any trade is withdrawn from 
 some other trade. The object itself may be the stimulus of 
 the production of the money which buys it ; that is to say, the 
 work by which the purchaser obtained the means of buying 
 it, would not have been done by him unless he had wanted 
 that particular thing. And the production of any article not 
 intrinsically (nor in the process of manufacture) injurious, is 
 
 [* The meaning of which is, that you may spend a great deal of 
 money, and get very little work for it, and that little bad ; but having 
 good " air " or " spirit," to put life into it, with very little money, you 
 may get a great deal of work, and all good ; which, observe, is an aritfr 
 metical, not at all a poetical or visionary circumstance.] 
 
HUN ERA PULVEM8., 
 
 137 
 
 useful, if the desire of it causes productive labour in other 
 directions. 
 
 52. In the national store, therefore, the presence of things 
 intrinsically valueless does not imply an entirely correlative 
 absence of things valuable. We cannot be certain that all the 
 labour spent on vanity has been diverted from reality, and 
 that for every bad thing produced, a precious thing has been 
 lost. In great measure, the vain things represent the results 
 of roused indolence ; they have been carved, as toys, in extra 
 time ; and, if they had not been made, nothing else would 
 have been made. Even to munitions of war this principle ap- 
 plies ; they partly represent the work of men who, if they had 
 not made spears, would never have made pruning hooks, and 
 who are incapable of any activities but those of contest. 
 
 53. Thus then, finally, the nature of the store has to be con- 
 sidered under two main lights ; the one, that of its immediate 
 and actual utility ; the other, that of the past national char- 
 acter which it signifies by its production, and future character 
 which it must devolop by its use. And the issue of this in- 
 vestigation will be to show us that 
 
 Economy does not depend merely on principles of " demand 
 and supply," but primarily on what is demanded, and what is 
 supplied ; which I will beg of you to observe, and take to 
 heart. 
 
 54. II. Question Second. — What is the quantity of the store, 
 in relation to the population ? 
 
 It follows from what has been already stated that the accu- 
 rate form in which this question has to be put is — " What 
 quantity of each article composing the store exists in propor- 
 tion to the real need for it by the population ? " But we shall 
 for the time assume, in order to keep all our terms at the sim- 
 plest, that the store is wholly composed of useful articles, and 
 accurately proportioned to the several needs for them. 
 
 Now it cannot be assumed, because the store is large in 
 proportion to the number of the people, that the people must 
 be in comfort ; nor because it is small, that they must be 
 in distress. An active and economical race always produces 
 
138 
 
 MUNERA PULVEIUS. 
 
 more than it requires, and lives (if it is permitted to do so) in 
 competence on the produce of its daily labour. The quantity 
 of its store, great or small, is therefore in many respects in- 
 different to it, and cannot be inferred from its aspect. Sim- 
 ilarly an inactive and wasteful population, which cannot live 
 by its daily labour, but is dependent, partly or wholly, on 
 consumption of its store, may be (by various difficulties, here- 
 after to be examined, in realizing or getting at such store) re- 
 tained in a state of abject distress, though its possessions may 
 be immense. But the results always involved in the magni- 
 tude of store are, the commercial power of the nation, its 
 security, and its mental character. Its commercial power, in 
 that according to the quantity of its store, may be the extent 
 oi its dealings ; its security, in that according to the quantity 
 of its store are its means of sudden exertion or sustained en- 
 durance ; and its character, in that certain conditions of civili- 
 zation cannot be attained without permanent and continually 
 accumulating store, of great intrinsic value, and of peculiar 
 nature.* 
 
 55. Now, seeing that these three advantages arise from 
 largeness of store in proportion to population, the question 
 arises immediately, " Given the store — is the nation enriched 
 by diminution of its numbers ? Are a successful national spec- 
 ulation, and a pestilence, economically the same thing ? 
 
 This is in part a sophistical question ; such as it would be 
 to ask whether a man was richer when struck by disease which 
 must limit his life within a predicable period, than he was 
 when in health. He is enabled to enlarge his current ex- 
 penses, and has for all purposes a larger sum at his imme- 
 diate disposal (for, given the fortune, the shorter the life, the 
 larger the annuity) ; yet no man considers himself richer be- 
 cause he is condemned by his physician. 
 
 56. The logical reply is that, since Wealth is by definition 
 only the means of life, a nation cannot be enriched by its own 
 mortality. Or in shorter words, the life is more than the 
 meat ; and existence itself, more wealth than the means of ex- 
 istence. Whence, of two nations who have equal store, the 
 
 [* More especially, works of great art.] 
 
M UN ERA PULVER1S. 
 
 139 
 
 more numerous is to be considered the richer, provided the 
 type of the inhabitant be as high (for, though the relative 
 bulk of their store be less, its relative efficiency, or the amount 
 of effectual wealth, must be greater). But if the type of the 
 population be deteriorated by increase of its numbers, we 
 have evidence of poverty in its worst influence ; and then, to 
 determine whether the nation in its total may still be justifi- 
 ably esteemed rich, we must set or weigh, the number of the 
 poor against that of the rich. 
 
 To effect which piece of scale-work, it is of course necessary 
 to determine, first, who are poor and who are rich ; nor this 
 only, but also how poor and how rich they are. Which will 
 prove a curious thermometrical investigation ; for we shall 
 have to do for gold and for silver, what we have done for 
 quicksilver ; — determine, namely, their freezing-point, their 
 zero, their temperate and fever-heat points ; finally, their 
 vaporescent point, at which riches, sometimes explosively, as 
 lately in America, "make to themselves wings — and corre- 
 spondency, the number of degrees below zero at which pov- 
 erty, ceasing to brace with any wholesome cold, burns to the 
 bone.'* 
 
 57. For the performance of these operations, in the strict- 
 est sense scientific, we will first look to the existing so-called 
 " science " of Political Economy ; we will ask it to define for 
 us the comparatively and superlatively rich, and the compara- 
 tively and superlatively poor ; and on its own terms — if any 
 terms it can pronounce — examine, in our prosperous Eng- 
 land, how many rich and how many poor people there are ; 
 and whether the quantity and intensity of the poverty is in- 
 deed so overbalanced by the quantity and intensity of wealth, 
 
 [* The meaning of tnat, in plain English, is, that we must find out 
 how far poverty and riches are good pr bad for people, and what is the 
 difference between being miserably poor — so as, perhaps, to be driven 
 to crime, or to pass life in suffering — and being blessedly poor, in the 
 sense meant in the Sermon on the Mount. For I suppose the people 
 who believe that sermon, do not think (if they ever honestly ask them- 
 selves what they do think), either that Luke vL 24. is a merely poetical 
 exclamation, or that the Beatitude of Poverty has yet been attained ia 
 St. Martin's Lane and other back streets of London.] 
 
MUNEEA PULVER1S. 
 
 that we may permit ourselves a luxurious blindness to it, and 
 call ourselves, complacently, a rich country. And if we find 
 no clear definition in the existing science, we will endeavour 
 for ourselves to fix the true degrees of the scale, and to apply 
 them.* 
 
 58. Question Third. What is the quantity of the store in 
 relation to the Currency? 
 
 We have seen that the real worth of the currency, so far as 
 dependent on its relation to the magnitude of the store, may 
 vary, within certain limits, without affecting its worth in 
 exchange. The diminution or increase of the represented 
 wealth may be unperceived, and the currency may be taken 
 either for more or less than it is truly worth. Usually it is 
 taken for much more ; and its power in exchange, or credit- 
 power, is thus increased up to a given strain upon its relation 
 to existing wealth. This credit-power is of chief importance 
 in the thoughts, because most sharply present to the expe- 
 rience, of a mercantile community : but the conditions of its 
 stability f and all other relations of the currency to the mate- 
 
 [* Large plans! — Eight years are gone, and nothing done yet. But I 
 keep my purpose of making one day this balance, or want of balance, 
 visible, in those so seldom used scales of Justice.] 
 
 f These are nearly all briefly represented by the image used for the 
 force of money by Dante, of mast and sail : — 
 
 Quali dal vento le gonfiate vele 
 Oaggiono avvolte, poi die Talber liacca 
 Tal cadde a terra la fiera crudele. 
 
 The image may be followed oat, like all of Dante's, into as close de- 
 tail as the reader chooses. Thus the stress of the sail must be propor- 
 tioned to the strength of the mast, and it is only in unforeseen danger 
 that a skilful seaman ever carries all the canvas his spars will bear , 
 states of mercantile languor are like the flap of the sail in a calm ; of 
 mercantile precaution, like taking in reefs ; and mercantile ruin is in- 
 stant on the breaking of the mast. 
 
 [I mean by credit-power, the general impression on the national mind 
 that a sovereign, or any other coin, is worth so much bread and cheese 
 — so much wine— so much horse and carriage— or so much fine art: it 
 may be really worth, when tried, less or more than is thought : the 
 thought of it is the credit-power,] 
 
MUNERA PULVEETR 
 
 141 
 
 rial store are entirely simple in principle, if not in action. 
 Far other than simple are the relations of the currency to the 
 available labour which it also represents. For this relation is 
 involved not only with that of the magnitude of the store to 
 the number, but with that of the magnitude of the store to 
 the mind, of the population. Its proportion to their number, 
 and the resulting worth of currency, are calculable ; but its 
 proportion to their will for labour is not. The worth of the 
 piece of money which claims a given quantity of the store is, 
 in exchange, less or greater according to the facility of ob- 
 taining the same quantity of the same thing without having 
 recourse to the store. In oflier words it depends on the im- 
 mediate Cost and Price of the thing. We must now, there- 
 fore, complete the definition of these terms. 
 
 59. All cost and price are counted in Labour. We must 
 know first, therefore, what is to be counted as Labour. 
 
 I have already defined labour to be the Contest of the life 
 of man with an opposite. Literally, it is the quantity of 
 " Lapse," loss, or failure of human life, caused by any effort. 
 It is usually confused with effort itself, or the application of 
 power (opera) ; but there is much effort which is merely a 
 mode of recreation, or of pleasure. The most beautiful ac- 
 tions of the human body, and the highest results of the 
 human intelligence, are conditions, or achievements, of quite 
 unlaborious, — nay, of recreative, — effort. But labour is the 
 suffering in effort. It is the negative quantity, or quantity of 
 de-feat, which has to be counted against every Feat, and of 
 de-fect which has to be counted against every Fact, or Deed 
 of men. In brief, it is " that quantity of our toil which we 
 die in." 
 
 We might, therefore, d priori, conjecture (as we shall ulti- 
 mately find), that it cannot be bought, nor sold. Everything 
 else is bought and sold for Labour, but labour itself cannot 
 be bought nor sold for anything, being priceless.* The idea 
 
 * The object of Political Economy is not to buy, nor to sell labour, 
 but to spare it. Every attempt to buy or sell it is, in the outcome, in- 
 effectual ; so far as successful, it is not sale, but Betrayal ; and the pur- 
 chase-money is a part of that thirty pieces which bought, first the great 
 
142 
 
 MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 that it is a commodity to be bought or sold, is the alpha and 
 omega of Politico-Economic fallacy. 
 
 60. This being the nature of labour, the " Cost " of any- 
 thing is the quantity of labour necessary to obtain it ; — the 
 quantity for which, or at which, it " stands " (constat). It is 
 literally the " Constancy " of the thing; — you rfiallwin it — 
 move it — come at it, for no less than this. 
 
 Cost is measured and measurable (using the accurate Latin 
 terms) only in " labour," not in " opera. 5 ' * It does not matter 
 how much work a thing needs to produce it ; it matters only 
 how much distress. Generally the more the power it requires, 
 the less the distress ; so that the noblest works of man cost 
 less than the meanest. 
 
 True labour, or spending of life, is either of the body, in 
 fatigue or pain ; of the temper or heart (as in perseverance of 
 search for things, — patience in waiting for them, — fortitude 
 or degradation in suffering for them, and the like), or of the 
 intellect. All these kinds of labour are supposed to be in- 
 cluded in the general term, and the quantity of labour is then 
 expressed by the time it lasts. So that a unit of labour is 
 " an hour's work " or a day's work, as we may determine, f 
 
 61. Cost, like value, is both intrinsic and effectual. Intrin- 
 sic cost is that of getting the thing in the right way ; effect- 
 
 est of labours, and afterwards the burial-field of the Stranger ; for this 
 purchase-money, being in its very smallness or vileness the exactly 
 measured opposite of the 11 vilis annona amicorum," makes all men 
 strangers to each other. 
 
 * Cicero's distinction, il sordidi qusestus, quorum operce, non quorum 
 artes emuntur," admirable in principle, is inaccurate in expression, be- 
 cause Cicero did not practically know how much operative dexterity is 
 necessary in all the higher arts ; but the cost of this dexterity is incal- 
 culable. Be it great or small, the "cost" of the mere perfectness of 
 touch in a hammer-stroke of Donatello's, or a pencil-touch of Correg- 
 gio's, is inestimable by any ordinary arithmetic. 
 
 [Old notes, these, more embarrassing I now perceive, than elucida- 
 tory ; but right, and worth retaining.] 
 
 f Only observe, as some labour is more destructive of life than other 
 labour, the hour or da]? of the more destructive toil is supposed to in- 
 clude proportionate rest. Though men do not, or cannot, usually taker 
 tuck rest, except in death. 
 
M UN En A PUL VERTS. 
 
 143 
 
 ual cost is that of getting the thing in the way we set about 
 it. But intrinsic cost cannot be made a subject of analytical 
 investigation, being only partially discoverable, and that by 
 long experience. Effectual cost is all that the political Econ- 
 omist can deal with ; that is to say, the cost of the thing un- 
 der existing circumstances, and by known processes. 
 
 Cost, being dependent much on application of method 5 
 varies with the quantity of the thing wanted, and with the 
 number of persons who work for it. It is easy to get a little 
 of some things, but difficult to get much ; it is impossible to 
 get some things with few hands, but easy to get them with 
 many. 
 
 62. The cost and value of things, however difficult to de- 
 termine accurately, are thus both dependent on ascertainable 
 physical circumstances.** 
 
 * There is, therefore, observe,, no such thing as cheapness (in the 
 common use of that term), without some error or injustice. A thing is 
 said to be cheap, not because it is common, but because it is supposed 
 to be sold under its worth. Everything has its proper and true worth 
 at any given time, in relation to everything else ; and at that worth 
 should be bought and sold. If sold under it, it is cheap to the buyer 
 by exactly so much as the seller loses, and no more. Putrid meat, at 
 twopence a pound, is not "cheaper" than wholesome meat at seven- 
 pence a pound ; it is probably much dearer ; but if, by watching your 
 opportunity, you can get the wholesome meat for sixpence a pound, it 
 is cheaper to you by a penny, which you have gained, and the seller 
 lias lost. The present rage for cheapness is either, therefore, simply 
 and literally a rage for badness of all commodities, or it is aivattempt to 
 find persons whose necessities will force them to let you have more than 
 you should for your money. It is quite easy to produce such persons, 
 and in large numbers ; for the more distress there is in a nation, the 
 more cheapness of this sort you can obtain, and your boasted cheapness 
 is thus merely a measure of the extent of your national distress. 
 
 There is, indeed, a condition of apparent cheapness, which we have 
 some right to be triumphant in ; namely, the real reduction in cost of 
 articles by right application of labour. But in this case the article is 
 only cheap with reference to its former price ; the so-called cheapness 
 is only our expression for the sensation of contrast between its former 
 and existing prices. So goon as the new methods ox producing the arti- 
 cle are established, it ceases to be esteemed either cheap or dear, at the 
 new price, as at the old one, and is felt to be cheap only when accident 
 enables it to be purchased beneath this new value. And it is no ad- 
 
M UN ERA PUL VERTS. 
 
 But their price is dependent on the human will. 
 
 Such and such a thing is demonstrably good for so muck 
 And it may demonstrably be had for so much. 
 
 But it remains questionable, and in all manner of ways 
 questionable, whether I choose to give so much.* 
 
 This choice is always a relative one. It is a choice to give 
 a price for this, rather than for that ; — a resolution to have 
 the thing, if getting it does not involve the loss of a better 
 thing. Price depends, therefore, not only on the cost of the 
 commodity itself, but on its relation to the cost of every other 
 attainable thing. 
 
 vantage to produce tlie article more easily, except as it enables you to 
 multiply your population. Cheapness of this kind is merely the dis- 
 covery that more men can be maintained on the same ground ; and the 
 question how many you will maintain in proportion to your additional 
 means, remains exactly in the same terms that it did before. 
 
 A form of immediate cheapness results, however, in many cases, 
 without distress, from the labour of a population where food is redun- 
 dant, or where the labour by which the food is produced leaves much 
 idle time on their hands, which may be applied to the production of 
 4 ' cheap " articles. 
 
 All such phenomena indicate to the political economist places where 
 the labour is unbalanced. In the first case, the just balance is to be 
 effected by taking labourers from the spot where pressure exists, and 
 sending them to that where food is redundant. In the second, the 
 cheapness is a local accident, advantageous to the local purchaser, disad- 
 vantageous to the local producer. It is one of the first duties of com- 
 merce to extend the market, and thus give the local producer his full 
 advantage. 
 
 Cheapness caused by natural accidents of harvest, weather, &c, is 
 always counterbalanced, in due time, by natural scarcity, similarly 
 caused. It is the part of wise government, and healthy commerce, so 
 to provide in times and places of plenty for times and places of dearth, 
 as that there shall never be waste, nor famine. 
 
 Cheapness caused by gluts of the market is merely a disease of 
 clumsy and wanton commerce. 
 
 * Price has been already defined (p. 9) to be the quantity of labour 
 which the possessor of a thing is willing to take for it. It is best to 
 consider the price to be that fixed by the possessor, because the posses- 
 sor has absolute power of refusing sale, while the purchaser has no ab- 
 solute power of compelling it ; but the effectual or market price is that 
 at which their estimates coincide. 
 
MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 145 
 
 Farther. The power of choice is also a relative one. It 
 depends not merely on our own estimate of the thing, but on 
 everybody else's estimate ; therefore on the number and forca 
 of the will of the concurrent buyers, and on the existing quan- 
 tity of the thing in proportion to that number and force. 
 
 Hence the price of anything depends on four variables. 
 
 (1.) Its cost. 
 
 (2.) Its attainable quantity at that cost. 
 
 (3.) The number and power of the persons who want it. 
 
 (4.) The estimate they have formed of its desirableness. 
 
 Its value only affects its price so far as it is contemplated 
 in this estimate ; perhaps, therefore, not at all. 
 
 63. Now, in order to show the manner in which price ia 
 expressed in terms of a currency, we must assume these four 
 quantities to be known, and the " estimate of desirableness," 
 commonly called the Demand, to be certain. We will take 
 the number of persons at the lowest. Let A and B be two 
 labourers who " demand," that is to say, have resolved to la- 
 bour for, two articles, a and b. Their demand for these arti- 
 cles (if the reader likes better, he may say their need) is to be 
 conceived as absolute, their existence depending on the get- 
 ting these two things. Suppose, for instance, that they are 
 bread and fuel, in a cold country, and let a represent the 
 least quantity of bread, and b tlie least quantity of fuel, which 
 will support a man's life for a day. Let a be producible by 
 an hour's labour, but 6 only by two hours' labour. 
 
 Then the cost of a is one hour, and of b two (cost, by our 
 definition, being expressible in terms of time). If, therefore, 
 each man worked both for his corn and fuel, each would have 
 to work three hours a day. But they divide the labour for its 
 greater ease.* Then if A works three hours, he produces 
 3a, which is one a more than both the men want. And if B 
 works three hours, he produces only 1| b, or half of b less 
 than both want. But if A work three hours and B six, A has 
 
 * This " greater ease " ought to be allowed for by a diminution in the 
 times of the divided work ; but as the proportion of times would re- 
 main the same, I do not introduce this unnecessary complexity into th# 
 calculation. 
 
146 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 3 a, and B has 3 b, a maintenance in the right proportion fof 
 both for a day and half ; so that each might take half a day's 
 rest. Bat as B has worked double time, the whole of this 
 day's rest belongs in equity to him. Therefore the just ex* 
 change should be, A giving two a for one b, has one a and one 
 b ; — maintenance for a day. B giving one b for two a, has 
 two a and two b ; maintenance for two days. 
 
 But B cannot rest on the second day, or A would be left 
 without the article which B produces. Nor is there any 
 means of making the exchange just, unless a third labourer is 
 called in. Then one workman, A, produces a, and two, B and 
 C, produce b : — A, working three hours, has three a ; — B, 
 three hours, 1^ b ; — C, three hours, 1|- b. B and C each give 
 half of b for a, and all have their equal daily maintenance foi 
 equal daily work. 
 
 To carry the example a single step farther, let three arti- 
 cles, a, b, and c be needed. 
 
 Let a need one hour's work, b two, and c four ; then the 
 day's work must be seven hours, and one man in a day's work 
 can make 7 a, or 3f b, or If a 
 
 Therefore one A works for a, producing 7a; two B's work 
 for b, producing 7b; four C's work for c, producing 7 c\ 
 
 A has six a to spare, and gives two a for one b, and four a 
 for one c. Each B has 2£ b to spare, and gives ^ b for one a, 
 and two b for one c. 
 
 Each C has f of c to spare, and gives £ c for one b, and \ of 
 c for one a. 
 
 And all have their day's maintenance. 
 
 Generally, therefore, it follows that if the demand is con- 
 stant,* the relative prices of things are as their costs, or as 
 the quantities of labour involved in production. 
 
 64 Then, in order to express their prices in terms of a 
 currency, we have only to put the currency into the form of 
 orders for a certain quantity of any given article (with us it 
 is in the form of orders for gold), and all quantities of other 
 articles are priced by the relation they bear to the artick 
 which the currency claims. 
 
 * Compare Unto this Last, p. 115, et seq. 
 
MUNERA PULVEMS. 
 
 147 
 
 But the worth of the currency itself is not in the slightest 
 degree founded more on the worth of the article which it 
 either claims or consists in (as gold) than on the worth of 
 every other article for which the gold is exchangeable. It is 
 just as accurate to say, " so many pounds are worth an acre 
 of land," as " an acre of land is worth so many pounds." The 
 worth of gold, of land, of houses, and of food, and of all 
 other things, depends at any moment on the existing quanti- 
 ties and relative demands for all and each ; and a change in 
 the worth of, or demand for, any one, involves an instantane- 
 ously correspondent change in the worth of, and demand for, 
 all the rest ; — a change as inevitable and as accurately bal- 
 anced (though often in its process as untraceable) as the 
 change in volume of the outflowing river from some vast 
 lake, caused by change in the volume of the inflowing 
 streams, though no eye can trace, nor instrument detect, mo- 
 tion, either on its surface, or in the depth. 
 
 65. Thus, then, the real working power or worth of the cur- 
 rency is founded on the entire sum of the relative estimates 
 formed by the population of its possessions ; a change in this 
 estimate in any direction (and therefore every change in the 
 national character), instantly alters the value of money, in 
 its second great function of commanding labour. But we 
 must always carefully and sternly distinguish between this 
 worth of currency, dependent on the conceived or appreciated 
 value of what it represents, and the worth of it, dependent on 
 the existence of what it represents. A currency is true, or 
 false, in proportion to the security with which it gives claim 
 to the possession of land, house, horse, or picture ; but a cur- 
 rency is strong or weak* worth much, or worth little, in pro- 
 portion to the degree of estimate in which the nation holds the 
 house, horse, or picture which is claimed. Thus the power 
 of the English currency has been, till of late, largely based on 
 the national estimate of horses and of wine : so that a man 
 
 [* That is to say, the love of money is founded first on the intense- 
 ness of desire for given things ; a youth will rob the till, now-a-days, 
 for pantomime tickets and cigars ; the "strength " of the currency be- 
 ing irresistible to him, in consequenee of his desire for those luxuries.] 
 
148 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 might always give any price to furnish choicely his stab T e, 01 
 his cellar ; and receive public approval therefor : but if he 
 gave the same sum to furnish his library, he was called mad 
 or a biblio-maniac. And although he might lose his fortune 
 by his horses, and his health or life by his cellar, and rarely 
 lost either by his books, he was yet never called a Hippo* 
 maniac nor an Oino-maniac ; but only Biblio-maniac, because 
 the current worth of money was understood to be legiti- 
 mately founded on cattle and wine, but not on literature. The 
 prices lately given at sales for pictures and MSS. indicate 
 some tendency to change in the national character in this re- 
 spect, so that the worth of the currency may even come in 
 time to rest, in an acknowledged manner, somewhat on the 
 state and keeping of the Bedford missal, as well as on the 
 health of Caractacus or Blink Bonny ; and old pictures be 
 considered property, no less than old port. They might have 
 been so before now, but that it is more difficult to choose the 
 one than the other. 
 
 66. Now, observe, all these sources of variation in the power 
 of the currency exist, wholly irrespective of the influences of 
 vice, indolence, and improvidence. We have hitherto sup- 
 posed, throughout the analysis, every professing labourer 
 to labour honestly, heartily, and in harmony with his fellows. 
 We have now to bring farther into the calculation the effects 
 of relative industry, honour, and forethought ; and thus to 
 follow out the bearings of our second inquiry : Who are the 
 holders of the Store and Currency, and in what proportions ? 
 
 This, however, we must reserve for our next paper— 
 noticing here only that, however distinct the several branches 
 of the subject are, radically, they are so interwoven in their 
 issues that we cannot rightly treat any one, till we have taken 
 cognizance of all. Thus the need of the currency in propor. 
 tion to number of population is materially influenced by the 
 probable number of the holders in proportion to the non- 
 holders ; and this again, by the number of holders of goods, 
 or wealth, in proportion to the non-holders of goods. For as, 
 by definition, the currency is a claim to goods which are not 
 possessed, its quantity indicates the number of claimants in 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 149 
 
 proportion to the number of holders ; and the force and com- 
 plexity of claim. For if the claims be not complex, currency 
 as a means of exchange may be very small in quantity. A 
 sells some corn to B, receiving a promise from B to pay in 
 cattle, which A then hands over to C, to get some wine. C 
 in due time claims the cattle from B ; and B takes back his 
 promise. These exchanges have, or might have been, all 
 effected with a single coin or promise ; and the proportion of 
 the currency to the store would in such circumstances indi- 
 cate only the circulating vitality of it — that is to say, the 
 quantity and convenient divisibility of that part of the store 
 which the habits of the nation keep in circulation. If a cattle 
 breeder is content to live with his household chiefly on meat 
 and milk, and does not want rich furniture, or jewels, or books 
 — if a wine and corn growler maintains himself and his men 
 chiefly on grapes and bread ; — if the wives and daughters of 
 families weave and spin the clothing of the household, and 
 the nation, as a whole, remains content with the produce of 
 its own soil and the work of its own hands, it has little occa- 
 sion for circulating media. It pledges and promises little and 
 seldom ; exchanges only so far as exchange is necessary for 
 life. The store belongs to the people in whose hands it is 
 found, and money is little needed either as an expression of 
 right, or practical means of division and exckauge. 
 
 67. But in proportion as the habits of the nation become 
 complex and fantastic (and they may be both, without there- 
 fore being civilized), its circulating medium must increase in 
 proportion to its store. If every one wants a little of every- 
 thing, — if food must be of many kinds, and dress of many 
 fashions, — if mulitudes live by work which, ministering to 
 fancy, has its pay measured by fancy, so that large prices will 
 be given by one person for what is valueless to another, — if 
 there are great inequalities of knowledge, causing great in- 
 equalities of estimate, — and, finally, and worst of all, if the 
 currency itself, from its largeness, and the power which the 
 possession of it implies, becomes the sole object of desire 
 with large numbers of the nation, so that the holding of it ia 
 disputed among them as the main object of life : — in each 
 
150 
 
 MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 and all of these cases, the currency necessarily enlarges in 
 proportion to the store ; and as a means of exchange and di- 
 vision, as a bond of right, and as an object of passion, has a 
 more and more important and malignant power over the na- 
 tion's dealings, character, and life. 
 
 Against which power, when, as a bond of Right, it becomes 
 too conspicuous and too burdensome, the popular voice is apt 
 to be raised in a violent and irrational manner, leading to 
 revolution instead of remedy. Whereas all possibility of 
 Economy depends on the- clear assertion and maintenance 
 of this bond of right, however burdensome. The first neces- 
 sity of all economical government is to secure the unques- 
 tioned and unquestionable working of the great law of Prop- 
 erty—that a man who works for a thing shall be allowed to get 
 it, keep it, and consume it, in peace ; and that he who does 
 not eat his cake to-day, shall be seen, without grudging, to 
 have his cake to-morrow. This, I say, is the first point to be 
 secured by social law ; without this, no political advance, nay, 
 no political existence, is in any sort possible. Whatever evil, 
 luxury, iniquity, may seem to result from it, this is neverthe- 
 less the first of all Equities ; and to the enforcement of this, 
 by law and by police-truncheon, the nation must always pri- 
 marily set its mind — that the cupboard door may have a firm 
 lock to it, and no man's dinner be carried off by the mob, oi> 
 its way home from the baker's. Which, thus fearlessly assert- 
 ing, we shall endeavour in next paper to consider how far it 
 may be practicable for the mob itself, also, in due breadth of 
 dish, to have dinners to carry home. 
 
MUNEUA PULVE1U8. 
 
 151 
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 COIN-KEEPING. 
 
 68. It will be seen by reference to the last chapter that out 
 present task is to examine the relation of holders of store to 
 holders of currency ; and of both to those who hold neither. 
 In order to do this, we must determine on which side we are 
 to place substances such as gold, commonly known as loases 
 of currency. By aid of previous definitions the reader will 
 now be able to understand closer statements than have yet 
 been possible. 
 
 G9. The currency of any country consists of every document 
 acknowledging debt, ivhich is transferable in the country.* 
 
 This transferableness depends upon its intelligibility and 
 credit. Its intelligibility depends chiefly on the difficulty of 
 forging anything like it ; — its credit much on national char- 
 acter, but ultimately ahvays on the existence of substantial means 
 of meeting its demand.^ 
 
 As the degrees of transferableness are variable, (some docu- 
 ments passing only in certain places, and others passing, if at 
 all, for less than their inscribed value), both the mass, and, s6> 
 to speak, fluidity, of the currency, are variable* True or per- 
 fect currency flows freely, like a pure stream ; it becomes 
 sluggish or stagnant in proportion to the quantity of less 
 
 [* Remember tliis definition : it is of great importance as opposed to 
 the imperfect ones usually given. When first these essays were pub- 
 lished, I remember one of their reviewers asking contemptuously, ' 'Is 
 lialf-a-crown a document ? " it never having before occurred to him that 
 a document might be stamped as well as written, and stamped on silver 
 as well as on parchment.] 
 
 [f I do not mean the demand of the holder of a five-pound note for 
 five pounds, but the demand of Mie holder of a pound for a pound's 
 worth of something good.] 
 
152 
 
 MVNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 transferable matter which mixes with it, adding to its bulk, 
 but diminishing its purity. [Articles of commercial value, on 
 which bills are drawn, increase the currency indefinitely ; and 
 substances of intrinsic value if stamped or signed without 
 restriction so as to become acknowledgments of debt, increase 
 it indefinitely also.] Every bit of gold found in Australia, so 
 long as it remains uncoined, is an article offered for sale like 
 any other ; but as soon as it is coined into pounds, it dimin- 
 ishes the value of every pound we have now in our pockets. 
 
 70. Legally authorized or national currency, in its perfect 
 condition, is a form of public acknowledgment of debt, so reg- 
 ulated and divided that any person presenting a commodity 
 of tr^ed worth in the public market, shall, if he please, receive 
 in exchange for it a document giving him claim to the return 
 of its equivalent, (1) in any place, (2) at any time, and (3) in 
 any kind. 
 
 When currency is quite healthy and vital, the persons en- 
 trusted with its management are always able to give on de- 
 mand either, 
 
 A. The assigning document for the assigned quantity of 
 goods. Or, 
 
 B. The assigned quantity of goods for the assigning docu- 
 ment. 
 
 If they cannot give document for goods, the national ex- 
 change is at fault. 
 
 If they cannot give goods for document, the national credit 
 is at fault. 
 
 The nature and power of the document are therefore to be 
 examined under the three relations it bears to Place, Time, 
 and Kind. 
 
 71. (1.) It gives claim to the return of equivalent wealth in 
 any Place. Its use in this function is to save carriage, so that 
 parting with a bushel of corn in London, we may receive an 
 order for a bushel of corn at the Antipodes, or elsewhere. 
 To be perfect in this use, the substance of currency must be 
 to the maximum portable, credible, and intelligible. Its non- 
 acceptance or discredit results always from some form oi 
 ignorance or dishonour : so far as suck interruptions rise out 
 
M UN ERA PULVERIS. 
 
 153 
 
 of differences in denomination, there is no ground for their 
 continuance among civilized nations. It may be convenient 
 in one country to use chiefly copper for coinage, in another 
 silver, and in another gold, — reckoning accordingly in cen- 
 times, francs, or zecchins : but that a franc should be dif- 
 ferent in weight and value from a shilling, and a zwanziger 
 vary from both, is wanton loss of commercial power. 
 
 72. (2.) It gives claim to the return of equivalent wealth at 
 any Time, In this second use, currency is the exponent of 
 accumulation : it renders the laying-up of store at the com- 
 mand of individuals unlimitediy possible ; — whereas, but for 
 its intervention, all gathering would be confined within cer- 
 tain limits by the bulk of property, or by its decay, or the 
 difficulty of its guardianship. " I will pull down my barns 
 and build greater," cannot be a daily saying ; and all material 
 investment is enlargement of care. The national currency 
 transfers the guardianship of the store to many ; and preserves 
 to the original producer the right of re-entering on its posses- 
 sion at any future period. 
 
 73. (3.) It gives claim (practical, though not legal) to the 
 return of equivalent wealth in any Kind. It is a transferable 
 right, not merely to this or that, but to anything ; and its 
 power in this function is proportioned to the range of choice. 
 If you give a child an apple or a toy, you give him a deter- 
 minate pleasure, but if you give him a penny, an indeterminate 
 one, proportioned to the range of selection offered by the 
 shops in the village. The power of the world's currency is 
 similarly in proportion to the openness of the world's fair, and, 
 commonly, enhanced by the brilliancy of external aspect, 
 rather than solidity of its wares. 
 
 74. We have said that the currency consists of orders for 
 equivalent goods. If equivalent, their quality must be guar- 
 anteed. The kinds of goods chosen for specific claim must, 
 therefore, be capable of test, while, also, that a store may be 
 kept in hand to meet the call of the currency, smallness of 
 bulk, with great relative value, is desirable ; and indestructi- 
 bility, over at least a certain period, essential. 
 
 Such indestructibility, and facility of being tested, are 
 
154 
 
 MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 united in gold ; its intrinsic value is great, and its imaginary 
 value greater ; so that, partly through indolence, partly 
 through necessity and want of organization, most nations 
 have agreed to take gold for the only basis of their curren- 
 cies . — with this grave disadvantage, that its portability en- 
 abling the metal to become an active part of the medium of 
 exchange, the stream of the currency itself becomes opaque 
 with gold — half currency and half commodity, in unison of 
 functions which partly neutralize, partly enhance each other's 
 force. 
 
 75. They partly neutralize, since in so far as the gold is 
 commodity, it is bad currency, because liable to sale ; and in 
 so far as it is currency, it is bad commodity, because its ex- 
 change value interferes with its practical use. Especially its 
 employment in the higher branches of the arts becomes un- 
 safe on account of its liability to be melted down for exchange. 
 
 Again. They partly enhance, since in so far as the gold 
 has acknowledged intrinsic value, it is good currency, be- 
 cause everywhere acceptable ; and in so far as it has legal 
 exchangeable value, its worth as a commodity is increased. 
 We want no gold in the form of dust or crystal ; but we seek 
 for it coined, because in that form it will pay baker and 
 butcher. And this worth in exchange not only absorbs a 
 large quantity in that use,* but greatly increases the effect 
 
 * [Read and think over, the following note very carefully.] 
 The waste of labour in obtaining the gold, though it cannot be 
 estimated by help of any existing data, may be understood in its 
 bearing on entire economy by supposing it limited to transactions 
 between two persons. If two farmers in Australia have been ex- 
 changing corn and cattle with each other for years, keeping their 
 accounts of reciprocal debt in any simple way, the sum of the posses- 
 sions of either would not be diminished, though the part of it which 
 was lent or borrowed were only reckoned by marks on a stone, or 
 notches on a tree ; and the one counted himself accordingly, so many 
 scratches, or so many notches, better than the other. But it would 
 soon be seriously diminished if, discovering gold in their fields, each 
 resolved only to accept golden counters for a reckoning ; and accord- 
 ingly, whenever he wanted a sack of corn or a cow, was obliged to go 
 and wash sand for a week before he could get the means of giving a 
 receipt for them. 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 155 
 
 on the imagination of the quantity used in the arts. Thus, 
 in brief, the force of the functions is increased, but their 
 precision blunted, by their unison. 
 
 76. These inconveniences, however, attach to gold as a 
 basis of currency on account of its portability and precious- 
 ness. But a far greater inconvenience attaches to it as the 
 only legal basis of currency. Imagine gold to be only attain- 
 able in masses weighing several pounds each, and its value, 
 like that of malachite or marble, proportioned to its large- 
 ness of bulk ; — it could not then get itself confused with the 
 currency in daily use, but it might still remain as its basis ; 
 and this second inconvenience would still affect it, namely, 
 that its significance as an expression of debt varies, as that 
 of every other article would, with the popular estimate of its 
 desirableness, and with the quantity offered in the market. 
 My power of obtaining other goods for gold depends always 
 on the strength of public passion for gold, and on the limita- 
 tion of its quantity, so that when either of two things happen 
 — that the world esteems gold less, or finds it more easily — 
 my right of claim is in that degree effaced ; and it has been 
 even gravely maintained that a discovery of a mountain of 
 gold would cancel the National Debt ; in other words, that 
 men may be paid for what costs much in what costs nothing. 
 Now, it is true that there is little chance of sudden convul- 
 sion in this respect ; the world will not so rapidly increase in 
 wisdom as to despise gold on a sudden ; and perhaps may 
 [for a little time] desire it more eagerly the more easily it is 
 obtained ; nevertheless, the right of debt ought not to rest 
 on a basis of imagination ; nor should the frame of a national 
 currency vibrate with every miser's panic, and every merchant's 
 imprudence. 
 
 77. There are two methods of avoiding this insecurity, 
 which would have been fallen upon long ago, if, instead of 
 calculating the conditions of the supply of gold, men had 
 only considered how the world might live and manage its 
 affairs without gold at all.* One is, to base the currency on 
 
 * It ii difficult to estimate the curious futility of discussions such as 
 that which lately occupied a section of the British Association, on tli*» 
 
|56 
 
 M UN ERA PULVERIS. 
 
 substances of truer intrinsic value ; the other, to base it on 
 several substances instead of one. If I can only claim gold, 
 the discovery of a golden mountain starves me ; but if I can 
 claim bread, the discovery of a continent of corn-fields need 
 not trouble me. If, however, I wish to exchange my bread 
 for other things, a good harvest will for the time limit my 
 power in this respect ; but if I can claim either bread, iron, 
 or silk at pleasure, the standard of value has three feet instead 
 of one, and will be proportionately firm. Thus, ultimately, 
 the steadiness of currency depends upon the breadth of its 
 base ; but the difficulty of organization increasing with this 
 breadth, the discovery of the condition at once safest and 
 most convenient* can only be by long analysis, which must 
 for the present be deferred. Gold or silver f may always be 
 retained in limited use, as a luxury of coinage and question- 
 less standard, of one weight and alloy among all nations, vary- 
 ing only in the die. The purity of coinage, when metallic, is 
 closely indicative of the honesty of the system of revenue, and 
 even of the general dignity of the State. J 
 
 absorption of gold, while no one can produce even the simplest of the 
 data necessary for the inquiry. To take the first occurring one, — What 
 means have we of ascertaining the weight of gold employed this year in 
 the toilettes of the women of Europe (not to speak of Asia) ; and, sup- 
 posing it known, what means of conjecturing the weight by which, next 
 year, their fancies, and the changes of style among their jewellers, will 
 diminish or increase it ? 
 
 * See, in Pope's epistle to Lord Bathurst, his sketch of the difficul- 
 ties and uses of a currency literally 11 pecuniary " — (consisting of herdg 
 of cattle). 
 
 " His Grace will game — to White's a bull be led," &c. 
 
 f Perhaps both ; perhaps silver only. It may be found expedient 
 ultimately to leave gold free for use in the arts. As a means of reck- 
 oning, the standard might be, and in some cases has already been, 
 entirely ideal. — See Mill's Political Economy, book iii. chap. vn. at 
 beginning. 
 
 % The purity of the drachma and zecchin were not without signifi- 
 cance of the state of intellect, art, and policy, both in Athens and Ven- 
 ice ;— a fact first impressed upon me ten years ago, when, in taking 
 daguerreotypes at Venice, I found no purchaseable gold pure enough U 
 gild them with, except that of the old Venetian zecchin. 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 157 
 
 78. Whatever the article or articles may be which the national 
 currency promises to pay, a premium on that article indicates 
 bankruptcy of the government in that proportion, the division 
 of its assets being restrained only by the remaining confidence 
 of the holders of notes in the return of prosperity to the firm. 
 Currencies of forced acceptance, or of unlimited issue, are 
 merely various modes of disguising taxation, and delaying 
 its pressure, until it is too late to interfere with the cause of 
 pressure. To do away with the possibility of such disguise 
 would have been among the first results of a true economical 
 science, had any such existed ; but there have been too many 
 motives for the concealment, so long as it could by any arti- 
 fices be maintained, to permit hitherto even the founding of 
 such a science. % 
 
 79. And indeed, it is only through evil conduct, wilfully 
 persisted in, that there is any embarrassment, either in the 
 theory or working of currency. No exchequer is ever em- 
 barrassed, nor is any financial question difficult of solution, 
 when people keep their practice honest, and their heads cool. 
 But when governments lose all office of pilotage, protection, 
 or scrutiny ; and live only in magnificence of authorized lar- 
 ceny, and polished mendicity ; or when the people, choosing 
 Speculation (the 8 usually redundant in the spelling) instead 
 of Toil, visit no dishonesty with chastisement, that each may 
 with impunity take his dishonest turn ; — there are no tricks 
 of financial terminology that will save them ; all signature 
 and mintage do but magnify the ruin they retard ; and even 
 the riches that remain, stagnant or current, change only from 
 the slime of Avernus to the sand of Phlegethon — ^uc&sand 
 at the embouchure ; — land fluently recommended by recent 
 auctioneers as " eligible for building leases." 
 
 80. Finally, then, the power of true currency is fourfold. 
 (1.) Credit power. Its worth in exchange, dependent on 
 
 public opinion of the stability and honesty of the issuer. 
 
 (2.) Real worth. Supposing the gold, or whatever else the 
 currency expressly promises, to be required from the issuer, 
 for all his notes ; and that the call cannot be met in full. 
 Then the actual worth of the document would be, and its act-- 
 
153 
 
 MUNERA PULVER1S. 
 
 ual worth at any moment is, therefore to be defined as, what 
 the division of the assets of the issuer would produce for it. 
 
 (3.) The exchange power of its base. Granting that we 
 can get five pounds in gold for our note, it remains a ques- 
 tion how much of other things we can get for five pounds in 
 gold. The more of other things exist, and the less gold, the 
 greater this power. 
 
 (4.) The power over labour, exercised by the given quantity 
 of the base, or of the things to be got for it. The question 
 in this case is, how much work, and (question of questions !) 
 tohose work, is to be had for the food which five pounds will 
 buy. This depends on the number of the population, on their 
 gifts, and on their dispositions, with which, down to their 
 slightest humours, and up to their strongest impulses, the 
 power of the currency varies. 
 
 81. Such being the main conditions of national currency, 
 we proceed to examine those of the total currency, under the 
 broad definition, " transferable acknowledgment of debt;"* 
 
 * Under which term, observe, we include all documents of debt, 
 which, being honest, might be transferable, though they practically are 
 not transferred ; while we exclude all documents which are in reality 
 worthless, though in fact transferred temporarily, as bad money is. 
 The document of honest debt, not transferred, is merely to paper cur- 
 rency as gold withdrawn from circulation is to that of bullion. Much 
 confusion has crept into the reasoning on this subject from the idea that 
 the withdrawal from circulation is a definable state, whereas it is a 
 graduated state, and indefinable. The sovereign in my pocket is with- 
 drawn from circulation as long as I choose to keep it there. It is no 
 otherwise withdrawn if I bury it, nor even if I choose to make it, and 
 others, into a golden cup, and drink out of them ; since a rise in the 
 price of the wine, or of other things, may at any time cause me to melt 
 the cup and throw it back into currency ; and the bullion operates on 
 the prices of the things in the market as directly, though not as forcibly, 
 while it is in the form of a cup as it does in the form of a sovereign. 
 No calculation can be founded on my humour in either case. If I like 
 to handle rouleaus, and therefore keep a quantity of gold, to play with, 
 in the form of jointed basaltic columns, it is all one in its effect on the 
 market as if I kept it in the form of twisted filigree, or, steadily " ami- 
 cus lamnaV' beat the narrow gold pieces into broad ones, and dined off 
 them. The probability is greater that I break the rouleau than that I 
 melt the pHte ; but the increased probability is not calculable. Thus, 
 
MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 159 
 
 among the many forms of which there are in eltect only two, 
 distinctly opposed ; namely, the acknowledgments of debts 
 which will be paid, and of debts which will not. Documents, 
 whether in whole or part, of bad debt, being to those of 
 good debt as bad money to bullion, we put for the present 
 these forms of imposture aside (as in analysing a metal we 
 should wash it clear of dross), and then range, in their exact 
 quantities, the true currency of the country on one side, and 
 the store or property of the country on the other. "We place 
 gold, and all such substances, on the side of documents, as 
 far as they operate by signature ; — on the side of store as far 
 as they operate by value. Then the currency represents the 
 quantity of debt in the country, and the store the quantity 
 of its possession. The ownership of all the property is divided 
 between the holders of currency and holders of store, and 
 whatever the claiming value of the currency is at any moment, 
 that value is to be deducted from the riches of the store- 
 holders. 
 
 82. Farther, as true currency represents by definition debts 
 which will be paid, it represents either the debtor's wealth, 
 or his ability and willingness ; that is to say, either wealth ex- 
 isting in his hands transferred to him by the creditor, or 
 wealth which, as he is at some time surely to return it, he is 
 either increasing, or, if diminishing, has the will and strength 
 to reproduce. A sound currency therefore, as by its increase 
 it represents enlarging debt, represents also enlarging means ; 
 but in this curious way, that a certain quantity of it marks 
 the deficiency of the wealth of the country from what it would 
 have been if that currency had not existed.* In this respect 
 
 documents are only withdrawn from the currency when cancelled, and 
 bullion when it is so effectually lost as that the probability of finding it 
 is no greater than of finding new gold in the mine. 
 
 * For example, suppose an active peasant, having got his ground into 
 good order and built himself a comfortable house, finding time still on 
 his hands, sees one of his neighbours little able to work, and ill-lodged, 
 and offers to build him also" a house, and to put his land in order, on 
 condition of receiving for a given period rent for the building and tithe 
 of the fruits. The offer is accepted, and a document given promissory 
 of rent and tithe. This note is money. It can only be good money if 
 
160 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 it is like the detritus of a mountain ; assume that it lies at a 
 fixed angle, and the more the detritus, the larger must be the 
 mountain ; but it would have been larger still, had there been 
 none. 
 
 83. Farther, though, as above stated, every man possessing 
 money has usually also some property beyond what is neces- 
 sary for his immediate wants, and men possessing property 
 usually also hold currency beyond what is necessary for their 
 immediate exchanges, it mainly determines the class to which 
 they belong, whether in their eyes the money is an adjunct of 
 the property, or the property of the money. In the first case 
 the holder's pleasure is in his possessions, and in his money 
 subordinately, as the means of bettering or adding to them. 
 In the second, his pleasure is in his money, and in his posses- 
 sions only as representing it. (In the first case the money is 
 as an atmosphere surrounding the wealth, rising from it and 
 raining back upon it ; but in the second, it is as a deluge, 
 with the wealth floating, and for the most part perishing in 
 it.*) The shortest distinction between the men is that the one 
 wishes always to buy, and the other to sell. 
 
 84. Such being the great relations of the classes, their sev- 
 eral characters are of the highest importance to the nation ; 
 for on the character of the store-holders chiefly depend the 
 preservation, display, and serviceableness of its wealth ; on 
 that of the currency-holders, its distribution ; on that of both, 
 its reproduction. 
 
 We shall, therefore, ultimately find it to be of incomparably 
 greater importance to the nation in whose hands the thing is 
 
 the man who has incurred the debt so far recovers his strength as to be 
 able to take advantage of the help he has received, and meet the de- 
 mand of the note ; if he lets his house fall to ruin, and his field to 
 waste, his promissory note will soon be valueless: but the existence of 
 the note at all is a consequence of his not having worked so stoutly as 
 the other. Let him gain as much as to be able to pay back the entire 
 debt ; the note is cancelled, and we have two rich store-holders and no 
 currency. 
 
 [* You need not trouble yourself to make out the sentence in paren- 
 thesis, unless you like, but do not think it is mere metaphor. It states' 
 & fact which I could not have stated so shortly, but by metaphor.] 
 
M UN ERA PULVERIS. 
 
 1G1 
 
 put, than how much of it is got ; and that the character of the 
 holders may be conjectured by the quality of the store ; for 
 such and such a man always asks for such and such a thing ; 
 nor only asks for it, but if it can be bettered, betters it : so 
 that possession and possessor reciprocally act on each other, 
 through the entire sum of national possession. The base na- 
 tion, asking for base things, sinks daily to deeper vileness of 
 nature and weakness in use ; while the noble nation, asking 
 for noble things, rises daily into diviner eminence in both ; 
 the tendency to degradation being surely marked by " drafta ; " 
 that is to say, (expanding the Greek thought), by carelessness 
 as to the hands in which things are put, consequent dispute 
 for the acquisition of them, disorderliness in the accumulation 
 of them, inaccuracy in the estimate of them, and bluntness in 
 conception as to the entire nature of possession. 
 
 85. The currreney-holders always increase in number and 
 influence in proportion to the bluntness of nature and clumsi- 
 ness of the store-holders ; for the less use people can make of 
 things, the more they want of them, and the sooner weary of 
 them, and want to change them for something else ; and all 
 frequency of change increases the quantity and power of cur- 
 rency. The large currency-holder himself is essentially a per- 
 son who never has been able to make up his mind as to what 
 he will have, and proceeds, therefore, in vague collection and 
 aggregation, with more and more infuriate passion, urged by 
 complacency in progress, vacancy in idea, and pride of con- 
 quest. 
 
 While, however, there is this obscurity in the nature of 
 possession of currency, there is a charm in the seclusion of it, 
 which is to some people very enticing. In the enjoyment of 
 real property, others must partly share. The groom has 
 some enjoyment of the stud, and the gardener of the garden ; 
 but the money is, or seems, shut up ; it is wholly enviable. 
 No one else can have part in any complacencies arising from 
 it. 
 
 The power of arithmetical comparison is also a great thing 
 to unimagiDative people. They know always they are so much 
 better than they were, in money ; so much better than others* 
 
162 
 
 M UN ERA PULVER18. 
 
 in money ; but wit cannot be so compared, nor character, 
 My neighbour cannot be convinced that I am wiser than he 
 is, but he can, that I am worth so much more ; and the uni- 
 versality of the conviction is no less flattering than its clear- 
 ness. Only a few can understand, — none measure — and few 
 will willingly adore, superiorities in other things ; but every- 
 body can understand money, everybody can count it, and 
 most will w r orship it. 
 
 86. Now, these various temptations to accumulation w T ould 
 be politically harmless if w 7 hat was vainly accumulated had any 
 fair chance of being wisely spent. For as accumulation can- 
 not go on for ever, but must some day end in its reverse — if 
 this reverse were indeed a beneficial distribution and use, as 
 irrigation from reservoir, the fever of gathering, though peril- 
 ous to the gatherer, might be serviceable to the community. 
 But it constantly happens (so constantly, that it may be stated 
 as a political law having few exceptions), that what is unreas- 
 onably gathered is also unreasonably spent by the persons into 
 whose hands it finally falls. Very frequently it is spent in 
 war, or else in a stupefying luxury, twice hurtful, both in be- 
 ing indulged by the rich and witnessed by the poor. So that 
 the mat tener and mal dare are as correlative as complementary 
 colours ; and the circulation of wealth, which ought to be 
 soft, steady, strong, far-sweeping, and full of w r armth, like the 
 Gulf stream, being narrowed into an eddy, and concentrated 
 on a point, changes into the alternate suction and surrender 
 of Charybdis. "Which is indeed, I doubt not, the true mean- 
 ing of that marvellous fable, " infinite," as Bacon said of it, 
 "in matter of meditation." * 
 
 87. It is a strange habit of wise humanity to speak in enig- 
 mas only, so that the highest truths and usefullest laws must 
 be hunted for through whole picture-galleries of dreams, 
 which to the vulgar seem dreams only. Thus Homer, the 
 Greek tragedians, Plato, Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and 
 Goethe, have hidden all that is chiefly serviceable in their 
 
 [* What follows, to the end of the chapter, was a note only, in the 
 first printing ; but for after service, it is of more value than any othej 
 part of the book, so I have put it into the main text. ] 
 
MUNERA PUL VERTS. 
 
 163 
 
 work, and in all the various literature they absorbed and re* 
 embodied, under types which have rendered it quite useless to 
 the multitude. What is worse, the two primal declarers of 
 moral discovery, Homer and Plato, are partly at issue ; for 
 Plato's logical power quenched his imagination, and he be* 
 came incapable of understanding the purely imaginative ele- 
 ment either in poetry or painting : he therefore somewhat 
 overrates the pure discipline of passionate art in song and 
 music, and misses that of meditative art. There is, however, 
 a deeper reason for his distrust of Homer. His love of justice, 
 and reverently religious nature, made him dread, as death, 
 every form of fallacy ; but chiefly, fallacy respecting the 
 world to come (his own myths being only symbolic exponents 
 of a rational hope). We shall perhaps now every day dis- 
 cover more clearly how right Plato was in this, and feel our- 
 selves more and more wonderstruck that men such as Homer 
 and Dante (and, in an inferior sphere, Milton), not to speak 
 of the great sculptors and painters of every age, have permit- 
 ted themselves, though full of all nobleness and wisdom, to 
 coin idle imaginations of the mysteries of eternity, and guide 
 the faiths of the families of the earth by the courses of their 
 own vague and visionary arts : while the indisputable truths 
 of human life and duty, respecting which they all have but 
 one voice, lie hidden behind these veils of phantasy, unsought, 
 and often unsuspected. I will gather carefully, out of Dante 
 and Homer, what, in this kind, bears on our subject, in its 
 due place ; the first broad intention of their symbols may be 
 sketched at once. 
 
 88. The rewards of a worthy use of riches, subordinate to 
 other ends, are shown by Dante in the fifth and sixth orbs of 
 Paradise ; for the punishment of their unworthy use, three 
 places are assigned ; one for the avaricious and prodigal 
 whose souls are lost, {Hell, canto 7) ; one for the avaricious 
 and prodigal whose souls are capable of purification, {Purga- 
 tory, canto 19) ; and one for the usurers, of whom none can 
 be redeemed (Hell, canto 17). The first group, the largest in 
 all hell("gente piu che altrove troppa," compare Virgil's 
 " quae maxima turba "), meet in contrary currents, as the 
 
MUNERA PULYERI8. 
 
 imves of Charybdis, casting weights at each other from oppo- 
 site sides. This weariness of contention is the chief element 
 of their torture ; so marked by the beautiful lines beginning 
 " Or puoi, figliuol," &c. : (but the usurers, who made their 
 money inactively, mi on the sand, equally without rest, how- 
 ever. " Di qua, di la, soccorrien, &c.) For it is not avarice, 
 but contention for riches, leading to this double misuse of 
 them, which, in Dante's light, is the unredeemable sin. The 
 place of its punishment is guarded by Plutus, "the great 
 enemy," and " la fiera crudele," a spirit quite different from 
 the Greek Plutus, who, though old and blind, is not cruel, 
 and is curable, so as to become far-sighted, (ov rvcf)\b$ dX/V 
 o^v pXewiDv, — Plato's epithets in first book of the Laws.) Still 
 more does this Dantesque type differ from the resplendent 
 Plutus of Goethe in the second part of Faust, who is the per- 
 sonified power of wealth for good or evil — not the passion for 
 Avealth ; and again from the Plutus of Spenser, who is the 
 passion of mere aggregation. Dante's Plutus is specially and 
 definitely the Spirit of Contention and Competition, or Evil 
 Commerce ; because, as I showed before, this kind of com- 
 merce " makes all men strangers ; " his speech is therefore 
 unintelligible, and no single soul of all those ruined by him 
 has recognizable feat u res. 
 
 On the other hand, the redeemable sins of avarice and 
 prodigality are, in Dante's sight, those which are without de- 
 liberate or calculated operation. The lust, or lavishness, of 
 riches can be purged, so long as there has been no servile 
 consistency of dispute and competition for them. The sin is 
 spoken of as that of degradation by the love of earth ; it is 
 purified by deeper humiliation — the souls crawl on their bel- 
 lies ; their chant is, "my soul cieaveth unto the dust." But 
 the spirits thus condemned are all recognizable, and even the 
 w T orst examples of the thirst for gold, which they are com- 
 pelled to tell the histories of during the night, are of men 
 swept by the passion of avarice into violent crime, but not 
 sold to its steady work. 
 
 89. The precept given to each of these spirits for its de- 
 liverance is — Turn thine eyes to the lucre (lure) which the 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 165 
 
 Eternal King rolls with the mighty wheels. Otherwise, the 
 wheels of the "Greater Fortune," of which the constellation 
 is ascending when Dante's dream begins. Compare George 
 Herbert — 
 
 " Lift up thy head ; 
 Take stars for money ; stars, not to be told 
 By any art, yet to be purchased." 
 
 And Plato's notable sentence in the third book of the Polity . 
 
 Tell them they have divine gold and silver in their souls 
 for ever ; that they need no money stamped of men — neither 
 may they otherwise than impiously mingle the gathering of 
 the divine with the mortal treasure, for through that which the 
 law of the multitude has coined, endless crimes have been done 
 and suffered ; but in their's is neither pollution nor sorrow" 
 
 90. At the entrance of this place of punishment an evil 
 spirit is seen by Dante, quite other than the " Gran Nemico." 
 The great enemy is obeyed knowingly and willingly ; but this 
 spirit — feminine — and called a Siren — is the " Deceitfulness of 
 riches," airdryj ttXovtov of the Gospels, winning obedience by 
 guile. This is the Idol of riches, made doubly phantasmal by 
 Dante's seeing her in a dream. She is lovely to look upon, 
 and enchants by her sweet singing, but her womb is loath- 
 some. Now, Dante does not call her one of the Sirens care- 
 lessly, any more than he speaks of Charybdis carelessly ; 
 and though he had got at the meaning of the Homeric fable 
 only through Virgil's obscure tradition of it, the clue he has 
 given us is quite enough. Bacon's interpretation, " the Sirens, 
 or pleasures" which has become universal since his time, is 
 opposed alike to Plato's meaning and Homer's. The Sirens 
 are not pleasures, but Desires : in the Odyssey they are the 
 phantoms of vain desire ; but in Plato's Vision of Destiny, phan- 
 toms of divine desire ; singing each a different note on the 
 circles of the distaff of Necessity, but forming one harmony, 
 to which the three great Fates put words. Dante, however, 
 adopted the Homeric conception of them, which was that 
 they were demons of the Imagination, not carnal ; (desire of 
 the eyes 5 not lust of the flesh) ; therefore said to be daughters 
 of the Muses. Yet not of the Muses, heavenly or historical 
 
16G 
 
 HUN ERA PUL VERTS. 
 
 but of the Muse of pleasure ; and they are at first winged, 
 because even vain hope excites and helps when first formed ; 
 but afterwards, contending for the possession of the imagi- 
 nation with the Muses themselves, they are deprived of their 
 wings. 
 
 91. And thus we are to distinguish the Siren power from 
 the power of Circe, who is no daughter of the Muses, but of 
 the strong elements, Sun and Sea ; her power is that of frank, 
 and full vital pleasure, which, if governed and watched, 
 nourishes men ; but, un watched, and having no " moly," bit* 
 terness or delay, mixed with it, turns men into beasts, but 
 does not slay them, — leaves them, on the contrary, power of 
 revival. She is herself indeed an Enchantress ; — pure Animal 
 life ; transforming — or degrading — but always wonderful (she 
 puts the stores on board the ship invisibly, and is gone again, 
 like a ghost) ; even the wild beasts rejoice and are softened 
 around her cave ; the transforming poisons she gives to men 
 are mixed with no rich feast, but with pure and right nour- 
 ishment, — Pramnian wine, cheese, and flour ; that is, wine, 
 milk, and corn, the three great sustainers of life — it is their 
 own fault if these make swine of them ; (see Appendix V.) 
 and swine are chosen merely as the type of consumption ; as 
 Plato's vmv ttoAis, in the second book of the Polity, and per- 
 haps chosen by Homer with a deeper knowledge of the like- 
 ness in variety of nourishment, and internal form of body. 
 
 "Et quel est, s'il vous plait, cet audacieux animal qui se 
 permet d'etre bati au dedans comme une jolie petite fille ?" 
 
 " Helas ! chere enfant, j'ai honte de le nommer, et il ne 
 faudra pas m'en vouloir. C'est . . . c'est le cochon. Ce 
 n'est pas precisement flatteur pour vous ; mais nous en 
 sommes tous la, et si cela vous contrarie par trop, il faut aller 
 vous plaindre au bon Dieu qui a voulu que les choses fussent 
 arrangees ainsi : seulement le cochon, qui ne pense qu'a man- 
 ger, a l'estomac bien plus vaste que nous et c'est toujours une 
 consolation." — (Histoire 3? une Bouch.ee de Pain, Lettre ix.) 
 
 92. But the deadly Sirens are in all things opposed to the 
 Circean power. They promise pleasure, but never give it. 
 They nourish in no wise ; but slay by slow death. And 
 
MTINEUA PULVER1S. 
 
 167 
 
 whereas they corrupt the heart and the head, instead of 
 merely betraying the senses, there is no recovery from their 
 power ; they do not tear nor scratch, like Scylla, but the men 
 who have listened to them are poisoned, and waste away. 
 Note that the Sirens' field is covered, not merely with the 
 bones, but with the skins, of those who have been consumed 
 there. They address themselves, in the part of the song 
 which Homer gives, not to the passions of Ulysses, but to his 
 vanity, and the only man who ever came within hearing of 
 them, and escaped untempted, was Orpheus, who silenced the 
 vain imaginations by singing the praises of the gods. 
 
 93. It is, then, one of these Sirens whom Dante takes as 
 the phantasm or deceitfulness of riches ; but note further, 
 that she says it was her song that deceived Ulysses. Look 
 back to Dante's account of Ulysses' death, and we find it was 
 not the love of money, but pride of knowledge, that betrayed 
 him ; whence we get the clue to Dante's complete meaning : 
 that the souls whose love of wealth is pardonable have been 
 first deceived into pursuit of it by a dream of its higher uses, 
 or by ambition. His Siren is therefore the Philotime of 
 Spenser, daughter of Mammon — 
 
 " Wliem all that folk with, such contention 
 Do flock about, my deare, my daughter is — 
 Honour and dignitie from her alone 
 Derived are." 
 
 By comparing Spenser's entire account of this Philotime 
 with Dante's of the Wealth-Siren, we shall get at the full 
 meaning of both poets ; but that of Homer lies hidden much 
 more deeply. For his Sirens are indefinite ; and they are de- 
 sires of any evil thing ; power of wealth is not specially indi- 
 cated by him, until, escaping the harmonious danger of im- 
 agination, Ulysses has to choose between two practical ways 
 of life, indicated by the two rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. 
 The monsters that haunt them are quite distinct from the 
 rocks themselves, which, having many other subordinate sig- 
 nifications, are in the main Labour and Idleness, or getting 
 and spending ; each with its attendant monster, or betraying 
 
168 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 demon. The rock of gaining has its summit in the clouds, in* 
 visible, and not to be climbed ; that of spending is low, but 
 marked by the cursed fig-tree, which has leaves, but no fruit. 
 We know the type elsewhere ; and there is a curious lateral 
 allusion to it by Dante when Jacopo di Sant' Andrea, who had 
 ruined himself by profusion and committed suicide, scatters 
 the leaves of the bush of Lotto degli Agli, endeavouring to 
 hide himself among them. "We shall hereafter examine the 
 type completely ; here I will only give an approximate ren- 
 dering of Homers words, which have been obscured more by 
 translation than even by tradition. 
 
 94. "They are overhanging rocks. The great waves of 
 blue water break round them ; and the blessed Gods call them 
 the Wanderers. 
 
 " By one of them no winged thing can pass — not even the 
 wild doves that bring ambrosia to their father Jove — but the 
 smooth rock seizes its sacrifice of them." (Not even ambrosia 
 to be had without Labour. The word is peculiar — as a part 
 of anything is offered for sacrifice ; especially used of heave- 
 offering.) " It reaches the wide heaven with its top, and a 
 dark blue cloud rests on it, and never passes ; neither does 
 the clear sky hold it, in summer nor in harvest. Nor can 
 any man climb it — not if he had twenty feet and hands, for 
 it is smooth as though it were hewn. 
 
 "And in the midst of it is a cave which is turned the way 
 of hell. And therein dwells Scyila, whining for prey : her 
 cry, indeed, is no louder than that of a newly-born whelp : 
 but she herself is an awful thing — nor can any creature see 
 her face and be glad ; no, though it were a god that rose 
 against her. For she has twelve feet, all fore-feet, and six 
 necks, and terrible heads on them ; and each has three rows 
 of teeth, full of black death. 
 
 " But the opposite rock is lower than this, though but a 
 bow-shot distant ; and upon it there is a great fig-tree, full of 
 leaves ; and under it the terrible Charybdis sudks down the 
 black water. Thrice in the day she sucks it down, and thrice 
 casts it up again : be not thou there when she sucks down, foi 
 Neptune himself could not save thee." 
 
MUNERA PULVER1S. 
 
 [Thus far went my rambling note, in Fraser's Magazine. 
 The Editor sent me a compliment on it— of which I was very 
 proud ; what the Publisher thought of it, I am not informed ; 
 only I know that eventually he stopped the papers. I thin> 
 a great deal of it myself, now, and have put it all in large ! 
 accordingly, and should like to write more ; but will, 
 contrary, self-denyingly, and in gratitude to any read 
 has got through so much, end my chapter.] 
 
170 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 COMMERCE. 
 
 95. As the currency conveys right of choice out of manj 
 things in exchange for one, so Commerce is the agency by 
 which the the power of choice is obtained ; so that countries 
 producing only timber can obtain for their timber silk and 
 gold ; or, naturally producing only jewels and frankincense, 
 can obtain for them cattle and corn. In this function, com- 
 merce is of more importance to a country in proportion to 
 the limitations of its products, and the restlessness of its 
 fancy ; — generally of greater importance towards Northern 
 latitudes. 
 
 96. Commerce is necessary, however, not only to exchange 
 local products, but local skill. Labour requiring the agency 
 of fire can only be given abundantly in cold countries ; labour 
 requiring suppleness of body and sensitiveness of touch, only 
 in warm ones ; labour involving accurate vivacity of thought 
 only in temperate ones ; while peculiar imaginative actions 
 are produced by extremes of heat and cold, and of light and 
 darkness. The production of great art is limited to climates 
 warm enough to admit of repose in the open air, and cool 
 enough to render such repose delightful. Minor variations in 
 modes of skill distinguish every locality. The labour which at 
 any place is easiest, is in that place cheapest ; and it becomes 
 often desirable that products raised in one country should be 
 wrought in another. Hence have arisen discussions on " Inter- 
 national values " which will be one day remembered as highly 
 curious exercises of the human mind. For it will be discov- 
 ered, in due course of tide and time, that international value is 
 regulated just as inter- provincial or inter-parishional value is. 
 Coals and hops are exchanged between Northumberland and 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 171 
 
 Kent on absolutely the same principles as iron and wine be- 
 tween Lancashire and Spain. The greater breadth of an arm 
 of the sea increases the cost, but does not modify the princi- 
 ple of exchange ; and a bargain written in two languag es will 
 have no other economical results than a bargain written in 
 one. The distances of nations are measured, not by seas, 
 but by ignorances ; and their divisions determined, not by 
 dialects, but by enmities.* 
 
 97. Of course, a system of international values may always 
 be constructed if we assume a relation of moral law to physi- 
 cal geography ; as, for instance, that it is right to cheat or 
 rob across a river, though not across a road ; or across a sea, 
 though not across a river, &c. ; — again, a system of such values 
 may be constructed by assuming similar relations of taxation 
 to physical geography ; as, for instance, that an article should 
 be taxed in crossing a river, but not in crossing a road ; or 
 in being carried fifty miles, but not in being carried five, &c. ; 
 such positions are indeed not easily maintained when once put 
 in logical form ; but one law of international value is main- 
 tainable in any form : namely, that the farther your neighbour 
 lives from you, and the less he understands you, the more you 
 are bound to he true in your dealings with him ; because your 
 power over him is greater in proportion to his ignorance, and 
 his remedy more difficult in proportion to his distance, f 
 
 98. I have just said the breadth of sea increases the cost of 
 exchange. Now note that exchange, or commerce, in itself, is 
 always costly ; the sum of the value of the goods being dimin- 
 ished by the cost of their conveyance, and by the maintenance 
 of the persons employed in it ; so that it is only when there is 
 advantage to both producers (in getting the one thing for the 
 
 [* I have repeated the substance of this and the next paragraph so 
 often since, that I am ashamed and weary. The thing is too true, and 
 too simple, it seems, for anybody ever to believe. Meantime, the theo- 
 ries of " international values, " as explained by Modern Political Econ- 
 omy, have brought about last year's pillage of France by Germany, and 
 the affectionate relations now existing in consequence between the in- 
 habitants of the right and left banks of the Rhine.] 
 
 [f I wish some one would examine and publish accurately the late 
 dealings of the Governors of the Cape with the Caffirs.] 
 
172 
 
 MUNERA PULVEJHS. 
 
 other) greater than the loss in conveyance, that the exchange 
 is expedient. And it can only he justly conducted when the 
 porters kept by the producers (commonly called merchants) 
 expect mere pay, and not profit.* For in just commerce there 
 are but three parties — the two persons or societies exchang- 
 ing, and the agent or agents of exchange ; the value of the 
 things to be exchanged is known by both the exchangers, and 
 each receives equal value, neither gaining nor losing (for what- 
 ever one gains the other loses). The intermediate agent is 
 paid a known per-centage by both, partly for labour in con- 
 veyance, partly for care, knowledge, and risk ; every attempt 
 at concealment of the amount of the pay indicates either ef- 
 fort on the part of the agent to obtain unjust profit, or effort 
 on the part of the exchangers to refuse him just pay. But for 
 the most part it is the first, namely, the effort on the part of 
 the merchant to obtain larger profit (so-called) by buying 
 cheap and selling dear. Some part, indeed, of this larger 
 gain is deserved, and might be openly demanded, because it 
 is the reward of the merchant's knowledge, and foresight of 
 probable necessity ; but the greater part of such gain is un- 
 just ; and unjust in this most fatal way, that it depends, first, 
 on keeping the exchangers ignorant of the exchange value of 
 the articles ; and, secondly, on taking advantage of the buyer's 
 need and the seller's poverty. It is, therefore, one of the es- 
 sential, and quite the most fatal, forms of usury ; for usury 
 means merely taking an exorbitant f sum for the use of any- 
 thing ; and it is no matter whether the exorbitance is on loan 
 or exchange, on rent or on price — the essence of the usury 
 being that it is obtained by advantage of opportunity or ne- 
 cessity, and not as due reward for labour. All the great 
 
 f* By <l pay," I mean wages for labour or skill; by "profit," gain 
 dependent on the state of the market.] 
 
 [f Since I wrote this, I have worked out the question of interest of 
 money, which always, until lately, had embarrassed and defeated me ; 
 and I find that the payment of interest of any amount whatever is real 
 44 usury," and entirely unjustifiable. I was shown this chiefly by the 
 pamphlets issued by Mr. W. C. Sillar, though I greatly regret the impa. 
 tience which causes Mr. Sillar to regard usury as the radical crime in po- 
 litical economy. There are others worse, that act with it.] 
 
MU2TERA PULVERIS. 
 
 173 
 
 thinkers, therefore, have held it to be unnatural and impious, 
 in so far as it feeds on the distress of others, or their folly. * 
 Nevertheless, attempts to repress it by law must for ever be 
 ineffective ; though Plato, Bacon, and the First Napoleon — all 
 three of them men who knew somewhat more of humanity 
 than the " British merchant " usually does — tried their hands 
 at it, and have left some (probably) good moderative forms of 
 law, which we will examine in their place. But the only final 
 check upon it must be radical purifying of the national char- 
 acter, for being, as Bacon calls it, " concessum propter duri- 
 tiem cordis," it is to be done away with by touching the heart 
 only ; not, however, without medicinal law — as in the case of 
 the other permission, ' 'propter duritiem." But in this more 
 than in anything (though much in all, and though in this he 
 would not himself allow of their application, for his own laws 
 against usury are sharp enough), Plato's words in the fourth 
 book of the Polity are true, that neither drugs, nor charms, 
 nor burnings, will touch a deep-lying political sore, any more 
 than a deep bodily one ; but only right and utter change of 
 constitution: and that 4 c they do but lose their labour who 
 think that by any tricks of law they can get the better of 
 these mischiefs of commerce, and see not that they hew at a 
 Hydra. * 
 
 99. And indeed this Hydra seems so unslayable, and sin 
 sticks so fast between the joinings of the stones of buying 
 and selling, that " to trade " in things, or literally " cross- 
 give " them, has warped itself, by the instinct of nations, into 
 their worst word for fraud ; for, because in trade there cannot 
 but be trust, and it seems also that there cannot but also be 
 injury in answer to it, what is merely fraud between enemies 
 becomes treachery among friends: and " trader," "traditor," 
 and " traitor " are but the same word. For which simplicity 
 of language there is more reason than at first appears : for 
 as in true commerce there is no "profit," so in true com- 
 merce there is no "sale." The idea of sale is that of an 
 
 * Hence Dante's companionship of Cahors, Inf., canto xi., supported 
 by the view taken of the matter throughout the middle ages, in commoB 
 with the Greeks. 
 
174: 
 
 MUNERA PVLVERIS. 
 
 interchange between enemies respectively endeavouring to get 
 the better one of another ; but commerce is an exchange be- 
 tween friends ; and there is no desire but that it should be 
 just, any more than there would be between members of the 
 same family.* The moment there is a bargain over the pot* 
 tage, the family relation is dissolved : — typically, " the days of 
 mourning for my father are at hand." Whereupon follows 
 the resolve, " then w T ill I slay my brother." 
 
 100. This inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more 
 notable because it is a fulfilment of the law that the corrup- 
 tion of the best is the worst. For as, taking the body nat- 
 ural for symbol of the body politic, the governing and form- 
 ing powers may be likened to the brain, and the labouring 
 to the limbs, the mercantile, presiding over circulation and 
 communication of things in changed utilities, is symbolized 
 by the heart ; and, if that hardens, all is lost. And this is 
 the ultimate lesson which the leader of English intellect meant 
 for us, (a lesson, indeed, not all his own, but part of the old 
 wisdom of humanity), in the tale of the Merchant of Venice ; 
 in which the true and incorrupt merchant, — kind and f ree be- 
 yond every other Shakspearian conception of men, — is opposed 
 to the corrupted merchant, or usurer ; the lesson being deep- 
 ened by the expression of the strange hatred which the cor- 
 rupted merchant bears to the pure one, mixed with intense 
 scorn, — 
 
 " This is the fool that lent out money gratis ; look to him, 
 jailer," (as to lunatic no less than criminal) the enmity, ob- 
 serve, having its symbolism literally carried out by being 
 aimed straight at the heart, and finally foiled by a literal ap- 
 peal to the great moral law that flesh and blood cannot be 
 weighed, enforced by " Portia "f ("Portion"), the type of di- 
 
 [* I do not wonder when I re-read this, that people talk about my 
 u sentiment." But there is no sentiment whatever in the matter. It is 
 a hard and bare commercial fact, that if two people deal together wh<r 
 don't try to cheat each other, they will in a given time, make more money 
 out of each other than if they do. See § 104.] 
 
 f Shakspeare would certainly never have chosen this name had he 
 heen forced to retain the Roman spelling. Like Perdita, "lost lady,' 
 
MVNERA PULVER1S. 
 
 175 
 
 rate Fortune, found, not in gold, nor in silver, but in lead, 
 that is to say, in endurance and patience, not in splendour ; 
 and finally taught by her lips also, declaring, instead of the 
 law and quality of " merces," the greater law and quality of 
 mercy, which is not strained, but drops as the rain, blessing 
 him that gives and him that takes. And observe that this 
 "mercy'' is not the mean "Misericordia," but the mighty 
 " Gratia," answered by Gratitude, (observe Shy lock's leaning 
 on the, to him detestable, word, gratis, and compare the re- 
 lations of Grace to Equity given in the second chapter of the 
 second book of the Memorabilia ;) that is to say, it is the gra- 
 cious or loving, instead of the strained, or competing manner, 
 of doing things, answered, not only with " merces " or pay, 
 but with " merci " or thanks. And this is indeed the mean- 
 ing of the great benediction "Grace, mercy, and peace," for 
 there can be no peace without grace, (not even by help of 
 rifled cannon), nor even without triplicity of graciousness, for 
 the Greeks, who began but with one Grace, had to open their 
 scheme into three before they had done. 
 
 101. With the usual tendency of long repeated thought* 
 to take the surface for the deep, w T e have conceived these 
 goddesses as if they only gave loveliness to gesture ; whereas 
 
 or Cordelia, "heart-lady," Portia is "fortune" lady. The two great 
 relative groups of words, Fortuna, fero, and fors — Portio, porto, and 
 pars (with the lateral branch, op-portune, iin-portune, opportunity, &c.), 
 are of deep and intricate significance ; their various senses of bringing, 
 abstracting, and sustaining being all centralized by the wheel (which 
 bears and moves at once), or still better, the ball (spera) of Fortune, — 
 " Volve sua spera, e beata si gode : " the motive power of this wheel 
 distinguishing its goddess from the fixed majesty of Necessitas with her 
 iron nails ; or avdytcr], with her pillar of fire and iridescent orbits, fixed 
 at the centre. Portus and porta, and gate in its connexion with gain, 
 form another interesting branch group ; and Mors, the concentration of 
 delaying, is always to be remembered with Fors, the concentration of 
 bringing and bearing, passing on into Fortis and Fortitude. 
 
 [This note is literally a mere memorandum for the future work which 
 I am now completing in Fors Olavigera ; it was printed partly in vanity, 
 but also with real desire to get people to share the interest I found in 
 the careful study of the leading words in noble languages. Compare 
 the next note.] 
 
176 
 
 M UN ERA PULVER1S. 
 
 their true function is to give graciousness to deed, the othei 
 loveliness arising naturally out of that. In which function 
 Charis becomes Charitas ; * and has a name and praise even 
 greater than that of Faith or Truth, for these may be main- 
 tained sullenly and proudly ; but Charis is in her countenance 
 always gladdening (Aglaia), and in her service instant and 
 humble ; and the true wife of Vulcan, or Labour. And it is 
 not until her sincerity of function is lost, and her mere beauty 
 contemplated instead of her patience, that she is born again 
 of the foam flake, and becomes Aphrodite ; and it is then only 
 that she becomes capable of joining herself to war and to the 
 enmities of men, instead of to labour and their services. 
 Therefore the fable of Mars and Venus is chosen by Homer, 
 picturing himself as Demodocus, to sing at the games in the 
 court of Alcinous. Phaeacia is the Homeric island of Atlantis ; 
 an image of noble and wise government, concealed, (how 
 slightly !) merely by the change of a short vowel for a long 
 
 * As Charis becomes Charitas, tlie word " Cher," or " Dear," passes 
 from Shylock's sense of it (to buy cheap and sell dear) into Antonio's 
 sense of it : emphasized with the final i in tender u Cheri," and hushed 
 to English calmness in our noble ' ' Cherish." The reader must not think 
 that any care can be misspent in tracing the connexion and power of the 
 words which we have to use in the sequel. (See i^ppendix VI.) Much 
 education sums itself in making men economize their words, and under- 
 stand them. Nor is it possible to estimate the harm which has been 
 done, in matters of higher speculation and conduct, by loose verbiage, 
 though we may guess at it by observing the dislike which people show 
 to having anything about their religion said to them in simple words, be- 
 cause then they understand it. Thus congregations meet weekly to in- 
 voke the influence of a Spirit of Life and Truth ; yet if any part of that 
 character were intelligibly expressed to them by the formulas of the 
 service, they would be offended. Suppose, for instance, in the closing 
 benediction, the clergyman were to give vital significance to the vague 
 word "Holy," and were to say, "the fellowship of the Helpful and 
 Honest Ghost be with you, and remain with you always," what would 
 be the horror of many, first at the irreverence of so intelligible an ex- 
 pression ; and secondly, at the discomfortable occurrence of the sus- 
 picion that while throughout the commercial dealings of the week they 
 had denied the propriety of Help, and possibility of Honesty, the Per* 
 son whose company they had been now asking to be blessed with could 
 have no fellowship with cruel people or knaves. 
 
MUNERA PULVE1US. 
 
 177 
 
 one in the name of its queen ; yet misunderstood by all late? 
 writers, (even by Horace, in his "pinguis, Phaeaxque "). 
 That fable expresses the perpetual error of men in thinking 
 that grace and dignity can only be reached by the soldier, and 
 never by the artisan ; so that commerce and the useful arts 
 have had the honour and beauty taken away, and only the 
 Fraud and Pain left to them, with the lucre. Which is, in- 
 deed, one great reason of the continual blundering about the 
 offices of government with respect to commerce. The higher 
 classes are ashamed to employ themselves in it ; and though 
 ready enough to fight for (or occasionally against) the people, 
 — to preach to them, — or judge them, will not break bread for 
 them : the refined upper servant who has willingly looked 
 after the burnishing of the armoury and ordering of the 
 library, not liking to set foot in the larder. 
 
 102. Farther still. As Charis becomes Charitas on the one 
 side, she becomes — better still — Chara, Joy, on the other ; 
 or rather this is her very mother's milk and the beauty of her 
 childhood ; for God brings no enduring Love, nor any other 
 good, out of pain ; nor out of contention ; but out of joy and 
 harmony. And in this sense, human and divine, music and 
 gladness, and the measures of both, come into her name ; 
 and Cher becomes full-vowelled Cheer, and Cheerful ; and 
 Chara opens into Choir and Choral.* 
 
 103. And lastly. As Grace passes into Freedom of action, 
 Charis becomes Eleutheria, or Liberality ; a form of liberty 
 quite curiously and intensely different from the thing usually 
 
 * u tc fxkv ovv &\Aa £c3a ovk %X €lv ctfcQyo'u' twu £y reus Kiiffiaeci rd^wtr 
 obdh ara^ioot/, ots ftfa pvO/mbs uvofia koX an^ovla' 7];jup 5 e o v s e ? tt o /.i e v robs 
 Oeovs (Apollo, the Muses, and Bacchus— the grave Bacchus, that is— 
 ruling the choir of age ; or Bacchus restraining ; ' sseva ie?ie, cum Bere- 
 cyntio cornu, tympana,' &c. ) cr v y%o p €vr as dedocrdai, tovtovs elvcu 
 ical rovs SedcvKOTCLS t\v evpvQfxov re Ka\ evap{x6viov aicrQrjaiv (jl€6" rjdovr t s . . . 
 Xopovs re vvouaKevou irapa rrjs x a ^« ? €fX(bvrov fivopa." H Other animals 
 have no perception of order nor of disorder in motion ; but for us, 
 Apollo and Bacchus and the Muses are appointed to mingle in our 
 dances ; and these are they who have given us the sense of delight in 
 rhythm and harmony. And the name of choir, choral dance, (we mav 
 believe,) came from chara (delighf\'" — Laws, book ii. 
 
173 
 
 MUNERA PULVER1S. 
 
 understood by " Liberty" in modem language : indeed, much 
 more like what some people would call slavery : for a Greek 
 always understood, primarily, by liberty, deliverance from the 
 lav/ of his own passions (or from what the Christian writers 
 call bondage of corruption), and this a complete liberty : not 
 being merely safe from the Siren, but also unbound from the 
 mast, and not having to resist the passion, but making it fawn 
 upon, and follow him— (this maybe again partly the meaning 
 of the fawning beasts about the Circean cave ; so, again, 
 George Herbert — 
 
 Correct thy passion's spite, 
 
 Then may the beasts draw thee to happy light)— 
 
 And it is only in such generosity that any man becomes 
 capable of so governing others as to take true part in any 
 system of national economy. Nor is there any other eternal 
 distinction between the upper and lower classes than this 
 form of liberty, Eleutheria, or benignity, in the one, and its 
 opposite of slavery, Douleia, or malignity, in the other ; the 
 separation of these two orders of men, and the firm govern- 
 ment of the lower by the higher, being the first conditions of 
 possible wealth and economy in any state, — the Gods giving 
 it no greater gift than the power to discern its true freemen, 
 and " malignum spernere vulgus." 
 
 104 While I have traced the finer and higher laws of this 
 matter for those whom they concern, I have also to note 
 the material law — vulgarly expressed in the proverb, " Hon- 
 esty is the best policy." That proverb is indeed wholly inap- 
 plicable to matters of private interest. It is not true that 
 honesty, as far as material gain is concerned, profits individ- 
 uals. A clever and cruel knave will in a mixed society al- 
 ways be richer than an honest person can be. But Honesty 
 is the best C£ policy," if policy mean practice of State. For 
 fraud gains nothing in a State. It only enables the knaves in 
 it to live at the expense of honest people ; while there is for 
 every act of fraud, however small, a loss of wealth to the 
 
MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 179 
 
 community. Whatever the fraudulent person gains, soma 
 other person loses, as fraud produces nothing ; and there is, 
 besides, the loss of the time and thought spent in accomplish- 
 ing the fraud, and of the strength otherwise obtainable by 
 mutual help (not to speak of the fevers of anxiety and jealousy 
 in the blood, which are a heavy physical loss, as I will show in 
 due time). Practically, when the nation is deeply corrupt, 
 cheat answers to cheat ; every one is in turn imposed upon, 
 and there is to the body politic the dead loss of the ingenuity, 
 together with the incalculable mischief of the injury to each 
 defrauded person, producing collateral effect unexpectedly. 
 My neighbour sells me bad meat : I sell him in return flawed 
 iron. We neither of us get one atom of pecuniary advantage 
 on the whole transaction, but we both suffer unexpected in- 
 convenience ; my men get scurvy, and his cattle-truck runs 
 off the rails. 
 
 105. The examination of this form of Gharis must, there- 
 fore, lead us into the discussion of the principles of govern- 
 ment in general, and especially of that of the poor by the 
 rich, discovering how the Graciousness joined with the Great- 
 ness, or Love with Majestas, is the true Dei Gratia, or Divine 
 Eight, of every form and manner of King ; i. e. } specifically, 
 of the thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, and powers 
 of the earth : — of the thrones, stable, or " ruling/' literally 
 right-doing powers ("rex eris, recte si facies " ) : — of the dom- 
 inations — lordly, edifying, dominant and harmonious powers ; 
 chiefly domestic, over the " built thing," domus, or house ; 
 and inherently twofold, Dominus and Domina ; Lord and 
 Lady : — of the Princedoms, pre-eminent, incipient, creative, 
 and demonstrative powers ; thus poetic and mercantile, in the 
 " princeps carmen deduxisse " and the merchant-prince : — of 
 the Virtues or Courages ; militant, guiding, or Ducal powers : 
 • — and finally of the Strengths, or Forces pure ; magistral # 
 powers, of the More over the less, and the forceful and free 
 over the w T eak and servile elements of life. 
 
 Subject enough for the next paper, involving " economical " 
 principles of some importance, of which, for theme, here is a 
 sentence, which I do not care to translate, for it would sound 
 
ISO 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 harsh in English,* though, truly, it is one of the tenderest 
 ever uttered by man ; which may be meditated over, or rather 
 through, in the meanwhile, by any one who will take the 
 pains : — 
 
 'Ap* ovv, &a"n-ep '{tittos rca tcueiriarrjfioui fx\v tyx eL P°^ VTL XP^°'^ ai Cm^ 1 ® 
 hrrli/j ovtcc Kai ade\(pbs y orav tls avry jxt] imo-TdfjLevos eyxeip xpV a '6 a h (vpl* 
 iari ; 
 
 [* My way now, is to say tilings plainly, if I can, whether they sound 
 harsh or not ; — this is the translation — " Is it possible, then, that as a 
 horse is only a mischief to any one who attempts to use him without 
 knowing how, so also our brother, if we attempt to use him without 
 knowing how, may be a mischief to us ?"] 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 181 
 
 CHAPTEK V. 
 
 8 
 
 GOVERNMENT. 
 
 106, It remains for us, as I stated in the close of the last 
 chapter, to examine first the principles of government in 
 general, and then those of the government of the Poor by 
 the Kich. 
 
 The government of a state consists in its customs, laws, 
 and councils, and their enforcements. 
 
 I. Customs. 
 
 As one person primarily differs from another by fineness 
 of nature, and, secondarily, by fineness of training, so also, 
 a polite nation differs from a savage one, first, by the refine- 
 ment of its nature, and secondly by the delicacy of its cus- 
 toms. 
 
 In the completeness of custom, which is the nation's self- 
 government, there are three stages— first, fineness in method 
 of doing or of being; — called the manner or moral of acts; 
 secondly, firmness in holding such method after adoption, so 
 that it shall become a habit in the character : i. e., a constant 
 " having " or £C behaving ; " and, lastly, ethical power in per- 
 formance and endurance, w 7 hich is the skill following on 
 habit, and the ease reached by frequency of right doing. 
 
 The sensibility of the nation is indicated by the fineness of 
 its customs ; its courage, continence, and self-respect by its 
 persistence iii them. 
 
 By sensibility I mean its natural perception of beauty, 
 fitness, and lightness ; or of what is lovely, decent, and 
 just : faculties dependent much on race, and the primal signs 
 of fine breeding in man ; but cultivable also by education, 
 and necessarily perishing without it. True education has, 
 indeed, no other function than the development of these 
 
182 
 
 MUNERA PULVERI& 
 
 faculties, and of the relative will. It lias been the great erroi 
 of modern intelligence to mistake science for education. You 
 do not educate a man by telling him what he knew not, but 
 by making him what he was not. 
 
 And making him what he will remain for ever : for no 
 wash of weeds will bring back the faded purple. And in 
 that dyeing there are two processes — first, the cleansing and 
 wringing-out, which is the baptism with water ; and then the 
 infusing of the blue and scarlet colours, gentleness and justice, 
 which is the baptism with fire. 
 
 107 * The customs and manners of a sensitive and highly- 
 trained race are always Vital : that is to say, they are orderly 
 manifestations of intense life, like the habitual action of the 
 fingers of a musician. The customs and manners of a vile and 
 rude race, on the contrary, are conditions of decay : they are 
 not, properly speaking, habits, but incrustations ; not re- 
 straints, or forms, of life ; but gangrenes, noisome, and the 
 beginnings of death. 
 
 And generally, so far as custom attaches itself to indolence 
 instead of action, and to prejudice instead of perception, it 
 takes this deadly character, so that thus 
 
 Custom hangs upon us with a weight 
 Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life. 
 
 But that weight, if it become impetus, (living instead of 
 dead weight) is just what gives value to custom, when it 
 works with life, instead of against it. 
 
 108. The high ethical training of a nation implies perfect 
 Grace, Pitifulness, and Peace ; it is irreconcilably inconsistent 
 with filthy or mechanical employments, — with the desire of 
 money, — and with mental states of anxiety, jealous}', or in- 
 difference to pain. The present insensibility of the upper 
 classes of Europe to the surrounding aspects of suffering, 
 uncleanness, and crime, binds them not only into one response 
 bility with the sin, but into one dishonour with the foulness, 
 
 [* Think over this paragraph carefully; it should have been much 
 expanded to be quite intelligible but it contains all that I want it to 
 contain.] 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 183 
 
 which rot at their thresholds. The crimes daily recorded in 
 the police-courts of London and Paris (and much more those 
 which are i^recorded) are a disgrace to the whole body poli- 
 tic ; * they are, as in the body natural, stains of disease on a 
 face of delicate skin, making the delicacy itself frightful. 
 Similarly, the filth and poverty permitted or ignored in the 
 midst of us are as dishonourable to the whole social body, as 
 in the body natural it is to wash the face, but leave the hands 
 and feet foul. Christ's way is the only true one : begin at the 
 feet ; the face will take care of itself. 
 
 109. Yet, since necessarily, in the frame of a nation, noth- 
 ing but the head can be of gold, and the feet, for the work 
 they have to do, must be part of iron, part of clay ; — foul or 
 mechanical work is always reduced by a noble race to the 
 minimum in quantity ; and, even then, performed and en- 
 dured, not without sense of degradation, as a fine temper is 
 wounded by the sight of the lower offices of the body. The 
 highest conditions of human society reached hitherto have 
 cast such work to slaves ; but supposing slavery of a politi- 
 cally defined kind to be done away with, mechanical and foul 
 employment must, in all highly organized states, take the as- 
 pect either of punishment or probation. All criminals should 
 at once be set to the most dangerous and painful forms of it, 
 especially to work in mines and at furnaces, f so as to relieve 
 
 * "The ordinary brute, who flourishes in the very centre of ornate 
 life, tells us of unknown depths on the verge of which we totter, being 
 bound to thank our stars every day we live that there is not a general 
 outbreak, and a revolt from the yoke of civilization. " — Times leader, 
 Dec. 25, 1862. Admitting that our stars are to be thanked for our safety, 
 whom are we to thank for the danger ? 
 
 f Our politicians, even the best of them, regard only the distress 
 caused by the failure of mechanical labour. The degradation caused 
 by its excess is a far more serious subject of thought, and of future fear. 
 I shall examine this part of our subject at length hereafter. There can 
 hardly be any doubt, at present, cast on the truth of the above passages, 
 as all the great thinkers are unanimous on the matter. Plato's words 
 are terrific in their scorn and pity whenever he touches on the mechan- 
 ical arts. He calls the men employed in them not even human, but 
 partially and diminutively human, "&tyK»x|*jro«»" and opposes such 
 work to noble occupations, not merely as prison is opposed to freedom 
 
M UN ERA PULVERIS. 
 
 the innocent population as far as possible : of merely rougli 
 (not mechanical) manual labour, especially agricultural, a largos 
 portion should be done by the upper classes ; — bodily health, and 
 sufficient contrast and repose for the mental functions, being W- 
 atlainable without it ; what necessarily inferior labour remains 
 to be done, as especially in manufactures, should, and always 
 will, when the relations of society are reverent and harmoni- 
 ous, fall to the lot of those who, for the time, are fit for noth- 
 ing better. For as, whatever the perfectness of the educa- 
 tional system, there must remain infinite differences between 
 the natures and capacities of men ; and these differing natures 
 are generally rangeable under the two qualities of lordly, (or 
 tending towards rule, construction, and harmony), and servile 
 (or tending towards misrule, destruction, and discord) ; and, 
 
 but as a convict's dishonoured prison is to the temple (escape from them 
 "being like that of a criminal to the sanctuary) ; and the destruction 
 caused by them being of soul no less than body. — Rep. vi. 9. Compare 
 Laws, v. 11. Xenophon dwells on the evil of occupations at the fur- 
 nace and especially their " ocrxoA-fo, want of leisure." — Econ, i. 4. 
 (Modern England, with all its pride of education, has lost that first sense 
 of the word "school ; M and till it recover that, it will find no other 
 rightly.) His word for the harm to the soul is to " break " it, as we say 
 of the heart. — Econ. i. 6. And herein, also, is the root of the scorn, 
 otherwise apparently most strange and cruel, with which Homer, Dante, 
 and Shakspeare always speak of the populace • for it is entirely true 
 that, in great states, the lower orders are low by nature as well as by 
 task, being precisely that part of the commonwealth which has been 
 thrust down for its coarseness or unworthiness (by coarseness I mean 
 especially insensibility and irreverence — the " profane " of Horace); 
 and when this ceases to be so, and the corruption and profanity are in 
 the higher instead of the lower orders, there arises, first, helpless confu* 
 sion , then, if the lower classes deserve power, ensues swift revolution, 
 and they get it ; but if neither the populace nor their rulers deserve it, 
 there follows mere darkness and dissolution, till, out of the putrid ele- 
 ments, some new capacity of order rises, like grass on a grave ; if not, 
 there is no more hope, nor shadow of turning, for that nation. Atropoa 
 has her way with it. 
 
 So that the law of national health is like that of a great lake or sea, 
 in perfect but slow circulation, letting the dregs fall continually to the 
 lowest place, and the clear water rise ; yet so as that there shall be no 
 neglect of the lower orders, but perfect supervision and sympathy, bo 
 that if one member suffer, all members shall suffer with it. 
 
MUJSfERA PUL VERTS. 
 
 185 
 
 since the lordly part is only in a state of profitableness while 
 ruling, and the servile only in a state of redeemableness while 
 serving, the whole health of the state depends on the mani- 
 fest separation of these two elements of its mind ; for, if the 
 servile part be not separated and rendered visible in service, 
 it mixes with, and corrupts, the entire body of the state ; and 
 if the lordly part be not distinguished, and set to rule, it is 
 crushed and lost, being turned to no account, so that the 
 rarest qualities of the nation are all given to it in vain.* 
 
 II. Laws. 
 
 110. These are the definitions and bonds of custom, or of 
 what the nation desires should become custom. 
 
 Law is either archic, f (of direction), meristic, (of division), 
 or critic, (of judgment). 
 
 Archie law is that of appointment and precept : it defines 
 what is and is not to be done. 
 
 Meristic law is that of balance and distribution : it defines 
 what is and is not to be possessed. 
 
 Critic law is that of discernment and award : it defines 
 what is and is not to be suffered. 
 
 III. A. Archic Law. If we choose to unite the laws of 
 precept and distribution under the head of " statutes," all law 
 
 * u oAlyiis, Ka\ yiyvofxevrjs." (Little, and that little born in vain.) 
 
 The bitter sentence never was so true as at this day. 
 
 [f This following note is a mere cluster of memoranda, but I keep it 
 for reference.] Thetic, or Thesmic, would perhaps be abetter term 
 than archic ; but liable to be confused with some which we shall want 
 relating to Theoria. The administrators of the three great divisions of 
 law are severally Archons Merists, and Dicasts. The Archons are the 
 true princes, or beginners of things ; or leaders (as of an orchestra). 
 The Merists are properly the Domini, or Lords of houses and nations. 
 The Dicasts, properly, the judges, and that with Olympian justice, 
 which reaches to heaven and hell. The violation of archic law is a^apria 
 (error), irov^pia. (failure or TrXyix/uLiXsia (discord). The violation of mer- 
 istic law is avof.ua (iniquity). The violation of critic law is adtKia (injury) 
 Iniquity is the central generic term ; for all law is fatal ; it is the divi- 
 sion to men of their fate ; as the fold of their pasture, it is vo\xos ; as the 
 assigning of their portion, ( uo?/?a. 
 
18G 
 
 MUNERA PULVERI3. 
 
 is simply either of statute or judgment ; that is, first the es- 
 tablishment of ordinance, and, secondly, the assignment ol 
 the reward, or penalty, due to its observance or violation. 
 
 To some extent these two forms of law must be associated, 
 and, with every ordinance, the penalty of disobedience to it 
 be also determined. But since the degrees and guilt of diso- 
 bedience vary, the determination of due reward and punish- 
 ment must be modified by discernment of special fact, which 
 is peculiarly the office of the judge, as distinguished from 
 that of the lawgiver and law-sustainer, or king ; not but that 
 the two offices are always theoretically, and in early stages, 
 or limited numbers, of society, are often practically, united in 
 the same person or persons. 
 
 112. Also, it is necessary to keep clearly in view the dis- 
 tinction between these two kinds of law, because the possible 
 range of law is wider in proportion to their separation. There 
 are many points of conduct respecting which the nation may 
 wisely express its will by a written precept or resolve, yet not 
 enforce it by penalty : * and the expedient degree of penalty 
 is always quite a separate consideration from the expedience 
 of the statute ; for the statute may often be better enforced 
 by mercy than severity, and is also easier in the bearing, and 
 less likely to be abrogated. Farther, laws of precept have 
 reference especially to youth, and concern themselves with 
 training ; but laws of judgment to manhood, and concern 
 themselves with remedy and reward. There is a highly curi- 
 ous feeling in the English mind against educational law : w r e 
 think no man's liberty should be interfered with till he has 
 done irrevocable wrong ; whereas it is then just too late for 
 the only gracious and kingly interference, which is to hinder 
 him from doing it. Make your educational laws strict, and 
 
 [* This is the only sentence which, in revising these essays, I am now 
 inclined to question ; hut the point is one of extreme difficulty. There 
 might be a law, for instance, of curfew, that candles should he put out, 
 unless for necessary service, at such and such an hour, the idea of 
 " necessary service" being quite indefinable, and no penalty possible ; 
 yet there would be a distinct consciousness of illegal conduct in young 
 ladies* minds who danced by candlelight till dawn.] 
 
M UN ERA PULVERIS. 
 
 1S7 
 
 your criminal ones may be gentle ; but, leave youth its liberty 
 and you will have to dig dungeons for age. And it is good 
 for a man that he " wear the yoke in his youth : " for the 
 reins may then be of silken thread ; and with sweet chime of 
 silver bells at the bridle ; but, for the captivity of age, you 
 must forge the iron fetter, and cast the passing bell. 
 
 113. Since no law can be, in a final or true sense, estab- 
 lished, but by right, (all unjust laws involving the ultimate 
 necessity of their own abrogation), the law-giving can only 
 become a law-sustaining power in so far as it is Royal, or 
 " right doing ; " — in so far, that is, as it rules, not mis- 
 rules, and orders, not dis-orders, the things submitted to it. 
 Throned on this rock of justice, the kingly power becomes 
 established and establishing ; t£ Befas" or divine, and, there- 
 fore, it is literally true that no ruler can err, so long as he is a 
 ruler, or ap^v ovSels a^apravu totc orav up^wv rj ; perverted by 
 careless thought, w T hich has cost the world somewhat, into— 
 ' ' the king can do no wrong. 5 ' 
 
 114. B. Meristic Law,* or that of the tenure of property, 
 first determines what every individual possesses by right, and 
 secures it to him ; and what he possesses by wrong, and de- 
 prives him of it. But it has a far higher provisory function : 
 it determines what every man should possess, and puts it 
 within his reach on due conditions ; and what he should not 
 possess, and puts this out of his reach, conclusively. 
 
 115. Every article of human wealth has certain conditions 
 attached to its merited possession ; when these are unob- 
 served, possession becomes rapine. And the object of meris- 
 tic law is not only to secure to every man his rightful share 
 (the share, that is, which he has worked for, produced, or re- 
 3eived by gift from a rightful owner), but to enforce the due 
 conditions of possession, as far as law may conveniently reach .* 
 for instance, that land shall not be wantonly allowed to run 
 to waste, that streams shall not be poisoned by the persons 
 through whose properties they pass, nor air be rendered un- 
 
 [* Read tliis and the next paragraph with attention ; they contain 
 slear statements, which I cannot mend, of things most necessary.] 
 
183 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 wholesome beyond given limits. Laws of this kind exist al 
 ready in rudimentary degree, but need large development : 
 the just laws respecting the possession of works of art have 
 not hitherto been so much as conceived, and the daily loss of 
 national wealth, and of its use, in this respect, is quite incal- 
 culable. And these laws need revision quite as much respect- 
 ing property in national as in private hands. For instance : 
 the public are under a vague impression that, because they 
 have paid for the contents of the British Museum, every one 
 has an equal right to see and to handle them. But the pub- 
 lic have similarly paid for the contents of Woolwich arsenal v 
 yet do not expect free access to it, or handling of its contents. 
 The British Museum is neither a free circulating library, nor 
 a free school : it is a place for the safe preservation, and ex- 
 hibition on due occasion, of unique books, unique objects of 
 natural history, and unique works of art ; its books can no 
 more be used by everybody than its coins can be handled, or 
 its statues cast. There ought to be free libraries in every 
 quarter of London, with large and complete reading-rooms 
 attached ; so also free educational museums should be open 
 in every quarter of London, all day long, until late at night, 
 well lighted, well catalogued, and rich in contents both of art 
 and natural history. But neither the British Museum nor 
 National Gallery is a school ; they are treasuries ; and both 
 should be severely restricted in access and in use. Unless 
 some order of this kind is made, and that soon, for the MSS. 
 department of the Museum, (its superintendents have sorrow- 
 fully told me this, and repeatedly), the best MSS. in the col- 
 lection will be destroyed, irretrievably, by the careless and 
 continual handling to which they are now subjected. 
 
 Finally, in certaiu conditions of a nation's progress, laws 
 limiting accumulation of any kind of property may be found 
 expedient. 
 
 116. C. Critic Law determines questions of injury, and 
 assigns due rewards and punishments to conduct. 
 
 Two curious economical questions arise laterally with re- 
 spect to this branch of law, namely, the cost of crime, and 
 
MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 the cost of judgment. The cost of crime is endured by na- 
 tions ignorantly, that expense being nowhere stated in their 
 budgets ; the cost of judgment, patiently, (provided only it can 
 be had pure for the money), because the science, or perhaps 
 we ought rather to say the art, of law, is felt to found a noble 
 profession and discipline ; so that civilized nations are usually 
 glad that a number of persons should be supported by exer- 
 cise in oratory and analysis. But it has not yet been calcu- 
 lated what the practical value might have been, in other di- 
 rections, of the intelligence now occupied in deciding, through 
 courses of years, what might have been decided as justly, had 
 the date of judgment been fixed, in as many hours. Imagine 
 one half of the funds which any great nation devotes to dis- 
 pute by law, applied to the determination of physical ques- 
 tions in medicine, agriculture, and theoretic science ; and 
 calculate the probable results within the next ten years ! 
 
 I say nothing yet of the more deadly, more lamentable loss, 
 involved in the use of purchased, instead of personal, justice 
 
 « — 6i iircLKTia Trap aWwv — airopta otK€iW." 
 
 117. In order to true analysis of critic law, we must under- 
 stand the real meaning of the word " injury." 
 
 We commonly understand by it, any kind of harm done by 
 one man to another ; but we do not define the idea of harm : 
 sometimes we limit it to the harm which the sufferer is con- 
 scious of ; whereas much the worst injuries are those he is 
 imconscious of ; and, at other times, we limit the idea to vio- 
 lence, or restraint ; whereas much the worse forms of injury 
 are to be accomplished by indolence, and the withdrawal oi 
 restraint. 
 
 118. "Injury "is then simply the refusal, or violation of, 
 any man's right or claim upon his fellows : which claim, much 
 talked of in modern times, under the term " right," is mainly 
 resolvable into two branches : a man's claim not to be hin- 
 dered from doing what he should ; and his claim to be hin- 
 dered from doing what he should not ; these two forms of 
 hindrance being intensified by reward, help, and fortune, or 
 Fors, on one side, and by punishment; impediment, and ejm 
 final arrest, or Mors, on the other, 
 
190 
 
 MUNEHA PULVERIS. 
 
 119. Now, in order to a man's obtaining these two rights 
 it is clearly needful that the worth of him should be approxi- 
 mately known ; as well as the want of worth, which has, un- 
 happily, been usually the principal subject of study for critic 
 law, careful hitherto only to mark degrees of de-merit, instead 
 of merit ; — assigning, indeed, to the Deficiencies (not always, 
 alas ! even to these) just estimate, fine, or penalty ; but to 
 the i^nciencies, on the other side, which are by much the 
 more interesting, as well as the only profitable part of its 
 subject, assigning neither estimate nor aid. 
 
 120. Now, it is in this higher and perfect function of critic 
 law, cabling instead of disabling, that it becomes truly 
 Kingly, instead of Draconic : (what Providence gave the 
 great, wrathful legislator his name ?) : that is, it becomes the 
 law of man and of life, instead of the law of the worm and of 
 death — both of these laws being set in changeless poise one 
 against another, and the enforcement of both being the eternal 
 function of the lawgiver, and true claim of every living soul : 
 such claim being indeed strong to be mercifully hindered, 
 and even, if need be, abolished, when longer existence means 
 only deeper destruction, but stronger still to be mercifully 
 helped, and recreated, when longer existence and new crea- 
 tion mean nobler life. So that reward and punishment will 
 be found to resolve themselves mainly* into help and hin- 
 drance ; and these again will issua naturally from true recog- 
 nition of deserving, and the just reverence and just wrath 
 which follow instinctively on such recognition. 
 
 121. I say, " follow," but, in reality, they are part of the 
 recognition. Keverence is as instinctive as anger ; — both of 
 them instant on true vision : it is sight and understanding 
 that we have to teach, and these are reverence. Make a man 
 perceive worth, and in its reflection he sees his own relative 
 unworth, and worships thereupon inevitably, not with stiff 
 courtesy, but rejoicingly, passionately, and, best of all, rest" 
 fully : for the inner capacity of awe and love is infinite in 
 
 [* Mainly ; not altogether, Conclusive reward of high virtue is 
 loving and crowning, not helping ; and conclusive punishment of deep 
 Vice is hating and crushing, not merely hindering ] 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 191 
 
 man *, and onlj in finding these, can we find peace. And the 
 common insolences and petulances of the people, and their 
 talk of equality, are not irreverence in them in the least, but 
 mere blindness, stupefaction, and fog in the brains,* the first 
 sign of any cleansing away of which is, that they gain some 
 power of discerning, and some patience in submitting to, 
 their true counsellors and governors. In the mode of such 
 discernment consists the real " constitution " of the state, 
 more than in the titles or offices of the discerned person ; for 
 it is no matter, save in degree of mischief, to what office a 
 man is appointed, if he cannot fulfil it. 
 
 122. III. Government by Council. 
 
 This is the determination, by living authority, of the na- 
 tional conduct to be observed under existing circumstances ; 
 and the modification or enlargement, abrogation or enforce- 
 ment, of the code of national law according to present needs 
 or purposes. This government is necessarily always by coun- 
 cil, for though the authority of it may be vested in one per- 
 son, that person cannot form any opinion on a matter of pub- 
 lic interest but by (voluntarily or involuntarily) submitting 
 himself to the influence of others. 
 
 This goverment is always twofold — visible and invisible. 
 
 The visible government is that which nominally carries on 
 the national business ; determines its foreign relations, raises 
 taxes, levies soldiers, orders war or peace, and otherwise be- 
 comes the arbiter of the national fortune. The invisible 
 government is that exercised by all energetic and intelligent 
 men, each in his sphere, regulating the inner will and secret 
 ways of the people, essentially forming its character, and pre- 
 paring its fate. 
 
 Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the dis- 
 eases of others, the harness of some, the burdens of more { 
 
 * Compare Chaucer's u villany " (clownishness), 
 Full foul and chorlishe seemed she. 
 And eke villanous for to be, 
 And little cmilde of norture 
 To worship any creatures. 
 
193 
 
 MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 the necessity of all. Sometimes their career is quite distinct 
 from that of the people, and to write it, as the national his- 
 tory, is as if one should number the accidents which befall a 
 man's weapons and wardrobe, and call the list his biography. 
 Nevertheless, a truly noble and wise nation necessarily has a 
 noble and wise visible government, for its wisdom issues in 
 that conclusively. 
 
 123. Visible governments are, in their agencies, capable of 
 three pure forms, and of no more than three. 
 
 They are either monarchies, where the authority is vested 
 in one person ; oligarchies, when it is vested in a minority ; 
 or democracies, when vested in a majority. 
 
 But these three forms are not only, in practice, variously 
 limited and combined, but capable of infinite difference in 
 character and use, receiving specific names according to their 
 variations ; which names, being nowise agreed upon, nor con- 
 sistently used, either in thought or writing, no man can at 
 present tell, in speaking of any kind of government, whether 
 he is understood ; nor, in hearing, whether he understands. 
 Thus we usually call a just government by one person a mon- 
 archy, and an unjust or cruel one, a tyranny : this might be 
 reasonable if it had reference to the divinity of true govern- 
 ment ; but to limit the term " oligarchy " to government by 
 a few rich people, and to call government by a few wise or 
 noble people " aristocracy," is evidently absurd, unless it were 
 proved that rich people never could be wise, or noble people 
 rich ; and farther absurd, because there are other distinctions 
 in character, as well as riches or wisdom (greater purity of 
 race, or strength of purpose, for instance), which may give 
 the power of government to the few. So that if we had to 
 give names to every group or kind of minority, we should 
 have verbiage enough. But there is only one right name— 
 " oligarchy. " 
 
 124. So also the terms " republic " and cc democracy " * are 
 
 [* I leave this paragraph, in every syllable, as it was written, during 
 the rage of the American war ; it was meant to refer, however, chiefly 
 to the Northerns: what modifications its hot and partial terms require I 
 will give in another place : let it stand nere as it stood.] 
 
MUNERA PULVEPJS. 
 
 193 
 
 confused, especially in modern use ; and both of them are 
 liable to every sort of misconception. A republic means, 
 properly, a polity in which the state, with its all, is at every 
 man's service, and every man, with his all, at the state's ser- 
 vice — (people are apt to lose sight of the last condition), but 
 its government may nevertheless be oligarchic (consular, or 
 decemviral, for instance), or monarchic (dictatorial). But a 
 democracy means a state in which the government rests 
 directly with the majority of the citizens. And both these 
 conditions have been judged only by such accidents and 
 aspects of them as each of us has had experience of ; and 
 sometimes both have been confused with anarchy, as it is the 
 fashion at present to talk of the " failure of republican insti- 
 tutions in America," when there has never yet been in America 
 any such thing as an institution, but only defiance of institu- 
 tion ; neither any such thing as a res-publica, but only a mul- 
 titudinous res-'primta ; every man for himself. It is not re- 
 publicanism which fails now in America ; it is your model 
 science of political economy, brought to its perfect practice. 
 There you may see competition, and the " law of demand and 
 supply " (especially in paper), in beautiful and unhindered 
 operation/* Lust of wealth, and trust in it ; vulgar faith in 
 magnitude and multitude, instead of nobleness ; besides that 
 faith natural to backwoodsmen — "lucum ligna,"f — perpetual 
 self-contemplation, issuing in passionate vanity ; total igno- 
 rance of the finer and higher arts, and of all that they teach 
 and bestow ; and the discontent of energetic minds unoccu- 
 pied, frantic with hope of uncomprehended change, and prog- 
 ress they know not whither ; J — these are the things that 
 
 * Supply and demand ! Alas ! for what noble work was there ever 
 any audible "demand" in that poor sense (Past and Fresent) ? Nay, 
 the demand is not loud, even for ignoble work. See u Average Earnings 
 of Betty Taylor," in Times of 4th February of this year [1868]: 
 " Worked from Monday morning at 8 A.M. to Friday night at 5.30 p.m. 
 for Is. 5£tf.* — Laissez faire. [This kind of slavery finds no Abolitionists 
 that I hear of.] 
 
 [f " That the sacred grove is nothing but logs."] 
 
 \ Ames, by report of Waldo Emerson, says that a monarchy is a 
 merchantman, which sails well s but will sometimes strike on a rock, and 
 
MVJSEliA PUL VEHTS. 
 
 have " failed " in America ; and yet not altogether failed— it 
 is not collapse, but collision ; the greatest railroad accident 
 on record, with fire caught from the furnace, and Catiline's 
 quenching " non aqua, sed ruina." * But I see not, in any of 
 our talk of them, justice enough done to their erratic strength 
 of purpose, nor any estimate taken of the strength of endur- 
 ance of domestic sorrow, in what their women and children 
 suppose a righteous cause. And out of that endurance and 
 suffering, its own fruit will be born with time ; [not abolition 
 of slavery, however. See § 130.] and Carlyle's prophecy of 
 them (June, 1850), as it has now come true in the first clause, 
 will, in the last : — 
 
 " America, too, will find that caucuses, divisionaiists, stump- 
 oratory, and speeches to Buncombe will not carry men to the 
 immortal gods ; that the Washington Congress, and constitu- 
 tional battle of Kilkenny cats is there, as here, naught for 
 such objects ; quite incompetent for such ; and, in fine, that 
 said sublime constitutional arrangement will require to be 
 (with terrible throes, and travail such as few expect yet) re- 
 modelled, abridged, extended, suppressed, torn asunder, put 
 together again — not without heroic labour and effort, quite 
 other than that of the stump-orator and the revival preacher, 
 one clay." 
 
 125.*}- Understand, then, once for all, that no form of gov- 
 ernment, provided it be a government at all, is, as such, to be 
 either condemned or praised, or contested for in anywise, but 
 
 go to the bottom ; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, 
 but tlien jour feet are always in the water." Yes, that is comfortable ; 
 and though your raft cannot sink (being too worthless for that), it may 
 go to pieces, I suppose, when the four winds (your only pilots) steer 
 competitively from its four corners, and carry it, o>s birwpivhs Bope^s 
 (popeTjaiy aK&vQas, and then more than your feet will be in the water. 
 
 [* "Not with water, but with ruin." The worst ruin being that 
 which the Americans chieily boast of. They sent all their best and 
 honestest youths, Harvard University men and the like, to that accursed 
 war ; got them nearly all shot ; wrote pretty biographies (to the ages of 
 17, 18, 19) and epitaphs for them ; and so, having washed all the salt 
 out of the nation in blood, left themselves to putrefaction, and tha 
 morality of New York.] 
 
 [f This paragraph contains the gist of all that precede.] 
 
HUN ERA PULVERIS. 
 
 195 
 
 by fools. But all forms of government are good just so far 
 as they attain this one vital necessity of policy — that the wise 
 and kind, few or many, shall govern the unwise and unkind ; and 
 they are evil so far as they miss of this, or reverse it. Nol 
 does the form, in any case, signify one whit, but its firmness, 
 and adaptation to the need ; for if there be many foolish per- 
 sons in a state, and few wise, then it is good that the few 
 govern ; and if there be many wise, and few foolish, then it is 
 good that the many govern ; and if many be wise, yet one 
 wiser, then it is good that one should govern ; and so on. 
 Thus, we may have " the ant's republic, and the realm of 
 bees," both good in their kind ; one for groping, and the 
 other for building ; and nobler still, for flying ; — the Ducal 
 monarchy* of those 
 
 Intelligent of seasons, tliat set forth 
 The aery caravan, high over seas. 
 
 128. Nor need we want examples, among the inferior creat- 
 ures, of dissoluteness, as well as resoluteness, in government. 
 I once saw democracy finely illustrated by the beetles of 
 North Switzerland, who by universal suffrage, and elytric ac- 
 clamation, one May twilight, carried it, that they would fly 
 over the Lake of Zug ; and flew short, to the great disfigure- 
 ment of the Lake of Zug, — KavOdpov \ifxrjv — over some leagues 
 square, and to the close of the cockchafer democracy for that 
 year. Then, for tyranny, the old fable of the frogs and the 
 stork finely touches one form of it ; but truth will image it 
 more closely than fable, for tyranny is not complete when it 
 is only over the idle, but when it is over the laborious and 
 the blind. This description of pelicans and climbing perch, 
 which I find quoted in one of our popular natural histories, 
 out of Sir Emerson Tennant's Ceylon, comes as near as may 
 be to the true image of the thing : — 
 
 [* Whenever you are puzzled by any apparently mistaken use of words 
 in these essays, take your dictionary, remembering I had to fix terms, as 
 well as principles. A Duke is a " dux " or " leader ; " the flying wedge 
 of cranes is under a "ducal monarch" — a very different personage 
 from a queen bee. The Venetians, with a beautiful instinct, gave th.8 
 name to their King of the Sea. ] 
 
196 
 
 M UN Eli A PULYERIS. 
 
 u Heavy rains came on, and as we stood on the high 
 ground, we observed a pelican on the margin of the shallow 
 pool gorging himself ; our people went towards him, and 
 raised a cry of ' Fish, fish ! ' We hurried down, and found 
 numbers of fish struggling upward through the grass, in the 
 rills formed by the trickling of the rain. There was scarcely 
 water to cover them, but nevertheless they made rapid prog- 
 ress up the bank, on which our followers collected about 
 two baskets of them. They were forcing their way up the 
 knoll, and had they not been interrupted, first by the pelican, 
 and afterwards by ourselves, they would in a few minutes 
 have gained the highest point, and descended on the other 
 side into a pool which formed another portion of the tank. 
 In going this distance, however, they must have used muscu- 
 lar exertion enough to have taken them half a mile on level 
 ground ; for at these places all the cattle and wild animals of 
 the neighbourhood had latterly come to drink, so that the 
 surface was everywhere indented with footmarks, in addition 
 to the cracks in the surrounding baked mud, into which the 
 fish tumbled in their progress. In those holes, which were 
 deep, and the sides perpendicular, they remained to die, and 
 were carried off by kites and crows." * 
 
 127. But whether governments be bad or good, one gen- 
 eral disadvantage seems to attach to them in modern times — 
 that they are all costly, f This, however, is not essentially 
 the fault of the governments. If nations choose to play at 
 war, they will always find their governments willing to leacl 
 the game, and soon coming under that term of Aristophanes, 
 " K&TrrjkoL dc77raW," " shield-sellers." And when (tt%a' £-1 
 TrtjfxaTi I) the shields take the form of iron ships, with ap- 
 
 [* This is a perfect picture of the French under the tyrannies of their 
 Pelican Kings, before the Revolution. But they must find other than 
 Pelican Kings— or rather, Pelican Kings of the Divine brood, that feed 
 their children, and with their best blood. 
 
 [f Bead carefully, from this point ; because here begins the statement 
 of things requiring to be done, which I am now re-trying to make defi* 
 nite in Fors Clavigera.] 
 
 \X " Evil on the top of Evil." Delphic oracle, meaning iron on tha 
 anvil.] 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 197 
 
 paratus " for defence against liquid fire," — as I see by latest 
 accounts they are now arranging the decks in English 
 dockyards — they become costly biers enough for the grey 
 convoy of chief mourner waves, wreathed with funereal foam, 
 to bear back the dead upon ; the massy shoulders of those 
 corpse-bearers being intended for quite other work, and to 
 bear the living, and food for the living, if we would let them. 
 
 128. Nor have we the least right to complain of our gov- 
 ernments being expensive, so long as we set the government 
 *o do 'precisely the work which brings no return. If our pres- 
 ent doctrines of political economy be just, let us trust them 
 to the utmost ; take that war business out of the government's 
 hands, and test therein the principles of supply and demand. 
 Let our future sieges of Sebastopol be done by contract — no 
 capture, no pay— (I admit that things might sometimes go 
 better so) ; and let us sell the commands of our prospective 
 battles, with our vicarages, to the lowest bidder ; so may we 
 have cheap victories, and divinity. On the other hand, if Ave 
 have so much suspicion of our science that we dare not trust 
 it on military or spiritual business, would it not be but rea- 
 sonable to try whether some authoritative handling may not 
 prosper in matters utilitarian? If we were to set our govern- 
 ments to do useful things instead of mischievous, possibly 
 even the apparatus itself might in time come to be less costly. 
 The machine, applied to the building of the house, might per- 
 haps pay, when it seems not to pay, applied to pulling it 
 down. If we made in our dockyards ships to carry timber 
 and coals, instead of cannon, and with provision for the 
 brightening of domestic solid culinary fire, instead of for the 
 scattering of liquid hostile fire, it might have some effect on 
 the taxes. Or suppose that we tried the experiment on land 
 instead of water carriage ; already the government, not unap- 
 proved, carries letters and parcels for us ; larger packages 
 may in time follow ; — even general merchandise — why not, at 
 last, ourselves ? Had the money spent in local mistakes and 
 vain private litigation, on the railroads of England, been laid 
 out, instead, under proper government restraint, on really 
 useful railroad work, and had no absurd expense been in« 
 
198 
 
 MUNEBA PULVBRIS. 
 
 curred in ornamenting stations, we might already have had,— 
 what ultimately it will be found we must have, — quadruple 
 rails, two for passengers, and two for traffic, on every great 
 line ; and we might have been carried in swift safety, and 
 watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the 
 present fares. [For, of course, a railroad company is merely 
 an association of turnpike-keepers, who make the tolls as high 
 as they can, not to mend the roads with, but to pocket. The 
 public will in time discover this, and do away with turnpikes 
 on railroads, as on all other public-ways.] 
 
 129. Suppose it should thus turn out, finally, that a true 
 government set to true work, instead of being a costly engine, 
 was a paying one ? that your government, rightly organized, 
 instead of itself subsisting by an income-tax, would produce 
 its subjects some subsistence in the shape of an income divi- 
 dend? — police, and judges duly paid besides, only with less 
 work than the state at present provides for them. 
 
 A true government set to true work ! — Not easily to be 
 imagined, still less obtained ; but not beyond human hope or 
 ingenuity. Only you will have to alter your election systems 
 somewhat, first. Not by universal suffrage, nor by votes pur- 
 chasable with beer, is such government to be had. That is* 
 to say, not by universal equal suffrage. Every man upwards 
 of twenty, who has been convicted of no legal crime, should 
 have his say in this matter ; but afterwards a louder voice, 
 as he grows older, and approves himself wiser. If he has one 
 vote at twenty, he should have two at thirty, four at forty, ten 
 at fifty. For every single vote which he has with an income 
 of a hundred a year, he should have ten with an income of a 
 thousand, (provided you first see to it that wealth is, as nature 
 intended it to be, the reward of sagacity and industry — not 
 of good luck in a scramble or a lottery). For every single 
 vote which he had as subordinate in any business, he should 
 have two when he became a master ; and every office and 
 authority nationally bestowed, implying trustworthiness and 
 intellect, should have its known proportional number of votes 
 attached to it. But into the detail and working of a true 
 system in these matters we cannot now enter ; we are con- 
 
MTJNEBA PULVERIS. 
 
 199 
 
 cenied as yet with definitions only, and statements of first 
 principles, which will be established now sufficiently for our 
 purposes when we have examined the nature of that form of 
 government last on the list in § 105, — the purely " Magistral," 
 exciting at present its full share of public notice, under its 
 ambiguous title of "slavery." 
 
 130. I have not, however, been able to ascertain in definite 
 terms, from the declaimers against slavery, what they under- 
 stand by it. If they mean only the imprisonment or compul- 
 sion of one person by another, such imprisonment or compul- 
 sion being in many cases highly expedient, slavery, so defined, 
 would be no evil in itself, but only in its abuse ; that is, when 
 men are slaves, who should not be, or masters, who should 
 not be, or even the fittest characters for either state, placed 
 in it under conditions which should not be. It is not, for 
 instance, a necessary condition of slavery, nor a desirable one, 
 that parents should be separated from children, or husbands 
 from wives ; but the institution of war, against which people 
 declaim with less violence, effects such separations, — not un- 
 frequently in a very permanent manner. To press a sailor, 
 seize a white youth by conscription for a soldier, or carry off 
 a black one for a labourer, may all be right acts, or all wrong 
 ones, according to needs and circumstances. It is wrong to 
 scourge a man unnecessarily. So it is to shoot him. Both 
 must be done on occasion ; and it is better and kinder to flog 
 a man to his work, than to leave him idle till he robs, and 
 flog him afterwards. The essential thing for all creatures is 
 to be made to do right ; how they are made to do it — by 
 pleasant promises, or hard necessities, pathetic oratory, or 
 the whip — is comparatively immaterial.* To be deceived is 
 perhaps as incompatible with human dignity as to be whipped ; 
 and I suspect the last method to be not the worst, for the 
 help of many individuals. The Jewish nation throve under 
 it, in the hand of a monarch reputed not unwise ; it is only 
 the change of whip for scorpion which is inexpedient ; and 
 
 [* Permit me to enfore and reinforce this statement, with all earnest- 
 ness. It is the sum of what needs most to be understood in the matte* 
 of education ] 
 
200 
 
 MUNEEA PULVERIS. 
 
 that change is as likely to come to pass on the side of license 
 as of law. For the true scorpion whips are those of the na- 
 tion's pleasant vices, which are to it as St. John's locusts — 
 crown on the head, ravin in the mouth, and sting in the tail. 
 If it will not bear the rule of Athena and Apollo, who shep- 
 herd without smiting (ov rrXvyrj i/e/wrcs), Athena at last calls 
 no more in the corners of the streets ; and then follows the 
 rule of Tisiphone, who smites without shepherding. 
 
 131. If, however, by slavery, instead of absolute compul- 
 sion, is meant the purch ase, by m oney, of the right of compulsion, 
 such purchase is necessarily made whenever a portion of any 
 territory is transferred, for money, from one monarch to 
 another : which has happened frequently enough in history, 
 without its being supposed that the inhabitants of the dis- 
 tricts so transferred became therefore slaves. In this, as in 
 the former case, the dispute seems about the fashion of the 
 thing, rather than the fact of it. There are two rocks in 
 mid-sea, on each of which, neglected equally by instructive 
 and commercial powers, a handful of inhabitants live as they 
 may. Two merchants bid for the two properties, but not in 
 the same terms. One bids for the people, buys them, and 
 sets them to work, under pain of scourge ; the other bids for 
 the rock, buys it, and throws the inhabitants into the sea. 
 The former is the American, the latter the English method, 
 of slavery ; much is to be said for, and something against, 
 both, which I hope to say in due time and place.* 
 
 132. If, however, slavery mean not merely the purchase of 
 the right of compulsion, but the purchase of the body and soul of 
 the creature itself for money, it is not, I think, among the black 
 races that purchases of this kind are most extensively made, 
 or that separate souls of a fine make fetch the highest price. 
 This branch of the inquiry w 7 e shall have occasion also to fol- 
 low out at some length, for in the worst instances of the sell- 
 ing of souls, we are apt to get, when we ask if the sale is valid, 
 only Pyrrhon's answer t — " None can know." 
 
 [* A pregnant paragraph, meant against English and Scotch land* 
 lords who drive their people off the land.] 
 [f In Lucian's dialogue, " The sale of lives."] 
 
M UN ERA PULVER1S. 
 
 201 
 
 133. The fact is that slavery is not a political institution at 
 all, but an inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance of a large 
 portion of the human race — to whom, the more you give of 
 their own free will, the more slaves they will make themselves. 
 In common parlance, we idly confuse captivity with slavery, and 
 are always thinking of the difference between pine-trunks (Ariel 
 in the pine), and cowslip-bells (" in the cowslip-bell I lie "), or 
 between carrying wood and drinking (Caliban's slavery and 
 freedom), instead of noting the far more serious differences be- 
 tween Ariel and Caliban themselves, and the means by which, 
 practically, that difference may be brought about or diminished, 
 
 134. * Plato's slave, in the Polity, who, well dressed and 
 washed, aspires to the hand of his master's daughter, corre- 
 sponds curiously to Caliban attacking Prospero's cell ; and 
 there is an undercurrent of meaning throughout, in the Tern- 
 vest as well as in the Merchant of Venice ; referring in this case 
 to government, as in that to commerce. Miranda f (" the 
 wonderful," so addressed first by Ferdinand, " Oh, you won- 
 der ! ") corresponds to Homer's Arete : Ariel and Caliban are 
 
 [* I raise tliis analysis of the Tempest into my text ; but it is nothing 
 but a hurried note, which I may never have time to expand. I have 
 retouched it here and there a little, however.] 
 
 f Of Shakspeare's names I will afterwards speak at more length ; 
 they are curiously — often barbarously — much by Providence, — but as- 
 suredly not without Shakspeare's cunning purpose — mixed out of the 
 various traditions he confusedly adopted, and languages which he im- 
 perfectly knew. Three of the clearest in meaning have been already 
 noticed. Desdemona, " §v<jda.ifxovia" " miserable fortune," is also plain 
 enough. Othello is, I believe, "the careful ; " all the calamity of the 
 tragedy arising from the single flaw and error in his magnificently col- 
 lected strength. Ophelia, " serviceableness," the true lost wife of 
 Hamlet, is marked as having a Greek name by that of her brother, 
 Laertes ; and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to in that 
 brother's last word of her, where her gentle preciousness is opposed to 
 the uselessness of the churlish clergy — " A ministering angel shall my 
 Bister be, when thou liest howling." Hamlet is, I believe, connected in 
 some way with "homely" the entire event of the tragedy turning on 
 betrayal of home duty. Hermione (e'^ua), "pillar-like," (r/ eTSos 
 IGpWrfS 'AQpoSiTrjs). Titania (rir-fivrj), "the queen;" Benedict and 
 Beatrice, "blessed and blessing;" Valentine and Proteus, enduring 
 (or strong), (valens\ and changeful. Iago and Iachimo have evidently 
 
202 
 
 MUX ERA PU LYE J US. 
 
 respectively the spirits of faithful and imaginative labour, 
 opposed to rebellious, hurtful and slavish labour. Prospero 
 ("for hope "), a true governor, is opposed to Sycorax, the 
 mother of slavery, her name " Swine-raven/' indicating at once 
 brutality and deathfulness ; hence the line — 
 " As wicked dew as e'er niy mother brushed, with raven's featlier" — &c. 
 For all these dreams of Shakespeare, as those of true and 
 
 strong men must be, are u (jxivTacrjjLara #eia ? kol ckiol twv qv- 
 tusP™ — divine phantasms, and shadows of things that are. We 
 hardly tell our children, willingly, a fable with no purport in 
 it ; yet we think God sends his best messengers only to sing 
 fairy tales to us, fond and empty. The Tempest is just like a 
 grotesque in a rich missal, " clasped where paynims pray." 
 Ariel is the spirit of generous and free-hearted service, in early 
 stages of human society oppressed by ignorance and wild tyr- 
 anny : venting groans as fast as mill-wheels strike ; in ship- 
 wreck of states, dreadful ; so that " all but mariners plunge in 
 the brine, and quit the vessel, then all afire with me,* 9 yet hav- 
 ing in itself the will and sweetness of truest peace, whence 
 that is especially called "Ariel's" song, "Come unto these 
 yellow sands, and there, take hands" "courtesied when you 
 have, and kissed, the wild waves whist:" (mind, it is "cor- 
 tesia," not " curtsey,") and read " quiet " for " whist," if you 
 want the full sense. Then you may indeed foot it featly, and 
 kweet spirits bear the burden for you — with watch in the 
 night, and call in early morning. The vis viva in elemental 
 transformation follows — " Full fathom five thy father lies, of 
 his bones are coral made." Then, giving rest after labour, it 
 "fetches dew from the still vext Bermoothes, and, with a 
 charm joined to their suffered labour, leaves men asleep." 
 Snatching away the feast of the cruel, it seems to them as a 
 harpy ; followed by the utterly vile, who cannot see it in any 
 shape, but to whom it is the picture of nobody, it still gives 
 shrill harmony to their false and mocking catch, " Thought is 
 
 the same root— probably the Spanish lago, Jacob, "the supplanter," 
 Leonatus, and other such names, are interpreted, or played with, in the 
 plays themselves. For the interpretation of Sycorax, and reference to 
 her raven's feather, I am indebted to Mr. John R. Wise. 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 free ; " but leads them into briers and foul places, and at last 
 hollas the hounds upon them. Minister of fate against the 
 great criminal, it joins itself with the "incensed seas and 
 shores " — the sword that layeth at it cannot hold, and may 
 " with bemocked-at stabs as soon kill the still-closing waters, 
 as diminish one dowle that is in its plume." As the guide and 
 aid of true love, it is always called by Prospero "fine " (the 
 French " fine," not the English), or " delicate " — another long 
 note would be needed to explain all the meaning in this word. 
 Lastly, its work done, and war, it resolves itself into the ele- 
 ments. The intense significance of the last song, "Where 
 the bee sucks," I will examine in its due place. 
 
 The types of slavery in Caliban are more palpable, and need 
 not be dwelt on now : though I will notice them also, sever- 
 ally, in their proper places ; — the heart of his slavery is in his 
 worship : " That's a brave god, and bears celestial — liquor." 
 But, in illustration of the sense in which the Latin " benig- 
 nus " and " malignus " are to be coupled with Eleutheria and 
 Douleia, note that Caliban's torment is always the physical re- 
 flection of his own nature — " cramps " and " side stiches 
 that shall pen thy breath up ; thou shalt be pinched, as thick 
 as honeycombs : " the whole nature of slavery being one 
 cramp and cretinous contraction. Fancy this of Ariel ! You 
 may fetter him, but you set no mark on him ; you may put him 
 to hard work and far journey, but you cannot give him a cramp. 
 
 135. I should dwell, even in these prefatory papers, at more 
 length on this subject of slavery, had not all I would say been 
 said already, in vain, (not, as I hope, ultimately in vain), by 
 Carlyle, in the first of the Latter-day Pamphlets, which I com- 
 mend to the reader's gravest reading ; together with that as 
 much neglected, and still more immediately needed, on model 
 prisons, and with the great chapter on " Permanence " (fifth 
 of the last section of " Past and Present "), which sums what 
 is known, and foreshadows, or rather forelights, all that is to 
 be learned of National Discipline. I have only here farther to 
 examine the nature of one world-wide and everlasting form of 
 slavery, wholesome in use, as deadly in abuse ;— the service of 
 the rich by the poor. 
 
204 
 
 M UN ERA PULVEBJR 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 MASTERSHIP. 
 
 136. As in all previous discussions of our subject, we must 
 study the relation of the commanding rich to the obeying 
 poor in its simplest elements, in order to reach its first prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 The simplest state of it, then, is this : * a wise and provi- 
 dent person works much, consumes little, and lays by a store ; 
 an improvident person works little, consumes all his produce, 
 and lays by no store. Accident interrupts the daily work, or 
 renders it less productive ; the idle person must then starve, 
 or be supported by the provident one, who, having him thus 
 at his mercy, may either refuse to maintain him altogether, 
 or, which will evidently be more to his own interest, say to 
 him, " I will maintain you, indeed, but you shall now work 
 hard, instead of indolently, and instead of being allowed to 
 lay by what you save, as you might have done, had you re- 
 mained independent, J will take all the surplus. You would 
 not lay it up for yourself ; it is wholly your own fault that 
 has thrown you into my power, and I will force you to work, 
 or starve ; yet you shall have no profit of your work, only 
 your daily bread for it ; [and competition shall determine 
 how much of thatf]." This mode of treatment has now be- 
 
 * In the present general examination, I concede so much to ordinary- 
 economists as to ignore all innocent poverty. I adapt my reasoning, for 
 once, to the modern English practical mind, by assuming poverty to be 
 always criminal; the conceivable exceptions we will examine after- 
 wards. 
 
 [f I have no terms of English, and can find none in Greek nor Latin, 
 nor in any other strong language known to me, contemptuous enough to 
 attach to the bestial idiotism of the modern theory that wages are to be 
 measured by competition J 
 
M UN ERA PULVERIS. 
 
 205 
 
 come so universal that it is supposed to be the only natural — > 
 nay, the only possible one ; and the market wages are calmly 
 defined by economists as " th© sum which will maintain the 
 labourer." 
 
 137. The power of the provident person to do this is only 
 checked by the correlative power of some neighbour of simi- 
 larly frugal habits, who says to the labourer — " I will give you 
 a little more than this other provident person : come and work 
 for me." 
 
 The power of the provident over the improvident depends 
 thus, primarily, on their relative numbers ; secondarily, on the 
 modes of agreement of the adverse parties with each other. 
 The accidental level of wages is a variable function of the num- 
 ber of provident and idle persons in the world, of the enmity 
 between them as classes, and of the agreement between those 
 of the same class. It depends, from beginning to end, on moral 
 conditions. 
 
 138. Supposing the rich to be entirely selfish, it is always 
 for their interest that the poor should be as numerous as they can 
 employ, and restrain. For, granting that the entire population 
 is no larger than the ground can easily maintain — that the 
 classes are stringently divided — and that there is sense or 
 strength of hand enough with the rich to secure obedience ; 
 then, if nine-tenths of a nation are poor, the remaining tenth 
 have the service of nine persons each ; * but, if eight-tenths 
 are poor, only of four each ; if seven-tenths are poor, of two 
 and a third each ; if six-tenths are poor, of one and a half 
 each ; and if five-tenths are poor, of only one each. But, prac* 
 tically, if the rich strive always to obtain more power over the 
 poor, instead of to raise them — and if, on the other hand, the 
 poor become continually more vicious and numerous, through 
 neglect and oppression, — though the range of the power of 
 
 * I say nothing yet of the quality of the servants, which, neverthe- 
 less, is the gist of the business. Will you have Paul Veronese to paint 
 your ceiling, or the plumber from over the way ? Both will work for 
 the same money ; Paul, if anything, a little the cheaper of the two, if 
 you keep him in good humour ; only you have to discern him first, whicb 
 will need eyes. 
 
206 
 
 MUNEliA PULVERIS. 
 
 the rich increases, its tenure becomes less secure ; until, at last, 
 the measure of iniquity being full, revolution, civil war, or the 
 subjection of the state to a healthier or stronger one, closea 
 the moral corruption, and industrial disease.* 
 
 139. It is rarely, however, that things come to this extrem- 
 ity. Kind persons among the rich, and wise among the poor, 
 modify the connexion of the classes : the efforts made to raise 
 and relieve on the one side, and the success of honest toil on 
 the other, bind and blend the orders of society into the con- 
 fused tissue of half-felt obligation, sullenly-rendered obedi- 
 ence, and variously-directed, or mis-directed toil, which form 
 the warp of daily life. But this great law rules all the wild 
 design : that success (while society is guided by laws of com- 
 petition) signifies always so much victory over your neighbour as 
 to obtain the direction of his work, and to take the profits of 
 it. This is the real source of all great riches. No man can 
 become largely rich by his personal toil.f The work of his 
 own hands, wisely directed, will indeed always maintain him- 
 self and his family, and make fitting provision for his aga 
 But it is only by the discovery of some method of taxing the la- 
 bour of others that he can become opulent. Every increase of 
 his capital enables him to extend this taxation more widely ; 
 that is, to invest larger funds in the maintenance of labourers, 
 — to direct, accordingly, vaster and yet vaster masses of la- 
 bour, and to appropriate its profits. 
 
 140. There is much confusion of idea on the subject of this 
 appropriation. It is, of course, the interest of the employer 
 to disguise it from the persons employed ; and, for his own 
 comfort and complaeencj', he often desires no less to disguise 
 it from himself. And it is matter of much doubt with me, 
 how far the foul and foolish arguments used habitually on 
 this subject are indeed the honest expression of foul and fool- 
 
 [* I have not altered a syllable in these three paragraphs, 137, 188, 
 139, on revision ; but have much italicised : the principles stated being 
 as vital, as they are little known.] 
 
 f By his art he may ; but only when its produce, or the sight or hear- 
 ing of it, becomes a subject of dispute, so as to enable the artist to ta# 
 the labour of multitudes highly, in exchange for his own. 
 
HUN ERA PULVK1US. 
 
 207 
 
 ish convictions ; — or rather (as I am sometimes forced to con- 
 clude from the irritation with which they are advanced) are 
 resolutely dishonest, wilful, and malicious sophisms, arranged 
 so as to mask, to the last moment, the real laws of economy, 
 and future duties of men. By taking a simple example, and 
 working it thoroughly out, the subject may be rescued from 
 all but such determined misrepresentation. 
 
 141. Let us imagine a society of peasants, living on a river- 
 shore, exposed to destructive inundation at somewhat extended 
 intervals ; and that each peasant possesses of this good, but 
 imperilled, ground, more than he needs to cultivate for im- 
 mediate subsistence. We will assume farther (and with too 
 great probability of justice), that the greater part of them in- 
 dolently keep in tillage just as much land as supplies them 
 with daily food ; — that they leave their children idle, and take 
 no precautions against the rise of the stream. But one of 
 them, (we will say but one, for the sake of greater clearness) 
 cultivates carefully all the ground of his estate ; makes his 
 children work hard and healthily ; uses his spare time and 
 theirs in building a rampart against the river ; and, at the 
 end of some years, has in his storehouses large reserves of food 
 and clothing, — in his stables a well-tended breed of cattle, 
 and around his fields a wedge of wall against flood. 
 
 The torrent rises at last — sweeps away the harvests, and 
 half the cottages of the careless peasants, and leaves them 
 destitute. They naturally come for help to the provident one, 
 whose fields are unwasted, and whose granaries are full. Ke 
 has the right to refuse it to them : no one disputes this right.* 
 But he will probably not refuse it ; it is not his interest to do 
 so, even were he entirely selfish and cruel. The only ques- 
 tion with him will be on what terms his aid is to be granted. 
 
 142. Clearly, not on terms of mere charity. To maintain 
 his neighbours in idleness would be not only his ruin, but 
 theirs. He will require work from them, in exchange for 
 their maintenance ; and, whether in kindness or cruelty, all 
 
 [* Observe this ; the legal right to keep what you have worked for, 
 and use it as you please, is the corner-stone of all economy : compare 
 the end of Chap, II.] 
 
208 
 
 MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 the work they can give. Not now the three or four hours 
 they were wont to spend on their own land, but the eight or 
 ten hours they ought to have spent.* But how will he apply 
 this labour ? The men are now his slaves ; — nothing less, and 
 nothing more. On pain of starvation, he can force them to 
 work in the manner, and to the end, he chooses. And it is 
 by his wisdom in this choice that the worthiness of his mas- 
 tership is proved, or its unworthiness. Evidently, he must 
 first set them to bank out the water in some temporary way, 
 and to get their ground cleansed and resown ; else, in any 
 case, their continued maintenance will be impossible. That 
 done, and while he has still to feed them, suppose he makes 
 them raise a secure rampart for their own ground against all 
 future flood, and rebuild their houses in safer places, with the 
 best material they can find ; being allowed time out of their 
 working hours to fetch such material from a distance. And 
 for the food and clothing advanced, he takes security in land 
 that as much shall be returned at a convenient period. 
 
 143. We may conceive this security to be redeemed, and 
 the debt paid at the end of a few years. The prudent peas- 
 ant has sustained no loss ; but is no richer than he was, and 
 has had all his trouble for nothing. But he has enriched his 
 neighbours materially ; bettered their houses, secured their 
 land, and rendered them, in worldly matters, equal to him- 
 self. In all rational and final sense, he has been throughout 
 their true Lord and King. 
 
 144. We wdll next trace his probable line of conduct, pre- 
 suming his object to be exclusively the increase of his own 
 fortune. After roughly recovering and cleansing the ground, 
 he allows the ruined peasantry only to build huts upon it, 
 such as he thinks protective enough from the weather to 
 keep them in working health. The rest of their time he oc- 
 cupies, first in pulling down, and rebuilding on a magnificent 
 scale, his own house, and in adding large dependencies to it. 
 This done, in exchange for his continued supply of corn, he 
 
 [* I should now put the time of necessary labour rather under than 
 over the third of the day. ] 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 buys as much of his neighbours' land as he thinks he can 
 superintend the management of; and makes the former 
 owners securely embank and protect the ceded portion. By 
 this arrangement, he leaves to a certain number of the peas- 
 antry only as much ground as will just maintain them in their 
 existing numbers ; as the population increases, he takes the 
 extra hands, who cannot be maintained on the narrowed es- 
 tates, for his own servants ; employs some to cultivate the 
 ground he has bought, giving them of its produce merely 
 enough for subsistence ; with the surplus, which, under his 
 energetic and careful sirperintendence, w T ill be large, he main- 
 tains a train of servants for state, and a body of workmen P 
 whom he educates in ornamental arts. He now can splen- 
 didly decorate his house, lay out its grounds magnificently, 
 and richly supply his table, and that of his household and ret- 
 inue. And thus, without any abuse of right, we should find 
 established all the phenomena of poverty and riches, which 
 (it is supposed necessarily) accompany modern civilization. In 
 one part of the district, we should have unhealthy land, mis- 
 erable dwellings, and half-starved poor ; in another, a well- 
 ordered estate, well-fed servants, and refined conditions of 
 highly educated and luxurious life. 
 
 145. I have put the two cases in simplicity, and to some 
 extremity. But though in more complex and qualified opera- 
 tion, all the relations of society are but the expansion of these 
 two typical sequences of conduct and result. I do not say, 
 observe, that the first procedure is entirely recommendable ; 
 or even entirely right ; still less, that the second is wiioily 
 wrong. Servants, and artists, and splendour of habitation 
 and retinue, have all their use, propriety, and office. But I 
 am determined that the reader shall understand clearly what 
 they cost ; and see that the condition of having them is the 
 subjection to us of a certain number of imprudent or unfort- 
 unate persons (or, it may be, more fortunate than their mas- 
 ters), over whose destinies we exercise a boundless control. 
 " Riches " mean eternally and essentially this ; and God 
 send at last a time when those words of our best-reputed 
 economist shall be true, and we shall indeed " all know what 
 
210 
 
 MTJNERA PULVEPJS. 
 
 it is to bo rich ; " * that it is to be slave-m aster over farthest 
 earth, and over all ways and thoughts of men. Every opera- 
 tive you employ is your true servant : distant or near, sub- 
 ject to your immediate orders, or ministering to your widely- 
 communicated caprice, — for the pay he stipulates, or the price 
 lie tempts, — all are alike under this great dominion of the 
 gold. The milliner who makes the dress is as much a ser- 
 vant (more so, in that she uses more intelligence in the ser- 
 vice) as the maid who puts it on ; the carpenter who smooths 
 the door, as the footman who opens it ; the tradesmen who 
 supply the table, as the labourers and sailors who supply the 
 tradesmen. Why speak of these lower services? Painters 
 and singers (whether of note or rhyme,) jesters and story- 
 tellers, moralists, historians, priests, — so far as these, in any 
 degree, paint, or sing, or tell their tale, or charm their charm, 
 or "perform" their rite, for pay, — in so far, they are all 
 slaves ; abject utterly, if the service be for pay only ; abject 
 less and less in proportion to the degrees of love and of wis- 
 dom which enter into their duty, or can enter into it, accord- 
 ing as their function is to do the bidding and the work of a 
 manly people ; — or to amuse, tempt, and deceive, a childish 
 one. 
 
 146. There is always, in such amusement and temptation, 
 to a certain extent, a government of the rich by the poor, as 
 of the poor by the rich ; but the latter is the prevailing and 
 necessary one, and it consists, when it is honourable, in the 
 collection of the profits of labour from those who would have 
 misused them, and the administration of those profits for the 
 service either of the same persons in future, or of others ; and 
 when it is dishonourable, as is more frequently the case in 
 modern times, it consists in the collection of the profits of 
 kbour from those who would have rightly used them, and 
 their appropriation to the service of the collector himself. 
 
 147. The examination of these various modes of collection 
 and use of riches will form the third branch of our future in- 
 quiries ; but the key to the whole subject lies in the clear un- 
 rierstanding of the difference between selfish and unselfish 
 
 [* See Preface to Unto this Last.] 
 
MUNEEA PULVERIS. 
 
 211 
 
 expenditure. It is not easy, by any course of reasoning, to 
 enforce this on the generally unwilling hearer ; yet the defini- 
 tion of unselfish expenditure is brief and simple. It is ex- 
 penditure which, if you are a capitalist, does not pay you, but 
 pays somebody else ; and if you are a consumer, does not 
 please you, but pleases somebody else. Take one special in- 
 stance, in further illustration of the general type given above. 
 I did not invent that type, but spoke of a real river, and of 
 real peasantry, the languid and sickly race which inhabits, or 
 haunts — for they are often more like spectres than living men 
 — the thorny desolation of the banks of the Arve in Savoy. 
 Some years ago, a society, formed at Geneva, offered to em- 
 bank the river for the ground which would have been re- 
 covered by the operation ; but the offer was refused by the 
 (then Sardinian) government. The capitalists saw that this ex- 
 penditure would have " paid " if the ground saved from the 
 river was to be theirs. But if, when the offer that had this 
 aspect of profit was refused, they had nevertheless persisted 
 in the plan, and merely taking security for the return of their 
 outlay, lent the funds for the work, and thus saved a whole 
 race of human souls from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I 
 presume, some among them would, at personal risk, have 
 dragged any one drowning creature out of the current of the 
 stream, and not expected payment therefor), such expendi- 
 ture would have precisely corresponded to the use of his 
 power made, in the first instance, by our supposed richer 
 peasant — it would have been the king's, of grace, instead of 
 the usurer's, for gain. 
 
 148. " Impossible, absurd, Utopian ! 99 exclaim nine-tenths 
 of the few readers whom these words may find. 
 
 No, good reader, this is not Utopian : but I will tell you 
 what would have seemed, if we had not seen it, Utopian on 
 the side of evil instead of good ; that ever men should have 
 come to value their money so much more than their lives, that if 
 you call upon them to become soldiers, and take chance of a 
 bullet through their heart, and of wife and children being left 
 desolate, for their pride's sake, they will do it gaily, without 
 thinking twice ; but if you ask them, for their country's sake, 
 
212 
 
 MVNEEA PULVER1S. 
 
 to spend a hundred pounds without security of getting back a 
 hundred-and-five,* they will laugh in your faca 
 
 149. Not but that also this game of life-giving and taking 
 is, in the end, somewhat more costly than other forms of play 
 might be. Rifle practice is, indeed, a not unhealthy pastime, 
 and a feather on the top of the head is a pleasing appendage ; 
 but while learning the stops and fingering of the sweet instru- 
 ment, does no one ever calculate the cost of an overture ? 
 What melody does Tityrus meditate on his tenderly spiral 
 pipe ? The leaden seed of it, broad-cast, true conical " Dents 
 de Lion " seed — needing less allowance for the wind than is 
 usual with that kind of herb — what crop are you likely to have 
 of it ? Suppose, instead of this volunteer marching and 
 countermarching, you were to do a little volunteer ploughing 
 and counter-ploughing ? It is more difficult to do it straight : 
 the dust of the earth, so disturbed, is more grateful than for 
 merely rhythmic footsteps. Golden cups, also, given for good 
 ploughing, would be more suitable in colour : (ruby glass, for 
 the wine which " giveth his colour " on the ground, might be 
 fitter for the rifle prize in ladies' hands). Or, conceive a little 
 volunteer exercise with the spade, other than such as is needed 
 
 * I have not hitherto touched on the subject of interest of money ; it 
 is too complex, and must be reserved for its proper place in the body of 
 the work. The definition of interest (apart from compensation for risk) 
 is, * £ the exponent of the comfort of accomplished labour, separated from 
 its power ; " the power being what is lent : and the French economists 
 who have maintained the entire illegality of interest are wrong ; yet by 
 no means so curiously or wildly wrong as the English and French ones 
 opposed to them, whose opinions have been collected by Dr. Whewell 
 at page 41 of his Lectures ; it never seeming to occur to the mind of the 
 compiler, any more than to the writers whom he quotes, that it is quite 
 possible, and even (according to Jewish proverb) prudent, for men to 
 hoard as ants and mice do, for use, not usury ; and lay by something 
 for winter nights, in the expectation of rather sharing than lending the 
 scrapings. My Savoyard squirrels would pass a pleasant time of it un- 
 der the snow-laden pine-branches, if they always declined to economize 
 because no one would pay them interest on nuts. 
 
 [I leave this note as it stood : but, as I have above stated, should now 
 side wholly with the French economists spoken of, in asserting the ab- 
 solute illegality of interest.] 
 
HUN ERA PULVEETS. 
 
 213 
 
 for moat and breastwork, or even for the burial of the fruit ol 
 the leaden avena-seed, subject to the shrill Lemures' criti* 
 cism — 
 
 AVer liat das Hans so sclileclit gebauet ? 
 
 If you were to embank Lincolnshire more stoutly against the 
 sea ? or strip the peat of Sol way, or plant Plinlimmon moors 
 with larch — then, in due season, some amateur reaping and 
 threshing ? 
 
 "Nay, we reap and thresh by steam, in these advanced 
 days." 
 
 I know it, my wise and economical friends. The stout arms 
 God gave you to win your bread by, you would fain shoot 
 your neighbours, and God's sweet singers with ; * then you 
 invoke the fiends to your farm-service ; and — 
 
 When young and old come forth to play 
 
 On a sulphurous holiday, 
 
 Tell how the darkling goblin sweat 
 
 (His feast of cinders duly set), 
 
 And, belching night, where breathed the morn, 
 
 His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn 
 
 That ten day-labourers could not end. 
 
 150. Going back to the matter in hand, we will press the 
 example closer. On a green knoll above that plain of the 
 
 * Compare Chaucer's feeling respecting birds (from Canace's falcon, 
 to the nightingale, singing, " Domine, labia — "to the Lord of Love), 
 with the usual modern British sentiments on this subject. Or eves 
 Cowley's : — 
 
 " What prince's choir of music can excel 
 That which within this shade does dwell, 
 To which we nothing pay, or give, 
 They, like all other poets, live 
 
 Without reward, or thanks for their obliging pains ! 
 'Tis well if they become not prey." 
 
 Yes ; it is better than well ; particularly since the seed sown by the way- 
 side has been protected by the peculiar appropriation of part of the church- 
 rates in our country parishes. See the remonstrance from a " Country 
 Parson, " in The Times of June 4th (or 5th ; the letter is dated Juna 
 
2U 
 
 M UN ERA PULVER1S. 
 
 Arve, between Cluse and Bonneville, there was, in the yeai 
 I860, a cottage, inhabited by a well-doing family — man and 
 wife, three children, and the grandmother. I call it. a cot- 
 tage, but in truth, it was a large chimney on the ground, wide 
 at the bottom, so that the family might live round the fire ; 
 lighted by one small broken window, and entered by an un- 
 closing door. The family, I say, was " well-doing ; " at least 
 it was hopeful and cheerful ; the wife healthy, the children, 
 for Savoyards, pretty and active, but the husband threatened 
 with decline, from exposure under the cliffs of the Mont Vergi 
 by day, and to draughts between every plank of his chimney 
 in the frosty nights. 
 
 " Why could he not plaster the chinks?" asks the prac- 
 tical reader. For the same reason that your child cannot 
 wash its face and hands till you have washed them many a day 
 for it, and will not wash them w T hen it can, till you force it. 
 
 151. I passed this cottage often in my walks, had its win- 
 dow and door mended ; sometimes mended also a little the 
 meal of sour bread and broth, and generally got kind greeting 
 and smile from the face of young or old ; which greeting, 
 this year, narrowed itself into the half-recognizing stare of 
 the elder child, and the old woman's tears ; for the father 
 and mother were both dead, — one of sickness, the other of 
 sorrow. It happened that I passed not alone, but with a 
 companion, a practised English joiner, who, while these peo- 
 ple were dying of cold, had been employed from six in the 
 morning to six in the evening, for two months, ill fitting, 
 without nails, the panels of a single door in a large house in 
 London. Three days of his work taken, at the right time, 
 from fastening the oak panels with useless precision, and ap- 
 
 3rd 5 ) 1862: — " I have heard at a vestry meeting a good deal of higgling 
 over a few shillings' outlay in cleaning the church ; but I have never 
 heard any dissatisfaction expressed on account of that part of the rate 
 which is invested in 50 or 100 dozens of birds' heads.'* 
 
 [If we could trace the innermost of all causes of modern war, I be- 
 lieve it would be found, not in the avarice nor ambition of nations, but 
 in the mere idleness of the upper classes. They have nothing to do 
 but to teach the peasantry to kill each other.] 
 
M UN ERA PULVEUI& 
 
 215 
 
 plied to fasten the larch timbers with decent strength, would 
 have saved these Savoyards' lives. He would have been main- 
 tained equally ;. (I suppose him equally paid for his work by the 
 owner of the greater house, only the work not consumed self- 
 ishly on his own wails ;) and the two peasants, and eventually, 
 probably their children, saved. 
 
 152. There are, therefore, — let me finally enforce, and 
 leave with the reader, this broad conclusion, — three things 
 to be considered in empkmng any poor person. It is not 
 enough to give him employment. You must employ him 
 first to produce useful things ; secondly, of the several (sup- 
 pose equally useful) things he can equally well produce, you 
 must set him to make that which will cause him to lead the 
 healthiest life ; lastly, of the things produced, it remains a 
 question of wisdom and conscience how much you are to take 
 yourself, and how much to leave to others. A large quantity, 
 remember, unless you destroy it, must always be so left at 
 one time or another ; the only questions you have to decide 
 are, not ivhat you will give, but when, and how, and to whom, 
 you will give, The natural law of human life is, of course, 
 that in youth a man shall labour and lay by store for his old 
 age, and when age comes, shall use what he has laid by, 
 gradually slackening his toil, and allowing himself more frank 
 use of his store ; taking care always to leave himself as much 
 as will surely suffice for him beyond any possible length of 
 life. What he has gained, or by tranquil and unanxious toil 
 continues to gain, more than is enough for his own need, he 
 ought so to administer, while he yet lives, as to see the good 
 of it again beginning, in other hands ; for thus he has him- 
 self the greatest sum of pleasure from it, and faithfully uses 
 his sagacity in its control. "Whereas most men, it appears, 
 dislike the sight of their fortunes going out into service again, 
 and say to themselves, — "I can indeed nowise prevent this 
 money from falling at last into the hands of others, nor hinder 
 the good of it from becoming theirs, not mine ; but at least 
 let a merciful death save me from being a witness of their 
 satisfaction ; and may God so far be gracious to me as to let 
 no good come of any of this money of mine before my eyes." 
 
21(3 
 
 MUNERA PULVERI& 
 
 153. Supposing this feeling unconquerable, the safest waj 
 of rationally indulging it would be for the capitalist at once 
 to spend all his fortune on himself, which might actually, in 
 many cases, be quite the lightest as well as the pleasantest 
 thing to do, if he had just tastes and worthy passions. But, 
 whether for himself only, or through the hands, and for the 
 sake, of others also, the law of wise life is, that the maker of 
 the money shall also be the spender of it, and spend it, ap- 
 proximately, all, before he dies ; so that his true ambition as 
 an economist should be, to die, not as rich, but as poor, as 
 possible,* calculating the ebb tide of possession in true and 
 calm proportion to the ebb tide of life. Which law, checking 
 the wing of accumulative desire in the mid- volley, f and lead- 
 ing to peace of possession and fulness of fruition in old age, 
 is also wholesome, in that by the freedom of gift, together 
 with present help and counsel, it at once endears and dignifies 
 age in the sight of youth, which then no longer strips the 
 bodies of the dead, but receives the grace of the living. Its 
 chief use would (or will be, for men are indeed capable of 
 attaining to this much use of their reason), that some temper- 
 ance and measure will be put to the acquisitiveness of com- 
 merce.]; For as things stand, a man holds it his duty to be 
 
 [* See the Life of Fenelon. u The labouring peasantry were at all 
 times the objects of his tenderest care ; his palace at Cambray, with all 
 his books and writings, being consumed by fire, he bore the misfortune 
 with unruffled calmness, and said it was better his palace should be 
 burnt than the cottage of a poor peasant.' 1 (These thoroughly good men 
 always go too far, and lose their power over the mass.) He died ex- 
 emplifying the mean he had always observed between prodigality and 
 avarice, leaving neither debts nor money.] 
 
 f tcai ireyiay r,yov;j.evovs qIvoli fj.7} rb t)]v ohaiav eAarroj ttokhv aWa rh t).p 
 airX-rjcrrlau ttKc'.ox "And thinking (wisely) that poverty consists not in 
 making one's possessions less, but one's avarice more." — Jjtins, v. 8. 
 Read the context, and compare. u He who spends for all that is noble, 
 and gains by nothing but what is just, will hardly be notably wealthy , 
 or distress i'ully poor." — Tjaws. v. 42. 
 
 X The fury of modern trade arises chiefly out of the possibility of 
 making sudden fortunes by largeness of transaction, and accident of 
 discovery or contrivance. I have no doubt that the final interest oi 
 every nation is to check the action of these commercial lotteries ; and 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 217 
 
 temperate in his food, and of his body, but for no duty to be 
 temperate in his riches, and of his mind. He sees that he 
 ought not to waste his youth and his flesh for luxury ; but he 
 will waste his age, and his soul, for money, and think he does 
 no wrong, nor know the delirium tremens of the intellect for 
 disease. But the law of life is, that a man should fix the sum 
 he desires to make annually, as the food lie desires to eat 
 daily ; and stay when he has reached the limit, refusing in- 
 crease 01 business, and leaving it to others, so obtaining due 
 freedom of time for better thoughts.* How the gluttony of 
 business is punished, a bill of health for the principals of the 
 richest city houses, issued annually, would show in a suffi- 
 ciently impressive manner. 
 
 154. I know, of course, that these statements will be re- 
 ceived by the modern merchant as an active border rider of 
 the sixteenth century would have heard of its being proper 
 Tor men of the Marches to get their living by the spade, in- 
 stead of the spur. But my business is only to state veracities 
 and necessities ; I neither look for the acceptance of the one, 
 nor hope for the nearness of the other. Near or distant, the 
 day will assuredly come when the merchants of a state shall 
 be its true ministers of exchange, its porters, in the double 
 sense of carriers and gate-keepers, bringing all lands into 
 frank and faithful communication, and knowing for their 
 master of guild, Hermes the herald, instead of Mercury the 
 gain-guarder. 
 
 155. And now, finally, for immediate rule to all who will ac- 
 cept it. 
 
 The distress of any population means that they need food, 
 house-room, clothes, and fuel. You can never, therefore, be 
 wrong in employing any labourer to produce food, house- 
 room, clothes, or fuel ; but you are always wrong if you em- 
 ploy him to produce nothing, (for then some other labourer 
 
 that all great accidental gains or losses should be national, — not individ- 
 ual. I>ut speculation absolute, unconnected with commercial effort, is 
 an unmitigated evil in a state, and the root of countless evils beside. 
 
 [* I desire in the strongest terms to reinforce all that is contained in 
 this paragraph.] 
 
218 
 
 MUNEEA rULVERIS. 
 
 must be worked double time to feed him) ; and you are gen- 
 erally wrong, at present, if you employ him (unless he can da 
 nothing else) to produce works of art or luxuries ; because 
 modern art is mostly on a false basis, and modern luxury is 
 crimin airy great. * 
 
 156. The way to produce more food is mainly to bring in 
 fresh ground, and increase facilities of carriage ; — to break 
 rock, exchange earth, drain the moist, and water the dry, to 
 mend roads, and build harbours of refuge. Taxation thus 
 spent will annihilate taxation, but spent in war, it annihilates 
 revenue. 
 
 157. The way to produce house-room is to apply your force 
 first to the humblest dwellings. When your brick-layers are 
 out of employ, do not build splendid new streets, but better 
 the old ones ; send your paviours and slaters to the poorest 
 villages, and see that your poor are healthily lodged, before 
 you try your hand on stately architecture. You will find its 
 stateliness rise better under the trowel afterwards ; and we do 
 
 * It is especially necessary that the reader should keep his mind fixed 
 on the methods of consumption and destruction, as the true sources of 
 national poverty. Men are apt to call every exchange "expenditure," 
 "but it is only consumption which is expenditure. A large number of 
 the purchases made by the richer classes are mere forms of interchange 
 of unused property, wholly without effect on national prosperity. It 
 matters nothing to the state whether, if a china pipkin be rated a*s worth 
 a hundred pounds, A has the pipkin and B the pounds, or A the pounds 
 and B the pipkin. But if the pipkin is pretty, and A or B breaks it, 
 there is national loss, not otherwise. So again, when the loss has really 
 taken place, no shifting of the shoulders that bear it will do away with 
 the reality of it. There is an intensely ludicrous notion in the public 
 mind respecting the abolishment of debt by denying it. When a debt 
 is denied, the lender loses instead of the borrower, that is all ; the loss 
 is precisely, accurately, everlastingly the same. The Americans borrow 
 money to spend in blowing up their own houses. They deny their debt, 
 by one -third already [1863], gold being at fifty premium ; and they will 
 probably deny it wholly. That merely means that the holders of the 
 notes are to be the losers instead of the issuers. The quantity of loss 
 is precisely equal, and irrevocable ; it is the quantity of human industry 
 spent in effecting the explosion, plus the quantity of goods exploded, 
 Honour only decides who shall pay the sum lost not whether it is to hf 
 paid or not. Faid it must be, and to the uttermost farthing. 
 
MTJNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 219 
 
 do not yet build so well that we need hasten to display our 
 skill to future ages. Had the labour which has decorated the 
 Houses of Parliament filled, instead, rents in walls and roofs 
 throughout the county of Middlesex ; and our deputies met 
 to talk within massive walls that would have needed no stucco 
 for five hundred years, — the decoration might have been after- 
 wards, and the talk now. And touching even our highly con- 
 scientious church building, it may be well to remember that 
 in the best days of church plans, their masons called them- 
 selves " logeurs du bon Dieu ; " and that since, according to 
 the most trusted reports, God spends a good deal of His time 
 in cottages as well as in churches, He might perhaps like to 
 be a little better lodged there also. 
 
 158. The way to get more clothes is — not, necessarily, to 
 get more cotton. There were words written twenty years 
 ago * which would have saved many of us some shivering, 
 had they been minded in time. Shall we read them again ? 
 
 " The Continental people, it would seem, are importing our 
 machinery, beginning to spin cotton, and manufacture for 
 themselves ; to cut us out of this market, and then out of 
 that ! Sad news, indeed ; but irremediable. By no means 
 the saddest news — the saddest news, is that we should find 
 our national existence, as I sometimes hear it said, depend 
 on selling manufactured cotton at a farthing an ell cheaper 
 than any other people. A most narrow stand for a great na- 
 tion to base itself on ! A stand which, with all the Corn-law 
 abrogations conceivable, I do not think will be capable of en- 
 during. 
 
 " My friends, suppose we quitted that stand; suppose we 
 came honestly down from it and said — ' This is our minimum 
 of cotton prices ; we care not, for the present, to make cotton 
 any cheaper. Do you, if it seem so blessed to you, make cot- 
 ton cheaper. Fill your lungs with cotton fur, your heart 
 
 [* (Past and Present, Chap. IX. of Third Section.) To think that for 
 these twenty— now twenty-six — years, this one voice of Carlyle's has 
 been the only faithful and useful utterance in all England, and has 
 Bounded through all these years in vain ! See Fors Claiigera, Letter 
 X] 
 
220 
 
 MUNERA PULVEBI8. 
 
 with copperas fumes, with rage and mutiny ; become ye the 
 general gnomes of Europe, slaves of the lamp ! ' I admire a 
 nation which fancies it will die if it do not undersell all other 
 nations to the end of the world. Brothers, we will cease to 
 undersell them ; we will be content to equal-sell them ; to be 
 happy selling equally with them ! I do not see the use of un» 
 derselling them : cotton-cloth is already tw T opence a yard, or 
 lower ; and yet bare backs were never more numerous among 
 us. Let inventive men cease to spend their existence inces- 
 santly contriving how cotton can be made cheaper ; and try 
 to invent a little how cotton at its present cheapness could be 
 somewhat justlier divided among us. 
 
 " Let inventive men consider — whether the secret of this 
 universe does after all consist in making money. With a hell 
 which means — ' failing to make money/ I do not think there 
 is any heaven possible that would suit one well. In brief, all 
 this Mammon gospel of supply-and- demand, competition, 
 laissez /aire, and devil take the hindmost (foremost, is it not, 
 rather, Mr. Caiiyle ?), ' begins to be one of the shabbiest 
 gospels ever preached.' " 
 
 159. The way to produce more fuel * is first to make your 
 coal mines safer, by sinking more shafts ; then set all your 
 convicts to work in them, and if, as is to be hoped, you suc- 
 ceed in diminishing the supply of that sort of labourer, con- 
 sider what means there may be, first, of growing forest where 
 its growth will improve climate ; secondly, of splintering the 
 forests which now make continents of fruitful land pathless and 
 poisonous, into fagots for fire ; — so gaining at once dominion 
 icewards and sunwards. Your steam power has been given 
 (you will find eventually) for work such as that : and not for 
 excursion trains, to give the labourer a moment's breath, at 
 the peril of his breath for ever, from amidst the cities which 
 it has crushed into masses of corruption. When you know 
 how to build cities, and how to rule them, you will be able to 
 
 [* We don't want to produce more fuel just now, but much less ; and 
 to use what we get for cooking and warming ourselves, instead of tot 
 running from place to place.] 
 
MUNERA PULVER1S. 
 
 221 
 
 breathe in their streets, and the " excursion " will be the af- 
 ternoon's walk or game in the fields round them. 
 
 160. "But nothing of this work wdll pay ? " 
 
 No ; no more than it pays to dust your rooms, or wash 
 your doorsteps. It will pay ; not at first in currency, but 
 in that which is the end and the source of currency, — in 
 life ; (and in currency richly afterwards). It will pay in that 
 which is more than life, — in light, whose true price has not 
 yet been reckoned in any currency, and yet into the image oL 
 which, all wealth, one way or other, must be cast. For your 
 riches must either be as the lightning, which, 
 
 Begot but in a cloud, 
 Though shining bright, and speaking loud, 
 Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race ; 
 And, where it gilds, it wounds the place ; — 
 
 or else, as the lightning of the sacred sign, which shines 
 from one part of the heaven to the other. There is no 
 other choice ; you must either take dust for deity, spectre 
 for possession, fettered dream for life, and for epitaph, this 
 reversed verse of the great Hebrew hymn of economy (Psalm 
 cxii.) : — " He hath gathered together, he hath stripped the 
 poor, his iniquity remaineth for ever : " — or else, having the sun 
 of justice to shine on you, and the sincere substance of good 
 in your possession, and the pure law and liberty of life within 
 you, leave men to write this better legend over your grave 
 
 " He hath dispersed abroad. He hath given to the poor. 
 His righteousness remaineth for ever." 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
 I havk brought together in these last pages a few notes, 
 which were not properly to be incorporated with the text, 
 and which, at the bottom of pages, checked the reader's 
 attention to the main argument. They contain, however, 
 several statements to which I wish to be able to refer, or have 
 already referred, in other of my books, so that I think right 
 to preserve them.] 
 
 APPENDIX I.— (p. 22.) 
 
 The greatest of all economists are those most opposed to the 
 doctrine of " laissez faire," namely, the fortifying virtues, 
 which the wisest men of all time have arranged under the 
 general heads of Prudence, or Discretion (the spirit which 
 discerns and adopts rightly) ; Justice (the spirit which rules 
 and divides rightly) ; Fortitude (the spirit which persists and 
 endures rightly) ; and Temperance (the spirit w T hich stops 
 and refuses rightly). These cardinal and sentinel virtues are 
 not only the means of protecting and prolonging life itself, 
 but they are the chief guards, or sources, of the material 
 means of life, and the governing powers and princes of 
 economy. Thus, precisely according to the number of just 
 men in a nation, is their power of avoiding either intestine or 
 foreign war. All disputes may be peaceably settled, if a suf- 
 ficient number of persons have been trained to submit to the 
 principles of justice, while the necessity for war is in direct 
 ratio to the number of unjust persons who are incapable of 
 determining a quarrel but by violence. "Whether the injus- 
 tice take the form of the desire of dominion, or of refusal ta 
 submit to it, or of lust of territory, or lust of money, or of 
 
MUNERA PULVERIS. 
 
 223 
 
 mere irregular passion and wanton will, the result is economi- 
 cally the game ; — loss of the quantity of power and life con- 
 sumed in repressing the injustice, added to the material and 
 moral destruction caused by the fact of war. The early civil 
 wars of England, and the existing * war in America, are curi- 
 ous examples — these under monarchical, this under republi- 
 can, institutions — of the results on large masses of nations of 
 the want of education in principles of justice. But the mere 
 dread or distrust resulting from the want of the inner virtues 
 of Faith and Charity prove often no less costly than war itself. 
 The fear which France and England have of each other costs 
 each nation about fifteen millions sterling annually, besides 
 various paralyses of commerce ; that sum being spent in the 
 manufacture of means of destruction instead of means of pro- 
 duction. There is no more reason in the nature of things 
 that France and England should be hostile to each other than 
 that England and Scotland should be, or Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire ; and the reciprocal terrors of the opposite sides 
 of the English Channel are neither more necessary, more eco- 
 nomical, nor more virtuous, than the old riding and reiving 
 on the opposite flanks of the Cheviots, or than England's own 
 weaving for herself of crowns of thorn, from the stems of her 
 Red and White roses. 
 
 APPENDIX II- (p. 34) 
 
 Few passages of the book which at least some part of the na« 
 tions at present most advanced in civilization accept as an ex- 
 pression of final truth, have been more distorted than those 
 bearing on Idolatry. For the idolatry there denounced is 
 neither sculpture, nor veneration of sculpture. It is simply 
 the substitution of an "Eidoloo," phantasm, or imagination of 
 Good, for that which is real and enduring ; from the Highest 
 Living Good, which gives life, to the lowest material good 
 
 [* Written in 1862. I little thought that when I next corrected my 
 type, the "existing" war best illustrative of the sentft^e. would b& 
 between Frenchmen in the Elysian Fields of Paris.] 
 
224 
 
 MUNERA rULVERIS. 
 
 which ministers to it. The Creator, and the things created, 
 which He is said to have " seen good " in creating, are in this 
 their eternal goodness appointed always to be " worshipped," 
 — i. e., to have goodness and worth ascribed to them from 
 the heart ; and the sweep and range of idolatry extend to the 
 rejection of any or all of these, " calling evil good, and good 
 evil, — putting bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." * For 
 in that rejection and substitution we betray the first of all 
 Loyalties, to the fixed Law of life, and with resolute opposite 
 loyalty serve our own imagination of good, which is the law, 
 not of the House, but of the Grave, (otherwise called the law 
 of " mark missing," which we translate " law of Sin ") ; these 
 "two masters," between whose services we have to choose, 
 being otherwise distinguished as God and Mammon, which 
 Mammon, though we narrowly take it as the power of money 
 only, is in truth the great evil Spirit of false and fond desire, 
 or " Covetousness, which is Idolatry." So that Iconoclasm — 
 image-breaking — is easy ; but an Idol cannot be broken — it 
 must be forsaken ; and this is not so easy, either to do, or 
 persuade to doing. For men may readily be convinced of the 
 weakness of an image ; but not of the emptiness of an imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 APPENDIX HI— (p. 36.) 
 
 I have not attempted to support, by the authority of other 
 writers, any of the statements made in these papers ; indeed, 
 if such authorities were rightly collected, there would be no 
 occasion for my writing at all. Even in the scattered pas- 
 sages referring to this subject in three books of Carlyle's — 
 Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and the Latter Day Pam- 
 phlets, — all has been said that needs to be said, and far better 
 than I shall ever say it again. But the habit of the public 
 mind at present is to require everything to be uttered dif- 
 fusely, loudly, and a hundred times over, before it will listen; 
 and it has revolted against these papers of mine as if they con- 
 * Compare the close of the Fourth Lecture in Araira PentdicL 
 
MU N ERA PUL VERTS. 
 
 225 
 
 tained things daring and new, when there is not one assertion 
 in them of which the truth has not been for ages known to 
 the wisest, and proclaimed by the most eloquent of men. It 
 svould be [I had written will be ; but have now reached a time 
 of life for which there is but one mood — the conditional,] a 
 far greater pleasure to me hereafter, to collect their words 
 than to add to mine ; Horace's clear rendering of the sub- 
 stance of the passages in the text may be found room for at 
 once, 
 
 Si quis emat citliaras, emptas comportet in unum 
 Kec studio citharae, nec Musae deditus ulli ; 
 Si scalpra et formas nan sutor, nautica vela 
 Aversus mercaturis, delirus et aniens 
 Undique dicatur merito. Qui discrepat istis 
 Qui nummos aurumque recondit, uescius uti 
 Compositis ; metuensque velut eontingere sacrum ? 
 
 [Which may be roughly thus translated : — 
 
 " Were anybody to buy fiddles, and collect a number, be- 
 ing in no wise given to fiddling, nor fond of music : or if, 
 being no cobbler, he collected awls and lasts, or, having no 
 mind for sea-adventure, bought sails, every one would call him 
 a madman, and deservedly. But what difference is there be- 
 tween such a man and one who lays by coins and gold, and 
 does not know how to use, when he has got them ? "] 
 
 With which it i3 perhaps desirable also to give Xenophon's 
 statement, it being clearer than any English one can be, owing 
 to the power of the general Greek term for wealth, " useable 
 things." 
 
 [I have cut out the Greek because I can't be troubled to 
 correct the accents, and am always nervous about them ; here 
 it is in English, as well as I can do it : — 
 
 " This being so, it follows that things are only property to 
 the man who knows how to use them ; as flutes, for instance, 
 are property to the man who can pipe upon them respectably ; 
 but to one who knows not how to pipe, they are no property, 
 unless he can get rid of them advantageously. . . For if 
 they are not sold, the flutes are no property (being service- 
 
226 
 
 MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 able for nothing) ; but, sold, they become property. To 
 which Socrates made answer, — £ and only then if he knows 
 how to sell them, for if he sell them to another man who can- 
 not play on them, still they are no property/ "] 
 
 APPENDIX IV.— (p. 39.) 
 
 The reader is to include here in the idea of " Government, n 
 any branch of the Executive, or even any body of private per- 
 sons, entrusted with the practical management of public in« 
 terests unconnected directly with their ow T n personal ones. 
 In theoretical discussions of legislative interference with polit- 
 ical economy, it is usually, and of course unnecessarily, as- 
 sumed that Government must be always of that form and 
 force in which we have been accustomed to see it ; — that its 
 abuses can never be less, nor its wisdom greater, nor its pow- 
 ers more numerous. But, practically, the custom in most 
 civilized countries is, for every man to deprecate the interfer- 
 ence of Government as long as things tell for his personal 
 advantage, and to call for it when they cease to do so. The 
 request of the Manchester Economists to be supplied with 
 cotton by Government (the system of supply and demand 
 having, for the time, fallen sorrowfully short of the expecta- 
 tions of scientific persons from it), is an interesting case in 
 point. It were to be wished that less wide and bitter suffer- 
 ing, suffering, too, of the innocent, had been needed to force 
 the nation, or some part of it, to ask itself why a body of 
 men, already confessedly capable of managing matters both 
 military and divine, should not be permitted, or even re- 
 quested, at need, to provide in some wise for sustenance as 
 well as for d Jer.ce ; and secure, if it might be, — (and it 
 might, I think, :ven the rather be), — purity of bodily, as well 
 as of spiritual, aliment ? "Why, having made many roads for 
 the passage of armies, may they not make a few for the con- 
 veyance of food ; and after organizing, with applause, various 
 schemes of theological instruction for the Public, organize, 
 
MUNEEA PULVERIS. 
 
 227 
 
 moreover, some methods of bodily nourishment for them? 
 Or is the soul so much less trustworthy in its instincts than 
 the stomach, that legislation is necessary for the one, but in- 
 applicable to the other. 
 
 APPENDIX V.— (p. 70.) 
 
 I debated with myself whether to make the note on Homer 
 longer by examining the typical meaning of the shipwreck of 
 Ulysses, and his escape from Charybdis by help of her figtree ; 
 but as I should have had to go on to the lovely myth of Leu- 
 cothea's veil, and did not care to spoil this by a hurried account 
 of it, I left it for future examination ; and, three days after the 
 paper was published, observed that the reviewers, with their 
 customary helpfulness, were endeavouring to throw the whole 
 subject back into confusion by dwelling on this single (as they 
 imagined) oversight. I omitted also a note on the sense of 
 the word Xvypov, with respect to the pharmacy of Circe, and 
 herb-fields of Helen, (compare its use in Odyssey, xvh\, 473, 
 &c), which would farther have illustrated the nature of the 
 Circean power. But, not to be led too far into the subtleties 
 of these myths, observe respecting them all, that even in very 
 simple parables, it is not always easy to attach indisputable 
 meaning to every part of them. I recollect some years ago, 
 throwing an assembly of learned persons who had met to de- 
 light themselves with interpretations of the parable of the 
 prodigal son, (interpretations which had up to that moment 
 °s very smoothly,) into mute indignation, by inadvertently 
 ag who the wnprodigal son was, and what was to be learr 
 his example. The leading divine of the company, Mi. 
 Molyneux, at last explained to me that the unprodigal son was 
 a lay figure, put in for dramatic effect, to make the story pret- 
 tier, and that no note was to be taken of him. Without, how- 
 ever, admitting that Homer put in the last escape of Ulysses 
 merely to make his story prettier, this is nevertheless true of 
 fill Greek myths, that they have many opposite lights and 
 
228 
 
 MUNERA PULVERI8, 
 
 shades ; they are as changeful as opal, and like opal, usually 
 have one colour by reflected, and another by transmitted light 
 But they are true jewels for all that, and full of noble enchant- 
 ment for those who can use them ; for those who cannot, I am 
 content to repeat the words I wrote four years ago, in the ap~ 
 pendix to the Two Paths — 
 
 " The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult to 
 fathom, and we may be over and over again more or less mis- 
 taken in guessing at his meaning ; but the real, profound, 
 nay, quite bottomless and unredeemable mistake, is the fool's 
 thought, that he had no meaning. " 
 
 APPENDIX VL— (p. 84) 
 
 The derivation of words is like that of rivers : there is one 
 real source, usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find, far up 
 among the hills ; then, as the word flows on and comes into 
 service, it takes in the force of other words from other sources, 
 and becomes quite another word — often much more than one 
 word, after the junction — a word as it were of many waters, 
 sometimes both sweet and bitter. Thus the whole force of 
 our English " charity " depends on the guttural in "charis" 
 getting confused with the c of the Latin " earns ; " thencefor- 
 ward throughout the middle ages, the two ideas ran on to- 
 gether, and both got confused with St. Paul's dyd-vr), which 
 expresses a different idea in all sorts of ways ; our " charity f 
 having not only brought in the entirely foreign sense of alms- 
 giving, but lost the essential sense of contentment, and lost 
 much more in getting too far away from the "charis" of the 
 final Gospel benedictions. For truly it is fine Christianity we 
 have come to, which, professing to expect the perpetual grace 
 or charity of its Founder, has not itself grace or charity enough 
 to hinder it from overreaching its friends in sixpenny bargains ; 
 and which, supplicating evening and morning the forgiveness 
 of its own debts, goes forth at noon to take its fellow-servants 
 by the throat, saying, — not merely "Pay me that thou owest/ 
 but " Pay me that thou owest me not" 
 
MUNERA PULVERI8. 
 
 229 
 
 It is true that we sometimes wear Ophelia's rue with a dif- 
 ference, and call it " Herb o' grace o' Sundays," taking conso- 
 lation out of the offertory with — " Look, what he layeth out, 
 it shall be paid him again." Comfortable words indeed, and 
 good to set against the old royalty of Largesse — 
 
 Whose moste joie was, I wis, 
 
 When that she gave, and said, 4 1 Have this." 
 
 [I am glad to end, for this time, with these lovely words of 
 Chaucer. We have heard only too much lately of " Indis- 
 criminate charity," with implied reproval, not of the Indiscrim- 
 ination merely, but of the Charity also. We have partly suc- 
 ceeded in enforcing on the minds of the poor the idea that 
 it is disgraceful to receive ; and are likely, without much dif- 
 ficulty, to succeed in persuading not a few of the rich that it 
 is disgraceful to give. But the political economy of a great 
 state makes both giving and receiving graceful ; and the po- 
 litical economy of true religion interprets the saying that " it 
 is more blessed to give than to receive," not as the promise of 
 reward in another life for mortified selfishness in this, but as 
 pledge of bestowal upon us of that sweet and better nature, 
 which does not mortify itself in giving.] 
 
 Brantwood, Conision^ 
 m October, 1871. 
 
 *hk ism 
 
PRE-RAPHAELITISM 
 
FRANCIS HAWKSWORTH FAWKES, ESQ. 
 
 OF FARNLEY 
 
 THESE PAGES 
 
 WHICH OWE THEIR PRESENT FORM TO ADVANTAGES GRANTED 
 BY HIS KINDNESS 
 ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 
 BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 Eight years ago, in the close of the first volume of " Mod- 
 ern Painters," I ventured to give the following advice to the 
 young artists of England : — 
 
 " They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and 
 walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other 
 thought but how best to penetrate her meaning ; rejecting 
 nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing." Advice 
 which, whether bad or good, involved infinite labor and 
 humiliation in the following it ; and was therefore, for the 
 most part, rejected. 
 
 It has, however, at last been carried out, to the very letter, 
 by a group of men who, for their reward, have been assailed 
 with the most scurrilous abuse which I ever recollect seeing 
 issue from the public press. I have, therefore, thought it due 
 to them to contradict the directly false statements which have 
 been made respecting their works ; and to point out the kind 
 of merit which, however deficient in some respects, those 
 works possess beyond the possibility of dispute, 
 
 Denmark Hill, 
 Aug. 1851. 
 
PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 
 
 It may be proved, with much certainty, that God intends 
 no man to live in this world without working : but it seems to 
 me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in 
 his work. It is written, " in the sweat of thy brow," but it 
 was never written, " in the breaking of thine heart/' thou 
 shalt eat bread ; and I find that, as on the one hand, infinite 
 misery is caused by idle people, who both fail in doing what 
 was appointed for them to do, and set in motion various 
 springs of mischief in matters in which they should have had 
 no concern, so on the other hand, no small misery is caused 
 by over-worked and unhappy people, in the dark views which 
 they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of 
 work itself. Were it not so, I believe the fact of their being 
 unhappy is in itself a violation of divine law, and a sign of 
 some kind of folly or sin in their way of life. Now in order 
 that people may be happy in their work, these three things 
 are needed : They must be fit for it : They must not do too 
 much of it : and they must have a sense of success in it — not 
 a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of other peo- 
 ple for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, 
 that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, 
 whatever the world may say or think about it. So that in 
 order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should 
 not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his 
 work. 
 
 The first thing then that he has to do, if unhappily his 
 parents or masters have not done it for him, is to find out 
 what he is fit for. In which inquiry a man may be very safely 
 guided by his likings, if he be not also guided by his pride. 
 
238 
 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 
 
 People usually reason in some such fashion as this : "I don't 
 
 seem quite fit for a head-manager in the firm of & Co., 
 
 therefore, in all probability, I am fit to be Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer." Whereas, they ought rather to reason thus : " I 
 
 don't seem quite fit to be head-manager in the firm of 
 
 & Co., but I daresay I might do something in a small green- 
 grocery business ; I used to be a good judge of peas ; " that 
 is to say, always trying lower instead of trying higher, until 
 they find bottom : once well set on the ground, a man may 
 build up by degrees, safely, instead of disturbing every one 
 in his neighborhood by perpetual catastrophes. But this kind 
 of humility is rendered especially difficult in these days, by 
 the contumely thrown on men in humble employments. The 
 very removal of the massy bars which once separated one 
 class of society from another, has rendered it tenfold more 
 shameful in foolish people's, i. e. in most people's eyes, to re- 
 main in the lower grades of it, than ever it was before. When 
 a man born of an artisan was looked upon as an entirely dif- 
 ferent species of animal from a man born of a noble, it made 
 him no more uncomfortable or ashamed to remain that differ- 
 ent species of animal, than it makes a horse ashamed to re- 
 main a horse, and not to become a giraffe. But now that a 
 man may make money, and rise in the world, and associate 
 himself, unreproached, with people once far above him, not 
 only is the natural discontentedness of humanity developed to 
 an unheard-of extent, whatever a man's position, but it be- 
 comes a veritable shame to him to remain in the state he was 
 born in, and everybody thinks it his duty to try to be a "gen- 
 tleman." Persons who have any influence in the management 
 of public institutions for charitable education know how com- 
 mon this feeling has become. Hardly a day passes but they 
 receive letters from mothers who want all their six or eight 
 sons to go to college, and make the grand tour in the long 
 vacation, and who think there is something wrong in the 
 foundations of society, because this is not possible. Out of 
 every ten letters of this kind, nine will allege, as the reason 
 of the writers' importunity, their desire to keep their families 
 in such and such a " station of life." There is no real desire 
 
PRE- RAPE AELITISM. 
 
 239 
 
 for the safety, the discipline, or the moral good of the chil- 
 dren, only a panic horror of the inexpressibly pitiable calamity 
 of their living a ledge or two lower on the molehill of the 
 world — a calamity to be averted at any cost whatever, of strug- 
 gle, anxiety, and shortening of life itself. I do not believe 
 that any greater good could be achieved for the country, than 
 the change in public feeling on this head, which might be 
 brought about by a few benevolent men, undeniably in the 
 class of " gentlemen," who would, on principle, enter into some 
 of our commonest trades, and make them honorable ; showing 
 that it was possible for a man to retain his dignity, and re- 
 main, in the best sense, a gentleman, though part of his time 
 was every day occupied in manual labor, or even in serving 
 customers over a counter. I do not in the least see why cour- 
 tesy, and gravity, and sympathy with the feelings of others, 
 and courage, and truth, and piety, and what else goes to make 
 up a gentleman's character, should not be found behind a 
 counter as well as elsewhere, if they were demanded, or even 
 hoped for, there. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that the man's way of life and man- 
 ner of work have been discreetly chosen ; then the next thing 
 to be required is, that he do not over-work himself therein. I 
 am not going to say anything here about the various errors in 
 our systems of society and commerce, which appear (I am not 
 sure if they ever do more than appear) to force us to over- 
 work ourselves merely that we may live ; nor about the still 
 more fruitful cause of unhealthy toil — the incapability, in 
 many men, of being content with the little that is indeed 
 necessary to their happiness. I have only a word or two to 
 say about one special cause of over-work — the ambitious 
 desire of doing great or clever things, and the hope of accom- 
 plishing them by immense efforts : hope as vain as it is per- 
 nicious ; not only making men over-work themselves, but ren- 
 dering all the work they do unwholesome to them. I say it 
 is a vain hope, and let the reader be assured of this (it is a 
 truth all-important to the best interests of humanity). No 
 great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort ; a great 
 thing can only be done by a great man, and he does it without 
 
240 
 
 PRE-RA PEA ELITISM. 
 
 effort. Nothing is, at present, less understood by us than 
 this — nothing is more necessary to be understood. Let me 
 try to say it as clearly, and explain it as fully as I may. 
 
 I have said no great intellectual thing : for I do not mean 
 the assertion to extend to things moral. On the contrary, it 
 seems to me that just because we are intended, as long as we 
 live, to be in a state of intense moral effort, we are not in- 
 tended to be in intense physical or intellectual effort. Our 
 full energies are to be given to the soul's work — to the great 
 fight with the Dragon — the taking the kingdom of heaven by 
 force. But the body's work and head's work are to be done 
 quietly, and comparatively without effort. Neither limbs nor 
 brain are ever to be strained to their utmost ; that is not the 
 way in which the greatest quantity of work is to be got out of 
 them : they are never to be worked furiously, but with tran- 
 quillity and constancy. We are to follow the plough from 
 sunrise to sunset, but not to pull in race-boats at the twilight : 
 we shall get no fruit of that kind of work, only disease of the 
 heart. 
 
 How many pangs would be spared to thousands, if this 
 great truth and law were but once sincerely, humbly under- 
 stood, — that if a great thing can be done at all, it can be done 
 easily ; that, when it is needed to be done, there is perhaps 
 only one man in the world who can do it ; but he can do it 
 without any trouble — without more trouble, that is, than it 
 costs small people to do small things ; nay, perhaps, with less. 
 And yet what truth lies more openly on the surface of all 
 human phenomena? Is not the evidence of Ease on the very 
 front of all the greatest works in existence ? Do they not say 
 plainly to us, not, 1 6 there has been a great effort here," but, 
 '' there has been a great power here"? It is not the weari- 
 ness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have 
 to recognise in all mighty things ; and that is just what we 
 now never recognise, but think that we are to do great things, 
 by help of iron bars and perspiration : — alas ! we shall do 
 nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight. 
 
 Yet, let me not be misunderstood, nor this great truth be 
 supposed anywise resolvable into the favorite dogma of young 
 
PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 
 
 241 
 
 men, that they need not work if they have genius. The fact 
 is, that a man of genius is always far more ready to work than 
 other people, and gets so much more good from the work that 
 he does, and is often so little conscious of the inherent divin- 
 ity in himself, that he is very apt to ascribe all his capacity to 
 his work, and to tell those who ask how he came to be what 
 he is : " If I am anything, which I much doubt, I made myself 
 so merely by labor." This was Newton's way of talking, and 
 I suppose it would be the general tone of men whose genius 
 had been devoted to the physical sciences. Genius in the 
 Arts must commonly be more self-conscious, but in whatever 
 field, it will always be distinguished by its perpetual, steady, 
 well-directed, happy, and faithful labor in accumulating and 
 disciplining its powers, as well as by its gigantic, incommuni- 
 cable facility in exercising them. Therefore, literally, it is no 
 man's business whether he has genius or not : work he must, 
 whatever he is, but quietly and steadily ; and the natural and 
 unforced results of such work will be always the things that 
 God meant him to do, and will be his best. No agonies nor 
 heart-rendings will enable him to do any better. If he be a 
 great man, they will be great things ; if a small man, small 
 things ; but always, if thus peacefully done, good and right ; 
 always, if restlessly and ambitiously done, false, hollow, and 
 despicable. 
 
 Then the third thing needed w r as, I said, that a man should 
 be a good judge of his work ; and this chiefly that he may not 
 be dependent upon popular opinion for the manner of doing- 
 it, but also that he may have the just encouragement of the 
 sense of progress, and an honest consciousness of victory : 
 how else can he become 
 
 " That awful independent on to-morrow, 
 Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile." 
 
 I am persuaded that the real nourishment and help of such a 
 feeling as this is nearly unknown to half the workmen of the 
 present day. For whatever appearance of self-complacency 
 there may be in their outward bearing, it is visible enough, 
 
242 
 
 PRE-RAPIlAELniSM. 
 
 by their feverish jealousy of each other, how little confidence 
 they have in the sterling value of their several doings. Con- 
 ceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up ; and there is 
 too visible distress and hopelessness in men's aspects to admit 
 of the supposition that they have any stable support of faith 
 in themselves. 
 
 I have stated these principles generally, because there is no 
 branch of labor to which they do not apply : But there is one 
 in which our ignorance or forgetfulness of them has caused 
 an incalculable amount of suffering : and I would endeavor 
 now to reconsider them with especial reference to it, — the 
 branch of the Arts. 
 
 In general, the men who are employed in the Arts have 
 freely chosen their profession, and suppose themselves to have 
 special faculty for it ; yet, as a body, they are not happy men. 
 For which this seems to me the reason, that they are expected, 
 and themselves expect, to make their bread by being clever — 
 not by steady or quiet work ; and are, therefore, for the most 
 part, trying to be clever, and so living in an utterly false state 
 of mind and action. 
 
 This is the case, to the same extent, in no other profession 
 or employment. A lawyer may indeed suspect that, unless 
 he has more wit than those around him, he is not likely to 
 advance in his profession ; but he will not be always thinking 
 how he is to display his wit. He will generally understand, 
 early in his career, that wit must be left to take care of itself, 
 and that it is hard knowledge of law and vigorous examination 
 and collation of the facts of every case entrusted to him, which 
 his clients will mainly demand ; this it is which he has to be 
 paid for ; and this is healthy and measurable labor, payable 
 by the hour. If he happen to have keen natural perception 
 and quick wit, these will come into play in their due time and 
 place, but he will not think of them as his chief power ; and 
 if he have them not, he may still hope that industry and con- 
 scientiousness may enable him to rise in his profession without 
 them. Again in the case of clergymen : that they are sorely 
 tempted to display their eloquence or wit, none who know 
 their own hearts will deny, but then they know this to he a 
 
PBE-RAPHAELITISM. 
 
 243 
 
 temptation : they never would suppose that cleverness was all 
 that was to be expected from them, or would sit down delib- 
 erately to write a clever sermon : even the dullest or vainest 
 of them would throw some veil over their vanity, and pretend 
 to some profitableness of purpose in what they did. They 
 would not openly ask of their hearers — Did you think my 
 sermon ingenious, or my language poetical ? They would 
 early understand that they were not paid for being ingenious, 
 nor called to be so, but to preach truth ; that if they happened 
 to possess wit, eloquence, or originality, these would appear 
 and be of service in due time, but were not to be continually 
 sought after or exhibited : and if it should happen that they 
 had them not, they might still be serviceable pastors without 
 them. 
 
 Not so with the unhappy artist. No one expects any honest 
 or useful work of him ; but every one expects him to be in- 
 genious. Originality, dexterity, invention, imagination, every 
 thing is asked of him except what alone is to be had for asking 
 — honesty and sound work, and the due discharge of his 
 function as a painter. What function ? asks the reader in 
 some surprise. He may well ask ; for I suppose few painters 
 have any idea what their function is, or even that they have 
 any at all. 
 
 And yet surely it is not so difficult to discover. The facul- 
 ties, which when a man finds in himself, he resolves to be a 
 painter, are, I suppose, intenseness of observation and facility 
 of imitation. The man is created an observer and an imitator ; 
 and his function is to convey knowledge to his fellow-men, of 
 such things as cannot be taught otherwise than ocularly. For 
 a long time this function remained a religious one : it was 
 to impress upon the popular mind the reality of the objects of 
 faith, and the truth of the histories of Scripture, by giving 
 visible form to both. That function has now passed away, 
 and none has as yet taken its place. The painter has no pro- 
 fession, no purpose. He is an idler on the earth, chasing the 
 shadows of his own fancies. 
 
 But he was never meant to be this. The sudden and uni- 
 versal Naturalism, or inclination to copy ordinary natura 1 
 
244 
 
 PRE-RA PHAELITISM. 
 
 objects, which manifested itself among the painters of Europe, 
 at the moment when the invention of printing superseded 
 their legendary labors, was no false instinct. It was mis- 
 understood and misapplied, but it came at the right time, and 
 has maintained itself through all kinds of abuse ; presenting 
 in the recent schools of landscape, perhaps only the first fruits 
 of its power. That instinct w T as urging every painter in 
 Europe at the same moment to his true duty — the faithful 
 representation of all objects of historical interest, or of natural 
 beauty existent at the period; representations such as might 
 at once aid the advance of the sciences, and keep faithful 
 record of every monument of past ages which was likely 
 to be swept away in the approaching eras of revolutionary 
 change. 
 
 The instinct came, as I said, exactly at the right moment ; 
 and let the reader consider what amount and kind of general 
 knowledge might by this time have been possessed by the 
 nations of Europe, had their painters understood and obeyed 
 it. Suppose that, after disciplining themselves so as to be 
 able to draw, with unerring precision, each the particular 
 kind of subject in which he most delighted, they had sepa- 
 rated into two great armies of historians and naturalists ; — 
 that the first had painted with absolute faithfulness every edi- 
 fice, every city, every battle-field, every scene of the slightest 
 historical interest, precisely and completely rendering their 
 aspect at the time ; and that their companions, according to 
 their several powers, had painted with like fidelity the plants 
 and animals, the natural scenery, and the atmospheric phe- 
 nomena of every country on the earth — suppose that a faith- 
 ful and complete record were now in our museums of every 
 building destroyed by war, or time, or innovation, during 
 these last 200 years — suppose that each recess of every moun- 
 tain chain of Europe had been penetrated, and its rocks 
 drawn with such accuracy that the geologist's diagram was no 
 longer necessary— suppose that every tree of the forest had 
 been drawn in its noblest aspect, every beast of the field in its 
 savage life — that all these gatherings were already in our nar 
 tional galleries, and that the painters of the present day were 
 
PRE- HA PEA EL ITISM. 
 
 245 
 
 laboring, happily and earnestly, to multiply them, and put 
 such means of knowledge more and more within reach of the 
 common people — would not that be a more honorable life for 
 them, than gaining precarious bread by " bright effects ? " 
 They think not, perhaps. They think it easy, and therefore 
 contemptible, to be truthful ; they have been taught so all 
 their lives. But it is not so, whoever taught it them. It is 
 most difficult, and worthy of the greatest men's greatest ef- 
 fort, to render, as it should be rendered, the simplest of the 
 natural features of the earth ; but also be it remembered, no 
 man is confined to the simplest ; each may look out work for 
 himself where he chooses, and it will be strange if he cannot 
 find something hard enough for him. The excuse is, however, 
 one of the lips only ; for every painter knows that when he 
 draws back from the attempt to render nature as she is, it is 
 oftener in cowardice than in disdain. 
 
 I must leave the reader to pursue this subject for himself : 
 I have not space to suggest to him the tenth part of the ad- 
 vantages which would follow, both to the painter from such 
 an understanding of his mission, and to the whole people, in 
 the results of his labor. Consider how the man himself 
 would be elevated : how content he would become, how 
 earnest, how full of all accurate and noble knowledge, how 
 free from envy — knowing creation to be infinite, feeling at 
 once the value of what he did, and yet the nothingness. Con- 
 sider the advantage to the people ; the immeasurably larger 
 interest given to art itself ; the easy, pleasurable, and perfect 
 knowledge conveyed by it, in every subject ; the far greater 
 number of men who might be healthily and profitably occu- 
 pied with it as a means of livelihood ; the useful direction of 
 myriads of inferior talents, now left fading away in misery. 
 Conceive all this, and then look around at our exhibitions, 
 and behold the " cattle pieces," and "sea pieces," and " fruit 
 pieces," and " family pieces ; " the eternal brown cows in 
 ditches, and white sails in squalls, and sliced lemons in sau- 
 cers, and foolish faces in simpers ; — and try to feel what we 
 are, and what we might have been. 
 
 Take a single instance in one branch of archaeology. Let 
 
PRE-RA PHA ELITISM. 
 
 those who are interested in the history of religion consider 
 what a treasure we should now have possessed, if, instead of 
 painting pots, and vegetables, and drunken peasantry, the 
 most accurate painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies had been set to copy, line for line, the religious and 
 domestic sculpture on the German, Flemish, and French ca- 
 thedrals and castles ; and if every building destroyed in the 
 French or in any other subsequent revolution, had thus been 
 drawn in all its parts with the same precision with which 
 Gerard Douw or Mieris paint basreliefs of Cupids. Consider, 
 even now, what incalculable treasure is still left in ancient 
 basreliefs, full of every kind of legendary interest, of subtle 
 expression, of priceless evidence as to the character, feelings, 
 habits, histories, of past generations, in neglected and shat- 
 tered churches and domestic buildings, rapidly disappearing 
 over the whole of Europe — treasure which, once lost, the labor 
 of all men living cannot bring back again ; and then look at 
 the myriads of men, with skill enough, if they had but. the 
 commonest schooling, to record all this faithfully, who are 
 making their bread by drawing dances of naked women from 
 academy models, or idealities of chivalry fitted out w r ith 
 Wardour Street armor, or eternal scenes from Gil Bias, Don 
 Quixote, and the Vicar of Wakefield, or mountain sceneries 
 with young idiots of Londoners wearing Highland bonnets 
 and brandishing rifles in the foregrounds. Do but think of 
 these things in the breadth of their inexpressible imbecility, 
 and then go and stand before that broken basrelief in the 
 southern gate of Lincoln Cathedral, and see if there is no 
 fibre of the heart in you that will break too. 
 
 But is there to be no place left, it will be indignantly asked, 
 for imagination and invention, for poetical power, or love of 
 ideal beauty ? Yes ; the highest, the noblest place — that 
 which these only can attain when they are all used in the 
 cause, and with the aid of truth. Wherever imagination and 
 sentiment are, they will either show themselves without forc- 
 ing, or, if capable of artificial development, the kind of train- 
 ing which such a school of art would give them would be the 
 best they could receive. The infinite absurdity and failure 
 
PR E- R A PHA EL II 'ISM. 
 
 247 
 
 of our present training consists mainly in this, that we do not 
 rank imagination and invention high enough, and suppose that 
 they can be taught. Throughout every sentence that I ever 
 have written, the reader will find the same rank attributed to 
 these powers, — the rank of a purely divine gift, not to be 
 attained, increased, or in any wise modified by teaching, only 
 in various wa}^s capable of being concealed or quenched. Un- 
 derstand this thoroughly ; know once for all, that a poet on 
 canvas is exactly the same species of creature as a poet in 
 song, and nearly every error in our methods of teaching will 
 be done away with. For who among us now thinks of bring- 
 ing men up to be poets ? — of producing poets by any kind of 
 general recipe or method of cultivation ? Suppose even that 
 we see in youth that which we hope may, in its development, 
 become a power of this kind, should w T e instantly, supposing 
 that we wanted to make a poet of him, and nothing else, for- 
 bid him all quiet, steady, rational labor ? Should we force 
 him to perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his boyish 
 brain, and set before him, as the only objects of his study, the 
 laws of versification which criticism has supposed itself to dis- 
 cover in the works of previous writers ? "Whatever gifts the 
 boy had, would much be likely to come of them so treated ? 
 unless, indeed, they w T ere so great as to break through all 
 such snares of falsehood and vanity, and build their own foun- 
 dation in spite of us ; whereas if, as in cases numbering mill- 
 ions against units, the natural gifts were too weak to do this, 
 could any thing come of such training but utter inanity and 
 spuriousness of the whole man ? But if we had sense, should 
 we not rather restrain and bridle the first flame of invention 
 in early youth, heaping material on it as one would on the 
 first sparks and tongues of a fire which we desired to feed into 
 greatness? Should we not educate the whole intellect into 
 general strength, and all the affections into warmth and hon- 
 esty, and look to heaven for the rest ? This, I say, we should 
 have sense enough to do,* in order to produce a poet in 
 words : but, it being required to produce a poet on canvas, 
 what is our way of setting to work ? We begin, in all proba- 
 bility, by telling the youth of fifteen or sixteen, that Nature 
 
248 
 
 PRK-RAPHA ELITISM. 
 
 is full of faults, and that he is to improve her • but that Raph- 
 ael is perfection, and that the more he copies Raphael the 
 better ; that after much copying of Raphael, he is to try what 
 he can do himself in a Raphaelesque, but yet original, man- 
 ner : that is to say, he is to try to do something very clever, 
 all out of his own head, but yet this clever something is to 
 be properly subjected to Raphaelesque rules, is to have a 
 principal light occupying one-seventh of its space, and a prin- 
 ciple shadow occupying one-third of the same ; that no two 
 people's heads in the picture are to be turned the same way, 
 and that all the personages represented are to possess ideal 
 beauty of the highest order, which ideal beauty consists partly 
 in a Greek outline of nose, partly in proportions expressible 
 in decimal fractions between the lips and chin ; but partly 
 also in that degree of improvement which the youth of sixteen 
 is to bestow upon God's work in general. This I say is the 
 kind of teaching which through various channels, Royal Acad- 
 emy lecturings, press criticisms, public enthusiasm, and not 
 least by solid weight of gold, we give to our young men. And 
 we wonder we have no painters ! 
 
 But we do worse than this. Within the last few years some 
 sense of the real tendency of such teaching has appeared in 
 some of our youuger painters. It only could appear in the 
 younger ones, our older men having become familiarised with 
 the false system, or else having passed through it and forgotten 
 it, not well knowing the degree of harm they had sustained. 
 This sense appeared, among our youths, — increased,- -matured 
 into resolute action. Necessarily, to exist at all, it needed the 
 support both of strong instincts and of considerable self-con- 
 fidence, otherwise it must at once have been borne down by 
 the weight of general authority and received canon law. Strong 
 instincts are apt to make men strange, and rude ; self-confi- 
 dence, however well founded, to give much of what they do 
 or say the appearance of impertinence. Look at the self-con- 
 fidence of Wordsworth, stiffening every other sentence of his 
 prefaces into defiance ; there is no more of it than was needed 
 to enable him to do his work, yet it is not a little ungraceful 
 here and there. Suppose this stubbornness and self-trust in 
 
PRE-RA PHA EL ITISM. 
 
 249 
 
 a youth, laboring in an art of which the executive part is con- 
 fessedly to be best learnt from masters, and we shall hardly 
 wonder that much of his work has a certain awkwardness and 
 stiffness in it, or that he should be regarded with disfavor by 
 many, even the most temperate, of the judges trained in the 
 system he was breaking through, and with utter contempt and 
 reprobation by the envious and the dull. Consider, farther, 
 that the particular system to be overthrown was, in the present 
 case, one of which the main characteristic was the pursuit of 
 beauty at the expense of manliness and truth ; and it will 
 seem likely, a priori, that the men intended successfully to 
 resist the influence of such a system should be endowed with 
 little natural sense of beauty, and thus rendered dead to the 
 temptation it presented. Summing up these conditions, there 
 is surely little cause for surprise that pictures painted, in a 
 temper of resistance, by exceedingly young men, of stubborn 
 instincts and positive self-trust, and with little natural per- 
 ception of beauty, should not be calculated, at the first glance, 
 to win us from works enriched by plagiarism, polished by 
 convention, invested with all the attractiveness of artificial 
 grace, and recommended to our respect by established 
 authority. 
 
 We should, however, on the other hand, have anticipated, 
 that in proportion to the strength of character required for 
 the effort, and to the absence of distracting sentiments, 
 whether respect for precedent, or affection for ideal beauty, 
 would be the energy exhibited in the pursuit of the special 
 objects which the youths proposed to themselves, and their 
 success in attaining them. 
 
 All this has actually been the case, but in a degree which 
 it would have been impossible to anticipate. That two youths, 
 of the respective ages of eighteen and twenty, should have 
 conceived for themselves a totally independent and sincere 
 method of study, and enthusiastically persevered in it against 
 every kind of dissuasion and opposition, is strange enough : 
 that in the third or fourth year of their efforts they should 
 have produced works in many parts not inferior to the best 
 of Albert Durer, this is perhaps not lc*;s strange. But the 
 
250 
 
 PR E- EA PIIA EL IT IS AT. 
 
 loudness and universality of the howl which the common 
 critics of the press have raised against them, the utter absence 
 of all generous help or encouragement from those who can 
 both measure their toil and appreciate their success, and the 
 shrill, shallow laughter of those who can do neither the one 
 nor the other, — these are strangest of all — unimaginable un- 
 less they had been experienced. 
 
 And as if these were not enough, private malice is at work 
 against them, in its own small, slimy way. The very day after 
 I had written my second letter to the Times in the defence of 
 the Pre-Kapha elites, I received an anonymous letter respecting 
 one of them, from some person apparently hardly capable of 
 spelling, and about as vile a specimen of petty malignity as 
 ever blotted paper. I think it w T eli that the public should 
 know this, and so get some insight into the sources of the 
 spirit which is at work against these men— how first roused it 
 is difficult to say, for one would hardly have thought that 
 mere eccentricity in young artists could have excited an hos- 
 tility so determined and so cruel ; — hostility which hesitated 
 at no assertion, however impudent. That of the " absence of 
 perspective " was one of the most curious pieces of the hue 
 and cry which began with the Times, and died away in feeble 
 maundering in the Art Union ; I contradicted it in the Times 
 — I here contradict it directly for the second time. There 
 was not a single error in perspective in three out of the four 
 pictures in question. But if otherwise, would it have been 
 anything remarkable in them? I doubt, if with the exception 
 of the pictures of David Roberts, there were one architectural 
 drawing in perspective on the walls of the Academy ; I never 
 met but with two men in my life who knew enough of per- 
 spective to draw a Gothic arch in a retiring plane, so that its 
 lateral dimensions and curvatures might be calculated to scale 
 from the drawing. Our architects certainly do not, and it was 
 but the other day that, talking to one of the most distinguished 
 among them, the author of several most valuable works, I 
 found he actually did not know how to draw a circle in per- 
 spective. And in this state of general science our writers for 
 the press take it upon them to tell us, that the forest trees 
 
PRE-RA PEA ELITISM. 
 
 251 
 
 in Mr. Hunt's Sylvia, and the bunches of lilies in Mr. Collins's 
 Convent Thoughts, are out of perspective.* 
 
 It might not, I think, in such circumstances, have been un- 
 graceful or unwise in the Academicians themselves to have 
 defended their young pupils, at least by the contradiction of 
 statements directly false respecting them,f and the direction 
 
 * It was not a little curious, tliat in the very number of the Art Union 
 which repeated this direct falsehood about the Pre-Raphaelite rejection 
 of " linear perspective" (by-the-bye, the next time J. B. takes upon 
 him to speak of anyone connected with the Universities, he may as well 
 first ascertain the difference between a Graduate and an Under-Grad- 
 uate), the second plate given should have been of a picture of Boning- 
 ton's,— a professional landscape painter, observe, — for the want of aerial 
 perspective in which the Art Union itself was obliged to apologise, and 
 in which the artist has committed nearly as many blunders in linear per- 
 spective as there are lines in the picture. 
 
 \ These false statements may be reduced to three principal heads, and 
 directly contradicted in succession. 
 
 The first, the current fallacy of society as well as of the press, was, 
 that the Pre-Raphaelites imitated the errors of early painters. 
 
 A falsehood of this kind could not have obtained credence anywhere 
 but in England, few English people, comparatively, having ever seen a 
 picture of early Italian Masters. If they had, they would have known 
 that the Pre-Raphaelite pictures are just as superior to the early Italian 
 in skill of manipulation, power of drawing, and knowledge of effect, as 
 inferior to them in grace of design ; and that in a word, there is not a 
 shadow of resemblance between the two styles. The Pre-Raphaelites 
 imitate no pictures : they paint from nature only. But they have op- 
 posed themselves as a body to that kind of teaching above described, 
 which only began after Raphael's time : and they have opposed them- 
 selves as sternly to the entire feeling of the Renaissance schools ; a feel- 
 ing compounded of indolence, infidelity, sensuality, and shallow pride. 
 Therefore they have called themselves Pre-Raphaelites. If they adhere 
 to their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with the help 
 of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the thirteenth 
 and fourteenth centuries, they will, as I said, found a new and noble 
 school in England. If their sympathies with the early artists lead them 
 into medievalism or Romanism, they will of course come to nothing. 
 But I believe there is no danger of this, at least for the strongest among 
 them. There may be some weak ones, whom the Tractarian heresies 
 may touch ; but if so, they will drop off like decayed branches from a 
 strong stem. I hope all things from the school. 
 
 The second falsehood was, that the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw 
 
252 
 
 PRE-11APIIAELIT1SM. 
 
 of the mind and sight of the public to such real merit as the} 
 possess. If Sir Charles Eastlake, Mulready, Edwin and Charles 
 Landseer, Cope, and Dyce would each of them simply state 
 their own private opinion respecting their paintings, sign it, 
 and publish it, I believe the act would be of more service to 
 English art than any thing the Academy has done since it was 
 founded. But as I cannot hope for this, I can only ask the 
 public to give their pictures careful examination, and look at 
 them at once with the indulgence and the respect which I 
 have endeavored to show they deserve. 
 
 Yet let me not be misunderstood. I have adduced them 
 only as examples of the kind of study which I would desire to 
 see substituted for that of our modern schools, and of sin- 
 gular success in certain characters, finish of detail, and bril- 
 liancy of color. What faculties, higher than imitative, may 
 be in these men, I do not yet venture to say ; but I do say, 
 that if they exist, such faculties will manifest themselves in 
 due time all the more forcibly because they have received 
 training so severe. 
 
 For it is always to be remembered that no one mind is like 
 another, either in its powers or perceptions ; and while the 
 main principles of training must be the same for all, the result 
 in each will be as various as the kinds of truth which each will 
 apprehend ; therefore, also, the modes of effort, even in men 
 whose inner principles and final aims are exactly the same. 
 Suppose, for instance, two men, equally honest, equally indus- 
 trious, equally impressed with a humble desire to render some 
 part of what they saw in nature faithfully ; and, otherwise, 
 trained in convictions such as I have above endeavored to in- 
 duce. But one of them is quiet in temperament, has a feeble 
 memory, no invention, and excessively keen sight. The other 
 is impatient in temperament, has a memory which nothing 
 
 well. This was assertsd, and could have been asserted only by persons 
 who had never looked at the pictures. 
 
 The third falsehood was, that they had no system of light and shade, 
 To which it may be simply replied that their system of light and shade 
 is exactly the same as the Sun's ; which is, I believe, likely to outlast 
 that of the Renaissance, however brilliant. 
 
PRE-RA PHA ELITISM. 
 
 253 
 
 escapes, an invention which never rests, and is comparatively 
 near-sighted. 
 
 Set them both free in the same field in a mountain valley. 
 One sees everything, small and large, with almost the same 
 clearness ; mountains and grasshoppers alike ; the leaves on 
 the branches, the veins in the pebbles, the bubbles in the 
 stream : but he can remember nothing, and invent nothing. 
 Patiently he sets himself to his mighty task ; abandoning at 
 once all thoughts of seizing transient effects, or giving general 
 impressions of that which his eyes present to him in micro- 
 scopical dissection, he chooses some small portion out of the 
 infinite scene, and calculates with courage the number of 
 weeks which must elapse before he can do justice to the in- 
 tensity of his perceptions, or the fulness of matter in his 
 subject. 
 
 Meantime, the other has been watching the change of the 
 clouds, and the march of the light along the mountain sides ; 
 he beholds the entire scene in broad, soft masses of true gra- 
 dation, and the very feebleness of his sight is in some sort an 
 advantage to him, in making him more sensible of the aerial 
 mystery of distance, and hiding from him the multitudes of 
 circumstances which it would have been impossible for him to 
 represent. But there is not one change in the casting of the 
 jagged shadows along the hollows of the hills, but it is fixed 
 on his mind for ever ; not a flake of spray has broken from 
 the sea of cloud about their bases, but he has watched it as it 
 melts away, and could recall it to its lost place in heaven by 
 the slightest effort of his thoughts. Not only so, but thou- 
 sands and thousands of such images, of older scenes, remain 
 congregated in his mind, each mingling in new associations 
 with those now visibly passing before him, and these again 
 confused with other images of his own ceaseless, sleepless 
 imagination, flashing by in sudden troops. Fancy how his 
 paper will be covered with stray symbols and blots, and un- 
 decipherable short-hand : — as for his sitting down to " draw 
 from Nature," there was not one of the things which he 
 wished to represent that stayed for so much as five seconds 
 together : but none of them escaped, for all that : they are 
 
254 
 
 PHE-RA PHAELITISM. 
 
 sealed up in that strange storehouse of his ; he may take one 
 of them out, perhaps, this day twenty years, and paint it in 
 his dark room, far away. Now, observe, you may tell both of 
 these men, when they are young, that they are to be honest, 
 that they have an important function, and that they are not 
 to care what Raphael did. This you may wholesomely im- 
 press on them both. But fancy the exquisite absurdity of 
 expecting either of them to possess any of the qualities of the 
 other. 
 
 I have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last, and of 
 invention in the first painter, that the contrast between them 
 might be more striking ; but, with very slight modification, 
 both the characters are real. Grant to the first considerable 
 inventive power, with exquisite sense of color ; and give to 
 the second, in addition to all his other faculties, the eye of an 
 eagle ; and the first is John Everett Millais, the second 
 Joseph Mallard William Turner. 
 
 They are among the few men who have defied all false 
 teaching, and have, therefore, in great measure, done justice 
 to the gifts with which they were entrusted. They stand at 
 opposite poles, marking culminating points of art in both 
 directions ; between them, or in various relations to them, we 
 may class five or six more living artists who, in like manner, 
 have done justice to their powers. I trust that I may be 
 pardoned for naming them, in order that the reader may 
 know how the strong innate genius in each has been inva- 
 riably acccompanied with the same humility, earnestness, and 
 industry in study. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to point out the earnestness or humil- 
 ity in the works of "William Hunt ; but it may be so to sug- 
 gest the high value they possess as records of English rural 
 life, and stilt life. Who is there who for a moment could 
 contend with him in the unaffected, yet humorous truth with 
 which he has painted our peasant children ? Who is there 
 who does not sympathize with him in the simple love with 
 which he dwells on the brightness and hlooni of our summer 
 fruit and flowers ? And yet there is something to be regretted 
 concerning him : why should he be allowed continually to 
 
PRE-RAPIIAEL1TISM. 
 
 255 
 
 paint the same bunches of hot-house grapes, and supply to 
 the Water Color Society a succession of pineapples with the 
 regularity of a Covent Garden fruiterer ? He has of late dis- 
 covered that primrose banks are lovely ; but there are 
 other things grow wild besides primroses : what undreamt-of 
 loveliness might he not bring back to us, if he would lose 
 himself for a summer in Highland foregrounds ; if he 
 would paint the heather as it grows, and the foxglove and the 
 harebell as they nestle in the clefts of the rocks, and the 
 mosses and bright lichens of the rocks themselves. And 
 then, cross to the Jura, and bring back a piece of Jura pasture 
 in spring ; with the gentians in their earliest blue, and the 
 soldanelle beside the fading snow ! And return again, and 
 paint a gray wall of Alpine crag, with budding roses crown- 
 ing it like a wreath of rubies. That is what he was meant to 
 do in this world ; not to paint bouquets in china vases. 
 
 I have in various other places expressed my sincere respect 
 for the works of Samuel Prout : his shortness of sight has 
 necessarily prevented their possessing delicacy of finish or 
 fulness of minor detail ; but I think that those of no other 
 living artist furnish an example so striking of innate and 
 special instinct, sent to do a particular work at the exact and 
 only period when it was possible. At the instant when peace 
 had been established all over Europe, but when neither 
 national character nor national architecture had as yet been 
 seriously changed by promiscuous intercourse or modern 
 " improvement ; " when, however, nearly every ancient and 
 beautiful building had been long left in a state of compara- 
 tive neglect, so that its aspect of partial ruinousness, and of 
 separation from recent active life, gave to every edifice a 
 peculiar interest — half sorrowful, half sublime ; — at that mo- 
 ment Prout was trained among the rough rocks and simple 
 cottages of Cornwall, until his eye was accustomed to follow 
 with delight the rents and breaks, and irregularities which, 
 to another man, would have been offensive ; and then, gifted 
 with infinite readiness in composition, but also with infinite 
 affection for the kind of subjects he had to portray, he was 
 sent to preserve, in an almost innumerable series of drawings, 
 
256 
 
 PEER A PHA ELITISM* 
 
 every one made on the spot, the aspect borne, at the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century, by cities which, in a few years more, 
 rekindled wars, or unexpected prosperities, were to ravage, or 
 renovate, into nothingness. 
 
 It seems strange to pass from Prout to John Lewis ; but 
 there is this fellowship between them, that both seem to have 
 been intended to appreciate the characters of foreign coun- 
 tries more than of their own — nay, to have been born in Eng- 
 land chiefly that the excitement of strangeness might enhance 
 to them the interest of the scenes they had to represent. I 
 believe John Lewis to have done more entire justice to all 
 his powers (and they are magnificent ones) than any other 
 man amongst us. His mission was evidently to portray the 
 comparatively animal life of the southern and eastern families 
 of mankind. For this he was prepared in a somewhat singu- 
 lar way— by being led to study, and endowed with altogether 
 peculiar apprehension of, the most sublime characters of ani- 
 mals themselves. Eubens, Rembrandt, Snyders, Tintoret, 
 and Titian, have all, in various ways, drawn wild beasts mag- 
 nificently ; but they have in some sort humanized or demon - 
 ized them, making them either ravenous fiends or educated 
 beasts, that would draw cars, and had respect for hermits, 
 The sullen isolation of the brutal nature ; the dignity and 
 quietness of the mighty limbs ; the shaggy mountainous 
 power, mingled with grace, as of a flowing stream ; the 
 stealthy restraint of strength and wrath in every soundless 
 motion of the gigantic frame ; all this seems never to have 
 been seen, much less drawn, until Lewis drew and himself 
 engraved a series of animal subjects, now many years ago. 
 Since then, he has devoted himself to the portraiture of those 
 European and Asiatic races, among whom the refinements of 
 civilization exist without its laws or its energies, and in whom 
 the fierceness, indolence, and subtlety of animal nature are 
 associated with brilliant imagination and strong affections. 
 To this task he has brought not only intense perception of 
 the kind of character, but powers of artistical composition 
 like those of the great Venetians, displaying, at the same 
 time, a refinement of drawing almost miraculous, and ajopre^ 
 
PRE- HA PHAELITISM. 
 
 257 
 
 eiable only, as the minutise of nature itself are appreciable, 
 by the help of the microscope. The value, therefore, of his 
 works, as records of the aspect of the scenery and inhabitants 
 of the south of Spain and of the East, in the earlier part of 
 the nineteenth century, is quite above all estimate. 
 
 I hardly know how to speak of Mulready : in delicacy and 
 completion of drawing, and splendor of color, he takes place 
 beside John Lewis and the pre-Raphaelites ; but he has, 
 throughout his career, displayed no definiteness in choice of 
 subject. He must be named among the painters who have 
 studied with industry, and have made themselves great by 
 doing so ; but having obtained a consummate method of ex- 
 ecution, he has thrown it away on subjects either altogether 
 uninteresting, or above his powers, or unfit for pictorial repre- 
 sentation. "The Cherry Woman,'' exhibited in 1850, may be 
 named as an example of the first kind; the 44 Burchell and 
 Sophia " of the second (the character of Sir William Thorn- 
 hill being utterly missed) ; the " Seven Ages " of the third ; 
 for this subject cannot be painted. In the written passage, 
 the thoughts are progressive and connected ; in the picture 
 they must be co-existent, and yet separate ; nor can all the 
 characters of the ages be rendered in painting at all. One 
 may represent the soldier at the cannon's mouth, but oue can- 
 not paint the "bubble reputation" wdiich he seeks. Mul- 
 ready, therefore, w T hile he has always produced exquisite 
 pieces of painting, has failed in doing anything which can be 
 of true or extensive use. He has, indeed, understood how to 
 discipline his genius, but never how to direct it. 
 
 Edw T in Landseer is the last painter but one whom I shall 
 name : I need not point out to any one acquainted with his 
 earlier works, the labor, or watchfulness of nature which they 
 involve, nor need I do more than allude to the peculiar facul- 
 ties of his mind. It will at once be granted that the highest 
 merits of his pictures are throughout found in those parts of 
 them which are least like what had before been accomplished ; 
 and that it was not by the study of Raphael that he attained 
 his eminent success, but by a healthy love of Scotch terriers. 
 
 None of these painters, however, it will be answered, afford 
 
PR E-RA P1IA EL II USM. 
 
 examples of the rise of the highest imaginative power out of 
 close study of matters of fact. Be it remembered, however, 
 that the imaginative power, in its magnificence, is not to be 
 found every day. Lewis has it in no mean degree ; but we 
 cannot hope to find it at its highest more than once in an age. 
 We have had it once, and must be content. 
 
 Towards the close of the last century, among the various 
 drawings executed, according to the quiet manner of the time, 
 in greyish blue, with brown foregrounds, some began to be 
 noticed as exhibiting rather more than ordinary diligence and 
 delicacy, signed W. Turner.* There was nothing, however, 
 in them at all indicative of genius, or even of more than or- 
 dinary talent, unless in some of the subjects a large percep- 
 tion of space, and excessive clearness and decision in the ar- 
 rangement of masses. Gradually and cautiously the blues 
 became mingled with delicate green, and then with gold ; the 
 browns in the foreground became first more positive, and 
 then were slightly mingled w T ith other local colors ; while the 
 touch, which had at first been heavy and broken, like that of 
 the ordinary drawing masters of the time, grew more and 
 more refined and expressive, until it lost itself in a method of 
 execution often too delicate for the eye to follow, rendering, 
 with a precision before unexampled, both the texture and the 
 form of every object. The style may be considered as per- 
 fectly formed about the year 1800, and it remained unchanged 
 for twenty years. 
 
 During that period the painter had attempted, and with 
 more or less success had rendered, every order of landscape 
 subject, but always on the same principle, subduing the colors 
 of nature into a harmony of which the key-notes are greyish 
 green and brown ; pure blues and delicate golden yellows 
 being admitted in small quantity, as the lowest and highest 
 limits of shade and light : and bright local colors in extremely 
 small quantity in figures or other minor accessories. 
 
 Pictures executed on such a system are not, properly speak- 
 
 * He did not use Ms full signature, J. M. Vv 7 ., until about the year 
 1800. 
 
PRERAPIIAE LIT18M. 
 
 ing, works in color at all ; they are studies of light and shade, 
 in which both the shade and the distance are rendered in the 
 general hue which best expresses their attributes of coolness 
 and transparency ; and the lights and the foreground are ex- 
 ecuted in that which best expresses their warmth and solidity. 
 This advantage may just as well be taken as not, in studies of 
 light and shadow to be executed with the hand : but the use 
 of two, three, or four colors, always in the same relations and 
 places, does not in the least constitute the work a study of 
 color, any more than the brown engravings of the Liber Stu- 
 diorum ; nor would the idea of color be in general more pre- 
 sent to the artist's mind, when he was at work on one of these 
 drawings, than when he was using pure brown in the mezzo- 
 tint engraving. But the idea of space, warmth, and freshness 
 being not successfully expressible in a single tint, and perfectly 
 expressible by the admission of three or four, he allows him- 
 self this advantage when it is possible, without in the least 
 embarrassing himself with the actual color of the objects to 
 be represented. A stone in the fore ground might in nature 
 have been cold grey, but it will be drawn nevertheless of a 
 rich brown, because it is in the foreground ; a hill in the dis- 
 tance might in nature be purple with heath, or golden with 
 furze ; but it will be drawn nevertheless of a cool grey, because 
 it is in the distance. 
 
 This at least was the general theory, — carried out with 
 great severity in many, both of the drawings and pictures ex- 
 ecuted by him during the period : in others more or less 
 modified by the cautious introduction of color, as the painter 
 felt his liberty increasing ; for the system was evidently never 
 considered as final, or as anything more than a means of prog- 
 ress : the conventional, easily manageable color, was visibly 
 adopted, only that his mind might be at perfect liberty to ad- 
 dress itself to the acquirement of the first and most necessary 
 knowledge in all art — that of form. But as form, in landscape, 
 implies vast bulk and space, the use of the tints which enabled 
 him best to express them, was actually auxiliary to the mere 
 drawing ; and, therefore, not only permissible, but even neces- 
 sary, while more brilliant or varied tints were never indulged 
 
2G0 
 
 PRE'RAPHlA ELITISM. 
 
 in, except when they might be introduced without the slight 
 est danger of diverting his mind for an instant from his prin- 
 cipal object. And, therefore, it will be generally found in the 
 works of this period, that exactly in proportion to the impor- 
 tance and general toil of the composition, is the severity of 
 the tint ; and that the play of color begins to show itself first 
 in slight and small drawings, where he felt that he could easily 
 secure all that he wanted in form. 
 
 Thus the " Crossing the Brook," and such other elaborate 
 and large compositions, are actually painted in nothing but 
 grey, brown, and blue, with a point or two of severe local 
 color in the figures ; but in the minor drawings, tender pas- 
 sages of complicated color occur not unfrequently in easy 
 places ; and even before the year 1800 he begins to introduce 
 it with evident joyfulness and longing in his rude and simple 
 studies, just as a child, if it could be supposed to govern itself 
 by a fully developed intellect, would cautiously, but with infi- 
 nite pleasure, add now and then a tiny dish of fruit or other 
 dangerous luxury to the simple order of its daily fare. Thus, 
 in the foregrounds of his most severe drawings, we not unfre- 
 quently find him indulging in the luxury of a peacock ; and it 
 is impossible to express the joyfulness with which he seems to 
 design its graceful form, and deepen with soft pencilling the 
 bloom of its blue, after he has worked through the stern detail 
 of his almost colorless drawing. A rainbow is another of his 
 most frequently permitted indulgences ; and we find him very 
 early allowing the edges of his evening clouds to be touched 
 with soft rose-color or gold ; while, whenever the hues of nat- 
 ure in anywise fall into his system, and can be caught with- 
 out a dangerous departure from it, he instantly throws his 
 whole soul into the faithful rendering of them. Thus the 
 usual brown tones of his foreground become warmed into 
 sudden vigor, and are varied and enhanced with indescribable 
 delight, when he finds himself by the shore of a moorland 
 stream, where they truly express the stain of its golden rocks, 
 and the darkness of its clear, Cairngorm-like pools, and the 
 usual serenity of his aerial blue is enriched into the softness 
 and depth of the sapphire, when it can deepen the distant 
 
PRE-RAPHA ELITISM. 
 
 261 
 
 slumber of some Highland lake, or temper the gloomy shad- 
 ows of the evening upon its hills. 
 
 The system of his color being thus simplified, he could ad- 
 dress all the strength of his mind to the accumulation of facts 
 of form ; his choice of subject, and his methods of treatment, 
 are therefore as various as his color is simple ; and it is not a 
 little difficult to give the reader who is unacquainted with his 
 works, an idea either of their infinitude of aims, on the one 
 hand, or of the kind of feeling which prevades them all, on 
 the other. No subject was too low or too high for him ; we 
 find him one day hard at work on a cock and hen, with their 
 family of chickens in a farm-yard ; and bringing all the refine- 
 ment of his execution into play to express the texture of the 
 plumage ; next day, he is drawing the Dragon of Colchis. One 
 hour he is much interested in a gust of wind blowing away an 
 old woman's cap ; the next he is painting the fifth plague of 
 Egypt. Every landscape painter before him had acquired 
 distinction by confining his efforts to one class of subject. 
 Hobbima painted oaks ; Kuysdael, waterfalls and copses ; 
 Cuyp, river or meadow scenes in quiet afternoons ; Salvator 
 and Poussin, such kind of mountain scenery as people could 
 conceive, who lived in towns in the seventeenth century. But 
 I am well persuaded that if all the works of Turner, up to the 
 year 1820, were divided into classes (as he has himself divided 
 them in the Liber Studiorum), no preponderance could be as- 
 signed to one class over another. There is architecture, in- 
 cluding a large number of formal "gentlemen's seats,'' I sup- 
 pose drawings commissioned by the owners ; then lowland 
 pastoral scenery of every kind, including nearly all farming 
 operations, — ploughing, harrowing, hedging and ditching, 
 felling trees, sheep-washing, and I know not what else ; then 
 all kinds of town life — court-yards of inns, starting of mail 
 coaches, interiors of shops, house-buildings, fairs, elections, 
 &c. ; then all kinds of inner domestic life — interiors of rooms, 
 studies of costumes, of still life, and heraldry, including mul- 
 titudes of symbolical vignettes ; then marine scenery of every 
 kind, full of local incident ; every kind of boat and method of 
 fishing for particular fish, being specifically drawn, round the 
 
262 
 
 PRE-RA PIIA ELITISM. 
 
 whole coast of England ; — pilchard fishing at St. Ives, whiting 
 fishing at Margate, herring at Loch Fyne ; and all kinds of 
 shipping, including studies of every separate part of the ves- 
 sels, and many marine battle-pieces, two in particular of Traf- 
 algar, both of high importance, — one of the Victory after the 
 battle, now in Greenwich Hospital ; another of the Death of 
 Nelson, in his own gallery ; then all kinds of mountain scenery, 
 some idealised into compositions, others of definite localities ; 
 together with classical compositions, Homes and Cartilages 
 and such others, by the myriad, with mythological, histori- 
 cal, or allegorical figures, — nymphs, monsters, and spectres ; 
 heroes and divinities.* 
 
 What general feeling, it may be asked incredulously, can 
 possibly pervade all this ? This, the greatest of all feelings — 
 an utter forgetfulness of self. Throughout the whole period 
 with which we are at present concerned, Turner appears as a 
 man of sympathy absolutely infinite — a sympathy so all-em- 
 bracing, that I know nothing but that of Shakespeare com- 
 parable with it, A soldier's wife resting by the roadside is 
 not beneath it ; Eizpah, the daughter of Aiah, watching the 
 dead bodies of her sons, not above it. Nothing can possibly 
 be so mean as that it will not interest his whole mind, and 
 carry away his whole heart ; nothing so great or solemn but 
 that he can raise himself into harmony with it ; and it is im- 
 possible to prophesy of him at any moment, whether, the next, 
 he will be in laughter or in tears. 
 
 This is the root of the man's greatness ; and it follows as a 
 matter of course that this sympathy must give him a subtle 
 power of expression, even of the characters of mere material 
 things, such as no other painter ever possessed. The man 
 who can best feel the difference between rudeness and tender- 
 ness in humanity, perceives also more difference between the 
 branches of an oak and a willow than any one else would ; and. 
 therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the draw- 
 ings themselves is the speciality of whatever they represent — • 
 the thorough stiffness of what is stiff, and grace of what is 
 
 * I shall give a catalogue raisonnce of all this in the third volume of 
 u Modern Painters," 
 
PRE-BAPHAELITISM. 
 
 263 
 
 graceful, and vastness of what is vast ; but through and beyond 
 all this, the condition of the mind of the painter himself is 
 easily enough discoverable by comparison of a large number 
 of the drawings. It is singularly serene and peaceful : in it- 
 self quite passionless, though entering with ease into the ex- 
 ternal passion which it contemplates. By the effort of its 
 will it sympathises with tumult or distress, even in their ex- 
 tremes, but there is no tumult, no sorrow in itself, only a 
 chastened and exquisitely peaceful cheerfulness, deeply medi- 
 tative ; touched without loss of its own perfect balance, by 
 sadness on the one side, and stooping to playfulness upon the 
 other. I shall never cease to regret the destruction, by fire, 
 now several years ago, of a drawing which always seemed to 
 me to be the perfect image of the painter's mind at this 
 period, — the drawing of Brignai Church near Bokeby, of 
 which a feeble idea may still be gathered from the engraving 
 (in the Yorkshire series). The spectator stands on the "Brig- 
 nai banks," looking down into the glen at twilight ; the sky 
 is still full of soft rays, though the sun is gone ; and the 
 Greta glances brightly in the valley, singing its evening-song ; 
 two white clouds, following each other, move without wind 
 through the hollows of the ravine, and others lie couched on 
 the far away moorlands ; every leaf of the woods is still in the 
 delicate air ; a boy's kite, incapable of rising, has become en- 
 tangled in their branches, he is climbing to recover it ; and 
 just behind it in the picture, almost indicated by it, the lowly 
 church is seen in its secluded field between the rocks and the 
 stream ; and around it the low churchyard wall, and the few 
 white stones which mark the resting places of those who can 
 climb the rocks no more, nor hear the river sing as it passes. 
 
 There are many other existing drawings which indicate the 
 same character of mind, though I think none so touching or 
 so beautiful ; yet they are not, as I said above, more numerous 
 than those which express his sympathy with sublimer or more 
 active scenes ; but they are almost always marked by a ten- 
 derness of execution, and have a look of being beloved in 
 every part of them, which shows them to be the truest expres- 
 sion of his own feelings. 
 
264 
 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM. 
 
 One other characteristic of his mind at this period remains 
 to be noticed — its reverence for talent in others. Not the 
 reverence which acts upon the practices of men as if they were 
 the laws of nature, hut that which is ready to appreciate the 
 power, and receive the assistance, of every mind which has 
 been previously employed in the same direction, so far as its 
 teaching seems to be consistent with the great text-book of 
 nature itself. Turner thus studied almost every preceding 
 landscape painter, chiefly Claude, Poussin, Vandevelde, 
 Loutherbourg, and "Wilson. It was probably by the Sir 
 George Beaumonts and other feeble conventionalists of the 
 period, that he was persuaded to devote his attention to the 
 works of these men ; and his having done so will be thought, 
 a few scores of years hence, evidence of perhaps the greatest 
 modesty ever shown by a man of original power. Modesty 
 at once admirable and unfortunate, for the study of the works 
 of Vandevelde and Claude was productive of unmixed mischief 
 to him ; he spoiled many of his marine pictures, as for instance 
 Lord Eilesmere's, by imitation of the former ; and from the 
 latter learned a false ideal, which confirmed by the notions of 
 Greek art prevalent in London in the beginning of this cen- 
 tury, has manifested itself in many vulgarities in his composi- 
 tion pictures, vulgarities which may perhaps be best expressed 
 by the general term " Twickenham Classicism," as consisting 
 principally in conceptions of ancient or of rural life such as 
 have influenced the erection of most of our suburban villas. 
 From Mcolo Poussin and Loutherbourg he seems to have de- 
 rived advantage ; perhaps also from Wilson ; and much in his 
 subsequent travels from far higher men, especially Tintoret 
 and Paiil Veronese. I have myself heard him speaking with 
 singular delight of the putting in of the beech leaves in the 
 upper right-hand corner of Titian's Peter Martyr. I cannot in 
 any of his works trace the slightest influence of Salvator ; and 
 I am not surprised at it, for though Salvator was a man of far 
 higher powers than either Vandevelde or Claude, he was a 
 wilful and gross caricaturist Turner would condescend to be 
 helped by feeble men, but could not be corrupted by false 
 men. Besides, he had never himself seen classical life, and 
 
PRE- RA PR A EL I TISM. 
 
 265 
 
 Claude was represented to him as competent authority for it. 
 But he had seen mountains and torrents, and knew therefore 
 that Salvator could not paint them. 
 
 One of the most characteristic drawings of this period for- 
 tunately bears a date, 1818, and brings us within two years 
 of another dated drawing, no less characteristic of what I 
 shall henceforward call Turner's Second period. It is in the 
 possession of Mr. Kawkesworth Fawkes of Farnley, one of 
 Turner's earliest and truest friends ; and bears the inscription, 
 unusually conspicuous, heaving itself up and down over the 
 eminences of the foreground — " Passage of Mont Cenis. J. 
 M. W. Turner, January 15 th, 1820." 
 
 The scene is on the summit of the pass close to the hospice, 
 or what seems to have been a hospice at that time, — I do not 
 remember such at present, — a small square-built house, built 
 as if partly for a fortress, with a detached flight of stone steps 
 in front of it, and a kind of drawbridge to the door. This 
 building, about 400 or 500 yards off, is seen in a dim, ashy 
 grey against the light, which by help of a violent blast of 
 mountain wind has broken through the depth of clouds which 
 hangs upon the crags. There is no sky, properly so called, 
 nothing but this roof of drifting cloud ; but neither is there 
 any weight of darkness — the high air is too thin for it — all 
 savage, howling, and luminous with cold, the massy bases of 
 the granite hills jutting out here and there grimly through 
 the snow wreaths. There is a desolate-looking refuge on the 
 left, with its number 10, marked on it in long ghastly figures, 
 and the wind is drifting the snow off the roof and through its 
 window in a frantic whirl ; the near ground is all wan with 
 half-thaw T ed, half-trampled snow ; a diligence in front, w r hose 
 horses, unable to face the wdnd, have turned right round with 
 fright, its passengers struggling to escape, jammed in the 
 window ; a little farther on is another carriage off the road, 
 some figures pushing at its wheels, and its driver at the horses' 
 heads, pulling and lashing with all his strength, his lifted arm 
 stretched out against the light of the distance, though too far 
 off for the whip to be seen. 
 
 Now I am perfectly certain that any one thoroughly accus* 
 
266 
 
 PRE-llAPHA EU'J 'ISM. 
 
 tomed to the earlier works of the painter, and shown this 
 picture for the first time, would be struck by two altogether 
 new characters in it. 
 
 The first, ■ a seeming enjoyment of the excitement of the 
 scene, totally different from the contemplative philosophy with 
 which it would formerly have been regarded. Every incident 
 of motion and of energy is siezed upon with indescribable 
 delight, and every line of the composition animated with a 
 force and fury which are now no longer the mere expression 
 of a contemplated external truth, but have origin in some in- 
 herent feeling in the painter's mind. 
 
 The second, that although the subject is one in itself almost 
 incapable of color, and although, in order to increase the 
 wildness of the impression, all brilliant local color has been 
 refused even where it might easily have been introduced, as 
 in the figures ; yet in the low minor key which has been 
 chosen, the melodies of color have been elaborated to the 
 utmost possible pitch, so as to become a leading, instead of a 
 subordinate, element in the composition ; the subdued warm 
 hues of the granite promontories, the dull stone color of the 
 walls of the buildings, clearly opposed, even in shade, to the 
 grey of the snow wreaths heaped against them, and the faint 
 greens and ghastly blues of the glacier ice, being all expressed 
 with delicacies of transition utterly unexampled in any previ- 
 ous drawings. 
 
 These, accordingly, are the chief characteristics of the w T orks 
 of Turner's second period, as distinguished from the first, — a 
 new energy inherent in the mind of the painter, diminishing 
 the repose and exalting the force and fire of his conceptions, 
 and the presence of Color, as at least an essential, and often 
 a principal, element of design. 
 
 Not that it is impossible, or even unusual, to find drawings 
 of serene subject, and perfectly quiet feeling, among the com- 
 positions of this period ; but the repose is in them, just as the 
 energy and tumult were in the earlier period, an external 
 quality, which the painter images by an effort of the w T ill : it 
 is no longer a character inherent in himself. The " Ulleswater," 
 in the England series, is one of those which are in most per- 
 
PRE-RA PIIAELIT18M. 
 
 2G7 
 
 feet peace : in the " Cowes," the silence is only broken by the 
 clash of the boat's oars, and in the " Alnwick" by a stag 
 drinking ; but in at least nine drawings out of ten, either sky, 
 water, or figures are in rapid motion, and the grandest draw- 
 ings are almost always those which have even violent action 
 in one or other, or in all : e. g. high force of Tees, Coventry, 
 Llanthony, Salisbury, Llanberis, and such others. 
 
 The color is, however, a more absolute distinction ; and we 
 must return to Mr. Fawkes's collection in order to see how 
 the change in it was effected. That such a change would take 
 place at one time or other was of course to be securely antici- 
 pated, the conventional system of the first period being, as 
 above stated, merely a means of Study. But the immediate 
 cause was the journey of the year 1820. As might be guessed 
 from the legend on the drawing above described, " Passage 
 of Mont Cenis, January 15th, 1820," that drawing represents 
 what happened on the day in question to the painter himself. 
 He passed the Alps then in the winter of 1820 ; and either in 
 the previous or subsequent summer, but on the same journey, 
 he made a series of sketches on the Khine, in body color, now 
 in Mr. Faw T kes's collection. Every one of those sketches is 
 the almost instantaneous record of an effect of color or atmo- 
 sphere, taken strictly from nature, the drawing and the details 
 of every subject being comparatively subordinate, and the 
 color nearly as principal as the light and shade had been be- 
 fore, — certainly the leading feature, though the light and 
 shade are always exquisitely harmonized with it. And natu- 
 rally, as the color becomes the leading object, those times of 
 day are chosen in which it is most lovely ; and whereas before, 
 at least five out of six of Turner's drawings represented ordi- 
 nary daylight, we now find his attention directed constantly 
 to the evening : and, for the first time, we have those rosy 
 lights upon the hills, those gorgeous falls of sun through 
 flaming heavens, those solemn twilights, with the blue moon 
 rising as the western sky grows dim, which have ever since 
 been the themes of his mightiest thoughts. 
 
 I have no doubt, that the immediate reason of this change 
 was the impression made upon him by the colors of the con- 
 
268 
 
 PRE-llAPHA ELITISM. 
 
 tinental skies. When he first travelled on the Continent 
 (1800), he was comparatively a young student ; not yet able 
 to draw form as he wanted, he was forced to give all his 
 thoughts and strength to this primary object. But now he 
 was free to receive other impressions ; the time was come for 
 perfecting his art, and the first sunset which he saw on the 
 Rhine taught him that all previous landscape art was vain 
 and valueless, that in comparison with natural color, the 
 things that had been called paintings were mere ink and 
 charcoal, and that all precedent and all authority must be 
 cast away at once, and trodden under foot. He cast them 
 away : the memories of Vandevelde and Claude were at once 
 weeded out of the great mind they had encumbered ; they 
 and all the rubbish of the schools together with them ; the 
 waves of the Rhine swept them away for ever ; and a new 
 dawn rose over the rocks of the Siebengebirge. 
 
 There was another motive at work, which rendered the 
 change still more complete. His fellow artists were already 
 conscious enough of his superior power in drawing, and their 
 best hope was, that he might not be able to color. They had 
 begun to express this hope loudly enough for it to reach his 
 ears. The engraver of one of his most important marine 
 pictures told me, not long ago, that one day about the period 
 in question, Turner came into his room to examine the 
 progress of the plate, not having seen his own picture for 
 several months. It was one of his dark early pictures, but in 
 the foreground was a little piece of luxury, a pearly fish 
 wrought into hues like those of an opal. He stood before the 
 picture for some moments ; then laughed, and pointed joy- 
 ously to the fish ; — " They say that Turner can't color ! " and 
 turned away. 
 
 Under the force of these various impulses the change was 
 total. Every subject thenceforth was primarily conceived in 
 color; and no engraving ever gave the slightest idea of any 
 drawing of this period. 
 
 The artists who had any perception of the truth were in 
 despair ; the Beaumontites, classicalists, and " owl species ,; 
 in .general, in as much indignation as their dulness was capa- 
 
PRE- II A VII A ELITISM. 
 
 269 
 
 ble of. They had deliberately closed their eyes to all nature, 
 and had gone on inquiring, 4 'Where do ycu put your brown 
 tree ?" A vast revelation was made to them at once, enough 
 to have dazzled any one ; but to them, light unendurable as 
 incomprehensible. They " did to the moon complain," in one 
 vociferous, unanimous, continuous " Tu whoo." Shrieking 
 rose from all dark places at the same instant, just the same 
 kind of shrieking that is now raised against the Pre-Raphael- 
 ites. Those glorious old Arabian Nights, how true they are ! 
 Mocking and whispering, and abuse loud and low by turns, 
 from all the black stones beside the road, when one living soul 
 is toiling up the hill to get the golden water. Mocking and 
 whispering, that he may look back, and become a black stone 
 like themselves. 
 
 Turner looked not back, but he went on in such a temper 
 as a strong man must be in, when he is forced to walk with 
 his fingers in his ears. He retired into himself ; he could 
 look no longer for help, or counsel, or sympathy from any 
 one ; and the spirit of defiance in which he w r as forced to 
 labor led him sometimes into violences, from which the 
 slightest expression of sympathy would have saved him. The 
 new energy that was upon him, and the utter isolation into 
 which he was driven, were both alike dangerous, and many 
 drawings of the time show the evil effects of both ; some of 
 them being hasty, wild, or experimental, and others little 
 more than magnificent expressions of defiance of public 
 opinion. 
 
 But all have this noble virtue — they are in everything his 
 own : there are no more reminiscences of dead masters, no 
 more trials of skill in the manner of Claude or Poussin ; every 
 faculty of his soul is fixed upon nature only, as he saw her, 
 or as he remembered her. 
 
 I have spoken above of his gigantic memory : it is espe- 
 cially necessary to notice this, in order that we may understand 
 the kind of grasp w r hich a man of real imagination takes of 
 all things that are once brought within his reach — grasp 
 thenceforth not to be relaxed for ever. 
 
 On looking over any catalogues of his works, or of par- 
 
270 
 
 PRE- RAP II A ELITISM. 
 
 ticular series of them, we shall notice the recurrence of the 
 same subject two, three, or even many times. In any other 
 artist this w T ould "be nothing remarkable. Probably most 
 modern landscape painters multiply a favorite subject twenty, 
 thirty, or sixty fold, putting the shadows and the clouds in 
 different places, and " inventing, " as they are pleased to call 
 it, a new " effect " every time. But if we examine the suc- 
 cessions of Turner's subjects, we shall find them either the 
 records of a succession of impressions actually perceived by 
 him at some favorite locality, or else repetitions of one im- 
 pression received in early youth, and again and again realised 
 as his increasing powers enabled him to do better justice to 
 it. In either case we shall find them records of seen facts ; 
 never compositions in his room to fill up a favorite outline. 
 
 For instance, every traveller, at least every traveller of 
 thirty years' standing, must love Calais, the place where he 
 first felt himself in a strange world. Turner evidently loved 
 it excessively. I have never catalogued his studies of Calais, 
 but I remember, at this moment, five : there is first the " Pas 
 de Calais," a very large oil painting, which is what he saw in 
 broad daylight as he crossed over, when he got near the 
 French side. It is a careful study of French fishing boats 
 running for the shore before the wind, with the picturesque 
 old city in the distance. Then there is the cc Calais Harbor " 
 in the Liber Studiorum : that is what he saw just as he was 
 going into the harbor, — a heavy brig warping out, and very 
 likely to get in his way, or run against the pier, and bad 
 weather coming on. Then there is the £C Calais Pier," a large 
 painting, engraved some years ago by Mr. Lupton : * that is 
 what he saw when he had landed, and ran back directly to the 
 pier to see what had become of the brig. The weather had 
 got still worse, the fishwomen were being blown about in a 
 distressful manner on the pier head, and some more fishing 
 boats were running in with all speed. Then there is the 
 "Fortrouge," Calais : that is w T hat he saw after he had been 
 home to Dessein's, and dined, and went out again in the even- 
 ing to walk on the sands, the tide being down. He had never 
 * The plate was, however, never published. 
 
PBE-RAPHAELITISM. 
 
 271 
 
 seen such a waste of sands before, and it made an impression 
 on him. The shrimp girls were all scattered over them too, 
 and moved about in white spots on the wild shore ; and the 
 storm had lulled a little, and there was a sunset — such a sun- 
 set, — and the bars of Fortrouge seen against it, skeleton-wise. 
 He did not paint that directly ; thought over it, — painted it 
 a long while afterwards. 
 
 Then there is the vignette in the illustrations to Scott. 
 That is what he saw as he was going home, meditatively ; and 
 the revolving lighthouse came blazing out upon him suddenly, 
 and disturbed him. He did not like that so much ; made a 
 vignette of it, however, when he was asked to do a bit of 
 Calais, twenty or thirty years afterwards, having already done 
 all the rest. 
 
 Turner never told me all this, but any one may see it if he 
 will compare the pictures. They might, possibly, not be im- 
 pressions of a single day, but of two days or three ; though 
 in all human probability they were seen just as I have stated 
 them ; * but they are records of successive impressions, as 
 plainly written as ever traveller's diary. All of them pure 
 veracities. Therefore immortal. 
 
 I could multipijr these series almost indefinitely from the 
 rest of his works. What is curious, some of them have a kind 
 of private mark running through all the subjects. Thus I 
 know three drawings of Scarborough, and all of them have a 
 starfish in the foreground : I do not remember any others of 
 his marine subjects which have a starfish. 
 
 The other kind of repetition — the recurrence to one early 
 impression — is however still more remarkable. In the collec- 
 tion of F. H. Bale, Esq., there is a small drawing of Llanthony 
 Abbey. It is in his boyish manner, its date probably about 
 1795 ; evidently a sketch from nature, finished at home. It 
 had been a showery day ; the hills v/ere partially concealed 
 by the rain, and gleams of sunshine breaking out at intervals. 
 A man was fishing in the mountain stream. The young 
 
 * And the more probably because Turner was never fond of staying 
 long at any place, and was least of all likely to make a pause of two or 
 three days at the beginning of his journey. 
 
272 
 
 PRE- RAPIIA ELITISM. 
 
 Turner sought a place of some shelter under the bushes • 
 made his sketch, took great pains when he got home to imi- 
 tate the rain, as he best could ; added his child's luxury of a 
 rainbow ; put in the very bush under which he had taken 
 shelter, and the fisherman, a somewhat ill-jointed and long- 
 legged fisherman, in the eourtty short breeches which were the 
 fashion of the time. 
 
 Some thirty years afterwards, with all his powers in their 
 strongest training, and after the total change in his feelings 
 and principles which I have endeavored to describe, he un- 
 dertook the series of " England and Wales," and in that series 
 introduced the subject of Llanthony Abbey. And behold, he 
 went back to his boy's sketch, and boy's thought. He kept 
 the very bushes in their places, but brought the fisherman to 
 the other side of the river, and put him, in somewhat less 
 courtly dress, under their shelter, instead of himself. And 
 then he set all his gained strength and new knowledge at 
 work on the well-remembered shower of rain, that had fallen 
 thirty years before, to do it better. The resultant drawing* 
 is one of the very noblest of his second period. 
 
 Another of the drawings of the England series, Ulleswater, 
 is the repetition of one in Mr. Fawkes's collection, which, by 
 the method of its execution, I should conjecture to have been 
 executed about the year 1808, or 1810 : at all events, it is a 
 very quiet drawing of the first period. The lake is quite 
 calm ; the western hills in grey shadow, the eastern massed in 
 light. Helvellyn rising like a mist between them, all being 
 mirrored in the calm water. Some thin and slightly evanes- 
 cent cows are standing in the shallow water in front ; a boat 
 floats motionless about a hundred yards from the shore : the 
 foreground is of broken rocks, with lovely pieces of copse on 
 the right and left. 
 
 This was evidently Turner's record of a quiet evening by 
 the shore of Ulleswater, but it was a feeble one. He could 
 not at that time render the sunset colors : he went back to 
 it therefore in the England series, and painted it again with 
 his new power. The same hills are there, the same shadows, 
 * Vide Modern Painters, Fart II. Sect. III. Chap. IV. § 14. 
 
PRE-RAPI1A ELITISM. 
 
 273 
 
 the same cows, — they bad stood in his mind, on the same 
 spot, for twenty years, — the same boat, the same rocks, only 
 the copse is cut away — it interfered with the masses of his col- 
 or : some figures are introduced bathing, and what was grey, 
 and feeble gold in the first drawing, becomes purple, and burn- 
 ing rose-color in the last. 
 
 But perhaps one of the most curious examples is in the 
 series of subjects from Winchelsea. That in the Liber Stu- 
 diorum, " Winchelsea, Sussex," bears date 1812, and its fig- 
 ures consist of a soldier speaking to a woman, who is resting 
 on the bank beside the road. There is another small subject, 
 with Winchelsea in the distance, of which the engraving bears 
 date 1817. It has two women with bundles, and two soldiers 
 toiling along the embankment in the plain, and a baggage 
 waggon in the distance. Neither of these seems to have sat- 
 isfied him, and at last he did another for the England series, 
 of which the engraving bears date 1830. There is now a regi- 
 ment on the march ; the baggage waggon is there, having got 
 no further on in the thirteen years, but one of the women is 
 tired, and has fainted on the bank ; another is supporting her 
 against her bundle, and giving her drink ; a third sympathetic 
 woman is added, and the two soldiers have stopped, and one 
 is drinking from his canteen. 
 
 Nor is it merely of entire scenes, or of particular incidents, 
 that Turners memory is thus tenacious. The slightest pas- 
 sages of color or arrangement that have pleased him — the 
 fork of a bough, the casting of a shadow, the fracture of a 
 stone — will be taken up again and again, and strangely worked 
 into new relations with other thoughts. There is a single 
 sketch from nature in one of the portfolios at Farnley, of a 
 common wood- walk on the estate, which has furnished pas- 
 sages to no few r er than three of the most elaborate composi- 
 tions in the Liber Studiorum. 
 
 I am thus tedious in dwelling on Turner s powers of memory, 
 because I wish it to be thoroughly seen how all his greatness, 
 all his infinite luxuriance of invention, depends on his taking- 
 possession of everything that he sees, — on his grasping all, 
 and losing hold of nothing, — on his forgetting himself, and 
 
274 
 
 PRE- RAPII A ELITISM. 
 
 forgetting nothing else. I wish it to be understood how every 
 great man paints what he sees or did see, his greatness being 
 indeed little else than his intense sense of fact. And thus 
 Fre-Eaphaelitism and Baphaelitism, and Turnerism, are ali 
 one and the same, so far as education can influence them. 
 They are different in their choice, different in their faculties, 
 but all the same in this, that Eaphael himself, so far as he was 
 great, and all who preceded or followed him who ever w r ere 
 great, became so by painting the truths around them as they 
 appeared to each man's own mind, not as he had been i aught 
 to see them, except by the God who made both him and 
 them. 
 
 There is, however, one more characteristic of Turner's 
 second period, on which I have still to dwell, especially 
 with reference to what has been above advanced respecting 
 the fallacy of overtoil ; namely, the magnificent ease with 
 which all is done when it is successfully done. For there are 
 one or two drawings of this time which are not done easily. 
 Turner had in these set himself to do a fine thing to exhibit 
 his powers ; in the common phrase, to excel himself ; so sure as 
 he does this, the work is a failure. The worst drawings that 
 have ever come from his hands are some of this second period, 
 on which he has spent much time and laborious thought ; 
 drawings filled with incident from one side to the other, with 
 skies stippled into morbid blue, and warm lights set against 
 them in violent contrast ; one of Bamborough Castle, a large 
 water-color, may be named as an example. But the truly 
 noble works are those in which, without effort, he has expressed 
 his thoughts as they came, and forgotten himself ; and in these 
 the outpouring of invention is not less miraculous than the 
 swiftness and obedience of the mighty hand that expresses it. 
 Any one who examines the drawings may see the evidence of 
 this facility-, in the strange freshness and sharpness of every 
 touch of color ; but when the multitude of delicate touches, 
 with which all the aerial tones are worked, is taken into con- 
 sideration, it would still appear impossible that the drawing 
 could have been completed with ease, unless we had direct 
 evidence in the matter : fortunately, it is not wanting. There 
 
PRE-RAPHA ELITISM. 
 
 275 
 
 is a drawing in Mr. Fawkes's collection of a man-of-war taking 
 in stores : it is of the usual size of those of the England se- 
 ries, about sixteen inches by eleven : it does not appear one 
 of the most highly finished, but is still farther removed from 
 slightness. The hull of a first-rate occupies nearly one-half 
 of the picture on the right, her bows towards the spectator, 
 seen in sharp perspective from stem to stern, with all her 
 portholes, guns, anchors, and lower rigging elaborately de- 
 tailed ; there are two other ships of the line in the middle dis- 
 tance, drawn with equal precision ; a noble breezy sea dancing 
 against their broad bows, full of delicate drawing in its waves ; 
 a store-ship beneath the hull of the larger vessel, and several 
 other boats, and a complicated cloudy sky. It might appear 
 no small exertion of mind to draw the detail of all this ship- 
 ping down to the smallest ropes, from memory, in the draw- 
 ing-room of a mansion in the middle of Yorkshire, even if 
 considerable time had been given for the effort. But Mr. 
 Fawkes sat beside the painter from the first stroke to the last. 
 Turner took a piece of blank paper one morning after break- 
 fast, outlined his ships, finished the drawing in three hours, 
 and went out to shoot. 
 
 Let this single fact be quietly meditated upon by our ordi- 
 nary painters, and they will see the truth of what was above 
 asserted, — that if a great thing can be done at all, it can be 
 done easily ; and let them not torment themselves with twist- 
 ing of compositions this way and that, and repeating, and ex- 
 perimenting, and scene-shifting. If a man can compose at 
 all, he can compose at once, or rather he must compose in 
 spite of himself. And this is the reason of that silence which 
 I have kept in most of my works, on the subject of Composi- 
 tion. Many critics, especially the architects, have found fault 
 with me for not " teaching people how to arrange masses ; " 
 for not " attributing sufficient importance to composition." 
 Alas ! I attribute far more importance to it than they do ; — 
 so much importance, that I should just as soon think of sit- 
 ting down to teach a man how to write a Divina Commedia, 
 or King Lear, as how to " compose," in the true sense, a sin- 
 gle building or picture. The marvellous stupidity of this age 
 
276 
 
 PRE-RAPIIA ELITISM. 
 
 of lecturers is, that they do not see that what they call " prin- 
 ciples of composition," are mere principles of common sense 
 in everything, as well as in pictures and buildings ; — A pict- 
 ure is to have a principal light ? Yes ; and so a dinner is to 
 have a principal dish, and an oration a principal point, and an 
 air of music a principal note, and every man a principal ob- 
 ject. A picture is to have harmony of relation among its 
 parts ? Yes ; and so is a speech well uttered, and an action 
 well ordered, and a company well chosen, and a ragout well 
 mixed. Composition ! As if a man were not composing 
 every moment of his life, well or ill, and would not do it in- 
 stinctively in his picture as well as elsewhere, if he could. 
 Composition of this lower or common kind is of exactly the 
 same importance in a picture that it is in any thing else, — no 
 more. It is well that a man should say what he has to say in 
 good order and sequence, but the main thing is to say it truly. 
 And yet we go on preaching to our pupils as if to have a prin- 
 cipal light was every thing, and so cover our academy walls 
 with Shacabac feasts, wherein the courses are indeed well or- 
 dered, but the dishes empty. 
 
 It is not, however, only in invention that men overwork 
 themselves, but in execution also ; and here I have a word to 
 say to the Pre-Raphaelites specially. They are working too 
 hard. There is evidence in failing portions of their pictures, 
 showing that they have wrought so long upon them that their 
 very sight has failed for weariness, and that the hand refused 
 any more to obey the heart. And, besides this, there are cer- 
 tain qualities of drawing which they miss from over-careful- 
 ness. For, let them be assured, there is a great truth lurking 
 in that common desire of men to see things done in what they 
 call a " masterly," or " bold," or " broad," manner : a truth op- 
 pressed and abused, like almost every other in this world, but 
 an eternal one nevertheless ; and whatever mischief may have 
 followed from men's looking for nothing else but this facility 
 of execution, and supposing that a picture was assuredly all 
 right if only it were done with broad dashes of the brush, 
 still the truth remains the same : — that because it is not in- 
 tended that men shall torment or weary themselves with anj 
 
PRE-RA PHAEL1TISM. 
 
 earthly labor, it is appointed that the noblest results should * 
 only be attainable by a certain ease and decision of manipula- 
 tion. I only wish people understood this much of sculpture, 
 as well as of painting, and could see that the finely finished 
 statue is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a far more 
 vulgar work than that which shows rough signs of the right 
 hand laid to the workman's hammer : but at all events, in 
 painting it is felt by all men, and justly felt. The freedom of 
 the lines of nature can only be represented by a similar free- 
 dom in the hand that follows them ; there are curves in the 
 flow of the hair, and in the form of the features, and in the 
 muscular outline of the body, which can in no wise be caught 
 but by a sympathetic freedom in the stroke of the pencil. I 
 do not care what example is taken, be it the most subtle aud 
 careful work of Leonardo himself, there will be found a play 
 and power and ease in the outlines, which no slow effort could 
 ever imitate. And if the Pre-Kaphaelites do not understand 
 how this kind of power, in its highest perfection, may be 
 united with the most severe rendering of all other orders of 
 truth, and especially of those with which they themselves have 
 most sympathy, let them look at the drawings of John Lewis. 
 
 These then are the principal lessons which we have to learn 
 from Turner, in his second or central period of labor. There 
 is one more, however, to be received ; and that is a warning ; 
 for towards the close of it, what with doing small conventional 
 vignettes for publishers, making showy drawings from sketches 
 taken by other people of places he had never seen, and touch- 
 ing up the bad engravings from his works submitted to him 
 almost every day, — engravings utterly destitute of animation, 
 and which had to be raised into a specious brilliancy by 
 scratching them over with white, spotty lights, he gradually 
 got inured to many conventionalities, and even falsities ; and, 
 having trusted for ten or twelve years almost entirely to his 
 memory and invention, living I believe mostly in London, and 
 receiving a new sensation only from the burning of the 
 Houses of Parliament, he painted many pictures between 
 1830 and 1840 altogether unworthy of him. But he was not 
 thus to close his career. 
 
278 
 
 PRE-RA PIT A EL J T1SM. 
 
 In the summer either of 1840 or 1841, he undertook another 
 journey into Switzerland. It was then at least forty years 
 since he had first seen the Alps ; (the source of the Arveron, 
 in Mr. Fawkes's collection, which could not have been painted 
 till he had seen the thing itself, bears date 1800,) and the 
 direction of his journey in 1840 marks his fond memory of 
 that earliest one ; for, if we look over the Swiss studies and 
 drawings executed in his first period, we shall be struck with 
 his fondness for the pass of the St, Gothard ; the most elabo- 
 rate drawing in the Farnley collection is one of the Lake of 
 Lucerne from Fluelen ; and, counting the Liber Studiorum 
 subjects, there are, to my knowledge, six compositions taken 
 at the same period from the pass of Sfc. Gothard, and, proba- 
 bly, several others are in existence. The valleys of Sallenche, 
 and Chamouni, and Lake of Geneva, are the only other Swiss 
 scenes which seem to have made very profound impressions 
 on him. 
 
 He returned in 1841 to Lucerne ; walked up Mont Pilate on 
 foot, crossed the St. Gothard, and returned by Lausanne and 
 Geneva. He made a large number of colored sketches on this 
 journey, and realised several of them on his return. The draw- 
 ings thus produced are different from all that had preceded 
 them, and are the first which belong definitely to w T hat I shall 
 henceforth call his Third period. 
 
 The perfect repose of his youth had returned to his mind, 
 while the faculties of imagination and execution appeared in 
 renewed strength ; all conventionality being done away with 
 by the force of the impression which he had received from the 
 Alps, after his long separation from them. The drawings are 
 marked by a peculiar largeness and simplicity of thought : 
 most of them by deep serenity, passing into melancholy ; all 
 by a richness of color, such as he had never before conceived. 
 They, and the works done in following years, bear the same 
 relation to those of the rest of his life that the colors of 
 sunset do to those of the day; and will be recognised, in a few 
 years more, as the noblest landscapes ever yet conceived by 
 human intellect. 
 
 Such has been the career of the greatest painter of this 
 
PRE-RAPIIA ELITISM. 
 
 270 
 
 century. Many a century may pass away before there rises 
 such another ; but what greatness any among us may be capa- 
 ble of, wiU, at least, be best attained by following in his path ; 
 by beginning in all quietness and hopefulness to use whatever 
 powers we may possess to represent the things around us as 
 we see and feel them ; trusting to the close of life to give the 
 -perfect crown to the course of its labors, and knowing assur- 
 edly that the determination of the degree in which watchful- 
 ness is to be exalted into invention, rests with a higher will 
 than our own. And, if not greatness, at least a certain good, 
 is thus to be achieved ; for though I have above spoken of the 
 mission of the more humble artist, as if it were merely to be 
 subservient to that of the antiquarian or the man of science, 
 there is an ulterior aspect in which it is not subservient, but 
 superior. Every archaeologist, every natural philosopher, 
 knows that there is a peculiar rigidity of mind brought on by 
 long devotion to logical and analytical inquiries. Weak men, 
 giving themselves to such studies, are utterly hardened by 
 them, and become incapable of understanding anything nobler, 
 or even of feeling the value of the results to which they lead. 
 But even the best men are in a sort injured by them, and pay 
 a definite price, as in most other matters, for definite advan- 
 tages. They gain a peculiar strength, but lose in tenderness, 
 elasticity, and impressibility. The man who has gone, ham- 
 mer in hand, over the surface of a romantic countiy, feels 
 no longer, in the mountain ranges he has so laboriously ex- 
 plored, the sublimity or mystery with w T hich they were veiled 
 when he first beheld them, and with which they are adorned 
 in the mind of the passing traveller. In his more informed 
 conception, they arrange themselves like a dissected model : 
 where another man would be awe-struck by the magnificence 
 of the precipice, he sees nothing but the emergence of a fos- 
 siliferous rock, familiarised already to his imagination as ex- 
 tending in a shallow stratum, over a perhaps uninteresting 
 district ; where the unlearned spectator would be touched with 
 strong emotion by the aspect of the snowy summits which rise 
 in the distance, he sees only the culminating points of a met- 
 amorphic formation, with an uncomfortable web of fan-likQ 
 
PllE-llAPIIA ELITISM. 
 
 fissures radiating, in his imagination, through their centres. * 
 That in the grasp he has obtained of the inner relations of all 
 these things to the universe, and to man, that in the vieWa 
 which have been opened to him of natural energies such as 
 no human mind would have ventured to conceive, and of pa^t 
 states of being, each in some new way bearing witness to the 
 unity of purpose and everlastingly consistent providence of 
 the Maker of all things, he has received reward well worthy 
 the sacrifice, I would not for an instant deny ; but the sense 
 of the loss is not less painful to him if his mind be rightly 
 constituted ; and it would be with infinite gratitude that he 
 would regard the man, who, retaining in his delineation of 
 natural scenery a fidelity to the facts of science so rigid as to 
 make his work at once acceptable and credible to the most 
 sternly critical intellect, should yet invest its features again 
 with the sweet veil of their daily aspect ; should make them 
 dazzling with the splendor of wandering light, and involve 
 them in the unsearchableness of stormy obscurity ; should re- 
 store to the divided anatomy its visible vitality of operation, 
 clothe naked crags with soft forests, enrich the mountain 
 ruins with bright pastures, and lead the thoughts from the 
 monotonous recurrence of the phenomena of the physical 
 world, to the sweet interests and sorrows of human life and 
 death. 
 
 * This state of mind appears to have been the only one which Words- 
 worth had been able to discern in men of science ; and in disdain of 
 which, lie wrote that short-sighted passage in the Excursion, Book III. 
 1. 165 — 190, which is, I think, the only one in the whole range of his 
 works which his true friends would have desired to see blotted out. 
 What else has been found fault with as feeble or superfluous, is not so 
 in the intense distinctive relief which it gives to his character. But 
 these lines are written in mere ignorance of the matter they treat ; in 
 mere want of sympathy with the men they describe ; for, observe, though 
 the passage is put into the mouth of the Solitary, it is fully confirmed, 
 and even rendered more scornful, by the speech which follows. 
 
 THE END. 
 
ARATRA PENTELICI 
 
 SIX LECTURES 
 
 ON THE ELEMENTS OF 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 1VEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IK 
 MICHAELMAS TERM, 1870 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to re- 
 member that the duty at present laid on me at Oxford is of 
 an exceptionally complex character. Directly, it is to awaken 
 the interest of my pupils in a study which they have hitherto 
 found unattractive, and imagined to be useless ; but more 
 imperatively, it is to define the principles by which the study 
 itself should be guided ; and to vindicate their security 
 against the doubts with which frequent discussion has lately 
 encumbered a subject which all think themselves competent 
 to discuss. The possibility of such vindication is, of course, 
 implied in the original consent of the Universities to the es- 
 tablishment of Art Professorships. Nothing can be made an 
 element of education of which it is impossible to determine 
 whether it is ill done or well ; and the clear assertion that 
 there is a canon law in formative Art is, at this time, a more 
 important function of each University than the instruction of 
 its younger members in any branch of practical skill. It mat- 
 ters comparatively little whether few or many of our students 
 learn to draw ; but it matters much that all who learn should 
 be taught with accuracy. And the number who may be justi- 
 fiably advised to give any part of the time they spend at col- 
 lege to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, 
 and finally must depend, on their being certified that paint- 
 ing and sculpture, no less than language or than reasoning, 
 have grammar and method, — that they permit a recognizable 
 distinction between scholarship and ignorance, and enforce a 
 constant distinction betw r een Eight and Wrong. 
 
 This opening course of Lectures on Sculpture is therefore 
 restricted to the statement, not only of first principles, but of 
 
264 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 those which were illustrated by the practice of one school, 
 and by that practice in its simplest branch, the analysis of 
 which could be certified by easily accessible examples, and 
 aided by the indisputable evidence of photography.* 
 
 The exclusion of the terminal Lecture of the course from 
 the series now published, is in order to mark more definitely 
 this limitation of my subject ; but in other respects the Lect- 
 ures have been amplified in arranging them for the press, 
 and the portions of them trusted at the time to extempore 
 delivery, (not through indolence, but because explanations of 
 detail are always most intelligible when most familiar,) have 
 been in substance to the best of my power set down, and in 
 what I said too imperfectly, completed. 
 
 In one essential particular I have felt it necessary to write 
 what I would not have spoken. I had intended to make no 
 reference, in my University Lectures, to existing schools of 
 
 * Photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finished sculpt- 
 ure ; but its audacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with the more 
 roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins. For the rendering 
 of all such frank relief, and for the better explanation of forms disturbed 
 by the lustre of metal or polished stone, the method employed in the 
 plates of this volume will be found, I believe, satisfactory. Casts are first 
 taken from the coins, in white plaster; these are photographed, and the 
 photograph printed by the heliotype process of Messrs. Edwards and 
 Kidd. Plate XII. is exceptional, being a pure mezzotint engraving of 
 the old school, excellently carried through by my assistant, Mr. Allen, 
 who was taught, as a personal favour to myself, by my friend, and Tur- 
 ner's fellow-worker, Thomas Lupton. Plate IV. was intended to be a 
 photograph from the superb vase in the British Museum, No. 564 in 
 Mr. Newton's Catalogue ; but its variety of colour deied photography, 
 and after the sheets had gone to press I was compelled to reduce Le 
 Normand's plate of it, which is unsatisfactory, but answers my imme- 
 diate purpose. 
 
 The enlarged photographs for use in the Lecture Room were made 
 for me with most successful skill by Sergeant Spackman, of South Ken- 
 sington ; and the help throughout rendered to me by Mr. Burgess is 
 acknowledged in the course of the Lectures ; though with thanks which 
 must remain inadequate lest they should become tedious ; for Mr. Bur- 
 gess drew the subjects of Plates III., X., and XIII. ; drew and engraved 
 every woodcut in the book ; and printed all the plates with his own 
 hand. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 285 
 
 Art, except in cases where it might be necessary to point out 
 some undervalued excellence. The objects specified in the 
 eleventh paragraph of my inaugural Lecture, might, I hoped, 
 have been accomplished without reference to any works de- 
 serving of blame ; but the Exhibition of the Royal Academv 
 in the present year showed me a necessity of departing from 
 my original intention. The task of impartial criticism * is 
 now, unhappily, no longer to rescue modest skill from neg- 
 lect ; but to withstand the errors of insolent genius, and abate 
 the influence of plausible mediocrity. 
 
 The Exhibition of 1871 was very notable in this important 
 particular, that it embraced some representation of the mod- 
 ern schools of nearly every country in Europe : aud I am well 
 assured that looking back upon it after the excitement of that 
 singular interest has passed away, every thoughtful judge of 
 Art will confirm my assertion, that it contained not a single 
 picture of accomplished merit ; while it contained many that 
 were disgraceful to Art, and some that were disgraceful to 
 humanity. 
 
 It becomes, under such circumstances, my inevitable duty 
 to speak of the existing conditions of Art with plainness 
 enough to guard the youths whose judgments I am entrusted 
 to form, from being misled, either by their own naturally 
 vivid interest in w T hat represents, however unworthily, the 
 scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunningly de- 
 vised, and, without doubt, powerful allurements of Art which 
 has long since confessed itself to have no other object than to 
 allure. I have, therefore, added to the second of these Lect- 
 ures such illustration of the motives and course of modern 
 industry as naturally arose out of its subject, and shall continue 
 
 * A pamphlet by the Earl of Southesk, " Britain } s Art Paradise,''' 
 (Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh) contains an entirely admirable 
 criticism of the most faultful pictures of the 1871 Exhibition, It is to 
 be regretted that Lord Southesk speaks only to condemn ; but indeed, 
 in my own three days' review of the rooms, I found nothing deserving 
 of notice otherwise, except Mr. Hook's always pleasant sketches from 
 fisher life, and Mr. Pettie's graceful and powerful, though too slightly 
 painted, study from Henry VI. 
 
286 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 in future to make similar applications ; rarely, indeed, per* 
 mitting myself, in the Lectures actually read before the 
 University, to introduce subjects of instant, and therefore too 
 exciting, interest ; but completing the addresses which I pre- 
 pare for publication in these, and in any other particulars, 
 which may render them more widely serviceable. 
 
 The present course of Lectures will be followed, if I am 
 able to fulfil the design of them, by one of a like elementary 
 character on Architecture ; and that by a third series on 
 Christian Sculpture : but, in the meantime, my effort is to 
 direct the attention of the resident students to Natural His- 
 tory, and to the higher branches of ideal Landscape : and it 
 will be, I trust, accepted as sufficient reason for the delay 
 which has occurred in preparing the following sheets for the 
 press, that I have not only been interrupted by a dangerous 
 illness, but engaged, in what remained to me of the summer, 
 in an endeavour to deduce, from the overwhelming complexity 
 of modern classification in the Natural Sciences, some forms 
 capable of easier reference by Art students, to whom the 
 anatomy of brutal and floral nature is often no less important 
 than that of the human body. 
 
 The preparation of examples for manual practice, and the 
 arrangement of standards for reference, both in Painting and 
 Sculpture, had to be carried on meanwhile, as I was able. 
 For what has already been done, the reader is referred to the 
 Catalogue of the .Educational Series, published at the end of 
 the Spring Term ; of what remains to be done I will make no 
 anticipatory statement, being content to have ascribed to me 
 rather the fault of narrowness in design, than of extravagance 
 in expectation. 
 
 Denmark Hill, 
 
 25th November, 1871. 
 
ARATRA PENTELIOI. 
 
 LECTURE £ 
 
 OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 November, 1870. 
 
 1. If, as is commonly believed, the subject of study which 
 it is my special function to bring before you had no relation 
 to the great interests of mankind, I should have less courage 
 in asking for your attention to-day, than when I first addressed 
 you ; though, even then, I did not do so without painful diffi- 
 dence. For at this moment, even supposing that in other 
 places it were possible for men to pursue their ordinary avo- 
 cations undisturbed by indignation or pity ; here, at least, in 
 the midst of the deliberative and religious influences of Eng- 
 land, only one subject, I am well assured, can seriously occupy 
 your thoughts — the necessity, namely, of determining how it 
 has come to pass, that in these recent days, iniquity the most 
 reckless and monstrous can be committed unanimously, by men 
 more generous than ever yet in the world's history were de- 
 ceived into deeds of cruelty ; and that prolonged agony of 
 body and spirit, such as we should shrink from inflicting wil- 
 fully on a single criminal, has become the appointed and ac- 
 cepted portion of unnumbered multitudes of innocent per- 
 sons, inhabiting the districts of the world which, of all others, 
 as it seemed, were best instructed in the laws of civilization, 
 and most richly invested with the honour, and indulged in the 
 felicity, of peace. 
 
 Believe me, however, the subject of Art— instead of being 
 
288 
 
 AUATRA PEN TEL 1 Cl. 
 
 foreign to these deep questions of social duty and peril, — is 
 so vitally connected with them, that it would be impossible 
 for me now to pursue the line of thought in which I began 
 these lectures, because so ghastly an emphasis would be given 
 to every sentence by the force of passing events. It is well, 
 then, that in the plan I have laid down for your study, we 
 shall now be led into the examination of technical details, or 
 abstract conditions of sentiment ; so that the hours you spend 
 with me may be times of repose from heavier thoughts. But 
 it chances strangely that, in this course of minutely detailed 
 study, I have first to set before you the most essential piece 
 of human workmanship, the plough, at the very moment when 
 — (you may see the announcement in the journals either of 
 yesterday or the day before) — the swords of your soldiers have 
 been sent for to be sharpened, and not at all to be beaten into 
 ploughshares. I permit myself, therefore, to remind you of 
 the watchword of all my earnest writings — "Soldiers of the 
 Ploughshare, instead of Soldiers of the Sword " — and I know 
 it my duty to assert to you that the work we enter upon to-day 
 is no trivial one, but full of solemn hope ; the hope, namely, 
 that among you there may be found men wise enough to lead 
 the national passions towards the arts of peace, instead of the 
 arts of war. 
 
 I say the work "we enter upon," because the first four lect- 
 ures I gave in the spring were wholly prefatory ; and the 
 following three only defined for you methods of practice. To- 
 day we begin the systematic analysis and progressive study of 
 our subject. 
 
 2. In general, the three great, or fine, Arts of Painting, 
 Sculpture, and Architecture, are thought of as distinct from 
 the lower and more mechanical formative arts, such as car- 
 pentry or pottery. But we cannot, either verbally, or with any 
 practical advantage, admit such classification. How are w T e to 
 distinguish painting on canvas from painting on china? — or 
 painting on china from painting on glass? — or painting on 
 glass from infusion of colour into any vitreous substance, such 
 as enamel ? — or the infusion of colour into glass and enamel 
 from the infusion of colour into wool or silk, and weaving of 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 289 
 
 pictures in tapestry, or patterns in dress ? You will find that 
 although, in ultimately accurate use of the word, painting 
 must be held to mean only the laying of a pigment on a surface 
 with a soft instrument ; yet, in broad comparison of the func- 
 tions of Art, we must conceive of one and the same great artis- 
 tic faculty, as governing every mode of disposing colours in a 
 permanent relation on, or in, a solid substance ; whether it be by 
 tinting canvas, or dyeing stuffs ; inlaying metals with fused 
 flint, or coating walls with coloured stone. 
 
 3. Similarly the word " Sculpture," — though in ultimate ac- 
 curacy it is to be limited to the development of form in hard 
 substances by cutting away portions of their mass — in broad 
 definition, must be held to signify the reduction of any shape- 
 less mass of solid matter into an intended shape, whatever the 
 consistence of the substance, or nature of the instrument em- 
 ployed ; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a piece of 
 box-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument, 
 axe, or hammer, or chisel, or our own hands, or water to 
 soften, or fire to fuse ; — whenever and however we bring a 
 shapeless thing into shape, we do so under the laws of the one 
 great Art of Sculpture. 
 
 4. Having thus broadly defined painting and sculpture, we 
 shall see that there is, in the third place, a class of work sep- 
 arated from both, in a specific manner, and including a great 
 group of arts which neither, of necessity, tint, nor for the sake 
 of form merely, shape, the substances they deal with ; but con- 
 struct or arrange them with a view to the resistance of some 
 external force. We construct, for instance, a table with a flat 
 top, and some support of prop, or leg, proportioned in strength 
 to such weights as the table is intended to carry. We con- 
 struct a ship out of planks, or plates of iron, with reference 
 to certain forces of impact to be sustained, and of inertia to be 
 overcome ; or we construct a wall or roof with distinct refer- 
 ence to forces of pressure and oscillation, to be sustained or 
 guarded against ; and therefore, in every case, with especial 
 consideration of the strength of our materials, and the nature 
 of that strength, elastic, tenacious, brittle, and the like. 
 
 Now although this group of arts nearly always involves the 
 
290 
 
 ARaTRA PENT ELI CL 
 
 putting of two or more separate pieces together, we must not 
 define it by that accident. The blade of an oar is not less 
 formed with reference to external force than if it were made 
 of many pieces ; and the frame of a boat, whether hollowed 
 out of a tree-trunk, or constructed of planks nailed together, 
 is essentially the same piece of art ; to be judged by its 
 buoyancy and capacity of progression. Still, from the most 
 wonderful piece of all architecture, the human skeleton, to 
 this simple one,* the ploughshare, on which it depends for its 
 subsistence, the putting of two or more pieces together is 
 curiously necessary to the perfectness of every fine instru- 
 ment ; and the peculiar mechanical work of Dsedalus, — inlay- 
 ing, — becomes all the more delightful to us in external aspect, 
 because, as in the jawbone of a Saurian, or the wood of a 
 bow, it is essential to the finest capacities of tension and re- 
 sistance. 
 
 5. And observe how unbroken the ascent from this, the 
 simplest architecture, to the loftiest. The placing of the 
 timbers in a ship's stem, and the laying of the stones in a 
 bridge buttress, are similar in art to the construction of the 
 ploughshare, differing in no essential point, either in that they 
 deal with other materials, or because, of the three things pro- 
 duced, one has to divide earth by advancing through it, 
 another to divide water fey advancing through it. and the 
 third to divide water which advances against it. And again, 
 the buttress of a bridge differs only from that of a cathedral 
 in having less weight to sustain, and more to resist. We can 
 find no term in the gradation, from the ploughshare to the 
 cathedral buttress, at which we can set a logical distinction. 
 
 6. Thus then we have simply three divisions of Art — one, 
 that of giving colours to substance ; another, that of giving 
 form to it without question of resistance to force ; and the 
 third, that of giving form or position which will make it 
 capable of such resistance. All the fine arts are embraced 
 
 * I had a real ploughshare on my lecture table ; but it would inter- 
 rupt the drift of the statements in the text too long if I attempted here 
 to illustrate by figures the relation of the coulter to the share, and of the 
 hard *o the soft pieces of metal in the share itself. 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 291 
 
 under these three divisions. Do not think that it is only a 
 logical or scientific affectation to mass them together in this 
 manner ; it is, on the contrary, of the first practical im- 
 portance to understand that the painter's faculty, or master- 
 hood over colour, being as subtle as a musician's over sound, 
 must be looked to for the government of every operation in 
 which colour is employed ; and that, in the same manner, the 
 appliance of any art whatsoever to minor objects cannot be 
 right, unless under the direction of a true master of that art. 
 Under the present system, you keep your Academician occu- 
 pied only in producing tinted pieces of canvas to be shown in 
 frames, and smooth pieces of marble to be placed in niches ; 
 while you expect your builder or constructor to design 
 coloured patterns in stone and brick, and your china-ware 
 merchant to keep a separate body of workwomen who can 
 paint china, but nothing else. By this division of labour, you 
 ruin all the arts at once. The work of the Academician be- 
 comes mean and effeminate, because he is not used to treat 
 colour on a grand scale and in rough materials ; and your 
 manufactures become base because no well educated person 
 sets hand to them. And therefore it is necessary to under- 
 stand, not merely as a logical statement, but as a practical 
 necessity, that wherever beautiful colour is to be arranged, 
 you need a Master of Painting ; and wherever noble form is 
 to be given, a Master of Sculpture ; and wherever complex 
 mechanical force is to be resisted, a Master of Architecture. 
 
 7. But over this triple division there must rule another yet 
 more important. Any of these three arts may be either 
 imitative of natural objects or limited to useful appliance. 
 You may either paint a picture that represents a scene, or 
 your street door, to keep it from rotting ; you may mould a 
 statue, or a plate ; build the resemblance of a cluster of lotus 
 stalks, or only a square pier. Generally speaking, Painting 
 and Sculpture will be imitative, and Architecture merely 
 useful ; but there is a great deal of Sculpture — as this crystal 
 ball * for instance, which is not imitative, and a great deal of 
 
 * A sphere of rock crystal, cut in Japan, enough imaginable by the 
 reader, without a figure. 
 
292 
 
 ABA TEA PENTELICL 
 
 Architecture which, to some extent is so, as the so called foils 
 of Gothic apertures ; and for many other reasons you will find 
 it necessary to keep distinction clear in your minds between 
 the arts — of whatever kind — which are imitative, and produce 
 a resemblance or image of something which is not present ; 
 and those which are limited to the production of some useful 
 reality, as the blade of a knife, or the wall of a house. You 
 will perceive also, as we advance, that sculpture and painting 
 are indeed in this respect only one art ; and that we shall 
 have constantly to speak and think of them as simply graphic, 
 whether with chisel or colour, their principal function being 
 to make us, in the words of Aristotle, " dtupryriKQi tov ir^pi ra 
 o-^/xara KaWovs " (Polit. 8, 3.), "having capacity and habit of 
 contemplation of the beauty that is in material things ; " while 
 Architecture, and its co-relative arts, are to be practised under 
 quite other conditions of sentiment. 
 
 8. Now it is obvious that so far as the fine arts consist 
 either in imitation or mechanical construction, the right judg- 
 ment of them must depend on our knowledge of the things 
 they imitate, and forces they resist : and my function of 
 teaching here would (for instance) so far resolve itself, either 
 into demonstration that this painting of a peach,* does re- 
 semble a peach, or explanation of the way in which this 
 ploughshare (for instance) is shaped so as to throw the earth 
 aside with least force of thrust. And in both of these methods 
 of study, though of course your own diligence must be your 
 chief master, to a certain extent your Professor of Art can 
 always guide you securely, and can show you, either that the 
 image does truly resemble what it attempts to resemble, or 
 that the structure is rightly prepared for the service it has to 
 perform. But there is yet another virtue of fine art which is, 
 perhaps, exactly that about which you will expect your Pro- 
 fessor to teach you most, and which, on the contrary, is 
 exactly that about which you must teach yourselves all that 
 it is essential to learn. 
 
 9. I have here in my hand one of the simplest possible 
 f One of William Hunt's peaches ; not, I am afraid, imaginable alto- 
 gether, but still less representable by figure. 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 293 
 
 examples of the union of the graphic and constructive pow- 
 erS) — one of my breakfast plates. Since all the finely archi- 
 tectural arts, we said, began in the shaping of the cup and 
 the platter, we will begin, ourselves, with the platter. 
 
 Why has it been made round ? For two structural reasons : 
 first, that the greatest holding surface may be gathered into 
 the smallest space ; and secondly, that in being pushed past 
 other things on the table, it may come into least contact with 
 them. 
 
 Tig. 1. 
 
 Next, why has it a rim ? For two other structural reasons ; 
 first, that it is convenient to put salt or mustard upon ; but 
 secondly and chiefly, that the plate may be easily laid hold of. 
 The rim is the simplest form of continuous handle. 
 
 Farther, to keep it from soiling the cloth, it will be wise to 
 put this ridge beneath, round the bottom ; for as the rim is 
 the simplest possible form of continuous handle, so this is the 
 simplest form of continuous leg. And we get the section 
 given beneath the figure for the essential one of a rightly 
 made platter. 
 
294 
 
 AJIATRA PENTELICL 
 
 10. Thus far our art has been strictly utilitarian having 
 respect to conditions of collision, of carriage, and of support. 
 But now, on the surface of our piece of pottery, here are vari- 
 ous bands and spots of colour which are presumably set there 
 to make it pleasanter to the eye. Six of the spots, seen closely, 
 you discover are intended to represent flowers. These then 
 have as distinctly a graphic purpose as the other properties 
 of the plate have an architectural one, and the first critical 
 question we have to ask about them is, whether they are like 
 roses or not. I will anticipate w r hat I have to say in subse- 
 quent lectures so far as to assure you that, if they are to be 
 like roses at all, the liker they can be, the better. Do not 
 suppose, as many people will tell you, that because this is a 
 common manufactured article, your roses on it are the better 
 for being ill-painted, or half-painted. If they had been painted 
 by the same hand that did this peach, the plate would have 
 been all the better for it ; but, as it chanced, there was no 
 hand such as William Hunt's to paint them, and their graphic 
 power is not distinguished. In any case, however, that graphic 
 power must have been subordinate to their effect as pink 
 spots, while the band of green-blue round the plate's edge, 
 and the spots of gold, pretend to no graphic power at all, but 
 are meaningless spaces of colour or metal. Still less have 
 they any mechanical office : they add nowise to the service- 
 ableness of the plate ; and their agreeableness, if they possess 
 any, depends, therefore, neither on any imitative, nor any 
 structural, character ; but on some inherent pleasantness in 
 themselves, either of mere colours to the eye (as of taste to 
 the tongue), or in the placing of those colours in relations 
 which obey some mental principle of order, or physical prin- 
 ciple of harmony. 
 
 11. These abstract relations and inherent pleasantnesses, 
 whether in space, number, or time, and whether of colours or 
 sounds, form what we may properly term the musical or har- 
 monic element in every art ; and the study of them is an en- 
 tirely separate science. It is the branch of art-philosophy to 
 which the word " aesthetics" should be strictly limited, being 
 the inquiry into the nature of things that in themselves are 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 295 
 
 pleasant to the human senses or instincts, though they repre- 
 sent nothing, and serve for nothing, their only service being 
 their pleasantness. Thus it is the province of aesthetics to 
 tell you, (if you did not know it before,) that the taste and 
 colour of a peach are pleasant, and to ascertain, if it be ascer- 
 tainable, (and you have any curiosity to know,) why they are so. 
 
 12. The information would, I presume, to most of you, be 
 gratuitous. If it were not, and you chanced to be in a sick 
 state of body in which you disliked peaches, it would be, for 
 the time, to you false information, and, so far as it was true 
 of other people, to you useless. Nearly the whole study of 
 aesthetics is in like manner either gratuitous or useless. Either 
 you like the right things without being recommended to do 
 so, or if you dislike them, your mind cannot be changed by 
 lectures on the laws of taste. You recollect the story of 
 Thackeray, provoked, as he was helping himself to strawberries, 
 by a young coxcomb's telling him that "he never took fruit 
 or sweets." u That " replied, or is said to have replied, Thack- 
 eray, " is because you are a sot, and a glutton. 7 ' And the 
 whole science of aesthetics is, in the depth of it, expressed by 
 one passage of Goethe's in the end of the 2nd part of Faust ; 
 — the notable one that follows the song of the Lemures, when 
 the angels enter to dispute with the fiends for the soul of 
 Faust. They enter singing — " Pardon to sinners and life 
 to the dust." Mephistopheles hears them first, and exclaims 
 to his troop, " Discord I hear, and filthy jingling " — "Mis- 
 tone hore ich ; garstiges Geklimper." This, you see, is the 
 extreme of bad taste in music. Presently the angelic host 
 begin strewing roses, which discomfits the diabolic crowd al- 
 together. Mephistopheles in vain calls to them — u "What do 
 you duck and shrink for — is that proper hellish behaviour ? 
 Stand fast, and let them strew " — " Was cluckt und zuckt ihr ; 
 ist das Hellen-brauch ? So haitet stand, und lasst sie streuen." 
 There you have, also, the extreme of bad taste in sight and 
 smell. And in the whole passage is a brief embodiment for 
 you of the ultimate fact that all aesthetics depend on the 
 health of soul and body, and the proper exercise of both, not 
 only through years, but generations. Only by harmony of 
 
296 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 both collateral and successive lives can the great doctrine of 
 the Muses be received which enables men " x a H* LV opOu?" 
 " to have pleasures rightly ; " and there is no other definition 
 of the beautiful, nor of any subject of delight to the aesthetic 
 faculty, than that it is what one noble spirit has created, seen 
 and felt by another of similar or equal nobility. So much as 
 there is in you of ox, or of swine, perceives no beauty 5 and 
 creates none : what is human in you, in exact proportion to 
 the perfectness of its humanity, can create it, and receive. 
 
 13. Returning now to the very elementary form in which 
 the appeal to our aesthetic virtue is made in our breakfast- 
 plate, you notice that there are two distinct kinds of pleasant- 
 ness attempted. One by hues of colour; the other by pro- 
 portions of space. I have called these the musical elements 
 of the arts relating to sight ; and there are indeed two com- 
 plete sciences, one of the combinations of colour, and the 
 other of the combinations of line and form, which might each 
 of them separately engage us in as intricate study as that of 
 the science of music. But of the two, the science of colour is, 
 in the Greek sense, the more musical, being one of the divis- 
 ions of the Apolline power ; and it is so practically educa- 
 tional, that if we are not using the faculty for colour to dis- 
 cipline nations, they will infallibly use it themselves as a 
 means of corruption. Both music and colour are naturally 
 influences of peace ; but in the war trumpet, and the war 
 shield, in the battle song and battle standard, they have con- 
 centrated by beautiful imagination the cruel passions of men ; 
 and there is nothing in all the Divina Commedia of history 
 more grotesque, yet more frightful, than the fact that, from 
 the almost fabulous period when the insanity and impiety of 
 war w r rote themselves in the symbols of the shields of the 
 Seven against Thebes, colours have been the sign and stimu- 
 lus of the most furious and fatal passions that have rent the 
 nations : blue against green, in the decline of the Roman Em- 
 pire ; black against white, in that of Florence ; red against 
 white, in the wars of the Royal houses in England ; and at 
 this moment, red against white, in the contest of anarchy and 
 loyalty, in all the world. 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 297 
 
 14. On the other hand, the directly ethical influence of 
 colour in the sky, the trees, flowers, and colouied creatures 
 round us, and in our own various arts massed under the one 
 name of painting, is so essential and constant that we cease to 
 recognize it, because we are never long enough altogether de- 
 prived of it to feel our need ; and the mental diseases induced 
 by the influence of corrupt colour are as little suspected, or 
 traced to their true source, as the bodily weaknesses resulting 
 from atmospheric miasmata. 
 
 15. The second musical science which belongs peculiarly to 
 sculpture (and to painting, so far as it represents form), con- 
 sists in the disposition of beautiful masses. That is to say, 
 beautiful surfaces limited by beautiful lines. Beautiful sur- 
 faces, observe ; and remember what is noted in my fourth lect- 
 ure of the difference between a space and a mass. If you 
 have at any time examined carefully, or practised from, the 
 drawings of shells placed in your copying series, you cannot 
 but have felt the difference in the grace between the aspects 
 of the same line, when enclosing a rounded or unrounded 
 space. The exact science of sculpture is that of the relations 
 between outline and the solid form it limits ; and it does not 
 matter whether that relation be indicated by drawing or carv- 
 ing, so long as the expression of solid form is the mental pur- 
 pose ; it is the science always of the beauty of relation in three 
 dimensions. To take the simplest possible line of continuous 
 limit — the circle : the flat disc enclosed by it may indeed be 
 made an element of decoration, though a very meagre one : 
 but its relative mass, the ball, being gradated in three dimen- 
 sions, is always delightful. Here * is at once the simplest, 
 and in mere patient mechanism, the most skilful, piece of 
 sculpture I can possibly show you, — a piece of the purest 
 rock-crystal, chiselled, (I believe, by mere toil of hand,) into 
 a perfect sphere. Imitating nothing, constructing nothing ; 
 sculpture for sculpture's sake, of purest natural substance into 
 simplest primary form. 
 
 16. Again. Out of the nacre of any mussel or oyster-shell 
 you might cut, at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat cir- 
 
 * The crystal ball above mentioned. 
 
son 
 
 ARATIIA PENTELIC1. 
 
 cular discs of the prettiest colour and lustre. To some extent, 
 such tinsel or foil of shell is used pleasantly for decoration. 
 But the mussel or oyster becoming itself an unwilling model* 
 ler, agglutinates its juice into three dimensions, and the fact 
 of the surface being now geometrically gradated, together 
 with the savage instinct of attributing value to what is diffi- 
 cult to obtain, make the little boss so precious in men's sight- 
 that wise eagerness of search for the kingdom of heaven can 
 be likened to their eagerness of search for it ; and the gates 
 of Paradise can be no otherwise rendered so fair to their poor 
 intelligence, as by telling them that every several gate was of 
 " one pearl." 
 
 17. But take note here. We have just seen that the sum of 
 the perceptive faculty is expressed in those words of Aristotle's 
 " to take pleasure rightly " or straightly — x ai 'P CiV °p6us. Now, 
 it is not possible to do the direct opposite of that, — to take 
 pleasure iniquitously or obliquely — x at 'p ea/ ^StKws or crKoXtm— 
 more than you do in enjoying a thing because your neighbour 
 cannot get it. You may enjoy a thing legitimately because it 
 is rare, and cannot be seen often, (as you do a fine aurora, or 
 a sunset, or an unusually lovely flower) ; that is Nature's way 
 of stimulating your attention. But if you enjoy it because 
 your neighbour cannot have it — and, remember, all value at- 
 tached to pearls more than glass beads, is merely and purely 
 for that cause, — then you rejoice through the worst of idola- 
 tries, covetousness ; and neither arithmetic, nor writing, nor 
 any other so-called essential of education, is now so vitally nec- 
 essary to the population of Europe, as such acquaintance 
 with the principles of intrinsic value, as may result in the 
 iconoclasm of jewellery ; and in the clear understanding that 
 we are not in that instinct, civilized, but yet remain wholly 
 savage, so far as we care for display of this selfish kind. 
 
 You think, perhaps, I am quitting my subject, and proceed- 
 ing, as it is too often with appearance of justice alleged against 
 me, into irrelevant matter. Pardon me ; the end, not only of 
 these lectures, but of my whole professorship, would be ac- 
 complished—and far more than that,— if only the English 
 nation could be made to understand that the beauty which ia 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 299 
 
 indeed to be a joy for ever, must be a joy for all ; and that 
 though the idolatry may not have been wholly divine which 
 sculptured gods, the idolatry is wholly diabolic, which, for 
 vulgar display, sculptures diamonds. 
 
 18. To go back to the point under discussion. A pearl, or 
 a glass bead, may owe its pleasantness in some degree to its 
 lustre as well as to its roundness. But a mere and simple 
 ball of unpolished stone is enough for sculpturesque value. 
 You may have noticed that the quatrefoil used in the Ducal 
 Palace of Venice owes its complete loveliness in distant effect 
 to the finishing of its cusps. The extremity of the cusp is a 
 mere ball of Istrian marble ; and consider how subtle the 
 faculty of sight must be, since it recognizes at any distance, 
 and is gratified by, the mystery of the termination of cusp ob- 
 tained by the gradated light on the ball. 
 
 In that Venetian tracery this simplest element of sculptured 
 form is used sparingly, as the most precious that can be em- 
 ployed to finish the facade. But alike in our own, and the 
 French, central Gothic, the ball-flower is lavished on every 
 line — and in your St. Mary's spire, and the Salisbury spire, 
 and the towers of Notre Dame of Paris, the rich pleasantness 
 of decoration, — indeed, their so-called " decorated style, 5 ' — 
 consists only in being daintily beset with stone balls. It is 
 true the balls are modified into dim likeness of flowers ; but 
 do you trace the resemblance to the rose in their distant, which 
 is their intended effect ? 
 
 19. Bat farther, let the ball have motion ; then the form it 
 generates will be that of a cylinder. You have, perhaps, 
 thought that pure Early English Architecture depended for 
 its charm on visibility of construction. It depends for its 
 charm altogether on the abstract harmony of groups of cylin- 
 ders,* arbitrarily bent into mouldings, and arbitrarily associ- 
 
 * All grandest effects in mouldings may be, and for the most part 
 have been, obtained by rolls and cavettos of circular (segmental) sec- 
 tion. More refined sections, as that of the fluting of a Doric shaft, are 
 only of use near the eye and in beautiful stone ; and the pursuit of them 
 was one of the many errors of later Gothic. The statement in the text 
 that the mouldings, even of best time, "have no real relation to con- 
 
300 
 
 ARAT11A VENT ELI CI. 
 
 ated as shafts, having no real relation to construction whatso- 
 ever, and a theoretical relation so subtle that none of us had 
 seen it, till Professor Willis worked it out for us. 
 
 20. And now, proceeding to analysis of higher sculpture, 
 you may have observed the importance I have attached to the 
 porch of San Zenone, at Verona, by making it, among your 
 standards, the first of the group which is to illustrate the sys- 
 tem of sculpture and architecture founded on faith in a future 
 life. That porch, fortunately represented in the photograph, 
 from which Plate I. has been engraved, under a clear and 
 pleasant light, furnishes you with examples of sculpture of 
 every kind from the flattest incised bas-relief to solid statues, 
 both in marble and bronze. And the two points I have been 
 pressing upon you are conclusively exhibited here, namely, — 
 (1). That sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant 
 bossiness or roundness of surface ; (2) that the pleasantness of 
 that bossy condition to the eye is irrespective of imitation on 
 one side, and of structure on the other. 
 
 21. (1.) Sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant 
 bossiness or roundness of surface. 
 
 If you look from some distance at these two engravings of 
 Greek coins, (place the book open so that you can see the op- 
 posite plate three or four yards off,) you will find the relief on 
 each of them simplifies itself into a pearl-like portion of a 
 sphere, with exquisitely gradated light on its surface. When 
 you look at them nearer, you will see that each smaller por- 
 tion into which they are divided— cheek, or brow, or leaf, or 
 tress of hair — resolves itself also into a rounded or undulated 
 surface, pleasant by gradation of light. Every several sur- 
 face is delightful in itself, as a shell, or a tuft of rounded 
 moss, or the bossy masses of distant forest would be. That 
 these intricately modulated masses present some resemblance 
 to a girl's face, such as the Syracusans imagined that of the 
 water-goddess Arethusa, is entirely a secondary matter ; the 
 
 struction," is scarcely strong enough : they in fact contend with, and 
 deny the construction, their principal purpose seeming t<? be the con- 
 cealment of the joints of the voussoirs. 
 
Plate I. — Porch of San Zenone. Verona. 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 301 
 
 primary condition is that the masses shall be beautifully 
 rounded, and disposed with due discretion and order. 
 
 22. (2.) It is difficult for you, at first, to feel this order and 
 beauty of surface, apart from the imitation. But you can see 
 there is a pretty disposition of, and relation between, the pro- 
 jections of a fir-cone, though the studded spiral imitates noth- 
 ing. Order exactly the same in kind, only much more com- 
 plex ; and an abstract beauty of surface rendered definite by- 
 increase and decline of light — (for every curve of surface has 
 its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolic 
 solid differs, specifically, from that on an elliptical or spheri- 
 cal one) — it is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain ; 
 as it is the essential business of a painter to get good colour, 
 whether he imitates anything or not. At a distance from the 
 picture, or carving, where the things represented become ab- 
 solutely unintelligible, we must yet be able to say, at a glance, 
 " That is good painting, or good carving." 
 
 And you will be surprised to find, when you try the ex- 
 periment, how much the eye must instinctively judge in this 
 manner. Take the front of San Zenone for instance, Plate I. 
 You will find it impossible without a lens, to distinguish in 
 the bronze gates, and in great part of the wall, anything that 
 their bosses represent. You cannot tell whether the sculpture 
 is of men, animals, or trees ; only you feel it to be composed 
 of pleasant projecting masses ; you acknowledge that both 
 gates and wall are, somehow, delightfully roughened ; and 
 only afterwards, by slow degrees, can you make out what this 
 roughness means ; nay, though here (Plate III.) I magnify* 
 one of the bronze plates of the gate to a scale, which gives 
 you the same advantage as if you saw it quite close, in the 
 reality, — you may still be obliged to me for the information, 
 that this boss represents the Madonna asleep in her little bed, 
 and this smaller boss, the Infant Christ in His ; and this at 
 
 * Some ol the most precious work done for me by my assistant Mr. 
 Burgess, during the course of these lectures, consisted in making en- 
 larged drawings from portions of photographs, Plate III. is engraved 
 from a drawing of his, enlarged from the original photograph of which 
 Plate I. is a reduction. 
 
302 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 the top, a cloud with an angel coming out of it, and these 
 jagged bosses, two of the Three Kings, with their crowns on, 
 looking up to the star, (which is intelligible enough I admit) ; 
 but what this straggling, three-legged boss beneath signifies, 
 I suppose neither you nor I can tell, unless it be the shep- 
 herd's dog, who has come suddenly upon the Kings with their 
 crowns on, and is greatly startled at them. 
 
 23. Farther, and much more definitely, the pleasantness of 
 the surface decoration is independent of structure ; that is to 
 say, of any architectural requirement of stability. The greater 
 part of the sculpture here is exclusively ornamentation of a 
 flat wall, or of door panelling ; only a small portion of the 
 church front is thus treated, and the sculpture has no more to 
 do with the form of the building than a piece of a lace veil 
 would have, suspended beside its gates on a festal day ; the 
 proportions of shaft and arch might be altered in a hundred 
 different ways, without diminishing their stability ; and the 
 pillars would stand more safely on the ground than on the 
 backs of these carved animals. 
 
 24. I wish you especially to notice these points, because the 
 false theory that ornamentation should be merely decorated 
 structure is so pretty and plausible, that it is likely to take 
 away your attention from the far more important abstract 
 conditions of design. Structure should never be contradicted, 
 and in the best buildings it is pleasantly exhibited and en- 
 forced ; in this very porch the joints of every stone are visible, 
 and you will find me in the Fifth Lecture insisting on this 
 clearness of its anatomy as a merit ; yet so independent is the 
 mechanical structure of the true design, that when I begin my 
 Lectures on Architecture, the first building I shall give you as 
 a standard will be one in which the structure is wholly con- 
 cealed. It will be the Baptistry of Florence, which is, in reality, 
 as much a buttressed chapel with a vaulted roof, as the Chap- 
 ter House of York — but round it, in order to conceal that 
 buttressed structure, (not to decorate, observe, but to conceal) 
 a flat external wall is raised ; simplifying the whole to a mere 
 hexagonal box, like a wooden piece of Tunbridge ware, on the 
 surface of which the eye and intellect are to be interested by 
 
Plate II. — The Arethusa of Syracuse. 
 
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 
 
 303 
 
 the relations of dimension and curve between pieces of en- 
 crusting marble of different colours, which have no more to 
 do with the real make of the building than the diaper of a 
 Harlequin's jacket has to do with his bones. 
 
 25. The sense of abstract proportion, on which the enjoy- 
 ment of such a piece of art entirely depends, is one of the 
 aesthetic faculties which nothing can develop but time and 
 education. It belongs only to highly-trained nations ; and, 
 among them, to their most strictly refined classes, though the 
 germs of it are found, as part of their innate power, in every 
 people capable of art. It has for the most part vanished at 
 present from the English mind, in consequence of our eager 
 desire for excitement, and for the kind of splendour that ex- 
 hibits wealth, careless of dignity ; so that, I suppose, there 
 are very few now even of our best-trained Londoners who 
 know the difference between the design of Whitehall and that 
 of any modern club-house in Pall-mall. The order and har- 
 mony which, in his enthusiastic account of the Theatre of 
 Epidaurus, Pausanias insists on before beauty, can only be 
 recognized by stern order and harmony in our daily lives ; and 
 the perception of them is as little to be compelled, or taught 
 suddenly, as the laws of still finer choice in the conception of 
 dramatic incident which regulate poetic sculpture. 
 
 26. And now, at last, I think, we can sketch out the sub- 
 ject before us in a clear light. "We have a structural art, 
 divine, and human, of which the investigation conies under 
 the general term, Anatomy ; whether the junctions or joints 
 be in mountains, or in branches of trees, or in buildings, or 
 in bones of animals. We have next a musical art, falling into 
 two distinct divisions — one using colours, the other masses, 
 for its elements of composition ; lastly, we have an imitative 
 art, concerned with the representation of the outward appear- 
 ances of things. And, for many reasons, I think it best to 
 begin with imitative Sculpture ; that being defined as the art 
 which, by the musical disposition of masses, imitates anything of 
 which the imitation is justly pleasant to us ; and does so in ac- 
 cordance with structural laws having due reference to the ma- 
 terials employed. 
 
301 
 
 All Alii A PENT ELI CI. 
 
 So that you see our task will involve the immediate inquiry 
 what the things are of which the imitation is justly pleasant 
 to us : what, in few words, — if we are to be occupied in the 
 making of graven images — we ought to like to make images 
 of. Secondly, after having determined its subject, what degree 
 of imitation or likeness we ought to desire in our graven 
 image ; and lastly, under what limitations demanded by 
 structure and material, such likeness may be obtained. 
 
 These inquiries I shall endeavour to pursue with you to 
 some practical conclusion, in my next four lectures, and in the 
 sixth, I will briefly sketch the actual facts that have taken 
 place in the development of sculpture by the two greatest 
 schools of it that hitherto have existed in the world. 
 
 27. The tenor of our next lecture then must be an inquiry 
 into the real nature of Idolatry ; that is to say, the invention 
 and service of Idols : and, in the interval, may I commend to 
 your own thoughts this question, not wholly irrelevant, yet 
 which I cannot pursue ; namely, whether the God to whom 
 we have so habitually prayed for deliverance " from battle, 
 murder, and sudden death," is indeed, seeing that the present 
 state of Christendom is the result of a thousand years' pray- 
 ing to that effect, "as the gods of the heathen who were but 
 idols ; " or whether — (and observe, one or other of these things 
 must be true) — whether our prayers to Him have been, by 
 this much, worse than Idolatry ;— that heathen prayer was true 
 prayer to false gods ; and our prayers have been false prayers 
 to the True One. 
 
 LECTUBE II 
 
 IDOLATRY. 
 
 November, 1870. 
 
 28. Beginning with the simple conception of sculpture as 
 the art of fiction in solid substance, we are now to consider 
 what its subjects should be. What — having the gift of imag- 
 ery — should we by preference endeavour to image ? A ques- 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 305 
 
 tion which is, indeed, subordinate to the deeper one— why 
 we should wish to image anything at all. 
 
 29. Some years ago, having been always desirous that the 
 education of women should begin in learning how to cook, I 
 got leave, one day, for a little girl of eleven years old to ex- 
 change, much to her satisfaction, her schoolroom for the 
 kitchen. But as ill fortune would have it, there was some 
 pastry toward, and she was left unadvisedly in command of 
 some delicately rolled paste ; whereof she made no pies, but 
 an unlimited quantity of cats and mice. 
 
 Now you may read the works of the gravest critics of art 
 from end to end ; but you will find, at last, they can give you 
 no other true account of the spirit of sculpture than that it is 
 an irresistible human instinct for the making of cats and mice, 
 and other imitable living creatures, in such permanent form 
 that one may play with the images at leisure. 
 
 Play with them, or love them, or fear them, or worship 
 them. The cat may become the goddess Pasht, and the 
 mouse, in the hand of the sculptured king, enforce his endur- 
 ing words " h e/xe rts 0/36(01/ euo-efirjs ccttoj ; " but the great 
 mimetic instinct underlies all such purpose; and is zoopiastic, 
 — life-shaping, — alike in the reverent and the impious. 
 
 30. Is, I say, and has been, hitherto ; none of us dare say 
 that it will be. I shall have to show you hereafter that the 
 greater part of the technic energy of men, as yet, has indi- 
 cated a kind of childhood ; and that the race becomes, if not 
 more wise, at least more manly, * with every gained century. 
 I can fancy that all this sculpturing and painting of ours may 
 be looked back upon, in some distant time, as a kind of doll- 
 making, and that the words of Sir Isaac Newton may be 
 smiled at no more : only it will not be for stars that we desert 
 our stone dolls, but for men. When the day comes, as come 
 it must, in which we no more deface and defile God's image 
 in living clay, I am not sure that we shall any of us care so 
 much for the images made of Him, in burnt clay. 
 
 31. But, hitherto, the energy of growth in any people may 
 be almost directly measured by their passion for imitative art ; 
 
 * Glance forward at once to § 75, read it, and return to this. 
 
306 
 
 ABATE A PENTRLICL 
 
 namely, for sculpture, or for the drama, which is living and 
 speaking sculpture, or, as in Greece, for both ; and in national 
 as in actual childhood, it is not merely the making, but the 
 making-believe ; not merely the acting for the sake of the 
 scene, but acting for the sake of acting, that is delightful. 
 And, of the two mimetic arts, the drama, being more passion- 
 ate, and involving conditions of greater excitement and lux 
 ury, is usually in its excellence the sign of culminating 
 strength in the people ; while fine sculpture, requiring always 
 submission to severe lav/, is an unfailing proof of their being 
 in early and active progress. There is no instance of fine 
 sculpture being produced by a nation either torpid, iveak, or in 
 decadence. Their drama may gain in grace and wit ; but their 
 sculpture, in days of decline, is always base. 
 
 32. If my little lady in the kitchen had been put in com- 
 mand of colours, as well as of dough, and if the paste would 
 have taken the colours, w T e may be sure her mice would have 
 been painted brown, and her cats tortoise-shell ; and this, 
 partly indeed for the added delight and prettiness of colour 
 itself, but more for the sake of absolute realization to her 
 eyes and mind. Now all the early sculpture of the most ac- 
 complished nations has been thus coloured, rudely or finely ; 
 and, therefore, you see at once now necessary it is that we 
 should keep the term " graphic " for imitative art generally ; 
 since no separation can at first be made between carving and 
 painting, with reference to the mental powers exerted in, or 
 addressed by, them. In the earliest known art of the world, 
 a reindeer hunt may be scratched in outline on the flat side 
 of a clean-picked bone, and a reindeer's head carved out of 
 the end of it ; both these are flint-knife work, and, strictly 
 speaking, sculpture : but the scratched outline is the begin- 
 ning of drawing, and the carved head of sculpture proper. 
 When the spaces enclosed by the scratched outline are filled 
 with colour, the colouring soon becomes a principal means 01 
 effect ; so that, in the engraving of an Egyptian-colour bas- 
 relief (S. 101), Rosellini has been content to miss the outlin- 
 ing incisions altogether, and represent it as a painting only. 
 Its proper definition is, "painting accented by sculpture;'' 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 307 
 
 on the other hand, in solid coloured statues, — Dresden china 
 figures, for example, — we have pretty sculpture accented by 
 painting ; the mental purpose in both kinds of art being to 
 obtain the utmost degree of realization possible, and the 
 ocular impression being the same, whether the delineation is 
 obtained by engraving or painting. For, as I pointed out to 
 you in my fifth lecture, everything is seen by the eye at 
 patches of colour, and of colour only ; a fact which the Greeks 
 knew well ; so that when it becomes a question in the dialogue 
 of Minos, " tlvl ovtl rfj 6\p€i bpaTOLi ra 6pa>//.ei/-a," the answer is 
 
 " aicrOr}(r€.L ravTrj rrj Sia rCv 6<f>6a\jjiQ>v 8rj\oLcrrj y)jj,iv tol ypu')- 
 
 p.ra." — "What bind of power is the sight with which we see 
 things ? It is that sense which, through the eyes, can reveal 
 colours to us." 
 
 33. And now observe that while the graphic arts begin in 
 the mere mimetic effort, they proceed, as they obtain more 
 perfect realization, to act under the influence of a stronger 
 and higher instinct. They begin by scratching the reindeer, 
 the most interesting object of sight. But presently, as the 
 human creature rises in scale of intellect, it proceeds to scratch, 
 not the most interesting object of sight only, but the most in- 
 teresting object of imagination ; not the reindeer, but the 
 Maker and Giver of the reindeer. And the second great condi- 
 tion for the advance of the art of sculpture is that the race should 
 possess, in addition to the mimetic instinct, the realistic or 
 idolizing instinct ; the desire to see as substantial the powers 
 that are unseen, and bring near those that are far off, and to 
 possess and cherish those that are strange. To make in some 
 way tangible and visible the nature of the gods — to illustrate 
 and explain it by symbols ; to bring the immortals out of the 
 recesses of the clouds, and make them Penates ; to bring back 
 the dead from darkness, and make them Lares. 
 
 34. Our conception of this tremendous and universal human 
 passion has been altogether narrowed by the current idea that 
 Pagan religious art consisted only, or chiefly, in giving person- 
 ality to the gods. The personality was never doubted ; it was 
 visibility, interpretation, and possession that the hearts of 
 men sought. Possession, first of all — the getting hold of 
 
308 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICI. 
 
 some hewn log of wild olive-wood that would fall on its knees 
 if it was pulled from its pedestal — and, afterwards, slowly 
 clearing manifestation ; the exactly right expression is used 
 in Lucian's dream, — <£>€(.oY-x9 eo'et^e rov A/« ; " Showed ** Zeus ; ,J 
 manifested him, nay, in a certain sense, brought forth, 01 
 created, as you have it, in Anacreon's ode to the Eose, of the 
 birth of Athena herself — 
 
 TroXdfLOKXoVOV T *A6yJV7]V 
 
 But I will translate the passage from Lucian to you at length 
 — it is in every way profitable. 
 
 35. " There came to me, in the healing f night, a divine 
 dream, so clear that it missed nothing of the truth itself ; yes, 
 and still after all this time, the shapes of what I saw T remain 
 ill my sight, and the sound of what I heard dwells in my 
 ears " — (note the lovely sense of Zvavkos— the sound being as 
 of a stream passing always by in the same channel, — " so dis- 
 tinct was everything to me. Two women laid hold of my 
 hands and pulled me, each towards herself, so violently, that 
 I had like to have been pulled asunder ; and they cried out 
 against one another, — the one, that she v/as resolved to have 
 me to herself, being indeed her own, and the other that it was 
 vain for her to claim what belonged to others ; — and the one 
 who first claimed me for her own was like a hard worker, and 
 hid strength as a man's ; and her hair was dusty, and her 
 hand full of horny places, and her dress fastened tight about 
 her, and the folds of it loaded with white marble-dust, so that 
 she looked just as my uncle used to look when he was filing 
 stones : but the other was pleasant in features, and delicate in 
 form, and orderly in her dress ; and so in the end, they left 
 
 * There is a primary and vulgar sense of "exhibited'' in Lucian's 
 mind ; but the higher meaning is involved in it. 
 
 f In the Greek, " ambrosial." Recollect always that ambrosia, as food 
 of gods, is the continual restorer of strength ; that all food is ambrosial 
 when it nourishes, and that the night is called ''ambrosial " because it 
 restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the 23rd Psalm, 
 the stillness of waters. 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 309 
 
 it to me to decide, after bearing what they had to say, with 
 which of them I would go ; and first the hard featured and 
 masculine one spoke : — 
 
 3G. " ' Dear child, I am the Art of Image-sculpture, which 
 yesterday you began to learn ; and I am as one of your own 
 people, and of your house, for your grandfather, (and she 
 named my mothers father) £ was a stone-cutter ; and both 
 your uncles had good name through me : and if you will keep 
 yourself well clear of the sillinesses and fluent follies that come 
 from this creature/ (and she pointed to the other woman) ' and 
 will follow me, and live with me, first of all, you shall be 
 brought up as a man should be, and have strong shoulders ; 
 and, besides that, you shall be kept well quit of all restless 
 desires, and you shall never be obliged to go away into any 
 foreign places, leaving your own country and the people of 
 your house ; neither shall all men praise you for your talk* 
 And you must not despise this rude serviceableness of my 
 body, neither this meanness of my dusty dress ; for, pushing 
 on in their strength from such things as these, that great 
 Phidias revealed Zeus, and Polyclitus wrought out Hera, and 
 Myron was praised, and Praxiteles marvelled at : therefore 
 are these men worshipped with the gods.'" 
 
 37. There is a beautiful ambiguity in the use of the prep- 
 osition w T ith the genitive in this last sentence. " Pushing on 
 from these things " means indeed, justly, that the sculptors 
 rose from a mean state to a noble one ; but not as leaving the 
 mean state ; — not as, from a hard life, attaining to a soft one, 
 — but as being helped and strengthened by the rough life to 
 do what was greatest. Again, " worshipped with the gods" 
 does not mean that they are thought of as in any sense equal 
 to, or like to, the gods, but as being on the side of the gods 
 against what is base and ungodly ; and that the kind of worth 
 which is in them is therefore indeed worshipful, as having its 
 source with the gods. Finally, observe that every one of the 
 expressions, used of the four sculptors, is definitely the best 
 
 * I have italicised this final promise of blessedness, given by the 
 noble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle s 5th Latter-day 
 pamphlet, throughout ; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition. 
 
310 
 
 All AT R A PENTELICL 
 
 that Lucian could have chosen. Phidias carved like one who 
 had seen Zeus, and had only to reveal him ; Polyclitus, in 
 labour of intellect, completed his sculpture by just law, and 
 ivrought out Hera ; Myron was of all most praised, because he 
 did best what pleased the vulgar ; and Praxiteles, the most 
 wondered at or admired, because he bestowed utmost exqui- 
 siteness of beauty. 
 
 38. I am sorry not to go on with the dream ; the more re- 
 fined lady, as you may remember, is liberal or gentlemanly 
 Education, and prevails at last ; so that Lucian becomes an 
 author instead of a sculptor, I think to his own regret, though 
 to our present benefit. One more passage of his I must refer 
 you to, as illustrative of the point before us ; the description 
 of the temple of the Syrian Hieropolis, where he explains the 
 absence of the images of the sun and moon. " In the temple 
 itself," he says, " on the left hand as one goes in, there is set 
 first the throne of the sun ; but no form of him is thereon, for 
 of these two powers alone, the sun and the moon, they show 
 no carved images. And I also learned why this is their law, 
 for they say that it is permissible, indeed, to make of the 
 other gods, graven images, since the forms of them are not 
 visible to all men. But Helios and Selenaia are everywhere 
 clear bright, and all men behold them ; what need is there 
 therefore for sculptured work of these, who appear in the 
 air ? " 
 
 39. This, then, is the second instinct necessary to sculpt- 
 ure ; the desire for the manifestation, description, and com- 
 panionship of unknown powers ; and for possession of a bodily 
 substance — the " bronze Strasbourg," which you can embrace, 
 and hang immortelles on the head of — instead of an abstract 
 idea. But if you get nothing more in the depth of the 
 national mind than these two feelings, the mimetic and idol- 
 izing instincts, there may be still no progress possible for the 
 arts except in delicacy of manipulation and accumulative 
 caprice of design. You must have not only the idolizing in- 
 stinct, but an r,6os which chooses the right thing to idolize ! 
 Else, you will get states of art like those in China or India, 
 non-progressive, and in great part diseased and frightful, 
 
IDOLATRY, 
 
 being wrought under the influence of foolish terror, or foolish 
 admiration. So that a third condition, completing and con- 
 firming both the others, must exist in order to the develop- 
 ment of the creative power. 
 
 40. This third condition is that the heart of the nation 
 shall be set on the discovery of just or equal law, and shall be 
 from day to day developing that law more perfectly. The 
 Greek school of sculpture is formed during, and in conse- 
 quence of, the national effort to discover the nature of justice ; 
 the Tuscan, during, and in consequence of, the national effort 
 to discover the nature of justification. I assert to you at 
 present briefly, what will, I hope, be the subject of prolonged 
 illustration hereafter. 
 
 41. Now when a nation with mimetic instinct and imagina- 
 tive longing is also thus occupied earnestly in the discovery 
 of Ethic law, that effort gradually brings precision and truth 
 into all its manual acts ; and the physical progress of sculpt- 
 ure as in the Greek, so in the Tuscan, school, consists in 
 gradually limiting what was before indefinite, in verifying 
 what was inaccurate, and in humanizing what was monstrous. 
 I might perhaps content you by showing these external phe- 
 nomena, and by dwelling simply on the increasing desire of 
 naturalness, which compels, in every successive decade -of 
 years, literally, in the sculptured images, the mimicked bones 
 to come together, bone to his bone ; and the flesh to come 
 up upon them, until from a flattened and pinched handful of 
 clay, respecting which you may gravely question whether it 
 was intended for a human form at all ; — by slow degrees, and 
 added touch to touch, in increasing consciousness of the 
 bodily truth, — at last the Aphrodite of Melos stands before 
 you, a perfect woman. But all that search for physical accu- 
 racy is merely the external operation, in the arts, of the seek- 
 ing for truth in the inner soul ; it is impossible without that 
 higher effort, and the demonstration of it would be worse 
 than useless to you, unless I made you aware at the same time 
 of its spiritual cause. 
 
 42. Observe farther ; the increasing truth in representation 
 is co-relative with increasing beauty in the thing to be repre- 
 
312 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICL 
 
 sented. The pursuit of justice which regulates the imitative 
 effort, regulates also the development of the race into dignity 
 of person, as of mind ; and their culminating art-skill attains 
 the grasp of entire truth at the moment when the truth be- 
 comes most lovely. And then, ideal sculpture may go on 
 safely into portraiture. But I shall not touch on the subject 
 of portrait sculpture to-day ; it introduces many questions of 
 detail, and must be a matter for subsequent consideration. 
 
 43. These then are the three great passions which are con- 
 cerned in true sculpture. I cannot find better, or, at least, 
 more easily remembered, names for them than " the Instincts 
 of Mimicry, Idolatry, and Discipline ; 99 meaning, by the last, 
 the desire of equity and wholesome restraint, in all acts and 
 works of life. Now of these, there is no question but that the 
 love of Mimicry is natural and right, and the love of Disci- 
 pline is natural and right. But it looks a grave question 
 whether the yearning for Idolatry, (the desire of companion-? 
 ship with images,) is right. Whether, indeed, if such an in- 
 stinct be essential to good sculpture, the art founded on it can 
 possibly be "fine" art. 
 
 44. I must now beg for your close attention, because I have 
 to point out distinctions in modes of conception which will 
 appear trivial to you, unless accurately understood ; but of 
 an importance in the history of art which cannot be over- 
 rated. 
 
 When the populace of Paris adorned the statue of Stras- 
 bourg with immortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious 
 decorators, would suppose that the city of Strasbourg itself, 
 or any spirit or ghost of the city, was actually there, sitting in 
 the Place de la Concorde. The figure was delightful to them 
 as a visible nucleus for their fond thoughts about Strasbourg ; 
 but never for a moment supposed to be Strasbourg. 
 
 Similarly, they might have taken delight in a statue pur- 
 porting to represent a river instead of a city, — the Rhine, or 
 Garonne, suppose, — and have been touched with strong 
 emotion in looking at it, if the real river were dear to thern, 
 and yet never think for an instant that the statue ivas the 
 river. 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 313 
 
 And yet again, similarly, but much more distinctly, they 
 might take delight in the beautiful image of a god, because if: 
 gathered and perpetuated their thoughts about that god ; 
 and yet never suppose, nor be capable of being deceived by 
 any arguments into supposing, that the statue was the god. 
 
 On the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell from the sky in 
 the sight of a savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most 
 piobably lay it aside in some, to him, sacred place, and be- 
 lieve the stone itself to be a kind of god, and offer prayer and 
 sacrifice to it. 
 
 In like manner, any other strange or terrifying object, 
 st^h, for instance, as a powerfully noxious animal or plant, 
 he would be apt to regard in the same way ; and very pos- 
 sibly also construct for himself frightful idols of some kind, 
 calculated to produce upon him a vague impression of their 
 being alive ; whose imaginary anger he might deprecate or 
 avert with sacrifice, although incapable of conceiving in them 
 any one attribute of exalted intellectual or moral nature. 
 
 45. If you will now refer to § 52-59 of my Introductory 
 Lectures, you will find this distinction between a resolute 
 conception, recognized for such, and an involuntary appre- 
 hension of spiritual existence, already insisted on at some 
 length. And you will see more and more clearly as we pro- 
 ceed, that the deliberate and intellectually commanded con- 
 ception is not idolatrous in any evil sense whatever, but is one 
 of the grandest and wholesomest functions of the human soul ; 
 and that the essence of evil idolatry begins only in the idea 
 or belief of a real presence of any kind, in a thing in which 
 there is no such presence. 
 
 46. I need not say that the harm of the idolatry must de- 
 pend on the certainty of the negative. If there be a real 
 presence in a pillar of cloud, in an unconsuming flame, or in 
 a still small voice, it is no sin to bow down before these. 
 
 But, as matter of historical fact, the idea of such presence 
 has generally been both ignoble and false, and confined to 
 nations of inferior race, who are often condemned to remain 
 for ages in conditions of vile terror, destitute of thought. 
 Nearly all Indian architecture and Chinese design arise out 
 
 I 
 
314 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICI. 
 
 of such a state : so also, though in a less gross degree, Nin- 
 evite and Phoenician art, early Irish, and Scandinavian ; th<i 
 latter, however, with vital elements of high intellect mingled 
 in it from the first. 
 
 But the greatest races are never grossly subject to such 
 terror, even in their childhood, and the course of their minds 
 is broadly divisible into three distinct stages. 
 
 47. (I.) In their infancy they begin to imitate the real 
 animals about them, as my little girl made the cats and mice, 
 but with an undercurrent of partial superstition — a sense that 
 there must be more in the creatures than they can see ; also 
 they catch up vividly any of the fancies of the baser nations 
 round them, and repeat these more or less apishly, yet rapidly 
 naturalizing and beautifying them. They then connect all 
 kinds of shapes together, compounding meanings out of the 
 old chimeras, and inventing new ones with the speed of a 
 running wild-fire ; but always getting more of man into their 
 images, and admitting less of monster or brute ; their own 
 characters, meanwhile, expanding and purging themselves, 
 and shaking off the feverish fancy, as springing flowei'3 
 shake the earth off their stalks. 
 
 48. (II.) In the second stage, being now themselves perfect 
 men and women, they reach the conception of true and great 
 gods as existent in the universe; and absolutely cease to 
 think of them as in any wise present in statues or images ; 
 but they have now learned to make these statues beautifully 
 human, and to surround them with attributes that may con- 
 centrate their thoughts of the gods. This is, in Greece, ac- 
 curately the Pindaric time, just a little preceding the Phidian ; 
 the Phidian is already dimmed with a faint shadow of infidel- 
 ity ; still, the Olympic Zeus may be taken as a sufficiently 
 central type of a statue which was no more supposed to be 
 Zeus, than the gold or elephants' tusks it was made of ; but 
 in which the most splendid powers of human art were ex- 
 hausted in representing a believed and honoured God to the 
 happy and holy imagination of a sincerely religious people. 
 
 49. (III.) The third stage of national existence follows, in 
 which, the imagination having now done its utmost, and be 
 
IDOLATRY, 
 
 315 
 
 ing partly restrained by the sanctities of tradition, which 
 permit no farther change in the conceptions previously 
 created, begins to be superseded by logical deduction and 
 scientific investigation. At the same moment, the elder ar- 
 tists having done all that is possible in realizing the national 
 conceptions of the Gods, the younger ones, forbidden to 
 change the scheme of existing representations, and incapable 
 of doing anything better in that kind, betake themselves to 
 refine and decorate the old ideas with more attractive skill. 
 Their aims are thus more and more limited to manual dexter- 
 ity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also, in the course of centu- 
 ries, the methods of every art continually improving, and be- 
 ing made subjects of popular inquiry, praise is now to be got, 
 for eminence in these, from the whole mob of the nation ; 
 whereas intellectual design can never be discerned but by the 
 few. So that in this third nera we find every kind of imitative 
 and vulgar dexterity more and more cultivated ; while design 
 and imagination are every day less cared for, and less possible. 
 
 50. Meanwhile, as I have just said, the leading minds in 
 literature and science become continually more logical and 
 investigative ; and, once that they are established in the 
 habit of testing facts accurately, a very few years are enough 
 to convince all the strongest thinkers that the old imaginative 
 religion is untenable, and cannot any longer be honestly 
 taught in its fixed traditional form, except by ignorant per- 
 sons. And at this point the fate of the people absolutely de- 
 pends on the degree of moral strength into which their hearts 
 have been already trained. If it be a strong, industrious, 
 chaste, and honest race, the taking its old gods, or at least 
 the old forms of them, away from it, w T ill indeed make it 
 deeply sorrowful and amazed ; but will in no whit shake its 
 will, nor alter its practice. Exceptional persons, naturally 
 disposed to become drunkards, harlots, and cheats, but who 
 had been previously restrained from indulging these disposi- 
 tions by their fear of God, will, of course, break out into open 
 vice, when that fear is removed. But the heads of the fami- 
 lies of the people, instructed in the pure habits and perfect 
 delights of an honest life, and to whom the thought of a 
 
316 
 
 ABA TEA PENT E LIC L 
 
 Father in heaven had been a comfort, not a restraint, will 
 assuredly not seek relief from the discomfort of their orphan- 
 age by becoming uncharitable and vile. Also the high leaders 
 of their thought gather their whole strength together in the 
 gloom ; and at the first entrance of this valley of the Shadow 
 of Death, look their new enemy full in the eyeless face of him, 
 and subdue him, and his terror, under their feet. " Metus 
 omnes, et inexorabile fatum, . . . strepitumque Acherontis 
 atari.'; This is the condition of national soul expressed by 
 the art, and the words, of Holbein, Durer, Shakspeare, PojDe, 
 and Goethe. 
 
 51. But if the people, at the moment when the trial of 
 darkness approaches, be not confirmed in moral character, 
 but are only maintaining a superficial virtue by the aid of 
 a spectral religion ; the moment the staff of their faith is 
 broken, the character of the race falls like a climbing plant 
 cut from its hold : then all the earthliest vices attack it as it 
 lies in the dust; every form of sensual and insane sin is 
 developed, and half a century is sometimes enough to close, 
 in hopeless shame, the career of the nation in literature, art, 
 and war. 
 
 52. Notably, within the last hundred years, all religion has 
 perished from the practically active national mind of France 
 and England. No statesman in the senate of either country 
 would dare to use a sentence out of their acceptedly divine 
 Eevelation, as having now a literal authority over them for 
 their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom for their con- 
 templation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in 
 the face of her former God ; and proclaimed, with open 
 challenge to Him, her resolved worship of His declared 
 enemy, Mammon. All the arts, therefore, founded on relig- 
 ion, and sculpture chiefly, are here in England effete and 
 corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the 
 history of mankind : and it is possible to show you the con- 
 dition of sculpture living, and sculpture dead, in accurate op- 
 position, by simply comparing the nascent Pisan school in Italy 
 with the existing school in England. 
 
 53. You were perhaps surprised at my placing in your 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 educational series, as a type of original Italian sculpture, the 
 pulpit by Niccola Pisano in the Duomo of Siena. I would 
 rather, had it been possible, have given the pulpit by Giovanni 
 Pisano in the Duomo of Pisa ; but that pulpit is dispersed in 
 fragments through the upper galleries of the Duomo, and the 
 cloister of the Campo Santo ; and the casts of its fragments 
 now put together at Kensington are too coarse to be of use to 
 you. You may partly judge, however, of the method of their 
 execution by the eagle's head, which I have sketched from the 
 marble in the Campo Santo (Edu., No. 113), and the lioness 
 with her cubs, (Edu., No. 103, more carefully studied at 
 Siena) ; and I will get you other illustrations in due time. 
 Meanwhile, I want you to compare the main purpose of the 
 Cathedral of Pisa, and its associated Bell Tower, Baptistery, 
 and Holy Field, with the main purpose of the principal build- 
 ing lately raised for the people of London. In these days, we 
 indeed desire no cathedrals ; but we have constructed an 
 enormous and costly edifice, which, in claiming educational 
 influence over the whole London populace, and middle class, 
 is verily the Metropolitan cathedral of this century, — the 
 Crystal Palace. 
 
 54. It was proclaimed, at its erection, an example of a newly 
 discovered style of architecture, greater than any hitherto 
 known, — our best popular writers, in their enthusiasm, de- 
 scribing it as an edifice of Fairyland. You are nevertheless to 
 observe that this novel production of fairy enchantment is 
 destitute of every kind of sculpture, except the bosses pro- 
 duced by the heads of nails and rivets ; while the Duomo of 
 Pisa, in the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its 
 capitals, inlaid colour designs of its fa£ade, embossed panels 
 of its baptistery font, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, 
 contained the germ of a school of sculpture which was to 
 maintain, through a subsequent period of four hundred years, 
 the greatest power yet reached by the arts of the world in 
 description of Form, and expression of Thought. 
 
 55. Now it is easy to show you the essential cause of the 
 vast discrepancy in the character of these two buildings. 
 
 In the vault of the apse of the Duomo of Pisa, was a 
 
ABATE A PENTELICL 
 
 colossal image of Christ, in coloured mosaic, bearing to tha 
 temple, as nearly as possible, the relation which the statue of 
 Athena bore to the Parthenon ; and in the same manner, con- 
 centrating the imagination of the Pisan on the attributes of the 
 God in whom he believed. 
 
 In precisely the same position with respect to the nave of 
 the building, but of larger size, as proportioned to the three 
 or four times greater scale of the whole, a colossal piece of 
 sculpture was placed by English designers, at the extremity 
 of the Crystal Palace, in preparation for their solemnities in 
 honour of the birthday of Christ, in December, 1867 or 1868. 
 
 That piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in a 
 pantomime, some twelve feet high from brow to chin, which 
 face, being moved by the mechanism which is our pride, every 
 half minute opened its mouth from ear to ear, showed its 
 teeth, and revolved its eyes, the force of these periodical 
 seasons of expression being increased and explained by the 
 illuminated inscription underneath "Here we are again. " 
 
 56. When it is assumed, and with too good reason, that 
 the mind of the English populace is to be addressed, in the 
 principal Sacred Festival of its year, by sculpture such as this, 
 I need scarcely point out to you that the hope is absolutely 
 futile of advancing their intelligence by collecting within this 
 building, (itself devoid absolutely of every kind of art, and so 
 vilely constructed that those who traverse it are continually in 
 danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it together) 
 examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the past 
 work, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and 
 Christians, miscoloured, misplaced, and misinterpreted ; * 
 here thrust into unseemly corners, and there mortised together 
 into mere confusion of heterogeneous obstacle ; pronouncing 
 itself hourly more intolerable in weariness, until any kind of 
 relief is sought from it in steam wheelbarrows or cheap toy- 
 
 * /k Falsely represented," would be the better expression. In the cast 
 of the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage 
 of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is repre- 
 sented by a repetition of casts from one mould, of which the design it- 
 self is entirely conjectural. 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 319 
 
 shops ; and most of all in beer and meat, the corks and the 
 bones being dropped through the chinks in the damp deal 
 flooring of the English Fairy Palace. 
 
 57. But you will probably think me unjust in assuming 
 that a building prepared only for the amusement of the peo- 
 ple can typically represent the architecture or sculpture of 
 modern England. You may urge, that I ought rather to de- 
 scribe the qualities of the refined sculpture which is executed 
 in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upper 
 classes, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I 
 could not now criticise that sculpture with any power of con- 
 viction to you, because I have not yet stated to you the prin- 
 ciples of good sculpture in general. I will, however, in some 
 points, tell you the facts by anticipation. 
 
 58. We have much excellent portrait sculpture ; but portrait 
 sculpture, which is nothing more, is always third-rate work, 
 even when produced by men of genius ; — nor does it in the 
 least require men of genius to produce it. To paint a por- 
 trait, indeed, implies the very highest gifts of painting ; but 
 any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, can carve a 
 satisfactory bust. 
 
 59. Of our powers in historical sculpture, I am, without 
 question, just, in taking for sufficient evidence the monuments 
 we have erected to our two greatest heroes by sea and land ; 
 namely, the Nelson Column, and the statue of the Duke of 
 "Wellington opposite Apsley House. Nor will you, I hope, 
 think me severe, — certainly, whatever you may think me, I 
 am using only the most temperate language, in saying of both 
 these monuments, that they are absolutely devoid of high 
 sculptural merit. But, consider how much is involved in the 
 fact thus dispassionately stated, respecting the two monu- 
 ments in the principal places of our capital, to our two great- 
 est heroes. 
 
 60. Kemember that we have before our e} T es, as subjects of 
 perpetual study and thought, the art of all the world for three 
 thousand years past : especially, we have the best sculpture 
 of Greece, for example of bodily perfection ; the best of Rome, 
 for example of character in portraiture ; the best of Florence, 
 
320 
 
 ABA TEA PENTELICI. 
 
 for example of romantic passion : we have unlimited access 
 to books and other sources of instruction ; we have the most; 
 perfect scientific illustrations of anatomy, both human and 
 comparative ; and, we have bribes for the reward of success, 
 large, in the proportion of at least twenty to one, as compared 
 with those offered to the artists of any other period. And 
 with all these advantages, and the stimulus also of fame car- 
 ried instantly by the press to the remotest corners of Europe, 
 the best efforts we can make, on the grandest of occasions, re- 
 sult in work which it is impossible in any one particular to 
 praise. 
 
 Now consider for yourselves what an intensity of the nega- 
 tion of the faculty of sculpture this implies in the national 
 mind ! What measures can be assigned to the gulf of inca- 
 pacit} r , which can deliberately swallow up in the gorge of it 
 the teaching and example of three thousand years, and pro- 
 duce as the result of that instruction, what it is courteous to 
 call " nothing?" 
 
 61. That is the conclusion at which we arrive, on the evi- 
 dence presented by our historical sculpture. To complete the 
 measure of ourselves, we must endeavour to estimate the rank 
 of the two opposite schools of sculpture employed by us in 
 the nominal service of religion, and in the actual service of 
 vice, 
 
 I am aware of no statue of Christ, nor of any apostle of 
 Christ, nor of any scene related in the New Testament, pro- 
 duced by us within the last three hundred years, which has 
 possessed even superficial merit enough to attract public at- 
 tention. 
 
 Whereas the steadily immoral effect of the formative art 
 which we learn, more or less apishly, from the French schools, 
 and employ, but too gladly, in manufacturing articles for the 
 amusement of the luxurious classes, must be ranked as one 
 of the chief instruments used by joyful fiends and angry fates, 
 for the ruin of our civilization. 
 
 If, after I have set before you the nature and principles of 
 true sculpture, in Athens, Pisa, and Florence, you reconsider 
 these facts, — (which you will then at once recognize as such). 
 
IDOLATRY. 
 
 321 
 
 — you will find that they absolutely justify my assertion that 
 the state of sculpture in modern England, as compared with 
 that of the great Ancients, is literally one of corrupt and dis- 
 honourable death, as opposed to bright and fameful life. 
 
 62. And now, will you bear with me, while I tell you finally 
 why this is so ? 
 
 The cause with which you are personally concerned is your 
 own frivolity ; though essentially this is not your fault, but 
 that of the system of your early training. But the fact, re- 
 mains the same, that here, in Oxford, you, a chosen body of 
 English youth, in no wise care for the history of your coun- 
 try, for its present dangers, or its present duties. You still, 
 like children of seven or eight years old, are interested only in 
 bats, balls, and oars : nay, including with you the students of 
 Germany and France, it is certain that the general body of 
 modern European youth have their minds occupied more seri- 
 ously by the sculpture and painting of the bowls of their 
 tobacco-pipes, than by all the divinest workmanship and pas- 
 sionate imagination of Greece, Rome, and Mediaeval Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 63. But the elementary causes, both of this frivolity in you, 
 and of worse than frivolity in older persons, are the two forms 
 of deadly Idolatry which are now all but universal in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The first of these is the worship of the Eidolon, or Phan- 
 tasm of Wealth ; worship of which you will find the nature 
 partly examined in the 37th paragraph of my Manera Pul- 
 veris ; but which is briefly to be defined as the servile appre- 
 hension of an active power in Money, and the submission to 
 it as the God of our life. 
 
 64. The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly 
 imaginative faculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the 
 Spirit, in what we chiefly accept as the ordinance and teach- 
 ing of Deity ; and the apprehension of a healing sacredness in 
 the act of reading the Book whose primal commands we re- 
 fuse to obey. 
 
 No feather idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more 
 shameful idolatry, than the modern notion in the minds of 
 
ARATRA PENT ELI CI. 
 
 certainly the majority of English religious persons, that the 
 Word of God, by which the heavens were of old, and the 
 earth, standing out of the water and in the water, — the Word 
 of God which came to the prophets, and comes still for ever to 
 all who will hear it, (and to many who will forbear) ; and 
 which, called Faithful and True, is to lead forth, in the judg- 
 ment, the armies of heaven, — that this " Word of God " may 
 yet be bound at our pleasure in morocco, and carried about 
 in a young lady's pocket, with tasselled ribands to mark the 
 passages she most approves of. 
 
 65. Gentlemen, there has hitherto been seen no instance, 
 and England is little likely to give the unexampled spectacle, 
 of a country successful in the noble arts, yet in which the 
 youths were frivolous, the maidens falsely religious, the men, 
 slaves of money, and the matrons, of vanity. Not from all the 
 marble of the hills of Luni will such a people ever shape one 
 statue that may stand nobly against the sky ; not from all 
 the treasures bequeathed to them by the great dead, will they 
 gather, for their own descendants, any inheritance but shame. 
 
 LECTURE in. 
 
 IMAGINATION. 
 
 November, 1870. 
 
 66. The principal object of the preceding lecture (and I 
 choose rather to incur your blame for tediousness in repeat- 
 ing, than for obscurity in defining it), was to enforce the dis- 
 tinction between the ignoble and false phase of Idolatry, which 
 consists in the attribution of a spiritual power to a material 
 thing ; and the noble and truth-seeking phase of it, to which 
 I shall in these lectures * give the general term of Imagina- 
 
 * I shall be obliged in future lectures, as hitherto in my other writ- 
 ings, to use the terms, Idolatry and Imagination in a more comprehen- 
 sive sense; but here I use them for convenience sake, limitedly, to 
 avoid the continual occurrence of the terms, noble and ignoble, or false 
 and true, with reference to modes of conception. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 823 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 325 
 
 tion ; — that is to say, the invention of material symbols which 
 may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods, 
 spirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least 
 implying the actual presence of such Beings among us, or 
 even their possession, in reality, of the forms we attribute to 
 them. 
 
 67. For instance, in the ordinarily received Greek t}*pe of 
 Athena, on vases of the Phidian time (sufficiently represented 
 in the opposite woodcut), no Greek would have supposed the 
 vase on which this was painted to be itself Athena, nor to con- 
 tain Athena inside of it, as the Arabian fisherman's casket 
 contained the genie ; neither did he think that this rude 
 black painting, done at speed as the potter's fancy urged his 
 hand, represented anything like the form or aspect of the 
 Goddess herself. Nor would he have thought so, even had 
 the image been ever so beautifully wrought. The goddess 
 might, indeed, visibly appear under the form of an armed 
 virgin, as she might under that of a hawk or a swallow, when 
 it pleased her to give such manifestation of her presence ; but 
 it did not, therefore, follow that she was constantly invested 
 with any of these forms, or that the best which human skill 
 could, even by her own aid, picture of her, was, indeed, a 
 likeness of her. The real use, at all events, of this rude 
 image, was only to signify to the eye and heart the facts of 
 the existence, in some manner, of a Spirit of wisdom, perfect 
 in gentleness, irresistible in anger ; having also physical do- 
 minion over the air which is the life and breadth of all creat- 
 ures, and clothed, to human eyes, with aegis of fiery cloud, and 
 raiment of falling dew. 
 
 68. In the yet more abstract conception of the Spirit of 
 agriculture, in which the wings of the chariot represent the 
 winds of spring, and its crested dragons are originally a mere 
 type of the seed with its twisted root piercing the ground, 
 and sharp-edged leaves rising above it ; we are in still less 
 danger of mistaking the symbol for the presumed form of an 
 actual Person. But I must, with persistence, beg of you to 
 observe that in all the noble actions of imagination in this 
 kind, the distinction from idolatry consists, not in the denial of 
 
32G ABATRA PENTELIGI. 
 
 the being, or presence of the Spirit, but only in the due recog* 
 nition of our human incapacity to conceive the one, or compel 
 the other. 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
 69. Farther — and for this statement I claim your attention 
 still more earnestly. As no nation has ever attained real 
 greatness during periods in which it was subject to any condi- 
 tion of Idolatry, so no nation has ever attained or persevered 
 in greatness, except in reaching and maintaining a passionate 
 Imagination of a spiritual estate higher than that of men ; and 
 of spiritual creatures nobler than men, having a quite real and 
 personal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 327 
 
 And all the arts of the present age deserving to be included 
 under the name of sculpture have been degraded by us, and 
 all principles of just policy have vanished from us, — and that 
 totally, — for this double reason ; that we are on one side, given 
 up to idolatries of the most servile kind, as I showed you in 
 the close of the last lecture, — while, on the other hand, we have 
 absolutely ceased from the exercise of faithful imagination ; 
 and the only remnants of the desire of truth which remain in 
 us have been corrupted into a prurient itch to discover the 
 origin of life in the nature of the dust, and prove that the 
 source of the order of the universe is the accidental concurrence 
 of its atoms. 
 
 70. Under these two calamities of our time, the art of sculpt- 
 ure has perished more totally than any other, because the 
 object of that art is exclusively the representation of form as 
 the exponent of life. It is essentially concerned only with the 
 human form, which is the exponent of the highest life we 
 know ; and with all subordinate forms only as they exhibit 
 conditions of vital power which have some certain relation to 
 humanity. It deals with the " particula undique clesecta " of 
 the animal nature, and itself contemplates, and brings forward 
 for its disciples' contemplation, all the energies of creation 
 which transform the -mqXo^ or lower still, the /36p/3opos of the 
 trivia, by Athena's help, into forms of power ; — (to iAv o\ov 
 ap)(LT€KTWV olvtos r/v. (TvvtLpya^zTO 8i rot kcll rj 'Adrjva ifXTTviovcra 
 rbv 7rrj\6v /cat e/xi^^a Troiovcra elvol ra TrXaayxaTa — but it has 
 nothing whatever to do with the representation of forms not 
 living, however beautiful, (as of clouds or waves) ; nor may 
 it condescend to use its perfect skill, except in expressing the 
 noblest conditions of life. 
 
 These laws of sculpture, being wholly contrary to the prac- 
 tice of our day, I cannot expect you to accept on my assertion, 
 nor do I wish you to do so, By placing definitely good and 
 bad sculpture before you, I do not doubt but that I shall 
 
 * M And in sum, he himself (Prometheus) was the master-maker, and 
 A.thena worked together with him, breathing into the clay, and caused 
 the moulded things to have soul (psyche) in them." — Lucian, PromE' 
 
 THEUS. 
 
328 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 gradually prove to you the nature of all excelling and endur- 
 ing qualities ; but to-day I will only confirm my assertions by 
 laying before you the statement of the Greeks themselves on 
 the subject ; given in their own noblest time, and assuredly 
 authoritative, in every point which it embraces, for all time 
 to come. 
 
 71. If any of you have looked at the explanation I have 
 given of the myth of Athena in my Queen of the Air, you can- 
 not but have been surprised that I took scarcely any note of 
 the story of her birth. I did not, because that story is con- 
 nected intimately with the Apolline myths ; and is told of 
 Athena, not essentially as the goddess of the air, but as the 
 goddess of Art-Wisdom. 
 
 You have probably often smiled at the legend itself, or 
 avoided thinking of it, as revolting. It is indeed, one of the 
 most painful and childish of sacred myths ; yet remember, 
 ludicrous and ugly as it seems to us, this story satisfied the 
 fancy of the Athenian people in their highest state ; and if it 
 did not satisfy — yet it was accepted by, all later mythologists : 
 you may also remember I told you to be prepared to find that, 
 given a certain degree of national intellect, the ruder the 
 symbol, the deeper would be its purpose. And this legend 
 of the birth of Athena is the central myth of all that the 
 Greeks have left us respecting the power of their arts ; and in 
 it they have expressed, as it seemed good to them, the most 
 important things they had to tell us on these matters. We 
 may read them wrongly ; but we must read them here, if 
 anywhere. 
 
 72. There are so many threads to be gathered up in the 
 legend, that I cannot hope to put it before you in total clear- 
 ness, but I will take main points. Athena is born in the 
 island of Ehodes ; and that island is raised out of the sea by 
 Apollo, after he had been left without inheritance among the 
 gods. Zeus* would have cast the lot again, but Apollo 
 
 * His relations with the two great Titans, Themis and Mnemosyne, 
 belong to another group of myths. The father of Athena is the lower 
 and nearer physical Zeus, from whom Metis, the mother of Athena, long 
 withdraws and disguises herself. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 329 
 
 orders the golden -girdled Lachesis to stretch out her hands ; 
 and not now by chance or lot, but by noble enchantment, the 
 island rises out of the sea. 
 
 Physically, this represents the action of heat and light on 
 chaos, especially on the deep sea. It is the " Fiat lux " of 
 Genesis, the first process in the conquest of Fate by Har- 
 mony. The island is dedicated to the Nymph Khodos, by 
 whom Apollo has the seven sons who teach cro^corara vorjfiara ; 
 because the rose is the most beautiful organism existing in 
 matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of light on the 
 earth, giving lovely form and colour at once ; (compare the use 
 of it by Dante as the form of the sainted crowd in highest 
 heaven) and remember that, therefore, the rose is in the Greek 
 mind, essentially a Doric flower, expressing the worship of 
 Light, as the Iris or Ion is an Ionic one, expressing the wor- 
 ship of the Winds and Dew. 
 
 73. To understand the agency of Hephaestus at the birth of 
 Athena, we must again return to the founding of the arts on 
 agriculture by the hand. Before you can cultivate land you 
 must clear it ; and the characteristic weapon of Hephaestus, — 
 which is as much his attribute as the trident is of Poseidon, 
 and the rhabdos of Hermes, is not, as you would have ex^ 
 pected, the hammer, but the clearing-axe — the doubled-edged 
 TrkXtKv^ the same that Calypso gives Ulysses with which to cut 
 down the trees for his home voyage ; so that both the naval 
 and agricultural strength of the Athenians are expressed by 
 this weapon, with which they had to hew out their fortune. 
 And you must keep in mind this agriculturally laborious 
 character of Hephaestus, even when he is most distinctly the 
 god of serviceable fire ; thus Horace's perfect epithet for him 
 " aviclus " expresses at once the devouring eagerness of fire, 
 and the zeal of progressive labour, for Horace gives it to him 
 when he is fighting against the giants. And this rude symbol 
 of his cleaving the forehead of Zeus with the axe, and giving 
 birth to Athena signifies, indeed, physically the thrilling 
 power of heat in the heavens, rending the clouds, and giving 
 birth to the blue air ; but far more deeply it signifies the sub- 
 duing of adverse Fate by true labour ; until, out of the chasm. 
 
330 
 
 ARATRA RENTE LIC L 
 
 cleft by resolute and industrious fortitude, springs the Spirit 
 of Wisdom. 
 
 74. Here (Fig. 4) is an early drawing of the myth, to which 
 I shall have to refer afterwards in illustration of the childish- 
 ness of the Greek mind at the time when its art-symbols 
 were first fixed ; but it is of peculiar value, because the phys- 
 ical character of Vulcan, as fire, is indicated by his wearing 
 the ivSpofxiSes of Hermes, while the antagonism of Zeus, as the 
 adverse chaos, either of cloud or of fate, is shown by his 
 striking at Hephsestus with his thunderbolt. But Plate IV. 
 gives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow 
 
 Fig. 4. 
 
 it to be deciphered) a characteristic representation of the. 
 scene, as conceived in later art. 
 
 75. I told you in a former lecture of this course that the 
 entire Greek intellect was in a childish phase as compared 
 to that of modern times. Observe, however, childishness 
 does not necessarily imply universal inferiority: there may 
 be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemn childhood, and there 
 may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition of advanced 
 life ; but the one is still essentially the childish, and the other 
 the adult phase of existence. 
 
 76. You will find, then, that the Greeks were the first 
 people that were born into complete humanity. All nations 
 before them had been, and all around them still were, partly 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 331 
 
 Bavage, bestial, clay-encumbered, inhuman ; still semi-goat, or 
 semi-ant, or semi-stone, or semi- cloud. But the power of a 
 new spirit came upon the Greeks, and the stones were filled 
 with breath, and the clouds clothed with flesh ; and then 
 came the great spiritual battle between the Centaurs and Lap- 
 ithse ; and the living creatures became "Children of Men. 75 
 Taught, yet by the Centaur — sown, as they knew, in the fang 
 — from the dappled skin of the brute, from the leprous scale 
 of the serpent, their flesh came again as the flesh of a little 
 child, and they were clean. 
 
 Fix your mind on this as the very central character of the 
 Greek race — the being born pure and human out of the bru- 
 tal misery of the past, and looking abroad, for the first time, 
 with their children's eyes, wonderingly open, on the strange 
 and divine world. 
 
 77. Make some effort to remember, so far as may be possi- 
 ble to you, either what you felt in yourselves when you were 
 young, or what you have observed in other children, of the 
 action of thought and fancy. Children are continually repre- 
 sented as living in an ideal world of their own. So far as I 
 have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to 
 live always in the tangible present, having little pleasure in 
 memory, and being utterly impatient and tormented by antic- 
 ipation : weak alike in reflection and forethought, but having 
 an intense possession of the actual present, do wn to the short- 
 est moments and least objects of it ; possessing it, indeed, so 
 intensely that the sweet childish days are as long as twenty 
 days will be ; and setting all the faculties of heart and imag- 
 ination on little things, so as to be able to make anything out 
 of them he chooses. Confined to a little garden, he does not 
 imagine himself somewhere else, but makes a great garden 
 out. of that ; possessed of an acorn-cup, he will not despise it 
 and throw it away, and covet a golden one in its stead : it is 
 the adult who does so. The child keeps his acorn-cup as a 
 treasure, and makes a golden one out of it in his mind ; so 
 that the wondering grown-up person standing beside him is 
 always tempted to ask concerning his treasures, not, "What 
 would you have more than these?" but " What possibly can 
 
332 
 
 ARATRA RENTE LIC I 
 
 you see in these ? " for, to the bystander, there is a ludicrous 
 and incomprehensible inconsistency between the child's words 
 and the reality. The little thing tells him gravely, holding 
 up the acorn-cup, that "this is a queen's crown, or a fairy's 
 boat," and, with beautiful effrontery, expects him to believe 
 the same. Bat observe — the acorn-cup must be there, and iu 
 his own hand. " Give it me ; " then I will make more of it 
 for myself. That is the child's one word, always. 
 
 Fig. 5. 
 
 78. It is also the one word of the Greek — " Give it me. 57 
 Give me any thing definite here in my sight, then I will make 
 more of it. 
 
 I cannot easily express to you how strange it seems to me 
 that I am obliged, here in Oxford, to take the position of an 
 apologist for Greek art ; that I find, in spite of all the devo- 
 tion of the admirable scholars who have so long maintained 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 333 
 
 in our public schools the authority of Greek literature, our 
 younger students take no interest in the manual work of the 
 people upon whose thoughts the tone of their early intellect- 
 ual life has exclusively depended. But I am not surprised 
 that the interest, if awakened, should not at first take the 
 form of admiration. The inconsistency between an Homeric 
 description of a piece of furniture or armour, and the actual 
 rudeness of any piece of art approximating within even three 
 or four centuries, to the Homeric period, is so great, that we 
 at first cannot recognize the art as elucidatory of, or in any 
 way related to, the poetic language. 
 
 79. You will find, however, exactly the same kind of dis- 
 crepancy between early sculpture, and the languages of deed 
 and thought, in the second birth, and childhood, of the 
 world, under Christian^. The same fair thoughts and bright 
 imaginations arise again ; and similarly, the fancy is content 
 with the rudest symbols by which they can be formalized to 
 the eyes. You cannot understand that the rigid figure (2) 
 with chequers or spots on its breast, and sharp lines of 
 drapery to its feet, could represent, to the Greek, the healing 
 majesty of heaven : but can you any better understand how a 
 symbol so haggard as this (Fig. 5) could represent to the 
 noblest hearts of the Christian ages the power and ministra- 
 tion of angels ? Yet it not only did so, but retained in the 
 rude undulatory and linear ornamentation of its dress, record 
 of the thoughts intended to be conveyed by the spotted a3gis 
 and falling chiton of Athena, eighteen hundred years before. 
 Greek and Venetian alike, in their noble childhood, knew with 
 the same terror the coiling wind and congealed hail in heaven 
 — saw with the same thankfulness the dew shed softly on the 
 earth, and on its flowers ; and both recognized, ruling these, 
 and symbolized by them, the great helpful spirit of Wisdom, 
 which leads the children of men to all knowledge, all courage, 
 and all art. 
 
 80. Bead the inscription written on the sarcophagus (Plate 
 V.), at the extremity of which this angel is sculptured. It 
 stands in an open recess in the rude brick wall of the west 
 front of the church of St. John and Paul at Venice, being the 
 
334 
 
 All ATE A PENT E LIC L 
 
 tomb of the two doges, father and son, Jacopo and Lorenza 
 Tiepolo. This is the inscription : — 
 
 " Quos n at ura pares studiis, virtutibus, arte 
 Edidit, illustres genitor natusque, sepulti 
 Hac sub rupe Duces. Venetum charissima proles 
 Theupula collatis dedit hos celebranda triuniphis. 
 Omnia presentis donavit predia templi 
 Dux Jacobus : valido nxit moderamine leges 
 Urbis, et ingratam redimens certamine Jadram 
 Dalmatiosque dedit patrie, post, Marte subactas 
 Graiorum pelago maculavit sanguine classes. 
 Suscipit oblatos princeps Laurentius Istros, 
 Et domuit rigidos, ingenti strage cadentes, 
 Bononie populos. Hinc subdita Cervia cessit. 
 Fundavere vias pacis ; fortique relicta 
 Re, superos sacris petierunt mentibus ambo. 
 
 • 4 Dominus Jacliobus liobiit * M.CCLI. Dominus Laurentius hobiit 
 
 M.CCLXXVIII." 
 
 You see, therefore, this tomb is an invaluable example of 
 thirteenth century sculpture in Venice. In Plate VI, you 
 have an example of the (coin) sculpture of the date accurately 
 corresponding in Greece to the thirteenth century in Venice, 
 when the meaning of symbols was everything and the work- 
 manship comparatively nothing. The upper head is an Athena, 
 of Athenian work in the seventh or sixth century — (the coin 
 itself may have been struck later, but the archaic type was re- 
 tained). The two smaller impressions below are the front and 
 obverse of a coin of the same age from Corinth, the head of 
 Athena on one side, and Pegasus, with the archaic Koppa, on 
 the other. The smaller head is bare, the hair being looped 
 up at the back and closely bound with an olive branch. You 
 are to note this general outline of the head, already given in 
 a more finished type in Plate II., as a most important element- 
 ary form in the finest sculpture, not of Greece only, but of all 
 Christendom. In the upper head the hair is restrained still 
 more closely by a round helmet, for the most part smooth, 
 
 * The Latin verses are of later date ; the contemporary plain prose re- 
 tains the Venetian gutturals and aspirates. 
 
Plate VI.— Archaic Athena op Athens and Corinth. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 but embossed with a single flower tendril, having one bud, 
 one flower, and above it, two olive leaves. You have thus the 
 most absolutely restricted symbol possible to human thought 
 of the power of Athena over the flowers and trees of the earth. 
 An olive leaf by itself could not have stood for the sign of a 
 tree, but the two can, when set in position of growth. 
 
 I would not give you the reverse of the coin on the same 
 plate, because you would have looked at it only, laughed at it, 
 and not examined the rest ; but here it is, wonderfully en- 
 graved for you (Fig. 6) : of it we 
 shall have more to say afterwards. 
 
 81. And now as you look at these 
 rude vestiges of the religion of 
 Greece, and at the vestiges, still 
 ruder, on the Ducal tomb, of the 
 religion of Christendom, take warn- 
 ing against two opposite errors. 
 
 There is a school of teachers who 
 will tell you that nothing but Greek 
 art is deserving of study, and that 
 all our work at this day should be an imitation of it. 
 
 Whenever you feel tempted to believe them, think of these 
 portraits of Athena and her owl, and be assured that Greek 
 art is not in all respects perfect, nor exclusively deserving of 
 imitation. 
 
 There is another school of teachers who will tell you that 
 Greek art is good for nothing ; that the soul of the Greek was 
 outcast, and that Christianity entirely superseded its faith, 
 and excelled its works. 
 
 Whenever you feel tempted to believe them, think of this 
 angel on the tomb of Jacopo Tiepolo ; and remember, that 
 Christianity, after it had been twelve hundred years existent 
 as an imaginative power on the earth, could do no better work 
 than this, though with all the former power of Greece to help 
 it ; nor was able to engrave its triumph in having stained its 
 fleets in the seas of Greece with the blood of her people, but 
 between barbarous imitations of the pillars which that people 
 had invented. 
 
A RATE A PENTELICL 
 
 82. Receiving these two warnings, receive also this lesson. 
 In both examples, childish though it be, this Heathen and 
 Christian art is alike sincere, and alike vividly imaginative : 
 the actual work is that of infancy ; the thoughts, in their vi- 
 sionaiy simplicity, are also the thoughts of infancy, but in 
 their solemn virtue, they are the thoughts of men. 
 
 We, on the contrary, are now, in all that we do, absolutely 
 without sincerity ; — absolutely, therefore, without imagina- 
 tion, and without virtue. Our hands are dexterous with the 
 vile and deadly dexterity of machines ; our minds filled with 
 incoherent fragments of faith, which we cling to in coward- 
 ice, without believing, and make pictures of in vanity, with- 
 out loving. False and base alike, whether we admire or imi- 
 tate, we cannot learn from the Heathen's art, but only pilfer 
 it ; we cannot revive the Christian's art, but only galvanize it ; 
 we are, in the sum of us, not human artists at all, but mechan- 
 isms of conceited clay, masked in the furs and feathers of liv- 
 ing creatures, and convulsed with voltaic spasms, in mockery 
 of animation. 
 
 83. You think, perhaps, that I am using terms unjustifiable 
 in violence. They would, indeed, be unjustifiable, if, spoken 
 from this chair, they were violent at all. They are, unhap- 
 pily, temperate and accurate, — except in shortcoming of blame. 
 For we are not only impotent to restore, but strong to defile, 
 the work of past ages. Of the impotence, take but this one, 
 utterly humiliatory, and, in the full meaning of it, ghastly, 
 example. We have lately been busy embanking, in the cap- 
 ital of the country, the river which, of all its waters, the im- 
 agination of our ancestors had made most sacred, and the 
 bounty of nature most useful. Of all architectural features of 
 the metropolis, that embankment will be, in future, the most 
 conspicuous ; and in its position and purpose it was the most 
 capable of noble adornment. 
 
 For that adornment, nevertheless, the utmost which our 
 modern poetical imagination has been able to invent, is a row 
 of gas-lamps. It has, indeed, farther suggested itself to our 
 minds as appropriate to gas-lamps set beside a river, that the 
 gas should come out of fishes' tails ; but we have not ingenuity 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 337 
 
 enough to cast so much as a smelt or a sprat for ourselves ; 
 so we borrow the shape of a Neapolitan marble, which has 
 been the refuse of the plate and candlestick shops in every 
 capital of Europe for the last fifty years. We cast that badly, 
 and give lustre to the ill-cast fish with lacquer in imitation of 
 bronze. On the base of their pedestals, towards the road, 
 we put for advertisement's sake, the initials of the casting 
 firm ; and, for farther originality and Christianity's sake, the 
 caduceus of Mercury ; and to adorn the front of the pedestals 
 towards the river, being now wholly at our wit's end, we 
 can think of nothing better than to borrow the door-knocker 
 which — again for the last fifty years — has disturbed and dec- 
 orated two or three millions of London street-doors ; and 
 magnifying the marvellous device of it, a lion's head with a 
 ring in its mouth (still borrowed from the Greek), we complete 
 the embankment with a row of heads and rings, on a scale 
 which enables them to produce, at the distance at which only 
 they can be seen, the exact effect of a row of sentryboxes. 
 
 84. Farther. In the very centre of the city, and at the 
 point where the Embankment commands a view of Westmin- 
 ster Abbey on one side and of St. Paul's on the other — that is 
 to say, at precisely the most important and stately moment 
 of its whole course — it has to pass under one of the arches of 
 Waterloo Bridge, which, in the sweep of its curve, is as vast 
 — it alone — as the Riaito at Venice, and scarcely less seemly 
 in proportions. But over the Riaito. though of late and de- 
 based Venetian work, there still reigns some power of human 
 imagination : on the two flanks of it are carved the Virgin 
 and the Angel of the Annunciation ; on the keystone the de- 
 scending Dove. It is not, indeed, the fault of living designers 
 that the Waterloo arch is nothing more thaD a gloom}' and 
 hollow heap of wedged blocks of blind granite. But just 
 beyond the damp shadow of it, the new Embankment is 
 reached by a flight of stairs, which are, in point of fact, the 
 principal approach to it, a-foot, from central London ; the de- 
 scent from the very midst of the metropolis of England to 
 the banks of the chief river of England ; and for this ap- 
 proach, living designers are answerable. 
 
AH ATE A PENTELICL 
 
 85. The principal decoration of the descent is again a gas- 
 lamp, but a shattered one, with a brass crown on the top of 
 it or, rather, half-crown, and that turned the wrong way, the 
 back of it to the river and causeway, its flame supplied by a 
 visible pipe far wandering along the wall ; the w T hole appa- 
 ratus being supported by a rough cross-beam. Fastened to 
 the centre of the arch above is a large placard, stating that 
 the Royal Humane Society's drags are in constant readiness, 
 and that their office is at 4, Trafalgar Square. On each side 
 of the arch are temporary, but dismally old and battered 
 boardings, across two angles capable of unseemly use by the 
 British public. Above one of these is another placard, stat- 
 ing that this is the Victoria Embankment. The steps them- 
 selves — some forty of them — descend under a tunnel, which 
 the shattered gas-lamp lights by night, and nothing by day. 
 They are covered with filthy dust, shaken off from infinitude 
 of filthy feet ; mixed up with shreds of paper, orange-peel, 
 foul straw, rags, and cigar ends, and ashes ; the whole agglu- 
 tinated, more or less, by dry saliva into slippery blotches and 
 patches ; or, when not so fastened, blown dismally by the 
 sooty wind hither and thither, or into the faces of those who 
 ascend and descend. The place is worth your visit, for you 
 are not likely to find elsewhere a spot which, either in costly 
 and ponderous brutality of building, or in the squalid and 
 indecent accompaniment of it, is so far separated from the 
 peace and grace of nature, and so accurately indicative of the 
 methods of our national resistance to the Grace, Mercy, and 
 Peace of Heaven. 
 
 86. I am obliged always to use the English word " Grace " 
 in two senses, but remember that the Greek x^P t? includes 
 them both (the bestowing, that is to say of Beauty and 
 Mercy) ; and especially it includes these in the passage of 
 Pindar's first ode, which gives us the key to the right inter- 
 pretation of the power of sculpture in Greece. You remem- 
 ber that I told you, in my Sixth Introductory Lecture (§ 151), 
 that the mythic accounts of Greek sculpture begin in the 
 legends of the family of Tantalus ; and especially in the most 
 grotesque legend of them all, the inlaying of the ivory shoul 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 339 
 
 der of Pelops. At that story Pindar pauses — not, indeed, 
 without admiration, nor alleging any impossibility in the cir- 
 cumstances themselves, but doubting the careless hunger of 
 Demeter — and gives his own reading of the event, instead of 
 the ancient one. He justifies this to himself, and to his hear- 
 ers, by the plea that myths have, in some sort, or degree, 
 (ttov rt), led the mind of mortals beyond the truth : and then 
 he goes on : — 
 
 " Grace, which creates everything that is kindly and sooth- 
 ing for mortals, adding honour, has often made things at first 
 untrustworthy, become trustworthy through Love." 
 
 87. I cannot, except in these lengthened terms, give you 
 the complete force of the passage ; especially of the aiua-rov 
 ifxrja-aTo ttlcftov — " made it trustworthy by passionate desire 
 that it should be so " — which exactly describes the temper of 
 religious persons at the present day, who are kindly and sin- 
 cere, in clinging to the forms of faith which either have long- 
 been precious to themselves, or which they feel to have been 
 without question instrumental in advancing the dignity of 
 mankind. And it is part of the constitution of humanity — a 
 part which, above others, you are in danger of unwisely con- 
 temning under the existing conditions of our knowledge, that 
 the things thus sought for belief with eager passion, do, 
 indeed, become trustworthy to us ; that, to each of us, they 
 verily become what we would have them ; the force of the 
 fjirjvLs and /JLvrjiJLr] with which we seek after them, does, indeed, 
 make them powerful to us for actual good or evil ; and it is 
 thus granted to us to create not only with our hands things 
 that exalt or degrade our sight, but with our hearts also, 
 things that exalt or degrade our souls ; giving true substance 
 to all that we hoped for ; evidence to things that we have not 
 seen, but have desired to see ; and calling, in the sense oi 
 creating, things that are not, as though they were. 
 
 88. You remember that in distinguishing Imagination from 
 Idolatry, I referred you to the forms of passionate affection 
 with which a noble people commonly regards the rivers and 
 springs of its native land. Some conception of personality 
 or of spiritual power in the stream, is almost necessarily in* 
 
VAO 
 
 ARATRA PEN TEL TCI. 
 
 volvecl in such emotion ; and prolonged x°-P L(; * n the form of 
 gratitude, the return of Love for benefits continually bestowed, 
 at last alike in all the highest and the simplest minds, when 
 they are honourable and pure, makes this untrue thing trust- 
 worthy ; amcTTov ifxrjoraro ttlcttov, until it becomes to them the 
 safe basis of some of the happiest impulses of their moral 
 nature. Next to the marbles of Verona, given you as a primal 
 type of the sculpture of Christianity, moved to its best energy 
 in adorning the entrance of its temples, I have not unwillingly 
 placed, as your introduction to the best sculpture of the re- 
 ligion of Greece, the forms under which it represented the 
 personality of the fountain Arethusa. But, without restriction 
 to those days of absolute devotion, let me simply point out to 
 you how this untrue thing, made true by Love, has intimate 
 and heavenly authority even over the minds of men of the 
 most practical sense, the most shrew r d wit, and the most 
 severe precision of moral temper. The fair vision of Sabrina 
 in Comus, the endearing and tender promise, " Fies nobilium 
 tu quoque fontium,'' and the joyful and proud affection of the 
 great Lombard's address to the lakes of his enchanted land, — 
 
 Te, Lari maxume, teque 
 Fluctibus et fremitu assurgens, Benace, marino, 
 
 may surely be remembered by you with regretful piety, when 
 you stand by the blank stones which at once restrain and dis- 
 grace your native river, as the final worship rendered to it by 
 modern philosophy. But a little incident which I saw last 
 summer on its bridge at Wallingford, may put the contrast of 
 ancient and modern feeling before you still more forcibly. 
 
 89. Those of you who have read with attention (none of 
 us can read with too much attention), Moliere's most perfect 
 work, the Misanthrope, must remember Celimene's description 
 of her lovers, and her excellent reason for being unable to re- 
 gard with any favour, " notre grand flandrin de vicomte, — 
 depuis que je 1'ai vu, trois quarts d'heure durant, cracher dans 
 un puits pour faire des ronds." That sentence is worth noting, 
 both in contrast to the reverence paid by the ancients to wells 
 and springs, and as one of the most interesting traces of the 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 extension of the loathsome habit among the upper classes of 
 Europe and America, which now renders all external grace, 
 dignity, and decency, impossible in the thoroughfares of their 
 principal cities. In connection wish that sentence of Moliere's 
 you may advisably also remember this fact, which I chanced 
 to notice on the bridge of V/ allingf ord. I was walking from 
 end to end of it, and back again, one Sunday afternoon of last 
 May, trying to conjecture what had made this especial bend 
 and ford of the Thames so important in all the Anglo-Saxon 
 wars. It was one of the few sunny afternoons of the bitter 
 spring, and I was very thankful for its light, and happy in 
 watching beneath it the flow and the glittering of the classical 
 river, when I noticed a well-dressed boy, apparently just out 
 of some orderly Sunday-school, leaning far over the parapet ; 
 watching, as I conjectured, some bird or insect on the bridge- 
 buttress. I went up to him to see what he was looking at ; 
 but just as I got close to him, he started over to the opposite 
 parapet, and put himself there into the same position, his ob- 
 ject being, as I then perceived, to spit from both sides upon 
 the heads of a pleasure party who were passing in a boat 
 below. 
 
 90. The incident may seem to you too trivial to be noticed 
 in this place. To me, gentlemen, it was by no means trivial. 
 It meant, in the depth of it, such absence of all true x^p S 
 reverence, and intellect, as it is very dreadful to trace in the 
 mind of any human creature, much more in that of a child 
 educated with apparently every advantage of circumstance in 
 a beautiful English country town, within ten miles of our 
 University. Most of ail, is it terrific when we regard it as the 
 exponent (and this, in truth, it is), of the temper which, as 
 distinguished from former methods, either of discipline or 
 recreation, the present tenor of our general teaching fosters 
 in the mind of youth ; — teaching which asserts liberty to be a 
 right, and obedience a degradation ; and which, regardless 
 alike of the fairness of nature and the grace of behaviour, 
 leaves the insolent spirit and degraded senses to find their 
 only occupation in malice, and their only satisfaction iq 
 shame. 
 
342 
 
 ABATRA PENTELW1. 
 
 91. You will, I hope, proceed with me, not scornfully any 
 
 more, to trace, in the early art of a noble heathen nation, the 
 feeling of what w T as at least a better childishness than this of 
 ours ; and the efforts to express, though with hands yet fail- 
 ing, and minds oppressed by ignorant phantasy, the first truth 
 by which they knew that they lived ; the birth of wisdom and 
 of all her powers of help to man, as the reward of his resolute 
 labour. 
 
 92. "'A^ato-rov Tixvaio-L." Note that word of Pindar in the 
 Seventh Olympic. This axe-blow of Vulcan's was to the 
 Greek mind truly what Clyternnestra falsely asserts hers to 
 have been "t?/s 8e Sefias x € P° ? ' Zpyov, Stxatas t€/ctovos" ; physi- 
 cally, it meant the opening of the blue through the rent clouds 
 of heaven, by the action of local terrestrial heat (of Hephaestus 
 as opposed to Apollo, who shines on the surface of the upper 
 clouds, but cannot pierce them ; and, spiritually, it meant the 
 first birth of prudent thought out of rude labour, the clear- 
 ing-axe in the hand of the woodman being the practical ele- 
 mentary sign of his difference from the wild animals of the 
 wood. Then he goes on, " From the high head of her Father, 
 Athenaia rushing forth, cried with her great and exceeding 
 cry ; and the Heaven trembled at her, and the Earth Mother." 
 The cry of Athena, I have before pointed out, physically dis- 
 tinguishes her, as the spirit of the air. from silent elemental 
 powers ; but in this grand passage of Pindar it is again the 
 mythic cry of which he thinks ; that is to say, the giving 
 articulate words, by intelligence, to the silence of Fate. 
 " Wisdom crieth aloud, she uttereth her voice in the streets," 
 and Heaven and Earth tremble at her reproof. 
 
 93. Uttereth her voice in " the streets." For all men, that 
 is to say ; but to what work did the Greeks think that her 
 Yoice was to call them ? What was to be the impulse com- 
 municated by her prevailing presence ; what the sign of the 
 people's obedience to her ? 
 
 This was to be the sign — "But she, the goddess herself, 
 gave to them to prevail over the dwellers upon earth, with 
 best-labouring hands in every art. And by their paths there were 
 the likenesses of living and of creeping things ; and the glory 
 
IMA GUSTATION. 
 
 343 
 
 was deep. For to the cunning workman, greater knowledge 
 comes, undeceitful." 
 
 94. An infinitely pregnant passage, this, of which to-day 
 you are to note mainly these three things : First, that Athena 
 is the goddess of Doing, not at all of sentimental inaction. 
 She is begotten, as it were, of the woodman's axe ; her purpose 
 is never in a word only, but in a word and a blow. She guides 
 the hands that labour best, in every art. 
 
 95. Secondly. The victory given by Wisdom, the worker, to 
 the hands that labour best, is that the streets and ways, KiKevOoi, 
 shall be filled by likenesses of living and creeping things ? 
 
 Things living, and creeping ! Are the Reptile things not 
 alive then? You think Pindar wrote that carelessly? or that, 
 if he had only known a little modern anatomy, instead of 
 " reptile " things, he would have said " monochondylous " 
 things ? Be patient, and let us attend to the main points 
 first. 
 
 Sculpture, it thus appears, is the only work of wisdom that 
 the Greeks care to speak of ; they think it involves and crowns 
 every other. Image-making art ; this is Athena's, as queen- 
 liest of the arts. Literature, the order and the strength of 
 word, of course belongs to Apollo and the Muses ; under 
 Athena are the Substances and the Forms of things. 
 
 96. Thirdly. By this forming of Images there is to be 
 gained a "deep " — that is to say — a weighty, and prevailing, 
 glory ; not a floating nor fugitive one. For to the cunning 
 workman, greater knowledge comes, "undeceitful." 
 
 " AaeVri- " I am forced to use two English words to trans- 
 late that single Greek one. The " cunning" workman, 
 thoughtful in experience, touch, and vision of the thing to be 
 done ; no machine, witless, and of necessary motion ; yet not 
 cunning only, but having perfect habitual skill of hand also ; 
 the confirmed reward of truthful doing. Recollect, in con- 
 nection with this passage of Pindar, Homer's three verses 
 about getting the lines of ship-timber true, (//. xv. 410) 
 
 " 'AAA' a>crr€ (TrdOfXT) Bopv v^'iov zfyQvvsi 
 
 tgktovos €u ira\oL}XYi<JL dayfiovos, os pd re 7rc(a'7js 
 eldy (ro(pl7]Sj vicodi) l uoo'vi'r}(riv 'AOrfcijs," 
 
344 
 
 All A TRA PENTEL1CL 
 
 and the beautiful epitliet of Persephone, <c Sacipa ? " as tha 
 Tryer and Knower of good work ; and remembering these, 
 trust Pindar for the truth of his saying, that to the cunning 
 workman — (and let me solemnly enforce the words by adding 
 — that to him only,) knowledge comes undeceitful. 
 
 97. You may have noticed, perhaps, and with a smile, as 
 one of the paradoxes you often hear me blamed for too fondly 
 stating, what I told you in the close of my Third Introductory 
 Lecture, that "so far from art's being immoral, little else ex- 
 cept art is moral." I have now farther to tell you, that little 
 else, except art, is wise ; that all knowledge, unaccompanied 
 by a habit of useful action, is too likely to become deceitful, 
 and that every habit of useful action must resolve itself into 
 some elementary practice of manual labour. And I would, in 
 all sober and direct earnestness advise you, whatever may be 
 the aim, predilection, or necessity of your lives, to resolve 
 upon this one thing at least, that you will enable yourselves 
 daily to do actually with your hands, something that is useful 
 to mankind. To do anything well with your hands, useful 
 or not ; — to be, even in trifling, TraXafxrjo-i Sarjfxwv, is already 
 much ; — when we come to examine the art of the middle ages 
 I shall be able to show- you that the strongest of all influences 
 of right then brought to bear upon character was the neces- 
 sity for exquisite manual dexterity in the management of the 
 spear and bridle ; and in your own experience most of you 
 will be able to recognize the wholesome effect, alike on body 
 and mind, of striving, within proper limits of time, to become 
 either good batsmen, or good oarsmen. But the bat and the 
 racer's oar are children's toys. Eesolve that you will be men 
 in usefulness, as well as in strength ; and you will find that 
 then also, but not till then, you can become men in under- 
 standing ; and that every fine vision and subtle theorem will 
 present itself to you thenceforward undeceitfuliy, vTroOrjfxoavvrjaiv 
 
 98. But there is more to be gathered yet from the words of 
 Pindar. He is thinking, in his brief, intense way, at once of 
 Athena's work on the soul, and of her literal power on the 
 dust of the Earth. His " KiktvdoL " is a wide word meaning all 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 3d5 
 
 the paths of sea and land. Consider, therefore, what Athena's 
 own work actually is — in the literal fact of it. The blue, clear 
 air is the sculpturing power upon the earth and sea. Where 
 the surface of the earth is reached by that, and its matter and 
 substance inspired with, and filled by that, organic form be- 
 comes possible. You must indeed have the sun, also, and 
 moisture ; the kingdom of Apollo risen out of the sea : but 
 the sculpturing of living things, shape by shape, is Athena's, 
 so that under the brooding spirit of the air, what was without 
 form, and void brings forth the moving creature that hath 
 life. 
 
 99. That is her work then — the giving of Form ; then the 
 separately Apolline w r ork is the giving of Light ; or, more 
 strictly, Sight : giving that faculty to the retina to which we 
 owe not merely the idea of light, but the existence of it ; for 
 light is to be denned only as the sensation produced in the eye 
 of an animal, under given conditions ; those same conditions 
 being, to a stone, only warmth or chemical influence, but not 
 light. And that power of seeing, and the other various per- 
 sonalities and authorities of the animal body, in pleasure and 
 pain, have never, hitherto, been, I do not say, explained, but 
 in any wise touched or approached by scientific discovery. 
 Some of the conditions of mere external animal form and of 
 muscular vitality have been shown ; but for the most part that 
 is true, even of external form, which I wrote six years ago. 
 " You may always stand by Form against Force. To a painter, 
 the essential character of anything is the form of it, and the 
 philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell you, for 
 instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific 
 energy (or whatever else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle, as 
 in a gier-eagle. Very good : that is so ; and it is very inter- 
 esting. It requires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, 
 to take the gier-eagle up to his nest, and as much more to 
 bring him down again on a hare or a partridge, But we 
 painters, acknowledging the equality and similarity of the 
 kettle and the bird in all scientific respects, attach, for our 
 part, our principal interest to the difference in their forms. 
 For us, the primarily cognisable facts, in the two things, are, 
 
346 
 
 ABATE A PENTELIC1. 
 
 that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak ; the one a 
 lid on its back, the other a pair of wings ; not to speak of the 
 distinction also of volition, which the philosophers may prop- 
 erly call merely a form or mode of force— but, then to an art- 
 ist, the form or mode is the gist of the business." 
 
 100. As you will find that it is, not to the artist only, but 
 to all of us. The laws under which matter is collected and 
 constructed are the same throughout the universe : the sub- 
 stance so collected, whether for the making of the eagle, or 
 the worm, may be analyzed into gaseous identity ; a diffusive 
 vital force, apparently so closely related to mechanically meas- 
 urable heat as to admit the conception of its being itself me- 
 chanically measurable, and unchanging in total quantity, ebbs 
 and flows alike through the limbs of men, and the fibres of 
 insects. But, above all this, and ruling every grotesque or 
 degraded accident of this, are two laws of beauty in form, 
 and of nobility in character, w T hich stand in the chaos of crea- 
 tion between the Living and the Dead, to separate the things 
 that have in them a sacred and helpful, from those that have 
 in them an accursed and destroying, nature ; and the power 
 of Athena, first physically put forth in the sculpturing of these 
 £ooa and epnera, these living and reptile things, is put forth, 
 finally, in enabling the hearts of men to discern the one from 
 the other ; to know the unquenchable fires of the Spirit from 
 the unquenchable fires of Death ; and to choose, not unaided, 
 between submission to the Love that cannot end, 'or to the 
 Worm that cannot die. 
 
 101. The unconsciousness of their antagonism is the most 
 notable characteristic of the modern scientific mind ; and I 
 believe no credulity or fallacy admitted by the weakness (cr 
 it may sometimes rather have been the strength) of early im- 
 agination, indicates so strange a depression beneath the due 
 scale of human intellect, as the failure of the sense of beauty 
 in form, and loss of faith in heroism of conduct, which have 
 become the curses of recent science,* art, and policy. 
 
 * The best modern illustrated scientific works show perfect faculty of 
 representing monkeys, lizards, and insects ; absolute incapability of 
 representing either a man, a horse, or a lion. 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 347 
 
 102. That depression of intellect has been alike exhibited 
 in the mean consternation confessedly felt on one side, and 
 the mean triumph apparently felt on the other, during the 
 course of the dispute now pending as to the origin of man. 
 Dispute for the present, not to be decided, and of which the 
 decision is to persons in the modern temper of mind, wholly 
 without significance : and I earnestly desire that you, my 
 pupils, may have firmness enough to disengage your energies 
 from investigation so premature and so fruitless, and sense 
 enough to perceive that it does not matter how you have 
 been made, so long as you are satisfied with being what you 
 are. If you are dissatisfied with yourselves, it ought not to 
 console, but humiliate you, to imagine that you were once 
 seraphs ; and if you are pleased with yourselves, it is not 
 any ground of reasonable shame to you if, by no fault of 
 your own, you have passed through the elementary condition 
 of apes. 
 
 103. Kemember, therefore, that it is of the very highest im- 
 portance that you should know what you are, and determine 
 to be the best that you may be ; but it is of no importance 
 whatever, except as it may contribute to that end, to know 
 what you have been. Whether your Creator shaped you with 
 fingers, or tools, as a sculptor would a lump of clay, or gradu- 
 ally raised you to manhood through a series of inferior forms, 
 is only of moment to you in this respect— that in the one case 
 you cannot expect your children to be nobler creatures than 
 you are yourselves — in the other, every act and thought of 
 your present life may be hastening the advent of a race which 
 will look back to you, their fathers (and you ought at least 
 to have attained the dignity of desiring that it may be so), 
 with incredulous disdain. 
 
 104. But that you are yourselves capable of that disdain 
 and dismay ; that you are ashamed of having been apes, if 
 you ever were so ; that you acknowledge instinctively, a 
 relation of better and worse, and a law respecting what is 
 noble and base, which makes it no question to you that the 
 man is worthier than the baboon — this is a fact of infinite sig- 
 nificance. This law of preference in your hearts is the true 
 
348 
 
 ARATRA PENTELIC1. 
 
 essence of your being, and the consciousness of that law is a 
 more positive existence than any dependent on the coherence 
 or forms of matter. 
 
 105. Now, but a few words more of mythology, and I have 
 done. Remember that Athena holds the weaver's shuttle, not 
 merely as an instrument of texture, but as an instrument of 
 picture ; the ideas of clothing, and of the warmth of life, be- 
 ing thus inseparably connected with those of graphic beauty, 
 and the brightness of life. I have told you that no art could 
 be recovered among us without perf ectness in dress, nor with- 
 out the elementary graphic art of women, in divers colours of 
 needlework. There has been no nation of any art-energy, but 
 has strenuously occupied and interested itself in this house- 
 hold picturing, from the web of Penelope to the tapestry of 
 Queen Matilda, and the meshes of Arras and Gobelins. 
 
 106. We should then naturally ask what kind of embroidery 
 Athena put on her own robe ; " ttIttXov iavbv, ttolklXov, 6v p avr^ 
 7roLr)(TaTo /cat, KOLfxe xepcriv." 
 
 The subject of that iroiKiXla of hers, as you know, was the 
 war of the giants and gods. Now the real name of these 
 giants, remember, is that used by Hesiod, " tttjXoxovoi" " mud- 
 begotten," and the meaning of the contest between these and 
 Zeus, irrjXoyovuw iXaTrjp, is, again, the inspiration of life into 
 the clay, by the goddess of breath ; and the actual confusion 
 going on visibly before you, daily, of the earth, heaping itself 
 into cumbrous war with the powers above it. 
 
 107. Thus briefly, the entire material of Art, under Athena's 
 hand, is the contest of life with clay ; and all my task in ex- 
 plaining to you the early thought of both the Athenian and 
 Tuscan schools will only be the tracing of this battle of the 
 giants into its full heroic form, when, not in tapestry only — 
 but in sculpture — and on the portal of the Temple of Delphi 
 itself, VOU have the (( kXovos iv revert Xcllvoictl ytyai/Twv," and 
 their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delight from the 
 Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, " Xevarw* 
 riaAAao' e[iav Oeov" my own goddess. All our work, I repeat, 
 will be nothing but the inquiry into the development of this 
 the subject, and the pressing fully home the question of Plato 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 349 
 
 about that embroidery — " And think you that there is verily 
 war with each other among the Gods ? and dreadful enmities 
 and battle, such as the poets have told, and such as our 
 painters set forth in graven scripture, to adorn all our sacred 
 rites and holy places ; yes, and in the great Panathenaea 
 themselves, the Peplus, full of such wild picturing, is carried 
 up into the Acropolis — shall we say that these things are true, 
 oh Euthuphron, right-minded friend ? " 
 
 108. Yes, we say, and know, that these things are true ; 
 and true for ever : battles of the gods, not among themselves, 
 but against the earth-giants. Battle prevailing age by age, in 
 nobler life and lovelier imagery ; creation, which no theory of 
 mechanism, no definition of force, can explain, the adoption 
 and completing of individual form by individual animation, 
 breathed out of the lips of the Father of Spirits. And to 
 recognize the presence in every knitted shape of dust, by 
 which it lives and moves and has its being — to recognize it, 
 revere, and show it forth, is to be our eternal Idolatry. 
 
 " Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them." 
 
 " Assuredly no," we answered once, in our pride ; and 
 through porch and aisle, broke dow r n the carved work thereof, 
 with axes and hammers. 
 
 Who would have thought the day so near when we should 
 bow down to worship, not the creatures, but their atoms, — 
 not the forces that form, but those that dissolve them ? Trust 
 me, gentlemen, the command w r hich is stringent against ado- 
 ration of brutality, is stringent no less against adoration of 
 chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to be re- 
 formed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. We 
 have ceased from the making of monsters to be appeased by 
 sacrifice ; — it is well, — if indeed we have also ceased from 
 making them in our thoughts. We have learned to distrust 
 the adorning of fair phantasms, to which we once sought for 
 succour ; — it is w r ell, if we learn to distrust also the adorning of 
 those to w T hich we seek, for temptation ; but the verity of gains 
 like these can only be known by our confession of the divine 
 seal of strength and beauty upon the tempered frame, and 
 honour in the fervent heart, by which, merea.sing visibly, may 
 
350 
 
 ARATRA RENTE LIC I. 
 
 yet be manifested to us the holy presence, and the approving 
 love, of the Loving God, who visits the iniquities of the 
 Fathers upon the Children, unto the third and fourth genera- 
 tion of them that hate Him, and shows mercy unto thousands 
 in them that love Him, and keep His Commandments. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 LIKENESS. 
 
 November, 1870. 
 
 109. You were probably vexed, and tired, towards the close of 
 my last lecture, by the time it took us to arrive at the appar- 
 ently simple conclusion, that sculpture must only represent 
 organic form, and the strength of life in its contest with mat- 
 ter. But it is no small thing to have that " AcuWa) IlaAAaSa * 
 fixed in your minds, as the one necessary sign by which you 
 are to recognize right sculpture, and believe me you will find 
 it the best of all things, if you can take for yourselves the say- 
 ing from the lips of the Athenian maids, in its entirety, and 
 say also — Xevo-ao) TTaAAaS' ifiav Oeav. I proceed to-day into 
 the practical appliance of this apparently speculative, but in 
 reality imperative, law. 
 
 110. You observe, I have hitherto spoken of the power of 
 Athena, as over painting no less than sculpture. Bat her rule 
 over both arts is only so far as they are zoographic ; — repre- 
 sentative, that is to say, of animal life, or of such order and 
 discipline among other elements, as may invigorate and purify 
 it. Now there is a speciality of the art of painting beyond 
 this, namely, the representation of phenomena of colour and 
 shadow, as such, without question of the nature of the things 
 that receive them. I am now accordingly obliged to speak of 
 sculpture and painting as distinct arts, but the laws which 
 bind sculpture, bind no less the painting of the higher schools 
 which has, for its main purpose, the showing beauty in human 
 or animal form ; and which is therefore placed by the Greeks 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 051 
 
 equally under the rule of Athena, as the Spirit, first, of Life, 
 and then of Wisdom in conduct. 
 
 111. First, I say, you are to "see Pallas " in all such work, 
 as the Queen of Life ; and the practical law which follows 
 from this, is one of enormous range and importance, namely, 
 that nothing must be represented by sculpture, external to 
 any living form, which does not help to enforce or illustrate 
 the conception of life. Both dress and armour may be made 
 to do this, by great sculptors, and are continually so used by 
 the greatest. One of the essential distinctions between the 
 Athenian and Florentine schools is dependent on their treat- 
 ment of drapery in this respect ; an Athenian always sets it to 
 exhibit the action of the body, by flowing with it, or over it, 
 or from it, so as to illustrate both its form and gesture ; a 
 Florentine, on the contrary, always uses his drapery to con- 
 ceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental 
 emotion : but both use it to enhance the life, either of the 
 body or soul ; Donatello and Michael Angelo, no less than the 
 sculptors of Gothic chivalry, ennoble armour in the same way ; 
 but base sculptors carve drapery and armour for the sake of 
 their folds and picturesqueness only, and forget the body be- 
 neath. The rule is so stern that all delight in mere incidental 
 beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly forbidden 
 to sculpture ; — for instance, in painting the branch of a tree, 
 you may rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on 
 it, but a sculptor must not touch one of them : they are ines- 
 sential to the tree's life, — he must give the flow and bending 
 of the branch only, else he does not enough "see Pallas" 
 in it. 
 
 Or to take a higher instance, here is an exquisite little 
 painted poem, by Edward Frere ; a cottage interior, one of 
 the thousands which within the last two months * have been 
 laid desolate in unhappy France. Every accessory in the 
 painting is of value — the fire-side, the tiled floor, the vegetables 
 lying upon it, and the basket hanging from the roof. But 
 not one of these accessories would have been admissible 
 
 * See date of delivery of Lecture. The picture was of a peasant girl 
 of eleven or twelve years old, peeling carrots by a cottage fire. 
 
352 
 
 ABA TEA PENTELICL 
 
 in sculpture. You must carve nothing but what has life. 
 "Why"? you probably feel instantly inclined to ask me. — 
 You see the principle we have got, instead of being blunt or 
 useless, is such an edged tool that you are startled the moment 
 I apply it. " Must we refuse every pleasant accessory and 
 picturesque detail, and petrify nothing but living creatures " ? 
 — Even so : I would not assert it on my own authority. It is 
 the Greeks who say it, but whatever they say of sculpture, be 
 assured, is true. 
 
 112. That then is the first law — you must see Pallas as the 
 Lady of Life — the second is, you must see her as the Lady of 
 Wisdom ; or ao^ia — and this is the chief matter of all. I can- 
 not but think, that after the considerations into which we 
 have now entered, you will find more interest than hitherto 
 in comparing the statements of Aristotle, in the Ethics, with 
 those of Plato in the Polity, which are authoritative as Greek 
 definitions of goodness in art, and which you may safely hold 
 authoritative as constant definitions of it. You remember, 
 doubtless, that the o-ockia, or aperrj rlyyri% for the sake of which 
 Phidias is called cro<£os as a sculptor, and Polyclitus as an 
 image-maker, Eth. 6. 7. (the opposition is both between ideal 
 and portrait sculpture, and between working in stone and 
 bronze) consists in the " vovs tuv T/./xto)rarwi/ ry </)i'<ret ? " "the 
 mental apprehension of the things that are most honourable 
 in their nature." Therefore what is, indeed, most lovely, the 
 true image-maker will most love ; and what is most hate- 
 ful, he will most hate, and in all things discern the best and 
 strongest part of them, and represent that essentially, or, if 
 the opposite of that, then with manifest detestation and horror. 
 That is his art wisdom ; the knowledge of good and evil, and 
 the love of good, so that you may discern, even in his repre- 
 sentation of the vilest thing, his acknowledgment of what re- 
 demption i3 possible for it, or latent power exists in it ; and, 
 contrariwise, his sense of its present misery. But for the most 
 part, he will idolize, and force us also to idolize, whatever is 
 living, and virtuous, and victoriously right ; opposing to it 
 in some definite mode the image of the conquered cpTreroV. 
 
 113. This is generally true of both the great arts ; but in 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 353 
 
 severity and precision, true of sculpture. To return to our 
 illustration : this poor little girl was more interesting to Ed- 
 ward Frere, he being a painter, because she was poorly dressed, 
 and wore these clumsy shoes, and old red cap, and patched 
 gown. May we sculpture her so ? No. We may sculpture 
 her naked, if we like ; but not in rags. 
 
 But if we may not put her into marble in rags, may we give 
 her a pretty frock with ribands and flounces to it, and put 
 her into marble in that ? No. We may put her simplest 
 peasant's dress, so it be perfect and orderly, into marble ; any- 
 thing finer than that would be more dishonourable in the eyes 
 of Athena than rags. If she were a French princess, you 
 might carve her embroidered robe and diadem ; if she were 
 Joan of Arc you might carve her armour — for then these also 
 would be " tCov TifjLUDTa.Twv,''' not otherwise. 
 
 114. Is not this an edge-tool we have got hold of, unawares ? 
 and a subtle one too ; so delicate and scimitar-like in decision. 
 For note, that even Joan of Arc's armour must be only sculpt- 
 ured, if she has it on ; it is not the honourableness or beauty 
 of it that are enough, but the direct bearing of it by her body. 
 You might be deeply, even pathetically, interested by looking 
 at a good knight's dinted coat of mail, left in his desolate hall. 
 May you sculpture it where it hangs ? No ; the helmet for 
 his pillow, if you will — no more. 
 
 You see we did not do our dull work for nothing in last 
 lecture. I define what we have gained once more, and then 
 we will enter on our new ground. 
 
 115. The proper subject of sculpture, we have determined, 
 is the spiritual power seen in the form of any living thing, 
 and so represented as to give evidence that the sculptor has 
 loved the good of it and hated the evil. 
 
 (i So represented," we sa}^ ; but how is that to be done ? 
 Why should it not be represented, if possible, just as it is 
 seen ? What mode or limit of representation may we adopt V 
 We are to carve things that have life ; — shall we try so to imi- 
 tate them that they may indeed seem living, — or only half 
 living, and like stone instead of flesh ? 
 
 It will simplify this question if I show you three examples 
 
ARATRA VENT ELI CI. 
 
 of what the Greeks actually did : three typical pieces of their 
 sculpture, in order of perfection. 
 
 116. And now, observe that in all our historical work, I will 
 endeavour to do, myself, what I have asked you to do in your 
 drawing exercises ; namely, to outline firmly in the beginning, 
 and then fill in the detail more minutely. I will give you 
 first, therefore, in a symmetrical form, absolutely simple and 
 easily remembered, the large chronology of the Greek school ; 
 within that unforgettable scheme we will place, as we discover 
 them, the minor relations of arts and times. 
 
 I number the nine centuries before Christ thus, upwards, 
 and divide them into three groups of three each. 
 
 A. archaic. \ 8 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 B. BEST. 
 
 4 
 
 C. CORRUPT. •{ 2 
 
 1 
 
 v. 
 
 Then the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries are the period 
 of Archaic Greek Art, steadily progressive wherever it existed. 
 
 The sixth, fifth, and fourth are the period of central Greek 
 Art ; the fifth, or central century producing the finest. That 
 is easily recollected by the battle of Marathon. And the third, 
 second, and first centuries are the period of steady decline. 
 
 Learn this ABC thoroughly, and mark, for yourselves, 
 what you, at present, think the vital events in each century. 
 As you know more, you will think other events the vital ones ; 
 but the best historical knowledge only approximates to true 
 
Plate VII — Archaic, Central and Declining Art 
 of Greece. 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 thought in that matter ; only be sure that what is truly vital 
 in the character which governs events, is always expressed by 
 the art of the century ; so that if you could interpret that art 
 rightly, the better part of your task in reading history would 
 be done to your hand. 
 
 117. It is generally impossible to date with precision art of 
 the archaic period — often difficult to date even that of the 
 central three hundred years. I will not weary you with futile 
 minor divisions of time; here are three coins (Plate VII.) 
 roughly, but decisively, characteristic of the three ages. The 
 first is an early coin of Tarentum. The city was founded as 
 you know, by the Spartan Phalanthus, late in the eighth 
 century. I believe the head is meant for that of Apollo 
 Archegetes, it ftiay however be Taras, the son of Poseidon ; it 
 is no matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the 
 fact that we cannot know, is itself of the greatest import. We 
 cannot say, with any certainty, unless by discovery of some 
 collateral evidence, whether this head is intended for that of 
 a god, or demi-god, or a mortal warrior. Ought not that to 
 disturb some of your thoughts respecting Greek idealism? 
 Farther, if by investigation we discover that the head is meant 
 for that of Phalanthus, we shall know nothing of the charac- 
 ter of Phalanthus from the face ; for there is no portraiture 
 at this early time. 
 
 118. The second coin is of iEnus in Macedonia ; probably 
 of the fifth or early fourth century, and entirely characteristic 
 of the central period. This we know to represent the face of 
 a god — Hermes. The third coin is a king's, not a city's. I 
 will not tell you, at this moment, what king's ; but only that 
 it is a late coin of the third period, and that it is as distinct 
 in purpose as the coin of Tarentum is obscure. Yv r e know of 
 this coin, that it represents no god nor demi-god, but a mere 
 mortal ; and we know precisely, from the portrait, what that 
 mortal's face was like. 
 
 119. A glance at the three coins, as they are set side by 
 side, will now show you the main differences in the three great 
 Greek styles. The archaic coin is sharp and hard ; every line 
 decisive and numbered, set unhesitatingly in its place ; nothing 
 
356 
 
 AEATRA PENTELICL 
 
 is wrong, though everything incomplete, and, to us who have 
 seen finer art, ugly. The central coin is as decisive and clear 
 in arrangement of masses, but its contours are completely 
 rounded and finished. There is no character in its execution 
 so prominent that you can give an epithet to the style. It in 
 not hard, it is not soft, it is not delicate, it is not coarse, it is 
 not grotesque, it is not beautiful ; and I am convinced, unless 
 you had been told that this is fine central Greek art, you 
 would have seen nothing at all in it to interest you. Do noh 
 let yourselves be anywise forced into admiring it ; there is, 
 indeed, nothing more here, than an approximately true ren- 
 dering of a healthy youthful face, without the slightest attempt 
 to give an expression of activity, cunning, nobility, or any 
 other attribute of the Mercurial mind. Extreme simplicity, 
 unpretending vigour of work, which claims no admiration 
 either for minuteness or dexterity, and suggests no idea of 
 effort at all ; refusal of extraneous ornament, and perfectly 
 arranged disposition of counted masses in a sequent order, 
 whether in the beads, or the ringlets of hair ; this is all you 
 have to be pleased with ; neither will you ever find, in the 
 best Greek Art, more. You might at first suppose that the 
 chain of beads round the cap was an extraneous ornament ; 
 but I have little doubt that it is as definitely the proper fillet 
 for the head of Hermes, as the olive for Zeus, or corn for 
 Triptolemus. The cap or petasus cannot have expanded edges, 
 there is no room for them on the coin ; these must be under- 
 stood, therefore ; but the nature of the cloud-petasus is ex- 
 plained by edging it with beads, representing either dew or 
 hail. The shield of Athena often bears white pellets for hail, 
 in like manner. 
 
 120. The third coin will, I think, at once strike you by 
 what we moderns should call its " vigour of character/" 
 You may observe also that the features are finished with 
 great care and subtlety, but at the cost of simplicity and 
 breadth. But the essential difference between it and the 
 central art, is its disorder in design — you see the locks of hair 
 cannot be counted any longer — they are entirely dishevelled 
 and irregular. Nov/ the individual character may, or may not 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 357 
 
 be, a sign of decline ; but the licentiousness, the casting loose 
 of the masses in the design, is an infallible one. The effort 
 at portraiture is good for art if the men to be portrayed are 
 good men, not otherwise. In the instance before you, the 
 head is that of Mithriclates VI. of Pontus, who had, indeed, 
 the good qualities of being a linguist and a patron of the arts ; 
 but as you will remember, murdered, according to report, his 
 mother, certainly his brother, certainly his wives and sisters, 
 I have not counted how many of his children, and from a hun- 
 dred to a hundred and fifty thousand person? besides ; these 
 last in a single day's massacre. The effort to represent this 
 kind of person is not by any means a method of study from 
 life ultimately beneficial to art. 
 
 121. This however is not the point I have to urge to-day. 
 What I want you to observe is that, though the master of the 
 great time does not attempt portraiture, he does attempt ani- 
 mation. And as far as his means will admit, he succeeds in 
 making the face — you might almost think — vulgarly animated ; 
 as like a real face, literally, "as it can stare." Yes: and its 
 sculptor meant it to be so ; and that was what Phidias meant 
 his Jupiter to be, if he could manage it Not, indeed, to be 
 taken for Zeus himself ; and yet, to be as like a living Zeus as 
 art could make it. Perhaps you think he tried to make it look 
 living only for the sake of the mob, and would not have tried 
 to do so for connoisseurs. Pardon me ; for real connoisseurs, 
 he would, and did ; and herein consists a truth which belongs 
 to all the arts, and which I will at once drive home in your 
 minds, as firmly as I can. 
 
 122. All second-rate artists — (and remember, the second- 
 rate ones are a loquacious multitude, while the great come 
 only one or two in a century ; and then, silently) — all second- 
 rate artists will tell you that the object of fine art is not re- 
 semblance, but some kind of abstraction more refined than 
 reality. Put that out of your heads at once. The object of 
 the great Resemblant Arts is, and always has been, to resemble; 
 and to resemble as closely as possible. It is the function of a 
 good portrait to set the man before you in habit as he lived, 
 and I would we had a few more that did so. It is the function 
 
358 
 
 A R ATM A PENT ELI CI. 
 
 of a good landscape to set the scene before you in its reality ; 
 to make you, if it may be, think the clouds are flying, and 
 the streams foaming. It is the function of the best sculptor 
 —the true Daedalus — to make stillness look like breathing, 
 and marble look like flesh. 
 
 123. And in all great times of art, this purpose is as naively 
 expressed as it is steadily held. All the talk about abstraction 
 belongs to periods of decadence. In living times, people see 
 something living that pleases them ; and they try to make it 
 live for ever, or to make it something as like it as possible, that 
 will last for ever. They paint their statues, and inlay the eyes 
 with jewels, and set real crowns on their heads ; they finish, 
 in their pictures, every thread of embroiderv, and would fain, 
 if they could, draw every leaf upon the trees. And their only 
 verbal expression of conscious success is, that they have made 
 their work "look real." 
 
 124. You think all that very wrong. So did I, once ; but 
 it was I that was wrong. A long time ago, before ever I had 
 seen Oxford, I painted a picture of the Lake of Como, for my 
 father. It was not at all like the Lake of Como; but I thought 
 it rather the better for that. My father differed with me ; and 
 objected particularly to a boat with a red and yellow awning, 
 which I had put into the most conspicuous corner of my draw- 
 ing. I declared this boat to be "necessary to the composi- 
 tion. " My father not the less objected, that he had never seen 
 such a boat,, either at Como or elsewhere ; and suggested that 
 if I would make the lake look a little more like water, I should 
 be under no necessity of explaining its nature by the presence 
 of floating objects. I thought him at the time a very simple 
 person for his pains ; but have since learned, and it is the very 
 gist of all practical matters, which, as professor of fine art, I 
 have now to tell you, that the great point in painting a lake is 
 — to get it to look like water. 
 
 125. So far 3 so good. We lay it down for a first principle, 
 that our graphic art, whether painting or sculpture, is to pro- 
 duce something which shall look as like Nature as possible. 
 But now we must go one step farther, and say that it is to 
 produce what shall look like Nature to people who know what 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 359 
 
 Nature is like ! You see this is at once a great restriction, as 
 well as a great exaltation of our aim. Our business is not to 
 deceive the simple ; but to deceive the wise ! Here, for in- 
 stance, is a modern Italian print, representing, to the best of 
 its power, St. Cecilia, in a brilliantly realistic manner. And 
 the fault of the work is not in its earnest endeavour to show 
 St. Cecilia in habit as she lived, but in that the effort could 
 only be successful with persons unaware of the habit St, Ce- 
 cilia lived in. And this condition of appeal only to the wise 
 increases the difficulty of imitative resemblance so greatly, 
 that, with only average skill or materials, we must surrender 
 all hope of it, and be content with an imperfect representa- 
 tion, true as far as it reaches, and such as to excite the imagi- 
 nation of a wise beholder to complete it ; though falling very 
 far short of what either he or we should otherwise have de- 
 sired. For instance, here is a suggestion, by Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds, of the general appearance of a British Judge — requir- 
 ing the imagination of a very wise beholder indeed, to fill it 
 up, or even at first to discover what it is meant for. Never- 
 theless, it is better art than the Italian St. Cecilia, because the 
 artist, however little he may have done to represent his knowl- 
 edge, does, indeed, know altogether what a Judge is like, and 
 appeals only to the criticism of those who know also. 
 
 126. There must be, therefore, two degrees of truth to be 
 looked for in the good graphic arts ; one, the commonest, 
 which, by any partial or imperfect sign conveys to you an idea 
 which you must complete for yourself ; and the other, the 
 finest, a representation so perfect as to leave you nothing to 
 be farther accomplished by this independent exertion ; but to 
 give you the same feeling of possession and presence which 
 you would experience from the natural object itself. For in- 
 stance of the first, in this representation of a rainbow,* the 
 artist has no hope that, by the black lines of engraving, he can 
 deceive you into any belief of the rainbow's being there, but 
 he gives indication enough of what he intends, to enable you 
 to supply the rest of the idea yourself, providing always you 
 know beforehand what a rainbow is like. But in this drawing 
 * In Durer's " Melencholia." 
 
AM A TEA PENTELICL 
 
 of the falls of Terni,* the painter has strained his skill to the 
 utmost to give an actually deceptive resemblance of the iris, 
 dawning and fading among the foam. So far as he has not 
 actually deceived you, it is not because he would not have 
 done so if he could ; but only because his colours and science 
 have fallen short of his desire. .They have fallen so little short 
 that, in a good light, you may all but believe the foam and 
 the sunshine are drifting and changing among the rocks. 
 
 127. And after looking a little while, you will begin to re- 
 gret that they are not so : you will feel that, lovely as the 
 drawing is, you would like far better to see the real place, and 
 the goats skipping among the rocks, and the spray floating 
 above the fall. And this is the true sign of the greatest art 
 —to part voluntarily with its greatness; — to make itself 'poor 
 and unnoticed ; but so to exalt and set forth its theme that 
 you may be fain to see the theme instead of it. So that you 
 have never enough admired a great workman's doing till you 
 have begun to despise it. The best homage that could be paid 
 to the Athena of Phidias would be to desire rather to see the 
 living goddess ; and the loveliest Madonnas of Christian art 
 fall short of their due power, if they do not make their be- 
 holders sick at heart to see the living Virgin. 
 
 128. We have then, for our requirement of the finest art 
 (sculpture, or anything else), that it shall be so like the 
 thing it represents as to please those who best know or can 
 conceive the original ; and, if possible, please them decep- 
 tively — its final triumph being to deceive even the wise ; 
 and (the Greeks thought) to please even the Immortals, who 
 were so wise PlS to be undeceivable. So that you get the 
 Greek, thus far entirely true, idea of perfectness in sculpture, 
 expressed to you by what Phalaris says, at first sight of the 
 bull of Perilaus, "It only wanted motion and bellowing to 
 seem alive ; and as soon as I saw it, I cried out, it ought to 
 be sent to the god." To Apollo, for only he, the undeceiv- 
 able, could thoroughly understand such sculpture, and per- 
 fectly delight in it. 
 
 129. And with this expression of the Greek ideal of sculpt- 
 
 * Turner's, in the Hakewill series. 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 nre, I wish you to join the early Italian, summed in a single line 
 by Dante — "non vide me' di me, chi vide '1 vero." Read the 
 12th canto of the "Purgatory," and learn that whole passage 
 by heart ; and if ever you chance to go to Pis to j a, look at 
 La Bobbia's coloured porcelain bas-reliefs of the seven works 
 of Mercy on the front of the hospital there ; and note es- 
 pecially the faces of the two sick men — one at the point of 
 death, and the other in the first peace and long-drawn breath- 
 ing of health after fever — and you will know what Dante 
 meant by the preceding line, "Morti li morti, e i vivi paren 
 vivi." 
 
 180. But now, may we not ask farther, — is it impossible 
 for art such as this, prepared for the wise, to please the 
 simple also ? Without entering on the awkward questions 
 of degree, how many the wise can be, or how much men 
 should know, in order to be rightly called wise, may we not 
 conceive an art to be possible, which would deceive every- 
 body, or everybody worth deceiving ? I showed you at my 
 first lecture, a little ringlet of Japan ivory, as a type of ele- 
 mentary bas-relief touched with colour ; and in your rudi- 
 mentary series you have a drawing by Mr. Burgess, of one of 
 the little fishes enlarged, with every touch of the chisel fac- 
 similed on the more visible scale ; and showing the little 
 black bead inlaid for the eye, which in the original is hardly 
 to be seen without a lens. You may, perhaps be surprised, 
 when I tell you, that (putting the question of subject aside 
 for the moment, and speaking only of the mode of execution 
 and aim at resemblance), you have there a perfect example of 
 the Greek ideal of method in sculpture. And you will 
 admit that, to the simplest person whom w r e could introduce 
 as a critic, that fish would be a satisfactory, nay, almost a 
 deceptive fish ; while to any one caring for subtleties of art, I 
 need not point out that every touch of the chisel is applied 
 with consummate knowledge, and that it would be impossible 
 to convey more truth and life with the given quantity of 
 workmanship. 
 
 131. Here is, indeed, a drawing by Turner, (Edu. 131), 
 in which with some fifty times the quantity of labour, and 
 
3G2 
 
 ARATMA PENTEL1GL 
 
 far more highly educated faculty of sight, the artist hag 
 expressed some qualities of lustre and colour which only 
 very wise persons indeed could perceive in a John Dory ; 
 and this piece of paper contains, therefore, much more, and 
 more subtle, art, than the Japan ivory ; but are we sure that 
 it is therefore greater art? or that the painter was better 
 
 Fig. 7. 
 
 employed in producing this drawing, w r hich only one person 
 can possess, and only one in a hundred enjoy, than he would 
 have been in producing two or three pieces on a larger scale, 
 w T hich should have been at once accessible to, and enjoyable 
 by, a number of simpler persons? Suppose for instance, 
 that Turner, instead of faintly touching this outline, on white 
 paper, with his camel's hair pencil, had struck the main forms 
 of his fish into marble, thus (Fig. 7) : and instead of colouring 
 the white paper so delicately that, perhaps, only a few of the 
 most keenly observant artists in England can see it at all, had, 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 3G3 
 
 with Lis strong hand, tinted the marble with a few colours, 
 deceptive to the people, and harmonious to the initiated ; 
 suppose that he had even conceded so much to the spirit of 
 popular applause as to allow of a bright glass bead being inlaid 
 for the eye, in the Japanese manner ; and that the enlarged, 
 deceptive, and popularly pleasing work had been carved on 
 the outside of a great building, — say Fishmongers' Hall, — 
 w r here everybody commercially connected with Billingsgate 
 could have seen it, and ratified it with the wisdom of the 
 market ; — might not the art have been greater, worthier, and 
 kinder in such use ? 
 
 132. Perhaps the idea does not once approve itself to you 
 of having your public buildings covered with ornaments like 
 this ; but pray, remember that the choice of subject is an ethi- 
 cal question, not now before us. All I ask you to decide is 
 whether the method is right, and would be pleasant in giving 
 the distinctiveness to pretty things, which it has here given 
 to what, I suppose it may be assumed, you feel to be an ugly 
 thing. Of course, I must note parenthetically, such realistic 
 work is impossible in a country where the buildings are to be 
 discoloured by coal-smoke ; but so is all fine sculpture, whatso- 
 ever ; and the whiter, the worse its chance. For that which 
 is prepared for private persons, to be kept under cover, will, 
 of necessity, degenerate into the copyism of past work, 
 or merely sensational and sensual forms of present life, unless 
 there be a governing school addressing the populace, for 
 their instruction, on the outside of buildings. So that, as I 
 partly warned you in my third lecture, you can simply have 
 no sculpture in a coal country. Whether you like coals or 
 carvings best, is no business of mine. I merely have to 
 assure you of the fact that they are incompatible. 
 
 But, assuming that we are again, some day, to become a 
 civilized and governing race, deputing ironmongery, coal- 
 digging, and lucre-digging, to our slaves in other countries, 
 it is quite conceivable that, with an increasing knowledge of 
 natural history, and desire for such knowledge, what is now 
 done by careful, but inefficient, woodcuts, and in ill-coloured 
 engravings, might be put in quite permanent sculptures, with 
 
3C4 
 
 ABA TiiA PEN TEL I CI. 
 
 inlay of variegated precious stones, on the outside of build- 
 ings, where such pictures would he little costly to the peo- 
 ple ; and in a more popular manner still, by Eobbia ware and 
 Palissy ware, and inlaid majolica, which would differ from the 
 housewives' present favourite decoration of plates abov$ her 
 kitchen dresser, by being every piece of it various, instructive, 
 and universally visible. 
 
 133. You hardly know, I suppose, whether I am speaking 
 in jest or earnest. In the most solemn earnest, I assure you ; 
 though such is the strange course of our popular life that 
 all the irrational arts of destruction are at once felt to be 
 earnest ; while any plan for those of instruction on a grand 
 scale, sounds like a dream or jest. Still, I do not absolutely 
 propose to decorate our public buildings with sculpture 
 wholly of this character ; though beast, and fowl, and creep- 
 ing things, and fishes, might all find room on such a building 
 as the Solomon's House of a New Atlantis ; and some of them 
 might even become symbolic of much to us again. Passing 
 through the Strand, only the other day, for instance, I saw 
 four highly finished and delicately coloured pictures of cock- 
 fighting, which, for imitative quality, were nearly all that 
 could be desired, going far beyond the Greek cock of Himera ; 
 and they would have delighted a Greek's soul, if they had 
 meant as much as a Greek cock-fight ; but they were only 
 types of the " eVdo/xa^cK dAeVrwp," and of the spirit of home 
 contest, which has been so fatal lately to the Bird of France ; 
 and not of the defence of one's own barnyard, in thought of 
 which the Olympians set the cock on the pillars of their 
 chariot course ; and gave it goodly alliance in its battle, as 
 you may see here, in what is left of the angle of mouldering 
 marble in the chair of the priest of Dionusos. The cast of it, 
 from the centre of the theatre under the Acropolis, is in the 
 British Museum ; and I wanted its spiral for you, and this 
 kneeling Angel of Victory ; — it is late Greek art, but nobly 
 systematic flat bas-relief. So I set Mr. Burgess to draw it ; 
 but neither he nor I for a little while, could make out what 
 the Angel of Victory was kneeling for. His attitude is an 
 ancient and grandly conventional one among the Egyptians; 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 365 
 
 and I was tracing it back to a kneeling goddess of the great* 
 est dynasty of the Pharaohs — a goddess of Evening, or Death, 
 laying down the sun out of her right hand ; — when, one bright 
 day, the shadows came out clear on the Athenian throne, and 
 I saw that my Angel of Victory was only backing a cock at a 
 cock-fight. 
 
 134 Still, as I have said, there is no reason why sculpture, 
 even for simplest persons, should confine itself to imagery of 
 fish, or fowl, or four-footed things. 
 
 We go back to our first principle : we ought to carve noth- 
 ing but what is honourable. And you are offended, at this 
 moment, with my fish, (as I believe, when the first sculptures 
 appeared on the windows of this museum, offence was taken 
 at the unnecessary introduction of cats), these dissatisfactions 
 being properly felt by your " vovs rwy Ti/xiwraTOH'.'' For in- 
 deed, in all cases, our right judgment must depend on our 
 wish to give honour only to things and creatures that deserve 
 it, 
 
 135. And now I must state to you another principle of 
 veracity, both in sculpture, and all following arts, of wider 
 scope than any hitherto examined. We have seen that sculpt- 
 ure is to be a true representation of true external form. 
 Much more is it to be a representation of true internal emo- 
 tion. You must carve only what you yourself see as you see 
 it; but, much more, you must carve only what you yourself 
 feel, as you feel it. You may no more endeavour to feel 
 through other men's souls, than to see with other men's eyes. 
 Whereas generally now in Europe and America, every man's 
 energy is bent upon acquiring some false emotion, not his 
 own, but belonging to the past, or to other persons, because 
 he has been taught that such and such a result of it will be 
 fine. Every attempted sentiment in relation to art is hypo- 
 critical ; our notions of sublimity, of grace, or pious serenity, 
 are all second hand ; and we are practically incapable of de- 
 signing so much as a bell-handle or a door-knocker without 
 borrowing the first notion of it from those who are gone — 
 where we shall not w r ake them with our knocking. I would 
 we could. 
 
DGG ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 136. In the midst of this desolation we have nothing to 
 count on for real growth, bat what we can find of honest lik- 
 ing and longing, in ourselves and in others. "We must dis- 
 cover, if we would healthily advance, what things are verily 
 Tt/uwrara among us ; and if we delight to honour the dis- 
 honourable, consider how, in future, we may better bestow 
 our likings. Now it appears to me from all our popular 
 declarations, that we, at present, honour nothing so much as 
 liberty and independence ; and no person so much as the Free 
 man and Self-made man, who will be ruled by no one, and 
 has been taught, or helped, by no one. And the reason I 
 chose a fish for you as the first subject of sculpture, was that 
 in men who are free and self-made, you have the nearest ap- 
 proach, humanly possible, to the state of the fish, and finely- 
 organized ifj-n-tTov. You get the exact phrase in Habakkuk, if 
 you take the Septuagint text. — "iroLrjcreis rovs av6pu>7rovs <Ls tovs 
 i^Ova? rrjs OaXo.aaqs, koL <!)? tol €p7T€Ta tol ovk l^orra 7]yovjJL€vov." 
 
 " Thou wilt make men as the fishes of the sea, and as the 
 reptile things, that have no ruler over them" And it chanced 
 that as I was preparing this lecture, one of our most able and 
 popular prints gave me a woodcut of the " self-made man/' 
 specified as such, so vigorously drawn, and with so few 
 touches, that Phidias or Turner himself could scarcely have 
 done it better ; so that I had only to ask my assistant to en- 
 large it with accuracy, and it became comparable with my 
 fish at once. Of course it is not given by the caricaturist as 
 an admirable face ; only, I am enabled by his skill to set be- 
 fore you, without any suspicion of unfairness on my part, the 
 expression to which the life we profess to think most honour- 
 able, naturally leads. If w r e were to take the hat off, you see 
 how nearly the profile corresponds with that of the typical 
 fish. 
 
 137. Such, then, being the definition by your best popular 
 art, of the ideal of feature at w T hich we are gradually arriving by 
 self-manufacture ; when I place opposite to it (in Plate VIII) 
 the profile of a man not in any w T ise self-made, neither by the 
 law of his own will, nor by the love of his own interest — nor 
 capable, for a moment, of any kind of " Independence," or of 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 3G7 
 
 the idea of independence ; but wholly dependent upon, and 
 subjected to, external influence of just law, wise teaching, and 
 trusted love and truth, in his fellow -spirits ; — setting before 
 you, I say, this profile of a God-made instead of a self-made, 
 man, I know that you will feel, on the instant, that you are 
 brought into contact with the vital elements of human art ; 
 and that this, the sculpture of the good, is indeed the only 
 permissible sculpture. 
 
 138. A God-made man, I say. The face, indeed, stands as 
 a symbol of more than man in its sculptor's mind. For as I 
 gave you, to lead your first effort in the form of leaves, the 
 sceptre of Apollo, so this, which I give you as the first type of 
 lightness in the form of flesh, is the countenance of the holder 
 of that sceptre, the Sun-God of Syracuse. But there is noth- 
 ing in the face (nor did the Greek suppose there was) more 
 perfect than might be seen in the daily beauty of the creat- 
 ures the Sun-God shone upon, and whom his strength and 
 honour animated. This is not an ideal, but a quite literally 
 true, face of a Greek youth ; nay, I will undertake to show 
 you that it is not supremely beautiful, and even to surpass it 
 altogether with the literal portrait of an Italian one. It is in 
 verity no more than the form habitually taken by the features 
 of a well educated young Athenian or Sicilian citizen ; and 
 the one requirement for the sculptors of to-day is not, as it 
 has been thought, to invent the same ideal, but merely to see 
 the same reality. 
 
 Now, you know I told you in my fourth lecture, that the 
 beginning of art was in getting our country clean and our 
 people beautiful, and you supposed that to be a statement ir- 
 relevant to my subject ; just as, at this moment, you perhaps 
 think, I am quitting the great subject of this present lecture 
 — the method of likeness-making — and letting myself branch 
 into the discussion of what things we are to make likeness of. 
 But you shall see hereafter that the method of imitating a 
 beautiful thing must be different from the method of imitat- 
 ing an ugly one ; and that, with the change in subject from 
 what is dishonourable to what is honourable, there will be in- 
 volved a parallel change in the management of tools, of lines, 
 
368 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 and of colours. So that before I can determine for you horn 
 you are to imitate, you must tell me what kind of face you 
 wish to imitate. The best draughtsmen in the world could 
 not draw this Apollo in ten scratches, though he can draw the 
 self-made man. Still less this nobler Apollo of Ionian Greece, 
 (Plate IX.) in which the incisions are softened into a harmony 
 like that of Correggio's painting. So that you see the method 
 itself, — the choice between black incision or fine sculpture, 
 and perhaps, presently, the choice between colour or no 
 colour, will depend on what you have to represent. Colour 
 may be expedient for a glistening dolphin or a spotted fawn ; 
 — perhaps inexpedient for white Poseidon, and gleaming 
 Dian. So that, before defining the laws of sculpture, I am 
 compelled to ask you, wltat you mean to carve ; and that, little 
 as you think it, is asking you how you mean to live, and what 
 the laws of your State are to be, for they determine those of 
 your statue. You can only have this kind of face to study 
 from, in the sort of state that produced it. And you will find 
 that sort of state described in the beginning of the fourth 
 book of the laws of Plato ; as founded, for one thing, on the 
 conviction that of all the evils that can happen to a state, 
 quantity of money is the greatest ! /xet£oj/ kclkov, eVos d-nCw, 
 7ro/\et ovSiv av yiyvotTO, eis yewaiuiv kol SikcuW r/6W Krrjo-iv, " for, 
 to speak shortly, no greater evil, matching each against each, 
 can possibly happen to a city, as adverse to its forming just 
 or generous character," than its being full of silver and gold. 
 
 139. Of course, the Greek notion may be wrong, and ours 
 right, only — & eVos direiv — you can have Greek sculpture 
 only on that Greek theory : shortly expressed by the words 
 put into the mouth of Poverty herself, in the Plutus of Aris- 
 tophanes " Tov ttXovtov 7rao€^a) /3e\rcovaq avSpas, kol ttjv yvwfJLrjv, 
 kol T7}v tSe'av." " I deliver to you better men than the God of 
 Money can, both in imagination and feature." So on the 
 other hand, this ichthyoid, reptilian, or mono-chondyloid 
 ideal of the self-made man can only be reached, universally, 
 by a nation which holds that poverty, either of purse or spirit, 
 —but especially the spiritual character of being Trrw^ot rol 
 TTvzvjxaTi, is the lowest of degradations ; and which believes 
 
Plate IX. — Apollo Ciirysocomes of Clazomenoz. 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 369 
 
 that the desire of wealth is the first of manly and moral sen- 
 timents. As I have been. able to get the popular ideal repre- 
 sented by its own living art, so I can give you this popular 
 faith in its own living words ; but in words meant seriously 
 and not at all as caricature, from one of oar leading journals, 
 professedly aesthetic also in its very name, the Spectator, of 
 August 6th, 1870. 
 
 " Mr. Buskin's plan," it says, " would make England poor, 
 in order that she might be cultivated, and refined and artistic. 
 A wilder proposal was never broached by a man of ability ; 
 and it might be regarded as a proof that the assiduous study 
 of art emasculates the intellect, and even the moral sense. Such 
 a theory almost warrants the contempt with which art is often 
 regarded by essentially intellectual natures, like Proudhon " 
 (sic). " Art is noble as the flower of life, and the creations ot 
 a Titian are a great heritage of the race ; but if England could 
 secure high art and Venetian glory of colour only by the sacri- 
 fice of her manufacturing supremacy, and by the acceptance of 
 national poverty, then the pursuit of such artistic achievements 
 would imply that we had ceased to possess natures of manly 
 strength, or to know the meaning of moral aims. If we must 
 choose between a Titian and a Lancashire cotton mill, then, 
 in the name of manhood and of morality, give us the cotton 
 mill. Only the dilettantism of the studio ; that dilettantism 
 which loosens the moral no less than the intellectual fibre, and 
 which is as fatal to rectitude of action as to correctness of 
 reasoning power, would make a different choice." 
 
 You see also, by this interesting and most memorable pas- 
 sive, how completely the question is admitted to be one of 
 ethics — the only real point at issue being, whether this face 
 or that is developed on the truer moral principle. 
 
 140. I assume, however, for the present, that this Apolline 
 type is the kind of form you wish to reach and to represent. 
 And now observe, instantly, the whole question of manner of 
 imitation is altered for us. The fins of the fish, the plumes of 
 the swan, and the flowing of the Sun-God's hair are all repre- 
 sented by incisions — but the incisions do sufficiently repre- 
 sent the hn and feather, — they ^sufficiently represent the 
 
370 
 
 ABA TEA PENTELICL 
 
 hair. If I chose, with a little more care and labour, I could 
 absolutely get the surface of the scales and spines of the fish, 
 and the expression of its mouth ; but no quantity of labour 
 would obtain the real surface of a tress of Apollo's hair, and 
 the full expression of his mouth. So that we are compelled 
 at once to call the imagination to help us, and say to it, You 
 know what the Apollo Chrysocomes must be like ; finish all 
 this for yourself. Now, the law under which imagination 
 works, is just that of other good workers. " You must give 
 me clear orders ; show me what I have to do, and where I am 
 to begin, and let me alone." And the orders can be given, 
 quite clearly, up to a certain point, in form ; but they cannot 
 be given clearly in colour, now that the subject is subtle. All 
 beauty of this high kind depends on harmony ; let but the 
 slightest discord come into it, and the finer the thing is, the 
 more fatal will be the flaw. Now, on a flat surface, I can 
 command my colour to be precisely what and where I mean 
 it to be ; on a round one I cannot. For all harmony depends 
 first, on the fixed proportion of the colour of the light, to that 
 of the relative shadow ; and therefore, if I fasten my colour, I 
 must fasten my shade. But on a round surface the shadow 
 changes at every hour of the day ; and therefore, all colouring 
 which is expressive of form, is impossible ; and if the form is 
 fine, (and here there is nothing but what is fine), you may bid 
 farewell to colour. 
 
 141; Farewell to colour ; that is to say, if the thing is to be 
 seen distinctly, and you have only wise people to show it to ; 
 but if it is to be seen indistinctly, at a distance, colour may 
 become explanatory ; and if you have simple people to show 
 it to, colour may be necessary to excite their imaginations, 
 though not to excite yours. And the art is great always 
 by meeting its conditions in the straightest way ; and if it is 
 to please a multitude of innocent and bluntly-minded persons, 
 must express itself in the terms that will touch them ; else it 
 is not good. And I have to trace for you through the history 
 of the past, and possibilities of the future, the expedients used 
 by great sculptors to obtain clearness, impressiveness, or 
 splendour ; and the manner of their appeal to the people. 
 
LIKENESS. 
 
 371 
 
 under various light and shadow, and with reference to differ- 
 ent degrees of public intelligence : such investigation resolv- 
 ing itself again and again, as we proceed, into questions 
 absolutely ethical ; as for instance, whether colour is to be 
 bright or dull, that is to say, for a populace cheerful or heart- 
 less ; — whether it is to be delicate or strong, that is to say, 
 for a populace attentive or careless ; whether it is to be a 
 background like the sky, for a procession of young men and 
 maidens, because your populace revere life — or the shadow of 
 a vault behind a corpse, stained with drops of blackened blood, 
 for a populace taught to worship Death. Every critical deter- 
 mination of lightness depends on the obedience to some ethic 
 law, by the most rational and, therefore, simplest, means. 
 And you see how it depends most, of all things, on whether 
 you are working for chosen persons or for the mob ; for the 
 joy of the boudoir, or of the Borgo. And if for the mob, 
 whether the mob of Olympia, or of St. Antoine. Phidias, 
 showing his Jupiter for the first time, hides behind the 
 temple door to listen, resolved afterwards, " pvOjjLt&tv to 
 dyakfia 7rpo<; to tois 7rAa'oT0ts Sokovv, ov yap rjytiro fUKpav elvai 
 o-vfifSovX-qv Stjulov tocovtov" and truly, as your people is, in 
 judgment, and in multitude, so must your sculpture be, in 
 glory. An elementary principle which has been too long out 
 of mind. 
 
 142. I leave you to consider it, since, for some time, we 
 shall not again be able to take up the inquiries to which it 
 leads. But, ultimately, I do not doubt that you will rest 
 satisfied in these following conclusions : 
 
 1. Not only sculpture, but all the other fine arts, must be 
 for the people. 
 
 2. They must be didactic to the people, and that as their chief 
 end. The structural arts, didactic in their manner ; the 
 graphic arts in their matter also. 
 
 3. And chiefly the great representative and imaginative arts, 
 that is to say, the drama, and sculpture, are to teach what is 
 noble in past history, and lovely in existing human and or- 
 ganic life. 
 
 4. And the test of right manner of execution in these arts, 
 
372 
 
 AEA TEA PENTEL1CI. 
 
 is that they strike, in the most emphatic manner, the rank of 
 popular minds to which they are addressed. 
 
 5. And the test of utmost fineness in execution in these 
 arts, is that they make themselves be forgotten in what they 
 represent ; and so fulfil the words of their greatest Master, 
 
 "The best, in this kind, are but shadows." 
 
 LECTUKE V. 
 
 STRUCTURE. 
 
 December, 1870. 
 
 143. On previous occasions of addressing you, I have en- 
 deavoured to show you, first, how sculpture is distinguished 
 from other arts ; then its proper subjects, then its proper 
 method in the realization of these subjects. To-day, we 
 must, in the fourth place, consider the means at its command 
 for the accomplishment of these ends ; the nature of its ma- 
 terials ; and the mechanical or other difficulties of their treat- 
 ment. 
 
 And however doubtful we may have remained, as to the 
 justice of Greek ideals, or propriety of Greek methods of rep- 
 resenting them, we may be certain that the example of the 
 Greeks will be instructive in all practical matters relating to 
 this great art, peculiarly their own. I think even the evidence 
 I have already laid before you is enough to convince you, 
 that it was by rightness and reality, not by idealism or delight- 
 fulness only, that their minds were finally guided ; and I am 
 sure that, before closing the present course, I shall be able so 
 far to complete that evidence, as to prove to you that the 
 commonly received notions of classic art are, not only un- 
 founded, but even in many respects, directly contrary to the 
 truth. You are constantly told that Greece idealized what- 
 ever she contemplated. She did the exact contrary : she real- 
 ized and verified it. You are constantly told she sought only 
 the beautiful. She sought, indeed, with all her heart ; but 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 873 
 
 she found, because she never doubted that the search was to 
 be consistent with propriety and common sense. And the 
 first thing you will always discern in Greek work is the first 
 which you ought to discern in all work ; namely, that the 
 object of it has been rational, and has been obtained by sim- 
 ple and unostentatious means. 
 
 144. "That the object of the work has been rational!" 
 Consider how much that implies. That it should be by ail 
 means seen to have been determined upon, and carried 
 through, with sense and discretion ; these being gifts of intel- 
 lect far more precious than any knowledge of mathematics, or 
 of the mechanical resources of art. Therefore, also, that it 
 should be a modest and temperate work, a structure fitted to 
 the actual state of men ; proportioned to their actual size, as 
 animals, — to their average strength, — to their true necessities, 
 — and to the degree of easy command they have over the 
 forces and substances of nature. 
 
 145. You see how much this law excludes ! All that is 
 fondly magnificent, insolently ambitious, or vainly difficult. 
 There is, indeed, such a thing as Magnanimity in design, but 
 never unless it be joined also with modesty and JBjkanimiirjr. 
 Nothing extravagant, monstrous, strained, or singular, can be 
 structurally beautiful. No towers of Babel envious of the 
 skies ; no pyramids in mimicry of the mountains of the earth ; 
 no streets that are a weariness to traverse, nor temples that 
 make pigmies of the worshippers. 
 
 It is one of the primal merits and decencies of Greek work 
 that it was, on the whole, singularly small in scale, and wholly 
 within reach of sight, to its finest details. And, indeed, the 
 best buildings that I know are thus modest ; and some of 
 the best are minute jewel cases for sweet sculpture. The 
 Parthenon would hardly attract notice, if it were set by the 
 Charing Cross Railway Station : the Church of the Miracoli, 
 at Venice, the Chapel of the Rose, at Lucca, and the Chapel 
 of the Thorn, at Pisa, would not, I suppose, all three together, 
 fill the tenth part, cube, of a transept of the Crystal Palace. 
 And they are better so. 
 
 146. In the chapter on Power in the " Seven Lamps of Archi- 
 
374 
 
 A RAT It A PENTELICI. 
 
 tecture," I Lave stated what seems, at first, the reverse of what 
 I am saying* now ; namely, that it is better to have one grand 
 buildiug than any number of mean ones. And that is true, 
 but you cannot command grandeur by size till you can com- 
 mand grace in minuteness ; and least of all, remember, will 
 you so command it to-day, when magnitude has become the 
 chief exponent of folly and misery, co-ordinate in the fra- 
 ternal enormities of the Factory and Poorhouse, — the Bar- 
 racks and Hospital. And the final law in this matter is, that 
 if you require edifices only for the grace and health of man- 
 kind, and build them without pretence and without chicanery, 
 they will be sublime on a modest scale, and lovely with little 
 decoration. 
 
 147. From these principles of simplicity and temperance, 
 two very severely fixed laws of construction follow ; namely, 
 first, that our structure, to be beautiful, must be produced 
 with tools of men ; and secondly, that it must be composed 
 of natural substances. First, I say, produced with tools of 
 men. All fine art requires the application of the whole 
 strength and subtlety of the body, so that such art is not pos- 
 sible to any sickly person, but involves the action and force of 
 a strong man's arm from the shoulder, as w r ell as the delicatest 
 touch of his finger : and it is the evidence that this full and 
 fine strength has been spent on it which makes the art execu- 
 tively noble ; so that no instrument must be used, habitually, 
 which is either too heavy to be delicately restrained, or too small 
 and weak to transmit a vigorous impulse ; much less any 
 mechanical aid, such as would render the sensibility of the 
 fingers ineffectual.* 
 
 148. Of course, any kind of work in glass, or in metal, on a 
 
 * Nothing is more wonderful, or more disgraceful among the forms 
 of ignorance engendered by modern vulgar occupations in pursuit of 
 gain, than the unconsciousness, now total, that fine art is essentially 
 Athletic. I received a letter from Birmingham, some little time since, 
 inviting me to see how much, in glass manufacture, "machinery 
 excelled rude hand work. " The writer had not the remotest concep- 
 tion that he might as well have asked me to come and see a mechanical 
 boat-race rowed by automata, and " how much machinery excelled rude 
 arm- work. 7 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 375 
 
 large scale, involves some painful endurance of heat ; and 
 working in clay, some habitual endurance of cold ; but the 
 point beyond which the effort must not be carried is marked 
 by loss of power of manipulation. As long as the eyes and 
 fingers have complete command of the material (as a glass 
 blower has, for instance, in doing fine ornamental work) — 
 the law is not violated ; but all our great engine and furnace 
 work, in gun-making and the like, is degrading to the intel- 
 lect ; and no nation can long persist in it without losing many 
 of its human faculties. Nay, even the use of machinery, other 
 than the common rope and puily, for the lifting of weights, is 
 degrading to architecture ; the invention of expedients for the 
 raising of enormous stones has always been a characteristic of 
 partly savage or corrupted races. A block of marble not 
 larger than a cart with a couple of oxen could carry, and a 
 cross-beam, with a couple of pulleys, raise, is as large as 
 should generally be used in any building. The employment 
 of large masses is sure to lead to vulgar exhibitions of geomet- 
 rical arrangement,* and to draw away the attention from tha 
 sculpture. In general, rocks naturally break into such pieces 
 as the human beings that have to build with them can easily 
 lift, and no larger should be sought for. 
 
 149. In this respect, and in many other subtle ways, tli8 
 law that the work is to be with tools of men is connected 
 with the farther condition of its modesty, that it is to be 
 wrought in substance provided by Nature, and to have a 
 faithful respect to all the essential qualities of such substance. 
 
 And here I must ask your attention to the idea, and, more 
 than idea, — the fact, involved in that infinitely misused term, 
 " Providentia," when applied to the Divine Power. In its 
 truest sense and scholarly use, it is a human virtue, YlpofAvfizia ; 
 the personal type of it is in Prometheus, and all the first 
 power of rixyy, is from him, as compared to the weakness of 
 days wdien men without foresight " Zfyvpov tiicrj ?raWa." But, 
 so far as we use the word " Providence " as an attribute of the 
 Maker and Giver of all things, it does not mean that in a 
 
 *Sucli as the sculptureless arch of Waterloo Bridge, for instance, 
 referred to in the Third Lecture, § 84. 
 
37G 
 
 A HA Til A PENTELICL 
 
 shipwreck He takes care of the passengers who are to be saved 
 and takes none of those who are to be drowned ; but it docs 
 mean that every race of creatures is born into the world un- 
 der circumstances of approximate adaptation to its necessities ; 
 and, beyond all others, the ingenious and observant race cf 
 man is surrounded with elements naturally good for his food, 
 pleasant to his sight, and suitable for the subjects of his in- 
 genuity ; — the stone, metal, and clay of the earth he walks 
 upon lending themselves at once to his hand, for all manner 
 of workmanship. 
 
 150. Thus, his truest respect for the law of the entire crea- 
 tion is shown by his making the most of what he can get most 
 easily ; and there is no virtue of art, nor application of com- 
 mon sense, more sacredly necessary than this respect to the 
 beauty of natural substance, and the ease of local use ; neither 
 are there any other precepts of construction so vital as these 
 — that you show all the strength of your material, tempt none 
 of its weaknesses, and do with it only what can be simply and 
 permanently done. 
 
 151. Thus, all good building will be with rocks, or pebbles, 
 or burnt clay, but with no artificial compound ; all good paint- 
 ing, with common oils and pigments on common canvas, paper, 
 plaster, or wood, — admitting, sometimes for precious work, 
 precious things, but all applied in a simple and visible way. 
 The highest imitative art should not, indeed, at first sight, call 
 attention to the means of it ; but even that, at length, should 
 do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to take pleasure in 
 seeing how completely the workman is master of the particu- 
 lar material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a 
 substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting its 
 unctious quality is to be delighted in ; in fresco, its chalky 
 quality ; in glass, its transparency ; in wood, its grain ; in 
 marble, its softness ; in porphyry, its hardness ; in iron, its 
 toughness. In a flint country, one should feel the delightful- 
 ness of having flints to pick up, and fasten together into rug- 
 ged walls. In a marble country one should be always more 
 and more astonished at the exquisite colour and structure of 
 marble ; in a slate country one should feel as if every rock 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 377 
 
 cleft itself only for the sake of being built with con- 
 veniently. 
 
 152. Now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials — ■ 
 Clay, and Stone ; for glass is only a clay that gets clear and 
 brittle as it cools, and metal a clay that gets opaque and 
 tough as it cools. Indeed, the true use of gold in this world 
 is only as a very pretty and very ductile clay, which you can 
 spread as flat as you like, spin as fine as you like, and which 
 will neither crack, nor tarnish. 
 
 All the arts of sculpture in clay may be summed up under 
 the word " Plastic," and all of those in stone, under the word 
 "Glyptic." 
 
 153. Sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast 
 brick-work, pottery, and tile-work * — a somewhat important 
 branch of human skill. Next to the potter's work, you have 
 all the arts in porcelain, glass, enamel, and metal ; everything, 
 that is to say, playful and familiar in design, much of what is 
 most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze or gold, most pre- 
 cious and permanent. 
 
 154. Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, 
 while we accurately use the general term "glyptic" for it, 
 may be thought of with, perhaps, the most clear force under 
 the English word " engraving." For, from the mere angular 
 incision which the Greek consecrated in the triglyphs of his 
 greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts of bas- 
 relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected 
 with each other and with architecture : as, in another direc- 
 tion, the arts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves. 
 
 155. Over all this vast field of human skill the laws which I 
 have enunciated to you rule with inevitable authority, embrac- 
 ing the greatest, and consenting to the humblest, exertion ; 
 strong to repress the ambition of nations, if fantastic and vain, 
 but gentle to approve the efforts of children, made in accord- 
 ance with the visible intention of the Maker of all flesh, and 
 
 * It is strange, at this day, to think of the relation of the Athenian 
 Oeramicus to the French Tile-fields, Tileries, or Tuileries ; and how 
 these last may yet become— have already partly become — " the Fotter' 
 tield," blood-bought. (December, 1870.) 
 
378 
 
 ARATRA PENTELIC1. 
 
 the Giver of all Intelligence. These laws, therefore, I now re- 
 peat, and beg of you to observe them as irrefragable. 
 
 1. That the work is to be with tools of men. 
 
 2. That it is to be in natural materials. 
 
 3. That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and 
 aim at no quality inconsistent with them. 
 
 4. That its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony 
 with common needs, and in consent to common intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 We will now observe the bearing of these laws on the ele- 
 mentary conditions of the art at present under discussion. 
 
 156. There is, first, work in baked clay, which contracts as 
 it dries, and is very easily frangible. Then you must put no 
 work into it requiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elabo- 
 rate that it would be a great loss if it were broken, but as the 
 clay yields at once to the hand, and the sculptor can do any- 
 thing with it he likes, it is a material for him to sketch with 
 and play with, — to record his fancies in, before they escape 
 him — and to express roughly, for people who can enjoy such 
 sketches, what he has not time to complete in marble. The 
 clay, being ductile, lends itself to all softness of line ; being 
 easily frangible, it would be ridiculous to give it sharp edges, 
 so that a blunt and massive rendering of graceidl gesture will 
 be its natural function ; but as it can be pinched, or pulled, 
 or thrust in a moment into projection which it would take 
 hours of chiselling to get in stone, it will also properly be 
 used for all fantastic and grotesque form, not involving sharp 
 edges. Therefore, what is true of chalk and charcoal, for 
 painters, is equally true of clay, for sculptors ; they are all 
 most precious materials for true masters, but tempt the false 
 ones into fatal license ; and to judge rightly of terra-cotta 
 work is a far higher reach of skill in sculpture-criticism than 
 to distinguish the merits of a finished statue. 
 
 157. We have, secondly, work in bronze, iron, gold, and 
 other metals ; in which the laws of structure are still more 
 definite. 
 
 All kinds of twisted and wreathen work on every scale be- 
 come delightful when wrought in ductile or tenacious metal ; 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 379 
 
 but metal which is to be hammered into form separates itself 
 into two great divisions — solid, and flat. 
 
 (A.) In solid metal work, i. e., metal cast thick enough to 
 resist bending, whether it be hollow or not, violent and various 
 projection may be admitted, which would be offensive in mar- 
 ble ; but no sharp edges, because it is difficult to produce 
 them with the hammer. But since the permanence of the 
 material justifies exquisiteness of workmanship, whatever del- 
 icate ornamentation can be wrought with rounded surfaces 
 may be advisedly introduced ; and since the colour of bronze 
 or any other metal is not so pleasantly representative of flesh 
 as that of marble, a wise sculptor will depend less on flesh 
 contour, and more on picturesque accessories, which, though 
 they would be vulgar if attempted in stone, are rightly enter- 
 taining in bronze or silver. Verrochio's statue 
 of Colleone at Venice, Cellini's Perseus at 
 Florence, and Ghiberti's gates at Florence, are 
 models of bronze treatment. 
 
 (B.) When metal is beaten thin, it becomes 
 what is technically called " plate," (the flattened 
 thing) and may be treated advisably in two ways ; 
 one, by beating it out into bosses, the other by 
 cutting it into strips and ramifications. The 
 vast schools of goldsmith's work and of iron dec- 
 oration, founded on these two principles, have 
 had the most powerful influences over general 
 taste in all ages and countries. One of the sim- 
 plest and most interesting elementary examples 
 of the treatment of fiat metal by cutting is the 
 common branched iron bar, Fig. 8, used to close 
 small apertures in countries possessing any good 
 primitive style of ironwork, formed by alternate cuts on its 
 sides, and the bending down of the several portions. The 
 ordinary domestic window balcony of Verona is formed by 
 mere ribands of iron, bent into curves as studiously refined 
 as those of a Greek vase, and decorated merely by their ow r n 
 terminations in spiral volutes. 
 
 All cast work in metal, unfinished by hand, is inadmissible 
 
380 
 
 ABA TEA PEN IE LI CI. 
 
 in an} 7 school of living art, since it cannot possess the perfec- 
 tion of form due to a permanent substance ; and the continual 
 sight of it is destructive of the faculty of taste : but metal 
 stamped with precision, as in coins, is to sculpture what en- 
 graving is to painting. 
 
 158. Thirdly. Stone-sculpture divides itself into three 
 schools : one in very hard material ; one in very soft, and one 
 in that of centrally useful consistence. 
 
 A. The virtue of work in hard material is the expression of 
 form in shallow relief, or in broad contours ; deep cutting in 
 hard material is inadmissible, and the art, at once pompous 
 and trivial, of gem engraving, has been in the last degree 
 destructive of the honour and service of sculpture. 
 
 B. The virtue of work in soft material is deep cutting, with 
 studiously graceful disposition of the masses of light and 
 shade. The greater number of flamboyant churches of France 
 are cut out of an adhesive chalk ; and the fantasy of their 
 latest decoration was, in great part, induced by the facility of 
 obtaining contrast of black space, undercut, with white tracery 
 easily left in sweeping and interwoven rods — the lavish use of 
 wood in domestic architecture materially increasing the habit 
 of delight in branched complexity of line. These points, 
 however, I must reserve for illustration in my lectures on ar- 
 chitecture. To-day, I shall limit myself to the illustration of 
 elementary sculptural structure in the best material ; — that is 
 to say, in crystalline marble, neither soft enough to encourage 
 the caprice of the workman, nor hard enough to resist his 
 will. 
 
 159. C. By the true ' ' Providence " of Nature, the rock 
 which is thus submissive has been in some places stained with 
 the fairest colours, and in others blanched into the fairest ab- 
 sence of colour, that can be found to give harmony to inlay- 
 ing, or dignity to form. The possession by the Greeks of 
 their Xcvkos At#os was indeed the first circumstance regulating 
 the development of their art ; it enabled them at once to ex- 
 press their passion for light by executing the faces, hands, and 
 feet of their dark wooden statues in white marble, so that 
 what we look upon only with pleasure for fineness of texture 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 881 
 
 was to them an imitation of the luminous body of the deity 
 shining from behind its dark robes ; and ivory afterwards 
 is employed in their best statues for its yet more soft and 
 flesh-like brightness, receptive also of the most delicate colour 
 — (therefore to this day the favourite ground of miniature 
 painters). In like manner, the existence of quarries of peach- 
 coloured marble within twelve miles of Verona, and of white 
 marble and green serpentine between Pisa and Genoa, defined 
 the manner both of sculpture and architecture for all the 
 Gothic buildings of Italy. No subtlety of education could 
 have formed a high school of art without these materials. 
 
 160. Next to the colour, the fineness of substance which 
 will take a perfectly sharp edge, is essential ; and this not 
 merely to admit fine delineation in the sculpture itself, but to 
 secure a delightful precision in placing the blocks of which it 
 is composed. For the possession of too fine marble, as far as 
 regards the work itself, is a temptation instead of an advantage 
 to an inferior sculptor ; and the abuse of the facility of under- 
 cutting, especially of undercutting so as to leave profiles de- 
 fined by an edge against shadow, is one of the chief causes of 
 decline of style in such encrusted bas-reliefs as those of the 
 Certosa of Pavia and its contemporary monuments. But no 
 undue temptation ever exists as to the fineness of block fit- 
 ting ; nothing contributes to give so pure and healthy a tone 
 to sculpture as the attention of the builder to the jointing of 
 his stones ; and his having both the power to make them fit so 
 perfectly as not to admit of the slightest portion of cement 
 showing externally, and the skill to insure, if needful, and to 
 suggest always, their stability in cementless construction. 
 Plate X. represents a piece of entirely fine Lombardic build- 
 ing, the central portion of the arch in the Duomo of Verona, 
 which corresponds to that of the porch of San Zenone, repre- 
 sented in Plate I. In both these pieces of building, the only 
 line that traces the architrave round the arch, is that of the 
 masonry joint ; yet this line is drawn with extremest subtlety, 
 with intention of delighting the eye by its relation of varied 
 curvature to the arch itself ; and it is just as much considered 
 as the finest pen-line of a Raphael drawing. Every joint of 
 
382 
 
 ARATRA PEN TEL 101. 
 
 the stone is used, in like manner, as a thin black line, which 
 the slightest sign of cement would spoil like a blot. And so 
 proud is the builder of his fine jointing, and so fearless of 
 any distortion or strain spoiling the adjustment afterwards, 
 that in one place he runs his joint quite gratuitously through 
 a bas-relief, and gives the keystone its only sign of pre-emi- 
 nence by the minute inlaying of the head of the Lamb, into 
 the stone of the course above. 
 
 161. Proceeding from this fine jointing to fine draughts- 
 manship, you have, in the very outset and earliest stage of 
 sculpture, your flat stone surface given you as a sheet of white 
 paper, on which you are required to produce the utmost effect 
 you can with the simplest means, cutting away as little of the 
 stone as may be, to save both time and trouble ; and, above 
 all, leaving the block itself, when shaped, as solid as you can, 
 that its surface may better resist weather, and the carved parts 
 be as much protected as possible by the masses left around 
 them. 
 
 162. The first thing to be done is clearly to trace the out- 
 line of subject with an incision approximating in section to 
 that of the furrow of a plough, only more equal-sided. A fine 
 sculptor strikes it, as his chisel leans, freely, on marble ; an 
 Egyptian, in hard rock, cuts it sharp, as in cuneiform inscrip- 
 tions. In any case, you have a result somewhat like the 
 upper figure, Plate XL, in which I show you the most ele- 
 mentary indication of form possible, by cutting the outline of 
 the typical archaic Greek head with an incision like that of a 
 Greek triglyph, only not so precise in edge or slope, as it is to 
 be modified afterwards. 
 
 163. Now, the simplest thing we can do next, is to round 
 off the flat surface ivithin the incision, and put what form w T e 
 can get into the feebler projection of it thus obtained. The 
 Egyptians do this, often with exquisite skill, and then, as I 
 showed you in a former lecture, colour the whole — using the 
 incision as an outline. Such a method of treatment is capable 
 of good service in representing, at little cost of pains, subjects 
 in distant effect, and common, or merely picturesque, subjects 
 even near. To show you what it is capable of, and what 
 
Plate XI. — The First Elements of Sculpture, 
 Incised Outline and Opened Space. 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 383 
 
 coloured sculpture would be in its rudest type, I have pre- 
 pared the coloured relief of the John Dory * as a natural his- 
 tory drawing for distant effect. You know, also, that I meant 
 him to be ugly — as ugly as any creature can well be. In 
 time, I hope to show you prettier things — peacocks and king- 
 fishers, — butterflies and flowers, on grounds of gold, and the 
 like, as they were in Byzantine work. I shall expect you, in 
 right use of your aesthetic faculties, to like those better than 
 what I show you to-day. But it is now a question of method 
 only ; and if you will look, after the lecture, first at the mere 
 white relief, and then see how much may be gained by a few 
 dashes of colour, such as a practised workman could lay in a 
 quarter of an hour,— the whole forming, if well done, almost a 
 deceptive image — you will, at least, have the range of power 
 in Egyptian sculpture clearly expressed to you. 
 
 164. But for fine sculpture, we must advance by far other 
 methods. If we carve the subject with real delicacy, the cast 
 shadow of the incision will interfere with its outline, so that, 
 for representation of beautiful things, you must clear away 
 the ground about it, at all events for a little distance. As the 
 law of work is to use the least pains possible, you clear it only 
 just as far back as you need, and then for the sake of order 
 and finish, you give the space a geometrical outline. By tak- 
 ing, in this case, the simplest I can, — a circle, — I can clear 
 the head with little labor in the removal of surface round it ; 
 (see the lower figure in Plate XI.) 
 
 165. Now, these are the first terms of all well-constructed 
 bas-relief. The mass you have to treat consists of a piece of 
 stone, which, however you afterwards carve it, can but, at its 
 most projecting point, reach the level of the external plane 
 surface out of which it was mapped, and defined by a depres- 
 sion round it ; that depression being at first a mere trench, 
 then a moat of certain width, of which the outer sloping bank 
 is in contact, as a limiting geometrical line, with the laterally 
 salient portions of sculpture. This, I repeat, is the primal 
 
 * This relief is now among the other casts which I have placed in tha 
 lower school in the University galleries. 
 
384 
 
 ARATIIA PENTELTCL 
 
 construction of good bas-relief, implying, first, perfect pro- 
 tection to its surface from any transverse blow, and a geo- 
 metrically limited space to be occupied by the design , into 
 which it shall pleasantly (and as you shall ultimately see, 
 ingeniously,) contract itself: implying, secondly, a determined 
 depth of projection, which it shall rarely reach, and never ex- 
 ceed : and implying, finally, the production of the whole piece 
 with the least possible labor of chisel and loss of stone. 
 
 166. And these, which are the first, are very nearly the last 
 constructive laws of sculpture. You will be surprised to find 
 how much they include, and how much of minor propriety in 
 treatment their observance involves. 
 
 In a very interesting essay on the architecture of the Par- 
 thenon, by the professor of architecture of the Ecole Polytech- 
 nique, M. Emile Boutmy, you will find it noticed that the 
 Greeks do not usually weaken, by carving, the constructive 
 masses of their building ; but put their chief sculpture in the 
 empty spaces between the triglyphs, or beneath the roof. 
 This is true ; but in so doing, they merely build their panel 
 instead of carving it ; they accept no less than the Goths, the 
 laws of recess and limitation, as being vital to the safety and 
 dignity of their design ; and their noblest recumbent statues 
 are, constructively, the fillings of the acute extremity of a 
 panel in the form of an obtusely summitted triangle. 
 
 167. In gradual descent from that severest type, you will 
 find that an immense quantity of sculpture of all times and 
 styles may be generally embraced under the notion of a mass 
 hewn out of, or, at least, placed in, a panel or recess, deepen- 
 ing, it may be, into a niche ; the sculpture being alw r ays de- 
 signed with reference to its position in such recess ; and,, 
 therefore, to the effect of the building out of which the re- 
 cess is hewn. 
 
 But, for the sake of simplifying our inquiry, I will at first 
 suppose no surrounding protective ledge to exist, and that the 
 area of stone we have to deal with is simply a flat slab, extant 
 from a flat surface depressed all round it. 
 
 168. Aflat slab, observe. The flatness of surface is essen- 
 tial to the problem of bas-relief. The lateral limit of the 
 
8TRUCTUHE. 
 
 385 
 
 panel may, or may not, be required ; but the vertical limit of 
 surface must be expressed ; and the art of bas-relief is to 
 give the effect of true form on that condition. For observe, 
 if nothing more were needed than to make first a cast of a 
 solid form, then cut it in half, and apply the half of it to the 
 flat surface ; — if, for instance, to carve a bas-relief of an ap- 
 ple, all I had to do was to cut my sculpture of the whole apple 
 in half, and pin it to the wall, any ordinary trained sculptor, 
 or even a mechanical workman, could produce bas-relief ; 
 but the business is to carve a round thing out of a flat thing ; 
 to carve an apple out of a biscuit ! — to conquer, as a subtle 
 Florentine has here conquered,* his marble, so as not only to 
 get motion into what is most rigidly fixed, but to get bound- 
 lessness into what is most narrowly bounded ; and carve Ma- 
 donna and Child, rolling clouds, flying angels, and space of 
 heavenly air behind all, out of a film of stone not the third of 
 an inch thick where it is thickest. 
 
 169. Carried, however, to such a degree of subtlety as this, 
 and with so ambitious and extravagant aim, bas-relief be- 
 comes a tour-de-force ; and, you know, I have just told you 
 all tours-de-force are wrong. The true law of bas-relief is to 
 begin with a depth of incision proportioned justly to the dis- 
 tance of the observer and the character of the subject, and out 
 of that rationally determined depth, neither increased for os- 
 tentation of effect, nor diminished for ostentation of skill, to 
 do the utmost that will be easily visible to an observer, sup- 
 posing him to give an average human amount of attention, 
 but not to peer into, or critically scrutinize the work. 
 
 170. I cannot arrest you to day by the statement of any of 
 the laws of sight and distance which determine the proper 
 depth of bas-relief. Suppose that depth fixed ; then observe 
 what a pretty problem, or, rather, continually varying cluster 
 of problems, will be offered to us. You might, at first, imag- 
 ine that, given what we may call our scale of solidity, or scale 
 of depth, the diminution from nature would be in regular 
 
 * The reference is to a cast from a small and low relief of Florentine 
 work in the Kensington Museum. 
 
88G ARaTRA RENTE Ll CI. 
 
 proportion, as for instance, if the real depth of your subject 
 be, suppose a foot, and the depth of your bas-relief an inch, 
 then the parts of the real subject which were six inches round 
 the side of it would be carved, you might imagine, at the 
 depth of half-an-inch, and so the whole thing mechanically 
 reduced to scale. But not a bit of it. Here is a Greek bas- 
 relief of a chariot with two horses (upper figure, Plate XXI). 
 Your whole subject has therefore the depth of two horses side 
 by side, say six or eight feet. Your bas-relief has, on the 
 scale,* say the depth of the third of an inch. Now, if you 
 gave only the sixth of an inch for the depth of the off horse, 
 and, dividing him again, only the twelfth of an inch for that 
 of each foreleg, you would make him look a mile away from 
 the other, and his own forelegs a mile apart. Actually, the 
 Greek has made the near leg of the off horse project much be- 
 yond the off leg of the near horse ; and has put nearly the 
 whole depth and power of his relief into the breast of the off 
 horse, while for the whole distance from the head of the near- 
 est to the neck of the other, he has allowed himself only a 
 shallow line ; knowing that, if he deepened that, he would 
 give the nearest horse the look of having a thick nose ; where- 
 as, by keeping that line down, he has not only made the head 
 itself more delicate, but detached it from the other by giving 
 no cast shadow, and left the shadow below to serve for thick- 
 ness of breast, cutting it as sharp down as he possibly can, to 
 make it bolder. 
 
 171. Here is a fine piece of business we have got into ! 
 — even supposing that all this selection and adaptation were 
 to be contrived under constant laws, and related only to the 
 expression of given forms. But the Greek sculptor, all this 
 while, is not only debating and deciding how to show what 
 he wants, but, much more, debating and deciding what, as he 
 can't show everything, he will choose to show at all. Thus, 
 being himself interested, and supposing that you will be, in 
 
 * The actual bas-relief is on a coin, and the projection not above the 
 twentieth of an inch, but I magnified it in photograph, for this Lecture, 
 so as to represent a relief with about the third of an inch for maximum 
 projection. 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 387 
 
 the manner of the driving, he takes great pains to carve the 
 reins, to show you where they are knotted, and how they are 
 fastened round the driver's waist (you recollect how Hippoly- 
 tus was lost by doing that), but he does not care the least bit 
 about the chariot, and having rather more geometry than he 
 likes in the cross and circle of one wheel of it, entirely omits 
 the other ! 
 
 172. I think you must see by this time that the sculptors 
 is not quite a trade which you can teach like brickmaking ; 
 nor its produce an article of which you can supply any quan- 
 tity " demanded " for the next railroad waiting-room. It may 
 perhaps, indeed, seem to you that, in the difficulties thus pre- 
 sented by it, bas-relief involves more direct exertion of intel- 
 lect than finished solid sculpture. It is not so, however. The 
 questions involved by bas-relief are of a more curious and 
 amusing kind, requiring great variety of expedients ; though 
 none except such as a true workmanly instinct delights in in- 
 venting and invents easily ; but design in solid sculpture in- 
 volves considerations of weight in mass, of balance, of per- 
 spective and opposition, in projecting forms, and of restraint 
 for those which must not project, such as none but the great- 
 est masters have over completely solved ; and they, not always ; 
 the difficulty of arranging the composition so as to be agree- 
 able from points of view on all sides of it, being, itself, arduous 
 enough. 
 
 173. Thus far, I have been speaking only of the laws of 
 structure relating to the projection of the mass which becomes 
 itself the sculpture. Another most interesting group of con- 
 structive laws governs its relation to the line that contains or 
 defines it. 
 
 In your Standard Series I have placed a photograph of the 
 south transept of Eouen Cathedral. Strictly speaking, all 
 standards of Gothic are of the thirteenth century ; but, in the 
 fourteenth, certain qualities of richness are obtained by the 
 diminution of restraint ; out of which we must choose what is 
 best in their kinds. The pedestals of the statues which once 
 occupied the lateral recesses are, as you see, covered with 
 groups of figures, enclosed each in a quatrefoil panel; tha 
 
388 
 
 ARATRA RENTE LIC I. 
 
 spaces between this panel and the enclosing square being 
 filled with sculptures of animals. 
 
 You cannot anywhere find a more lovely piece of fancy, or 
 more illustrative of the quantity of result that may be obtained 
 with low and simple chiselling. The figures are ail perfectly 
 simple in drapery, the story told by lines of action only in the 
 main group, no accessories being admitted. There is no un- 
 dercutting anywhere, nor exhibition of technical skill, but 
 the fondest and tenderest appliance of it ; and one of the prin- 
 cipal charms of the whole is the adaptation of every subject 
 to its quaint limit. The tale must be told within the four 
 petals of the quatrefoil, and the wildest and playfullest beasts 
 must never come out of their narrow corners. The attention 
 with which spaces of this hind are filled by the Gothic design- 
 ers is not merely a beautiful compliance with architectural re- 
 quirements, but a definite assertion of their delight in the 
 restraint of law ; for, in illuminating books, although, if they 
 chose it, they might have designed floral ornaments, as we 
 now usually do, rambling loosely over the leaves, and although, 
 in later works, such license is often taken by them, in all books 
 of the fine time the wandering tendrils are enclosed by limits 
 approximately rectilinear, and in gracefullest branching often 
 detach themselves from the right line only by curvature of ex- 
 treme severity. 
 
 174. Since the darkness and extent of shadow by which 
 the sculpture is relieved necessarily vary with the depth of the 
 recess, there arise a series of problems, in deciding which the 
 wholesome desire for emphasis by means of shadow is too often 
 exaggerated by the ambition of the sculptor to show his skill 
 in undercutting. The extreme of vulgarity is usually reached 
 when the entire bas-relief is cut hollow underneath, as in 
 much Indian and Chinese work, so as to relieve its forms 
 against an absolute darkness ; but no formal law can ever be 
 given ; for exactly the same thing may be beautifully done for 
 a wise purpose, by one person, which is basely done, and to 
 no purpose, or to a bad one, by another. Thus, the desire for 
 emphasis itself may be the craving of a deadened imagination, 
 or the passion of a vigorous one ; and relief against shadow 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 389 
 
 may be sought by one man only for sensation, and by another 
 for intelligibility. John of Pisa undercuts fiercely, in order 
 to bring out the vigour of life which no level contour could 
 render ; the Lombard i of Venice undercut delicately, in order 
 to obtain beautiful lines, and edges of faultless precision ; but 
 the base Indian craftsmen undercut only that people may 
 yonder how the chiselling was done through the holes, or that 
 tEyey may see every monster white against black. 
 
 1 75. Yet, here again we are met by another necessity for 
 dist animation. There may be a true delight in the inlaying 
 of w.nte on dark, as there is a true delight in vigorous round- 
 ing. Nevertheless, the general law is always, that, the lighter 
 the in isions, and the broader the surface, the grander, ceteris 
 paribus, will be the work. Of the structural terms of that 
 work you now know enough to understand that the schools of 
 good sculpture, considered in relation to projection, divide 
 themselves into four entirely distinct groups : — 
 
 1st. Flat Relief, in which the surface is, in many places, 
 absolutely flat ; and the expression depends greatly 
 on the lines of its outer contour, and on fine incis- 
 ions within them. 
 
 2nd. Round Relief, in which, as in the best coins, the sculpt- 
 ured mass projects so as to be capable of complete 
 modulation into form, but is not anywhere undercut. 
 The formation of a coin by the blow of a die neces- 
 sitates, oi course, the severest obedience to this law. 
 
 3rd. Edged Relief. Undercutting admitted, so as to throw 
 out the for ns against a background of shadow. 
 
 4th. Full Relief. The statue completely solid in form, and 
 unreduced in retreating depth of it, yet connected 
 locally with some definite part of 'the building, so as 
 to be still dependent on the shadow of its back- 
 ground and dii action of protective line. 
 
 176. Let me recomme> d you at once to take what pains 
 may be needful to enable )ou to distinguish these four kinds 
 of sculpture, for the distinctions between them are not founded 
 on mere differences in gracation of depth. They are truly 
 four species, or orders, of scujpture, separated from each other 
 
390 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICI. 
 
 by determined characters. I have used, you may have noted, 
 hitherto in my Lectures, the word " bas-relief " almost indis- 
 criminately for all, because the degree of lowness or highness 
 of relief is not the question, but the method of relief. Observe 
 again, therefore — 
 
 A. If a portion of the surface is absolutely flat, you have the 
 first order — Flat Relief. 
 
 B. If every portion of the surface is rounded, but none un- 
 dercut, you have Round Relief — essentially that of seals and 
 coins. 
 
 C. If any part of the edges be undercut, but the general 
 projection of solid form reduced, you have what I think you 
 may conveniently call Foliate Relief, — the parts of the design 
 overlapping each other in places, like edges of leaves. 
 
 D. If the undercutting is bold and deep, and the projection 
 of solid form unreduced, you have full relief. 
 
 Learn these four names at once by heart : — 
 Flat Relief. 
 Round Relief. 
 Foliate Relief. 
 Full Relief. 
 
 And whenever you look at any piece of sculpture, determine 
 first to which of these classes it belongs ; and then consider 
 how the sculptor has treated it with reference to the neces- 
 sary structure — that reference, remember, being partly to the 
 mechanical conditions of the material, partly to the means of 
 light and shade at his command. 
 
 177. To take a single instance. You know, for these many 
 years, I have been telling our architects with all the force of 
 voice I had in me, that they could design nothing until they 
 could carve natural forms rightly. Many imagine that work 
 was easy ; but judge for yourselves whether it be or not. In 
 Plate XII., I have drawn, with approximate accuracy, a cluster 
 of Phillyrea leaves as they grow. Now, if we wanted to cut 
 them in bas-relief, the first thing we should have to consider 
 would be the position of their outline on the marble ; — here 
 it is, as far down as the spring of the leaves. ' But do you 
 suppose that is what an ordinary sculptor could either lay for 
 
s 
 
 Ph 
 
 -4 
 H 
 P5 
 
 s 
 
 Hi 
 M 
 
 w 
 
 h 
 o 
 
 w 
 
 -4 
 « 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 391 
 
 his first sketch, or contemplate as a limit to be worked clown 
 to ? Then consider how the interlacing and springing of the 
 leaves can be expressed within this outline. It must be done 
 by leaving such projection in the marble as will take the light 
 in the same proportion as the drawing does ; — and a Floren- 
 tine workman could do it, for close sight, without driving one 
 incision deeper, or raising a single surface higher, than the 
 eighth of an inch. Indeed, no sculptor of the finest time 
 
 Fig. 9. 
 
 would design such a complex cluster of leaves as this, except 
 for bronze or iron work ; they would take simpler contours 
 for marble ; but the laws of treatment would, under these 
 conditions, remain just as strict : and you may, perhaps, be- 
 lieve me now when I tell you that, in any piece of fine struct- 
 ural sculpture by the great masters, there is more subtlety 
 and noble obedience to lovely laws than could be explained to 
 you if I took twenty lectures to do it in, instead of one. 
 
 178. There remains yet a point of mechanical treatment, on 
 which I have not yet touched at all ; nor that the least impor- 
 
392 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 tant, — namely, the actual method and style of handling. A 
 great sculptor uses his tools exactly as a painter his pencil, 
 unci you may recognize the decision of his thought, and glow 
 of his temper, no less in the workmanship than the design. 
 The modern system of modelling the work in clay, getting it 
 into form by machinery, and by the hands of subordinates, 
 and touching it at last, if indeed the (so called) sculptor touch 
 it at all, only to correct their inefficiencies, renders the pro- 
 duction of good work in marble a physical impossibility. The 
 first result of it is that the sculptor thinks in clay instead of 
 marble, and loses his instinctive sense of the proper treatment 
 of a brittle substance. The second is that neither he nor the 
 public recognize the touch of the chisel as expressive of per- 
 sonal feeling or power, and that nothing is looked for except 
 mechanical polish. 
 
 179. The perfectly simple piece of Greek relief represented 
 in Plate XIII., will enable you to understand at once, — exam- 
 ination of the original, at your leisure, will prevent you, I 
 trust, from ever forgetting — what is meant by the virtue of 
 handling in sculpture. 
 
 The projection of the heads of the four horses, one behind 
 the other, is certainly not more, altogether, than three-quarters 
 of an inch from the flat ground, and the one in front does not 
 in reality project more than the one behind it, yet, by mere 
 drawing,* you see the sculptor has got them to appear to re- 
 cede in due order, and by the soft rounding of the flesh sur- 
 faces, and modulation of the veins, he has taken away all look 
 of flatness from the necks. He has drawn the eyes and nos- 
 trils with dark incision, careful as the finest touches of a 
 painter's pencil : and then, at last, when he comes to the manes, 
 he has let fly hand and chisel with their full force, and where 
 a base workman, (above all, if he had modelled the thing in 
 clay first,) would have lost himself in laborious imitation of 
 hair, the Greek has struck the tresses out with angular inci- 
 
 * This plate lias been executed from a drawing by Mr. Burgess, in 
 which he has followed the curves of incision with exquisite care, and 
 preserved the effect of the surface of the stone, where a photograph 
 would have lost it by exaggerating accidental stains. 
 
STRUCTURE. 
 
 393 
 
 Bions,, deep driven, every one in appointed place and deliberate 
 curve, yet flowing so free under bis noble band that you can- 
 not alter, without harm, the bending of any single ridge, nor 
 contract, nor extend, a point of them. And if you will look 
 back to Plate Dv. you will see the difference between this sharp 
 incision, used to express horse-hair, and the soft incision with 
 intervening rounded ridge, used to express the hair of Apollo 
 Chrysocomes ; and, beneath, the obliquely ridged incision used 
 to express the plumes of his swan ; in both these cases the 
 handling being much more slow, because the engraving is in 
 metal ; but the structural importance of incision, as the means 
 of effect, never lost sight of. Finally, here are two actual ex- 
 amples of the work in marble of the two great schools of the 
 world ; one, a little Fortune, standing tiptoe on the globe of 
 the Earth, its surface traced with lines in hexagons ; not cha- 
 otic under Fortune's feet ; Greek, this, and by a trained work- 
 man ; — dug up in the temple of Neptune at Corfu ; — and here, 
 a Florentine portrait-marble, found in the recent alterations, 
 face downwards, under the pavement of St a Maria Novella ; * 
 both of them first-rate of their kind ; and both of them, while 
 exquisitely finished at the telling points, showing, on all their 
 unregarded surfaces, the rough furrow of the fast-driven 
 chisel, as distinctly as the edge of a common paving-stone. 
 
 180. Let me suggest to you, in conclusion, one most inter- 
 esting point of mental expression in these necessary aspects 
 of finely executed sculpture. I have already again and again 
 pressed on your attention the beginning of the arts of men in 
 the make and use of the ploughshare. Read more carefully 
 — you might indeed do well to learn at once by heart, — the 
 twenty-seven lines of the Fourth Pythian, which describe the 
 ploughing of Jason. There is nothing grander extant in 
 human fancy, nor set down in human words : but this great 
 mythical expression of the conquest of the earth-clay, and 
 brute-force, by vital human energy, will become yet more 
 interesting to you when you reflect what enchantment has 
 been cut, on whiter clay, by the tracing of finer furrows ; — 
 
 * These two marbles will always, henceforward, be sufficiently ac- 
 cessible for reference in my room at Corpus Christi College. 
 
394 
 
 ARATRA PENTELlri. 
 
 what the delicate and consummate arts of man have done by 
 the ploughing of marble, and granite, and iron. You will 
 learn daily more and more, as you advance in actual practice, 
 how the primary manual art of engraving, in the steadiness, 
 clearness, and irrevocableness of it, is the best art- discipline 
 that can be given either to mind or hand ; * you will recog- 
 nize one law of right, pronouncing itself in the well- resolved 
 work of every age ; you will see the ^firmly traced and irrev- 
 ocable incision determining not only the forms, but, in great 
 part, the moral temper, of all vitally progressive art ; you w 7 ill 
 trace the same principle and power in the furrows which the 
 oblique sun show r s on the granite of his own Egyptian city, — 
 in the white scratch of the stylus through the colour on a 
 Greek vase — in the first delineation, on the wet wall, of the 
 groups of an Italian fresco ; in the unerring and unalterable 
 touch of the great engraver of Nuremberg, — and in the deep 
 driven and deep bitten ravines of metal by which Turner 
 closed, in embossed limits, the shadows of the Liber Studi- 
 orum. 
 
 Learn, therefore, in its full extent, the force of the great 
 Greek word, xapao-o-o> ; — and, give me pardon — if you think 
 pardon needed, that I ask you also to learn the full meaning 
 of the English word derived from it. Here, at the Ford of 
 the Oxen of Jason, are other furrows to be driven than these 
 in the marble of Pentelicus. The fruitfullest, or the fatallest 
 of all ploughing is that by the thoughts of your youth, on the 
 white field of its imagination. For by these, either down to 
 the disturbed spirit, " KeKG7rTaL kol ^apdacrcTai TreSoi/;" or 
 around the quiet spirit, and on all the laws of conduct that 
 hold it, as a fair vase its frankincense, are ordained the pure 
 colours, and engraved the just Characters, of iEonian life. 
 
 * That it was also, in some cases, the earliest that the Greeks gave, 
 is proved by LuciarTs account of his first lesson at his uncle's; the 
 eyitonevs, literally "in-cutter" — being the first tool put into his hand, 
 and an earthenware tablet to cut upon, which the boy pressing too hard, 
 presently breaks; — gets beaten — goes home crying, and becomes, after 
 his dream above quoted, a philosopher instead of a sculptor. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 C05 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 December, 1870. 
 
 181. It can scarcely be needful for me to tell even the younger 
 members of my present audience, that the conditions neces- 
 sary for the production of a perfect school of sculpture have 
 only twice been met in the history of the world, and then for 
 a short time ; nor for short time only, but also in narrow dis- 
 tricts, namely, in the valleys and islands of Ionian Greece, and 
 in the strip of land deposited by the Arno, between the Apen- 
 nine crests and the sea. 
 
 All other schools, except these two, led severally by Athens 
 in the fifth century before Christ, and by Florence in the 
 fifteenth of our own era, are imperfect ; and the best of them 
 are derivative : these two are consummate in themselves, and 
 the origin of what is best in others. 
 
 182. And observe, these Athenian and Florentine schools 
 are both of equal rank, as essentially original and independ- 
 ent. The Florentine, being subsequent to the Greek, bor- 
 rowed much from it ; but it would have existed just as strongly 
 — and, perhaps, in some respects, more nobly — had it been 
 the first, instead of the latter of the two. The task set to each 
 of these mightiest of the nations was, indeed, practically the 
 same, and as hard to the one as to the other. The Greeks 
 found Phoenician and Etruscan art monstrous, and had to 
 make them human. The Italians found Byzantine and Nor- 
 man art monstrous, and had to make them human. The 
 original power in the one case is easily traced ; in the other 
 it has partly to be unmasked, because the change at Florence 
 was, in many points, suggested and stimulated by the former 
 school. But we mistake in supposing that Athens taught 
 Florence the laws of design ; she taught her, in reality, only 
 the duty of truth. 
 
 183. You remember that I told you the highest art could 
 
396 
 
 An ATE A PENTEL1CI. 
 
 do no more than rightly represent the human form. This is 
 the simple test, then, of a perfect school, — that it has repre- 
 sented the human form, so that it is impossible to conceive of 
 its being better done. And that, I repeat, has been accom- 
 plished twice only : once in Athens, once in Florence. And 
 so narrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, 
 that it cannot be said of either of them that they represented 
 the entire human form. The Greeks perfectly drew, and per- 
 fectly moulded the body and limbs ; but there is, so far as I 
 am aware, no instance of their representing the face as well 
 as any great Italian. On the other hand, the Italian painted 
 and carved the face insuperably ; but I believe there is no in- 
 stance of his having perfectly represented the body, which, 
 by command of his religion, it became his pride to despise, 
 and his safety to mortify. 
 
 184. The general course of your study here renders it de- 
 sirable that you should be accurately acquainted with the lead- 
 ing principles of Greek sculpture ; but I cannot lay these be- 
 fore you without giving undue prominence to some of the 
 special merits of that school, unless I previously indicate the 
 relation it holds to the more advanced, though less disciplined, 
 excellence of Christian art. 
 
 In this and the last lecture of the present course,* I shall 
 endeavour, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude and dia- 
 gram-like outline as may be possible or intelligible, the main 
 characteristics of the two schools, completing and correcting 
 the details of comparison afterwards ; and not answering, ob- 
 serve, at present, for any generalization I give you, except as a 
 ground for subsequent closer and more qualified statements. 
 
 And in carrying out this parallel, I shall sj3eak indifferently 
 of works of sculpture, and of the modes of painting which 
 
 * The closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine, 
 though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to my 
 class, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do not 
 choose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined in 
 fuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the Sixth 
 Lecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of the pub- 
 lished course on Florentine Sculpture. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 397 
 
 propose to themselves the same objects as sculpture. And 
 this indeed Florentine, as opposed to Venetian, painting, and 
 that of Athens in the fifth century, nearly always did. 
 
 185. I begin, therefore, by comparing two designs of the 
 simplest kind — engravings, or, at least, linear drawings, both ; 
 one on clay, one on copper, made in the central periods of 
 each style, and representing the same goddess — Aphrodite 
 They are now set beside each other in your Rudimentary 
 Series. The first is from a patera lately found at Camirus, 
 authoritatively assigned by Mr. Newton, in his recent catalogue, 
 to the best period of Greek art. The second is from one of 
 the series of engravings executed, probably, by Baccio Balclini, 
 in 1485, out of which I chose your first practical exercise — the 
 Sceptre of Apollo. I cannot, however, make the comparison 
 accurate in all respects, for I am obliged to set the restricted 
 type of the Aphrodite Urania of the Greeks beside the univer- 
 sal Deity conceived by the Italian as governing the air, earth, 
 and sea ; nevertheless the restriction in the mind of the Greek, 
 and expatiation in that of the Florentine, are both character- 
 istic. The Greek Venus Urania is flying in heaven, her power 
 over the waters symbolized by her being borne by a swan, and 
 her power over the earth by a single flower in her right hand ; 
 but the Italian Aphrodite is rising out of the actual sea, and 
 only half risen : her limbs are still in the sea, her merely ani- 
 mal strength filling the waters with their life ; but her body 
 to the loins is in the sunshine, her face raised to the sky ; her 
 hand is about to lay a garland of flowers on the earth. 
 
 186. The Venus Urania of the Greeks, in her relation to 
 men, has power only over lawful and domestic love ; there- 
 fore, she is fully dressed, and not only quite dressed, but most 
 daintily and trimly : her feet delicately sandalled, her gown 
 spotted with little stars, her hair brushed exquisitely smooth 
 at the top of her head, trickling in minute waves down her 
 forehead ; and though, because there's such a quantity of it, 
 she can't possibly help having a chignon, look how tightly she 
 has fastened it in with her broad fillet. Of course she is 
 married, so she must wear a cap with pretty minute pendant 
 jewels at the border ; and a very small necklace, all that her 
 
398 
 
 AH ATE A PENT ELI CI. 
 
 husband can properly afford, just enough to go closely round 
 the neck, and no more. On the contrary, the Aphrodite of 
 the Italian, being universal love, is pure-naked ; and her long 
 hair is thrown wild to the wind and sea. 
 
 These primal differences in the symbolism, observe, are 
 only because the artists are thinking of separate powers : 
 they do not necessarily involve any national distinction in 
 feeling. But the differences I have next to indicate are es- 
 sential, and characterize the two opposed national modes of 
 mind. 
 
 187. First, and chiefly. The Greek Aphrodite is a very 
 pretty person, and the Italian a decidedly plain one. That is 
 because a Greek thought no one could possibly love any but 
 pretty people ; but an Italian thought that love could give 
 dignity to the meanest form that it inhabited, and light to the 
 jDOorest that it looked upon. So his Aphrodite will not con- 
 descend to be pretty. 
 
 188. Secondly. In the Greek Venus the breasts are broad 
 and full, though perfectly severe in their almost conical pro- 
 file ; — (you are allowed on purpose to see the outline of the 
 right breast, under the chiton ;) — also the right arm is left bare, 
 and you can just see the contour of the front of the right 
 limb and knee ; both arm and limb pure and firm, but lovely. 
 The plant she holds in her hand is a branching and flowering 
 one, the seed vessel prominent. These signs all mean that 
 her essential function is child-bearing. 
 
 On the contrary, in the Italian Venus the breasts are so 
 small as to be scarcely traceable ; the body strong, and almost 
 masculine in its angles ; the arms meagre and unattractive, 
 and she lays a decorative garland of flowers on the earth. 
 These signs mean that the Italian thought of love as the 
 strength of an eternal spirit, for ever helpful ; and for ever 
 crowned with flowers, that neither know seed-time nor har- 
 vest, and bloom where there is neither death, nor birth. 
 
 189. Thirdly. The Greek Aphrodite is entirely calm, and 
 looks straight forward. Not one feature of her face is dis- 
 turbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The 
 Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 399 
 
 with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, 
 self-possessed, and self-satisfied ; the Italian incapable of rest ; 
 she has had no thought nor care for herself ; her hair has 
 been bound by a fillet like the Greeks ; but it is now all fallen 
 loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body ; only 
 the front tress of it is caught by the breeze from her raised 
 forehead, and lifted, in the place where the tongues of fire 
 rest on the brows, in the early Christian pictures of Pentecost, 
 and the waving fires abide upon the heads of Angelico's ser- 
 aphim. 
 
 190. There are almost endless points of interest, great and 
 small, to be noted in these differences of treatment. This 
 binding of the hair by the single fillet marks the straight 
 course of one great system of art method, from that Greek 
 head which I showed you on the archaic coin of the seventh 
 century before Christ, to this of the fifteenth of our own era 
 — nay, when you look close, you will see the entire action of 
 the head depends on one lock of hair falling back from the 
 ear, which it does in compliance with the old Greek observance 
 of its being bent there by the pressure of the helmet. That 
 rippling of it down her shoulders comes from the Athena of 
 of Corinth ; the raising of it on her forehead, from the knot 
 of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of the angels. 
 But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, and 
 their anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the character- 
 istic difference in every conception of the schools, the Greek 
 never representing expression, the Italian primarily seeking 
 it ; but far more, mark for us here the utter change in the 
 conception of love ; from the tranquil guide and queen of a 
 happy terrestrial domestic life, accepting its immediate 
 pleasures and natural duties, to the agonizing hope of an in- 
 finite good, and the ever mingled joy and terror of a love di- 
 vine in jealousy, crying, " Set me as. a seal upon thine heart, 
 as a seal upon thine arm ; for love is strong as death, jealousy 
 is cruel as the grave." 
 
 The vast issues dependent on this change in the conception 
 of the ruling passion of the human soul, I will endeavour to 
 show you, on a future occasion : in my present lecture, I 
 
400 
 
 ARATRA RENTE L1C L 
 
 shall limit myself to the definition of the temper of Greek 
 sculpture, and of its distinctions from Florentine in the treat- 
 ment of any subject whatever, be it love or hatred, hope or 
 despair. 
 
 These great differences are mainly the following. 
 
 191. 1. A Greek never expresses momentary passion ; a 
 Florentine looks to momentary passion as the ultimate object 
 of his skill. 
 
 When you are next in London, look carefully in the British 
 Museum at the casts from the statues in the pediment of the 
 Temple of Minerva at iEgina. You have there Greek work of 
 definite date ; — about 600 b.c, certainly before 580 — of the 
 purest kind ; and you have the representation of a noble ideal 
 subject, the combats of the iEaeidse at Troy, with Athena her- 
 self looking on. But there is no attempt whatever to repre- 
 sent expression in the features, none to give complexity of 
 action or gesture ; there is no struggling, no anxiety, no visi- 
 ble temporary exertion of muscles. There are fallen figures, 
 one pulling a lance out of his wound, and others in attitudes 
 of attack and defence ; several kneeling to draw their bows. 
 But all inflict and suffer, conquer or expire, with the same 
 smile. 
 
 192. Plate XIV. gives you examples, from more advanced 
 art, of true Greek representation ; the subjects being the two 
 contests of leading import to the Greek heart — that of Apollo 
 with the Python, and of Hercules with the NemeanLion. You 
 see that in neither case is there the slightest effort to repre- 
 sent the Xvacra, or agony of contest. No good Greek artist 
 would have you behold the suffering, either of gods, heroes, 
 or men ; nor allow you to be apprehensive of the issue of their 
 contest with evil beasts, or evil spirits. All such lower 
 sources of excitement are to be closed to you ; your interest 
 is to be in the thoughts* involved by the fact of the war ; and 
 in the beauty or lightness of form, whether active or in- 
 active. I have to work out this subject with you afterwards, 
 and to compare with the pure Greek method of thought, that 
 of modern dramatic passion, engrafted on it, as typically in 
 Turner's contest of Apollo and the Python : in the meantime, 
 
Plate XIV. — Apollo and the Python. 
 Heracles and the Nemean Lion. 
 
Plate XV.— Hera of Argos. Zeus of Syracuse. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 be content with the statement of this first great principle-— 
 that a Greek, as such, never expresses momentary j^assion. 
 
 193. Secondly. The Greek, as such, never expresses per- 
 sonal character, while a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate 
 condition of beauty. You are startled, I suppose, at my 
 saying this, having had it often pointed out to you, as a tran- 
 scendent piece of subtlety in Greek art, that you could dis- 
 tinguish Hercules from Apollo by his being stout, and Diana 
 from Juno by her being slender. That is very true ; but those 
 are general distinctions of class, not special distinctions of 
 personal character. Even as general, they are bodily, not 
 mental. They are the distinctions, in fleshly aspect, between 
 an athlete and a musician, — between a matron and a huntress ; 
 but in no wise distinguish the simple-hearted hero from the 
 subtle Master of the Muses, nor the wilful and fitful girl- 
 goddess from the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. But 
 judge for yourselves ; — In the successive plates, XY. — XVIII., I 
 show you,* typically represented as the protectresses of nations, 
 the Argive, Cretan, and Lacinian Hera, the Messenian Demeter, 
 the Athena of Corinth, the Artemis of Syracuse, the fountain 
 Arethusa of Syracuse, and the Sirem Ligeia of Terina. Now, 
 of these heads, it is true that some are more delicate in feature 
 than the rest, and some softer in expression : in other respects, 
 can you trace any distinction between the Goddesses of Earth 
 and Heaven, or between the Goddess of Wisdom and the Water 
 Nymph of Syracuse ? So little can you do so, that it would have 
 remained a disputed question — had not the name luckily been 
 inscribed on some Syracusan coins — whether the head upon 
 them was meant for Arethusa at all ; and, continually, it becomes 
 a question respecting finished statues, if without attributes, "Is 
 this Bacchus or Apollo — Zeus or Poseidon ? " There is a fact for 
 you ; noteworthy, I think ! There is no personal character in 
 
 * These plates of coins are given for future reference and examina- 
 tion, not merely for the use made of them in this place. The Lacinian 
 Hera, if a coin could be found unworn in surface, would be very noble ; 
 her hair is thrown free because she is the goddess of the cape of storms, 
 though in her temple, there, the wind never moved the ashes oj? its 
 iltar. (Livy, xxiv. 3.) 
 
402 
 
 All AT R A PENTELICL 
 
 true Greek art : — abstract ideas of youth and age, strength 
 and swiftness, virtue and vice, — yes : but there is no individu- 
 ality ; and the negative holds down to the revived conven- 
 tionalism of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you 
 how you are to paint young women, and how old ones ; though 
 a Greek would hardly have been so discourteous to age as the 
 Italian is in his canon of it, — " old women should be repre- 
 sented as passionate and hasty, after the manner of Infernal 
 Furies." 
 
 194. " But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they 
 give ideal beauty ? " So it is said, without contradiction. But 
 will you look again at the series of coins of the best time of 
 Greek art, which I have just set before you ? Are any of these 
 goddesses or nymphs very beautiful? Certainly the Junos 
 are not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren, and 
 Arethusa, have well-formed and regular features ; but I am 
 quite sure that if you look at them without prejudice, you will 
 think neither reach even the average standard of pretty Eng- 
 lish girls. The Venus Urania suggests at first, the idea of a 
 very charming person, but you will find there is no real depth 
 nor sweetness in the contours, looked at closely. And re- 
 member, these are chosen examples ; the best I can find of 
 art current in Greece at the great time ; and if even I were to 
 take the celebrated statues, of which only two or three are 
 extant, not one of them excels the Venus of Melos ; and she, 
 as I have already asserted, in The Queen of the Air, has noth- 
 ing notable in feature except dignity and simplicity. Of Athena 
 I do not know one authentic type of great beauty ; but the 
 intense ugliness which the Greeks could tolerate in their sym- 
 bolism of her will be convincingly proved to you by the coin 
 represented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or three 
 vases of the best time, to assure yourselves that beauty of 
 feature w T as, in popular art, not only unattained, but unat- 
 tempted ; and finally, — and this you may accept as a conclusive 
 proof of the Greek insensitiveness to the most subtle beauty — 
 there is little evidence even in their literature, and none in 
 their art, of their having ever perceived any beauty in infancy 
 or early childhood. 
 
Plate XVI.— Demeter of Messene. Hera of Crossus. 
 
\ 
 
Plate XVII. — Athena of Thurium. 
 Sereie Ligeia of Terina 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 403 
 
 195. The Greeks, then, do not give passion, do not give 
 character, do not give refined or naive beauty. But you may 
 think that the absence of these is intended to give dignity to 
 the gods and nymphs ; and that their calm faces would be 
 found, if you long observed them, instinct with some expres- 
 sion of divine mystery or power. 
 
 I will convince you of the narrow range of Greek thought 
 in these respects, by showing you, from the two sides of one 
 and the same coin, images of the most mysterious of their 
 Deities, and the most powerful, — Demeter and Zeus. 
 
 Remember, that just as the west coasts of Ireland and Eng- 
 land catch first on their hills the rain of the Atlantic, so the 
 western Peloponnese arrests, in the clouds of the first moun- 
 tain ranges of Arcadia, the moisture of the Mediterranean ; 
 and over all the plains of Elis, Pylos, and Messene, the strength 
 and sustenance of men was naturally felt to be granted by 
 Zeus ; as, on the east coast of Greece, the greater clearness of 
 the air by the power of Athena. If you will recollect the 
 prayer of Rhea, in the single line of Callimachus — "Tola 
 TeK€ kolL <tv- real 8' wSlv€<; eAcu^pai," (compare Pausanias iv. 33, 
 at the beginning,) — it will mark for you the connection, in the 
 Greek mind, of the birth of the mountain springs of Arcadia 
 with the birth of Zeus. And the centres of Greek thought on 
 this western coast are necessarily Elis, and, (after the time of 
 Epaminondas,) Messene. 
 
 19G. I show you the coin of Messene, because the splendid 
 height and form of Mount Ithome were more expressive of 
 11 le physical power of Zeus than the lower hills of Olympia ; 
 and also because it was struck just at the time of the most 
 finished and delicate Greek art — a little after the main 
 strength of Phidias, but before decadence had generally pro- 
 nounced itself. The coin is a silver didrachm, bearing on 
 one side a head of Demeter (Plate XVI, at the top); on the 
 other a full figure of Zeus Aietophoros (Plate XIX., at the 
 top) ; the two together signifying the sustaining strength of 
 the earth and heaven. Look first at the head of Demeter. It 
 is merely meant to personify fulness of harvest : there is no 
 mystery in it, no sadness, no vestige of the expression which 
 
404 
 
 ABATE A PENTELICL 
 
 we should have looked for in any effort to reaHze the Greek 
 thoughts of the Earth Mother, as we find them spoken by the 
 poets. But take it merely as personified abundance ; — the 
 goddess of black furrow and tawny grass — how commonplace 
 it is, and how poor ! The hair is grand, and there is one 
 stalk of wheat set in it, which is enough to indicate the god- 
 dess who is meant ; but, in that very office, ignoble, for it shows 
 that the artist could only inform you that this was Demeter 
 by such a symbol. How easy it would have been for a great 
 designer to have made the hair lovely with fruitful flowers, 
 and the features noble in mystery of gloom, or of tenderness. 
 But here you have nothing to interest you, except the com- 
 mon Greek perfections of a straight nose and a full chin. 
 
 197. We pass, on the reverse of the die, to the figure of 
 Zeus Aietophoros. Think of the invocation to Zeus in the 
 Suppliants, (525), "King of Kings, and Happiest of the 
 Happy, Perfectest of the Perfect in strength, abounding in 
 all things, Jove — hear us and be with us ; " and then, consider 
 w r hat strange phase of mind it was, which, under the very 
 mountain-home of the god, was content with this symbol of 
 him as a w T ell-fed athlete, holding a diminutive and crouching 
 eagle on his fist. The features and the right hand have been 
 injured in this coin, but the action of the arms shows that it 
 held a thunderbolt, of which, I believe, the twisted rays were 
 triple. In the, presumably earlier, coin engraved by Mil- 
 lingen, however,* it is singly pointed only ; and the added 
 inscription "I012M," in the field, renders the conjecture of 
 Millingen probable, that this is a rude representation of the 
 statue of Zeus Ithomates, made by Ageladas, the master of 
 Phidias ; and I think it has, indeed, the aspect of the endeav- 
 our, by a workman of more advanced knowledge, and more 
 vulgar temper, to put the softer anatomy of later schools 
 into the simple action of an archaic figure. Be that as it 
 may, here is one of the most refined cities of Greece content 
 with the figure of an athlete as the representative of their 
 own mountain god ; marked as a divine power merely by the 
 attributes of the eagle and thunderbolt. 
 
 * Ancient Cities and Kings, Plate IV. No. 20. 
 
Plate XVIII. — Artemis of Syracuse. 
 Hera of Lacinian Cape. 
 
Plate XIX.— Zeus of Messene. Ajax of Opus. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 405 
 
 198. Lastly. The Greeks have not, it appears, in any 
 supreme way, given to their statues character, beauty, or 
 divine strength. Can they give divine sadness ? Shall we 
 find in their artwork any of that pensiveness and yearning 
 for the dead, which fills the chants of their tragedy ? I sup- 
 pose if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in after- 
 life is to be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in 
 the stories about the Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the 
 Danube, inhabited by the ghosts of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax 
 the son of O'ileus, and Helen ; and in which the pavement of 
 the Temple of Achilles was washed daily by the sea-birds 
 with their wings, dipping them in the sea. 
 
 Now it happens that we have actually on a coin of the 
 Locrians the representation of the ghost of the Lesser Ajax. 
 There is nothing in the history of human imagination more 
 lovely, than their leaving always a place for his spirit, vacant 
 in their ranks of battle. But here is their sculptural repre- 
 sentation of the phantom ; (lower figure, Plate XIX. ), and I 
 think you will at once agree with me in feeling that it would be 
 impossible to conceive anything more completely unspiritual. 
 You might more than doubt that it could have been meant for 
 the departed soul, unless you were aware of the meaning of 
 this little circlet between the feet. On other coins you find his 
 name inscribed there, but in this you have his habitation, 
 the haunted Island of Leuce itself, with the waves flowing 
 round it. 
 
 199. Again and again, however, I have to remind you, 
 with respect to these apparently frank and simple failures, 
 that the Greek always intends you to think for yourself, and 
 understand, more than he can speak. Take this instance at 
 our hands, the trim little circlet for the Island of Leuce. 
 The workman knows very well it is not like the island, and 
 that he could not make it so ; that at its best, his sculpture 
 can be little more than a letter ; and yet, in putting this cir- 
 clet, and its encompassing fretwork of minute waves, he does 
 more than if he had merely given you a letter L, or written 
 " Leuce." If you know anything of beaches and sea, this 
 symbol will set your imagination at work in recalling them ; 
 
406 
 
 ARATRA PENTELICL 
 
 then you will think of the temple service of the novitiate sea- 
 birds, and of the ghosts of Achilles and Patroclus appearing, 
 like the Dioscuri, above the storm-clouds of the Euxine. And 
 the artist, throughout his work, never for an instant loses 
 faith in your sympathy and passion being ready to answer his ; 
 — if you have none to give, he does not care to take you into 
 his counsel ; on the whole, would rather that you should not 
 look at his work. 
 
 200. But if you have this sympathy to give, you may be 
 sure that whatever he does for you will be right, as far as he 
 can render it so. It may not be sublime, nor beautiful, nor 
 amusing ; but it will be full of meaning, and faithful in guid- 
 ance. He will give you clue to myriads of things that he can- 
 not literally teach ; and, so far as he does teach, you may trust 
 him. Is not this saying much ? 
 
 And as he strove only to teach what was true, so, in his 
 sculptured symbol, he strove only to carve what was — Eight. 
 He rules over the arts to this day. and will for ever, because 
 he sought not first for beauty, nor first for passion, or for inven- 
 tion, but for Eightness ; striving to display, neither himself 
 nor his art, but the thing that he dealt with, in its simplicity. 
 That is his specific character as a Greek. Of course, every 
 nation's character is connected with that of others surround- 
 ing or preceding it ; and in the best Greek work you will find 
 some things that are still false, or fanciful ; but whatever in it 
 is false or fanciful, is not the Greek part of it — it is the 
 Phoenician, or Egyptian, or Pelasgian part. The essential Hel- 
 lenic stamp is veracity : — Eastern nations drew their heroes 
 with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them with two ; — Egyp- 
 tians drew their deities with cats' heads, bnt the Greeks drew 
 them with men's ; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, and 
 indefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdraw- 
 ing and exalting themselves into restricted and demonstrable 
 truth. 
 
 201. And now, having cut away the misconceptions which 
 encumbered our thoughts, I shall be able to put the Greek 
 school into some clearness of its position for you, with respect 
 to the art of the world. That relation is strangely duplicate ; 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 407 
 
 for on one side, Greek art is the root of all simplicity ; and on 
 the other, of all complexity. 
 
 On one side I say, it is the root of all simplicity. If you 
 ■were for some prolonged period to study Greek sculpture ex- 
 clusively in the Elgin Room of the British Museum, and were 
 then suddenly transported to the Hotel de Cluny, or any 
 other museum of Gothic and barbarian workmanship, you 
 would imagine the Greeks were the masters of all that was 
 grand, simple, wise, and tenderly human, opposed to the pet- 
 tiness of the toys of the rest of mankind. 
 
 202. On one side of their work they are so. From all vain 
 and mean decoration — all weak and monstrous error, the 
 Greeks rescue the forms of man and beast, and sculpture 
 them in the nakedness of their true flesh, and with the lire 
 of their living soul. Distinctively from other races, as I have 
 now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, this is the work of 
 the Greek, to give health to what was diseased, and chastise- 
 ment to what was untrue. So far as this is found in any other 
 school, hereafter, it belongs to them by inheritance from the 
 Greeks, or invests them with the brotherhood of the Greek. 
 And this is the deep meaning of the myth of Daedalus as the 
 giver of motion to statues. The literal change from the bind- 
 ing together of the feet to their separation, and the other 
 modifications of action which took place, either in progressive 
 skill, or often, as the mere consequence of the transition from 
 wood to stone, (a figure carved out of one wooden log must 
 have necessarily its feet near each other, and hands at its 
 sides), these literal changes are as nothing, in the Greek fable, 
 compared to the bestowing of apparent life. The figures of 
 monstrous gods on Indian temples have their legs separate 
 enough ; but they are infinitely more dead than the rude fig- 
 ures at Branchida3 sitting with their hands on their knees. 
 And, briefly, the work of Daedalus is the giving of deceptive 
 life, as that of Prometheus the giving of real life ; and I can 
 put the relation of Greek to all other art, in this function, be- 
 fore you in easily compared and remembered examples. 
 
 203. Here, on the right, in Plate XX., is an Indian bull, 
 colossal, and elaborately carved, which you may take as a 
 
408 
 
 ARATHA PENTBLICI. 
 
 sufficient type of the bad art of all the earth. False in form, 
 dead in heart, and loaded with wealth, externally. We will 
 not ask the date of this ; it may rest in the eternal obscurity 
 of evil art, everywhere, and for ever. Now, besides this colos- 
 sal bull, here is a bit of Daedalus work, enlarged from a coin 
 not bigger than a shilling : look at the two together, and you 
 ought to know, henceforward, what Greek art means, to the 
 end of your days. 
 
 20 L In this aspect of it then, I say, it is the simplest and 
 naked est of lovely veracities. But it has another aspect, or 
 rather another pole, for the opposition is diametric. As the 
 simplest, so also it is the most complex of human art. I told 
 you in my fifth Lecture, showing you the spotty picture of 
 Velasquez, that an essential Greek character is a liking for 
 things that are dappled. And you cannot but have noticed 
 how often and how prevalently the idea which gave its name 
 to the Porch of Polygnotus, (C arod ir oikLX-q" occurs to the 
 Greeks as connected with the finest art. Thus, when the lux- 
 urious city is opposed to the simple and healthful one, in the 
 second book of Plato's Polity, you find that, next to perfumes, 
 pretty ladies, and dice, you must have in it " Trot/aXta," which 
 observe, both in that place and again in the third book, is the 
 separate art of joiners' work, or inlaying ; but the idea of ex- 
 quisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight and 
 sound — the "ravishing division to the lute," as in Pindar's 
 " ttolklXol vfxvoL 1 ' — runs through the compass of all Greek art- 
 description ; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles, 
 you were to look at it only on vases of a fine time, (look back, 
 for instance, to Plate IV. here), your impression of it would 
 be, instead of breadth and simplicity, one of universal spot- 
 tiness and chequeredness, " £v dyyeW f 'E ( o/<eo-u/ -n-cLfATroudkois ; " 
 and of the artist's delighting in nothing so much as in crossed 
 or starred or spotted things ; which, in right places, he and 
 his public both do unlimitedly. Indeed they hold it compli- 
 mentary even to a trout, to call him a " spotty." Do you 
 recollect the trout in the tributaries of the Ladon, which 
 Pausanias says were spotted, so that they were like thrushes, 
 and which, the Arcadians told him, could speak ? In this last 
 
Plate XXI. — The Beginnings of Chivalry. 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 409 
 
 7rciKiAta, however, they disappointed him. "I, indeed, saw 
 some of them caught," he says, "but I did not hear any of 
 them speak, though I waited beside the river till sunset." 
 
 205. I must sum roughly now, for I have detained you too 
 long. 
 
 The Greeks have been thus the origin not only of all broad, 
 mighty, and calm conception, but of all that is divided, deli- 
 cate, and tremulous ; " variable as the shade, by the light 
 quivering aspen made." To them, as first leaders of orna- 
 mental design, belongs, of right, the praise of glistenings in 
 gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings 
 in dark blue steel ; of the fantasy of the Arabian roof 
 — quartering of the Christian shield, — rubric and arabesque 
 of Christian scripture ; in fine, all enlargement, and all 
 diminution of adorning thought, from the temple to the 
 toy, and from the mountainous pillars of Agrigentum 
 to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan Chapel of the 
 Thorn. 
 
 And in their doing all this, they stand as masters of human 
 order and justice, subduing the animal nature guided by the 
 spiritual one, as you see the Sicilian Charioteer stands, hold- 
 ing his horse-reins, with the wild lion racing beneath him, and 
 the flying angel above, on the beautiful coin of early Syracuse ; 
 (lowest in Plate XXL). 
 
 And the beginnings of Christian chivalary were in that 
 Greek bridling of the dark and the white horses. 
 
 208. Not that a Greek never made mistakes. He made as 
 many as we do ourselves, nearly ; — he died of his mistakes at 
 last — as we shall die of them ; but so far he was separated 
 from the herd of more mistaken and more wretched nations 
 —so far as he was Greek — it was by his rightness. He lived, 
 and worked, and was satisfied with the fatness of his land, and 
 the fame of his deeds, by his justice, and reason, and modesty. 
 He became Grceculus esuriens, little, and hungry, and every 
 man's errand-boy, by his iniquity, and his competition, and 
 his love of talk. But his Graecism was in having done, at least 
 at one period of his dominion, more than anybody else, what 
 was modest, useful, and eternally true ; and as a workman, he 
 
410 
 
 ABA TEA PENTELIGL 
 
 verily did, or first suggested the doing of, everything possible 
 to man. 
 
 Take Daedalus, his great type of the practically executive 
 craftsman, and the inventor of expedients in craftsmanship, 
 (as distinguished from Prometheus, the institutor of moral 
 order in art). Daedalus invents, — he, or his nephew, — 
 
 The potter's wheel, and all work in clay ; 
 
 The saw, and all work in wood ; 
 
 The masts and sails of ships, and all modes of motion ; 
 (wings only proving too dangerous !) 
 The entire art of minute ornament ; 
 And the deceptive life of statues. 
 
 By his personal toil, he involves the fatal labyrinth for 
 Minos : builds an impregnable fortress for the Agrigentines ; 
 adorns healing baths among the wild parsley fields of Selinus ; 
 buttresses the precipices of Eryx, under the temple of Aph- 
 rodite ; and for her temple itself — finishes in exquisiteness 
 the golden honeycomb. 
 
 207. Take note of that last piece of his art : it is connected 
 with many things which I must bring before you when we 
 enter on the study of architecture. That study we shall begin 
 at the foot of the Baptistery of Florence, which, of all build- 
 ings known to me, unites the most perfect symmetry with the 
 quaintest 77-01/aAta, Then, from the tomb of your own Edward 
 the Confessor, to the farthest shrine of the opposite Arabian 
 and Indian world, I must show you how the glittering and 
 iridescent dominion of Daedalus prevails ; and his ingenuity 
 in division, interposition, and labyrinthine sequence, more 
 widely still. Only this last summer I found the dark red 
 masses of the rough sandstone of Furness Abbey had been 
 fitted by him, with no less pleasure than he had in carving 
 them, into wedged hexagons — reminiscences of the honey- 
 comb of Venus Erycina. His ingenuity plays around the 
 framework of all the noblest things; and yet the brightness 
 of it has a lurid shadow. The spot of the fawn, of the bird, 
 and the moth, may be harmless. But Daedalus reigns no less 
 over the spot of the leopard and snake. That cruel and venom- 
 ous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him, by 
 
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 
 
 411 
 
 his invention of the saw from tlie serpent's tooth ; and his 
 seeking refuge, under blood-guiltiness, with Minos, who can 
 judge evil, and measure, or remit, the penalty of it, but not 
 reward good : Ehadamanthus only can measure that ; but 
 Minos is essentially the recognizer of evil deeds " conoscitor 
 delle peccata," whom, therefore, you find in Dante under the 
 form of the cpireTov. " Cignesi con la coda tante volte, quan- 
 tunque gradi vuol che giu sia messa." 
 
 And this peril of the influence of Dsedalus is twofold ; first 
 in leading us to delight in glitterings and semblances of 
 things, more than in their form, or truth ; — admire the harle- 
 quin's jacket more than the hero's strength ; and love the 
 gilding of the missal more than its words ; — but farther, and 
 worse, the ingenuity of Daedalus may even become bestial, an 
 instinct for mechanical labour only, strangely involved with a 
 feverish and ghastly cruelty : — (you will find this distinct in 
 the intensely D8edal work of the Japanese) ; rebellious, finally, 
 against the laws of nature and honour, and building labyrinths 
 for monsters, — not combs for bees. 
 
 208. Gentlemen, we of the rough northern race may never, 
 perhaps, be able to learn from the Greek his reverence for 
 beauty : but we may at least learn his disdain of mechanism : 
 — of all work which he felt to be monstrous and inhuman in 
 its imprudent dexterities. 
 
 We hold ourselves, we English, to be good workmen. I do 
 not think I speak with light reference to recent calamity, (for 
 I myself lost a young relation, full of hope and good purpose, 
 in the foundered ship London,) when I say that either an 
 iEginetan or Ionian shipwright built ships that could be fought 
 f rom, though they were under water ; and neither of them 
 would have been proud of having built one that would fill and 
 sink helplessly if the sea washed over her deck, or turn upside 
 down if a squall struck her topsail. 
 
 Believe me, gentlemen, good workmanship consists in con- 
 tinence and common sense, more than in frantic expatiation 
 of mechanical ingenuity ; and if you would be continent and 
 rational, you had better learn more of Art than you do now, 
 und less of Engineering. What is taking place at this very 
 
412 
 
 ARATRA RENTE L I CI. 
 
 hour,* among the streets, once so bright, and avenues once so 
 pleasant, of the fairest city in Europe, may surely lead us all 
 to feel that the skill of Daedalus, set to build impregnable 
 fortresses, is not so wisely applied as in framing the rp-qrov 
 7tqvov, — the golden honeycomb. 
 
 * The siege of Paris, at the time of the delivery of this Lecture, was 
 in one of its most destructive phases. 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE R. A. INSTITUTION, 
 WOOLWICH, DECEMBER 14, 1869. 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 {Delivered at the B. A. Institution, Woolwich, Deceiriber 14, 1869.) 
 
 I would fain have left to the frank expression of the moment, 
 but fear I could not have found clear words — I cannot easily 
 find them, even deliberately, — to tell you how glad I am, and 
 yet how ashamed, to accept your permission to speak to you. 
 Ashamed of appearing to think that I can tell you any truth 
 which you have not more deeply felt than I ; but glad in the 
 thought that my less experience, and way of life sheltered 
 from the trials, and free from the responsibilities of yours, 
 may have left me with something of a child's power of help to 
 you; a sureness of hope, which may perhaps be the one thing 
 that can be helpful to men who have done too much not to 
 have often failed in doing all that they desired. And indeed, 
 even the most hopeful of us, cannot but now be in many 
 things apprehensive. For this at least we all know too well, 
 that we are on the eve of a great political crisis, if not of 
 political change. That a struggle is approaching between the 
 newly-risen power of democracy and the apparently departing 
 power of feudalism ; and another struggle, no less imminent, 
 and far more dangerous, between wealth and pauperism. 
 These two quarrels are constantly thought of as the same. 
 They are being fought together, and an apparently common 
 interest unites for the most part the millionaire with the 
 noble, in resistance to a multitude, crying, part of it for 
 bread and part of it for liberty. 
 
 And yet no two quarrels can be more distincu. Riches — 
 so far from being necessary to noblesse — are adverse to it. 
 So utterly adverse, that the first character of all the Nobilities 
 which have founded great dynasties in the world is to be 
 
416 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 poor ; — often poor by oath — always poor by generosity. And 
 of every true knight in the chivalric ages, the first thing his- 
 tory tells you is, that he never kept treasure for himself. 
 
 Thus the causes of wealth and noblesse are not the same ; 
 but opposite. On the other hand, the causes of anarchy and 
 of the poor are not the same, but opposite. Side by side, in 
 the same rank, are now indeed set the pride that revolts 
 against authority, and the misery that appeals against avarice. 
 But, so far from being a common cause, all anarchy is the 
 forerunner of poverty, and all prosperity begins in obedience. 
 So that thus, it has become impossible to give due support 
 to the cause of order, without seeming to countenance injury ; 
 and impossible to plead justly the claims of sorrow, without 
 seeming to plead also for those of license. 
 
 Let me try, then, to put in very brief terms, the real plan 
 of this various quarrel, and the truth of the cause on each 
 side. Let us face that full truth, whatever it may be, and 
 decide what part, according to our power, we should take in 
 the quarrel. 
 
 First. For eleven hundred years, all but five, since Char- 
 lemagne set on his head the Lombard crown, the body of 
 European people have submitted patiently to be governed ; 
 generally by kings — always by single leaders of some kind. 
 But for the last fifty years they have begun to suspect, and of 
 late they have many of them concluded, that they have been 
 on the whole ill-governed, or misgoverned, by their kings. 
 Whereupon they say, more and more widely, "Let us hence- 
 forth have no kings ; and no government at all." 
 
 Now we said, we must face the full truth of the matter, in 
 order to see what we are to do. And the truth is that the 
 people have been misgoverned ; — that very little is to be said, 
 hitherto, for most of their masters — and that certainly in 
 many places they will try their new system of " no masters 
 ■ — and as that arrangement will be delightful to all foolish 
 persons, and, at first, profitable to all wicked ones, — and as 
 these classes are not wanting or unimportant in any human 
 society,— the experiment is likely to be tried extensively. 
 And the world may be quite content to endure much suffer- 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 417 
 
 ing with this fresh hope, and retain its faith in anarchy, 
 whatever comes of it, till it can endure no more. 
 
 Then, secondly. The people have begun to suspect that 
 one particular form of this past misgovernment has been, that 
 their masters have set them to do all the work, and have 
 themselves taken all the wages. In a word, that what was 
 called governing them, meant only wearing fine clothes, and 
 living on good fare at their expense. And I am sorry to say, 
 the people are quite right in this opinion also. If you in- 
 quire into the vital fact of the matter, this you will find to be 
 the constant structure of European society for the thousand 
 years of the feudal system ; it was divided into peasants who 
 lived by working ; priests who lived by begging ; and knights 
 who lived by pillaging ; and as the luminous public mind 
 becomes gradually cognizant of these facts, it will assuredly 
 not suffer things to be altogether arranged that way any more ; 
 and the devising of other ways will be an agitating business ; 
 especially because the first impression of the intelligent popu- 
 lace is, that whereas, in the dark ages, half the nation lived 
 idle, in the bright ages to come, the whole of it may. 
 
 Now, thirdly — and here is much the worst phase of the 
 crisis. This past system of misgovernment, especially during 
 the last three hundred years, has prepared, by its neglect, a 
 class among the lower orders which it is now peculiarly diffi- 
 cult to govern. It deservedly lost their respect — but that was 
 the least part of the mischief. The deadly part of it was, 
 that the lower orders lost their habit, and at last their faculty, 
 of respect ; — lost the very capability of reverence, which is 
 the most precious part of the human soul. Exactly in the 
 degree ill which you can find creatures greater than yourself, 
 to look up to, in that degree, you are ennobled yourself, and, 
 in that degree, happy. If you could live always in the pres- 
 ence of archangels, you would be happier than in that of 
 men ; but even if only in the company of admirable knights 
 and beautiful ladies, the more noble and bright they were, 
 and the more you could reverence their virtue the happier 
 you would be. On the contrary, if you were condemned 
 to live among a multitude of idiots, dumb, distorted and 
 
418 
 
 THE GROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 malicious, you would not be happy in the constant sense of 
 your own superiority. Thus all real joy and power of prog- 
 ress in humanity depend on finding something to rever- 
 ence ; and all the baseness and misery of humanity begin in a 
 habit of disdain. Now, by general misgovernment, I repeat, 
 we have created in Europe a vast populace, and out of Eu- 
 rope a still vaster one, which has lost even the power and 
 conception of reverence ; * — which exists only in the wor- 
 ship of itself — which can neither see anything beautiful 
 around it, nor conceive anything virtuous above it ; which 
 has, towards all goodness and greatness, no other feelings 
 than those of the lowest creatures — fear, hatred, or hunger ; 
 a populace which has sunk below your appeal in their nature, 
 as it has risen beyond your power in their multitude ; — 
 whom you can now no more charm than you can the adder, 
 nor discipline, than you can the summer fly. 
 
 It is a crisis, gentlemen ; and time to think of it. I have 
 roughly and broadly put it before you in its darkness. Let 
 us look what we may find of light. 
 
 Only the other day, in a journal which is a fairly repre- 
 sentative exponent of the Conservatism of our day, and for 
 the most part not at all in favor of strikes or other popular 
 proceedings ; only about three weeks since, there was a lead- 
 er, with this, or a similar, title — " What is to become of the 
 House of Lords?" It startled me, for it seemed as if we 
 were going even faster than I had thought, when such a ques- 
 tion was put as a subject of quite open debate, in a journal 
 meant chiefly for the reading of the middle and upper classes. 
 Open or not — the debate is near. What is to become of 
 them ? And the answer to such question depends first on 
 their being able to answer another question — " What is the use 
 of them ! " For some time back, I think the theory of the na- 
 tion has been, that they are useful as impediments to busi- 
 ness, so as to give time for second thoughts. But the nation 
 is getting impatient of impediments to business ; and cer- 
 tainly, sooner or later, will think it needless to maintain these 
 
 * Compare Time and Tide, § 169, and Fors Clavigera, Letter XIV. 
 fcage 9 # 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 419 
 
 expensive obstacles to its humors. And I have not heard, 
 either in public, or from any of themselves, a clear expres- 
 sion of their own conception of their use. So that it seems 
 thus to become needful for all men to tell them, as our one 
 quite clear-sighted teacher, Carlyle, has been telling us for 
 many a year, that the use of the Lords of a country is to 
 govern the country. If they answer that use, the country 
 will rejoice in keeping them ; if not, that will become of 
 them which must of all things found to have lost their ser- 
 viceableness. 
 
 Here, therefore, is the one question, at this crisis, for 
 them, and for us. Will they be lords indeed, and give 
 us laws — dukes indeed, and give us guiding — princes indeed, 
 and give us beginning, of truer dynasty, which shall not be 
 soiled by covetousness, nor disordered by iniquity? Have 
 they themselves sunk so far as not to hope this ? Are there 
 yet any among them who can stand forward with open English 
 brows, and say, — So far as in me lies, I will govern with my 
 might, not for Dieu et mon Droit, but for the first grand 
 reading of the war cry, from which that was corrupted, " Dieu 
 et Droit ? " Among them I know there are some — among 
 you, soldiers of England, I know there are many, who can do 
 this ; and in you is our trust. I, one of the lower people 
 of your country, ask of you in their name — you whom I will 
 not any more call soldiers, but by the truer name of 
 Knights ; — Equites of England. How many yet of you are 
 there, knights errant now beyond all former fields of danger 
 — knights patient now beyond all former endurance ; who 
 still retain the ancient and eternal purpose of knighthood, to 
 subdue the wicked, and aid the weak ? To them, be they 
 few or many, we English people call for help to the wretched- 
 ness, and for rule over the baseness, of multitudes desolate 
 and deceived, shrieking to one another this new gospel of 
 their new religion. " Let the weak do as they can, and the 
 wicked as they will/' 
 
 I can hear you saying in your hearts, even the bravest 
 of you, " The time is past for all that." Gentlemen, it is not 
 so. The time has come for more than all that. Hitherto, 
 
420 
 
 THE GROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 soldiers have given their lives for false fame, and for cruel 
 power. The day is now when they must give their lives for 
 true fame, and for beneficent power : and the work is near 
 every one of you — close beside you — the means of it even 
 thrust into your hands. The people are crying to you for 
 command, and you stand there at pause, and silent. You 
 think they don't want to be commanded ; try them ; deter- 
 mine what is needful for them — honorable for them ; show it 
 them, promise to bring them to it, and they will follow you 
 through fire, " Govern us," they cry with one heart, though 
 in any minds. They can be governed still, these English ; 
 they are men still ; not gnats, nor serpents. They love their 
 old ways yet, and their old masters, and their old land. 
 They would fain live in it, as many as may stay there, if you 
 will show them how", there, to live ; — or show them even, how, 
 there, like Englishmen, to die. 
 
 u To live in it, as many as may ! " How many do you 
 think may ? How many can ? How many do you want to 
 live there ? As masters, your first object must be to increase 
 your power ; and in what does the power of a country con- 
 sist ? Will you have dominion over its stones, or over its 
 clouds, or over its souls? What do you mean by a great 
 nation, but a great multitude of men who are true to each 
 other, and strong, and of worth ? Now you can increase the 
 multitude only definitely — your island has only so much 
 standing room —but you can increase the worth indefinitely. 
 It is but a little island ;— -suppose, little as it is, you were to 
 fill it with friends ? You may, and that easily. You must, 
 and that speedily ; or there will be an end to this England of 
 ours, and to all its loves and enmities. 
 
 To fill this little island with true friends — men brave, 
 wise, and happy ! Is it so impossible, think you, after the 
 world's eighteen hundred years of Christianity, and our own 
 thousand years of toil, to fill only this little white gleaming- 
 crag with happy creatures, helpful to each other? Africa, 
 and India, and the Brazilian wide-watered plain, are these 
 not wide enough for the ignorance of our race ? have they 
 not space enough for its pain ? Must we remain here also 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 421 
 
 savage, — here at enmity with each other, — here foodless, 
 houseless, in rags, in dust, and without hope, as thousands 
 and tens of thousands of us are lying ? Do not think it, 
 gentlemen. The thought that it is inevitable is the last infi- 
 delity ; infidelity not to God only, but to every creature and 
 every law that He has made. Are we to think that the 
 earth was only shaped to be a globe of torture ; and that 
 there cannot be one spot of it where peace can rest, or justice 
 reign ? Where are men ever to be happy, if not in England ? 
 by whom shall they ever be taught to do right, if not by you ? 
 Are we not of a race first among the strong ones of the earth ; 
 the blood in us incapable of weariness, unconquerable by 
 grief ? Have we not a history of which we can hardly think 
 without becoming insolent in our just pride of it? Can we 
 dare, without passing every limit of courtesy to other nations, 
 to say how much more we have to be proud of in our ances- 
 tors than they ? Among our ancient monarchs, great crimes 
 stand out as monstrous and strange. But their valor, and, 
 according to their understanding, their benevolence, are con- 
 stant. The Wars of the Roses, which are as a fearful crimson 
 shadow on our land, represent the normal condition of other 
 nations ; while from the days of the Heptarchy downwards 
 we have had examples given us, in all ranks, of the most 
 varied and exalted virtue ; a heap of treasure that no moth 
 can corrupt, and which even our traitorship, if we are to be- 
 come traitors to it, cannot sully. 
 
 And this is the race, then, that we know not any more how 
 to govern ! and this the history which we are to behold 
 broken off by sedition ! and this is the country, of all others, 
 where life is to become difficult to the honest, and ridiculous 
 to the wise ! . And the catastrophe, forsooth, is to come just 
 when we have been making swiftest progress beyond the wis- 
 dom and wealth of the past. Our cities are a wilderness of 
 spinning wheels instead of palaces ; yet the people have not 
 clothes. We have blackened every leaf of English greenwood 
 with ashes, and the people die of cold ; our harbors are a 
 forest of merchant ships, and the people die of hunger. 
 
 Whose fault is it ? Yours, gentlemen ; yours only. You 
 
422 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 alone can feed them, and clothe, and bring into their right 
 minds, for you only can govern — that is to say, you only can 
 educate them. 
 
 Educate, or govern, they are one and the same word. 
 Education does not mean teaching people to know what they 
 do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do 
 not behave. And the true " compulsory education " which 
 the people now ask of you is not catechism, but drill. It is 
 not teaching the youth of England the shapes of letters and 
 the tricks of numbers ; and then leaving them to turn their 
 arithmetic to roguery, and their literature to lust. It is, on 
 the contrary, training them into the perfect exercise and 
 kingly continence of their bodies and souls. It is a painful, 
 continual, and difficult work ; to be done by kindness, by 
 watching, by warning, by precept, and by praise, — but above 
 all — by example. 
 
 Compulsory ! Yes, by all means ! " Go ye out into 
 the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in." 
 Compulsory ! Yes, and gratis also. Dei Gratia, they must be 
 taught, as, Dei Gratia, you are set to teach them. I hear 
 strange talk continually, " how difficult it is to make people 
 pay for being educated ! " Why, I should think so ! Do you 
 make your children pay for their education, or do you give it 
 them compulsorily, and gratis ? You do not expect them to 
 pay you for their teaching, except by becoming good chil- 
 dren. Why should you expect a peasant to pay for his, ex- 
 cept by becoming a good man ? — payment enough, I think, 
 if we knew it. Payment enough to himself, as to us. For 
 that is another of our grand popular mistakes — people are 
 always thinking of education as a means of livelihood. Edu- 
 cation is not a profitable business, but a costly one ; nay, 
 even the best attainments of it are always unprofitable, in any 
 terms of coin. No nation ever made its bread either by its 
 great arts, or its great wisdoms. By its minor arts or manu- 
 factures, by its practical knowledges, yes : but its noble 
 scholarship, its noble philosophy, and its noble art, are always 
 to be bought as a treasure, not sold for a livelihood. You do 
 not learn that you may live — you live that you may learn. 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 423 
 
 You are to spend on National Education, and to be spent for 
 it, and to make by it, not more money, but better men ; — to 
 get into this British Island the greatest possible number of 
 good and brave Englishmen. They are to be your " money's 
 worth." 
 
 But where is the money to come from ? Yes, that is to be 
 asked. Let us, as quite the first business in this our national 
 crisis, look not only into our affairs, but into our accounts, 
 and obtain some general notion how we annually spend our 
 money, and what we are getting for it. Observe, I do not 
 mean to inquire into the public revenue only ; of that some 
 account is rendered already. But let us do the best we can 
 to set down the items of the national 'private expenditure ; 
 and know what we spend altogether, and how. 
 
 To begin with this matter of education. You probably 
 have nearly all seen the admirable lecture lately given by 
 Captain Maxse, at Southampton. It contains a clear state- 
 ment of the facts at present ascertained as to our expenditure 
 in that respect. It appears that of our public moneys, for 
 every pound that we spend on education we spend twelve 
 either in charity or punishment ; — ten millions a year in pau- 
 perism and crime, and eight hundred thousand in instruction. 
 Now Captain Maxse adds to this estimate of ten millions pub- 
 lic money spent on crime and want, a more or less conjectural 
 sum of eight millions for private charities. My impression is 
 that this is much beneath the truth, but at all events it leaves 
 out of consideration much the heaviest and saddest form of 
 charity — the maintenance, by the working members of fami- 
 lies, of the unfortunate or ill-conducted persons whom the 
 general course of misrule now leaves helpless to be the bur- 
 den of the rest. 
 
 Now I want to get first at some, I do not say approx- 
 imate, but at all events some suggestive, estimate of the quan- 
 tity of real distress and misguided life in this country. Then 
 next, I want some fairly representative estimate of our private 
 expenditure in luxuries. We won't spend more, publicly, it 
 appears, than eight hundred thousand a year, on educating 
 men gratis. I want to know, as nearly as possible, what we 
 
424 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 spend privately a year, in educating horses gratis. Let us, at 
 least, quit ourselves in this from the taunt of Rabshakeh, and 
 see that for every horse we train also a horseman ; and that 
 the rider be at least as high-bred as the horse, not jockey, 
 but chevalier. Again, we spend eight hundred thousand, 
 which is certainty a great deal of money, in making rough 
 minds bright. I want to know how much we spend annually 
 in making rough stones bright ; that is to say, what may be 
 the united annual sum, or near it, of our jewellers' bills. So 
 much we pay for educating children gratis ; — how much for 
 educating diamonds gratis? and which pays best for bright- 
 ening, the spirit or the charcoal ? Let us get those two items 
 set down with some sincerity, and a few more of the same 
 kind. Publicly set down. "We must not be ashamed of the 
 way we spend our money. If our right hand is not to know 
 what our left does, it must not be because it would be 
 ashamed if it did. 
 
 That is, therefore, quite the first practical thing to be done. 
 Let every man who wishes well to his country, render it yearly 
 an account of his income, and of the main heads of his ex- 
 penditure ; or, if he is ashamed to do so, let him no more 
 impute to the poor their poverty as a crime, nor set them to 
 break stones in order to frighten them from committing it. 
 To lose money ill is indeed often a crime ; but to get it ill is 
 a worse one, and to spend it ill, worst of all. You object, 
 Lords of England, to increase, to the poor, the wages you give 
 them, because they spend them, you say, unadvisedly. Ren- 
 der them, therefore, an account of the wages which they give 
 you ; and show them, by your example, how to spend theirs, to 
 the last farthing advisedly. 
 
 It is indeed time to make this an acknowledged sub- 
 ject of instruction, to the workingman, — how to spend his 
 wages. For, gentlemen, we must give that instruction, 
 whether we will or no, one way or the other. We have given 
 it in years gone by ; and now we find fault with our peasantry 
 for having been too docile, and profited too shrewdly by our 
 tuition. Only a few clays since I had a letter from the wife of 
 a village rector, a man of common sense and kindness, who 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 425 
 
 was greatly troubled in his mind because it was precisely the 
 men who got highest wages in summer that came desti- 
 tute to his door in the winter. Destitute, and of riotous 
 temper — for their method of spending wages in their period of 
 prosperity was by sitting two days a week in the tavern par- 
 lor, ladling port wine, not out of bowls, but out of buckets. 
 Well, gentlemen, who taught them that method of festivity? 
 Thirty years ago, I, a most inexperienced freshman, went to 
 my first college supper ; at the head of the table sat a noble- 
 man of high promise and of admirable powers, since dead of 
 palsy ; there also we had in the midst of us, not buckets, 
 indeed, but bowls as large as buckets ; there also, we helped 
 ourselves with ladles. There (for this beginning of college 
 education was compulsory), I choosing ladlefuls of punch in- 
 stead of claret, because I was then able, unperceived to 
 pour them into my waistcoat instead of down my throat, 
 stood it out to the end, and helped to carry four of my fellow- 
 students, one of them the son of the head of a college, head 
 foremost, down stairs and home. 
 
 Such things are no more ; but the fruit of them re- 
 mains, and will for many a day to come. The laborers whom 
 you cannot now shut out of the ale-house are only the too 
 faithful disciples of the gentlemen who were wont to shut 
 themselves into the dining-room. The gentlemen have not 
 thought it necessary, in order to correct their own habits, to 
 diminish their incomes ; and, believe me, the way to deal 
 with your drunken workman is not to lower his wages, — but 
 to mend his wits.* 
 
 And if indeed we do not yet see quite clearly how to 
 deal with the sins of our poor brother, it is possible that our 
 dimness of sight may still have other causes that can be cast 
 out. There are two opposite cries of the great liberal and 
 conservative parties, which are both most right, and worthy 
 to be rallying cries. On their side " let every man have his 
 chance;" on yours "let every man stand in his place." 
 Yes, indeed, let that be so, every man in his place, and 
 
 * See Appendix, " Modern Education," and compare § 70 of Time 
 and Tide, 
 
426 
 
 THE GROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 every man fit for it. See that be holds that place from 
 Heaven's Providence ; and not from his family's Providence. 
 Let the Lords Spiritual quit themselves of simony, we laymen 
 will look after the heretics for them. Let the Lords Tem- 
 poral quit themselves of nepotism, and we will take care of 
 their authority for them. Publish for us, you soldiers, an 
 army gazette, in which the one subject of daily intelligence 
 shall be the grounds of promotion ; a gazette which shall 
 simply tell us, what there certainly can be no detriment to 
 the service in our knowing, when any officer is appointed to 
 a new command, — what his former services and successes 
 have been, — whom he has superseded, — and on what ground. 
 It will be always a satisfaction to us ; it may sometimes be an 
 advantage to you : and then, when there is really necessary 
 debate respecting reduction of wages, let us always begin not 
 with the wages of the industrious classes, but with those of 
 the idle ones. Let there there be honorary titles, if people 
 like them ; but let there be no honorary incomes. 
 
 So much for the master's motto, " Every man in his 
 place." Next for the laborer's motto, " Every man his 
 chance." Let us mend that for them a little, and say, 
 " Every man his certainty " — certainty, that if he does well, 
 he will be honored, and aided, and advanced in such degree 
 as may be fitting for his faculty and consistent with his 
 peace ; and equal certainty that if he does ill, he will by sure 
 justice be judged, and by sure punishment be chastised ; if 
 it may be, corrected ; and if that may not be, condemned. 
 That is the right reading of the Kepublican motto, " Every 
 man his chance." And then, with such a system of govern- 
 ment, pure, watchful and just, you may approach your great 
 problem of national education, or in other words, of national 
 employment. For all education begins in work. What we 
 think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end, of 
 little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what 
 we do ; and for man, woman, or child, the first point of edu- 
 cation is to make them do their best. It is the law of good 
 economy to make the best of everything. How much more 
 to make the best of every creature ! Therefore, when your 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 427 
 
 pauper comes to you and asks for bread, ask of him instantly 
 — What faculty have you? What can you do best? Can 
 you drive a nail into wood? Go and mend the parish fences. 
 Can you lay a brick ? Mend the walls of the cottages where 
 the wind comes in. Can you lift a spadeful of earth ? Turn 
 this field up three feet deep all over. Can you only drag a 
 weight with your shoulders ? Stand at the bottom of this 
 hill and help up the overladen horses. Can you weld iron 
 and chisel stone? Fortify this wreck-strewn coast into a 
 harbor ; and change these shifting sands into fruitful ground. 
 Wherever death was, bring life ; that is to be your work ; 
 that your parish refuge ; that your education. So and no 
 otherwise can we meet existent distress. But for the contin- 
 ual education of the whole people, and for their future hap- 
 piness, they must have such consistent employment as shall 
 develop all the powers of the fingers, and the limbs, and the 
 brain : and that development is only to be obtained by hand- 
 labor, of which you have these four great divisions — hand- 
 labor on the earth, hand-labor on the sea, hand-labor in art, 
 hand-labor in war. Of the last two of these I cannot speak 
 to-night, and of the first two only with extreme brevity. 
 
 I Hand-labor on the earth, the work of the husbandman 
 and of the shepherd;— to dress the earth and to keep the 
 flocks of it — the first task of man, and the final one — the 
 education always of noblest lawgivers, kings and teachers ; 
 the education of Hesiod, of Moses, of David, of all the true 
 strength of Rome ; and all its tenderness : the pride of Cin- 
 cinnatus, and the inspiration of Virgil. Hand-labor on the 
 earth, and the harvest of it brought forth with singing : — not 
 steam-piston labor on the earth, and the harvest of it brought 
 forth with steam-whistling. You will have no prophet's voice 
 accompanied by that shepherd's pipe, and pastoral symphony. 
 Do you know that lately, in Cumberland, in the chief pastoral 
 district of England — in Wordsworth's own home — a proces- 
 sion of villagers on their festa day provided for themselves, 
 by way of music, a steam-plough whistling at the head of 
 them. 
 
 Give me patience while I put the principle of machine 
 
428 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 labor before you, as clearly and in as short compass as pos- 
 sible ; it is one that should be known at this juncture. Sup- 
 pose a farming proprietor needs to employ a hundred men on 
 his estate, and that the labor of these hundred men is enough, 
 but not more than enough, to till all his land, and to raise 
 from it food for his own family, and for the hundred laborers. 
 He is obliged, under such circumstances, to maintain all the 
 men in moderate comfort, and can only by economy accumu- 
 late much for himself. But, suppose he contrive a machine 
 that will easily do the work of fifty men, with only one man 
 to watch it. This sounds like a great advance in civilization. 
 The farmer of course gets his machine made, turns off the 
 fifty men, who may starve or emigrate at their choice, and 
 now he can keep half of the produce of his estate, which for- 
 merly went to feed them, all to himself. That is the essential 
 and constant operation of machinery among us at this moment. 
 
 Nay, it is at first answered ; no man can in reality keep half 
 the produce of an estate to himself, nor can he in the end 
 keep more than his own human share of anything ; his riches 
 must diffuse themselves at some time ; he must maintain some- 
 body else with them, however he spends them. That is mainly 
 true (not altogether so), for food and fuel are in ordinary cir- 
 cumstances personally wasted by rich people, in quantities 
 which would save many lives. One of my own great luxuries, 
 for instance, is candlelight — and I probably burn, for myself 
 alone, as many candles during the winter, as would comfort 
 the old eyes, or spare the young ones, of a whole rushlighted 
 country village. Still, it is mainly true, that it is not by their 
 personal waste that rich people prevent the lives of the poor. 
 This is the way they do it. Let me go back to my farmer. 
 He has got his machine made, which goes creaking, scream- 
 ing, and occasionally exploding, about modern Arcadia. He 
 has turned off his fifty men to starve. Now, at some distance 
 from his own farm, there is another on which the laborers 
 were working for their bread in the same way, by tilling the 
 land. The machinist sends over to these, saying — "I have 
 got food enough for you without your digging or ploughing 
 any more. I can maintain you in other occupations instead 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 429 
 
 of ploughing that land ; if you rake in its gravel you will find 
 some hard stones — you shall grind those on mills till they 
 glitter ; then, my wife shall wear a necklace of them. Also, 
 if you turn up the meadows below you will find some fine 
 white clay, of which you shall make a porcelain service for me : 
 and the rest of the farm I want for pasture for horses for my 
 carriage — and you shall groom them, and some of you ride 
 behind the carriage with staves in your hands, and I will keep 
 you much fatter for doing that than you can keep yourselves 
 by digging." 
 
 Well — but it is answered, are we to have no diamonds, 
 nor china, nor pictures, nor footmen, then — but all to be 
 farmers? I am not saying what we ought to do, I want 
 only to show you with perfect clearness first what we are do- 
 ing ; and that, I repeat, is the upshot of machine-contriving 
 in this country. And observe its effect on the national 
 strength. Without machines, you have a hundred and fifty 
 yeomen ready to join for defence of the land. You get your 
 machine, starve fifty of them, make diamond-cutters or foot- 
 men of as many more, and for your national defence against 
 an enemy, you have now, and can have, only fifty men, in- 
 stead of a hundred and fifty ; these also now with minds 
 much alienated from you as their chief,* and the rest, lapi- 
 daries or footmen ; and a steam plough. 
 
 That is one effect of machinery ; but at all events, if we 
 have thus lost in men, we have gained in riches ; instead 
 of happy human souls, we have at least got pictures, china, 
 horses, and are ourselves better off than we were before. 
 Bat very often, and in much of our machine-contriving, even 
 that result does not follow. We are not one whit the richer 
 for the machine, we only employ it for our amusement. For 
 observe, our gaining in riches depends on the men who are 
 out of employment consenting to be starved, or sent out of 
 the country. But suppose they do not consent passively to 
 be starved, but some of them become criminals, and have to 
 be taken charge of and fed at a much greater cost than if 
 
 * [They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of this year, 
 1873, at the rate of a regiment a week. ] 
 
430 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 they were at work, and, others, paupers, rioters, and the like, 
 then you attain the real outcome of modern wisdom and in- 
 genuity. You have your hundred men honestly at country 
 work ; but you don't like the sight of human beings in your 
 fields ; you like better to see a smoking kettle. You pay, as 
 an amateur, for that pleasure, and you employ your fifty men 
 in picking oakum, or begging, rioting, and thieving. 
 
 By hand-labor, therefore, and that alone, we are to till 
 the ground. By hand labor also to plough the sea ; both 
 for food, and in commerce, and in war: not with floating 
 kettles there neither, but with hempen bridle, and the winds 
 of heaven in harness. That is the way the power of Greece 
 rose on her Egean, the power of Venice on her Adria, of 
 Amalfi in her blue bay, of the Norman sea-riders from the 
 North Cape to Sicily : — so, your own dominion also of the 
 past. Of the past mind you. On the Baltic and the Nile, 
 your power is already departed. By machinery you would 
 advance to discovery ; by machinery you would carry your 
 commerce ; — you would be engineers instead of sailors ; and 
 instantly in the North seas you are beaten among the ice, 
 and before the very Gods of Nile, beaten among the sand. 
 Agriculture, then, by the hand or by the plough draw 7 n only 
 by animals ; and shepherd and pastoral husbandry, are to be 
 the chief schools of Englishmen. And this most royal acad- 
 emy of all academies you have to open over all the land, puri- 
 fying your heaths and hills, and waters, and keeping them 
 full of every kind of lovely natural organism, in tree, herb, 
 and living creature. All land that is waste and ugly, you 
 must redeem into ordered fruitfulness ; all ruin, desolateness, 
 imperfectness of hut or habitation, you must do away with ; 
 and throughout every village and city of your English domin- 
 ion there must not be a hand that cannot find a helper, nor 
 a heart that cannot find a comforter. 
 
 " How impossible ! " I know, you are thinking. Ah ! So 
 far from impossible, it is easy, it is natural, it is necessary, 
 and I declare to you that, sooner or later, it must be done, at 
 our peril. If now our English lords of land will fix this idea 
 steadily before them ; take the people to their hearts, trust 
 
THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 431 
 
 to their loyalty, lead their labor ; — then indeed there will be 
 princes again in the midst of us, worthy of the island throne, 
 
 ■ This royal throne of kings — this sceptred isle — 
 This fortress built by nature for herself 
 Against infection, and the hand of war ; 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea; 
 This happy breed of men — this little world : 
 This other Eden — Demi-Paradise. " 
 
 But if they refuse to do this, and hesitate and equivocate, 
 clutching through the confused catastrophe of all things only 
 at what they can still keep stealthily for themselves — their 
 doom is nearer than even their adversaries hope, and it will 
 be deeper than even their despisers dream. 
 
 That, believe me, is the work you have to do in Eng- 
 land ; and out of England you have room for everything 
 else you care to do. Are her dominions in the world so narrow 
 that she can find no place to spin cotton in but Yorkshire ? 
 We may organize emigration into an infinite power. We 
 may assemble troops of the more adventurous and ambitious 
 of our youth ; we may send them on truest foreign service, 
 founding new seats of authority, and centres of thought, in 
 uncultivated and unconquered lands ; retaining the full affec- 
 tion to the native country no less in our colonists than in our 
 armies, teaching them to maintain allegiance to their father- 
 land in labor no less than in battle ; aiding them with free 
 hand in the prosecution of discovery, and the victory over 
 adverse natural powers ; establishing seats of every manufact- 
 ure in the climates and places best fitted for it, and bringing 
 ourselves into due alliance and harmony of skill with the dex- 
 terities of every race, and the wisdoms of every tradition and 
 every tongue. 
 
 And then you may make England itself the centre of the 
 learning, of the arts, of the courtesies and felicities of the 
 world. You may cover her mountains with pasture ; her 
 plains with corn, her valleys with the lily, and her gardens 
 with the rose. You may bring together there in peace the 
 
432 
 
 THE CROWN OB 1 WILD OLIVE. 
 
 wise and the pure, and the gentle of the earth, and by their 
 word, command through its farthest darkness the birth of 
 "God's first creature, which was Light." You know whose 
 words those are ; the words of the wisest of Englishmen. He, 
 and with him the wisest of all other great nations, have 
 spoken always to men of this hope, and they would not hear. 
 Plato, in the dialogue of Critias, his last, broken off at his 
 death — Pindar, in passionate singing of the fortunate islands 
 — Virgil, in the prophetic tenth eclogue — Bacon, in his fable 
 of the New Atlantis — More, in the book which, too impa- 
 tiently wise, became the bye-word of fools — these, all, have 
 told us with one voice what we should strive to attain ; they 
 not hopeless of it, but for our follies forced, as it seems, by 
 heaven, to tell us only partly and in parables, lest we should 
 hear them and obey. 
 
 Shall w T e never listen to the words of these w r isest of men ? 
 Then listen at least to the words of your children — let us in 
 the lips of babes and sucklings find our strength ; and see 
 that we do not make them mock instead of pray, when we 
 teach them, night and morning, to ask for what we believe 
 never can be granted ; — that the will of the Father, — which 
 is, that His creatures may be righteous and happy — should 
 be done, on earth, as it is in Heaven. 
 
NOTES 
 
 ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA 
 
NOTES ON THE POLITICAL ECON- 
 OMY OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 I am often accused of inconsistency ; but believe myself 
 defensible against the charge with respect to what I have 
 said on nearly every subject except that of war. It is impos- 
 sible for me to write consistently of war, for the groups of 
 facts I have gathered about it lead me to two precisely oppo- 
 site conclusions. 
 
 When I find this the case, in other matters, I am silent, till 
 I can choose my conclusion : but, with respect to war, I am 
 forced to speak, by the necessities of the time ; and forced to 
 act, one way or another. The conviction on which I act is, 
 that it causes an incalculable amount of avoidable human 
 suffering, and that it ought to cease among Christian nations ; 
 and if therefore any of my boy-friends desire to be soldiers, 
 I try my utmost to bring them into what I conceive to be a 
 better mind. But, on the other hand, I know certainly that 
 the most beautiful characters yet developed among men have 
 been formed in war ; — that all great nations have been war- 
 rior nations, and that the only kinds of peace which we are 
 likely to get in the present age are ruinous alike to the intel- 
 lect, and the heart. 
 
 The lecture on " War," in this volume, addressed to young 
 soldiers, had for its object to strengthen their trust in the vir- 
 tue of their profession. It is inconsistent with itself, in its clos- 
 ing appeal to women, praying them to use their influence to 
 bring wars to an end. And I have been hindered from com- 
 pleting my long intended notes on the economy of the Kings 
 of Prussia by continually increasing doubt how far the ma- 
 
436 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 chinery and discipline of war, under which they learned the 
 art of government, was essential for such lesson ; and what 
 the honesty and sagacity of the Friedrich who so nobly re- 
 paired his ruined Prussia, might have done for the happiness 
 of his Prussia, unruined. 
 
 In war, however, or in peace, the character which Carlyle 
 chiefly loves him for, and in which Carlyle has shown him to 
 differ from all kings up to this time succeeding him, is his 
 constant purpose to use every power entrusted to him for the 
 good of his people ; and be, not in name only, but in heart 
 and hand, their king. 
 
 Not in ambition, but in natural instinct of duty. Fried- 
 rich, born to govern, determines to govern to the best of his 
 faculty. That "best" may sometimes be unwise ; and self- 
 will, or love of glory, may have their oblique hold on his 
 mind, and warp it this way or that ; but they are never prin- 
 cipal with him. He believes that war is necessary, and main- 
 tains it ; sees that peace is necessary, and calmly persists in 
 the work of it to the day of his death, not claiming therein 
 more praise than the head of any ordinary household, who 
 rules it simply because it is his place, and he must not yield 
 the mastery of it to another. 
 
 How far, in the future, it may be possible for men to gain 
 the strength necessary for kingship without either fronting 
 death, or inflicting it, seems to me not at present determina- 
 ble. The historical facts are that, broadly speaking, none 
 but soldiers, or persons with a soldierly faculty, have ever 
 yet shown themselves fit to be kings ; and that no other men 
 are so gentle, so just, or so clear-sighted. Wordsworth's 
 character of the happ} r warrior cannot be reached in the 
 height of it but by a warrior ; nay, so much is it beyond com- 
 mon strength that I had supposed the entire meaning of it 
 to be metaphorical, until one of the best soldiers of England 
 himself read me the poem,* and taught me, what I might 
 have known, had I enough watched his own life, that it was 
 entirely literal. There is nothing of so high reach distinctly 
 demonstrable in Friedrich : but I see more and more, ap I 
 * The late Sir Herbert Edwardes. 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 437 
 
 grow older, that the things which are the most worth, en- 
 cumbered among the errors and faults of every man's nature, 
 are never clearly demonstrable ; and are often most forcible 
 when they are scarcely distinct to his own conscience, — how 
 much less, clamorous for recognition by others ! 
 
 Nothing can be more beautiful than Carlyle's showing of 
 this, to any careful reader of Priedrich. But careful readers 
 are but one in the thousand ; and by the careless, the masses 
 of detail with which the historian must deal are insurmount- 
 able. 
 
 My own notes, made for the special purpose of hunting 
 down the one point of economy, though they cruelly spoil 
 Carlyle's own current and method of thought, may yet be use- 
 ful in enabling readers, unaccustomed to books involving so 
 vast a range of conception, to discern what, on this one sub- 
 ject only, may be gathered from that history. On any other 
 subject of importance, similar gatherings might be made of 
 other passages. The historian has to deal with all at once. 
 
 I therefore have determined to print here, as a sequel to the 
 Essay on War, my notes from the first volume of Friedrich, 
 on the economies of Brandenburg, up to the date of the estab- 
 lishment of the Prussian monarchy. The economies of the 
 first three Kings of Prussia I shall then take up in Fors 
 Clavigera, finding them fitter for examination in connection 
 with the subject of that book than of this. 
 
 I assume, that the reader will take down his first volume of 
 Carlyle, and read attentively the passages to which I refer him. 
 I give the reference first to the largest edition, in six volumes 
 (1858-1865) ; then, in parenthesis, to the smallest or "people's 
 edition" (1872-1873). The pieces which I have quoted in my 
 own text are for the use of readers who may not have ready 
 access to the book ; and are enough for the explanation of the 
 points to which I wish them to direct their thoughts in read- 
 ing such histories of soldiers or soldier-kingdoms. 
 
438 
 
 THE CRO WN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 I. 
 
 Year 928 to 936. — Dawn of Order in Christian Germany. 
 Book II. Chap. i. p. 67 (47). 
 
 Henry the Fowler, " the beginning of German kings," is a 
 mighty soldier in the cause of peace ; his essential work the 
 building and organization of fortified towns for the protection 
 of men. 
 
 Read page 72 with utmost care (51), "He fortified towns," 
 to end of small print. I have added some notes on the matter 
 in my lecture on Giovanni Pisano ; but whether you can glance 
 at them or not, fix in your mind this institution of truly civil 
 or civic building in Germany, as distinct from the building of 
 baronial castles for the security of robbers : and of a standing 
 army consisting of every ninth man, called a " burgher M 
 (" townsman") — a soldier, appointed to learn that profession 
 that he may guard the walls — the exact reverse of our notion 
 of a burgher. 
 
 Frederick's final idea of his army is, indeed, only this. 
 
 Brannibor, a chief fortress of the Wends, is thus taken, and 
 further strengthened by Henry the Fowler ; wardens appoint- 
 ed for it ; and thus the history of Brandenburg begins. On 
 all frontiers, also, this "beginning of German kings" has 
 his "Markgraf." "Ancient of the marked place." Bead 
 page 73, measuredly, learning it by heart, if it may be. (51- 
 2.) 
 
 It 
 
 936-1000. — History of Nascent Brandenburg. 
 
 The passage I last desired you to read ends with this sen- 
 tence: "The sea-wall you build, and what main floodgates 
 you establish in it, will depend on the state of the outer 
 sea." 
 
 From this time forward you have to keep clearly separate 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 439 
 
 in your minds, (a) the history of that outer sea, Pagan Scan- 
 dinavia, Russia, and Bor-Bussia, or Prussia proper ; (b) the 
 history of Henry the Fowler's Eastern and Western Marches ; 
 asserting themselves gradually as Austria and the Nether- 
 lands ; and (c) the history of this inconsiderable fortress of 
 Brandenburg, gradually becoming considerable, and the cap- 
 ital city of increasing district between them. That last his- 
 tory, however, Carlyle is obliged to leave vague and gray for 
 two hundred years after Henry's death. Absolutely dim for 
 the first century, in which nothing is evident but that its 
 wardens or Markgraves had no peaceable possession of the 
 place. Bead the second paragraph in page 74 (52-3), "in 
 old books" to "reader," and the first in page 83 (59) "mean- 
 while" to "substantial," consecutively. They bring the 
 story of Brandenburg itself down, at any rate, from 936 to 
 1000. 
 
 m 
 
 936-1000.— State of the Outer Sea. 
 
 Read now Chapter II. beginning at page 76 (54), wherein 
 you will get account of the beginning of vigorous missionary 
 work on the outer sea, in Prussia proper ; of the death of St. 
 Adalbert, and of the purchase of his dead body by the Duke 
 of Poland. 
 
 You will not easily understand Carlyle 's laugh in this chap- 
 ter, unless you have learned yourself to laugh in sadness, and 
 to laugh in love. 
 
 "No Czech blows his pipe in the woodlands without certain 
 precautions and preliminary fuglings of a devotional nature." 
 (Imagine St. Adalbert, in spirit, at the railway station in 
 Birmingham !) 
 
 My own main point for notice in the chapter is the pur- 
 chase of his body for its "weight in gold." Swindling angels 
 held it up in the scales ; it did not weigh so much as a web 
 of gossamer. "Had such excellent odor, too, and came for 
 a mere nothing of gold," says Carlyle. It is one of the first 
 commercial transactions of Germany, but I regret the con- 
 
440 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 duct of the angels on the occasion. Evangelicalism has been 
 proud of ceasing to invest in relics, its swindling angels help- 
 ing it to better things, as it supposes. For my own part, I 
 believe Christian Germany could not have bought at this 
 time any treasure more precious ; nevertheless, the missionary 
 work itself you find is wholly vain. The difference of opinion 
 between St. Adalbert and the Wends, on Divine matters, 
 does not signify to the Fates. They will not have it disputed 
 about ; and end the dispute adversely, to St. Adalbert — ad- 
 versely, even, to Brandenburg and its civilizing power, as you 
 will immediately see. 
 
 IV. 
 
 1000-1030. — History of Brandenburg in Trouble. 
 Book II. Chap. ih\ p. 83 (59). 
 
 The adventures of Brandenburg in contest with Pagan 
 Prussia, irritated, rather than amended, by St. Adalbert. In 
 1023, roughly, a hundred years after Henry the Fowler's 
 death, Brandenburg is taken by the Wends, and its first line 
 of Markgraves ended ; its population mostly butchered, espe- 
 cially the priests; and the Wends' God, Triglaph, "some- 
 thing like three whales' cubs combined by boiling," set up on 
 the top of St. Mary's Hill. 
 
 Here is an adverse "Doctrine of the Trinity" which has 
 its supporters ! It is wonderful, — this Tripod and Triglyph 
 — three footed, three-cut faith of the North and South, the 
 leaf of the oxalis, and strawberry, and clover, fostering the 
 same in their simple manner. I suppose it to be the most 
 savage and natural of notions about Deity ; a prismatic 
 idol- shape of Him, rude as a triangular log, as a trefoil grass. 
 I do not find how long Triglaph held his state on St. Mary's 
 Hill. "For a time," says Carlyle, "the priests all slain or 
 fled — shadowy Markgraves the like — church and state lay in 
 ashes, and Triglaph, like a triple porpoise under the influence 
 of laudanum, stood, I know not whether on his head or his 
 tail, aloft on the Harlungsberg, as the Supreme of this Uni- 
 verse for the time being. " 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 441 
 
 V. 
 
 ,1030-1130. — Brandenburg under the Ditmarsch Markgraves, 
 or Ditmarsch-Stade Markgraves. 
 
 Book II. Chap. iii. p. 85 (60). 
 
 Or Anglish, or Saxon breed. They attack Brandenburg, 
 under its Triglyphic protector, take it — dethrone him, and 
 hold the town for a hundred years, their history " stamped 
 beneficially on the face of things, Markgraf after Markgraf 
 getting killed in the business. 'Erschlagen,' ' slain/ fight- 
 ing with the Heathen — say the old books, and pass on to an- 
 other.'' If we allow seven years to Triglaph — we get a clear 
 century for these— as above indicated. They die out in 
 1130. 
 
 VI. 
 
 1130-1170. — Brandenburg under Albert the Bear. 
 Book II. Chap iv. p. 91 (64). 
 
 He is the first of the Ascanien Markgraves, whose castle of 
 Ascanica is on the northern slope of the Hartz Mountains, 
 " ruins still dimly traceable." 
 
 There had been no soldier or king of note among the Dit- 
 marsch Markgraves, so that you will do well to fix in your 
 mind successively the three men, Henry the Fowler, St. Adal- 
 bert, and Albert the Bear. A soldier again, and a strong one. 
 Named the Bear only from the device on his shield, first 
 wholly definite Markgraf of Brandenburg that there is, " and 
 that the luckiest of events for Brandenburg. " Read page 
 93 (66) carefully, and note this of his economies. 
 
 Nothing better is known to me of Albert the Bear than his 
 introducing large numbers of Dutch Netherlander into those 
 countries ; men thrown out of work, who already knew how 
 
442 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 to deal with bog and sand, by mixing and delving, and who 
 first taught Brandenburg what greenness and cow-pasture 
 was. The Wends, in presence of such things, could not but 
 consent more and more to efface themselves — either to be- 
 come German, and grow milk and cheese in the Dutch man- 
 ner, or to disappear from the world. 
 
 After two-hundred and fifty years of barking and worry- 
 ing, the Wends are now finally reduced to silence ; their 
 anarchy well buried and wholesome Dutch cabbage planted 
 over it ; Albert did several great things in the world ; but 
 this, for posterity, remains his memorable feat. Not done 
 quite easily, but done : big destinies of nations or of persons 
 are not founded gratis in this world, He had a sore, toil- 
 some time of it, coercing, warring, managing among his fel- 
 low-creatures, while his day's work lasted — fifty years or so, 
 for it began early. He died in his castle of Ballenstadt, 
 peaceably among the Hartz Mountains at last, in the year 
 1170, age about sixty-five. 
 
 Now, note in all this the steady gain of soldiership enforc- 
 ing order and agriculture, with St. Adalbert giving higher 
 strain to the imagination. Henry the Fowler establishes 
 walled towns, fighting for mere peace. Albert the Bear plants 
 the country with cabbages, fighting for his cabbage-fields. 
 And the disciples of St. Adalbert, generally, have succeeded 
 in substituting some idea of Christ for the idea of Triglaph. 
 Some idea only ; other ideas than of Christ haunt even to 
 this day those Hartz Mountains among which Albert the Bear 
 dies so peacefully. Mephistopheles, and all his ministers, 
 inhabit there, commanding mephitic clouds and earth-born 
 dreams. 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 443 
 
 VII. 
 
 1170-1320. — Brandenburg 150 years under the Ascanien 
 
 Markgraves. 
 
 Vol. I. Book II. Chap. viii. p. 135 (96). 
 
 " Wholesome Dutch cabbages continued to be more and 
 more planted by them in the waste sand : intrusive chaos, and 
 Triglaph held at bay by them," till at last in 1240, seventy 
 years after the great Bear's death, they fortify a new Burg, a 
 " little rampart," Wehrlin, diminutive of Wehr (or vallum), 
 gradually smoothing itself, with a little echo of the Bear in it 
 too, into Ber-lin, the oily river Spree flowing by, " in which 
 you catch various fish ; " while trade over the flats and by the 
 dull streams, is widely possible. Of the Ascanien race, the 
 notablest is Otto with the Arrow, whose story see, pp. 138- 
 141 (98-100), noting that Otto is one of the first Minnesing- 
 ers ; that, being a prisoner to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, 
 his wife rescues him, selling her jewels to bribe the canons ; 
 and that the Knight, set free on parole and promise of farther 
 ransom, rides back with his own price in his hand ; holding 
 himself thereat cheaply bought, though no angelic legerde- 
 main happens to the scales now. His own estimate of his 
 price — "Kain gold ducats on my war-horse and me, till you 
 cannot see the point of my spear atop." 
 
 Emptiness of utter pride, you think ? 
 
 Not so. Consider with yourself, reader, how much you 
 dare to say, aloud, you are worth. If you have no courage to 
 name any price whatsoever for yourself, believe me, the 
 cause is not your modesty, but that in very truth you feel in 
 your heart there would be no bid for you at Lucian's sale of 
 lives, were that again possible, at Christie and Manson's. 
 
 Finally (1319 exactly ; say 1320, for memory), the Ascanien 
 line expired in Brandenburg, and the little town and its 
 electorate lapsed to the Kaiser : meantime other economical 
 arrangements had been in progress ; but observe first how far 
 we have got. 
 
4J4 THE GROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 The Fowler, St. Adalbert and the Bear have established 
 order, and some sort of Christianity ; but the established 
 persons begin to think somewhat too well of themselves. On 
 quite honest terms, a dead saint or a living knight ought to 
 be worth their true " weight in gold." But a pyramid, with 
 only the point of the spear seen at top, would be many times 
 over one's weight in gold. And although men were yet far 
 enough from the notion of modern days, that the gold is 
 better than the flesh, and from buying it with the clay of 
 one's body, and even the fire of one's soul, instead of soul 
 and body with it, they were beginning to fight for their own 
 supremacy, or for their own religious fancies, and not at all 
 to any useful end, until an entirely unexpected movement is 
 made in the old useful direction forsooth, only by some 
 kind ship-captains of Ltibeck ! 
 
 VIIL 
 
 1210-1320. — Civil work, aiding military, during the Ascanien 
 
 period. 
 
 Vol. I. Book II. Chap. vi. p. 109 (77). 
 
 In the year 1190, Acre not yet taken, and the crusading army 
 wasting by murrain on the shore, the German soldiers es- 
 pecially having none to look after them, certain compassion- 
 ate ship-captains of Lubeck, one Walpot von Bassenheim tak- 
 ing the lead, formed themselves into an union for succor of 
 the sick and the dying, set up canvas tents from the Lubeck 
 ship stores, and did what utmost was in them silently in the 
 name of mercy and heaven. Finding its work prosper, the 
 little medicinal and weather-fending company took vows on 
 itself, strict chivalry forms, and decided to become permanent 
 " Knights Hospitallers of our dear Lady of Mount Zion," 
 separate from the former Knights Hospitallers, as being en- 
 tirely German : yet soon, as the German Order of St. Mary, 
 eclipsing in importance Templars, Hospitallers, and every 
 other chivalric order then extant ; no purpose of battle in 
 them, but much strength for it ; their purpose only the help- 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 445 
 
 ing of German pilgrims. To this only they are bound by 
 their vow, "geliibde,'' and become one of the usefullest of 
 clubs in all the Pall Mall of Europe. 
 
 Finding pilgrimage in Palestine falling slack, and more 
 need for them on the homeward side of the sea, their Hoch- 
 meister, Hermann of the Salza, goes over to Venice in 1210. 
 There the titular bishop of still unconverted Preussen advises 
 him of that field of work for his idle knights. Hermann 
 thinks well of it : sets his St. Mary's riders at Triglaph, with 
 the sword in one hand and a missal in the other. 
 
 Not your modern way of affecting conversion ! Too illib- 
 eral, you think ; and what w T ould Mr. J. S. Mill say ? 
 
 But if Triglaph had been verily " three whales' cubs 
 combined by boiling, " you would yourself have promoted 
 attack upon him for the sake of his oil, would not you ? The 
 Teutsch Hitters, fighting him for charity, are they so much 
 inferior to you ? 
 
 They built, and burnt, innumerable stockades for and 
 against ; built wooden forts which are now stone towns. They 
 fought much and prevalently ; galloped desperately to and fro, 
 ever on the alert. In peaceabler ulterior times, they fenced 
 in the Nogat and the Weichsel with dams, whereby unlimited 
 quagmire might become grassy meadow — as it continues to 
 this day. Marie u burg (Mary's Burg), with its grand stone 
 Schloss still visible and even habitable : this was at length 
 their headquarter. But how many Burgs of wood and stone 
 they built, in different parts ; what revolts, surprisals, furious 
 fights in woody, boggy places they had, no man has counted. 
 
 But always some preaching by zealous monks, accompanied 
 the chivalrous fighting. And colonists came in from Germany ; 
 trickling in, or at times streaming. Victorious Eitterdom 
 offers terms to the beaten heathen : terms not of tolerant 
 nature, but which will be punctually kept by Eitterdom. When 
 the flame of revolt or general conspiracy burnt up again too 
 extensively, high personages came on crusade to them. Otto- 
 car, King of Bohemia, with his extensive far-shining chivalry, 
 " conquered Samland in a month ; " tore up the Eomova where 
 Adalbert had been massacred, and burned it from the face of 
 the earth. A certain fortress was founded at that time, in 
 Ottocar s presence ; and in honor of him they named it King's 
 
44G 
 
 THE GROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Portress, " Konigsberg." Among King Ottocar's esquires, 
 or subaltern junior officials, on this occasion, is one Budolf, 
 heir of a poor Swiss lordship and gray hill castle, called 
 Hapsburg, rather in reduced circumstances, whom Ottocar 
 likes for his prudent, hardy ways ; a stout, modest, wise 
 young man, who may chance to redeem Hapsburg a little, if 
 he lives. 
 
 Conversion, and complete conquest once come, there was a 
 happy time for Prussia ; ploughshare instead of sword : busy 
 sea-havens, German towns, getting built ; churches everywhere 
 rising ; grass growing, and peaceable cows, where formerly had 
 been quagmire and snakes, and for the Order a happy time. 
 On the whole, this Teutsch Bittcrdom, for the first century 
 and more, was a grand phenomenon, and flamed like a bright 
 blessed beacon through the night of things, in those Northern 
 countries. For above a century, we perceive, it was the rally- 
 ing place of all brave men who had a career to seek on terms 
 other than vulgar. The noble soul, aiming beyond money, 
 and sensible to more than hunger in this world, had a beacon 
 burning (as we say), if the night chanced to overtake it, and 
 the earth to grow too intricate, as is not uncommon. Bet- 
 ter than the career of stump-oratory, I should fancy, and its 
 Hesperides apples, golden, and of gilt horse-dung. Better than 
 puddling away one's poor spiritual gift of God (loan, not gift), 
 such as it may be, in building the lofty rhyme, the lofty re- 
 view article, for a discerning public that has sixpence to spare ! 
 Times alter greatly.* 
 
 We must pause here again for a moment to think where we 
 are, and who is with us. The Teutsch Hitters have been fight- 
 iug, independently of all states, for their own hand, or St. 
 Adalbert's ; partly for mere love of fight, partly for love of 
 order, partly for love of God. Meantime, other Eiders have 
 been fighting wholly for what they could get by it ; and other 
 persons, not Eiders, have not been fighting at all, but in their 
 own towns peacefully manufacturing and selling. 
 
 Of Henry the Fowler's Marches, Austria has become a mili- 
 tary power, Flanders a mercantile one, pious only in the degree 
 consistent with their several occupations. Prussia is now a 
 
 * I would much rather print these passages of Carlyle in large golden 
 letters than small black ones ; but they are only here at all for unlucky 
 people who can't read them with the context. 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 447 
 
 practical and farming country, more Christian than its longer- 
 converted neighbors. 
 
 Towns are built, Konigsberg (King Ottocar's town), Thoren 
 (Thorn, City of the Gates), with many others ; so that the wild 
 population and the tame now lived tolerably together, under 
 Gospel and Ltibeck law ; and all was ploughing and trading. 
 
 But Brandenburg itself, what of it? 
 
 The Ascanien Markgraves rule it on the whole prosperously 
 down to 1320, when their line expires, and it falls into the 
 power of Imperial Austria. 
 
 IX. 
 
 1320-1415. — Brandenburg under the Austrians. 
 
 A century — the fourteenth — of miserable anarchy and de- 
 cline for Brandenburg, its Kurfursts, in deadly succession, 
 making what they can out of it for their own pockets. The 
 city itself and its territory utterly helpless. Read pp. 180, 181 
 (129, 130). " The towns suffered much, any trade they might 
 have had going to wreck. Robber castles flourished, all else 
 decayed, no highway safe. What are Hamburg pedlars made 
 for but to be robbed?" 
 
 X. 
 
 1415-1440. — Brandenburg under Friedrich of Nuremberg. 
 
 This is the fourth of the men whom you are to remember as 
 creators of the Prussian monarchy, Henry the Fowler, St. 
 Adalbert, Albert the Bear, of Ascanien, and Friedrich of Nu- 
 remberg ; (of Hohenzollern, by name, and by country, of the 
 Black Forest, north of the Lake of Constance). 
 
 Brandenburg is sold to him at Constance, during the great 
 Council, for about 200,000/. of our money, worth perhaps 
 a million in that day; still, with its capabilities, "dog 
 cheap/' Admitting, what no one at the time denied, the gen- 
 
448 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 eral niarketableness of states as private property, this is the 
 one practical result, thinks Carlyle (not likely to think 
 wrong), of that oecumenical deliberation, four years long, of 
 the ' ' elixir of the intellect and dignity of Europe. And that 
 one thing was not its doing ; but a pawnbroking job, inter- 
 calated/' putting, however, at last, Brandenburg again under 
 the will of one strong man. On St. John's day, 1412, he first 
 set foot in his town, " and Brandenburg, under its wise Kur- 
 fiirst, begins to be cosmic again." The story of Heavy Peg, 
 pages 195-198 (138, 140), is one of the most brilliant and im- 
 portant passages of the first volume ; page 199, specially to 
 our purpose, must be given entire : — 
 
 The offer to be Kaiser was made him in his old days ; but 
 he wisely declined that too. It was in Brandenburg, by 
 what he silently founded there, that he did his chief benefit 
 to Germany and mankind. He understood the noble art of 
 governing men ; had in him the justness, clearness, valor, 
 and patience needed for that. A man of sterling probity, for 
 one thing. Which indeed is the first requisite in said art : — if 
 you will have your laws obeyed without mutiny, see well that 
 they be pieces of God Almighty's law ; otherwise all the ar- 
 tillery in the world will not keep down mutiny. 
 
 Friedrich ' 6 travelled much over Brandenburg;" looking 
 into everything with his own eyes ; making, I can well fancy, 
 innumerable crooked things straight ; reducing more and 
 more that famishing dog-kennel of a Brandenburg into a 
 fruitful arable field. His portraits represent a square-headed, 
 mild-looking, solid gentleman, with a certain twinkle of mirth 
 in the serious eyes of him. Except in those Hussite wars for 
 Kaiser Sigismund and the Beich, in which no man could pros- 
 per, he may be defined as constantly prosperous. To Bran- 
 denburg he was, very literally, the blessing of blessings ; re- 
 demption out of death into life. In the ruins of that old 
 Friesack Castle, battered down by Heavy Peg, antiquarian 
 science (if it had any eyes) might look for the taproot of the 
 Prussian nation, and the beginning of all that Brandenburg 
 has since grown to under the sun. 
 
 Which growth is now traced by Carlyle in its various bud- 
 ding and withering, under the succession of the twelve Elec- 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 449 
 
 tors, of whom Friedrich, with his heavy Peg, is first, and 
 Friedrich, first King of Prussia, grandfather of Friedrich the 
 Great, the twelfth. 
 
 XL 
 
 1415-1701. — Brandenburg under the Hohenzollem Kurfiirsts. 
 
 Book III. 
 
 Who the Hohenzollerns were, and how they came to power 
 in Nuremberg, is told in Chap. v. of Book II. 
 
 Their succession in Brandenburg is given in brief at page 
 377 (269). I copy it, in absolute barrenness of enumeration, 
 for our momentary convenience, here : 
 
 Friedrich 1st of Brandenburg (6th of Nuremberg), . 1412-1440 
 
 Friedrich II., called 44 Iron Teeth," . . .1440-1472 
 
 Albert, 1472-1486 
 
 Johann, 1486-1499 
 
 Joachim I, 1499-1535 
 
 Joachim II, 1535-1571 
 
 Johann George, 1571-1598 
 
 Joachim Friedrich, 1598-1608 
 
 Johann Sigismund, 1608-1619 
 
 George Wilhelm, . 1619-1640 
 
 Friedrich Wilhelm (the Great Elector), . . . 1640-1688 
 
 Friedrich, first King ; crowned 18th January, . 1701 
 
 Of this line of princes we have to say they followed gener- 
 ally in their ancestor's steps, and had success of the like kind 
 more or less ; Hohenzollerns all of them, by character and be- 
 haviour as well as by descent. No lack of quiet energy, of 
 thrift, sound sense. There was likewise solid fair-play in 
 general, no founding of yourself on ground that will not 
 carry, and there was instant, gentle, but inexorable crushing of 
 mutiny, if it showed itself, which after the Second Elector, or 
 at most the Third, it had altogether ceased to do. 
 
 This is the general account of them ; of special matters 
 note the following : — 
 
 II. Friedrich, called "Iron- teeth," from his firmness, proves 
 
450 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 a notable manager and governor. Builds the palace at Ber~ 
 lin in its first form, and makes it his chief residence. Buys 
 Neumark from the fallen Teutsch Bitters, and generally es- 
 tablishes things on securer footing. 
 
 III. Albert, " a fiery, tough old Gentlemen," called the 
 Achilles of Germany in his day ; has half-a-century of fight- 
 ing with his own Niirembergers, with Bavaria, France, Bur- 
 gundy, and its fiery Charles, besides being head constable to 
 the Kaiser among any disorderly persons in the East. His 
 skull, long shown on his tomb, " marvellous for strength and 
 with no visible sutures." 
 
 IV. John, the orator of his race ; (but the orations unre- 
 corded). His second son, Archbishop of Maintz, for whose 
 piece of memorable work see page 223 (143) and read in con- 
 nection with that the history of Margraf George, pp. 237- 
 241 (152-154), and the 8th chapter of the third book. 
 
 V. Joachim L, of little note ; thinks there has been enough 
 Reformation, and checks proceedings in a dull stubbornness, 
 causing him at least grave domestic difficulties. — Page 271 
 (173). 
 
 VI. Joachim II. Again active in the Reformation, and 
 staunch, 
 
 though generally in a cautious, weighty, never in a rash, 
 swift way, to the great cause of Protestantism and to all 
 good causes. He was himself a solemnly devout man ; deep, 
 awe-stricken reverence dwelling in his view of this universe. 
 Most serious, though with a jocose dialect, commonly having 
 a cheerful wit in speaking to men. Luther's books he called 
 his Seelenschatz, (soul's treasure) ; Luther and the Bible were 
 his chief reading. Fond of profane learning, too, and of the 
 useful or ornamental arts ; given to music, and " would him- 
 self sing aloud " when he had a melodious leisure hour. 
 
 VII. Johann George, a prudent thrifty Herr ; no mistresses, 
 no luxuries allowed ; at the sight of a new-fashioned coat 
 he would fly out on an unhappy youth and pack him from 
 his presence. Very strict in point of justice ; a peasant once 
 appealing to him in one of his inspection journeys through 
 the country — 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 451 
 
 " Grant me justice, Durchlaucht, against so and so ; I am 
 your Highness's born subject. " " Thou sliouldst have it, man, 
 wert thou a born Turk ! " answered Johann George. 
 
 Thus, generally, we find this line of Electors representing 
 in Europe the Puritan mind of England in a somewhat duller, 
 but less dangerous, form ; receiving what Protestantism 
 could teach of honesty and common sense, but not its anti- 
 Catholic fury, or its selfish spiritual anxiety. Pardon of sins 
 is not to be had from Tetzel ; neither, the Hohenzollern mind 
 advises with itself, from even Tetzel's master, for either the 
 buying, or the asking. On the whole, we had better commit 
 as few as possible, and live just lives and plain ones. 
 
 A conspicuous thrift, veracity, modest solidity, looks through 
 the conduct of this Herr ; a determined Protestant he too, as 
 indeed all the following were and are. 
 
 VIII. Joachim Friedrich. Gets hold of Prussia, which 
 hitherto, you observe, has always been spoken of as a separate 
 country from Brandenburg. March 11, 1605 — "squeezed his 
 way into the actual guardianship of Preussen and its imbe- 
 cile Duke, which was his by right." 
 
 For my own part, I do not trouble myself much about 
 these rights, never being able to make out any single one, to 
 begin with, except the right to keep everything and every 
 place about you in as good order as you can — Prussia, Po- 
 land, or what else. I should much like, for instance, just 
 now, to hear of any honest Cornish gentleman of the old 
 Drake breed taking a fancy to land in Spain, and trying what 
 he could make of his rights as far round Gibraltar as he 
 could enforce them. At all events, Master Joachim has some- 
 how got hold of Prussia ; and means to keep it. 
 
 IX. Johann Sigismund. Only notable for our economical 
 purposes, as getting the " guardianship " of Prussia confirmed 
 to him. The story at page 317 (226), " a strong flame of 
 cboler," indicates a new order of things among the knights of 
 Europe — "princely etiquettes melting all into smoke." Too 
 
452 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 literally so, that being one of the calamitous functions of the 
 plain lives we are living, and of the busy life our country is 
 living. In the Duchy of Cleve, especially, concerning which 
 legal dispute begins in Sigismund's time. And it is well 
 worth the lawyers' trouble, it seems. 
 
 It amounted, perhaps, to two Yorkshires in extent. A nat- 
 urally opulent country of fertile meadows, shipping capabili- 
 ties, metalliferous hills, and at this time, in consequence of 
 the Dutch-Spanish war, and the multitude of Protestant ref- 
 ugees, it was getting filled with ingenious industries, and 
 rising to be what it still is, the busiest quarter of Germany. 
 A country lowing with kine ; the hum of the flax-spindle 
 heard in its cottages in those old days — " much of the linen 
 called Hollands is made in Jiilich, and only bleached, 
 stamped, and sold by the Dutch," says Biisching. A country 
 in our days which is shrouded at short intervals with the due 
 canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with sounds of the anvil and 
 the loom. 
 
 The lawyers took two hundred and six years to settle the 
 question concerning this Duchy, and the thing Johann Sigis- 
 mund had claimed legally in 1609 was actually handed over 
 to Johann Sigismund's descendant in the seventh generation. 
 " These litigated duchies are now the Prussian provinces, 
 Jiilich, Berg, Cleve, and the nucleus of Prussia's possessions 
 in the Rhine country." 
 
 X. George Wilhelm. Bead pp. 325 to 327 (231, 233) on 
 this Elector and German Protestantism, now fallen cold, and 
 somewhat too little dangerous. But George Wilhelm is the 
 only weak prince of all the twelve. For another example 
 how the heart and life of a country depend upon its prince, 
 not on its council, read this, of Gustavus Adolphus, demand- 
 ing the cession of Spandau and Kilstrin : 
 
 Which cession Kurfiirst George Wilhelm, though giving 
 all his prayers to the good cause, could by no means grant. 
 Gustav had to insist, with more and more emphasis, advanc- 
 ing at last with military menace upon Berlin itself. He was 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 453 
 
 met by George Wilhelm and his Council, V in the woods of 
 Copenick," short way to the east of that city ; there George 
 Wilhelm and his Council wandered about, sending messages, 
 hopelessly consulting, saying among each other, " Que faire ? 
 ils ont des canons." For many hours so, round the inflexible 
 Gustav, who was there like a fixed mile-stone, and to all 
 questions and comers had only one answer. 
 
 On our special question of war and its consequences, read 
 this of the Thirty Years' one : 
 
 But on the whole, the grand weapon in it, and towards the 
 latter times, the exclusive one, was hunger. The opposing 
 armies tried to starve one another ; at lowest, tried each not 
 to starve. Each trying to eat the country or, at any rate, to 
 leave nothing eatable in it ; what that will mean for the 
 country we may consider. As the armies too frequently, and 
 the Kaiser's armies habitually, lived without commissariat, 
 often enough without pay, all horrors of war and of being a 
 seat of war, that have been since heard of, are poor to those 
 then practised, the detail of which is still horrible to read. 
 Germany, in all eatable quarters of it, had to undergo the 
 process ; tortured, torn to pieces, wrecked, and brayed as in 
 a mortar, under the iron mace of war. Brandenburg saw its 
 towns seized and sacked, its country populations driven to 
 despair by the one party and the other. Three times — first 
 in the Wallenstein-Mecklenburg times, while fire and sword 
 were the weapons, and again, twice over, in the ultimate 
 stages of the struggle, when starvation had become the 
 method — Brandenburg fell to be the principal theatre of con- 
 flict, where all forms of the dismal were at their height. In 
 1638, three years after that precious " Peace of Prag," 
 . . . the ravages of the starving Gallas and his Imperial- 
 ists excelled all precedent, . . . men ate human flesh, 
 nay, human creatures ate their own children. " Que faire ? 
 ils ont des canons ! 1 
 
 " We have now arrived at the lowest nadir point " (says 
 Carlyle) " of the history of Brandenburg under the Hohen- 
 zollerns. ,, Is this then all that Heavy Peg and our nine 
 Kurf firsts have done for us ? 
 
454 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Carlyle does not mean that ; but even he, greatest of his- 
 torians since Tacitus, is not enough careful to mark for us 
 the growth of national character, as distinct from the pros- 
 perity of dynasties. 
 
 A republican historian would think of this develop- 
 ment only, and suppose it to be possible without any dy- 
 nasties. 
 
 Which is indeed in a measure so, and the work now chiefly 
 needed in moral philosophy, as well as history, is an analysis 
 of the constant and prevalent, yet unthought of, influences, 
 which, without any external help from kings, and in a silent 
 and entirely necessary manner, form, in Sweden, in Bava- 
 ria, in the Tyrol, in the Scottish border, and on the French 
 sea-coast, races of noble peasants ; pacific, poetic, heroic, 
 Christian-hearted in the deepest sense, who may indeed 
 perish by sword or famine in any cruel thirty years' war, or 
 ignoble thirty years* peace, and yet leave such strength to 
 their children that the country, apparently ravaged into hope- 
 less ruin, revives, under any prudent king, as the cultivated 
 fields do under the spring rain. How the rock to which no 
 seed can cling, and which no rain can soften, is subdued into 
 the good ground which can bring forth its hundredfold, we 
 forget to watch, while we follow the footsteps of the sower, 
 or mourn the catastrophes of storm. All this while, the 
 Prussian earth — the Prussian soul — has been thus dealt 
 upon by successive fate ; and now, though laid, as it seems, 
 utterly desolate, it can be revived by a few years of wisdom 
 and of peace. 
 
 Vol. L Book III. Chap, xviii.— The Great Elector, Fried- 
 rich Wilhelm. Eleventh of the dynasty : — 
 
 There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man 
 of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circum- 
 stances. Political significance Brandenburg had none ; a 
 mere Protestant appendage, dragged about by a Papist Kai- 
 ser. His father's Prime Minister, as we have seen, was in the 
 interest of his enemies ; not Brandenburg's servant, but 
 Austria's. The very commandants of his fortresses, Com- 
 mandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey Fried- 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 455 
 
 rich Wilhelm on his accession ; " were bound to obey the 
 Kaiser in the first place." 
 
 For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by 
 hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser's part of which, 
 committed outrages new in human history. In a }^ear or two 
 hence, Brandenburg became again the theatre of business, 
 Austrian Gallas advancing thither again (1644) with intent 
 " to shut up Torstenson and his Swedes in Jutland." Gallas 
 could by no means do what he intended ; on the contrary, 
 he had to run from Torstenson — what feet could do ; was 
 hunted, he and his Merode Briider (beautiful inventors of 
 the "marauding" art), till they pretty much all died (ere- 
 pirten) says Kohler. No great loss to society, the death of 
 these artists, but we can fancy what their life, and especially 
 what the process of their dying, may have cost poor Branden- 
 burg again ! 
 
 Priedrich Wilhelm's aim, in this as in other emergencies, 
 was sun-clear to himself, but for most part dim to everybody 
 else. He had to walk very warily, Sweden on one hand of him, 
 suspicious Kaiser on the other : he had to wear semblances, 
 to be ready with evasive words, and advance noiselessly by 
 many circuits. More delicate operation could not be imag- 
 ined. But advance he did ; advance and arrive. With ex- 
 traordinary talent, diligence, and felicity the young man 
 wound himself out of this first fatal position, got those foreign 
 armies pushed out of his country, and kept them out. His 
 first concern had been to find some vestige of revenue, to put 
 that upon a clear footing, and by loans or otherwise to scrape 
 a little ready-money together. On the strength of ivhich a 
 small body of soldiers could be collected about him, and drilled 
 into real ability to fight and obey. This as a basis : on this 
 followed all manner of things, freedom from Swedish- Austrian 
 invasions, as the first thing. He was himself, as appeared 
 by-and-by, a fighter of the first quality, when it came to that ; 
 but never was willing to fight if he could help it. Preferred 
 rather to shift, manoeuvre, and negotiate, which he did in 
 most vigilant, adroit, and masterly manner. But by degrees 
 he had grown to have, and could maintain it, an army of 
 twenty-four thousand men, among the best troops then in 
 being. 
 
 To wear semblances, to be ready with evasive words, how is 
 this, Mr. Carlyle ? thinks perhaps the rightly thoughtful reader. 
 
456 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Yes, such things have to be. There are lies and lies, and 
 there are truths and truths. Ulysses cannot ride on the 
 ram's back, like Phryxus ; but must ride under his belly. 
 Eead also this, presently following : 
 
 Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm, who had shone 
 much in the battle of Warsaw, into which he was dragged 
 against his will, changed sides. An inconsistent, treacherous 
 man? Perhaps not, O reader ! perhaps a man advancing "in 
 circuits," the only way he has ; spirally, face now to east, now 
 to west, with his own reasonable private aim sun-clear to 
 him all the while ? 
 
 The battle of Warsaw, three days long, fought with Gus- 
 tavus, the grandfather of Charles XII., against the Poles, vir- 
 tually ends the Polish power : 
 
 Old Johann Casimir, not long after that peace of Oliva, 
 getting tired of his unruly Polish chivalry and their ways, 
 abdicated — retired to Paris, and "and lived much with Ninon 
 de l'Enclos and her circle/' for the rest of his life. He used 
 to complain of his Polish chivalry, that there was no solidity 
 in them ; nothing but outside glitter, with tumult and anar- 
 chic noise ; fatal want of one essential talent, the talent of 
 obeying ; and has been heard to prophesy that a glorious 
 Bepublic, persisting in such courses, would arrive at results 
 which would surprise it. 
 
 Onward from this time, Friedrich Wilhelm figures in the 
 world ; public men watching his procedure ; kings anxious 
 to secure him — Dutch print-sellers sticking up his portraits 
 for a hero-worshipping public. Fighting hero, had the pub- 
 lic known it, was not his essential character, though he had 
 to fight a great deal. He was essentially an industrial man ; 
 great in organizing, regulating, in constraining chaotic heaps 
 to become cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles colonies 
 in the waste places of his dominions, cuts canals ; unwea- 
 riedly encourages trade and work. The Friedrich Wilhelm's 
 Canal, which still carries tonnage from the Oder to the Spree, 
 is a monument of his zeal in this way ; creditable with the 
 means he had. To the poor French Protestants in the Edict- 
 of-Nantes affair, he was like an express benefit of Heaven ; 
 one helper appointed to whom the help itself was profit- 
 
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 457 
 
 able. He munificently welcomed them to Brandenburg ; 
 showed really a noble piety and human pity, as well as judg- 
 ment ; nor did Brandenburg and he want their reward. Some 
 twenty thousand nimble French souls, evidently of the best 
 French quality, found a home there ; made " waste sands 
 about Berlin into potherb gardens ; " and in spiritual Bran- 
 denburg, too, did something of horticulture which is still 
 noticeable. 
 
 Now read carefully the description of the man, p. 352 
 (224-5); the story of the battle of Fehrbellin, "the Mara- 
 thon of Brandenburg/' p. 354 (225) ; and of the winter cam- 
 paign of 1679, p. 356 (227), beginning with its week's 
 marches at sixty miles a day ; his wife, as always, being with 
 him : 
 
 Louisa, honest and loving Dutch girl, aunt to our William 
 of Orange, who trimmed up her own " Orange-burg " (coun- 
 try-house), twenty miles north of Berlin, into a little jewel of 
 the Dutch type, potherb gardens, training-schools for young 
 girls, and the like, a favorite abode of hers when she was at 
 liberty for recreation. But her life was busy and earnest ; 
 she was helpmate, not in name only, to an ever busy man. 
 They were married young ; a marriage of love withal. Young 
 Friedrich Wilbelm's courtship ; wedding in Holland ; the 
 honest, trustful walk and conversation of the two sovereign 
 spouses, their journeyings together, their mutual hopes, fears, 
 and manifold vicissitudes, till death, with stern beauty, shut 
 it in ; all is human, true, and wholesome in it, interesting to 
 look upon, and rare among sovereign persons. 
 
 Louisa died in 1667, twenty-one years before her husband, 
 who married again — (little to his contentment) — died in 1688 ; 
 and Louisa's second son, Friedrich, ten years old at his 
 mother's death, and now therefore thirty-one, succeeds, be- 
 coming afterwards Friedrich I. of Prussia. 
 
 And here we pause on two great questions. Prussia is 
 assuredly at this point a happier and better country than it 
 was, when inhabited by Wends. But is Friedrich I. a hap- 
 pier and better man than Henry the Fowler ? Have all these 
 kings thus improved their country, but never themselves? 
 
458 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Is this somewhat expensive and ambitious Herr, Friedrich I. 
 buttoned in diamonds, indeed the best that Protestantism 
 can produce, as against Fowlers, Bears, and Red Beards? 
 Much more, Friedrich Wilhelm, orthodox on predestination ; 
 most of all, his less orthodox son ; — have we, in these, the 
 highest results which Dr. Martin Luther can produce for the 
 present, in the first circles of society ? And if not, how is it 
 that the country, having gained so much in intelligence and 
 strength, lies more passively in their power than the baser 
 country did under that of nobler men ? 
 
 These, and collateral questions, I mean to work out as I 
 can, with Carlyle's good help ; — but must pause for this time ; 
 in doubt, as heretofore. Only of this one thing I doubt not, 
 that the name of all great kings, set over Christian nations, 
 must at last be, in fufilment, the hereditary one of these 
 German princes, " Rich in Peace ; " and that their coronation 
 will be with Wild olive, not with gold. 
 
THE 
 
 ETHICS OF THE DUST 
 
 TEN LECTURES 
 
 TO 
 
 LITTLE HOUSEWIVES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF CRYSTALLISATION 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 The Valley of Diamonds 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 The Pyramid Builders .... 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 The Crystal Life . 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 The Crystal Orders . . . • 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 Crystal Virtues .... 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 Crystal Quarrels • 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 Home Virtues . 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 Crystal Caprice ..... 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 Crystal Sorrows .... 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 The Crystal Rest ..... 
 
 Notes • • • • • • 
 
 Fiction— Fair and Foul 
 
 ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 On First Practice • . , 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Sketching from Nature 
 
 LETTER III, 
 On Colour and Composition 
 
 Appendix: Things to be Studied 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 FIGURE PAGB 
 
 1. Squares . . . . . • „ 237 
 
 2. Gradated Spaces ...... 241 
 
 3. Outline of Letter , 245 
 
 4. Outline of Bough of Tree ..... 248 
 
 5. Charred Log ...... 257 
 
 6. Shoot of Lilac ...... 272 
 
 7. Leaf ........ 274 
 
 8. Bough of Phillyrea ...... 275 
 
 9. Spray of Phillyrea ..... 276 
 
 10. Trunk of Tree, by Titian ..... 284 
 
 11. Sketch from Raphael , 285 
 
 12. Outlines of a Ball . . . . . ; 287 
 
 13. Woodcut of Durer's . 289 
 
 14. 15, 16. Masses of Leaves .... 290, 291 
 17, 18, 19. Curvatures in Leaves . . . 295, 296 
 
 20. From an Etching, by Turner . . . . .297 
 
 21. Alpine Bridge ...... 307 
 
 22. Alpine Bridge as it Appears at Various Distances . 308 
 
FIGURE PAGE 
 
 23. Outlines Expressive of Foliage . . . 314 
 
 24. Shoot of Spanish Chestnut . . . 315 
 25 Young Shoot of Oak . 316 
 26, 27, 28. Woodcuts after Titian . . .321, 322 
 
 29. Diagram of Window ...» 339 
 
 30. Swiss Cottage ....... 355 
 
 31. Groups of Leaves ...... 359 
 
 32. Painting, by Turner ...... 361 
 
 33. Sketch on Calais Sands, by Turner . . 365 
 
 34. Drawing of an Ileal Bridge, by Turner . . . 369 
 
 35. Profile of the Towers of Ehrenbreitstein . . 370 
 
 36. Curves . . . . . . . 37 1 
 
 37. 38, 39. Curves Found in Leaves .... 372 
 40. Outlines of a Tree Trunk . 373 
 41-44. Tree Radiation . 374, 375 
 45, 46. Woodcuts of Leaf ..... 376 
 
 47. Leaf of Columbine • 378 
 
 48. Top of an Old Tower . • . . . . 385 
 
PERSONAL 
 
 Old Lecturer (o£ incalculable age) 
 
 Florrie, on astronomical evidence presumed to be aged 9# 
 
 Luc ill A . "15. 
 
 Violet . . . . " 16. 
 
 Dora (who has the keys and is housekeeper) . . u 17. 
 
 Egypt (so called from her dark eyes) . . . 14 17. 
 
 Jessie (who somehow always makes the room look 
 
 brighter when she is in it) . . . . . " 18. 
 
 Mary (ol whom everybody, including the Old Lec- 
 turer, is in great awe) . . * # , . 41 20. 
 
 Isabel 
 May . 
 Lily . 
 Kathleen 
 
 " 11, 
 
 44 It 
 
 11 12. 
 
 44 14. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, 
 
 t have seldom been more disappointed by the result of my 
 best pains given to any of my books, than by the earnest 
 request of my publisher, after the opinion of the public had 
 been taken on the ' Ethics of the Dast,' that I would " write 
 no more in dialogue ! " However, I bowed to public judg- 
 ment in this matter at once, (kaowing also my inventive 
 powers to be of the feeblest,) ; but in reprinting the book, 
 (at the prevailing request of my kind friend, Mr. Henry Wil- 
 lett,) I would pray the readers whom it may at first offend by 
 its disconnected method, to examine, nevertheless, with care, 
 the passages in which the principal speaker sums the conclu- 
 sions of any dialogue : for these summaries were written as 
 introductions, for young people, to all that I have said on the 
 same matters in my larger books ; and, on re-reading them, 
 they satisfy me better, and seem to me calculated to be more 
 generally useful, than anything else I have done of the kind. 
 
 The summary of the contents of the whole book, beginning, 
 4 'You may at least earnest]y believe," at p. 130, is thus the 
 clearest exposition I have ever yet given of the general con- 
 ditions under which the Personal Creative Power manifests 
 itself in the forms of matter ; and the analysis of heathen con- 
 ceptions of Deity, beginning at p. 131, and closing at p. 138, 
 not only prefaces, but very nearly supersedes, all that in more 
 lengthy terms I have since asserted, or pleaded for, in ' Ara* 
 tra Pentelici,' and the ' Queen of the Air.' 
 
6 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 And thus, however the book may fail in its intention of 
 suggesting new occupations or interests to its younger read- 
 ers, I think it worth reprinting, in the way I have also re- 
 printed ' Unto this Last/ — page for page ; that the students 
 of my more advanced works may be able to refer to these as 
 the original documents of them ; of which the most essential 
 in this book are these following. 
 
 I. The explanation of the baseness of the avaricious func- 
 tions of the Lower Pthah, p. 39, with his beetle-gospel, p. 41, 
 " that a nation can stand on its vices better than on its vir- 
 tues/' explains the main motive of all my books on Political 
 Economy. 
 
 II. The examination of the connexion between stupidity 
 and crime, pp. 57-62, anticipated all that I have had to urge 
 in Fors Clavigera against the commonly alleged excuse for 
 public wickedness, — " They don't mean it — they don't know 
 any better." 
 
 III. The examination of the roots of Moral Power, pp. 
 90-92, is a summary of what is afterwards developed with 
 utmost care in my inaugural lecture at Oxford on the rela- 
 tion of Art to Morals ; compare in that lecture, §§ 83-85, with 
 the sentence in p. 91 of this book, " Nothing is ever done so 
 as really to please our Father, unless we would also have done 
 it, though we had had no Father to know of it." 
 
 This sentence, however, it must be observed, regards only 
 the general conditions of action in the children of God, in 
 consequence of which it is foretold of them by Christ that 
 they will say at the Judgment, " When saw we thee ? " It 
 does not refer to the distinct cases in which virtue consists in 
 faith given to command, appearing to foolish human judg- 
 ment inconsistent with the Moral Law, as in the sacrifice of 
 Isaac ; nor to those in which any directly -given command re- 
 quires nothing more of virtue than obedience. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 7 
 
 IV. The subsequent pages, 92-97, were written especially 
 to check the dangerous impulses natural to the minds of many 
 amiable young women, in the direction of narrow and selfish 
 religious sentiment : and they contain, therefore, nearly 
 everything which I believe it necessary that young people 
 should be made to observe, respecting the errors of monastic 
 life. But they in nowise enter on the reverse, or favourable 
 side : of which indeed I did not, and as yet do not, feel my- 
 self able to speak with any decisiveness ; the evidence on that 
 side, as stated in the text, having " never yet been dispassion- 
 ately examined." 
 
 V. The dialogue w T ith Lucilla, beginning at p. 63, is, to 
 my own fancy, the best bit of conversation in the book, and 
 the issue of it. at p. 67, the most practically and immedi- 
 ately useful. For on the idea of the inevitable weakness and 
 corruption of human nature, has logically followed, in our 
 daily life, the horrible creed of modern " Social science," that 
 all social action must be scientifically founded on vicious im- 
 pulses. But on the habit of measuring and reverencing our 
 powers and talents that we may kindly use them, will be 
 founded a true Social science, developing, by the employ- 
 ment of them, all the real powers and honourable feelings of 
 the race. 
 
 VI. Finally, the account given in the second and third lect- 
 ures, of the real nature and marvellousness of the laws of 
 crystallization, is necessary to the understanding of what 
 farther teaching of the beauty of inorganic form I may bo 
 able to give, either in ' Deucalion,' or in my ' Elements of 
 Drawing.' I wish however that the second lecture had been 
 made the beginning of the book ; and would fain now cancel 
 the first altogether, which I perceive to be both obscure and 
 dull. It was meant for a metaphorical description of the 
 pleasures and dangers in the kingdom of Mammon, or of 
 
s 
 
 PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 worldly wealth ; its waters mixed with blood, its fruits en- 
 tangled in thickets of trouble, and poisonous when gathered ; 
 and the final captivity of its inhabitants within frozen walls of 
 cruelty and disdain. But the imagery is stupid and ineffec- 
 tive throughout ; and I retain this chapter only because I am 
 resolved to leave no room for any one to say that I have with- 
 drawn, as erroneous in principle, so much as a single sentence 
 of any of my books written since 1860. 
 
 One license taken in this book, however, though often per- 
 mitted to essay- writers for the relief of their dulness, I never 
 mean to take more, — the relation of composed metaphor as of 
 actual dream, pp. 23 and 104. I assumed, it is true, that in 
 these places the supposed dream would be easily seen to be 
 an invention ; but must not any more, even under so trans- 
 parent disguise, pretend to any share in the real powers of 
 Vision possessed by great poets and true painters. 
 
 Brantwood : 
 
 10th October, 1877. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following lectures were really given, in substance, at a 
 girls' school (far in the country) ; which in the course of vari- 
 ous experiments on the possibility of introducing some better 
 practice of drawing into the modern scheme of female educa- 
 tion, I visited frequently enough to enable the children to re- 
 gard me as a friend. The lectures always fell more or less 
 into the form of fragmentary answers to questions ; and they 
 are allowed to retain that form, as, on the whole, likely to be 
 more interesting than the symmetries of a continuous treatise. 
 Many children (for the school was large) took part, at different 
 times, in the conversations ; but I have endeavoured, without 
 confusedly multiplying the number of imaginary * speakers, 
 to represent, as far as I could, the general tone of comment 
 and enquiry among young people. 
 
 It will be at once seen that these Lectures were not intended 
 for an introduction to mineralogy. Their purpose was merely 
 to awaken in the minds of young girls, who were ready to work 
 earnestly and systematically, a vital interest in the subject of 
 their study. No science can be learned in play ; but it is often 
 possible, in play, to bring good fruit out of past labour, or 
 show sufficient reasons for the labour of the future. 
 
 * I do not mean, in saying * imaginary,' that I have not permitted to 
 myself, in several instances, the affectionate discourtesy of some remi- 
 niscence of personal character ; for which I must hope to be forgiven by 
 my old pupils and their friends, as I could not otherwise have written 
 the book at all. But only two sentences in all the dialogues, and the 
 anecdote of * Dotty,' are literally 'historical.' 
 
10 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The narrowness of this aim does not, indeed, justify the ab* 
 sence of all reference to many important principles of struct* 
 ure, and many of the most interesting* orders of minerals ; but 
 I felt it impossible to go far into detail without illustrations ; 
 and if readers find this book useful, I may, perhaps, endeavour 
 to supplement it by illustrated notes of the more interesting 
 phenomena in separate groups of familiar minerals ; — flints of 
 the chalk ; — agates of the basalts ; — and the fantastic and ex- 
 quisitely beautiful varieties of the vein-ores of the two com- 
 monest metals, lead and iron. But I have always found that 
 the less we speak of our intentions, the more chance there is 
 of our realizing them ; and this poor little book will suffi- 
 ciently have done its work, for the present, if it engages any 
 of its young readers in study which may enable them to de« 
 spise it for its shortcomings. 
 
 Denmakk Hill : 
 
 Ckmtmm, 186-5. 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 
 A very idle talk, by the dining-room fire, after raisin -and-almond time. 
 
 Old Lecturer ; Florrie, Isabel, May, Lily, and Sibyl. 
 
 Old Lecturer (L.). Come here, Isabel, and tell me what 
 the make-believe was, this afternoon. 
 
 Isabel (arranging herself very primly on the j bot-stool). Such 
 a dreadful one ! Florrie and I were lost in the Yalley of 
 Diamonds. 
 
 L. What ! Sindbads, which nobody could get out of ? 
 Isabel. Yes ; but Florrie and I got out of it. 
 L. So I see. At least, I see you did ; but are you sure 
 Florrie did ? 
 
 Isabel. Quite sure. 
 
 Florrie (putting her head round from behind L.'s sofa* 
 cushion). Quite sure. (Disappears again.) 
 
 L. I think I could be made to feel surer about it, 
 
 (Florrie reappears, gives L. a kiss, and again exit.) 
 
 L. I suppose it's all right ; but how did you manage it ? 
 
 Isabel. Well, you know, the eagle that took up Sindbad was 
 very large — very, very large — the largest of all the eagles. 
 
 L. How large were the others ? 
 
 Isabel. I don't quite know — they were so far off. But this 
 one was, oh, so big ! and it had great wings, as wide as — 
 twice over the ceiling. So, when it was picking up Sindbad, 
 Florrie and I thought it wouldn't know if we got on its back 
 too : so I got up first, and then I pulled up Florrie, and we 
 put our arms round its neck, and away it new. 
 
12 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 L. But why did you want to get out of the valley ? and 
 why haven't you brought me some diamonds ? 
 
 Isabel. It was because of the serpents. I couldn't pick up 
 even the least little bit of a diamond, I was so frightened. 
 
 L. You should not have minded the serpents. 
 
 Isabel. Oh, but suppose that they had minded me ? 
 
 L. We all of us mind you a little too much, Isabel, Tm 
 afraid. 
 
 Isabel. No — no — no, indeed. 
 
 L. I tell you what, Isabel — I don't believe either Sindbad, 
 or Florrie, or you, ever were in the Valley of Diamonds. 
 Isabel. You naughty ! when I tell you we were ! 
 L. Because you say you were frightened at the serpents. 
 Isabel. And wouldn't you have been ? 
 
 L. Not at those serpents. Nobody who really goes into 
 the valley is ever frightened at them — they are so beautiful. 
 
 Isabel (suddenly serious). But there's no real Valley of Dia- 
 monds, is there ? 
 
 L. Yes, Isabel ; very real indeed. 
 
 Florrie (reappearing). Oh, where ? Tell me about it. 
 
 L. I cannot tell you a great deal about it ; only I know it 
 is very different from Sindbad's. In his valley, there was 
 only a diamond lying here and there ; but, in the real valley, 
 there are diamonds covering the grass in showers every morn- 
 ing, instead of dew : and there are clusters of trees, which 
 look like lilac trees ; but, in spring, all their blossoms are of 
 amethyst, 
 
 Florrie. But there can't be any serpents there, then ? 
 L. Why not? 
 
 Florrie. Because they don't come into such beautiful 
 places. 
 
 L. I never said it w T as a beautiful place. 
 Florrie. What ! not with diamonds strewed about it like 
 dew ? 
 
 L. That's according to your fancy, Florrie. For myself, X 
 like dew better. 
 
 Ibabel. Oh, but the dew won't stay ; it all dries ! 
 
 L. Yes ; and it would be much nicer if the diamonds dried 
 
THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 
 
 13 
 
 too, for the people in the valley have to sweep them off the 
 grass, in heaps, whenever they want to walk on it ; and then 
 the heaps glitter so, they hurt one's eyes. 
 
 Floerie. Now you're just playing, you know. 
 
 L. So are you, you know. 
 
 Florrie. Yes, but you mustn't play. 
 
 L. That's very hard, Florrie ; why mustn't I, if you may ? 
 
 Florrie. Oh, I may, because I'm little, but you mustn't, be- 
 cause you're — (hesitates for a delicate expression of magnitude). 
 
 L. (rudely taking the first that comes). Because I'm big? 
 No ; that's not the way of it at all, Florrie. Because you're 
 little, you should have very little play ; and because I'm big 
 I should have a great deal. 
 
 Isabel and, Florrie (both). No — no — no — no. That isn't it 
 at all. (Isabel sola, quoting Hiss Ingelow.) ' The lambs play 
 always — they know no better.' (Putting her head very much 
 on one side.) Ah, now — please — please — tell us true ; we 
 want to know. 
 
 L. But why do you want me to tell you true, any more 
 than the man who wrote the 'Arabian Nights?' 
 
 Isabel. Because — because we like to know about real 
 things ; and you can tell us, and we can't ask the man who 
 wrote the stories. 
 
 L. What do you call real things ? 
 
 Isabel. Now, you know! Things that really are. 
 
 L. Whether you can see them or not ? 
 
 Isabel. Yes, if somebody else saw them. 
 
 L. But if nobody has ever seen them ? 
 
 Isabel (evading the point). Well, but, you know, if there 
 were a real Valley of Diamonds, somebody must have seen it, 
 
 L. You cannot be so sure of that, Isabel. Many people go 
 to real places, and never see them ; and many people pass 
 through this valley, and never see it. 
 
 Florrie. What stupid people they must be ! 
 
 L. No, Florrie. They are much wiser than the people 
 who do see it. 
 
 May. I think I know where it is. 
 
 Isabel. Tell us more about it, and then we'll guess. 
 
14 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 L. Well. There's a great broad road, by a river-side, lead 
 ing up into it. 
 
 May {gravely cunning, with emphasis on the last word). 
 Does the road really go up f 
 
 L. You think it should go down into a valley ? No, it goes 
 ap ; this is a valley among the hills, and it is as high as the 
 clouds, and is often full of them ; so that even the people who 
 most want to see it, cannot, always. 
 
 Isabel. And what is the river beside the road like ? 
 
 L. It ought to be very beautiful, because it flows over 
 diamond sand — only the water is thick and red. 
 
 Isabel. Red w r ater ? 
 
 L. It isn't all water. 
 
 May. Oh, please never mind that, Isabel, just now ; I want 
 to hear about the valley. 
 
 L. So the entrance to it is very wide, under a steep rock ; 
 only such numbers of people are always trying to get in, that 
 they keep jostling each other, and manage it but slowly. 
 Some weak ones are pushed back, and never get in at all ; 
 and make great moaning as they go away : but perhaps they 
 are none the worse in the end. 
 
 May. And when one gets in, what is it like ? 
 
 L. It is up and down, broken kind of ground : the road 
 stops directly ; and there are great dark rocks, covered all 
 over with wild gourds and wild vines ; the gourds, if you cut 
 them, are red, with black seeds, like water-melons, and look 
 ever so nice ; and the people of the place make a red pottage 
 of them : but you must take care not to eat any if you ever 
 want to leave the valley (though I believe putting plenty of 
 meal in it makes it wholesome). Then the wild vines have 
 clusters of the colour of amber ; and the people of the coun- 
 try say they are the grape of Eshcol ; and sweeter than honey . 
 but, indeed, if anybody else tastes them, they are like gall. 
 Then there are thickets of bramble, so thorny that they would 
 be cut away directly, anywhere else ; but here they are cov- 
 ered with little cinque-foiled blossoms of pure silver ; and, 
 for berries, they have clusters of rubies. Dark rubies, which 
 you only see are red after gathering them. But you maj 
 
THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 
 
 15 
 
 fancy what blackberry parties the children have ! Only they 
 get their frocks and hands sadly torn. 
 
 Lily. But rubies can't spot one's frocks as blackberries 
 do? 
 
 L. No ; but I'll tell you what spots them — the mulberries. 
 There are great forests of them, all up the hills, covered with 
 silkworms, some munching the leaves so loud that it is like 
 mills at work ; and some spinning. But the berries are the 
 blackest you ever saw ; and, wherever they fall, they stain a 
 deep red ; and nothing ever washes it out again. And it is 
 their juice, soaking through the grass, which makes the river 
 so red, because all its springs are in this wood. And the 
 boughs of the trees are twisted, as if in pain, like old olive 
 branches ; and their leaves are dark. And it is in these 
 forests that the serpents are ; but nobody is afraid of them. 
 They have fine crimson crests, and they are wreathed about 
 the wild branches, one in every tree, nearly ; and they are 
 singing serpents, for the serpents are, in this forest, what 
 birds are in ours. 
 
 Florrie. Oh, I don't want to go there at all, now. 
 
 L. You would like it very much indeed, Florrie, if you 
 were there. The serpents would not bite you ; the only fear 
 would be of your turning into one ! 
 
 Florrie. Oh, dear, but that's worse. 
 
 L. You wouldn't think so if you really were turned into 
 one, Florrie ; you would be very proud of your crest. And 
 as long as you were yourself (not that you could get there if 
 you remained quite the little Florrie you are now), you would 
 like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss a little through it, 
 like the cicadas in Italy ; but they keep good time, and sing 
 delightful melodies ; and most of them have seven heads, 
 with throats which each take a note of the octave ; so that 
 they can sing chords — it is very fine indeed. And the fire- 
 flies fly round the edge of the forests all the night long ; you 
 wade in fireflies, they make the fields look like a lake trem- 
 bling with reflection of stars ; but you must take care not to 
 touch them, for they are not like Italian fireflies, but bum- 
 like real sparks. 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 Florrie. I don't like it at all ; I'll never go there. 
 
 L. I hope not, Florrie ; or at least that you will get out 
 again if you do. And it is very difficult to get out, for beyond 
 these serpent forests there are great cliffs of dead gold, which 
 form a labyrinth, winding always higher and higher, till the 
 gold is all split asunder by wedges of ice ; and glaciers, welded, 
 half of ice seven times frozen, and half of gold seven times 
 frozen, hang down from them, and fall in thunder, cleaving 
 into deadly splinters, like the Cretan arrowheads ; and into 
 a mixed dust of snow and gold, ponderous, yet which the 
 mountain whirlwinds are able to lift and drive in wreaths 
 and pillars, hiding the paths with a burial cloud, fatal at once 
 with wintry chill, and weight of golden ashes. So the wan- 
 derers in the labyrinth fall, one by one, and are buried there: 
 ■ — yet, over the drifted graves, those who are spared climb to 
 the last, through coil on coil of the path ;— for at the end of it 
 they see the king of the valley, sitting on his throne : and be- 
 side him (but it is only a false vision), spectra of creatures 
 like themselves, set on thrones, from which they seem to look 
 down on all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of 
 them. And on the canopy of his throne there is an inscrip- 
 tion in fiery letters, which they strive to read, but cannot ; for 
 it is written in words which are like the words of all languages, 
 and yet are of none. Men say it is more like their own 
 tongue to the English than it is to any other nation ; but the 
 only record of it is by an Italian, who heard the King him - 
 self cry it as a war cry, 'Pape Satan, Pape Satan Aleppe.' * 
 
 Sibyl. But do they all perish there ? You said there was 
 a way through the valley, and out of it. 
 
 L. Yes ; but few find it. If any of them keep to the grass 
 paths, where the diamonds are swept aside ; and hold their 
 hands over their eyes so as not to be dazzled, the grass paths 
 lead forward gradually to a place where one sees a little open- 
 ing in the golden rocks. You were at Chamouni last year, 
 Sibyl ; did your guide chance to show you the pierced rock 
 of the Aiguille du Midi ? 
 
 Sibyl. No, indeed, we only got up from Geneva on Monday 
 * Dante, Inf. 7. 1. 
 
THE VALLEY GF DIAMONDS. 
 
 11 
 
 night ; and it rained all Tuesday ; and we had to be back at 
 Geneva again, early on Wednesday morning. 
 
 L. Of course. That is the way to see a country in a Sibyl- 
 line manner, by inner consciousness : but you might have 
 seen the pierced rock in your drive up, or down, if the clouds 
 broke : not that there is much to see in it ; one of the crags 
 of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it, is struck 
 sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole ; which 
 you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley (as the 
 clouds flit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and 
 then dark blue. Well, there's just such an eyelet hole in one 
 of the upper crags of the Diamond Valley ; and, from a dis- 
 tance, you think that it is no bigger than the eye of a needle. 
 But if you get up to it, they say you may drive a loaded camel 
 through it, and that there are fine things on the other side, 
 but I have never spoken with anybody who had been through. 
 
 Sibyl. I think we understand it now. We will try to write 
 it down, and think of it. 
 
 L. Meantime, Florrie, though all that I have been telling 
 you is very true, yet you must not think the sort of diamonds 
 that people wear in rings and necklaces are found lying about 
 on the grass. Would you like to see how they really are 
 found ? 
 
 Florrie. Oh, yes — yes. 
 
 L. Isabel — or Lily — run up to my room and fetch me the 
 little box with a glass lid, out of the top drawer of the chest 
 of drawers. {Race between Lily and Isabel.) 
 
 (Re-enter Isabel with the box, very much out of breath. Lily 
 behind.) 
 
 L. W T hy, you never can beat Lily in a race on the stairs, can 
 you, Isabel? 
 
 Isabel (panting). Lily — beat me — ever so far— but she gave 
 in 3 — the box — to carry in. 
 
 L. Take off the lid, then ; gently. 
 
 Florrie (after peeping in, disappointed). There's only a greai 
 ugly brown stone ! 
 
 L. Not much more than that, certainly, Florrie, if people 
 were wise. But look, it is not a single stone ; but a knot of 
 
18 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 pebbles fastened together by gravel ; and in the gravel, oi 
 compressed sand, if you look close, you will see grains of gold 
 glittering everywhere, all through ; and then, do you see these 
 two white beads, which shine, as if they had been covered 
 with grease ? 
 
 Floerie. May I touch them ? 
 
 L. Yes ; you will find they are not greasy, only very smooth* 
 Well, those are the fatal jewels ; native here in their dust with 
 gold, so that you may see, cradled here, together, the two great 
 enemies of mankind, — the strongest of all malignant physical 
 powers that have tormented our race. 
 
 Sibyl. Is that really so ? I know they do great harm ; but 
 do they not also do great good ? 
 
 L. My dear child, what good ? Was any woman, do you 
 suppose, ever the better for possessing diamonds ? but how 
 many have been made base, frivolous, and miserable by desir- 
 ing them? Was ever man the better for having coffers full of 
 gold? But who shall measure the guilt that is incurred to 
 fill them ? Look into the history of any civilised nations ; an- 
 alyse, with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, 
 the lives and thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, and 
 men of luxurious life. Every other temptation is at last con- 
 centrated into this ; pride, and last, and envy, and anger all 
 give up their strength to avarice. The sin of the whole world 
 is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not disbelieve their 
 Christ ; but they sell Him. 
 
 Sibyl. But surely that is the fault of human nature ? it is 
 not caused by the accident, as ifc were, of there being a pretty 
 metal, like gold, to be found by digging. If people could not 
 find that, would they not find something else, and quarrel for 
 it instead ? 
 
 L. No. Wherever legislators have succeeded in excluding, 
 for a time, jewels and precious metals from among national 
 possessions, the national spirit has remained healthy. Cove- 
 tousness is not natural to man — generosity is ; but covetous- 
 ness must be excited by a special cause, as a given disease by 
 a given miasma ; and the essential nature of a material for the 
 Excitement of covetousness is, that it shall be a beautiful thing 
 
THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 
 
 19 
 
 which can bo retained without a use. The moment we can use 
 our possessions to any good purpose ourselves, the instinct of 
 communicating that use to others rise3 side by side with out 
 power. If you can read a book rightly, you will want others 
 to hear it ; if you can enjoy a picture rightly, you will want 
 others to see it : learn how to manage a horse, a plough, or a 
 ship, and you will desire to make your subordinates good 
 horsemen, ploughmen, or sailors ; you will never be able to 
 see the fine instrument you are master of, abused ; but, once 
 fix your desire on anything useless, and all the purest pride 
 and folly in your heart will mix with the desire, and make you 
 at last wholly inhuman, a mere ugly lump of stomach and 
 suckers, like a cuttle-fish. 
 
 Sibyl. But surely, these two beautiful things, gold and dia^ 
 inoncls, must have been appointed to some good purpose ? 
 
 L. Quite conceivably so, my dear : as also earthquakes and 
 pestilences ; but of such ultimate purposes we can have no 
 sight. The practical, immediate office of the earthquake and 
 pestilence is to slay us, like moths ; and, as moths, we shall be 
 wise to live out of their w T ay. So, the practical, immediate 
 office of gold and diamonds is the multiplied destruction of 
 souls (in whatever sense you have been taught to understand 
 that phrase) ; and the paralysis of wholesome human effort 
 and thought on the face of God's earth : and a wise nation 
 will live out of the way of them. The money which the Eng- 
 lish habitually spend in cutting diamonds w r ould, in ten years, 
 if it were applied to cutting rocks instead, leave no dangerous 
 reef nor difficult harbour round the whole island coast Great 
 Britain would be a diamond worth cutting, indeed, a true 
 piece of regalia. (Leaves this to their thoughts for a little while.) 
 Then, also, w r e poor mineralogists might sometimes have the 
 chance of seeing a fine crystal of diamond unhacked by the 
 jeweller. 
 
 Sibyl. "Would it be more beautiful uncut ? 
 L. No ; but of infinite interest. We might even come to 
 know something about the making of diamonds. 
 
 Sibyl. I thought the chemists could make them already ? 
 L. In very small black crystals, yes; but no one knows how 
 
20 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 they are formed where they are found ; or if indeed they are 
 formed there at ah. These, in my hand, look as if they had 
 been swept dow T n with the gravel and gold ; only we can trace 
 the gravel and gold to their native rocks, but not the dia- 
 monds. Read the account given of the diamond in any good 
 wwk on mineralogy ; — you will find nothing but lists of locals 
 ties of gravel, or conglomerate rock (which is only an old in- 
 durated gravel). Some say it was once a vegetable gum ; but 
 it may have been charred wood ; but what one would like to 
 know is, mainly, why charcoal should make itself into dia- 
 monds in India, and only into black lead in Borrowdale. 
 
 Sibyl. Are they wholly the same, then ? 
 
 L. There is a little iron mixed with our black lead but 
 nothing to hinder its crystallisation. Your pencils in fact are 
 all pointed with formless diamond, though they would be 
 h h h pencils to purpose, if it crystallised. 
 
 Sibyl. But what is crystallisation ? 
 
 L. A pleasant question, when one's half asleep, and it has 
 been tea time these two hours. What thoughtless things 
 girls are ! 
 
 Sibyl. Yes, we are ; but we want to know, for all that, 
 
 L. My dear, it would take a week to tell you. 
 
 Sibyl. Well, take it, and tell us. 
 
 L. But nobody knows anything about it. 
 
 Sibyl. Then tell us something that nobody knows. 
 
 L. Get along with you, and tell Dora to make tea. 
 
 (The house rises; hut of course the Lecturer wanted He 
 he forced to lecture again, and was,) 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 
 
 In the large Schoolroom, to which everybody has been summoned by 
 ringing of the great bell. 
 
 L. So you have all actually come to hear about crystallisa- 
 tion ! I cannot conceive why, unless the little ones think that 
 the discussion may involve some reference to sugar-candy. 
 
 (Symptoms of high displeasure among the younger members 
 of council. Isabel frowns severely at L., and shakes her 
 head violently.) 
 
 My dear children, if you knew it, you are } T ourselves, at 
 this moment, as you sit in your ranks, nothing, in the eye of 
 a mineralogist, but a lovely group of rosy sugar-candy, ar- 
 ranged by atomic forces. And even admitting you to be 
 something more, you have certainly been crystallising with- 
 out knowing it. Did I not hear a great hurrying and whis- 
 pering, ten minutes ago, when you were late in from the play- 
 ground ; and thought you would not all be quietly seated by 
 the time I was ready : — besides some discussion about places 
 — something about c it's not being fair that the little ones 
 should always be nearest ? ' Well, you were then all being 
 crystallised. When you ran in from the garden, and against 
 one another in the passages, you were in what mineralogists 
 would call a state of solution, and gradual confluence ; when 
 you got seated , in those orderly rows, each in her proper 
 place, you became crystalline. That is just what the atoms of 
 a mineral do, if they can, whenever they get disordered : 
 they get into order again as soon as may be. 
 
 I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, 6 But we 
 know our places ; how do the atoms know theirs? And some- 
 
22 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE LUST. 
 
 times we dispute about our places ; do the atoms — (and, be- 
 sides, we don't like being compared to atoms at all) — neve? 
 dispute about theirs?' Two wise questions these, if you had 
 a mind to put them ! it was long before I asked them myself, 
 of myself. And I will not call you atoms any more. May I 
 call you— let me see — ' primary molecules ? ' ( General distent 
 indicated in subdued but decisive murmurs ) No ! not even, in 
 familiar Saxon, 6 dust ? % 
 
 {Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt; Lil* 
 gives voice to the general sentiment in a timid ' Please 
 don't:) 
 
 No, children, I won't call you that ; and mind, as you grow 
 up, that you do not get into an idle and wicked habit of call- 
 ing yourselves that. You are something better than dust, 
 and have other duties to do than ever dust can do ; and the 
 bonds of affection you will enter into are better than merely 
 ' getting into order.' But see to it, on the other hand, that 
 you always behave at least as well as 6 dust ; ' remember, it is 
 only on compulsion, and while it has no free permission to do 
 as it likes, that it ever gets out of order ; but sometimes, with 
 some of us, the compulsion has to be the other way — hasn't 
 it? (Remonstrator y whispers, expressive of opinion that the 
 Lecturer is becoming too 'personal.) I'm not looking at any- 
 body in particular — indeed I am not. Nay, if you blush so, 
 Kathleen, how can one help looking? We'll go back to the 
 atoms. 
 
 £ How do they know their places ? ' you asked, or should 
 have asked. Yes, and they have to do much more than know 
 them : they have to find their way to them, and that quietly 
 and at once, without running against each other. 
 
 We may, indeed, state it briefly thus : — Suppose you have 
 to build a castle, with towers and roofs and* buttresses, out 
 of bricks of a given shape, and that these bricks are all lying 
 in a huge heap at the bottom, in utter confusion, upset out 
 of carts at random. You would have to draw a great many 
 plans, and count all your bricks, and be sure you had enough 
 for this and that tower, before you began, and then you 
 
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 
 
 23 
 
 •isrould have to lay your foundation, and add layer by layer, in 
 order, slowly. 
 
 But how would you be astonished, in these melancholy 
 days, when children don't read children's books, nor believe 
 any more in fairies, if suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a 
 bright brick-red gown, were to rise in the midst of the red 
 bricks, and to tap the heap of them with her wand, and say . 
 6 Bricks, bricks, to your places ! ' and then you saw in an 
 instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red 
 bees, and — you have been used to see bees make a honey, 
 comb, and to think that strange enough, but now you would 
 see the honeycomb make itself ! — You want to ask something, 
 Florrie, by the look of your eyes. 
 
 Florrie. Are they turned into real bees, with stings? 
 
 L. No, Florrie ; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you 
 saw the slates flying from the roof the other day in the 
 storm ; only those slates didn't seem to know where they 
 were going, and, besides, were going where they had no 
 business : but my spell-bound bricks, though they have no 
 wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find 
 their way in the air just where they should settle, into 
 towers and roofs, each flying to his place and fastening there 
 at the right moment, so that every other one shall fit to him 
 in his turn. 
 
 Lily. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crystals ? 
 
 L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more 
 than crystals ; but she builds these also. I dreamed that I 
 saw her building a pyramid, the other day, as she used to do, 
 for the Pharaohs. 
 
 Isabel. But that was only a dream ? 
 
 L. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isabel ; but 
 I won't tell it you unless you like. 
 Isabel. Oh, please, please. 
 
 L. You are all such wise children, there's no talking to 
 you ; you won't believe anything. 
 
 Lily. No, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, 
 when you say we ought 
 
 L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect 
 
24 
 
 THE ETHICS OF TUB DUST. 
 
 that evening when we had been looking at your old cave by 
 Cuinae, and wondering why you didn't live there still ; and 
 then we wondered how old you were ; and Egypt said you 
 wouldn't tell, and nobody else could tell but she ; and you 
 laughed — I thought very gaily for a Sibyl — and said yo-& 
 would harness a flock of cranes for us, and we might fly ovei 
 to Egypt if we liked, and see. 
 
 Sibyl. Yes, and you went, and couldn't find out after all ! 
 
 L. Why, you know, Egypt had been just doubling that 
 third pyramid of hers ; * and making a new entrance into it ; 
 and a fine entrance it was ! First, we had to go through an 
 ante-room, which had both its doors blocked up with stones ; 
 and then we had three granite portcullises to pull up, one 
 after another ; and the moment w T e had got under them, 
 Egypt signed to somebody above ; and down they came 
 again behind us, with a roar like thunder, only louder ; then 
 we got into a passage fit for nobody but rats, and Egypt 
 wouldn't go any further herself, but said we might go on if 
 we liked ; and so we came to a hole in the pavement, and 
 then to a granite trap-door — and then we thought we had 
 gone quite far enough, and came back, and Egypt laughed 
 at us. 
 
 Egypt. You would not have had me take my crown off, 
 and stoop all the way down a passage fit only for rats? 
 
 L. It was not the crown, Egypt — you know that very well. 
 It was the flounces that would not let you go any farther. I 
 suppose, however, you wear them as typical of the inunda- 
 tion of the Nile, so it is all right. 
 
 Isabel. Why didn't you take me with you?- Where rats 
 can go, mice can. I wouldn't have come back. 
 
 L. No, mousie ; you would have gone on by yourself, and 
 you might have w T aked one of Pasht's cats,f and it would 
 have eaten you. I was very glad you were not there. But 
 after all this, I suppose the imagination of the heavy granite 
 blocks and the underground ways had troubled me, and 
 dreams are often shaped in a strange opposition to the im- 
 pressions that have caused them ; and from all that we had 
 * Note i. f Note iii. 
 
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 
 
 25 
 
 been reading in Bunsen about stones that couldn't be lifted 
 with levers, I began to dream about stones that lifted them- 
 selves with wings. 
 
 Sibyl. Now you must just tell us all about it 
 
 L. I dreamed that I was standing beside the lake, out of 
 whose clay the bricks were made for the great pyramid of 
 isychis.* They had just been all finished, and were lying 
 by the lake margin, in long ridges, like waves. It was near 
 evening ; and as I looked towards the sunset, I saw a thing 
 like a dark pillar standing where the rock of the desert stoops 
 to the Nile valley. I did not know there was a pillar there, 
 and wondered at it ; and it grew larger, and glided nearer, 
 becoming like the form of a man, but vast, and it did not 
 move its feet, but glided like a pillar of sand. And as it drew 
 nearer, I looked by chance past it, towards the sun ; and saw 
 a silver cloud, which was of all the clouds closest to the sun 
 (and in one place crossed it), draw itself back from the sun, 
 suddenly. And it turned, and shot towards the dark pillar ; 
 leaping in an arch, like an arrow out of a bow. And I 
 thought it was lightning ; but when it came near the shadowy 
 pillar, it sank slowly down beside it, and changed into the 
 shape of a woman, very beautiful, and with a strength of 
 deep calm in her blue eyes. She was robed to the feet with 
 a white robe ; and above that, to her knees, by the cloud 
 which I had seen across the sun ; but all the golden ripples 
 of it had become plumes, so that it had changed into two 
 bright wings like those of a vulture, w T hich wrapped round 
 her to her knees. She had a weaver's shuttle hanging over 
 her shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her left hand, ar- 
 rows, tipped with fire. 
 
 Isabel (clapping her hands). Oh ! it was Neith, it was 
 Keith ! I know now. 
 
 L. Yes ; it was Neith herself ; and as the two great spirits 
 came nearer to me, I saw they were the Brother and Sister— 
 the pillared shadow was the Greater Pthaht And I heard 
 them speak, and the sound of their words was like a distant 
 singing. I could not understand the w T ords one by one ; yei 
 * Note ii. t Note hi 
 
26 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 their sense came to me ; and so I knew that Neith had come 
 down to see her brother's work, and the work that he had 
 put into the mind of the king to make his servants do. And 
 she was displeased at it ; because she saw only pieces of dark 
 clay : and no porphyry, nor marble, nor any fair stone that 
 men might engrave the figures of the gods upon. And she 
 blamed her brother, and said, ' Oh, Lord of truth ! is this 
 then thy will, that men should mould only four-square pieces 
 of clay : and the forms of the gods no more ? ' Then the 
 Lord of truth sighed, and said, ' Oh ! sister, in truth they do 
 not love us ; why should they set up our images ? Let them 
 do what they may, and not lie — let them make their clay 
 four-square ; and labour ; and perish/ 
 
 Then Neith's dark blue eyes grew darker, and she said, 
 ' Oh, Lord of truth ! why should they love us ? their love is 
 vain ; or fear us? for their fear is base. Yet let them testify 
 of us, that they knew we lived for ever/ 
 
 But the Lord of truth answered, ' They know, and yet they 
 know not. Let them keep silence ; for their silence only is 
 truth.' 
 
 But Neith answered, ' Brother, wilt thou also make league 
 with Death, because Death is true ? Oh ! thou potter, who 
 hast cast these human things from thy wheel, many to dis- 
 honour, and few to honour ; wilt thou not let them so much 
 as see my face ; but slay them in slavery?' 
 
 But Pthah only answered, ' Let them build, sister, let them 
 build.' 
 
 And Neith answered, ' "What shall they build, if I build not 
 with them ? ' 
 
 And Pthah drew with his measuring rod upon the sand, 
 And I saw suddenly, drawn on the sand, the outlines of great 
 cities, and of vaults, and domes, and aqueducts, and bastions, 
 and towers, greater than obelisks, covered with black clouds. 
 And the wind blew ripples of sand amidst the lines that 
 Pthah drew, and the moving sand was like the marching of 
 men. But I saw that wherever Neith looked at the lines, 
 they faded, and were effaced. 
 
 < Oh, Brother ! ' she said at last, ' what is this vanity ? If I, 
 
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 
 
 27 
 
 who am Lady of wisdom, do not mock the children of men, 
 w T hy shouldst thou mock them, who art Lord of truth ? ' But 
 Pthah answered, ' They thought to bind me ; and they shall 
 be bound. They shall labour in the fire for vanity. ' 
 
 And Neith said, looking at the sand, 'Brother, there is no 
 true labour here — there is only w T eary life and wasteful 
 death.' 
 
 And Pthah answered, c Is it not truer labour, sister, than 
 thy sculpture of dreams?' 
 
 Then Neith smiled ; and stopped suddenly. 
 
 She looked to the sun ; its edge touched the horizon -edge 
 of the desert. Then she looked to the long heaps of pieces 
 of clay, that lay, each with its blue shadow, by the lake 
 shore. 
 
 'Brother,' she said, £ how long will this pyramid of thine be 
 in building? ' 
 
 i Thoth will have sealed the scroll of the years ten times, 
 before the summit is laid.' 
 
 1 Brother, thou knowest not how to teach thy children to 
 labour,' answered Neith. 1 Look ! I must follow Phre be- 
 yond Atlas ; shall I build your pyramid for you before he 
 goes down ? ' And Pthah answered, ' Yea, sister, if thou 
 canst put thy winged shoulders to such work.' And Neith 
 drew herself to her height ; and I heard a clashing pass 
 through the plumes of her wings, and the asp stood up on 
 her helmet, and fire gathered in her eyes. And she took one 
 of the flaming arrows out of the sheaf in her left hand, and 
 stretched it out over the heaps of clay. And they rose up 
 like flights of locusts, and spread themselves in the air, so 
 that it grew dark in a moment. Then Neith designed them 
 places with her arrow point ; and they drew into ranks, like 
 dark clouds laid level at morning. Then Neith pointed with 
 her arrow to the north, and to the south, and to the east, and 
 to the west, and the flying motes of earth drew asunder into 
 four great ranked crowds ; and stood, one in the north, and 
 one in the south, and one in the east, and one in the w r est— - 
 one against another. Then Neith spread her wings wide for 
 an instant, and closed them with a sound like the sound of 
 
28 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 a rushing sea ; and waved her hand towards the foundation 
 of the pyramid, where it, was laid on the brow of the desert. 
 And the four flocks drew together and sank down, like sea- 
 birds settling to a level rock ; and when they met, there was 
 a sudden flame, as broad as the pyramid, and as high as the 
 clouds ; and it dazzled me ; and I closed my eyes for an in- 
 stant ; and w r hen I looked again, the pyramid stood on its 
 rock, perfect ; and purple w r ith the light from the edge of the 
 sinking sun. 
 
 The younger Children (variously pleased). Tm so glad ! 
 How nice ! But what did Pthah say ? 
 
 L. Neith did not wait to hear w T hat he would say. When 
 I turned back to look at her, she was gone ; and I only saw r 
 the level white cloud form itself again, close to the arch of 
 the sun as it sank. And as the last edge of the sun disap- 
 peared, the form of Pthah faded into a mighty shadow, and 
 so passed awa}^. 
 
 Egypt. And was Neith's pyramid left ? 
 
 L. Yes ; but you could not think, Egypt, what a strange 
 feeling of utter loneliness came over me when the presence 
 of the two gods passed aw T ay. It seemed as if I had never 
 known what it was to be alone before ; and the unbroken 
 line of the desert was terrible. 
 
 Egypt. I used to feel that, when I w r as queen : sometimes 
 I had to carve gods, for company, all over my palace. I 
 would fain have seen real ones, if I could. 
 
 L. But listen a moment yet, for that was not quite all my 
 dream. The twilight drew swiftly to the dark, and I could 
 hardly see the great pyramid ; when there came a heavv 
 murmuring sound in the air ; and a horned beetle, with ter- 
 rible claws, fell on the sand at my feet, with a blow like the 
 beat of a hammer. Then it stood up on its hind claws, and 
 waved its pincers at me : and its fore claws became strong 
 arms, and hands ; one grasping real iron pincers, and the 
 other a huge hammer ; and it had a helmet on its head, with- 
 out any eyelet holes, that I could see. And its two hind 
 claws became strong crooked legs, with feet bent inwards. 
 And so there stood by me a dwarf, in glossy black armour. 
 
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 
 
 29 
 
 ribbed and embossed like a beetle's back, leaning on his ham< 
 mer. And I could not speak for wonder ; but he spoke with 
 a murmur like the dying away of a beat upon a bell. He 
 said, ( I will make Neith's great pyramid small. I am the 
 lower Pthah ; and have power over fire. I can wither the 
 strong things, and strengthen the weak ; and everything that 
 is great I can make small, and everything that is little I can 
 make great/ Then he turned to the angle of the pyramid 
 and limped towards it. And the pyramid grew deep purple ; 
 and then red like blood, and then pale rose-colour, like fire. 
 And I saw that it glowed with fire from within. And the 
 lower Pthah touched it with the hand that held the pincers ; 
 and it sank down like the sand in an hour-glass, — then drew 
 itself together, and sank, still, and became nothing, it seemed 
 to me ; but the armed dwarf stooped down, and took it into 
 his hand, and brought it to me, saying, c Everything that is 
 great I can make like this pyramid ; and give into men's 
 hands to destroy.' And I saw that he had a little pyramid in 
 his hand, with as many courses in it as the large one ; and 
 built like that, only so small. And because it glowed still, I 
 was afraid to touch it ; but Pthah said, £ Touch it — for I have 
 bound the fire within it, so that it cannot burn.' So i 
 touched it, and took it into my own hand ; and it was cold ; 
 only red, like a ruby. And Pthah laughed, and became like 
 a beetle again, and buried himself in the sand, fiercely ; 
 throwing it back over his shoulders. And it seemed to me as 
 if he would draw me down with him into the sand ; and I 
 started back, and woke, holding the little pyramid so fast in 
 my hand that it hurt me. 
 
 Egypt. Holding what in your hand ? 
 
 L. The little pyramid. 
 
 Egypt. Neith's pyramid ? 
 
 L. Neith's, I believe ; though not built for Asychis. I 
 know only that it is a little rosy transparent pyramid, built 
 of more courses of bricks than I can count, it being made so 
 small. You don't believe me, of course, Egyptian infidel ; 
 but there it is. (Giving crystal of rose Fluor.) 
 
so 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 (Confused examination by crowded audience, over* each 
 other's shoidders and under each other's arms. Disap* 
 pointment begins to manifest itself.) 
 
 Sibyl (not quite knowing why she and others are disappointed\ 
 But you showed us this the other day ! 
 
 L. Yes ; but you would not look at it the other day. 
 
 Sibyl. But was all that fine dream only about this? 
 
 L. What finer thing could a dream be about than this? 
 It is small, if you will ; but when you begin to think of things 
 rightly, the ideas of smailness and largeness pass away. The 
 making of this pyramid was in reality just as wonderful as 
 the dream I have been telling you, and just as incomprehen- 
 sible. It was not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand 
 things are done as swiftly. When Neith makes crystals of 
 snow, it needs a great deal more marshalling of the atoms, 
 by her flaming arrows, than it does to make crystals like this 
 one ; and that is done in a moment. 
 
 Egypt. But how you do puzzle us ! Why do you say Neith 
 does it ? You don't mean that she is a real spirit, do you ? 
 
 L. W T hat / mean, is of little consequence. What the Egyp- 
 tians meant, who called her £ Neith,' — or Homer, who called 
 her ' Athena,' — or Solomon, who called her by a word which 
 the Greeks render as 'Sophia,' you must judge for yourselves. 
 But her testimony is always the same, and all nations have 
 received it : £ I was by Him as one brought up with Him, and 
 I was daily His delight ; rejoicing in the habitable parts oi 
 the earth, and my delights were with the sons of men/ 
 
 Mary. But is not that only a personification ? 
 
 L. If it be, what will you gain by unpersonifying it, or 
 what right have you to do so ? Cannot you accept the imago 
 given you, in its life : and listen, like children, to the words 
 which chiefly belong to you as children : ' I love them that 
 love me, and those that seek me early shall find me ? ' 
 
 (They are all quiet for a minute or two ; questions begin 
 to appear in their eyes.) 
 
 I cannot talk to you any more to-day. Take that rose- 
 erystal away with you, and think. 
 
OICTITKB HI 
 
 THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 
 
 A very dull Lecture, wilfully brought upon themselves by the elder children 
 Some of the young ones have, however, managed to get in by mistake* 
 Scene, the Schoolroom. 
 
 L. So I am to stand up here merely to be asked questions, 
 to-day, Miss Mary, am I ? 
 
 Mary. Yes ; and you must answer them plainly ; without 
 telling us any more stories. You are quite spoiling the chil- 
 dren : the poor little things' heads are turning round like 
 kaleidoscopes ; and they don't know in the least what you 
 mean. Nor do we old ones, either, for that matter: to-day 
 you must really tell us nothing but facts. 
 
 L. I am sworn ; but you won't like it, a bit. 
 
 Mary. Now, first of all, what do you mean by ' bricks?' — - 
 Are the smallest particles of minerals all of some accurate 
 shape, like bricks ? 
 
 L. I do not know, Miss Mary ; I do not even know if any- 
 body knows. The smallest atoms which are visibly and prac- 
 tically put together to make large crystals, may better be 
 described as 'limited in fixed directions' than as 4 of fixed 
 forms/ But I can tell you nothing clear about ultimate 
 atoms : you will find the idea of little bricks, or, perhaps, of 
 little spheres, available for all the uses you will have to put 
 it to. 
 
 Mary. Well, it's very provoking ; one seems always to be 
 stopped just when one is coming to the very thing one wants 
 to know. 
 
 L. No, Mary, for we should not wish to know anything but 
 what is easily and assuredly knowable. There's no end to it 
 If I could show you, or myself, a group of ultimate atoms, 
 
32 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 quite clearly, in this magnifying glass, we should both be 
 presently vexed because we could not break them in two 
 pieces, and see their insides. 
 
 Mary. Well then, next, what do you mean by the flying of 
 the bricks ? What is it the atoms do, that is like flying ? 
 
 L. When they are dissolved, or uncrystallised, they are 
 really separated from each other, like a swarm of gnats in the 
 air, or like a shoal of fish in the sea ; — generally at about 
 equal distances. In currents of solutions, or at different 
 depths of them, one part may be more full of the dissolved 
 atoms than another ; but on the whole, you may think of 
 them as equidistant, like the spots in the print of your gown. 
 If they are separated by force of heat only, the substance is 
 said to be melted ; if they are separated by any other sul> 
 stance, as particles of sugar by water, they are said to be 
 6 dissolved.' Note this distinction carefully, all of you. 
 
 Dora. I will be very particular. When next you tell me 
 there isn't sugar enough in your tea, I will say, ' It is not yet 
 dissolved, sir.' 
 
 L. I tell you what shall be dissolved, Miss Dora ; and that's 
 the present parliament, if the members get too saucy. 
 
 (Dora folds her hands and casts down her eyes.) 
 
 L. (proceeds in state). Now, Miss Mary, you know already, 
 I believe, that nearly everything will melt, under a sufficient 
 heat, like wax. Limestone melts (under pressure); sand 
 melts ; granite melts ; the lava of a volcano is a mixed mass 
 of many kinds of rocks, melted : and any melted substance 
 nearly always, if not always, crystallises as it cools ; the more 
 slowly the more perfectly. Water melts at what we call the 
 freezing, but might just as wisely, though not as conveniently, 
 call the melting, point ; and radiates as it cools into the most 
 beautiful of all known crystals. Glass melts at a greater heat, 
 and will crystallise, if you let it cool slowly enough, in stars, 
 much like snow. Gold needs more heat to melt it, but crys- 
 tallises also exquisitely, as I will presently show you. Arsenic 
 and sulphur crystallise from their vapours. Now in any of 
 these cases, either of melted, dissolved, or vaporous bodies, 
 
THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 
 
 33 
 
 the particles are usually separated from each other, either by 
 heat, or by an intermediate substance ; and in crystallis- 
 ing they are both brought nearer to each other, and packed, 
 so as to fit as closely as possible : the essential part of the 
 business being not the bringing together, but the packing. 
 Who packed your trunk for you, last holidays, Isabel ? 
 Isabel. Lily does, always. 
 
 L. And how much can you allow for Lily's good packing, 
 in guessing what will go into the trunk ? 
 
 Isabel. Oh ! I bring twice as much as the trunk holds. 
 Lily always gets everything in. 
 
 Lily. Ah ! but, Isey, if you only knew what a time it takes ! 
 and since you've had those great hard buttons on your frocks, 
 I can't do anything w 7 ith them. Buttons won't go anywhere, 
 you know. 
 
 L. Yes, Lily, it would be well if she only knew what a time 
 it takes ; and I wish any of us knew what a time crystallisa- 
 tion takes, for that is consummately fine packing. The parti- 
 cles of the rock are thrown down, just as Isabel brings her 
 things — in a heap ; and innumerable Lilies, not of the valley, 
 but of the rock, come to pack them. But it takes such a 
 time ! 
 
 However, the best — out and out the best — way of under- 
 standing the thing, is to crystallise yourselves. 
 The Audience. Ourselves ! 
 
 L. Yes ; not merely as you did the other day, carelessly, 
 on the schoolroom forms ; but carefully and finely, out in the 
 playground. You can play at crystallisation there as much as 
 you please. 
 
 Kathleen and Jessie. Oh ! how ? — how ? 
 
 L. First, you must put yourselves together, as close as you 
 can, in the middle of the grass, and form, for first practice, 
 any figure you like. 
 
 Jessie. Any dancing figure, do you mean ? 
 
 L. No ; I mean a square, or a cross, or a diamond. Any 
 figure you like, standing close together. You had better out- 
 line it first on the turf, with sticks, or pebbles, so as to see 
 that it is rightly drawn ; then get into it and enlarge or dimin* 
 
84 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 ish it at one side, till you are all quite in it, and no empty 
 space left. 
 
 Doha. Crinoline and all ? 
 
 L. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline 
 surface, unless you pin it in ; and then you may make a pol- 
 ished crystal of yourselves. 
 
 Lily. Oh, we'll pin it in — we'll pin it in ! 
 
 L. Then, when you are all in the figure, let every one note 
 her place, and who is next her on each side ; and let the out- 
 siders count how many places they stand from the corners. 
 
 Kathleen. Yes, yes, — and then? 
 
 L. Then you must scatter all over the playground — right 
 over it from side to side, and end to end ; and put yourselves 
 all at equal distances from each other, everywhere. You 
 needn't mind doing it very accurately, but so as to be nearly 
 equidistant ; not less than about three yards apart from each 
 other, on every side. 
 
 Jessie. "We can easily cut pieces of string of equal length, 
 to hold. And then ? 
 
 L. Then, at a given signal, let everybody walk, at the same 
 rate, towards the outlined figure in the middle. You had 
 better sing as you walk ; that will keep you in good time. 
 And as you close in towards it, let each take her place, and 
 the next comers fit themselves in beside the first ones, till you 
 are all in the figure again. 
 
 Kathleen. Oh ! how we shall run against each other ! "What 
 fun it will be ! 
 
 L. No, no, Miss Katie ; I can't allow any running against 
 each other. The atoms never do that, whatever human creat- 
 ures do. You must all know your places, and find your way 
 to them without jostling. 
 
 Lmr. But how ever shall we do that ? 
 
 Isabel. Mustn't the ones in the middle be the nearest, and 
 the outside ones farther off — when we go away to scatter, I 
 mean ? 
 
 L. Yes ; you must be very careful to keep your order ; you 
 will soon find out how to do it ; it is only like soldiers form- 
 ing square, except that each must stand still in her place 
 
THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 
 
 35 
 
 as she reaches it, and the others come round her ; and you 
 will have much more complicated figures, afterwards, to form, 
 than squares. 
 
 Isabel. Ill put a stone at my place : then I shall know it. 
 
 L. You might each nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your 
 place, with your name upon it : but it w r ould be of no use f 
 for if you don't know your places, you will make a fine piece 
 of business of it, while you are looking for your names. 
 And, Isabe], if with a little head, and eyes, and a brain (all 
 of them very good and serviceable of their kind, as such 
 things go), you think you cannot know your place without a 
 stone at it, after examining it well, — how do you think each 
 atom knows its place, when it never was there before, and 
 there's no stone at it ? 
 
 Isabel. But does every atom know its place ? 
 
 L. How else could it get there ? 
 
 Mary. Are they not attracted to their places ? 
 
 L. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at equal intervals ; 
 and then imagine any kind of attraction you choose, or any 
 law of attraction, to exist between the spots, and try how, on 
 that permitted supposition, you can attract them into the 
 figure of a Maltese cross, in the middle of the paper. 
 
 Mary (havijig tried it). Yes ; I see that I cannot : — one 
 would need all kinds of attractions, in different ways, at dif- 
 ferent places. But you do not mean that the atoms are alive ? 
 
 L. What is it to be alive ? 
 
 Dora. There now ; you're going to be provoking, I know. 
 
 L. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked 
 what it is to be alive. Do you think you don't know whether 
 you are alive or not ? 
 
 (Isabel skips to the end of the room and back.) 
 
 L. Yes, Isabel, that's all very fine ; and you and I may call 
 that being alive : but a modern philosopher calls it being in a 
 6 mode of motion. ' It requires a certain quantity of heat to 
 take you to the sideboard ; and exactly the same quantity to 
 bring you back again. That's all. 
 
 Isabel. No, it isn't. And besides, I'm not hot. 
 
36 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 L. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you 
 know, Isabel, you might have been a particle of a mineral, and 
 yet have been carried round the room, or anywhere else, by 
 chemical forces, in the liveliest way. 
 
 Isabel. Yes ; but I wasn't carried : I carried myself. 
 
 L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to say 
 what makes a thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As soon 
 as you are shut off from the rest of the universe into a Self, 
 you begin to be alive. 
 
 Violet {indignant). Oh, surely — surely that cannot be so. 
 Is not all the life of the soul in communion, not separation ? 
 
 L. There can be no communion where there is no distinc- 
 tion. But we shall be in an abyss of metaphysics presently, 
 if we don't look out ; and besides, we must not be too grand, 
 to-day, for the younger children. We'll be grand, some da} r , 
 by ourselves, if we must. [The younger children are not 
 pleased, and prepare to remonstrate ; but, knowing by expert 
 ence, that all conversations in which the word 'communion 9 
 occurs, are unintelligible, think better of it.) Meantime, for 
 broad answer about the atoms. I do not think we should 
 use the word ■ life,' of any energy which does not belong to 
 a given form. A seed, or an egg, or a young animal are pro- 
 perly called ' alive ' with respect to the force belonging to 
 those forms, which consistently develops that form, and no 
 other. But the force which crystallises a mineral appears to 
 be chiefly external, and it does not produce an entirely deter- 
 minate and individual form, limited in size, but only an ag- 
 gregation, in which some limiting laws must be observed. 
 
 Mary. But I do not see much difference, that way, between 
 a crystal and a tree. 
 
 L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living 
 thing implies a continual change in its elements ; and a 
 period for its end. So you may define life by its attached 
 negative, death ; and still more by its attached positive, 
 birth. But I won't be plagued any more about this, just 
 now ; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and wel- 
 come. Rocks have always been called - living ' in their na« 
 tive place. 
 
THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 
 
 31 
 
 Mary. These's one question more ; then I've done. 
 L. Only one ? 
 Mary. Only one. 
 
 L. But if it is answered, won't it turn into two? 
 Mary. No ; I think it will remain single, and be comfort* 
 . able. 
 
 L. Let me hear it. 
 
 Mary. You know, we are to crystallise ourselves out 01 
 the whole playground. Now, what playground have the 
 minerals ? Where are they scattered before they are crystal- 
 lised ; and where are the crystals generally made ? 
 
 L. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, 
 Mary. If it is only one, it is a wide one. 
 
 Mary. I did not say anything about the width of it. 
 
 L. Well, I must keep it within the best compass I can. 
 W T hen rocks either dry from a moist state, or cool from a 
 heated state, they necessarily alter in bulk ; and cracks, or 
 open spaces, form in them in all directions. These cracks 
 must be filled up with solid matter, or the rock would even- 
 tually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water, 
 sometimes by vapour, sometimes nobody knows how, erystal- 
 lisable matter is brought from somewhere, and fastens itself 
 in these open spaces, so as to bind the rock together again, 
 with crystal cement. A vast quantity of hollows are formed 
 in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are left in bread 
 well baked. In process of time these cavities are generally 
 filled with various crystals. 
 
 Mary. But where does the crystallising substance come from ? 
 
 L. Sometimes out of the rock itself ; sometimes from below 
 or above, through the veins. The entire substance of the 
 contracting rock may be filled with liquid, pressed into it so 
 as to fill every pore ; — or with mineral vapour ;— or it may 
 be so charged at one place, and empty at another. There's 
 no end to the ' may be's.' But all that you need fancy, for 
 our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the 
 caves in Derbyshire, are traversed by liquids or vapour con- 
 taining certain elements in a more or less free or separate 
 state, which crystallise on the cave walls. 
 
38 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 Sibyl. There now ; — Mary has had all her questions an« 
 
 swered : it's my turn to have mine. 
 
 L. Ah, there's a conspiracy among you, I see. I might 
 
 have guessed as much. 
 
 Dora. I'm sure you ash us questions enough ! How can 
 you have the heart, when you dislike so to be asked them 
 yourself ? 
 
 L. My dear child, if people do not answer questions, it 
 does not matter how many they are asked, because they've 
 no trouble with them. Now, when I ask you questions, I 
 never expect to be answered ; but when you ask me, you 
 always do ; and it's not fair. 
 
 Dora. Very well, we shall understand, next time. 
 
 Sibyl. No, but seriously, we all want to ask one thing 
 more, quite dreadfully. 
 
 L. And I don't want to be asked it, quite dreadfully ; but 
 you'll have your own way, of course. 
 
 Sibyl. We none of us understand about the lower Pthah. 
 It was not merely yesterday ; but in all we have read about 
 him in Wilkinson, or in any book, we cannot understand 
 what the Egyptians put their god into that ugly little de- 
 formed shape for. 
 
 L. Well, I'm glad it's that sort of question ; because I can 
 answer anything I like, to that. 
 
 Egypt. Anything you like will do quite w T ell for us ; we 
 shall be pleased with the answer, if you are. 
 
 L. I am not so sure of that, most gracious queen ; for I 
 must begin by the statement that queens seem to have dis- 
 liked all sorts of work, in those days, as much as some queens 
 dislike sewing to-day. 
 
 Egypt. Now, it's too bad ! and just when I was trying to 
 say the civillest thing I could ! 
 
 L. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you disliked sewing 
 so? 
 
 Egypt. Did not I show you how the thread cuts my fin- 
 gers? and I always get cramp, somehow, in my neck, if I sew 
 long. 
 
 L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought every 
 
THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 
 
 39 
 
 body got cramp in their neck, if they sewed long ; and that 
 thread always cut people's fingers. At all events, every 
 kind of manual labour was despised both by them, and the 
 Greeks ; and, while they owned the real good and fruit of it, 
 they yet held it a degradation to all who practised it. Also, 
 knowing the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that the 
 special practice necessary to bring any manual art to perfec- 
 tion strengthened the body distorteclly ; one energy or mem* 
 ber gaining at the expense of the rest. They especially 
 dreaded and despised any kind of work that had to be done 
 near fire : jet, feeling what they owed to it in metal- work, as 
 the basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed rever- 
 ence and scorn in the varied types of the lame Hephaestus, 
 and the lower Pthah. 
 
 Sibyl. But what did you mean by making him say ' every- 
 thing great I can make small, and everything small great ? * 
 
 L. I had my own separate meaning in that. We have seen 
 in modern times the power of the lower Pthah developed in 
 a separate way, which no Greek nor Egyptian could have 
 conceived. It is the character of pure and eyeless manual 
 labour to conceive everything as subjected to it : and, in 
 reality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected ; ag- 
 grandising itself, and the thought of itself, at the expense of 
 all noble things. I heard an orator, and a good one too, at 
 the Working Men's College, the other day, make a great 
 point in a description of our railroads ; saying, with grandly 
 conducted emphasis, ' They have made man greater, and the 
 world less.' His working audience were mightily pleased ; 
 they thought it so very fine a thing to be made bigger them- 
 selves ; and all the rest of the world less. I should have en* 
 joyed asking them (but it would have been a pity — they 
 were so pleased), how much less they would like to have the 
 world made ; — and whether, at present, those of them really 
 felt the biggest men, who lived in the least houses. 
 
 Sibyl. But then, why did you make Pthah say that he 
 could make weak things strong, and small things great ? 
 
 L. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature ; 
 but it is so far true. For instance, we used to have a fair 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DU81. 
 
 in our neighbourhood — a very fine fair we thought it. You 
 never saw such an one ; but if you look at the engraving ol 
 Turner's ' St. Catherine's Hill,' you will see what it was like. 
 There were curious booths, carried on poles; and peep-shows ; 
 and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals ; and much 
 barley-sugar and gingerbread, and the like : and in the alleys 
 of this fair the London populace would enjoy themselves, 
 after their fashion, very thoroughly. Well, the little Pthah 
 get to work upon it one day ; he made the wooden poles into 
 iron ones, and put them across, like his own crooked legs, 
 so that you always fall over them if you don't look where you 
 are going ; and he turned all the canvas into panes of glass, 
 and put it up on his iron cross-poles ; and made all the little 
 booths into one great booth ; and people said it was very 
 fine, and a new style of architecture ; and Mr. Dickens said 
 nothing was ever like it in Fairy-land, which was very true. 
 And then the little Pthah set to work to put fine fairings in 
 it ; and he painted the Nineveh bulls afresh, with the blackest 
 eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and he 
 got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their 
 wings like his gingerbread of old times ; and he sent for 
 everything else he could think of, and put it in his booth. 
 There are the casts of Niobe and her children ; and the Chim- 
 panzee ; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders ; and 
 the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le 
 Petit Blondin ; and Handel ; and Mozart ; and no end of 
 shops, and buns, and beer ; and all the little -Pthah- worship- 
 pers say, never was anything so sublime ! 
 
 Sibyl. Now, do you mean to say you never go to these 
 Crystal Palace concerts ? They're as good as good can be. 
 
 L. I don't go to the thundering things with a million of 
 bad voices in them. When I want a song, I get Julia Man- 
 nering and Lucy Bertram and Counsellor Pleydell to sing 
 ' We be three poor Mariners ' to me ; then I've no headache 
 next morning. But I do go to the smaller concerts, when ] 
 can ; for they are very good, as you say, Sibyl : and I always 
 get a reserved seat somewhere near the orchestra, where 1 
 am sure 1 can see the kettle-drummer drum. 
 
THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 
 
 41 
 
 Sibyl. Now do be serious, for one minute. 
 
 L. I am serious — never was more so. You know one can*t 
 see the modulation of violinists' fingers, but one can see the 
 vibration of the drummer's hand ; and it's lovely. 
 
 Sibyl. But fancy going to a concert, not to hear, but to 
 see ! 
 
 L. Yes, it is very absurd. The quite right thing, I believe, 
 is to go there to talk. I confess, however, that in most 
 music, when very well done, the doing of it is to me the 
 chiefly interesting part of the business. I'm always thinking 
 how good it would be for the fat, supercilious people, who 
 care so little for their half-crown's worth, to be set to try and 
 do a half-crown's worth of anything like it. 
 
 Mary. But surely that Crystal Palace is a great good and 
 help to the people of London ? 
 
 L. The fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or was, my dear ; 
 but they are spoiling that with smoke as fast as they can. 
 And the palace (as they call it) is a better place for them, by 
 much, than the old fair ; and it is always there, instead of for 
 three days only ; and it shuts up at proper hours of night. 
 And good use may be made of the things in it, if you know 
 how : but as for its teaching the people, it will teach them 
 nothing but the lowest of the lower Pthah's work — nothing 
 but hammer and tongs. I saw a wonderful piece, of his 
 doing, in the place, only the other day. Some unhappy 
 metal-worker — I am not sure if it was not a metal-working 
 firm — had taken three years to make a Golden eagle. 
 
 Sibyl. Of real gold ? 
 
 L. No ; of bronze, or copper, or some of their foul patent 
 metal— it is no matter what. I meant a model of our chief 
 British eagle. Every feather was made separately ; and 
 every filament of every feather separately, and so joined on ; 
 and all the quills modelled of the right length and right sec- 
 tion, and at last the whole cluster of them fastened together 
 You know, children, I don't think much of my ow r n drawing ; 
 but take my proud word for once, that when I go to the 
 Zoological Gardens, and happen to have a bit of chalk in my 
 pocket, and the Gray Harpy will sit, without screwing his 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE BUST. 
 
 head rcranc!, for thirty seconds, — I can do a better thing of 
 him in that time than the three years' work of this industri- 
 ous firm. For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is my 
 object, — not myself ; and during the three years, the firm's 
 object;, in every fibre of bronze it made, was itself, and not 
 the eagle. That is the true meaning of the little Pthah's 
 having no eyes — he can see only himself. The Egyptian 
 beetle was not quite the full type of him ; our northern 
 ground beetle is a truer one. It is beautiful to see it at work, 
 gathering its treasures (such as they are) into little round 
 balls ; and pushing them home with the strong wrong end of 
 it, — head downmost all the way, — like a modern political 
 economist with his ball of capital, declaring that a nation can 
 stand on its vices better than on its virtues. But away with 
 you, children, now, for I'm getting cross. 
 
 Dora. I'm going down-stairs ; I shall take care, at any 
 rate, that there are no little Pthahs in the kitchen cupboards, 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 
 
 A working Lecture, in the large Sclwol-room ; icith experimental Interludes, 
 The great bell has rung unexpectedly. 
 
 Kathleen {entering disconsolate, though first at the summons). 
 Oh dear, oh dear, what a day ! Was ever anything so provok- 
 lDg ! just when we wanted to crystallise ourselves ; — and I'm 
 sure it's going to rain all day long. 
 
 L. So am I, Kate. The sky has quite an Irish way with it, 
 But I don't see why Irish girls should also look so dismal. 
 Fancy that you don't want to crystallise yourselves : you 
 didn't, the day before yesterday, and you were not unhappy 
 when it rained then. 
 
 Florrie. Ah ! but we do want to-day ; and the rain's so 
 tiresome. 
 
 L. That is to say, children, that because you are all the 
 richer by the expectation of playing at a new game, you choose 
 to make yourselves unhappier than when you had nothing to 
 look forward to, but the old ones. 
 
 Isabel. But then, to have to wait — wait — wait ; and before 
 we've tried it ; — and perhaps it will rain to-morrow, too ! 
 
 L. It may also rain the day after to-morrow. We can make 
 ourselves uncomfortable to any extent with perhapses, Isabel. 
 You may stick perhapses into your little minds, like pins, till 
 you are as uncomfortable as the Lilliputians made Gulliver 
 with their arrows, when he would not lie quiet. 
 
 Isabel. But what are we to do to-day ? 
 
 L. To be quiet, for one thing, like Gulliver when he saw 
 there was nothing better to be done. And to practise patience, 
 I can tell you children, that requires nearly as much practising 
 as music ; and we are continually losing our lessons when the 
 master comes. Now, to-day, here's a nice little adagio lesson 
 for us ? if we play it properly. 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 Isabel. But I don't like that sort of lesson. I can't play it 
 properly. 
 
 L. Can you play a Mozart sonata yet, Isabel ? The more 
 need to practise. All one's life is a music, if one touches the 
 notes rightly, and in time. But there must be no hurry. 
 
 Kathleen. I'm sure there's no music in stopping in on a 
 rainy day. 
 
 L. There's no music in a ' rest,' Katie, that I know of : but 
 there's the making of music in it. And people are always 
 missing that part of the life-melody ; and scrambling on with- 
 out counting — not that it's easy to count ; but nothing on 
 which so much depends ever is easy. People are always talk- 
 ing of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude ; but patience 
 is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, — and the rarest, 
 too. I know twenty persevering girls for one patient one : 
 but it is only that twenty-first who can do her work, out and 
 out, or enjoy it. For patience lies at the root of all pleasures, 
 as well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness, 
 when Impatience companions her. 
 
 (Isabel and Lilys^ down on the floor, arid fold their hands* 
 The others follow their example.) 
 
 Good children ! but that's not quite the way of it, neither. 
 Folded hands are not necessarily resigned ones. The Pa- 
 tience who really smiles at grief usually stands, or walks, or 
 even runs : she seldom sits ; though she may sometimes have 
 to do it, for many a day, poor thing, by monuments ; or like 
 Chaucer's, 'with face' pale, upon a hill of sand.' But we are 
 not reduced to that to-day. Suppose we use this calamitous 
 forenoon to choose the shapes we are to crystallise into ? we 
 know nothing about them yet, 
 
 (The pictures of resignation rise from the floor, not in the 
 patientest manner. General applause.) 
 
 Mary (with one or two others). The very thing we wanted 
 to ask you about ! 
 
 Lily. We looked at the books about crystals, but they are 
 so dreadful. 
 
THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 
 
 45 
 
 L. Well, Lily, we must go through a little dreadfulness, 
 that's a fact : no road to any good knowledge is wholly 
 among the lilies and the grass ; there is rough climbing to be 
 done always. But the crystal-books are a little too dreadful, 
 most of them, I admit ; and w T e shall have to be content with 
 very little of their help. You know, as you cannot stand on 
 each other's heads, you can only make yourselves into the 
 sections of crystals, — the figures they show when they are 
 cut through ; and we will choose some that will be quite easy. 
 You shall make diamonds of yourselves 
 
 Isabel. Oh, no, no ! we won't be diamonds, please. 
 
 L. Yes, you shall, Isabel ; they are very pretty things, if 
 the jewellers, and the kings and queens, w r ould only let them 
 alone. You shall make diamonds of yourselves, and rubies of 
 yourselves, and emeralds ; and Irish diamonds ; two of those 
 — with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very orderly, 
 of course ; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, for which 
 we will hope the best ; — and you shall make Derbyshire sj3ar 
 of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and — 
 Quicksilver there's enough of in you, without any making. 
 
 Mary. Now, you know, the children will be getting quite 
 wild : we must really get pencils and paper, and begin properly. 
 
 L. Wait a minute, Miss Mary ; I think as we've the school 
 room clear to-day, I'll try to give you some notion of the 
 three great orders or ranks of crystals, into which all the 
 others seem more or less to fall. We shall only want one 
 figure a day, in the playground ; and that can be drawn in a 
 minute : but the general ideas had better be fastened first. I 
 must show you a great many minerals ; so let me have three 
 tables wheeled into the three windows, that we may keep our 
 specimens separate ; — we will keep the three orders of crys- 
 tals on separate tables. 
 
 (First Interlude, of pushing and pulling, and spreading of 
 baize covers. Violet, not particularly minding what she is 
 about, gets herself jammed into a corner, and bid to stand 
 out of the way ; on which she devotes herself to medi* 
 tation.) 
 
46 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 Violet (after interval of meditation). How strange it is that 
 everything seems to divide into threes ! 
 
 L. Everything doesn't divide into threes. Ivy won't, though 
 shamrock will ; and daisies won't, though lilies will. 
 
 Violet. But all the nicest things seem to divide into threes, 
 
 L. Violets won't. 
 
 Violet. No ; I should think not, indeed ! But I mean the 
 great things. 
 
 L. I've always heard the globe had four quarters. 
 
 Isabel. Well ; but you know you said it hadn't any quarters 
 at all. So mayn't it really be divided into three ? 
 
 L. If it were divided into no more than three, on the out- 
 side of it, Isabel, it would be a fine world to live in ; and if 
 it were divided into three in the inside of it, it would soon be 
 no world to live in at all. 
 
 Dora. We shall never get to the crystals, at this rate. 
 (Aside to Mary. ) He will get off into political economy be- 
 fore we know where we are. (Aloud.) But the crystals are 
 divided into three, then ? 
 
 L. No ; but there are three general notions by which we 
 may best get hold of them. Then between these notions there 
 are other notions. 
 
 Lily (alarmed). A great many? And shall we have to 
 learn them all ? 
 
 L. More than a great many — a quite infinite many. So 
 you cannot learn them ail. 
 
 Lily (greatly relieved). Then may we only learn the three? 
 
 L. Certainly ; unless, when you have got those three no- 
 tions, you want to have some more notions ; — which would 
 not surprise me. But we'll try for the three, first. Katie, 
 you broke your coral necklace this morning ? 
 
 Kathleen. Oh ! who told you ? It was in jumping. Tm 
 so sorry ! 
 
 L. I'm very glad. Can you fetch me the beads of it ? 
 
 Kathleen. I've lost some ; here are the rest in my pocket, 
 if I can only get them out. 
 
 L. You mean to get them out some day, I suppose ; so try 
 now. I want them. 
 
THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 
 
 49 
 
 (Kathleen empties her pocket on the floor. The beads dis 
 perse. Tlie School disperses also. Second Interlude — 
 hunting piece.) 
 
 L. (after waiting patiently for a quarter of an hoar, to Isabel, 
 who comes up from under the table with her hair all about het 
 ears, and the last findable beads in her hand). Mice are useful 
 little things sometimes. Now, mousie, I want all those beads 
 crystallised. How many ways are there of putting them in 
 order ? 
 
 Isabel. Well, first one would string them, I suppose ? 
 
 L. Yes, that's the first way. You cannot string ultimate 
 atoms ; but you can put them in a row, and then they fasten 
 themselves together, somehow, into a long rod or needle. We 
 will call these ' jVee^/e-crystals.' What would be the next way J 
 
 Isabel. I suppose, as we are to get together in the play- 
 ground, when it stops raining, in different shapes ? 
 
 L. Yes ; put the beads together, then, in the simplest form 
 you can, to begin with. Put them into a square, and pad 
 them close. 
 
 Isabel (after careful endeavour). I can't get them closer. 
 
 L. That will do. Now you may see, beforehand, that if you 
 try to throw yourselves into square in this confused way, 
 you will never know your places ; so you had better consider 
 every square as made of rods, put side by side. Take fout 
 beads of equal size, first, Isabel ; put them into a little square. 
 That, you may consider as made up of two rods of two beads 
 each. Then you can make a square a size larger, out of three 
 rods of thre«. Then the next square may be a size larger. 
 How many rods, Lily ? 
 
 Lily. Four rods of four beads each, I suppose. 
 
 L. Yes, and then five rods of five, and so on. But now, 
 look here ; make another square of four beads again. You see 
 they leave a little opening in the centre. 
 
 Isabel (pushing two opposite ones closer together). Now they 
 don't. 
 
 L. No ; but now it isn't a square ; and by pushing the two 
 together you have pushed the two others farther apart 
 
48 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 Isabel. And yet, somehow, they all seem closer than they 
 were ! 
 
 L. Yes ; for before, each of them only touched two of the 
 others, but now each of the two in the middle touches the 
 other three. Take away one of the outsiders, Isabel ; now you 
 have three in a triangle — the smallest triangle you can make 
 out of the beads. Now put a rod of three beads on at one 
 side. So, you have a triangle of six beads ; but just the shape 
 of the first one. Next a rod of four on the side of that ; and 
 you have a triangle of ten beads : then a rod of five on the 
 side of that ; and you have a triangle of fifteen. Thus you 
 have a square with five beads on the side, and a triangle with 
 five beads on the side ; equal-sided, therefore, like the square. 
 So, however few or many you may be, you may soon learn 
 how to crystallise quickly into these two figures, which are 
 the foundation of form in the commonest, and therefore act- 
 ually the most important, as well as in the rarest, and there- 
 fore, by our esteem, the most important, minerals of the 
 world. Look at this in my hand. 
 
 Violet. Why, it is leaf-gold ! 
 
 L. Yes ; but beaten by no man's hammer ; or rather, not 
 beaten at all, but woven. Besides, feel the weight of it 
 There is gold enough there to gild the walls and ceiling, if it 
 were beaten thin. 
 
 Violet. How beautiful ! And it glitters like a leaf covered 
 with frost. 
 
 L. You only think it so beautiful because you know it is 
 gold. It is not prettier, in reality, than a bit of brass : for it 
 is Transylvanian gold ; and they say there is a foolish gnome 
 in the mines there, who is always wanting to live in the moon, 
 and so alloys all the gold with a little silver. I don't know 
 how that may be : but the silver always is in the gold ; and if 
 he does it, it's very provoking of him, for no gold is woven so 
 fine anywhere else. 
 
 Mary (ivho has been looking through her magnifying glass). 
 But this is not woven. This is all made of little triangles. 
 
 L. Say 'patched,' then, if you must be so particular. But 
 \£ you fancy all those triangles, small as they are (and many 
 
TEE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 
 
 49 
 
 ei them are infinitely small), made up again of rods, and those 
 of grains, as we built our great triangle of the beads, what 
 word will you take for the manufacture ? 
 
 May. There's no word — it is beyond words. 
 
 L. Yes ; and that would matter little, were it not beyond 
 thoughts too. But, at all events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, 
 $hed, not from the ruined woodlands, but the ruined rocks, 
 will help you to remember the second kind of crystals, Leaf- 
 crystals, or Foliated crystals ; though I show you the form in 
 gold first only to make a strong impression on you, for gold 
 is not generally, or characteristically, crystallised in leaves ; 
 the real type of foliated crystals is this thing, Mica ; which if 
 you once feel well, and break well, you will always know again ; 
 and you will often have occasion to know it, for you will find it 
 everywhere, nearly, in hill countries. 
 
 Kathleen. If we break it well ! May we break it ? 
 
 L. To powder, if you like. 
 
 (Surrenders plate of brown mica to public investigation. 
 Third Interlude. It sustains severely philosophical treat* 
 ment at all hands. ) 
 
 Florrie. (to whom the last fragments have descended) Always 
 leaves, and leaves, and nothing but leaves, or white dust I 
 
 L. That dust itself is nothing but finer leaves. 
 
 (Shows them to Florrie through magnifying glass.) 
 
 Isabel (peeping over Florrie's shoulder). But then this bit 
 Under the glass looks like that bit out of the glass ! If we 
 could break this bit under the glass, what would it be like ? 
 
 L. It would be all leaves still. 
 
 Isabel. And then if we broke those again ? 
 
 L. All less leaves still. 
 
 Isabel (impatient). And if we broke them again, and again, 
 and again, and again, and again ? 
 
 L. Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, if you could 
 only see it. Notice thai the little flakes already differ some- 
 what from the large ones : because I can bend them up and 
 down, and they stay bent ; while the large flake, though it 
 bent easily a little way, sprang back when you let it go, and 
 
50 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST, 
 
 broke, when you tried to bend it far. And a large mass would 
 not bend at all. 
 
 Mary. Would that leaf gold separate into finer leaves, in 
 
 the same way ? 
 
 L. No ; and therefore, as I told you, it is not a characteris- 
 tic specimen of a foliated crystallisation. The little triangles 
 are portions of solid crystals, and so they are in this, which 
 looks like a black mica ; but you see it is made up of triangles 
 like the gold, and stands, almost accurately, as an intermedi- 
 ate link, in crystals, between mica and gold. Yet this is the 
 commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals. 
 
 Mary. Is it iron ? I never saw iron so bright. 
 
 L. It is rust of iron, finely crystallised : from its resem- 
 blance to mica, it is often called micaceous iron. 
 
 Kathleen. May we break this, too ? 
 
 L. No, for I could not easily get such another crystal ; 
 besides, it would not break like the mica ; it is much harder. 
 But take the glass again, and look at the fineness of the jag- 
 ged edges of the triangles where they lap over each other. 
 The gold has the same : but you see them better here, terrace 
 above terrace, countless, and in successive angles, like superb 
 fortified bastions. 
 
 May. But all foliated crystals are not made of triangles ? 
 
 L. Far from it ; mica is occasionally so, but usually of 
 hexagons ; aud here is a foliated crystal made of squares, which 
 will show you that the leaves of the rock-land have their sum- 
 mer green, as well as their autumnal gold. 
 
 Florrie. Oh ! oh ! oh ! (jumps for joy). 
 
 L. Did you never see a bit of green leaf before, Florrie ? 
 
 Florrie. Yes, but never so bright as that, and not in a 
 sk>ne. 
 
 L. If you will look at the leaves of the trees in sunshine 
 after a shower, you will find they are much brighter than 
 that ; and surely they are none the worse for being on stalks 
 instead of in stones ? 
 
 Florrie. Yes, but then there are so many of them, one 
 never looks, I suppose. 
 
 L. Now you have it, Florrie. 
 
THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 
 
 51 
 
 Violet (sighing). There are so many beautiful things we 
 never see ! 
 
 L. You need not sigh for that, Violet ; but I will tell you 
 what we should all sigh for, — that there are so many ugly 
 things we never see. 
 
 Violet. But we don't want to see ugly things ! 
 
 L. You had better say, ' We don't want to suffer thenio* 
 You ought to be glad in thinking how much more beauty God 
 has made, than human eyes can ever see ; but not glad in 
 thinking how much more evil man has made, than his own 
 soul can ever conceive, much more than his hands can ever 
 heal. 
 
 Violet. I don't understand ; — how is that like the leaves ? 
 
 L. The same law holds in our neglect of multiplied pain, as 
 in our neglect of multiplied beauty. Florrie jumps for joy at 
 sight of half an inch of a green leaf in a bi'own stone ; and 
 takes more notice of it than of all the green in the wood : and 
 you, or I, or any of us, would be unhappy if any single human 
 creature beside us were in sharp pain ; but we can read, at 
 breakfast, day after day, of men being killed, and of women 
 and children dying of hunger, faster than the leaves strew the 
 brooks in Vallombrosa ;— and then go out to play croquet, as 
 if nothing had happened. 
 
 May. But we do not see the people being killed or dying. 
 
 L. You did not see your brother, when you got the tele- 
 gram the other day, saying he was ill, May ; but you cried for 
 him ; and played no croquet. But we cannot talk of these 
 things now ; and what is more, you must let me talk straight 
 on, for a little while ; and ask no questions till I've done : for 
 we branch (' exfoliate,' I should say, mineralogically) always 
 into something else, — though that's my fault more than yours ; 
 but I must go straight on now. You have got a distinct 
 notion, I hope, of leaf-crystals ; and you see the sort of look 
 they have : you can easily remember that ' folium ' is Latin 
 for a leaf, and that the separate flakes of mica, or any other 
 such stones, are called c folia ; ' but, because mica is the most 
 characteristic of these stones, other things that are like it in 
 structure are called ' micas ; ' thus we have Uran-mica, which 
 
52 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE BUST. 
 
 is the green leaf I showed you ; aud Copper-mica, which is 
 another like it, made chiefly of copper ; and this foliated iron 
 is called ' micaceous iron/ You have then these two great 
 orders, Needle-crystals, made (probably) of grains in rows ; 
 and Leaf-crystals, made (probably) of needles interwoven ; 
 now, lastly, there are crystals of a third order, in heaps, or 
 knots, or masses, which may be made, either of leaves laid 
 one upon another, or of needles bound like Roman fasces ; and 
 mica itself, when it is well crystallised, puts itself into such 
 masses, as if to show us how others are made. Here is a 
 brown six-sided crystal, quite as beautifully chiselled at the 
 sides as any castle tower ; but you see it is entirely built of 
 folia of mica, one laid above another, which break away the 
 moment I touch the edge with my knife. Now, here is an- 
 other hexagonal tower, of just the same size and colour, w T hich 
 I want you to compare with the mica carefully ; but as I can- 
 not wait for you to do it just now, I must tell you quickly 
 what main differences to look for. First, you will feel it is far 
 heavier than the mica. Then, though its surface looks quite 
 micaceous in the folia of it, when you try them with the knife, 
 
 you will find you cannot break them away 
 
 Kathleen. May I try ? 
 
 L. Yes, you mistrusting Katie. Here's my strong knife 
 for you. [Experimental pause. Kathleen doing her best.) 
 You'll have that knife shutting on your finger presently, Kate ; 
 and I don't know a girl who would like less to have her hand 
 tied up for a week. 
 
 Kathleen (ivJio also does not like to be beaten — giving up the 
 knife despondently). What can the nasty hard thing be? 
 
 L. It is nothing but indurated clay, Kate : very hard set 
 certainly, yet not so hard as it might be. If it were thor- 
 oughly well crystallised, you would see none of those mica- 
 ceous fractures ; and the stone would be quite red and clear, 
 all through. 
 
 Kathleen. Oh, cannot you show us one ? 
 
 L. Egypt can, if you ask her ; she has a beautiful one in th$ 
 clasp of her favourite bracelet. 
 
 Kathleen. Why, that's a ruby ! 
 
THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 
 
 53 
 
 L. Well, so is that thing you've been scratching at. 
 Kathleen. My goodness ! 
 
 {Takes up the stone again, very delicately ; and drops it 
 General consternation.) 
 
 L. Never mind, Katie ; you might drop it from the top of 
 the house, and do it no harm. But though you really are 
 a very good girl, and as good-natured as anybody can possi- 
 bly be, remember, you have your faults, like other people ; 
 and, if I were you, the next time I wanted to assert anything 
 energetically, I would assert it by c my badness,' not \ my good- 
 ness.' 
 
 Kathleen. Ah, now, it's too bad of you ! 
 
 L. Well, then, I'll invoke, on occasion, my ' too-badness/ 
 But you may as well pick up the ruby, now you have dropped 
 it ; and look carefully at the beautiful hexagonal lines which 
 gleam on its surface ; and here is a pretty white sapphire (essen- 
 tially the same stone as the ruby), in which you will see the 
 same lovely structure, like the threads of the finest white 
 cobweb. I do not know what is the exact method of a ruby's 
 construction ; but you see by these lines, what fine construction 
 there is, even in this hardest of stones (after the diamond), 
 which usually appears as a massive lump or knot. There is 
 therefore no real mineralogical distinction between needle 
 crystals and knotted crystals, but, practically, crystallised 
 masses throw themselves into one of the three groups we 
 have been examining to-day ; and appear either as Needles, 
 as Folia, or as Knots ; when they are in needles (or fibres), 
 they make the stones or rocks formed out of them 'fibrous ; 9 
 when they are in folia, they make them 'foliated ; ' when they 
 are in knots (or grains), ' granular.' Fibrous rocks are com- 
 paratively rare, in mass ; but fibrous minerals are innumer- 
 able ; and it is often a question which really no one but a 
 young lady could possibly settle, whether one should call the 
 fibres composing them 4 threads ' or 4 needles.' Here is amian- 
 thus, for instance, which is quite as fine and soft as any cotton 
 thread you ever sewed with ; and here is sulphide of bismuth, 
 with sharper points and brighter lustre than your finest 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 needles have ; and fastened in white webs of quartz more 
 delicate than your finest lace ; and here is sulphide of anti- 
 mony, which looks like mere purple wool, but it is all of 
 purple needle crystals ; and here is red oxide of copper (you 
 must not breathe on it as you look, or you may blow some of 
 the films of it off the stone), which is simply a w T oven tissue 
 of scarlet silk. However, these finer thread forms are compar- 
 atively rare, while the bolder and needle-like crystals occur 
 constantly ; so that, I believe, i Needle-crystal • is the best 
 word (the grand one is ' Acicular crystal,' but Sibyl will tell 
 you it is all the same, only less easily understood ; and there- 
 fore more scientific). Then the Leaf- crystals, as I said, 
 form an immense mass of foliated rocks ; and the Granular 
 crystals, which are of many kinds, form essentially granular, 
 or granitic and porphyritic rocks ; and it is always a point of 
 more interest to me (and I think will ultimately be to you), 
 to consider the causes which force a given mineral to take 
 any one of these three general forms, than what the peculiar 
 geometrical limitations are, belonging to its own crystals.* 
 It is more interesting to me, for instance, to try and find out 
 %vhy the red oxide of copper, usually crystallising in cubes or 
 octahedrons, makes itself exquisitely, out of its cubes, into 
 this red silk in one particular Cornish mine, than what are 
 the absolutely necessary angles of the octahedron, w 7 hich is 
 its common form. At all events, that mathematical part of 
 crystallography is quite beyond girls' strength ; but these 
 questions of the various tempers and manners of crystals are 
 not only comprehensible by you, but full of the most curious 
 teaching for you. For in the fulfilment, to the best of their 
 power, of their adopted form under given circumstances^ 
 there are conditions entirely resembling those of human vir- 
 tue ; and indeed expressible under no term so proper as that 
 of the Virtue, or Courage of crystals : — which, if you are not 
 afraid of the crystals making you ashamed of yourselves, we 
 will try to get some notion of, to-morrow. But it will be a 
 bye-lecture, and more about yourselves than the minerals. 
 Don't come unless you like. 
 
 * Note iv. 
 
THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 
 
 55 
 
 Maky. I'm sure the crystals will make us ashamed of our- 
 selves ; but we'll come, for all that. 
 
 L. Meantime, look well and quietly over these needle, or 
 thread crystals, and those on the other two tables, with mag- 
 nifying glasses, and see what thoughts will come into your 
 little heads about them. For the best thoughts are generally 
 those which come without being forced, one does not know 
 how. And so I hope you will get through your wet dav pa- 
 tiently. 
 
LECTUEE V. 
 
 CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 
 
 A quiet talk, hi the afternoon, by the sunniest icindow of tlie Drawing* 
 room. Present, Florrie, Isabel, May, Lucilla, Kathleen, Doha, 
 Mary, and some others, who have saved time for the bye-Lecture. 
 
 L. So you have really come, like good girls, to be made 
 ashamed of yourselves ? 
 
 Dora (very meekly). No, we needn't be made so ; we always 
 are. 
 
 L. "Well, I believe that's truer than most pretty speeches : 
 but you know, you saucy girl, some people have more reason 
 to be so than others. Are you sure everybody is, as well as 
 you ? 
 
 The General Voice. Yes, yes ; everybody. 
 L. What ! Florrie ashamed of herself ? 
 
 (Florrie hides behind the curtain.) 
 L. And Isabel ? 
 
 (Isabel hides under the table.) 
 L. And May? 
 
 (May runs into the corner behind the piano.) 
 L. And Lucilla ? 
 
 (Lucilla hides her face in her hands.) 
 L. Dear, dear ; but this will never do. I shall have to tell 
 you of the faults of the crystals, instead of virtues, to put you 
 in heart again. 
 
 May (coming out of her corner). Oh ! have the crystals faults, 
 like us ? 
 
 L. Certainly, May. Their best virtues are shown in fight- 
 ing their faults. And some have a great many faults ; and 
 some are very naughty crystals indeed. 
 
 Florrie (from behind her curtain). As naughty as me? 
 
 Isabel (peeping from under the table cloth). Or me ? 
 
CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 
 
 57 
 
 L. Well, I don't know. They never forget their syntax, 
 children, when once they've been taught it. But I think some 
 of them are, on the whole, worse than any of you. Not that 
 it's amiable of you to look so radiant, all in a minute, on that 
 account. 
 
 Dora. Oh ! but it's so much more comfortable. 
 
 [Everybody seems to recover their spirits. Eclipse of Floe* 
 me and Isabel terminates.) 
 
 L. What kindly creatures girls are, after all, to their neigh- 
 bours' failings ! I think you may be ashamed of yourselves 
 indeed, now, children ! I can tell you, you shall hear of the 
 highest crystalline merits that I can think of, to-day : and I 
 wish there were more of them ; but crystals have a limited, 
 though a stern, code of morals ; and their essential virtues 
 are but two ; — the first is to be pure, and the second to be 
 well shaped. 
 
 Mary. Pure ! Does that mean clear — transparent ? 
 
 L. No ; unless in the case of a transparent substance. You 
 cannot have a transparent crystal of gold ; but you may have 
 a perfectly pure one. 
 
 Isabel. But you said it was the shape that made things be 
 crystals ; therefore, oughtn't their shape to be their first vir- 
 tue, not their second ? 
 
 L. Eight, you troublesome mousie. But I call their shape 
 only their second virtue, because it depends on time and ac- 
 cident, and things which the crystal cannot help. If it is 
 cooled too quickly, or shaken, it must take what shape it can ; 
 but it seems as if, even then, it had in itself the power of re- 
 jecting impurity, if it has crystalline life enough. Here is a 
 crystal of quartz, well enough shaped in its way ; but it seems 
 to have been languid and sick at heart ; and some white milky 
 substance has got into it, and mixed itself up with it, all 
 through. It makes the quartz quite yellow, if you hold it up 
 to the light, and milky blue on the surface. Here is another, 
 broken into a thousand separate facets, and out of all trace- 
 able shape ; but as pure as a mountain spring. I like this 
 one best. 
 
58 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 The Audience. So do I — and I — and I. 
 Mary. Would a crystallographer ? 
 
 L. I think so. He would find many more laws curiously 
 exemplified in the irregularly grouped but pure crystal. But 
 it is a futile question, this of first or second. Parity is in 
 most cases a prior, if not a nobler, virtue ; at all events it is 
 most convenient to think about it first. 
 
 Mary. But what ought we to think about it? Is there much 
 to be thought — I mean, much to puzzle one ? 
 
 L. I don't know what you call 4 much.' It is a long time 
 since I met with anything in which there was little. There's 
 not much in this, perhaps. The crystal must be either dirty 
 or clean, — and there's an end. So it is with one's hands, and 
 with one's heart — only you can wash your hands without 
 changing them, but not hearts, nor crystals. On the whole, 
 while you are young, it will be as well to take care that your 
 hearts don't want much washing ; for they may perhaps need 
 wringing also, when they do. 
 
 {Audience doubtful and uncomfortable. Lucilla at last 
 takes courage.) 
 
 Lucilla. Oh ! but surely, sir, we cannot make our hearts 
 clean ? 
 
 L. Not easily, Lucilla ; so you had better keep them so 
 when they are. 
 
 Lucilla. When they are ! But, sir — 
 L. Well? 
 
 Lucilla. Sir — surely — are we not told that they are all 
 evil ? 
 
 L. Wait a little, Lucilla ; that is difficult ground you are 
 getting upon ; and we must keep to our crystals, till at least 
 we understand what their good and evil consist in ; they may 
 help us afterwards to some useful hints about our own. I 
 said that their goodness consisted chiefly in purity of sub- 
 stance, and perfectness of form : but those ars rather the 
 effects of their goodness, than the goodness itself, The inher- 
 ent virtues of the crystals, resulting in these outer conditions, 
 might really seem to be best described in the words we should 
 
CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 
 
 59 
 
 use respecting living creatures — ' force of heart* and 'steadi- 
 ness of purpose.' There seem to be in some crystals, from 
 the beginning, an unconquerable purity of vital power, and 
 strength of crystal spirit. Whatever dead substance, unac- 
 ceptant of this energy, comes in their way, is either rejected, 
 or forced to take some beautiful subordinate form ; the purity 
 of the crystal remains unsullied, and every atom of it bright 
 with coherent energy. Then the second condition is, that 
 from the beginning of its whole structure, a fine crystal seems 
 to have determined that it will be of a certain size and of a 
 certain shape ; it persists in this plan, and completes it. 
 Here is a perfect crystal of quartz for you. It is of an un- 
 usual form, and one which it might seem very difficult to build 
 — a pyramid with convex sides, composed of other minor pyra- 
 mids. But there is not a flaw in its contour throughout ; not 
 one of its myriads of component sides but is as bright as a 
 jeweller's facetted work (and far finer, if you saw it close). 
 The crystal points are as sharp as javelins ; their edges vvill 
 cut glass with a touch. Anything more resolute, consummate, 
 determinate in form, cannot be conceived. Here, on the 
 other hand, is a crystal of the same substance, in a perfectly 
 simple type of form — a plain six-sided prism ; but from its 
 base to its point, — and it is nine inches long, — it has never 
 for one instant made up its mind what thickness it will have. 
 It seems to have begun by making itself as thick as it thought 
 possible with the quantity of material at command. Still not 
 being as thick as it would like to be, it has clumsily glued on 
 more substance at one of its sides. Then it has thinned itself, 
 in a panic of economy ; then puffed itself out again ; tliea 
 starved one side to enlarge another ; then warped itself quite 
 out of its first line. Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged on the 
 edge, distorted in the spine, it exhibits a quite human imag** 
 of decrepitude and dishonour ; but the worst of all the signs 
 of its decay and helplessness, is that half-way up, a parasite 
 crystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has rooted itself in the side 
 of the larger one, eating out a cavity round its root, and then 
 growing backwards, or downwards, contrary to the direction 
 of the main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least difference in 
 
80 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 purity of substance between the first most noble stone, and 
 this ignoble and dissolute one. The impurity of the last is 
 in its will, or want of will. 
 
 Mary. Oh, if we could but understand the meaning of it 
 all! 
 
 L. We can understand all that is good for us. It is just as 
 true for us, as for the crystal, that the nobleness of life de- 
 pends on its consistency, — clearness of purpose, — quiet and 
 ceaseless energy. All doubt, and repenting, and botching, 
 and retouching, and wondering what it will be best to do 
 next, are vice, as well as misery. 
 
 Mary (much wondering). But must not one repent when one 
 does wrong, and hesitate when one can't see one's way ? 
 
 L. You have no business at all to do wrong ; nor to get 
 into any way that you cannot see. Your intelligence should 
 always be far in advance of your act. Whenever you do not 
 know what you are about, you are sure to be doing wrong. 
 
 Kathleen. Oh, dear, but I never know what I am about ! 
 
 L. Very true, Katie, but it is a great deal to know, if you 
 know that. And you find that you have done wrong after- 
 wards ; and perhaps some day you may begin to know, or at 
 least, think, what you are about. 
 
 Isabel. But surely people can't do very wrong if they don't 
 know, can they ? I mean, they can't be very naughty. They 
 can be wrong, like Kathleen or me, when we make mistakes ; 
 but not wrong in the dreadful way. I can't express what I 
 mean ; but there are two sorts of wrong are there not ? 
 
 L. Yes, Isabel ; but you will find that the great difference 
 is between kind and unkind wrongs, not between meant and 
 unmeant wrong. Very few people really mean to do wrong, 
 — in a deep sense, none. They only don't know what they 
 are about. Cain did not mean to do wrong when he killed 
 Abel. 
 
 (Isabel draws a deep breath, and opens her eyes very wide.) 
 
 L. No, Isabel ; and there are countless Cains among us 
 now, who kill their brothers by the score a day, not only for 
 less provocation than Cain had, but for no provocation,— and 
 
CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 
 
 61 
 
 merely for what they can make of their bones, — yet do not 
 think they are doing wrong in the least. Then sometimes 
 you have the business reversed, as over in America these last 
 years, where you have seen Abel resolutely killing Cain, and 
 not thinking he is doing wrong. The great difficulty is 
 always to open people's eyes : to touch their feelings, and 
 break their hearts, is easy ; the difficult thing is to break 
 their heads. What does it matter, as long as they remain 
 stupid, whether you change their feelings or not? You can- 
 not be always at their elbow to tell them what is right : and 
 they may just do as wrong as before, or worse ; and their best 
 intentions merely make the road smooth for them, — you know 
 where, children. For it is not the place itself that is paved 
 with them, as people say so often. You can't pave the bot- 
 tomless pit ; but you may the road to it. 
 
 May. Well, but if people do as well as they can see how, 
 surely that is the right for them, isn't it ? 
 
 L. No, May, not a bit of it ; right is right, and wrong is 
 wrong. It is only the fool who does wrong, and says he * did 
 it for the best.' And if there's one sort of person in the world 
 that the Bible speaks harder of than another, it is fools. Their 
 particular and chief way of saying 6 There is no God ' is this, 
 of declaring that whatever their ' public opinion ' may be, is 
 right : and that God's opinion is of no consequence. 
 
 May. But surely nobody can always know what is right ? 
 
 L. Yes, you always can, for to day ; and if you do what 
 you see of it to-day, you will see more of it, and more clearly, 
 to-morrow. Here, for instance, you children are at school, 
 and have to learn French, and arithmetic, and music, and sev- 
 eral other such things. That is your 6 right ' for the present ; 
 the 1 right ' for us, your teachers, is to see that you learn as 
 much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your sleep, or 
 your play ; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You 
 all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. 
 There's no doubt of conscience about that, I suppose ? 
 
 Violet. No ; but if one wants to read an amusing book, in- 
 stead of learning one's lesson ? 
 
 L. You don't call that a ' question/ seriously, Violet ? You 
 
62 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 are then merely deciding whether you will resolutely do 
 wrong or not. 
 
 Mary. But, in after life, how many fearful difficulties may 
 arise, however one tries to know or to do what is right ! 
 
 L. You are much too sensible a girl, Mary, to have felt 
 that, whatever you may have seen. A great many of young 
 ladies' difficulties arise from their falling in love with a wrong 
 person : but they have no business to let themselves fall in 
 love, till they know he is the right one. 
 
 Dora. How many thousands ought he to have a year ? 
 
 L. {disdaining reply). There are, of course, certain crises 
 of fortune when one has to take care of oneself, and mind 
 shrewdly what one is about. There is never any real doubt 
 about the path, but you may have to walk very slowly. 
 
 Mary. And if one is forced to do a wrong thing by some 
 one who has authority over you ? 
 
 L. My dear, no one can be forced to do a wrong thing, for 
 the guilt is in the will : but you may any day be forced to do 
 a fatal thing, as you might be forced to take poison ; the re- 
 markable law of nature in such cases being, that it is always 
 unfortunate you who are poisoned, and not the person who 
 gives you the dose. It is a very strange law, but it is a law. 
 Nature merely sees to the carrying out of the normal opera- 
 tion of arsenic. She never troubles herself to ask who gave 
 it you. So also you may be starved to death, morally as 
 well as physically, by other people's faults. You are, on the 
 whole, very good children sitting here to-day ; — do you think 
 that your goodness comes all by your own contriving ? or 
 that you are gentle and kind because your dispositions are 
 naturally more angelic than those of the poor girls who are 
 playing, with wild eyes, on the dustheaps in the alleys of our 
 great towns ; and who will one day fill their prisons, — or, 
 better, their graves ? Heaven only knows where they, and 
 we who have cast them there, shall stand at last. But the 
 main judgment question will be, I suppose, for all of us, 'Did 
 you keep a good heart through it ? ' What you were, others 
 may answer for ; — what you tried to be, you must answer for, 
 yourself. Was the heart pure and true — tell us that ? 
 
CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 
 
 63 
 
 And so we come back to your sorrowful question, Lucilla, 
 which I put aside a little ago. You would be afraid to an- 
 swer that your heart was pure and true, would not you ? 
 
 Lucilla. Yes, indeed, sir. 
 
 L. Because you have been taught that it is all evil — ' only 
 evil continually.' Somehow, often as people say that, they 
 never seem, to me, to believe it ? Do you really believe it ? 
 
 Lucilla. Yes, sir ; I hope so. 
 
 L. That you have an entirely bad heart ? 
 
 Lucilla (a little uncomfortable at the substitution of the mono- 
 syllable for the dissyllable, nevertheless persisting in her ortho- 
 doxy). Yes, sir. 
 
 L. Florrie, I am sure you are tired ; I never like you to 
 stay when you are tired ; but, you know, you must not play 
 with the kitten while we're 'talking. 
 
 Florrie. Oh ! but I'm not tired ; and I'm only nursing her. 
 She'll be asleep in my lap directly. 
 
 L. Stop ! that puts me in mind of something I had to show 
 you, about minerals that are like hair. I want a hair out of 
 Tittie's tail 
 
 Florrie (quite rude, in her surprise, even to the point of re- 
 peating expressions) . Out of Tittie's tail ! 
 
 L. Yes ; a brown one : Lucilla, you can get at the tip of it 
 nicely, under Florrie's arm ; just pull one out for me. 
 
 Lucilla. Oh ! but, sir, it will hurt her so ! 
 
 L. Never mind ; she can't scratch you while Florrie is 
 holding her. Now that I think of it, you had better pull out 
 two. 
 
 Lucilla. Bat then she may scratch Florrie ! and it will 
 hurt her so, sir ! if you only want brown hairs, wouldn't two 
 of mine do ? 
 
 L. Would you really rather pull out your own than Tittie's? 
 Lucilla. Oh, of course, if mine will do. 
 L. But that's very wicked, Lucilla ! 
 Lucilla. Wicked, sir? 
 
 L. Yes ; if your heart was not so bad, you would much 
 rather pull all the cat's hairs out, than one of your own. 
 Lucilla. Oh ! but sir, I didn't mean bad, like that 
 
64 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 L I believe, if the truth were told, Lucilla, you would like 
 to tie a kettle to Tittie's tail, and hunt her round the play, 
 ground. 
 
 Lucilla. Indeed, I should not, sir. 
 
 L. That's not true, Lucilla ; you know it cannot be. 
 
 Lucilla. Sir? 
 
 L. Certainly it is not; — how can you possibly speak any 
 truth out of such a heart as you have ? It is wholly deceitful. 
 
 Lucilla. Oh ! no, no ; I don't mean that way ; I don't mean 
 that it makes me tell lies, quite out. 
 
 L. Only that it tells lies within you ? 
 
 Lucilla. Yes. 
 
 L. Then, outside of it, you know what is true, and say so ; 
 and I may trust the outside of your heart ; but within, it is 
 all foul and false. Is that the way ? 
 
 Lucilla. I suppose so : I don't understand it, quite. 
 
 L. There is no occasion for understanding it ; but do you 
 feel it ? Are you sure that your heart is deceitful above all 
 things, and desperately wicked ? 
 
 Lucilla [much relieved by finding herself among phrases with 
 which she is acquainted). Yes, sir. I'm sure of that. 
 
 L. (pensively). I'm sorry for it, Lucilla. 
 
 Lucilla. So am I, indeed. 
 
 L. What are you sorry with, Lucilla? 
 
 Lucilla. Sorry with, sir ? 
 
 L. Yes ; I mean, where do you feel sorry ? in your feet ? 
 Lucilla (laughing a little). No, sir, of course. 
 L. In your shoulders, then ? 
 Lucilla. No, sir. 
 
 L. You are sure of that ? Because, I fear, sorrow in the 
 shoulders would not be worth much. 
 
 Lucilla. I suppose I feel it in my heart, if I really am 
 sorry. 
 
 L. If you really are ! Do you mean to say that you ara 
 sure you are utterly wicked, and yet do not care ? 
 Lucilla. No, indeed ; I have cried about it often. 
 L. Well, then, you are sorry in your heart ? 
 Lucilla. Yes, when the sorrow is worth anything. 
 
CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 
 
 65 
 
 L. Even if it be not, it cannot be anywhere else but there. 
 It is not the crystalline lens of your eyes which is sorry, w T hen 
 you cry ? 
 
 Lucilla. No, sir, of course. 
 
 L. Then, have you two hearts ; one of which is wicked, and 
 the other grieved ? or is one side of it sorry for the other side ? 
 
 Lucilla [weary of cross-examination, and a little vexed). 
 Indeed, sir, you know I can't understand it ; but you know 
 how it is written — 6 another law in my members, warring 
 against the law of my mind/ 
 
 L. Yes, Lucilla, I know how it is written ; but I do not see 
 that it will help us to know that, if we neither understand 
 w T hat is written, nor feel it. And you will not get nearer to 
 the meaning of one verse, if, as soon as you are puzzled by it, 
 you escape to another, introducing three new words — ' law/ 
 Members,' and 'mind'; not one of which you at present 
 know the meaning of ; and respecting which, you probably 
 never will be much wiser ; since men like Montesquieu and 
 Locke have spent great part of their lives in endeavouring to 
 explain two of them. 
 
 Lucilla. Oh ! please, sir, ask somebody else. 
 
 L. If I thought anyone else could answer better than you, 
 Lucilla, I would ; but suppose I try, instead, myself, to ex- 
 plain your feelings to you ? 
 
 Lucilla. Oh, yes ; please do. 
 
 L. Mind, I say your 'feelings/ not your 'belief/ For I 
 cannot undertake to explain anybody's beliefs. Still I must 
 try a little, first, to explain the belief also, because I want to 
 draw it to some issue. As far as I understand what you say, 
 or any one else, taught as you have been taught, says, on 
 this matter, — you think that there is an external goodness, a 
 whited-sepulchre kind of goodness, which appears beautiful 
 outwardly, but is within full of uncleanness : a deep secret 
 guilt, of which w r e ourselves are not sensible ; and which can 
 only be seen by the Maker of us all. (Approving murmuri 
 from audience.) 
 
 L. Is it not so with the body as well as the soul ? 
 {Looked notes of interrogation.) 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 L. A skull, for instance, is not a beautiful thing ? 
 
 (Grave faces, signifying 6 Certainly not,' and ' What next? '\ 
 
 L. And if you all could see in each other, with clear eyes, 
 whatever God sees beneath those fair faces of yours, you 
 would not like it ? 
 
 (Murmured 'No's.') 
 
 L. Nor would it be good for you ? 
 
 (Silence.) 
 
 L. The probability being that what God does not allow you 
 to see, He does not wish you to see ; nor even to think of 2 
 
 (Silence prolonged.) 
 
 L. It would not at all be good for you, for instance, when- 
 ever you were washing your faces, and braiding your hair, to 
 be thinking of the shapes of the jawbones, and of the carti- 
 lage of the nose, and of the jagged sutures of the scalp ? 
 
 (Resolutely whispered No's.) 
 
 L. Still less, to see through a clear glass the daily pro- 
 cesses of nourishment and decay ? 
 (No.) 
 
 L. Still less if instead of merely inferior and preparatory 
 conditions of structure, as in the skeleton, — or inferior offices 
 of structure, as in operations of life and death, — there were 
 actual disease in the body ; ghastly and dreadful. You would 
 try to cure it ; but having taken such measures as were neces- 
 sary, you would not think the cure likely to be promoted by 
 perpetually watching the wounds, or thinking of them. On 
 the contrary, you would be thankful for every moment of for- 
 getfulness : as, in daily health, you must be thankful that 
 your Maker has veiled whatever is fearful in your frame under 
 a sweet and manifest beauty ; and has made it your duty, and 
 your only safet}^ to rejoice in that, both in yourself and in 
 others : — not indeed concealing, or refusing to believe in sick- 
 ness, if it come ; but never dwelling on it. 
 
 Now, your wisdom and duty touching soul-sickness are just 
 the same. Ascertain clearly what is wrong with you ; and so 
 
CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 
 
 67 
 
 far as you know any means of mending it, take those means, 
 and have done : when you aie examining yourself, never call 
 yourself merely a ' sinner,' that is very cheap abuse ; and ut- 
 terly useless. You may even get to like it, and be proud of 
 it But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton^ 
 or an evil-eyed jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to 
 be in any wise any of these. Take steady means to check 
 yourself in whatever fault you have ascertained, and justly ac- 
 cused yourself of. And as soon as you are in active way of 
 mending, you will be no more inclined to moan over an unde- 
 fined corruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy to 
 uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not 
 think of your faults ; still less of others' faults : in every 
 person who comes near you, look for what is good and strong : 
 honour that ; rejoice in it ; and, as you can, try to imitate it : 
 and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their 
 time comes. If, on looking back, your whole life should 
 seem rugged as a palm tree stem ; still, never mind, so long- 
 as it has been growing ; and has its grand green shade of 
 leaves, and weight of honied fruit, at top. And even if you 
 cannot find much good in yourself at last, think that it does 
 not much matter to the universe either what you were, or 
 are ; think how many people are noble, if you cannot be ; and 
 rejoice in their nobleness. An immense quantity of modern 
 confession of sin, even when honest, is merely a sickly ego- 
 tism ; which will rather gloat over its own evil, than lose the 
 centralisation of its interest in itself. 
 
 Mary. But then, if we ought to forget ourselves so much, 
 how did the old Greek proverb ' Know thyself ' come to be so 
 highly esteemed ? 
 
 L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs ; Apollo's prov- 
 erb, and the sun's ; — but do you think you can know yourself 
 by looking into yourself ? Never. You can know what you 
 are, only by looking out of yourself. Measure your own 
 powers with those of others ; compare your own interests 
 with those of others ; try to understand what you appear to 
 them, as well as what they appear to you ; and judge of your- 
 selves, in all things, relatively and subordinately ; not posi- 
 
68 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 tively : starting always with a wholesome conviction of the 
 probability that there is nothing particular about you. For 
 instance, some of you perhaps think you can write poetry. 
 Dwell on your own feelings and doings : — and you will soon 
 think yourselves Tenth Muses ; but forget your own feelings ; 
 and try, instead, to understand a line or two of Chaucer or 
 Dante : and you will soon begin to feel yourselves very fool- 
 ish girls — which is much like the fact. 
 
 So, something which befalls you may seem a great misfort- 
 une ; — you meditate over its effects on you personally ; and 
 begin to think that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a 
 this or that or the other of profound significance ; and that 
 all the angels in heaven have left their business for a little 
 while, that they may watch its effects on your mind. But 
 give up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy ; examine a 
 little what misfortunes, greater a thousandfold, are happen- 
 ing, every second, to twenty times worthier persons : and your 
 self-consciousness w T ill change into pity and humility ; and 
 you will know yourself, so far as to understand that e there 
 hath nothing taken thee but what is common to man.' 
 
 Now, Lucilla, these are the practical conclusions which any 
 person of sense would arrive at, supposing the texts which re- 
 late to the inner evil of the heart were as many, and as prom- 
 inent, as they are often supposed to be by careless readers. 
 But the way in which common people read their Bibles is just 
 like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate 
 grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said), over and over, 
 where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to 
 their spines, they carried off, and ate. So your hedgehoggy 
 readers roll themselves over and over their Bibles, and declare 
 that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scripture ; and 
 that nothing else is. But you can only get the skins of the 
 texts that way. If you want their juice, you must press them 
 in cluster. Now, the clustered texts about the human heart, 
 insist, as a body, not on any inherent corruption in all hearts, 
 but on the terrific distinction between the bad and the good 
 ones. ' A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, 
 bringeth forth that which is good ; and an evil man, out of 
 
CRYSTAL VIRTUES, 
 
 69 
 
 the evil treasure, bringeth forth that which is evil/ ' They on 
 the rock are they which, in an honest and good heart, having 
 heard the word, keep it.' ' Delight thyself in the Lord, and 
 He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' * The wicked 
 have bent their bow, that they may privily shoot at him that 
 is upright in heart. 5 And so on ; they are countless, to the 
 same effect And, for al] of us, the question is not at all to 
 ascertain how much or how little corruption there is in human 
 nature ; but to ascertain whether, out of all the mass of that 
 nature, we are of the sheep or the goat breed ; whether we 
 are people of upright heart, being shot at, or people of 
 crooked heart, shooting. And, of all the texts bearing on the 
 subject, this, which is a quite simple and practical order, is 
 the one you have chiefly to hold in mind. 'Keep thy heart 
 with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.' 
 
 Lucilla. And yet, how inconsistent the texts seem ! 
 
 L. Nonsense, Lucilla ! do you think the universe is bound 
 to look consistent to a girl of fifteen ? Look up at your own 
 room window ; — you can just see it from where you sit. I'm 
 glad that it is left open, as it ought to be, in so fine a day. 
 But do you see what a black spot it looks, in the sun-lighted 
 wall? 
 
 Lucilla. Yes, it looks as black as ink. 
 
 L. Yet you know it is a very bright room when you are 
 inside of it ; quite as bright as there is any occasion for it to 
 be, that its little lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very 
 probable, also, that if you could look into your heart from the 
 sun's point of view, it might appear a very black hole indeed : 
 nay, the sun may sometimes think good to tell you that it 
 looks so to Him ; but He will come into it, and make it very 
 cheerful for you, for all that, if you don't put the shutters up. 
 And the one question for you, remember, is not ' dark or 
 light ? ' but ' tidy or untidy ? ' Look well to your sweeping 
 and garnishing ; and be sure it is only the banished spirit, or 
 some of the seven wickeder ones at his back, who will stil] 
 whisper to you that it is all black. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 CRYSTAL QUARRELS, 
 
 Wall vortclave, in Schoolroom. There-has been a game at erystallisatiop, in 
 the morning, of which various account has to be rendered. In partic* 
 tddr, everybody has to explain why they were always where they were not 
 intended to be. 
 
 L. (having received and considered the report). You have 
 got on pretty well, children : but you know these were easy 
 figures you have been trying. "Wait till I have drawn you 
 out the plans of some crystals of snow ! 
 
 Mary. I don't think those will be the most difficult :— they 
 are so beautiful that we shall remember our places better ; 
 and then they are all regular, and in stars : it is those twisty 
 oblique ones we are afraid of. 
 
 L. Bead Carlyle's account of the battle of Leuthen, and 
 learn Freidrich's 'oblique order/ You will 'get it done for 
 once, I think, provided you can march as a pair of compasses 
 would.' But remember, when you can construct the most 
 difficult single figures, you have only learned half the game 
 — nothing so much as the half, indeed, as the crystals them- 
 selves play it. 
 
 Mary. Indeed ; what else is there ? 
 
 L. It is seldom that any mineral crystallises alone. Usually 
 two or three, under quite different crystalline laws, form to- 
 gether. They do this absolutely without flaw or fault, when 
 they are in fine temper : and observe what this signifies. 
 It signifies that the two, or more, minerals of different natures 
 agree, somehow, between themselves, how much space each 
 will want ; — agree which of them shall give away to the other 
 at their junction ; or in what measure each will accommodate 
 itself to the other's shape ! And then each takes its per- 
 mitted shape, and allotted share of space ; yielding, or being 
 
CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 
 
 71 
 
 yielded to, as it builds, till each crystal has fitted itself per- 
 fectly and gracefully to its differently-natured neighbour. 
 So that, in order to practise this, in even the simplest terms, 
 you must divide into two parties, wearing different colours ; 
 each much choose a different figure to construct ; and you 
 must form one of these figures through the other, both going 
 on at the same time. 
 
 Mary. I think we may, perhaps, manage it ; but I cannot 
 at all understand how the crystals do. It seems to imply so 
 much preconcerting of plan, and so much giving way to each 
 other, as if they really were living. 
 
 L. Yes, it implies both concurrence and compromise, 
 regulating all wilfulness of design : and, more curious still, 
 the crystals do not always give way to each other. They show 
 exactly the same varieties of temper that human creatures 
 might. Sometimes they yield the required place with per- 
 fect grace and courtesy ; forming fantastic, but exquisitely 
 finished groups : and sometimes they will not yield at all ; 
 but fight furiously for their places, losing all shape and 
 honour, and even their own likeness, in the contest. 
 
 Mary. But is not that wholly wonderful ? How is it that 
 one never sees it spoken of in books ? 
 
 L. The scientific men are all busy in determining the con- 
 stant laws under which the struggle takes place ; these indefi- 
 nite humours of the elements are of no interest to them. 
 And unscientific people rarely give themselves the trouble of 
 thinking at all when they look at stones. Not that it is of 
 much use to think ; the more one thinks, the more one is 
 puzzled. 
 
 Mary. Surely it is more wonderful than anything in 
 botany ? 
 
 L. Everything has its own wonders ; but, given the nature 
 of the plant, it is easier to understand what a flower will do, 
 and why it does it, than, given anything w r e as yet know of 
 stone-nature, to understand what a crystal will do, and why 
 it does it. You at once admit a kind of volition and choice, 
 in the flower ; but we are not accustomed to attribute anything 
 of the kind to the crystal. Yet there is, in reality, more like* 
 
72 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 ness to some conditions of human feeling among stones than 
 among plants. There is a far greater difference between 
 kindly-tempered and ill-tempered crystals of the same mine- 
 ral, than between any two specimens of the same flower : and 
 the friendships and wars of crystals depend more definitely 
 and curiously on their varieties of disposition, than any associ- 
 ations of flowers. Here, for instance, is a good garnet, living 
 with good mica ; one rich red, and the other silver white : 
 the mica leaves exactly room enough for the garnet to crystal- 
 lise comfortably in ; and the garnet lives happily in its little 
 white house ; fitted to it, like a pholas in its cell. But here 
 are wicked garnets living with wicked mica. See what ruin 
 they make of each other ! You cannot tell which is which ; 
 the garnets look like dull red stains on the crumbling stone. 
 By the way, I never could understand, if St. Gothard is a 
 real saint, why he can't keep his garnets in better order. 
 These are all under his care ; but I suppose there are too 
 many of them for him to look after. The streets of Airolo 
 are paved with them. 
 
 May. Paved with garnets? 
 
 L. With mica-slate and garnets ; I broke this bit out of a 
 paving stone. Now garnets and mica are natural friends, 
 and generally fond of each other ; but you see how they 
 quarrel when they are ill brought up. So it is always. Good 
 crystals are friendly with almost all other good crystals, 
 however little they chance to see of each other, or how- 
 ever opposite their habits may be ; while wicked crystals 
 quarrel with one another, though they may be exactly alike 
 in habits, and see each other continually. And of course the 
 wicked crystals quarrel with the good ones. 
 
 Isx\bel. Then do the good ones get angry ? 
 
 L. No, never : they attend to their own work and life ; 
 and live it as well as they can, though they are always the 
 sufferers, Here, for instance, is a rock-crystal of the purest 
 race and finest temper, who was born, unhappily for him, in 
 a bad neighbourhood, near Beaufort in Savoy ; and he has had 
 to fight with vile calcareous mud all his life. See here, when he 
 was but a child, it came down on him, and nearly buried him ; a 
 
CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 
 
 73 
 
 weaker crystal would have died in despair ; but he only 
 gathered himself together, like Hercules against the serpents, 
 and threw a layer of crystal over the clay ; conquered it,— 
 imprisoned it, — and lived on. Then, when he was a little 
 older, came more clay ; and poured itself upon him here, at 
 the side ; and he has laid crystal over that, and lived on, in 
 his purity. Then the clay came on at his angles, and tried to 
 cover them, and round them away ; but upon that he threw 
 out buttress-crystals at his angles, all as true to his own 
 central line as chapels round a cathedral apse ; and clustered 
 them round the clay ; and conquered it again. At last the 
 clay came on at his summit, and tried to blunt his summit ; but 
 he could not endure that for an instant ; and left his flanks 
 all rough, but pure ; and fought the clay at his crest, and 
 built crest over crest, and peak over peak, till the clay sur- 
 rendered at last ; and here is his summit, smooth and pure, 
 terminating a pyramid of alternate clay and crystal, half a 
 foot high ! 
 
 Lily. Oh, how nice of him ! What a dear, brave crystal ! 
 But I can't bear to see his flanks all broken, and the clay 
 within them. 
 
 L. Yes ; it was an evil chance for him, the being born to 
 such contention ; there are some enemies so base that even 
 to hold them captive is a kind of dishonour. But look, here 
 lias been quite a different kind of struggle : the adverse 
 power has been more orderly, and has fought the pure crystal 
 in ranks as firm as its own. This is not mere rage and im- 
 pediment of crowded evil : here is a disciplined hostility ; 
 army against army. 
 
 Lily. Oh, but this is much more beautiful ! 
 
 L. Yes, for both the elements have true virtue in them ; it 
 is a pity they are at war, but they war grandly. 
 
 Mary. But is this the same clay as in the other crystal ? 
 
 L. I used the word clay for shortness. In both, the enemy 
 is really limestone ; but in the first, disordered, and mixed 
 with true clay ; while, here, it is nearly pure, and crystallises 
 into its own primitive form, the oblique six-sided one, which 
 you know : and out of these it makes regiments ; and then 
 
7i 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE BUST. 
 
 squares of the regiments, and so charges the rock crystal 
 literally in square against column. 
 
 Isabel. Please, please, let me see. And what does the 
 rock crystal do ? 
 
 L. The rock crystal seems able to do nothing. The calcite 
 cuts it through at every charge. Look here, — and here ! 
 The loveliest crystal in the whole group is hewn fairly into 
 two pieces. 
 
 Isabel. Oh, dear ; but is the calcite harder than the crys- 
 tal then? 
 
 L. No, softer. Very much softer. 
 
 Mary. But then, how can it possibly cut the crystal ? 
 
 L. It did not really cut it, though it passes through it. 
 The two were formed together, as I told you ; but no one 
 knows how. Still, it is strange that this hard quartz has in 
 all cases a good-natured way with it, of yielding to every- 
 thing else. All sorts of soft things make nests for themselves 
 in it ; and it never makes a nest for itself in anything. It 
 has all the rough outside work ; and every sort of cowardly 
 and weak mineral can shelter itself within it. Look ; these 
 are hexagonal plates of mica ; if they were outside of this 
 crystal they would break, like burnt paper ; but they are 
 inside of it, — nothing can hurt them, — the crystal has taken 
 them into its very heart, keeping all their delicate edges as 
 sharp as if they were under water, instead of bathed in rock. 
 Here is a piece of branched silver : you can bend it with a 
 touch of your finger, but the stamp of its every fibre is on 
 the rock in which it lay, as if the quartz had been as soft as 
 wool. 
 
 Lily. Oh, the good, good quartz ! But does it never get 
 inside of anything ? 
 
 L. As it is a little Irish girl who asks, I may perhaps an- 
 swer, without being laughed at, that it gets inside of itself 
 sometimes. Bat I don't remember seeing quartz make a nest 
 for itself in anything else. 
 
 Isabel. Please, there was something I heard you talking 
 about, last term, with Miss Mary. I was at my lessons, but 
 I heard something about nests ; and I thought it was birds' 
 
CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 
 
 75 
 
 nests ; and I couldn't help listening ; and then, I remem- 
 ber, it was about ' nests of quartz in granite.' I remember 
 because I was so disappointed ! 
 
 L. Yes, mousie, you remember quite rightly ; but I can'* 
 tell you about those nests to-day, nor perhaps to-morrow : 
 but there's no contradiction between my saying then, and 
 now ; I will show you that there is not, some day. Will you 
 trust me meanwhile ? 
 
 Isabel. Won't I ! 
 
 L. Well, then, look, lastly, at this piece of courtesy in 
 quartz ; it is on a small scale, but wonderfully pretty. Here 
 is nobly born quartz living with a green mineral, called epi- 
 dote ; and they are immense friends. Now, you see, a com- 
 paratively large and strong quartz -crystal, and a very weak 
 and slender little one of epidote, have begun to grow, close 
 by each other, and sloping unluckily towards each other, so 
 that they at last meet. They cannot go on growing togeth- 
 er ; the quartz crystal is five times as thick, and more than 
 twenty times as strong,* as the epidote ; but he stops at 
 once, just in the very crowning moment of his life, when he 
 is building his own summit ! He lets the pale little film of 
 epidote grow right past him ; stopping his own summit for 
 it ; and he never himself grows any more. 
 
 Lily (after some silence of wonder). But is the quartz never 
 wicked then ? 
 
 L. Yes, but the wickedest quartz seems good-natured, com- 
 pared to other things. Here are two very characteristic ex- 
 amples ; one is good quartz, living with good pearlspar, and 
 the other, wicked quartz, living with wicked pearlspar. In 
 both, the quartz yields to the soft carbonate of iron : but, in 
 the first place, the iron takes only what it needs of room ; and 
 is inserted into the planes of the rock crystal with such pre- 
 cision, that you must break it away before you can tell 
 whether it really penetrates the quartz or not ; w r hile the 
 crystals of iron are perfectly formed, and have a lovely bloom 
 on their surface besides. But here, when the two minerals 
 
 * Quartz is not much harder than epidote ; the strength is only sup 
 posed to be in some proportion to the squares of the diameters. 
 
76 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 quarrel, the unhappy quartz has all its surfaces jagged and 
 torn to pieces ; and there is not a single iron crystal whose 
 shape you can completely trace. But the quartz has the worst 
 of it, in both instances. 
 
 Violet. Might we look at that piece of broken quartz again, 
 with the weak little film across it ? it seems such a strange 
 lovely thing, like the self-sacrifice of a human being. 
 
 L. The self sacrifice of a human being is not a lovely thing, 
 Violet. It is often a necessary and noble thing ; but no form 
 nor degree of suicide can be ever lovely. 
 
 Violet. Bat self-sacrifice is not suicide ! 
 
 L. What is it then ? 
 
 Violet. Giving up one's self for another. 
 
 L. Well ; and what do you mean by - giving up one's self?' 
 
 Violet. Giving up one's tastes, one's feelings, one's time, 
 one's happiness, and so on, to make others happy. 
 
 L. I hope you will never marry anybody, Violet, who ex- 
 pects you to make him happy in that way. 
 
 Violet (hesitating). In what way ? 
 
 L. By giving up your tastes, and sacrificing your feelings, 
 and happiness. 
 
 Violet. No, no, I don't mean that ; but you know, for other 
 people, one must. 
 
 L. For people who don't love you, and whom you know 
 nothing about ? Be it so ; but how does this ' giving up ' dif- 
 fer from suicide then ? 
 
 Violet. Why, giving up one's pleasures is not killing one's 
 self ? 
 
 L. Giving up wrong pleasure is not ; neither is it self-sacri- 
 fice, but self-culture. But giving up right pleasure is. If 
 you surrender the pleasure of walking, your foot will wither ; 
 you may as well cut it off : if you surrender the pleasure of 
 seeing, your eyes will soon be unable to bear the light ; you 
 may as well pluck them out. And to maim yourself is partly 
 to kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, and you will soon 
 slay. 
 
 Violet. But why do you make me think of that verse ther, 
 %bout the foot and the eye ? 
 
CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 
 
 77 
 
 L. You are indeed commanded to cut off and to pluck out, 
 if foot or eye offend you ; but why should they offend you ? 
 
 Violet. I don't know ; I never quite understood that. 
 
 L. "Yet it is a sharp order ; one needing to be well under- 
 stood if it is to be well obeyed ! When Helen sprained her 
 ancle the other day, you saw how strongly it had to be band- 
 aged : that is to say, prevented from all work, to recover it. 
 But the bandage was not £ lovely.' 
 
 Violet. No, indeed. 
 
 L. And if her foot had been crushed, or diseased, or snake- 
 bitten, instead of sprained, it might have been needful to cut 
 it off. But the amputation would not have been ' lovely.' 
 
 Violet. No. 
 
 L. Well, if eye and foot are dead already, and betray you 
 — if the light that is in you be darkness, and your feet run 
 into mischief, or are taken in the snare, — it is indeed time 
 to pluck out, and cut off, I think : but, so crippled, you can 
 never be what you might have been otherwise. You enter 
 into life, at best, halt or maimed ; and the sacrifice is not 
 beautiful, though necessary. 
 
 Violet {after a pause). But when one sacrifices one's self 
 for others ? 
 
 L. Why not rather others for you ? 
 
 Violet. Oh ! but I couldn't bear that. 
 
 L. Then why should they bear it ? 
 
 Dora [bursting in, indignant). And Thermopylae, and Pro- 
 tesilaus, and Marcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, and 
 Iphigenia, and Jephthah's daughter ? 
 
 L. (sustaining the indignation unmoved). And the Samaritan 
 woman's son ? 
 
 Dora. Which Samaritan woman's? 
 
 L. Bead 2 Kings vi. 29. 
 
 Dora (obeys). How horrid ! As if we meant anything like 
 that ! 
 
 L. You don't seem to me to know in the least what you do 
 mean, children. What practical difference is there between 
 • that,' and what you are talking about ? The Samaritan chil- 
 dren had no voice of their own in the business, it is true ; but 
 
78 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 neither had Iphigenia : the Greek girl was certainly neithei 
 boiled, nor eaten ; but that only makes a difference in the 
 dramatic effect ; not in the principle. 
 
 Dora (biting her lip). Well, then, tell us what we ought to 
 mean. As if you didn't teach it all to us, and mean it your- 
 self, at this moment, more than we do, if you wouldn't be 
 tiresome ! 
 
 L. I mean, and have always meant, simply this, Dora ; — > 
 that the will of God respecting us is that we shall live by each 
 other's happiness, and life ; not by each other's misery, or 
 death. I made you read that verse which so shocked you just 
 now, because the relations of parent and child are typical of 
 all beautiful human help. A child may have to die for its 
 parents ; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather live 
 for them ; — that, not by its sacrifice, but by its strength, its 
 joy, its force of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength ; 
 and as the arrow in the hand of the giant. So it is in all 
 other right relations. Men help each other by their joy, not 
 by their sorrow. They are not intended to slay themselves 
 for each other, but to strengthen themselves for each other. 
 And among the many apparently beautiful things which turn, 
 through mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not sure but that 
 the thoughtlessly meek and self-sacrificing spirit of good men 
 must be named as one of the fatallest. They have so often 
 been taught that there is a virtue in mere suffering, as such ; 
 and foolishly to hope that good may be brought by Heaven 
 out of all on which Heaven itself has set the stamp of evil, 
 that we may avoid it, — that they accept pain and defeat as if 
 these were their appointed portion ; never understanding that 
 their defeat is not the less to be mourned because it is more 
 fatal to their enemies than to them. The one thing that a 
 good man has to do, and to see done, is justice ; he is neither 
 to slay himself nor others causelessly : so far from denying 
 himself, since he is pleased by good, he is to do his utmost to 
 get his pleasure accomplished. And I only wish there were 
 strength, fidelity, and sense enough, among the good English- 
 men of this day, to render it possible for them to band to- 
 gether in a vowed brotherhood, to enforce, by strength of 
 
CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 
 
 79 
 
 heart and hand, the doing of human justice among all who 
 came within their sphere. And finally, for your own teach- 
 ing, observe, although there may be need for much self-sacri- 
 fice and self-denial in the correction of faults of character, 
 the moment the character is formed, the self-denial ceases. 
 Nothing is really well done, which it costs you pain to do. 
 
 Violet. But surely, sir, you are always pleased with us 
 when we try to please others, and not ourselves ? 
 
 L. My dear child, in the daily course and discipline of right 
 life, we must continually and reciprocally submit and sur- 
 render in all kind and courteous and affectionate ways : and 
 these submissions and ministries to each other, of which you 
 all know (none better) the practice and the preciousness, are 
 as good for the yielder as the receiver : they strengthen and 
 perfect as much as they soften and refine. But the real sacri- 
 fice of all our strength, or life, or happiness to others (though 
 it may be needed, and though all brave creatures hold their 
 lives in their hand, to be given, when such need comes, as 
 frankly as a soldier gives his life in battle), is yet always a 
 mournful and momentary necessity ; not the fulfilment of the 
 continuous law of being. Self-sacrifice which is sought after, 
 and triumphed in, is usually foolish ; and calamitous in its 
 issue : and by the sentimental proclamation and pursuit of it, 
 good people have not only made most of their own lives use- 
 less, but the whole framework of their religion so hollow, 
 that at this moment, while the English nation, with its lips, 
 pretends to teach every man to • love his neighbour as him- 
 self,' with its hands and feet it clutches and tramples like a 
 wild beast ; and practically lives, every soul of it that can, on 
 other people's labour. Briefly, the constant duty of every man 
 to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts ; 
 and to strengthen them for the help of others. Do you think 
 Titian would have helped the w r orld better by denying him- 
 self, and not painting ; or Casella by denying himself, and not 
 singing ? The real virtue is to be ready to sing the moment 
 people ask us ; as he was, even in purgatory. The very word 
 'virtue' means not 'conduct' but 'strength,' vital energy in 
 the heart. Were not you reading about that group of words 
 
80 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 beginning with V, — vital, virtuous, vigorous, and so on, — in 
 Max Muller, the other day, Sibyl ? Can't you tell the othera 
 about it ? 
 
 Sibyl. No, I can't ; will you tell us, please ? 
 
 L. Not now, it is too late. Come to me some idle time 
 to-morrow, and 111 tell you about it, if all's well. But the 
 gist of it is, children, that you should at least know two Latin 
 words ; recollect that ' mors ' means death and delaying ; and 
 6 vita 9 means life and growing : and try always, not to mor- 
 tify yourselves, but to vivify yourselves. 
 
 Violet. But, then, are we not to mortify our earthly affec- 
 tions? and surely we are to sacrifice ourselves, at least in 
 God's service, if not in man's ? 
 
 L. Keally, Violet, we are getting too serious. I've given 
 you enough ethics for one talk, I think ! Do let us have a 
 little play. Lily, what were you so busy about, at the ant-hill 
 in the wood, this morning ? 
 
 Lily. Oh, it was the ants who were busy, not I ; I waa 
 only trying to help them a little. 
 
 L. And they wouldn't be helped, I suppose ? 
 
 Lily. No, indeed. I can't think why ants are always so 
 tiresome, when one tries to help them ! They were carrying 
 bits of stick, as fast as they could, through a piece of grass ; 
 and pulling and pushing, so hard ; and tumbling over and 
 over, — it made one quite pity them ; so I took some of the 
 bits of stick, and carried them forward a little, where I 
 thought they wanted to put them ; but instead of being 
 pleased, they left them directly, and ran about looking quite 
 angry and frightened ; and at last ever so many of them got 
 up my sleeves, and bit me all over, and I had to come away. 
 
 L. I couldn't think what you were about. I saw your 
 French grammar lying on the grass behind you, and thought 
 perhaps you had gone to ask the ants to hear you a French 
 verb. 
 
 Isabel. Ah ! but you didn't, though ! 
 
 L. Why not, Isabel ? I knew, well enough, Lily couldn't 
 xearn that verb by herself. 
 
 Isabel. No ; but the ants couldn't help her. 
 
CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 
 
 81 
 
 L. Are you sure the ants could not have helped you, Lily ? 
 Lily {thinking). I ought to have learned something from 
 them, perhaps. 
 
 L. But none of them left their sticks to help you through 
 the irregular verb ? 
 
 Lily. No, indeed. (Laughing, with some others.) 
 
 L. What are you laughing at, children ? I cannot see why 
 the ants should not have left their tasks to help Lily in her's, 
 ■ — since here is Violet thinking she ought to leave her tasks, 
 to help God in His. Perhaps, however, she takes Lily's more 
 modest view, and thinks only that ' He ought to learn some- 
 thing from her.' 
 
 (Tears in Violet's eyes.) 
 
 Dora (scarlet). It's too bad — it's a shame : — poor Violet ! 
 
 L. My dear children, there's no reason why one should be 
 ao red, and the other so pale, merely because you are made 
 for a moment to feel the absurdity of a phrase which you 
 have been taught to use, in common with half the religious 
 world. There is but one way in which man can ever help 
 God — that is, by letting God help him : and there is no way 
 in which his name is more guiltily taken in vain, than by call- 
 ing the abandonment of our own work, the performance of 
 His. 
 
 God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where 
 He wishes us to be employed ; and that employment is truly 
 ' our Father's business/ He chooses work for every creature 
 which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and 
 humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense 
 enough, for what He wants us to do ; if we either tire our- 
 selves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may 
 always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be 
 pleasing Him, if w r e are not happy ourselves. Now, away 
 with you, children ; and be as happy as you can. And when 
 you cannot, at least don't plume yourselves upon pouting. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 HOME VIRTUES. 
 By the fireside, in the Drawing-room. Evening. 
 
 Ijora. Now, the curtains are drawn, and the fire's bright 
 and here's your arm-chair—and you're to tell us all about what 
 you promised. 
 
 L. All about what ? 
 
 Doha. All about virtue. 
 
 Kathleen. Yes, and about the words that begin with V. 
 L. I heard you singing about a word that begins with V, 
 in the playground, this morning, Miss Katie. 
 Kathleen. Me singing? 
 May. Oh tell us — tell us. 
 L. ' Vilikens and his ' 
 
 Kathleen {stopping his mouth). Oh ! please don't. Where 
 were you ? 
 
 Isabel. I'm sure I wish I had known- where he was! We 
 lost him among the rhododendrons, and I don't know where 
 he got to ; oh, you naughty — naughty — (climbs on his knee). 
 
 Doha. Now, Isabel, we really want to talk. 
 
 L. /.don't. 
 
 Dora. Oh, but you must. You promised, you know. 
 L. Yes, if all was well ; but ail's ill. I'm tired, and cross ; 
 and I won't. 
 
 Dora. You're not a bit tired, and you're not crosser than 
 two sticks ; and we'll make you talk, if you were crosser than . 
 six. Come here, Egypt ; and get on the other side of him. 
 
 (Egypt takes up a commanding position near the hearth- 
 brush.) 
 
 Dora (reviewing her forces). Now, Lily, come and sit on 
 the rug in front. 
 
 (Lily does as she is bid.) 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 S3 
 
 L. {seeing he has no chance against the odds.) Well, well ; 
 but I'm really tired. Go and dance a little, first ; and let me 
 think. 
 
 Dora. No ; you mustn't think. You will be wanting to 
 make us think next ; that will be tiresome. 
 
 L. Well, go and dance first, to get quit of thinking ; and 
 then I'll talk as long as you like. 
 
 Dora. Oh, but we can't dance to-night. There isn't time ; 
 and we wan't to hear about virtue. 
 
 L. Let me see a little of it first. Dancing is the first of 
 girl's virtues. 
 
 Egypt. Indeed ! And the second ? 
 
 L. Dressing. 
 
 Egypt. Now, you needn't say that ! I mended that tear the 
 first thing before breakfast this morning. 
 
 L. I cannot otherwise express the ethical principle, Egypt ; 
 w T hether you have mended your gown or not. 
 
 Dora. Now don't be tiresome. We really must hear about 
 virtue, please ; seriously. 
 
 L. Well. I'm telling you about it, as fast as I can. 
 
 DoRx\. What ! the first of girls' virtues is dancing ? 
 
 L. More accurately, it is wishing to dance, and not wishing 
 to tease, nor hear about virtue. 
 
 Dora (to Egypt). Isn't he cross? 
 
 Egypt. How many balls must we go to in the season, to be 
 perfectly virtuous ? 
 
 L. As many as you can without losing your colour. But 
 I did not say you should wish to go to balls. I said you 
 should be always wanting to dance. 
 
 Egypt. So we do ; but everybody says it is very wTong. 
 
 L. W T hy, Egypt, I thought — 
 
 * There was a lady once, 
 
 That would not be a queen, — that would she not, 
 For all the mud in Egypt.' 
 
 You were complaining the other day of having to go out a 
 great deal of tener than you liked, 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 Egypt. Yes, so I was ; but then, it isn't to dance. There's 
 
 no room to dance : it's — (Pausing to consider what it is for). 
 
 L. It is only to be seen, I suppose. Well, there's no harm 
 in that. Girls ought to like to be seen. 
 
 Dora [her eyes flashing). Now, you don't mean that ; and 
 you're too provoking ; and we won't dance again, for a month c 
 
 L. It will answer every purpose of revenge, Dora, if you 
 only banish me to the library ; and dance by yourselves : bui 
 I don't think Jessie and Lily will agree to that. You like m< 
 to see you dancing, don't you Lily ? 
 
 Lily. Yes, certainly, — when we do it rightly. 
 
 L. And besides, Miss Dora, if young ladies really do not 
 want to be seen, they should take care not to let their eyes 
 flash when they dislike what people say : and, more than that, 
 it is all nonsense from beginning to end, about not want- 
 ing to be seen. I don't know any more tiresome flower in the 
 borders than your especially ( modest ' snowdrop ; which one 
 always has to stoop down and take all sorts of tiresome trou- 
 ble with, and nearly break its poor little head off, before you 
 can see it ; and then, half of it is not worth seeing. Girls 
 should be like daisies ; nice and white, with an edge of red, 
 if you look close ; making the ground bright wherever they 
 are ; knowing simply and quietly that they do it, and are 
 meant to do it, and that it would be very wrong if they didn't 
 do it. Not want to be seen, indeed ! How long were you in 
 doing your back hair, this afternoon, Jessie ? 
 
 (Jessie not immediately answering, Doha comes to her assist* 
 ance.) 
 
 Dora. Not above three-quarters of an hour, I think, Jess? 
 
 Jessie (putting her finger up). Now, Dorothy, you needn't 
 talk, you know ! 
 
 L. I know she needn't, Jessie ; I shall ask her about those 
 dark plaits presently. (Dora looks round to see if there is any 
 way open for retreat.) But never mind ; it was worth the 
 time, whatever it was ; and nobody will ever mistake that 
 golden wreath for a chignon : but if you don't want it to be 
 seen, you had better wear a cap. 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 85 
 
 Jessie. Ah, now, are you really going to do nothing but ■ 
 play ? And we all have been thinking, and thinking, all day ; 
 and hoping you would tell us things ; and now — ! 
 
 L. And now I am telling you things, and true things, and 
 things good for you ; and you won't believe me. You might 
 as well have let me go to sleep at once, as I wanted to. 
 
 {Endeavours again to make himself comfortable.) 
 
 Isabel. Oh, no, no, you sha'n't go to sleep, you naughty — i 
 Kathleen, come here. 
 
 L. {knowing what he has to expect ^Kathleen comes). Get 
 away, Isabel, you're too heavy. {Sitting up.) What have I 
 been saying ? 
 
 Dora. I do believe he has been asleep all the time ! You 
 never heard anything like the things you've been saying. 
 
 L. Perhaps not. If you have heard them, and anything 
 like them, it is all I want 
 
 Egypt. Yes, but we don't understand, and you know wo 
 don't ; and we want to. 
 
 L. What did I say first ? 
 
 Dora. That the first virtue of girls was wanting to go to 
 balls. 
 
 L. I said nothing of the kind. 
 
 Jessie. ' Always wanting to dance/ you said. 
 
 L. Yes, and that's true. Their first virtue is to be intensely 
 happy ; — so happy that they don't know what to do with them- 
 selves for happiness, — and dance, instead of walking. Don't 
 you recollect 'Louisa,' 
 
 ' No fountain from a rocky cave 
 E'er tripped with foot so free ; 
 She seemed as happy as a wave 
 That dances on the sea.' 
 
 A girl is always like that, when everything's right with her, 
 Violet. But, surely, one must be sad sometimes ? 
 L. Yes, Violet ; and dull sometimes, and stupid sometimes, 
 
 and cross sometimes. What must be, must 5 but it is always 
 
86 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 either our own fault, or somebody else's. The last and worst 
 thing that can be said of a nation is, that it has made its 
 young girls sad, and weary. 
 
 May. But I am sure I have heard a great many good people 
 speak against dancing ? 
 
 L. Yes, May ; but it does not follow they were wise as well 
 as good. I suppose they think Jeremiah liked better to have 
 to write Lamentations for his people, than to have to write 
 that promise for them, which everybody seems to hurry past, 
 that they may get on quickly to the verse about Eachel weep- 
 ing for her children ; though the verse they pass is the counter- 
 blessing to that one : ' Then shall the virgin rejoice in the 
 dance ; and both young men and old together ; and I will 
 turn their mourning into joy. 5 
 
 (The children get very serious, but look at each other, as if 
 pleased.) 
 
 Mary. They understand now : but, do you know what you 
 said next? 
 
 L. Yes ; I was not more than half asleep. I said their sec- 
 oncl virtue was dressing. 
 
 Mary. Well ! what did you mean by that ? 
 L. What do you mean by dressing? 
 Mary. Wearing fine clothes. 
 
 L. Ah ! there's the mistake. / mean wearing plain ones. 
 . Mary. Yes, I daresay ! but that's not what girls understand 
 by dressing, you know. 
 
 L. I can't help that. If they understand by dressing, buy- 
 ing dresses, perhaps they also understand by drawing, buying 
 pictures. But when I hear them say they can draw, I under- 
 stand that they can make a drawing ; and when I hear them 
 say they can dress, I understand that they can make a dress 
 and — which is quite as difficult — wear one. 
 
 Dora. I'm not sure about the making ; for the wearing, we 
 can all wear them— out, before anybody expects it. 
 
 Egypt (aside, to L , piteously). Indeed I have mended that 
 torn flounce quite neatly ; look if I haven't ! 
 
 L. (aside, to Egypt). All right; don't be afraid. (Aloud to 
 
HOME VIRTUES, 
 
 87 
 
 Dora.) Yes, doubtless ; but you know that is only a slow way 
 of wwdressing. 
 
 Dora. Then, we are all to learn dress-making, are we ? 
 
 L. Yes ; and always to dress yourselves beautifully — not 
 finely, unless on occasion ; but then very finely and beauti- 
 fully too. Also, you are to dress as many other people as you 
 can ; and to teach them how to dress, if they don't know ; 
 and to consider every ill-dressed woman or child whom 
 you see anywhere, as a personal disgrace ; and to get at them, 
 somehow, until everybody is as beautifully dressed as birds. 
 
 {Silence ; the children drawing their breaths hard, as if 
 they had come from under a shower bath.) 
 
 L (seeing objections begin to express themselves in the eyes). 
 Now you needn't say you can't ; for you can : and it's what 
 you were meant to do, always ; and to dress your houses, and 
 your gardens, too ; and to do very little else, I believe, ex- 
 cept singing ; and dancing, as we said, of course ; and— one 
 thing more. 
 
 Dora. Our third and last virtue, I suppose ? 
 
 L. Yes ; on Violet's system of triplicities. 
 
 Dora. Well, we are prepared for anything now. What is it ? 
 
 L. Cooking. 
 
 Dora. Cardinal, indeed ! If only Beatrice were here with 
 her seven handmaids, that she might see what a fine eighth 
 we had found for her ! 
 
 Mary. And the interpretation ? What does ' cooking ■ mean ? 
 
 L. It means the knowledge of Medea, and of Circe, and of 
 Calypso, and of Helen, and of Eebekah, and of the Queen of 
 Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs, and fruits, and 
 balms, and spices ; and of all that is healing and sweet in 
 fields and groves, and savoury in meats ; it means careful- 
 ness, and inventiveness, and watchfulness, and willingness, 
 and readiness of appliance ; it means the economy of your 
 great-grandmothers, and the science of modern chemists ; it 
 means much tasting, and no wasting ; it means English 
 thoroughness, and French art, and Arabian hospitality ; and 
 it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and always, 
 
ss 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 ' ladies ' — * loaf-givers ; ' and, as you are to see, imperatively^ 
 that everybody has something pretty to put on, — so you ar<§ 
 to see, yet more imperatively, that everybody has something 
 nice to eat. 
 
 {Another pause, and long drawn breath.) 
 
 Dora (slowly recovering herself) to Egypt. We had bettei 
 have let him go to sleep, I think, after all ! 
 
 L. You had better let the younger ones go to sleep now : 
 for I haven't half done. 
 
 Isabel (panic-struck). Oh ! please, please ! just one quarter 
 of an hour. 
 
 L. No, Isabel ; I cannot say what I've got to say, in a 
 quarter of an hour ; and it is too hard for you, besides : — 
 you would be lying awake, and trying to make it out, half 
 the night. That will never do. 
 
 Isabel. Oh, please ! 
 
 L. It would please me exceedingly, mousie : but there are 
 times when we must both be displeased ; mores the pity. 
 Lily may stay for half an hour, if she likes. 
 
 Lily. I can't ; because Isey never goes to sleep, if she ia 
 waiting for me to come. 
 
 Isabel. Oh, yes, Lily ; I'll go to sleep to-night, I will, in- 
 deed. 
 
 Lily. Yes, it's very likely, Isey, with those fine round eyes ! 
 (To L.) You'll tell me something of what you've been saying, 
 to-morrow, w 7 on't you ? 
 
 L. No, I won't, Lily. You must choose. It's only in Miss 
 Edgeworth's novels that one can do right, and have one's 
 cake and sugar afterwards, as well (not that I consider the 
 dilemma, to-night, so grave). 
 
 (Lily, sighing, takes Isabel's hand.) 
 Yes, Lily dear, it will be better, in the outcome of it, so, 
 than if you were to hear all the talks that ever were talked, 
 $nd all the stories that ever were told. Good night. 
 
 (The door leading to the condemned cells of the Dormitory 
 closes on Lily, Isabel, Floerie, and other diminutive 
 and submissive victims.) 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 89 
 
 Jessie (after a ]Muse). Why, I thought you were so fond 
 of Miss Edgeworth ! 
 
 L. So I am ; and so you ought all to be. I can read her 
 over and over again, without ever tiring ; there's no one 
 whose every page is so full, and so delightful ; no one who 
 brings you into the company of pleasanter or wiser people ; 
 no one who tells you more truly how to do right. And it is 
 very nice, in the midst of a wild world, to have the very ideal 
 of poetical justice done always to one's hand : — to have 
 everybody found out, who tells lies ; and everybody decorated 
 with a red riband, who doesn't ; and to see the good Laura, 
 who gave away her half sovereign, receiving a grand ovation 
 from an entire dinner party disturbed for the purpose ; and 
 poor, dear, little Rosamond, who chooses purple jars instead 
 of new shoes, left at last without either her shoes or her 
 bottle. But it isn't life: and, in the way children might easily 
 understand it, it isn't morals. 
 
 Jessie. How do you mean we might understand it ? 
 
 L. You might think Miss Edgeworth meant that the right 
 was to be done mainly because one was always rewarded for 
 doing it. It is an injustice to her to say that : her heroines 
 always do right simply for its own sake, as they should ; and 
 her examples of conduct and motive are wholly admirable. 
 But her representation of events is false and misleading. 
 Her good characters never are brought into the deadly trial 
 of goodness, — the doing right, and suffering for it, quite 
 finally. And that is life, as God arranges it. 'Taking up 
 one's cross ' does not at all mean having ovations at dinner 
 parties, and being put over everybody else's head. 
 
 Dora. But what does it mean then ? That is just what we 
 couldn't understand, when you were telling us about not 
 sacrificing ourselves, yesterday. 
 
 L. My dear, it means simply that you are to go the road 
 which you see to be the straight one ; carrying whatever you 
 find is given you to carry, as well and stoutly as you can ; 
 without making faces, or calling people to come and look at 
 you. Above all, you are neither to load, nor unload, your- 
 self ; nor cut your cross to your own liking. Some people 
 
90 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 think it would be better for them to have it large ; and many, 
 that they could carry it much faster if it were small ; and 
 even those who like it largest are usually very particular 
 about its being ornamental, and made of the best ebony. But 
 all that you have really to do is to keep your back as straight 
 as you can ; and not think about what is upon it — above all, 
 not to boast of what is upon it. The real and essential mean- 
 ing of ' virtue ' is in that straightness of back. Yes ; you may 
 laugh, children, but it is. You know I was to tell about the 
 words that began with V. Sibyl, what does * virtue ' mean, 
 literally ? 
 
 Sibyl. Does it mean courage ? 
 
 L. Yes ; but a particular kind of courage. It means cour- 
 age of the nerve ; vital courage. That first syllable of it, if 
 you look in Max Mtilier, you will find really means ' nerve, 1 
 and from it come ' vis,' and 'vir/and 'virgin' (through vi- 
 reo), and the connected word 'virga' — c a rod • j — the green 
 rod, or springing bough of a tree, being the type of perfect 
 human strength, both in the use of it in the Mosaic story, 
 when it becomes a serpent, or strikes the rock ; or when 
 Aaron's bears its almonds ; and in the metaphorical expres- 
 sions, the 'Rod out of the stem of Jesse,' and the 'Man 
 whose name is the Branch,' and so on. And the essential 
 idea of real virtue is that of a vital human strength, which 
 instinctively, constantly, and without motive, does what is 
 right. You must train men to this by habit, as you would 
 the branch of a tree ; and give them instincts and manners 
 (or morals) of purity, justice, kindness, and courage. Once 
 rightly trained, they act as they should, irrespectively of all 
 motive, of fear, or of reward. It is the blackest sign of 
 putrescence in a national religion, when men speak as if it 
 were the only safeguard of conduct ; and assume that, but 
 for the fear of being burned, or for the hope of being re- 
 warded, everybody would pass their lives in lying, stealing, 
 and murdering. I think quite one of the notablest historical 
 events of this century (perhaps the very notablest), was that 
 council of clergymen, horror-struck at the idea of any dimi- 
 nution in our dread of hell, at which the last of English 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 91 
 
 clergymen whom one would have expected to see in such a 
 function, rose as the devil's advocate ; to tell us how impos- 
 sible it was we could get on without him. 
 
 Violet {after a pause). But, surely, if people weren't 
 afraid — (hesitates again). 
 
 L. They should be afraid of doing wrong, and of that only, 
 my dear. Otherwise, if they only don't do wrong for fear of 
 being punished, they have done wrong in their hearts, al- 
 ready. 
 
 Violet. Well, but surely, at least one ought to be afraid 
 of displeasing God ; and one's desire to please Him should 
 be one's first motive ? 
 
 L. He never would be pleased with us, if it were, my dear. 
 When a father sends his son out into the world — suppose as 
 tin apprentice — fancy the boy's coming home at night, and 
 saying, ' Father, I could have robbed the till to-day ; but 
 I didn't, because I thought you wouldn't like it.' Do you 
 think the father w T ould be particularly pleased ? 
 
 (Violet is silent.) 
 
 He w r ould answer, would he not, if he were wise and good, 
 c My boy, though you had no father, you must not rob tills ' ? 
 And nothing is ever done so as really to please our Great 
 Father, unless we w T ould also have done it, though we had 
 had no Father to know of it. 
 
 Violet (after long pause). But, then, what continual 
 threatenings, and promises of reward there are ! 
 
 L. And how vain both ! with the Jews, and with all of us. 
 But the fact is, that the threat and promise are simply state- 
 ments of the Divine law, and of its consequences. The fact 
 is truly told you, — make what use you may of it : and as col- 
 lateral warning, or encouragement, or comfort, the knowledge 
 of future consequences may often be helpful to us ; but 
 helpful chiefly to the better state when we can act without 
 reference to them. And there's no measuring the poisoned 
 influence of that notion of future reward on the mind of 
 Christian Europe, in the early ages. Half the monastic sys- 
 tem rose out of that, acting on the occult pride and ambition 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST, 
 
 of good people (as the other half of it came of their follies 
 and misfortunes). There is always a considerable quantity of 
 pride, to begin with, in what is called ' giving one's self to 
 God.' As if one had ever .belonged to anybody else! 
 
 Dora. But. surely, great good has come out of the monastic 
 system — our books, — our sciences — all saved by the monks? 
 
 L. Saved from what, my dear ? From the abyss of misery 
 and ruin which that false Christianity allowed the whole 
 active world to live in. When it had become the principal 
 amusement, and the most admired art, of Christian men, to 
 cut one another's throats, and burn one another's towns ; of 
 course the few feeble or reasonable persons left, who desired 
 quiet, safety, and kind fellowship, got into cloisters ; and the 
 gentlest, though tfull est, noblest men and women shut them- 
 selves up, precisely where they could be of least use. They 
 are very fine things, for us painters, now, — the towers and 
 white arches upon the tops of the rocks ; always in places 
 where it takes a day's climbing to get at them ; but the 
 intense tragi-comedy of the thing, when one thinks of it, is 
 unspeakable. All the good people of the world getting 
 themselves hung up out of the way, of mischief, like Bailie 
 Nicol Jarvie ; — poor little lambs, as it were, dangling there 
 for the sign of the Golden Fleece ; or like Socrates in his 
 basket in the 'Clouds'! (I must read you" that bit of 
 Aristophanes again, by the way.) And believe me, children, 
 I am no warped witness, as far as regards monasteries ; or if 
 I am, it is in their favour. I have always had a strong lean- 
 ing that way ; and have pensively shivered with Augustines 
 at St. Bernard ; and happily made hay with Franciscans at 
 Fesole ; and sat silent with Carthusians in their little gardens, 
 south of Florence ; and mourned through many a day-dream, 
 at Melrose and Bolton. But the wonder is always to me, not 
 how much, but how little, the monks have, on the whole, 
 done, with all that leisure, and all that good-will ! What 
 nonsense monks characteristically wrote ; — what little progress* 
 they made in the sciences to which they devoted themselves 
 as a duty, — medicine especially ; — and, last and worst, what 
 depths of degradation they can sometimes see one another 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 93 
 
 and the population round them, sink into ; without either 
 doubting their system, or reforming it ! 
 
 (Seeing questions rising to lips.) Hold your little tongues, 
 children ; it's very late, and you'll make me forget what I've 
 to say. Fancy yourselves in pews, for five minutes. There's 
 one point of possible good in the conventual system, which 
 is always attractive to young girls ; and the idea is a very 
 dangerous one ; — the notion of a merit, or exalting virtue, 
 consisting in a habit of meditation on the ' things above,' 
 or things of the next world. Now it is quite true, that a 
 person of beautiful mind, dwelling on whatever appears 
 to them most desirable and lovely in a possible future 
 will not only pass their time pleasantly, but will even ac- 
 quire, at last, a vague and wildly gentle charm of manner 
 and feature, w r hich will give them an air of peculiar sanctity 
 in the eyes of others. Whatever real or apparent good there 
 may be in this result, I want you to observe, children, that 
 we have no real authority for the reveries to which it is 
 owing. We are told nothing distinctly of the heavenly 
 world ; except that it will be free from sorrow, and pure 
 from sin. What is said of pearl gates, golden floors, and the 
 like, is accepted as merely figurative by religious enthusiasts 
 themselves ; and whatever they pass their time in conceiving, 
 whether of the happiness of risen souls, of their intercourse, 
 or of the appearance and employment of the heavenly 
 powers, is entirely the product of their own imagination ; and 
 as completely and distinctly a work of fiction, or romantic 
 invention, ag any novel of Sir Walter Scott's. That the 
 romance is founded on religious theory or doctrine ; — that no 
 disagreeable or wicked persons are admitted into the story ; 
 — and that the inventor fervently hopes that some portion of 
 it may hereafter come true, does not in the least alter the 
 real nature of the effort or enjoyment. 
 
 Now, whatever indulgence may be granted to amiable 
 people for pleasing themselves in this innocent way, it is 
 beyond question, that to seclude themselves from the rough 
 duties of life, merely to write religious romances, or, as in 
 most cases, merely to dream them, without taking so much 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST, 
 
 trouble as is implied in writing, ought not to be received as 
 an act of heroic virtue. But, observe, even in admitting 
 thus much, I have assumed that the fancies are just and 
 beautiful, though fictitious. Now, what right have any of 
 us to assume that our own fancies will assuredly be either 
 the one or the other? That they delight us, and appear 
 lovely to us, is no real proof of its not being wasted time ta 
 form them : and we may surely be led somewhat to distrust 
 our judgment of them by observing what ignoble imagina- 
 tions have sometimes sufficiently, or even enthusiastically, 
 occupied the hearts of others. The principal source of the 
 spirit of religious contemplation is the East ; now I have here 
 in my hand a Byzantine image of Christ, which, if you will 
 look at it seriously, may, I think, at once and for ever render 
 you cautious in the indulgence of a merely contemplative 
 habit of mind. Observe, it is the fashion to look at such a 
 thing only as a piece of barbarous art ; that is the smallest 
 part of its interest. What I want you to see, is the baseness 
 and falseness of a religious state of enthusiasm, in which 
 such a work could be dwelt upon with pious pleasure. That 
 a figure, with two small round black beads for eyes ; a gilded 
 face, deep cut into horrible wrinkles ; an open gash for a 
 mouth, and a distorted skeleton for a body, wrapped about, 
 to make it fine, with striped enamel of blue and' gold ; — that 
 such a figure, I say, should ever have been thought helpful 
 towards the conception of a Eedeeming Deity, may make 
 you, I think, very doubtful, even of the Divine approval, — 
 much more of the Divine inspiration, — of religious reverie in 
 general. You feel, doubtless, that your own idea of Christ 
 would be something very different from this ; but in what 
 does the difference consist ? Not in any more divine author- 
 ity in your imagination ; but in the intellectual work of six 
 intervening centuries ; which, simply, by artistic discipline, 
 has refined this crude conception for you, and filled you, 
 partly with an innate sensation, partly with an acquired 
 knowledge, of higher forms, — which render this Byzantine 
 crucifix as horrible to you, as it was pleasing to its maker. 
 More is required to excite your fancy ; but your fancy is of 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 no more authority than his was : and a point of national art- 
 skill is quite conceivable, in which the best we can do now 
 will be as offensive to the religious dreamers of the more 
 highly cultivated time, as this Byzantine crucifix is to you. 
 
 Mary. But surely, Angelico will always retain his power 
 over everybody ? 
 
 L. Yes, I should think, always ; as the gentle words of a 
 child will : but you would be much surprised, Mary, if you 
 thoroughly took the pains to analyse, and had the perfect 
 means of analysing, that power of Angelico, — to discover its 
 real sources. Of course it is natural, at first, to attribute it 
 to the pure religious fervour by which he was inspired ; but 
 do you suppose Angelico was really the only monk, in all the 
 Christian world of the middle ages, who laboured, in art, with 
 a sincere religious enthusiasm ? 
 
 Mary. No, certainly not. 
 
 L. Anything more frightful, more destructive of all relig- 
 ious faith whatever, than such a supposition, could not be. 
 And yet, what other monk ever produced such work ? I have 
 myself examined carefully upwards of two thousand illumin- 
 ated missals, with especial view to the discovery of any evi- 
 dence of a similar result upon the art, from the monkish 
 devotion ; and utterly in vain. 
 
 Mary. But then, was not Fra Angelico a man of entirely 
 separate and exalted genius ? 
 
 L. Unquestionably ; and granting him to be that, the pecul- 
 iar phenomenon in his art is, to me, not its loveliness, but its 
 weakness. The effect of 'inspiration/ had it been real, on a 
 man of consummate genius, should have been, one would 
 have thought, to make everything that he did faultless and 
 strong, no less than lovely. But of all men, deserving to be 
 called * great,' Fra Angelico permits to himself the least par- 
 donable faults, and the most palpable follies. There is evi- 
 dently within him a sense of grace, and power of invention, 
 ♦is great as Ghiberti's : — we are in the habit of attributing 
 those high qualities to his religious enthusiasm ; but, if they 
 were produced by that enthusiasm in him, they ought to be 
 produced by the same feelings in others ; and we see they 
 
TEE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 are not. Whereas, comparing him with contemporary great 
 artists, of equal grace and invention, one peculiar character 
 remains notable in him — which, logically, we ought therefore 
 to attribute to the religious fervour ; — and that distinctive 
 character is, the contented indulgence of his own weaknesses, 
 and perseverance in his own ignorances. 
 
 Mary. But that's dreadful ! And what is the source of the 
 peculiar charm which we all feel in his work ? 
 
 L. There are many sources of it, Mary ; united and seem- 
 ing like one. You would never feel that charm but in the 
 work of an entirely good man ; be sure of that ; but the 
 goodness is only the recipient and modifying element, not the 
 creative one. Consider carefully what delights you in any 
 original picture of Angelico's. You will find, for one minor 
 thing, an exquisite variety and brightness of ornamental 
 work. That is not Angelico's inspiration. It is the final 
 result of the labour and thought of millions of artists, of all 
 nations ; from the earliest Egyptian potters downwards — 
 Greeks, Byzantines, Hindoos, Arabs, Gauls, and Northmen — 
 all joining in the toil ; and consummating it in Florence, in 
 that century, with such embroidery of robe and inlaying of 
 armour as had never been seen till then ; nor, probably, ever 
 will be seen more. Angelico merely takes his share of this 
 inheritance, and applies it in the tenderest way to subjects 
 which are peculiarly acceptant of it. But the inspiration, if 
 it exist anywhere, flashes on the knight's shield quite as ra- 
 diantly as on the monk's picture. Examining farther into 
 the sources of your emotion in the Angelico work, you will 
 find much of the impression of sanctity dependent on a sin- 
 gular repose and grace of gesture, consummating itself in the 
 floating, flying, and above all, in the dancing groups. That 
 is not Angelico's inspiration. It is only a peculiarly tender 
 use of systems of grouping which had been long before de- 
 veloped by Giotto, Memmi, and Orcagna ; and the real root 
 of it all is simply — What do you think, children ? The beau- 
 tiful dancing of the Florentine maidens ! 
 
 Dora (indignant again). Now, I wonder what next ! Why 
 not say it all depended on Herodias' daughter, at once ? 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 97 
 
 L. Yes ; it is certainly a great argument against singing, 
 that there were once sirens. 
 
 Dora. Well, it may be all very fine and philosophical, but 
 shouldn't I just like to read you the end of the second volume 
 of ' Modern Painters ' ! 
 
 L. My dear, do you think any teacher could be worth your 
 listening to, or anybody else's listening to, who had learned 
 nothing, and altered his mind in nothing, from seven and 
 twenty to seven and forty ? But that second volume is very 
 good for you as far as it goes. It is a great advance, and a 
 thoroughly straight and swift one, to be led, as it is the main 
 business of that second volume to lead you, from Dutch cattle 
 pieces, and ruffian-pieces, to Fra Angelico. And it is right 
 for you also, as you grow older, to be strengthened in the 
 general sense and judgment which may enable you to distin- 
 guish the weaknesses from the virtues of what you love : else 
 you might come to love both alike ; or even the weaknesses 
 without the virtues. You might end by liking Overbeck and 
 Cornelius as well as Angelico. However, I have perhaps been 
 leaning a little too much to the merely practical side of 
 things, in to-night's talk ; and you are always to remember, 
 children, that I do not deny, though I cannot affirm, the 
 spiritual advantages resulting, in certain cases, from enthusi- 
 astic religous reverie, and from the other practices of saints 
 and anchorites. The evidence respecting them has never yet 
 been honestly collected, much less dispassionately examined : 
 but assuredly, there is in that direction a probability, and 
 more than a probability, of dangerous error, while there is 
 none whatever in the practice of an active, cheerful, and 
 benevolent life. The hope of attaining a higher religious 
 position, which induces us to encounter, for its exalted alterna- 
 tive, the risk of unhealthy error, is often, as I said, founded 
 more on pride than piety ; and those who, in modest useful- 
 ness, have accepted what seemed to them here the lowliest 
 place in the kingdom of their Father, are not, I believe, the 
 least likely to receive hereafter the command, then unmistaka* 
 ble, * Friend, go up higher/ 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 
 
 Formal Lecture in Schoolroom, after some practical examination of 
 
 minerals. 
 
 L. We have seen enough, children, though very little of 
 what might be seen if we had more time, of mineral struct- 
 ures produced by visible opposition, or contest among ele- 
 ments ; structures of which the variety, however great, need 
 not surprise us : for we quarrel, ourselves, for many and 
 slight causes ; — much more, one should think, may crystals, 
 who can only feel the antagonism, not argue about it. But 
 there is a yet more singular mimicry of our human ways in the 
 varieties of form which appear owing to no antagonistic force ; 
 but merely to the variable humour and caprice of the crystals 
 themselves : and I have asked you all to come into the school- 
 room to-day, because, of course, this is a part of the crystal 
 mind which must be peculiarly interesting to a feminine 
 audience. {Great symptoms of MmpproMl on the part of said 
 audience.) Now, you need not pretend that it will not in- 
 terest }^ou ; why should it not ? It is true that we men are 
 never capricious ; but that only makes us the more dull 
 and disagreeable. You, who are crystalline in brightness, as 
 well as in caprice, charm infinitely, by infinitude of change. 
 {Audible murmurs of ' Worse and worse ! ' ' As if we could be 
 got over that way I ' &c. The Lecturer, however, observing the 
 expression of the features to be more complacent, proceeds.) 
 And the most curious mimicry, if not of your changes of 
 fashion, at least of your various modes (in healthy periods) of 
 national costume, takes place among the crystals of different 
 countries. With a little experience, it is quite possible to 
 3ay at a glance, in what districts certain crystals have been 
 
CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 
 
 99 
 
 found ; and although, if we had knowledge extended and 
 accurate enough, we might of course ascertain the laws and 
 circumstances which have necessarily produced the form pe- 
 culiar to each locality, this would be just as true of the 
 fancies of the human mind. If we could know the exact cir- 
 cumstances which affect it, we could foretell what now seems 
 to us only caprice of thought, as well as what now seems to 
 us only caprice of crystal : nay, so far as our knowledge 
 reaches, it is on the whole easier to find some reason v/hy the 
 peasant girls of Berne should wear their caps in the shape of 
 butterflies ; and the peasant girls of Munich their's in the 
 shape of shells, than to say why the rock-crystals of Dauphine 
 should all have their summits of the shape of lip-pieces of 
 flageolets, while those of St. Gothard are symmetrical : or 
 why the fluor of Chamouni is rose-coloured, and in octahe- 
 drons, while the fluor of Weardale is green, and in cubes. 
 Still farther removed is the hope, at present, of accounting 
 for minor differences in modes of grouping and construction. 
 Take, for instance, the caprices of this single mineral, quartz ; 
 —variations upon a single theme. It has many forms ; but 
 see what it will make out of this one, the six-sided prism. 
 For shortness' sake, I shall call the body of the prism its 
 * column/ and the pyramid at the extremities its ' cap.' Now, 
 here, first you have a straight column, as long and thin as a 
 stalk of asparagus, with two little caps at the ends ; and here 
 you have a short thick column, as solid as a haystack, with 
 two fat caps at the ends ; and here you have two caps fastened 
 together, and no column at all between them ! Then here is 
 a crystal with its column fat in the middle, and tapering to a 
 little cap ; and here is one stalked like a mushroom, with a 
 huge cap put on the top of a slender column ! Then here is 
 a column built wholly out of little caps, with a large smooth 
 cap at the top. And here is a column built of columns and 
 caps ; the caps all truncated about half way to their points. 
 And in both these last, the little crystals are set anyhow, and 
 build the large one in a disorderly way ; but here is a crystal 
 made of columns and truncated caps, set in regular terraces 
 all the way up. 
 
100 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 Mary. But are not these, groups of crystals, rather than 
 
 one crystal ? 
 
 L. What do you mean by a group, and what by one 
 
 crystal ? 
 
 Dora [audibly aside, to Mary, who is brought to pause). You 
 know you are never expected to answer, Mary. 
 
 L. I'm sure this is easy enough. What do you mean by a 
 group of people ? 
 
 Mary. Three or four together, or a good many together, 
 like the caps in these crystals. 
 
 L. But when a great many persons get together they don't 
 take the shape of one person ? 
 
 (Mary still at pause.) 
 
 Isabel. No, because they can't ; but, you know the crystals 
 can ; so why shouldn't they ? 
 
 L. Well, they don't ; that is to say, they don't always, nor 
 even often. Look here, Isabel. 
 
 Isabel. What a nasty ugly thing ! 
 
 L. I'm glad you think it so ugly. Yet it is made of beau- 
 tiful crystals ; they are a little grey and cold in colour, but 
 most of them are clear. 
 
 Isabel. But they're in such horrid, horrid disorder ! 
 
 L. Yes ; all disorder is horrid, when it is among things 
 that are naturally orderly. Some little girl's rooms are natu- 
 rally disorderly, I suppose ; or I don't know how they could 
 live in them, if they cry out so when they only see quartz 
 crystals in confusion. 
 
 Isabel. Oh ! but how come they to be like that? 
 
 L. You may well ask. And yet you will always hear peo- 
 ple talking as if they thought order more wonderful than dis- 
 order ! It is wonderful — as we have seen ; but to me, as to 
 you, child, the supremely wonderful thing is that nature 
 should ever be ruinous or wasteful, or deathful ! I look at 
 this wild piece of crystallisation with endless astonishment. 
 
 Mary. Where does it come from? 
 
 L. The Tete Noire of Chamonix. What makes it more 
 strange is that it should be in a vein of fine quartz rock, If it 
 
CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 
 
 101 
 
 were in a mouldering rock, it would be natural enough ; but 
 in the midst of so fine substance, here are the crystals tossed 
 in a heap ; some large, myriads small (almost as small as 
 dust), tumbling over each other like a terrified crowd, and 
 glued together by the sides, and edges, and backs, and heads ; 
 some warped, and some pushed out and in, and all spoiled^ 
 and each spoiling the rest. 
 
 Mary. And how fiat they all are ! 
 
 L Yes ; that's the fashion at the Tete Noire. 
 
 Mary. But surely this is ruin, not caprice ? 
 
 L. I believe it is in great part misfortune ; and we will ex- 
 amine these crystal troubles in next lecture. But if you want 
 to see the gracefullest and happiest caprices of which dust is 
 capable, you must go to the Hartz ; not that I ever mean to 
 go there myself, for I want to retain the romantic feeling 
 about the name ; and I have done myself some harm already 
 by seeing the monotonous and heavy form of the Brocken 
 from the suburbs of Brunswick. But whether the mountains 
 be picturesque or not, the tricks which the goblins (as I am 
 told) teach the crystals in them, are incomparably pretty. 
 They work chiefly on the mind of a docile, bluish coloured, 
 carbonate of lime ; which comes out of a grey limestone. 
 The goblins take the greatest possible care of its education, 
 and see that nothing happens to it to hurt its temper ; and 
 when it may be supposed to have arrived at the crisis which 
 is, to a well brought up mineral, what presentation at court is 
 to a young lady — after which it is expected to set fashions — 
 mere's no end to its pretty ways of behaving. First it will 
 \nake itself into pointed darts as fine as hoar-frost ; here, it 
 
 changed into a white fur as fine as silk ; here into little 
 crowns and circlets, as bright as silver ; as if for the gnome 
 princesses to wear ; here it is in beautiful little plates, for 
 them to eat off ; presently it is in towers which they might be 
 imprisoned in ; presently in caves and cells, where they may 
 make nun-gnomes of themselves, and no gnome ever hear of 
 them more ; here is some of it in sheaves, like corn ; here, some 
 in drifts, like snow ; here, some in rays, like stars : and, though 
 ihese are, all of them, necessarily, shapes that the mineral 
 
102 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 takes in other places, they are all taken here with such a grace 
 that you recognise the high caste and breeding of the crystals 
 wherever you meet them ; and know at once they are Hartz- 
 born. 
 
 Of course, such fine things as these are only done by crys- 
 tals which, are perfectly good, and good-humoured ; and of 
 course, also, there are ill-humoured crystals who torment each 
 other, and annoy quieter crystals, yet without coming to any- 
 thing like serious war. Here (for once) is some ill-disposed 
 quartz, tormenting a peaceable octahedron of fluor, in mere 
 caprice. I looked at it the other night so long, and so won- 
 cleringly, just before putting my candle out, that I fell into 
 another strange dream. But you don't care about dreams. 
 
 Dora. No ; we didn't, yesterday ; but you know we are 
 made up of caprice ; so we do, to-day : and you must tell it 
 us directly. 
 
 L. Well, you see, Neith and her work were still much in 
 my mind ; and then, I had been looking over these Hartz 
 things for you, and thinking of the sort of grotesque sympa- 
 thy there seemed to be in them with the beautiful fringe and 
 pinnacle work of Northern architecture. So, when I fell 
 asleep, I thought I saw Neith and St. Barbara talking 
 together. 
 
 Dora. But what had St. Barbara to do with it? * 
 L. My dear, I am quite sure St. Barbara is the patroness 
 of good architects : not St. Thomas, whatever the old build- 
 ers thought. It might be very fine, according to the monks' 
 uotions, in St. Thomas, to give all his employer's money away 
 to the poor : but breaches of contract are bad foundations ; 
 and I believe, it was not he, but St. Barbara, who overlooked 
 the work in all the buildings you and I care about. How T ever 
 that may be, it was certainly she whom I saw in my dream 
 with Neith. Neith w r as sitting weaving, and I thought she 
 looked sad, and threw her shuttle slowly ; and St. Barbara was 
 standing at her side, in a stiff little gown, all ins and outs, and 
 angles ; but so bright with embroidery that it dazzled me when- 
 ever she moved ; the train of it was just like a heap of broken 
 
 * JN T ote v. 
 
CRYSTAL OA PRICE. 
 
 103 
 
 jewels, it was so stiff, and full of corners, and so many-coloured, 
 and bright. Her hair fell over her shoulders in long, delicate 
 waves, from under a little three pinnacled crown, like a tower. 
 She was asking Neith about the laws of architecture in Egypt 
 and Greece ; and when Neith told her the measures of the 
 pyramids, St. Barbara said she thought they would have been 
 better three-cornered : and when Neith told her the measures 
 of the Parthenon, St. Barbara said she thought it ought to 
 have had two transepts. But she was pleased when Neith 
 told her of the temple of the dew, and of the Caryan maidens 
 bearing its frieze : and then she thought that perhaps Neith 
 would like to hear what sort of temples she was building her- 
 self, in the French valleys, and on the crags of the Rhine. 
 So she began gossiping, just as one of you might to an old 
 lady : and certainly she talked in the sweetest way in the world 
 to Neith ; and explained to her all about crockets and pin- 
 nacles : and Neith sat, looking very grave ; and always graver 
 as St. Barbara went on ; till at last, I'm sorry to say, St. Bar- 
 bara lost her temper a little. 
 
 May (very grave herself). ' St. Barbara ?' 
 
 L. Yes, May. "Why shouldn't she ? It was very tiresome 
 of Neith to sit looking like that. 
 
 May. But, then, St. Barbara was a saint ! 
 
 L. What's that, May? 
 
 May. A saint ! A saint is — I am sure you know ! 
 
 L. If I did, it w r ould not make me sure that you knew too, 
 May : but I don't. 
 
 Violet (expressing the incredulity of the audience). Oh, — sir ! 
 
 L. That is to say, I know that people are called saints w 7 ho 
 are supposed to be better than others : but I don't know how 
 much better they must be, in order to be saints ; nor how 
 nearly anybody may be a saint, and yet not be quite one ; nor 
 whether everybody who is called a saint was one ; nor whether 
 everybody who isn't called a saint, isn't one. 
 
 (General silence ; the audience feeling themselves on the 
 verge of the Infinities — and a little shocked — and much 
 puzzled by so many questions at once.) 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST, 
 
 L, Besides, did you never hear that verse about being ' called 
 to be saints ' ? 
 
 May (repeats Bom. i. 7. ) 
 
 L. Quite right, May. Well, then, who are called to be that? 
 People in Rome only ? 
 
 May. Everybody, I suppose, whom God loves. 
 
 L. What ! little girls as well as other people ? 
 
 May. All grown-up people, I mean. 
 
 L AVhy not little girls ? Are they wickeder when they are 
 little ? 
 
 May. Ob, I hope not. 
 
 L. Why not little girls, then ? 
 
 (Pause.) 
 
 Lily. Because, you know, we can't be worth anything if 
 we're ever so good ; — I mean, if we try to be ever so good ; 
 and we can't do difficult things — like saints. 
 
 L. I am afraid, my dear, that old people are not more able 
 or willing for their difficulties than you children are for yours, 
 All I can say is, that if ever I see any of you, when you are 
 seven or eight and twenty, knitting your brows over any work 
 you want to do or to understand, as I saw you, Lily, knitting 
 your brows over your slate this morning, I should think you 
 very noble women. But — to come back to my dream — St. 
 Barbara did lose her temper a little ; and I was not surprised. 
 For you can't think how provoking Neith looked, sitting there 
 just like a statue of sandstone ; only going on weaving, like a 
 machine ; and never quickening the cast of her shuttle ; while 
 St. Barbara was telling her so eagerly all about the most beau- 
 tiful things, and chattering away, as fast as bells ring on Christ- 
 mas Eve, till she saw that Neith didn't care ; and then St. 
 Barbara got as red as a rose, and stopped, just in time ; — or 
 I think she would really have said something naughty. 
 
 Isabel. Oh, please, but didn't Neith say anything then? 
 
 L. Yes. She said, quite quietly, 'It may be very pretty, 
 my love ; but it is all nonsense.' 
 
 Isabel. Oh dear, oh dear ; and then ? 
 
 L, Well ; then I was a little angry myself, and hoped St 
 
vltYSTAL CAPRICE. 
 
 105 
 
 Barbara would be quite angry ; but she wasn't. She bit her 
 lips first ; and then gave a great sigh — such a wild, sweet 
 sigh — and then she knelt down and hid her face on Neiths 
 knees* Then Neith smiled a little, and was moved. 
 Isabel, Oh, I am so glad ! 
 
 L. And she touched St. Barbara's forehead with a flower 
 of whUe lotus ; and St. Barbara sobbed once or twice, and 
 then mid : ' If you only could see how beautiful it is, and how 
 much it makes people feel what is good and lovely ; and 
 it yoi* uould only hear the children singing in the Lady chap- 
 els ! f And Neith smiled, — but still sadly, — and said, ■ How 
 do y<ru know what I have seen, or heard, my love ? Do you 
 think all those vaults and towers of yours have been built 
 without me ? There was not a pillar in your Giotto's Santa 
 Maria del Fiore which I did not set true by my spearshaft as 
 it rose. But this pinnacle and flame work which has set your 
 little heart on fire, is all vanity ; and you will see what it will 
 come to, and that soon ; and none will grieve for it more 
 than I. And then every one will disbelieve your pretty 
 symbols and types. Men must be spoken simply to, my 
 dear, if you would guide them kindly, and long.' But St. 
 Barbara answered, that, ' Indeed she thought every one liked 
 her work,' and that ' the people of different towns w r ere as 
 eager about their cathedral towers as about their privileges 
 or their markets ; ' and then she asked Neith to come and 
 build something with her, wall against tower ; and ' see 
 whether the people will be as much pleased with your build- 
 ing as with mine.' But Neith answered, £ I will not contend 
 with you, my dear. I strive not with those who love me ; 
 and for those who hate me, it is not well to strive with me, 
 as weaver Arachne knows. And remember, child, that noth- 
 ing is ever done beautifully, which is done in rivalship ; nor 
 nobly, which is done in pride.' 
 
 Then St. Barbara hung her head quite down, and said she 
 was very sorry she had been so foolish ; and kissed Neith ; 
 and stood thinking a minute : and then her eyes got bright 
 again, and she said, she would go directly and build a chapel 
 with five windows in it ; four for the four cardinal virtues, 
 
106 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 and one for humility, in the middle, bigger than the rest 
 
 And Neith very nearly laughed quite out, I thought ; cer« 
 tainly her beautiful lips lost all their sternness for an instant ; 
 then she said, ' Well, love, build it, but do not put so many 
 colours into your windows as you usually do ; else no one 
 will be able to see to read, inside : and when it is built, let 
 a poor village priest consecrate it, and not an archbishop.' 
 St. Barbara started a little, I thought, and turned as if to say 
 something ; but changed her mind, and gathered up her 
 train, and went out. And Neith bent herself again to her 
 loom, in which she was weaving a web of strange dark col- 
 ours, I thought ; but perhaps it w r as only after the glittering 
 of St. Barbara's embroidered train : and I tried to make out 
 the figures in Neith's web, and confused myself among them, 
 as one always does in dreams ; and then the dream changed 
 altogether, and I found myself, all at once, among a crowd of 
 little Gothic and Egyptian spirits, who were quarrelling : at 
 least the Gothic ones were trying to quarrel ; for the Egyp- 
 tian ones only sat with their hands on their knees, and their 
 aprons sticking out very stiffly ; and stared. And after a 
 while I began to understand what the matter was. It seemed 
 that some of the troublesome building imps, who meddle and 
 make continually, even in the best Gothic work, had been 
 listening to St. Barbara's talk with Neith ; and had made up 
 their minds that Neith had no workpeople who could build 
 against them. They were but dull imps, as you may fancy 
 by their thinking that ; and never had done much, except 
 disturbing the great Gothic building angels at their work, 
 and playing tricks to each other ; indeed, of late they had 
 been living years and years, like bats, up under the cornices 
 of Strasbourg and Cologne cathedrals, with nothing to do 
 but to make mouths at the people below. However, they 
 thought they knew everything about tower building ; and 
 those who had heard what Neith said, told the rest ; and 
 they all ilew down directly, chattering in German, like jack- 
 daws, to show Neith's people what they could do. And they 
 had found some of Neith's old workpeople somewhere near 
 Sais, sitting in the sun, with their hands on their kiiees ; and 
 
CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 
 
 107 
 
 abused them heartily : and Neith's people did not mind at 
 first, but, after a while, they seemed to get tired of the noise ; 
 and one or two rose up slowly, and laid hold of their measur- 
 ing rods, and said, c If St. Barbara's people liked to build 
 with them, tower against pyramid, they would show them 
 how to lay stones.' Then the little Gothic spirits threw a 
 great many double somersaults for joy ; and put the tips of 
 their tongues out slily to each other, on one side ; and I heard 
 the Egyptians say, f they must be some new kind of frog — 
 they didn't think there was much building in them.' How- 
 ever, the stiff old workers took their rods, as I said, and 
 measured out a square space of sand ; but as soon as the 
 German spirits saw that, they declared they wanted exactly 
 that bit of ground to build on, themselves. Then the Egyp- 
 tian builders offered to go farther off, and the Germans ones 
 said, ' Ja wohl.' But as soon as the Egyptians had measured 
 out another square, the little Germans said they must have 
 some of that too. Then Neith's people laughed ; and said, 
 ' they might take as much as they liked, but they would not 
 move the plan of their pyramid again.' Then the little Ger- 
 mans took three pieces, and began to build three spires 
 directly ; one large, and two little. And when the Egyptians 
 saw they had fairly begun, they laid their foundation all 
 round, of large square stones : and began to build, so steadily 
 that they had like to have swallowed up the three little Ger- 
 man spires. So when the Gothic spirits saw that, they built 
 their spires leaning, like the tower of Pisa, that they might 
 stick out at the side of the pyramid. And Neith's people 
 stared at them ; and thought it very clever, but very wrong ; 
 and on they went, in their own way, and said nothing. Then 
 the little Gothic spirits were terribly provoked because they 
 could not spoil the shape of the pyramid ; and they sat down 
 all along the ledges of it to make faces ; but that did no good. 
 Then they ran to the corners, and put their elbows on their 
 knees, and stuck themselves out as far as they could, and 
 made more faces ; but that did no good, neither. Then they 
 looked up to the sky, and opened their mouths wide, and 
 gobbled, and said it was too hot for work, and wondered 
 
108 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 when it would rain ; but that did no good, neither. And all 
 the while the Egyptian spirits were laying step above step, 
 patiently. But when the Gothic ones looked, and saw how 
 high they had got, they said, ' Ach, Himmel ! ' and flew down 
 in a great black cluster to the bottom ; and swept out a level 
 spot in the sand with their wings, in no time, and began 
 building a tower straight up, as fast as they could. And 
 the Egyptians stood still again to stare at them ; for the 
 Gothic spirits had got quite into a passion, and were really 
 working very wonderfully. They cut the sandstone into 
 strips as fine as reeds ; and put one reed on the top of another, 
 so that you could not see where they fitted : and they twisted 
 them in and out like basket work, and knotted them into 
 likenesses of ugly faces, and of strange beasts biting each 
 other ; and up they went, and up still, and they made spiral 
 staircases at the corners, for the loaded workers to come up by 
 (for I saw they were but weak imps, and could not fly with 
 stones on their backs), and then they made traceried galleries 
 for them to run round by ; and so up again ; with finer and finer 
 work, till the Egyptians wondered whether they meant the 
 thing for a tower or a pillar : and I heard them saying to one 
 another, * It was nearly as pretty as lotus stalks ; and if it 
 were not for the ugly faces, there would be a fine temple, if 
 they were going to build it all with pillars as big as that ! ' 
 But in a minute afterwards, — just as the Gothic spirits had 
 carried their work as high as the upper course, but three or 
 four, of the pyramid — the Egyptians called out to them to 
 ' mind what they were about, for the sand was running away 
 from under one of their tower corners.' But it was too late 
 to mind what they were about ; for, in another instant, the 
 whole tower sloped aside ; and the Gothic imps rose out of 
 it like a flight of puffins, in a single cloud ; but screaming 
 worse than any puffins you ever heard : and down came the 
 tower, all in a piece, like a falling poplar, with its head right 
 on the flank of the pyramid ; against which it snapped short 
 off. And of course that waked me ! 
 
 Mary. What a shame of you to have such a dream, after aD 
 you have told us about Gothic architecture ! 
 
CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 
 
 109 
 
 L. If you have understood anything I ever told you about 
 it, you know that no architecture was ever corrupted more 
 miserably ; or abolished more justly by the accomplishment 
 of its own follies. Besides, even in its days of power, it was 
 subject to catastrophes of this kind. I have stood too often, 
 mourning, by the grand fragment of the apse of Beauvais, not 
 to have that fact well burnt into me. Still, you must have 
 seen, surely, that these imps were of the Flamboyant school ; 
 or, at least, of the German schools correspondent with it in 
 extravagance. 
 
 Mary. But, then, where is the crystal about which you 
 dreamed all this ? 
 
 L. Here ; but I suppose little Pthah has touched it again, 
 for it is very small. But, you see, here is the pyramid, built 
 of great square stones of fluor spar, straight up ; and here are 
 the three little pinnacles of mischievous quartz, which have 
 set themselves, at the same time, on the same foundation ; 
 only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out obliquely 
 at the side : and here is one great spire of quartz which seems 
 as if it had been meant to stand straight up, a little way off ; 
 and then had fallen down against the pyramid base, breaking 
 its pinnacle away. In reality, it has crystallised horizontally, 
 and terminated imperfectly : but, then, by what caprice does 
 one crystal form horizontally, when all the rest stand upright ? 
 But this is nothing to the phantasies of fluor, and quartz, and 
 some other such companions, when they get leave to do any- 
 thing they like. I could show you fifty specimens, about 
 every one of which you might fancy a new fairy tale. Not 
 that, in truth, any crystals get leave to do quite what they 
 like ; and many of them are sadly tried, and have little time 
 for caprices — poor things ! 
 
 Mary. I thought they always looked as if they were either 
 in play or in mischief ! What trials have they ? 
 
 L. Trials much like our own. Sickness, and starvation ; 
 fevers, and agues, and palsy ; oppression ; and old age, and 
 the necessity of passing away in their time, like all else. If 
 there's any pity in you, you must come to-morrow, and take 
 some part in these crystal griefs. 
 
110 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 Dora. I am sure we shall cry till our eyes are red. 
 
 L. Ah, you may laugh, Dora : but I've been made grave, 
 not once, nor twice, to see that even crystals ' cannot choose 
 but be old ' at last. It may be but a shallow proverb of the 
 Justice's ; but it is a shrewdly wide one. 
 
 Dora [pensive, for once). I suppose it is very dreadful to 
 be old ! But then (brightening again), what should we do 
 without our dear old friends, and our nice old lecturers ? 
 
 L. If all nice old lecturers were minded as little as one I 
 know of 
 
 Dora. And if they all meant as little what they say, would 
 they not deserve it ? But we'll come — we'll come, and cry. 
 
LECTURE IX. 
 
 CRYSTAL SORROWS. 
 Working Lecture in Schoolroom. 
 
 L. We have been hitherto talking, children, as if crystals 
 might live, and play, and quarrel, and behave ill or well, 
 according to their characters, without interruption from any- 
 thing else. But so far from this being so, nearly all crystals, 
 whatever their characters, have to live a hard life of it. and 
 meet with many misfortunes. If we could see far enough, 
 we should find, indeed, that, at the root, all their vices were 
 misfortunes : but to-day I want you to see what sort of 
 troubles the best crystals have to go through, occasionally, 
 by no fault of their own. 
 
 This black thing, which is one of the prettiest of the very 
 few pretty black things in the world, is called ' Tourmaline.' 
 It may be transparent, and green, or red, as well as black ; 
 and then no stone can be prettier (only, all the light that 
 gets into it, I believe, comes out a good deal the worse ; and 
 is not itself again for a long while). But this is the com- 
 monest state of it, — opaque, and as black as jet. 
 
 Mary. What does ' Tourmaline ' mean? 
 
 L. They say it is Ceylanese, and I don't know Ceylanese ; 
 but we may always be thankful for a graceful word, whatever 
 it means. 
 
 Mary. And what is it made of ? 
 
 L. A little of everything ; there's always flint, and clay, and 
 magnesia in it ; and the black is iron, according to its fancy ; 
 and there's boracic acid, if you know what that is ; and if 
 you don't, I cannot tell you to-day ; and it doesn't signify ; 
 and there's potash, and soda ; and, on the whole, the chem- 
 istry of it is more like a mediaeval doctor's prescription, than 
 
112 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 the making of a respectable mineral : but it may, perhaps, be 
 owing to the strange complexity of its make, that it has a 
 notable habit which makes it, to me, one of the most inter- 
 esting of minerals. You see these two crystals are broken 
 right across, in many places, just as if they had been shafts 
 of black marble fallen from a ruinous temple ; and here they 
 lie, imbedded in white quartz, fragment succeeding fragment, 
 keeping the line of the original crystal, while the quartz fills 
 up the intervening spaces. Now tourmaline has a trick of 
 doing this, more than any other mineral I know : here is 
 another bit which I picked up on the glacier of Macugnaga ; 
 it is broken, like a pillar built of very fiat broad stones, into 
 about thirty joints, and all these are heaved and warped away 
 from each other sideways, almost into a line of steps ; and 
 then all is filled up with quartz paste. And here, lastly, is a 
 green Indian piece, in which the pillar is first disjointed, and 
 then wrung round into the shape of an S. 
 Mary. How can this have been done ? 
 
 L. There are a thousand ways in which it may have been 
 done ; the difficulty is not to account for the doing of it ; but 
 for the showing of it in some crystals, and not in others. You 
 never by any chance get a quartz crystal broken or twisted in 
 this way. If it break or twist at all, which it does sometimes, 
 like the spire of Dijon, it is by its own will or fault ; it never 
 seems to have been passively crushed. But, for the forces 
 which cause this passive ruin of the tourmaline, —here is a 
 stone which will show you multitudes of them in operation 
 at once. It is known as 'brecciated agate,' beautiful, as yon 
 see ; and highly valued as a pebble : yet, so far as I can read 
 or hear, no one has ever looked at it with the least attention. 
 At the first glance, ^ou see it is made of very fine red striped 
 agates, which have been broken into small pieces, and fast- 
 ened together again by paste, also of agate. There would be 
 nothing wonderful in this, if this were all. It is well known 
 that by the movements of strata, portions of rock are often 
 shattered to pieces : — well known also that agate is a deposit 
 of flint by water under certain conditions of heat and press- 
 ure : there is, therefore, nothing wonderful in an agate's 
 
CRYSTAL SORROWS. 
 
 113 
 
 being broken ; and nothing wonderful in its being mended 
 with the solution out of which it was itself originally con- 
 gealed. And with this explanation, most people, looking at 
 a brecciated agate, or brecciated anything, seem to be satis- 
 fied. I was so myself, for twenty years ; but, lately happening 
 to stay for some time at the Swiss Baden, where the beach of 
 the Limmat is almost wholly composed of brecciated lime- 
 stones, I began to examine them thoughtfully ; and perceived, 
 in the end, that they were, one and all, knots of as rich mystery 
 as any poor little human brain was ever lost in. That piece of 
 agate in your hand, Mary, will show you many of the common 
 phenomena of breccias ; but you need not knit your brows 
 over it in that way ; depend upon it, neither you nor I shall 
 ever know anything about the way it was made, as long as we 
 live. 
 
 Dora. That does not seem much to depend upon. 
 
 L. Pardon me, puss. When once we gain some real notion 
 of the extent and the unconquerableness of our ignorance, 
 it is a very broad and restful thing to depend upon : you 
 can throw yourself upon it at ease, as on a cloud, to feast 
 with the gods. You do not thenceforward trouble yourself, 
 — nor any one else, — with theories, or the contradiction of 
 theories ; you neither get headache nor heartburning ; and 
 you never more waste your poor little store of strength, or 
 allowance of time. 
 
 However, there are certain facts, about this agate-making, 
 which I can tell you ; and then you may look at it in a 
 pleasant wonder as long as you like ; pleasant wonder is no 
 loss of time. 
 
 First, then, it is not broken freely by a blow ; it is slowly 
 wrung, or ground, to pieces. You can only with extreme 
 dimness conceive the force exerted on mountains in transi- 
 tional states of movement. You have all read a little geol- 
 ogy ; and you know how coolly geologists talk of mountains 
 being raised or depressed. They talk coolly of it, because 
 they are accustomed to the fact ; but the very universality of 
 the fact prevents us from ever conceiving distinctly the con 
 ditions of force involved. You know I was living last year 
 
114 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 in Savoy ; my house was on the back of a sloping mountain, 
 which rose gradually for two miles, behind it ; and then fell 
 at once in a great precipice towards Geneva, going down three 
 thousand feet in four or five cliffs, or steps. Now that whole 
 group of cliffs had simply been torn away by sheer strength 
 from the rocks below, as if the whole mass had been as soft 
 as biscuit. Put four or five captains' biscuits on the floor, on 
 the top of one another ; and try to break them all in half, not 
 by bending, but by* holding one half down, and tearing the 
 other halves straight up ; — of course you will not be able to do 
 it, but you will feel and comprehend the sort of force needed. 
 Then, fancy each captains' biscuit a bed of rock, six or 
 seven hundred feet thick ; and the whole mass torn straight 
 through ; and one half heaved up three thousand feet, grind- 
 ing against the other as it rose, — and you will have some idea 
 of the making of the Mont Saleve. 
 
 May. But it must crush the rocks all to dust ! 
 
 L. No ; for there is no room for dust. The pressure is too 
 great ; probably the heat developed also so great that the 
 rock is made partly ductile ; but the worst of it is, that we 
 never can see these parts of mountains in the state they were 
 left in at the time of their elevation ; for it is precisely in 
 these rents and dislocations that the crystalline power prin- 
 cipally exerts itself. It is essentially a styptic power, and 
 wherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds ; nay, the tort- 
 ure and grieving of the earth seem necessary to bring out 
 its full energy ; for you only find the crystalline living power 
 fully in action, where the rents and faults are deep and many. 
 
 Dora. If you please, sir, — would you tell us — what are 
 faults'? 
 
 L. You never heard of such things ? 
 Dora. Never in all our lives. 
 
 L. When a vein of rock which is going on smoothly, is in- 
 terrupted by another troublesome little vein, which stops it, 
 and puts it out, so that it has to begin again in another place 
 ■ — that is called a fault. I always think it ought to be called 
 the fault of the vein that interrupts it ; but the miners always 
 call it the fault of the vein that is interrupted, 
 
CRYSTAL SORROWS. 
 
 115 
 
 Dora. So it is, if it does not begin again where it left off 
 
 L. Well, that is certainly the gist of the business : but, 
 whatever good-natured old lecturers may do, the rocks have a 
 bad habit, when they are once interrupted, of never asking 
 ' Where was I ? ' 
 
 Doea 0 When the two halves of the dining table came sepa- 
 rate, yesterday, was that a c fault ' ? 
 
 L. Yes ; but not the table's.. However, it is not a bad illus- 
 tration, Dora. When beds of rock are only interrupted by a 
 fissure, but remain at the same level, like the two halves of the 
 table, it is not called a fault, but only a fissure ; but if one half 
 of the table be either tilted higher than the other, or pushed 
 to the side, so that the two parts will not fit, it is a fault. 
 You had better read the chapter on faults in Jukes's Geology ; 
 then you will know all about it. And this rent that I am tell- 
 ing you of in the Saleve, is one only of myriads, to which are 
 owing the forms of the Alps, as, I believe, of all great moun- 
 tain chains. Wherever you see a precipice on any scale of. 
 real magnificence, you will nearly always find it owing to some 
 dislocation of this kind ; but the point of chief wonder to me, 
 is the delicacy of the touch by which these gigantic rents have 
 been apparently accomplished. Note, however, that we have 
 no clear evidence, hitherto, of the time taken to produce any 
 of them. We know that a change of temperature alters the po- 
 sition and the angles of the atoms of crystals, and also the 
 entire bulk of rocks. We know that in all volcanic, and the 
 greater part of all subterranean, action, temperatures are con- 
 tinually changing, and therefore masses of rock must be ex- 
 panding or contracting, with infinite slowness, but with in- 
 finite force. This pressure must result in mechanical strain 
 somewhere, both in their own substance, and in that of the 
 rocks surrounding them ; and we can form no conception of 
 the result of irresistible pressure, applied so as to rend and 
 raise, with imperceptible slowness of gradation, masses 
 thousands of feet in thickness. We want some experiments 
 tried on masses of iron and stone ; and we can't get them 
 tried, because Christian creatures never will seriously and 
 sufficiently spend money, except to find out the shortest ways 
 
116 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE LUST. 
 
 of killing each other. But, besides this slow kind of press- 
 ure, there is evidence of more or less sudden violence, on the 
 sapae terrific scale ; and, through it all, the wonder, as I said, 
 is always to me the delicacy of touch. I cut a block of the 
 Saleve limestone from the edge of one of the principal faults 
 which have formed the precipice ; it is a lovely compact lime 
 stone, and the fault itself is filled up with a red breccia 5 
 formed of the crushed fragments of the torn rock, cemented 
 by a rich red crystalline paste. I have had the piece I cut 
 from it smoothed, and polished across the junction ; here it 
 is ; and you may now pass your soft little fingers over the 
 surface, without so much as feeling the place where a rock 
 which all the hills of England might have been sunk in the 
 body of, and not a summit seen, was torn asunder through 
 that whole thickness, as a thin dress is torn when you tread 
 upon it. 
 
 {The audience examine the stone, and touch it timidly ; but 
 the matter remains inconceivable to them.) 
 
 Mary {struck by the beauty of the stone). But this is almost 
 marble ? 
 
 L. It is quite marble. And another singular point in the 
 business, to my mind, is that these stones, which men have 
 been cutting into slabs, for thousands of years, to ornament 
 their principal buildings with, — and which, under the general 
 name of ' marble/ have been the delight of the eyes, and the 
 wealth of architecture, among all civilised nations, — are pre- 
 cisely those on which the signs and brands of these earth- 
 agonies have been chiefly struck ; and there is not a purple 
 vein nor flaming zone in them, which is not the record of 
 their ancient torture. What a boundless capacity for sleep, 
 and for serene stupidity, there is in the human mind ! Fancy 
 reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for three thousand 
 years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them ; and edu- 
 cate themselves to an art at last (such as it is), of imitating 
 these veins by dexterous painting ; and never a curious sou] 
 of them, all that while, asks, ' What painted the rocks ? ' 
 
 {The audience look dejected, and ashamed of themselves.) 
 
CRYSTAL SORROWS. 
 
 117 
 
 The iact is, we are all, and always, asleep, through our 
 lives ; and it is only by pinching ourselves very hard that we 
 ever come to see, or understand, anything. At least, it is not 
 always we who pinch ourselves ; sometimes other people 
 pinch us ; which I suppose is ver} 7 good of them, — or other 
 things, which I suppose is very proper of them. But it is a 
 sad life ; made up chiefly of naps and pinches. 
 
 (Some of the audience, on this, appearing to think that the 
 others require pinching, the Lecturer changes the subject.) 
 
 Now, however, for once, look at a piece of marble care- 
 fully, and think about it. You see this is one side of the 
 fault ; the other side is down or up, nobody knows where ; 
 but, on this side, you can trace the evidence of the dragging 
 and tearing action. All along the edge of this marble, the 
 ends of the fibres of the rock are torn, here an inch, and there 
 half an inch, away from each other ; and you see the exact 
 places where they fitted, before they were torn separate ; and 
 you see the rents are now all filled up with the sanguine paste, 
 fall of the broken pieces of the rock ; the paste itself seems 
 to have been half melted, and partly to have also melted the 
 edge of the fragments it contains, and then to have crystal- 
 lised with them, and round them. And the brecciated agate 
 I first showed you contains exactly the same phenomena ; 
 a zoned crystallisation going on amidst the cemented frag- 
 ments, partly altering the structure of those fragments them- 
 selves, and subject to continual change, either in the intensity 
 of its own power, or in the nature of the materials submitted 
 to it ; — so that, at one time, gravity acts upon them, and dis- 
 poses them in horizontal layers, or causes them to droop in 
 stalactites ; and at another, gravity is entirely defied, and 
 the substances in solution are crystallised in bands of equal 
 thickness on every side of the cell. It would require a course 
 of lectures longer than these (I have a great mind, — you have 
 behaved so saucily — to stay and give them) to describe to 
 you the phenomena of this kind, in agates and chalcedonies 
 only ; — nay, there is a single sarcophagus in the British Mu- 
 seum, covered with grand sculpture of the 18th dynasty. 
 
iLS 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 which contains in the magnificent breccia (agates and jaspers 
 imbedded in porphyry), out of which it is hewn, material for 
 the thought of years ; and record of the earth-sorrow of ages 
 in comparison with the duration of which, the Egyptian let- 
 ters tell us but the history of the evening and morning of a 
 day. 
 
 Agates, I think, of all stones, confess most of their past 
 history ; but all crystallisation goes on under, and partly 
 records, circumstances of this kind — circumstances of infinite 
 variety, but always involving difficulty, interruption, and 
 change of condition at different times. Observe, first, you 
 have the whole mass of the rock in motion, either contracting 
 itself, and so gradually widening the cracks ; or being com- 
 pressed, and thereby closing them, and crushing their edges ; 
 — and, if one part of its substance be softer, at the given tem- 
 perature, than another, probably squeezing that softer sub- 
 stance out into the veins. Then the veins themselves, when 
 the rock leaves them open by its contraction, act with various 
 power of suction upon its substance ; — by capillary attraction 
 when they are fine, — by that of pure vacuity when they are 
 larger, or by changes in the constitution and condensation of 
 the mixed gases with which they have been originally filled. 
 Those gases themselves may be supplied in all variation of 
 volume and power from below ; or, slowly, by the decompo- 
 sition of the rocks themselves ; and, at changing temperatures, 
 must exert relatively changing forces of decomposition and 
 combination on the walls of the veins they fill ; while water, 
 at every degree of heat and pressure (from beds of everlasting 
 ice, alternate with cliffs of native rock, to volumes of red hot, 
 or white hot, steam), congeals, and drips, and throbs, and 
 thrills, from crag to crag ; and breathes from pulse to pulse 
 of foaming or fiery arteries, whose beating is felt through 
 chains of the great islands of the Indian seas, as your own 
 pulses lift your bracelets, and makes whole kingdoms of the 
 world quiver in deadly earthquake, as if they were light as 
 aspen leaves. And, remember, the poor little crystals have to 
 live their lives, and mind their own affairs, in the midst of all 
 this, as best they may. They are wonderfully like human 
 
CRYSTAL SORROWS. 
 
 119 
 
 creatures, — forget all that is going on if they don't see it, how* 
 ever dreadful ; and never think what is to happen to-morrow. 
 They are spiteful or loving, and indolent or painstaking, and 
 orderly or licentious, with no thought whatever of the lava or 
 the flood which may break over them any day ; and evaporate 
 them into air-bubbles, or wash them into a solution of salts. 
 And you may look at them, once understanding the surround- 
 ing conditions of their fate, with an endless interest. You 
 will see crowds of unfortunate little crystals, who have been 
 forced to constitute themselves in a hurry, their dissolving 
 element being fiercely scorched away ; you will see them doing 
 their best, bright and numberless, but tiny. Then you will 
 find indulged crystals, who have had centuries to form them* 
 selves in, and have changed their mind and ways continually ; 
 and have been tired, and taken heart again ; and have been 
 sick, and got well again ; and thought they would try a differ- 
 ent diet, and then thought better of it ; and made but a poor 
 use of their advantages, after all. And others you will see, 
 who have begun life as wicked crystals ; and then have been 
 impressed by alarming circumstances, and have become con- 
 verted crystals, and behaved amazingly for a little while, and 
 fallen away again, and ended, but discreditably, perhaps even 
 in decomposition ; so that one doesn't know what will become 
 of them. And sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that 
 look as soft as velvet, and are deadly to all near them ; and 
 sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that seem flint-edged, 
 like our little quartz-crystal of a housekeeper here, (hush ! 
 Dora,) and are endlessly gentle and true wherever gentleness 
 and truth are needed. And sometimes you will see little 
 child-crystals put to school like school-girls, and made to stand 
 in rows ; and taken the greatest care of, and taught how to 
 hold themselves up, and behave : and sometimes you will see 
 unhappy little child-crystals left to lie about in the dirt, and 
 pick up their living, and learn manners, where they can. And 
 sometimes you will see fat crystals eating up thin ones, like 
 great capitalists and little labourers ; and politico-economic crys- 
 tals teaching the stupid ones how to eat each other, and cheat 
 each other ; and foolish crystals getting in the way of wise 
 
120 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE BUST 
 
 ones ; and impatient crystals spoiling the plans of patient 
 ones, irreparably ; just aa things go on in the world. And 
 sometimes you may see hypocritical crystals taking the shape 
 of others, though they are nothing like in their minds ; and 
 vampire crystals eating out the hearts of others ; and hermit- 
 crab crystals living in the shells of others ; and parasite crys ■ 
 tals living on the means of others ; and courtier crystals glit- 
 tering in attendance upon others ; and all these, besides the 
 two great companies of war and peace, who ally themselves, 
 resolutely to attack, or resolutely to defend. And for the 
 close, you see the broad shadow and deadly force of inevitable 
 fate, above all this : you see the multitudes of crystals w T hose 
 time has come ; not a set time, as with us, but yet a time, 
 sooner or later, when they all must give up their crystal ghosts : 
 ■ — when the strength by which they grew, and the breath given 
 them to breathe, pass away from them ; and they fail, and 
 are consumed, and vanish away ; and another generation is 
 brought to life, framed out of their ashes. 
 
 Mary. It is very terrible. Is it not the complete fulfilment, 
 down into the very dust, of that verse : ' The whole creation 
 groaneth and travaileth in pain ' ? 
 
 L. I do not know that it is in pain, Mary : at least, the 
 evidence tends to show that there is much more pleasure than 
 pain, as soon as sensation becomes possible. 
 
 Luctlla. But then, surely, if we are told that it is pain, it 
 must be pain ? 
 
 L. Yes ; if w r e are told ; and told in the way you mean, 
 Luciila ; but nothing is said of the proportion to pleasure. 
 Unmitigated pain would kill any of us in a few hours ; pain 
 equal to our pleasures would make us loathe life ; the word 
 itself cannot be applied to the lower conditions of matter, in 
 its ordinary sense. But wait till to-morrow to ask me about 
 this. To-morrow is to be kept for questions and difficulties ; 
 let us keep to the plain facts to-day. There is yet one group 
 of facts connected with this rending of the rocks, which I 
 especially want you to notice. You know, when you have 
 mended a very old dress, quite meritoriously, till it won't 
 mend any more 
 
VUTSTAL SORROWS. 
 
 121 
 
 Egypt {interrupting). Could not you sometimes take gen* 
 ilemen's work to illustrate by ? 
 
 L. Gentlemen's work is rarely so useful as yours, Egypt ; 
 and when it is useful, girls cannot easily understand it. 
 
 Dora. I am sure we should understand it better than gen- 
 tlemen understand about sewing. 
 
 L. My dear, I hope I always speak modestly, and under 
 correction, when I touch upon matters of the kind too high 
 for me ; and besides, I never intend to speak otherwise than 
 respectfully of sewing ; — though you alwavs seem to think I 
 am laughing at you. In all seriousness, illustrations from 
 sewing are those which Neith likes me best to use ; and which 
 young ladies ought to like everybody to use. What do you 
 think the beautiful word ' wife 9 comes from ? 
 
 Dora (tossi?ig her head). I don't think it is a particularly 
 beautiful word. 
 
 L. Perhaps not. At your ages you may think ' bride * 
 Bounds better ; but wife's the word for wear, depend upon it. 
 It is the great word in which the EDglish and Latin languages 
 conquer the French and the Greek. I hope the French will 
 some day get a word for it, yet, instead of their dreadful 
 1 femme.' But what do you think it comes from ? 
 
 Dora. I never did think about it. 
 
 L. Nor you, Sibyl ? 
 
 Sibyl. No ; I thought it was Saxon, and stopped there. 
 
 L. Yes ; but the great good of Saxon words is, that they 
 usually do mean something. "Wife means 'weaver.' You 
 have all the right to call yourselves little 'housewives,' when 
 you sew neatly. 
 
 Dora. But I don't think we want to call ourselves 'little 
 housewives.' 
 
 L. You must either be house-Wives, or house-Moths ; re- 
 member that. In the deep sense, you must either weave 
 men's fortunes, and embroider them ; or feed upon, and bring 
 them to decay. You had better let me keep my sewing illus* 
 tration, and help me out with it. 
 
 Dora. Well w T e'll hear it, under protest. 
 
 L, You have heard it before ; but with reference to other 
 
122 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 matters. When it is said, ' no man putteth a piece of new 
 cloth on an old garment, else it taketh from the old/ does it 
 not mean that the new piece tears the old one away at the 
 
 sewn edge ? 
 
 Dora. Yes ; certainly. 
 
 L. And when you mend a decayed stuff with strong thread, 
 does not the whole edge come away sometimes, when it tears 
 again ? 
 
 Dora. Yes ; and then it is of no use to mend it any more. 
 
 L. Well, the rocks don't seem to think that : but the same 
 thing happens to them continually. I told you they were full 
 of rents, or veins. Large masses of mountain are sometimes 
 as full of veins as your hand is ; and of veins nearly as fine 
 (only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube, but a crack 
 or cleft). Now these clefts are mended, usually, with the 
 strongest material the rock can find ; and often literally with 
 threads ; for the gradually opening rent seems to draw the 
 substance it is filled with into fibres, which cross from one 
 side of it to the other, and are partly crystalline ; so that, 
 when the crystals become distinct, the fissure has often ex- 
 actly the look of a tear, brought together with strong cross 
 stitches. Now when this is completely done, and all has been 
 fastened and made firm, perhaps some new change of tem- 
 perature may occur, and the rock begin to contract again. 
 Then the old vein must open, wider ; or else another open 
 elsewhere. If the old vein widen, it may do so at its centre ; 
 but it constantly happens, with well filled veins, that the 
 cross stitches are too strong to break ; the walls of the vein, 
 instead, are torn away by them ; and another little supple- 
 mentary vein — often three or four successively— w r ill be thus 
 formed at the side of the first. 
 
 Mary. That is really very much like our work. But what 
 do the mountains use to sew with ? 
 
 L. Quartz, whenever they can get it : pure limestones are 
 obliged to be content with carbonate of lime ; but most mixed 
 rocks can find some quartz for themselves. Here is a piece 
 of black slate from the Buet : it looks merely like dry dark 
 mud ;— you could not think there was any quartz in it ; bnt^ 
 
CRYSTAL SORROWS. 
 
 123 
 
 you see, its rents are all stitched together with beautiful white 
 thread, which is the purest quartz, so close drawn that you 
 can break it like flint, in the mass ; but, where it has been ex- 
 posed to the weather, the fine fibrous structure is shown : 
 and, more than that, you see the threads have been all twisted 
 and pulled aside, this way and the other, by the warpings and 
 shifting of the sides of the vein as it widened. 
 
 Mary. It is wonderful ! But is that going on still ? Are 
 the mountains being torn and sewn together again at this 
 moment ? 
 
 L. Yes, certainly, my dear : but I think, just as certainly 
 (though geologists differ on this matter), not with the violence, 
 or on the scale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. All things 
 seem to be tending towards a condition of at least temporary 
 rest ; and that groaning and travailing of the creation, as, as- 
 suredly, not wholly in pain, is not, in the full sense, ' until 
 now.' 
 
 Mary. I want so much to ask you about that ! 
 
 Sibyl. Yes ; and we all want to ask you about a great many 
 other things besides. 
 
 L. It seems to me that you have got quite as many new 
 ideas as are good for any of you at present : and I should not 
 like to burden you with more ; but I must see that those you 
 have are clear, if I can make them so ; so we will have one 
 more talk, for answer of questions, mainly. Think over all 
 the ground, and make your difficulties thoroughly presentable. 
 Then we'll see what we can make of them. 
 
 Dora. They shall ail be dressed in their very best ; and 
 curtsey as they come in. 
 
 L. No, no, Dora ; no curtseys, if you please. I had enough 
 of them the day you all took a fit of reverence, and curtsied 
 me out of the room. 
 
 Dora. But, you know, we cured ourselves of the fault, at 
 once, by that fit. We have never been the least respectful 
 since. And the difficulties will only curtsey themselves out of 
 the room, I hope ; — come in at one door — vanish at the other. 
 
 L. What a pleasant world it would be, if all its difficulties 
 were taught to behave so I However, one can generally make 
 
124 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 something, or (better still) nothing, or at least less, of then^ 
 if they thoroughly know their own minds ; and your difficul- 
 ties — I must say that for you, children, — generally do know 
 their own minds, as you do yourselves. 
 
 Dora. That is very kindly said for us. Some people w r ould 
 not allow so much as that girls had any minds to know. 
 
 L. They will at least admit that you have minds to change, 
 Dora. 
 
 Mary. You might have left us the last speech, without a 
 retouch. But we'll put our little minds, such as they are, in 
 the best trim we can, for to-morrow. 
 
LECTURE X. 
 
 THE CRYSTAL REST. 
 Weening. TJie fireside. L's arm-chair in the comfortablest corner. 
 
 L. (perceiving various arrangements being made of foot stool, 
 cushion, screen, and the like). Yes, yes, it's all very fine ! and 
 I am to sit here to be asked questions till supper-time, am I ? 
 
 Dora. I don't think you can have any supper to-night : — 
 we've got so much to ask. 
 
 Lily. Oh, Miss Dora ! We can fetch it him here, you 
 know, so nicely ! 
 
 L. Yes, Lily, that will be pleasant, with competitive exami- 
 nation going on over one's plate ; the competition being 
 among the examiners. Keally, now that I know what teasing 
 things girls are, I don't so much wonder that people used to 
 put up patiently with the dragons who took them for supper. 
 But I can't help myself, I suppose ; — no thanks to St. George. 
 Ask away, children, and I'll answer as civilly as may be. 
 
 Dora. We don't so much care about being answered civilly, 
 as about not being asked things back again. 
 
 L. c Ayez seulement la patience que je le parle.' There 
 shall be no requitals. 
 
 Dora. Well, then, first of all — What shall we ask first, 
 Mary ? 
 
 Mary. It does not matter. I think all the questions come 
 into one, at last, nearly. 
 
 Dora. You know, you always talk as if the crystals were 
 alive ; and we never understand how much you are in play, 
 and how much in earnest. That's the first thing. 
 
 L. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much I 
 am in earnest. The stones puzzle me as much as I puzzle 
 you. They look as if they were alive, and make me speak as 
 if they were ; and I do not in the least know how much truth 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 there is in the appearance. I'm not to ask things back again 
 to-night, but all questions of this sort lead necessarily to the 
 one main question, which we asked, before, in vain, ' What is 
 it to be alive ? ' 
 
 Dora. Yes ; but we want to come back to that : for we've 
 been reading scientific books about the ' conservation of 
 forces,' and it seems all so grand, and wonderful ; and the 
 experiments are so pretty ; and I suppose it must be all 
 right : but then the books never speak as if there were any 
 such thing as ' life.' 
 
 L. They mostly omit that part of the subject, certainly, 
 Dora ; but they are beautifully right as far as they go ; and 
 life is not a convenient element to deal with. They seem to 
 have been getting some of it into and out of bottles, in their 
 ' ozone ' and ' antizone ' lately ; but they still know little of 
 it : and, certainly, I know less. 
 
 Dora. You promised not to be provoking, to-night. 
 
 L. Wait a minute. Though, quite truly, I know less of the 
 secrets of life than the philosophers do ; I yet know one cor- 
 ner of ground on which we artists can stand, literally as 
 'Life Guards' at bay, as steadily as the Guards at Inker- 
 rnann ; however hard the philosophers push. And you may 
 stand with us, if once you learn to draw nicely. 
 
 Dora. I'm sure we are all trying ! but tell us where we may 
 stand. 
 
 L. You may always stand by Form, against Force. To a 
 painter, the essential character of anything is the form of it ; 
 and the philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell 
 you, for instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or 
 calorific energy (or whatever else they like to call it), in a tea- 
 kettle as in a Gier-eagle. Very good ; that is so ; and it is 
 very interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil 
 the kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to his nest ; and as much 
 more to bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. 
 But we painters, acknowledging the equality and similarity 
 of the kettle and the bird in all scientific respects, attach, 
 for our part, our principal interest to the difference in their 
 forms. For us, the primarily cognisable facts, in the two 
 
THE CRYSTAL REST. 
 
 127 
 
 things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak ; 
 the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings ; — not to 
 speak of the distinction also of volition, which the philoso- 
 phers may properly call merely a form or mode of force ; — 
 but then, to an artist, the form, or mode, is the gist of the 
 business. The kettle chooses to sit still on the hob ; the 
 eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of the choice, not 
 the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it, which 
 appears to us the more interesting circumstance ; — though 
 the other is very interesting too. Exceedingly so ! Don't 
 laugh, children ; the philosophers have been doing quite 
 splendid work lately, in their own way : especially, the trans- 
 formation of force into light is a great piece of systematised 
 discovery ; and this notion about the sun's being supplied 
 with his flame by ceaseless meteoric hail is grand, and looks 
 very likely to be true. Of course, it is only the old gun- 
 lock, — flint and steel, — on a large scale : but the order and 
 majesty of it are sublime. Still, we sculptors and painters 
 care little about it. 'It is very fine,' we say, 'and very useful, 
 this knocking the light out of the sun, or into it, by an eter- 
 nal cataract of planets. But you may hail away, so, for ever, 
 and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a bit of 
 silver, not the size of half-a-erown, on which, w T ith a single 
 hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and odd years ago, 
 hit out the head of the Apollo of Clazomenae. It is merely a 
 matter of form ; but if any of you philosophers, with your 
 whole planetary system to hammer with, can hit out such 
 another bit of silver as this, — we w 7 ill take off our hats to you. 
 For the present, we keep them on.' 
 
 Mary. Yes, I understand ; and that is nice ; but I don't 
 think we shall any of us like having only form to depend upon. 
 
 L. It was not neglected in the making of Eve, my dear. 
 
 Mary. It does not seem to separate us from the dust of the 
 ground. It is that breathing of the life which we want to 
 understand. 
 
 L. So you should : but hold fast to the form, and defend 
 that first, as distinguished from the mere transition of forces. 
 Discern the moulding hand of the potter commanding the 
 
128 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 clay, from his merely beating foot, as it turns the wheel. II 
 you can find incense, in the vase, afterwards, — well : but it is 
 curious how far mere form will carry you ahead of the phil- 
 osophers. For instance, with regard to the most interesting 
 of all their modes of force — light ; — they never consider how 
 far the existence of it depends on the putting of certain 
 vitreous and nervous substances into the formal arrangement 
 which we call an eye. The German philosophers began the 
 attack, long ago, on the other side, by telling us, there was 
 no such thing as light at all, unless w r e chose to see it : now, 
 German and English, both, have reversed their engines, and 
 insist that light would be exactly the same light that it is, 
 though nobody could ever see it. The fact being that the 
 force must be there, and the eyes there ; and c light ' means 
 the effect of the one on the other ; — and perhaps, also — (Plato 
 saw farther into that mystery than any one has since, that I 
 know of), — on something a little way within the eyes ; but we 
 may stand quite safe, close behind the retina, and defy the 
 philosophers. 
 
 Sibyl. But I don't care so much about defying the philoso- 
 phers, if only one could get a clear idea of life, or soul, for 
 one's self. 
 
 L Well, Sibyl, you used to know more about it, in that 
 cave of yours, than any of us. I was just going to ask you 
 about inspiration, and the golden bough, and the like ; only I 
 remembered I was not to ask anything. But, will not you, 
 at least, tell us whether the ideas of Life, as the power of 
 putting things together, or 6 making ' them ; and of Death, as 
 the power of pushing things separate, or c unmaking ' them, 
 may not be very simply held in balance against each other? 
 
 Sibyl. No, I am not in my cave to-night ; and cannot tell 
 you anything. 
 
 L. I think they may. Modern Philosophy is a great sepa- 
 rator ; it is little more than the expansion of Moliere's great 
 sentence, ' II s'ensuit de la, que tout ce qu'il y a de beau est 
 dans les dictionnaires ; il n'y a que les mots qui sont trans- 
 poses.' But when you used to be in your cave, Sibyl, and to 
 be inspired, there was (and there remains still in some small 
 
THE CRYSTAL REST. 
 
 129 
 
 measure), beyond the merely formative and sustaining power, 
 another, which we painters call ' passion ' — I don't know what 
 the philosophers call it ; we know it makes people red, or 
 white ; and therefore it must be something, itself ; and per- 
 haps it is the most truly ' poetic ' or ' making ' force of all, 
 creating a world of its own out of a glance, or a sigh : and 
 the want of passion is perhaps the truest death, or 6 unmaking 9 
 of everything ; — even of stones. By the way, you were all 
 reading about that ascent of the Aiguille Verte, the other 
 day? 
 
 Sibyl. Because you had told us it was so difficult, you 
 thought it could not be ascended. 
 
 L. Yes ; I believed the Aiguille Verte would have held its 
 own. But do you recollect w T hat one of the climbers ex- 
 claimed, when he first felt sure of reaching the summit ? 
 
 Sibyl. Yes, it was, £ Oh, Aiguille Verte, vous etes morte, 
 vous etes morte ! ' 
 
 L. That was true instinct. Real philosophic joy. Now 
 can you at all fancy the difference between that feeling of 
 triumph in a mountain's death ; and the exultation of your 
 beloved poet, in its life — 
 
 4 Quan tus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, ant ipse coruscis 
 Quum fremit ilicibus quantus, gaudetque nivali 
 Vertice, se attollens pater Apeiminus ad auras.' 
 
 Dora. You must translate for us mere house-keepers, please, 
 f— whatever the cave-keepers may know about it. 
 Mary. Will Dryden do ? 
 
 L. No. Dryden is a far way worse than nothing, and nobody 
 will c do.' You can't translate it. But this is all you need 
 know, that the lines are full of a passionate sense of the Apen- 
 nines' fatherhood, or protecting power over Italy ; and of sym- 
 pathy with their joy in their snowy strength in heaven ; and 
 with the same joy, shuddering through all the leaves of their 
 forests. 
 
 Mary. Yes, that is a difference indeed ! but then, you know, 
 one can't help feeling that it is fanciful. It is very delightful 
 to imagine the mountains to be alive ; but then, — are they alive? 
 
130 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 L. It seems to me, on the whole, Mary, that the feelmga 
 of the purest and most mightily passioned human souls are 
 likely to be the truest. Not, indeed, if they do not desire to 
 know the truth, or blind themselves to it that they may please 
 themselves with passion ; for then they are no longer pure : 
 but if, continually seeking and accepting the truth as far as it 
 is discernible, they trust their Maker for the integrity of the 
 instincts He has gifted them with, and rest in the sense of a 
 higher truth which they cannot demonstrate, I think they 
 will be most in the right, so. 
 
 Dora and Jessie {clapping their hands). Then we really 
 may believe that the mountains are living? 
 
 Ix You may at least earnestly believe, that the presence of 
 the spirit which culminates in your own life, shows itself in 
 dawning, wherever the dust of the earth begins to assume 
 any orderly and lovely state. You will find it impossible to 
 separate this idea of gradated manifestation from that of the 
 vital power. Things are not either wholly alive, or wholly 
 dead. They are less or more alive. Take the nearest, most 
 easily examined instance — the life of a flower. Notice what a 
 different degree and kind of life there is in the calyx and the 
 corolla. The calyx is nothing but the swaddling clothes of 
 the flower ; the child-blossom is bound up in it, hand and 
 foot ; guarded in it, restrained by it, till the time of birth. 
 The shell is hardly more subordinate to the germ in the egg, 
 lhan the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last ; but it never 
 lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its task 
 is fulfilled, as in the poppy ; or wither gradually, as in the 
 buttercup ; or persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is 
 dead, as in the rose ; or harmonise itself so as to share in the 
 aspect of the real flower, as in the lily ; but it never shares in 
 the corolla's bright passion of life. And the gradations which 
 thus exist between the different members of organic creat- 
 ures, exist no less between the different ranges of organism. 
 We know no higher or more energetic life than our own ; but 
 there seems to me this great good in the idea of gradation of 
 life — it admits the idea of a life above us, in other creatures, as 
 much nobler than ours, as ours is nobler than that of the dust. 
 
THE CRYSTAL REST. 
 
 131 
 
 Mary. I am glad you have said that ; for I know Violet and 
 Lucilla and May want to ask you something ; indeed, we all 
 do ; only you frightened Violet so about the ant-hill, that she 
 can't say a word ; and May is afraid of your teasing her, too % 
 but I know they are wondering why you are always telling 
 them about heathen gods and goddesses, as if you half be- 
 lieved in them ; and you represent them as good ; and then 
 we see there is really a kind of truth in the stories about 
 them ; and we are all puzzled : and, in tins, we cannot even 
 make our difficulty quite clear to ourselves ; — it would be 
 such a long confused question, if we could ask you all we 
 should like to know. 
 
 L. Nor is it any wonder, Mary ; for this is indeed the long- 
 est, and the most wildly confused question that reason can 
 deal with ; but I will try to give you, quickly, a few clear 
 ideas about the heathen gods, which you may follow out 
 afterwards, as your knowledge increases. 
 
 Every heathen conception of deity in which you are likely 
 to be interested, has three distinct characters : — 
 
 I. It has a physical character. It represents some of the 
 great powers or objects of nature — sun or moon, or heaven, 
 or the winds, or the sea. And the fables first related about 
 each deity represent, figuratively, the action of the natural 
 power which it represents ; such as the rising and setting of 
 the sun, the tides of the sea, and so on. 
 
 II. It has an ethical character, and represents, in its his- 
 tory, the moral dealings of God with man. Thus Apollo is 
 first, physically, the sun contending w T ith darkness ; but mor- 
 ally, the power of divine life contending with corruption. 
 Athena is, physically, the air ; morally, the breathing of the 
 divine spirit of wisdom. Neptune is, physically, the sea ; 
 morally, the supreme power of agitating passion ; and so on. 
 
 III. It has, at last, a personal character ; and is realised in 
 the minds of its worshippers as a living spirit, with whom 
 men may speak face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. 
 
 Now it is impossible to define exactly, how far, at any 
 period of a national religion, these three ideas are mingled ; 
 or how far one prevails over the other. Eacli enquirer 
 
132 
 
 TEE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 usually takes up one of these ideas, and pursues it, to the 
 exclusion of the others : no impartial effort seems to have 
 been made to discern the real state of the heathen imagina- 
 tion in its successive phases. For the question is not at all 
 what a mythological figure meant in its origin ; but what it 
 became in each subsequent mental development of the nation 
 inheriting the thought. Exactly in proportion to the mental 
 and moral insight of any race, its mythological figures mean 
 more to it, and become more real. An early and savage race 
 means nothing more (because it has nothing more to mean) 
 by its Apollo, than the sun ; while a cultivated Greek means 
 every operation of divine intellect and justice. The Neith, of 
 Egypt, meant, physically, little more than the blue of the air ; 
 but the Greek, in a climate of alternate storm and calm, rep- 
 resented the wild fringes of the storm-cloud by the serpents 
 of her aegis ; and the lightning and cold of the highest 
 thunder-clouds, by the Gorgon on her shield : while morally, 
 the same types represented to him the mystery and changeful 
 terror of knowledge, as her spear and helm its ruling and de- 
 fensive power. And no study can be more interesting, or 
 more useful to you, than that of the different meanings which 
 have been created by great nations, and great poets, out of 
 mythological figures given them, at first, in utter simplicity. 
 But when we approach them in their third, or personal, char- 
 acter (and, for its power over the whole national mind, this is 
 far the leading one), we are met at once by questions which 
 may well put all of you at pause. Were they idly imagined 
 to be real beings ? and did they so usurp the place of the 
 true God ? Or were they actually real beings — evil spirits, — 
 leading men away from the true God ? Or is it conceivable 
 that they might have been real beings, — good spirits, — en- 
 trusted with some message from the true God ? These were 
 the questions you wanted to ask ; were they not, Lucilla ? 
 Lucilla. Yes, indeed. 
 
 L. Well, Lucilla, the answer will much depend upon the 
 clearness of your faith in the personality of the spirits which 
 are described in the book of your own religion ; — their per- 
 sonality, observe, as distinguished from merely symbolical vis- 
 
THE CRYSTAL REST. 
 
 133 
 
 ions. For instance, when Jeremiah has the vision of the 
 seething pot with its mouth to the north, you know that this 
 which he sees is not a real thing ; but merely a significant 
 dream. Also, when Zechariah sees the speckled horses among 
 the myrtle trees in the bottom, you still may suppose the 
 vision symbolical ; — you do not think of them as real spirits, 
 like Pegasus, seen in the form of horses. But when you are 
 told of the four riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense of 
 personality begins to force itself upon you. And though you 
 might, in a dull temper, think that (for one instance of all) the 
 fourth rider on the pale horse was merely a symbol of the 
 power of death, — in your stronger and more earnest moods 
 you will rather conceive of him as a real and living angel. 
 And when you look back from the vision of the Apocalypse 
 to the account of the destruction of the Egyptian first-born, 
 and of the army of Sennacherib, and again to David's vision 
 at the threshing floor of Araunah, the idea of personality in 
 this death-angel becomes entirely defined, just as in the ap- 
 pearance of the angels to Abraham, Manoah, or Mary. 
 
 Now, when you have once consented to this idea of a per- 
 sonal spirit, must not the question instantly follow : ■ Does 
 this spirit exercise its functions towards one race of men only, 
 or towards all men ? Was it an angel of death to the Jew 
 only, or to the Gentile also ? ' You find a certain Divine 
 agency made visible to a King of Israel, as an armed angel, 
 executing vengeance, of which one special purpose was to 
 lower his kingly pride. You find another (or perhaps the 
 same) agency, made visible to a Christian prophet as an angel 
 standing in the sun, calling to the birds that fly under heaven 
 to come, that they may eat the flesh of kings. Is there any- 
 thing impious in the thought that the same agency might 
 have been expressed to a Greek king, or Greek seer, by simi- 
 lar visions ? — that this figure, standing in the sun, and armed 
 with the sword, or the bow (whose arrows were drunk with 
 blood), and exercising especially its power in the humiliation 
 of the proud, might, at first, have been called only 'De- 
 stroyer/ and afterwards, as the light, or sun, of justice, was 
 recognised in the chastisement, called also ' Physician ' or 
 
134 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 ' Healer ? ' If you feel hesitation in admitting the possibility 
 of such a manifestation, I believe you will find it is caused, 
 partly indeed by such trivial things as the difference to your 
 ear between Greek and English terms ; but, far more, by un- 
 certainty in your own mind respecting the nature and truth< 
 of the visions spoken of in the Bible. Have any of you in- 
 tently examined the nature of your belief in them ? You, 
 for instance, Lucilla, who think often, and seriously, of such 
 things ? 
 
 Lucilla. No ; I never could tell what to believe about them, i 
 I know they must be true in some way or other ; and I like 
 reading about them. 
 
 L. Yes ; and I like reading about them too, Lucilla ; as I 
 like reading other grand poetry. But, surely, we ought both 
 to do more than like it ? Will God be satisfied with us, think 
 you, if we read His words merely for the sake of an entirely 
 meaningless poetical sensation ? 
 
 Lucilla. But do not the people who give themselves to seek 
 out the meaning of these things, often get very strange, and 
 extravagant ? 
 
 L. More than that, Lucilla. They often go mad. That 
 abandonment of the mind to religious theory, or contempla- 
 tion, is the very thing I have been pleading with you against. 
 I never said you should set yourself to discover the mean- 
 ings ; but you should take careful pains to understand them, 
 so far as they are clear ; and you should always accurately 
 ascertain the state of your mind about them. I want you 
 never to read merely for the pleasure of fancy ; still less as a 
 formal religious duty (else you might as w r ell take to repeat- 
 ing Paters at once ; for it is surely wiser to repeat one thing 
 we understand, than read a thousand which we cannot). 
 Either, therefore, acknowledge the passages to be, for the 
 present, unintelligible to you ; or else determine the sense in 
 which you at present receive them ; or, at all events, the dif- 
 ferent senses between which you clearly see that you must 
 choose. Make either your belief, or your difficulty, definite ; 
 but do not go on, all through your life, believing nothing in- 
 telligently, and yet supposing that your having read the worda 
 
THE CRYSTAL REST. 
 
 135 
 
 of a divine book must give you the right to despise every reli- 
 gion but your own. I assure you, strange as it may seem, our 
 scorn of Greek tradition depends, not on our belief, but our 
 disbelief, of our own traditions. We have, as yet, no sufficient 
 clue to the meaning of either ; but you will always find that, 
 in proportion to the earnestness of our own faith, its tendency 
 to accept a spiritual personality increases : and that the most 
 vital and beautiful Christian temper rests joyfully in its con- 
 viction of the multitudinous ministry of living angels, infinitely, 
 varied in rank and power. You all know one expression of 
 the purest and happiest form of such faith, as it exists in 
 modern times, in Richter's lovely illustrations of the Lord's 
 Prayer. The real and living death-angel, girt as a pilgrim for 
 journey, and softly crowned with flowers, beckons at the dying 
 mother's door ; child-angels sit talking face to face with mor- 
 tal children, among the flowers ; — hold them by their little 
 coats, lest they fall on the stairs ; — whisper dreams of heaven 
 to them, leaning over their pillows ; carry the sound of the 
 church bells for them far through the air ; and even descend- 
 ing lower in service, fill little cups with honey, to hold out to the 
 weary bee. By the way, Lily, did you tell the other children 
 that story about your little sister, and Alice, and the sea ? 
 
 Lily. I told it to Alice, and to Miss Dora. I don't think I 
 did to anybody else. I thought it wasn't worth. 
 
 L. We shall think it worth a great deal now, Lily, if you 
 will tell it us. How old is Dotty, again ? I forget, 
 
 Lily. She is not quite three ; but she has such odd little 
 old ways, sometimes. 
 
 L. And she was very fond of Alice ? 
 
 Lily. Yes ; Alice was so good to her always ! 
 
 L, And so when Alice went away ? 
 
 Lily. Oh, it was nothing, you know, to tell about ; only it 
 was strange at the time. 
 
 L. Well ; but I want you to tell it, 
 
 Lily. The morning after Alice had gone, Dotty was very sad 
 and restless when she got up ; and went about, looking into 
 all the corners, as if she could find Alice in them, and at last 
 she came to me, and said, ' Is Alie gone over the great sea?' 
 
136 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 And I said, ' Yes, she is gone over the great, deep sea, but she 
 will come back again some day.' Then Dotty looked round 
 the room ; and I had just poured some water out into the 
 basin ; and Dotty ran to it, and got up on a chair, and dashed 
 her hands through the water, again and again ; and cried, 
 6 Oh, deep, deep sea ! send little Alie back to me.' 
 
 L. Isn't that pretty, children ? There's a dear little heathen 
 for you ! The whole heart of Greek mythology is in that ; the 
 idea of a personal being in the elemental power ; — of its being 
 moved by prayer ; — and of its presence everywhere, making 
 the broken diffusion of the element sacred. 
 
 Now, remember, the measure in which we may permit our- 
 selves to think of this trusted and adored personality, in 
 Greek, or in any other, mythology, as conceivably a shadow 
 of truth, will depend on the degree in w T hich we hold the 
 Greeks, or other great nations, equal, or inferior, in privilege 
 and character, to the Jews, or to ourselves. If we believe that 
 the great Father would use the imagination of the Jew as an 
 instrument by which to exalt and lead him ; but the imagina- 
 tion of the Greek only to degrade and mislead him : if we can 
 suppose that real angels were sent to minister to the Jews 
 and to punish them ; but no angels, or only mocking spectra 
 of angels, or even devils in the shapes of angels, to lead Lycur- 
 gus and Leonidas from desolate cradle to hopeless grave : — 
 and if we can think that it was only the influence of spectres, 
 or the teaching of demons, which issued in the making of 
 mothers like Cornelia, and of sons like Cleobis and Bito, we 
 may, of course, reject the heathen Mythology in our privileged 
 scorn : but, at least, we are bound to examine strictly by what 
 faults of our own it has come to pass, that the ministry of real 
 angels among ourselves is occasionally so ineffectual, as to end 
 in the production of Cornelias who entrust their child-jewels 
 to Charlotte "Winsors for the better keeping of them ; and of 
 sons like that one who, the other day, in France, beat his 
 mother to death with a stick ; and was brought in by the jury, 
 < guilty, with extenuating circumstances.' 
 
 May. Was that really possible ? 
 
 L. Yes, my dear. I am not sure that I can lay my hand 
 
THE CRYSTAL REST. 
 
 137 
 
 on the reference to it (and I should not have said ' the other 
 day ' — it was a year or two ago), but you may depend on the 
 fact ; and I could give you many like it, if I chose. There 
 was a murder done in Bussia, very lately, on a traveller. 
 The murderess's little daughter was in the way, and found it 
 out, somehow. Her mother killed her, too, and put her into 
 the oven. There is a peculiar horror about the relations be- 
 tween parent and child, which are being now brought about 
 by our variously degraded forms of European white slavery. 
 Here is one reference, I see, in my notes on that story of 
 Cleobis and Bito ; though I suppose I marked this chiefly 
 for its quaintness, and the beautifully Christian names of the 
 sons ; but it is a good instance of the power of the King of 
 the Valley of Diamonds * among us. 
 
 In ' Galignani ' of July 21-22, 1862, is reported a trial of a 
 farmer's son in the department of the Yonne. The father, 
 two years ago, at Malay le Grand, gave up his property to 
 his two sons, on condition of being maintained by them. 
 Simon fulfilled his agreement, but Pierre would not. The 
 tribunal of Sens condemns Pierre to pay eighty-four francs a 
 year to his father. Pierre replies, £ he would rather die than 
 pay it.' Actually, returning home, he throws himself into the 
 river, and the body is not found till next day. 
 
 Mary. But — but — I can't tell what you w^ould have us 
 think. Do you seriously mean that the Greeks were better 
 than we are ; and that their gods were real angels ? 
 
 L. No, my dear. I mean only that we know, in reality, 
 less than nothing of the dealings of our Maker with our 
 fellow-men ; and can only reason or conjecture safely about 
 them, when we have sincerely humble thoughts of ourselves 
 and our creeds. 
 
 "We owe to the Greeks every noble discipline in literature ; 
 every radical principle of art ; and every form of convenient 
 beauty in our household furniture and daily occupations of 
 life. We are unable, ourselves, to make rational use of half 
 that we have received from them : and, of our own, we have 
 nothing but discoveries in science, and fine mechanical adap- 
 
 * Note vi. 
 
138 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 tations of the discovered physical powers. On the other 
 hand, the vice existing among certain classes, both of the rich 
 and poor, in London, Paris, and Vienna, could have been 
 conceived by a' Spartan or Roman of the heroic ages only as 
 possible in a Tartarus, where fiends were employed to teach, 
 but not to punish, crime. It little becomes us to speak con- 
 temptuously of the religion of races to whom we stand in 
 such relations ; nor do I think any man of modesty or 
 thoughtfulness will ever speak so of any religion, in which 
 God has allowed one good man to die, trusting. 
 
 The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cher- 
 ished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital 
 and helpful w r hatever is right in them will become : and no 
 error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not 
 allow us to err, though He has allowed all other men to do 
 so. There may be doubt of the meaning of other visions, 
 but there is none respecting that of the dream of St. Peter ; 
 and you may trust the Eock of the Church's Foundation for 
 true interpreting, when he learned from it that, 'in every 
 nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is 
 accepted with Him/ See that you understand what that 
 righteousness means ; and set hand to it stoutly : you will 
 always measure your neighbors' creed kindly; in proportion 
 to the substantial fruits of your own. Do not think you will 
 ever get harm by striving to enter into the faith of others, 
 and to sympathise, in imagination, with the guiding prin- 
 ciples of their lives. So only can you justly love them, or 
 pity them, or praise. By the gracious effort you will double, 
 treble — nay, indefinitely multiply, at once the pleasure, the 
 reverence, and the intelligence with which you read : and, 
 believe me, it is wiser and holier, by the fire of your own 
 faith to kindle the ashes of expired religions, than to let your 
 soul shiver and stumble among their graves, through the 
 gathering darkness, and communicable cold. 
 
 Mary (after some pause). We shall all like reading Greek 
 history so much better after this ! but it has put everything 
 else out of our heads that we wanted to ask. 
 
 L. I can tell you one of the things ; and I might take 
 
THE CRYSTAL REST. 
 
 139 
 
 credit for generosity in telling you ; but I have a personal 
 reason — Lucilla's verse about the creation. . 
 
 Dora. Oh, yes — yes ; and its 'pain together, until now.' 
 
 L. I call you back to that, because I must warn you against 
 an old error of my own. Somewhere in the fourth volume 
 of ' Modern Painters/ I said that the earth seemed to have 
 passed through its highest state : and that, after ascending 
 by a series of phases, culminating in its habitation by man, 
 it seems to be now gradually becoming less fit for that 
 habitation. 
 
 Mary. Yes, I remember. 
 
 L. I wrote those passages under a very bitter impression 
 of the gradual perishing of beauty from the loveliest scenes 
 which I knew in the physical world ; — not in any doubtful 
 way, such as I might have attributed to loss of sensation in 
 myself — but by violent and definite physical action ; such as 
 the filling up of the Lac de Chede by landslips from the Ro- 
 chers des Fiz ; — the narrowing of the Lake Lucerne by the 
 gaining delta of the stream of the Muotta-Thal, which, in the 
 course of years, will cut the lake into two, as that of Brientz 
 has been divided from that of Thun ; — the steady diminishing 
 of the glaciers north of the Alps, and still more, of the sheets 
 of snow on their southern slopes, which supply the refreshing 
 streams of Lombardy : — the equally steady increase of deadly 
 maremma round Pisa and Venice ; and other such phenom- 
 ena, quite measurably traceable within the limits even of short 
 life, and unaccompanied, as it seemed, by redeeming or com- 
 pensatory agencies. I am still under the same impression 
 respecting the existing phenomena ; but I feel more strongly, 
 every day, that no evidence to be collected within historical 
 periods can be accepted as any clue to the great tendencies of 
 geological change ; but that the great laws which never fail, 
 and to which all change is subordinate, appear such as to ac- 
 complish a gradual advance to lovelier order, and more calmly, 
 yet more deeply, animated Rest. Nor has this conviction ever 
 fastened itself upon me more distinctly, than during my en- 
 deavour to trace the laws which govern the lowly framework 
 of the dust. For, through all the phases of its transition and 
 
140 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 dissolution, there seems to be a continual effort to raise itself 
 into a higher state ; and a measured gain, through the fierce 
 revulsion and slow renewal of the earth's frame, in beauty, and 
 order, and permanence. The soft white sediments of the sea 
 draw themselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of 
 sphered symmetry ; burdened and strained under increase of 
 pressure, they pass into a nascent marble ; scorched by fervent 
 heat, they brighten and blanch into the snowy rock of Faros and 
 Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river, or stagnant slime of 
 inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself as it dries, into 
 layers of its several elements ; slowly purifying each by the 
 patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in 
 which it was mingled. Contracted by increasing drought, 
 till it must shatter into fragments, it infuses continually a 
 finer ichor into the opening veins, and finds in its weakness 
 the first rudiments of a perfect strength. Rent at last, rock 
 from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in lambent 
 fire, it knits, through the fusion, the fibres of a perennial 
 endurance ; and, during countless subsequent centuries, de- 
 clining, or rather let me say, rising to repose, finishes the in- 
 fallible lustre of its crystalline beauty, under harmonies of 
 law which are wholly beneficent, because wholly inexorable. 
 
 [The children seem pleased, but more inclined to think 
 over these matters than to talk.) 
 
 L. [after giving them a little time). Mary, I seldom ask you 
 to read anything out of books of mine ; but there is a passage 
 about the Law of Help, which I want you to read to the 
 children now, because it is of no use merely to put it in other 
 words for them. You know the place I mean, do not you ? 
 
 Mary. Yes {presently finding it) ; where shall I begin? 
 
 L. Here ; but the elder ones had better look afterwards at 
 the piece which comes just before this. 
 
 Mary (reads) : 
 
 ' A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its 
 parts are helpful or consistent. The highest and first law of 
 the universe, and the other name of life, m therefore, "help." 
 The other name of death is "separation." Government and 
 
THE CRYSTAL REST. 
 
 141 
 
 co-operation are in all things, and eternally, the laws of life. 
 Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws 
 of death. 
 
 'Perhaps the best, though the most familiar, example we 
 could take of the nature and power of consistence, will be 
 that of the possible changes in the dust we tread on. 
 
 ' Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more 
 absolute type of impurity, than the mud or slime of a damp, 
 over-trodden path, in the outskirts of a manufacturing town. 
 I do not say mud of the road, because that is mixed with 
 animal refuse ; but take merely an ounce or two of the blackest 
 slime of a beaten footpath, on a rainy day, near a manufactur- 
 ing town. That slime we shall find in most cases composed of 
 clay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay), mixed with soot, a 
 little sand and water. All these elements are at helpless w r ar 
 w T ith each other, and destroy reciprocally each other's nature 
 and power : competing and fighting for place at every tread 
 of your foot ; sand squeezing out clay, and clay squeezing 
 out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and defiling the 
 whole. Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in 
 perfect rest, and that its elements gather together, like to 
 like, so that their atoms may get into the closest relations 
 possible. 
 
 ' Let the clay begin. Kidding itself of all foreign substance, 
 it gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful, 
 and fit, with help of congealing fire, to be made into finest 
 porcelain, and painted on, and be kept in kings' palaces. 
 But such artificial consistence is not its best. Leave it still 
 quiet, to follow 7 its own instinct of unity, and it becomes, not 
 only white but clear ; not only clear, but hard ; nor only 
 clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with light in a 
 wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays 
 only, refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire. 
 
 4 Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar 
 permission of quiet to the sand. It also becomes, first, a 
 white earth ; then proceeds to grow 7 clear and hard, and at 
 last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely fine parallel lines, 
 which have the power of reflecting, not merely the blue rays, 
 but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the greatest 
 beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material 
 whatsoever. We call it then an opal. 
 
 ' In next order the soot sets to work. It cannot make itself 
 white at first ; but, instead of being discouraged, tries harder 
 and harder ; and comes out clear at last ; and the hardest 
 
142 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 
 
 thing in the world : and for the blackness that it had, obtaine 
 in exchange the power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at 
 once, in the viviclest blaze that any solid thing can shoot. We 
 call it then a diamond. 
 
 £ Last of all, the water purifies, or unites itself ; contented 
 enough if it only reach the form of a dewdrop : but, if we 
 insist on its proceeding to a more perfect consistence, it crys- 
 tallises into the shape of a star. And, for the ounce of slime 
 which we had by political economy of competition, we have, 
 by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and 
 a diamond, set in the midst of a star of snow.' 
 
 L. I have asked you to hear that, children, because, from 
 all that we have seen in the work and play of these past days, 
 I would have you gain at least one grave and enduring thought. 
 The seeming trouble, — the unquestionable degradation, — of 
 the elements of the physical earth, must passively wait the ap- 
 pointed time of their repose, or their restoration. It can only be 
 brought about for them by the agency of external law. But if, in- 
 deed, there be a nobler life in us than in these strangely mov- 
 ing atoms ; — if, indeed, there is an eternal difference between 
 the fire which inhabits them, and that which animates us, — it 
 must be shown, by each of us in his appointed place, not 
 merely in the patience, but in the activity of our hope ; not 
 merely by our desire, but our labour, for the time when the 
 Dust of the generations of men shall be confirmed for founda- 
 tions of the gates of the city of God. The human clay, now 
 trampled and despised, will not be, — cannot be, — knit into 
 strength and light by accident or ordinances of unassisted 
 fate. By human cruelty and iniquity it has been afflicted ;— 
 by human mercy and justice it must be raised : and, in all 
 fear or questioning of what is or is not, the real message of 
 creation, or of revelation, you may assuredly find perfect 
 peace, if you are resolved to do that which your Lord has 
 plainly required, — and content that He should indeed require 
 no more of you, — than to do Justice, to love Mercy, and tc 
 walk humbly with Him. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Note I. 
 
 *. Page 24. 
 
 * TJiat third pyramid of hsrs.' 
 
 Throughout the dialogues, it must be observed that 'Sibyl* is ad« 
 dressed (when in play) as having once been the Cumsean Sibyl ; and 
 ' Egypt ' as having been queen Nitocris, — the Cinderella, and ' the 
 greatest heroine and beauty ' of Egyptian story. The Egyptians called 
 her 4 Neith the Victorious ' (Nitocris), and the Greeks 4 Face of the 
 Rose ' (Rhodope). Chaucer's beautiful conception of Cleopatra in the 
 4 Legend of Good Women,' is much more founded on the traditions of 
 her than on those of Cleopatra ; and, especially in its close, modified by 
 Herodotus's terrible story of the death of Nitocris, which, however, is 
 mythologically nothing more than a part of the deep monotonous 
 ancient dirge for the fulfilment of the earthly destiny of Beauty ; ' She 
 cast herself into a chamber full of ashes.' 
 
 I believe this Queen is now sufficiently ascertained to have either 
 built, or increased to double its former size, the third pyramid of 
 Gizeh : and the passage following in the text refers to an imaginary 
 endeavour, by the Old Lecturer and the children together, to make out 
 the description of that pyramid in the 16?th page of the second volume 
 of Bunsen's ' Egypt's Place in Universal History' — ideal endeavour,— 
 which ideally terminates as the Old Lecturer's real endeavours to the 
 same end always have terminated. There are, however, valuable notes 
 respecting Nitocris at page 210 of the same volume : but the 1 Early 
 Egyptian History for the Young,' by the author of Sidney Gray, con- 
 tains, in a pleasant form, as much information as young readers will 
 usually need. 
 
 Note II. 
 
 Page 25. 
 
 ' Pyramid of Asychis.' 
 
 This pyramid, in mythology, divides with the Tower of Babel the 
 shame, or vain glory, of being presumptuously, and first among great 
 edifices, built with ( brick for stone.' This was the inscription on it 
 according to Herodotus :-— < 
 
144 
 
 XOTES. 
 
 1 Despise me not,, in comparing me with the pyramids of stone ; fot 
 I have the pre-eminence over them, as far as Jupiter has pre- 
 eminence over the gods. For, striking with staves into the pool, 
 men gathered the clay which fastened itself to the staff, and 
 kneaded bricks out of it, and so made me.' 
 
 The word I have translated ' kneaded 1 is literally 1 drew ; ' in the sense 
 of drawing, for which the Latins used ' duco ; ' and thus gave us our 
 1 ductile ' in speaking of dead clay, and Duke, Doge, or leader, in speak- 
 ing of living clay. As the asserted pre-eminence of the edifice is made, 
 in this inscription, to rest merely on the quantity of labour consumed 
 in it, this pyramid is considered, in the text, as the type, at once, of 
 the base building, and of the lost labour, of future ages, so far at least 
 as the spirits of measured and mechanical effort deal with it : but Neith, 
 exercising her power upon it, makes it a type of the work of wise and 
 inspired builders. 
 
 Note III. 
 
 Page 25. 
 
 J The Greater PtlmJi.' 
 
 It is impossible, as yet, to define with distinctness the personal agencies* 
 of the Egyptian deities. They aie continually associated in function, 
 or hold derivative powers, or are related to each other in mysterious 
 triads ; uniting always symbolism of physical phenomena with real 
 spiritual power. I have endeavoured partly to explain this in the text 
 of the tenth Lecture : here, it is only necessary for the reader to know 
 that the Greater Pthah more or less represents the formative power of 
 order and measurement : he always stands on a four-square pedestal, 
 
 * the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth ; ' 
 his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a pillar ; he 
 has a measuring-rod in his hand ; and at Philae, is represented as hold- 
 ing an egg on a potter's wheel • but I do not know if this symbol occurs 
 in older sculptures. His usual title is the ' Lord of Truth.* Others, 
 very beautiful : 4 King of the Two Worlds, of Gracious Countenance,' 
 
 • Superintendent of the Great Abode,' &c, are given by Mr. Birch in 
 Arundale's ' Gallery of Antiquities,' which I suppose is the book of best 
 authority easily accessible. For the full titles and utterances of the 
 gods, Rosellini is as yet the only— and I believe, still a very question- 
 able—authority ; and Arundale's little book, excellent in the text, has 
 this great defect, that its drawings give the statues invariably a ludi- 
 crous or ignoble character. Readers who have not access to the originals 
 must be warned against this frequent fault in modern illustration (espe- 
 cially existing also in some of the painted casts of Gothic and Normai> 
 
NOT Ed. 
 
 145 
 
 work at the Crystal Palace). Jt is not owing to any wilful want of 
 veracity : the plates in Arundale's book are laboriously faithful : but 
 the expressions of both face and body in a figure depend merely on 
 emphasis of touch ; and, in barbaric art, most draughtsmen emphasise 
 what they plainly see — the barbarism ; and miss conditions of noble- 
 ness, which they must approach the monument in a different temper 
 before they will discover, and draw with great subtlety before they can 
 express. 
 
 The character of the Lower Pthah, or perhaps I ought rather to say, 
 of Pthah in his lower office, is sufficiently explained in the text of the 
 third Lecture ; only the reader must be warned that the Egyptian 
 symbolism of him by the beetle was not a scornful one ; it expressed 
 only the idea of his presence in the first elements of life. But it may 
 not unjustly be used, in another sense, by us, who have seen his power 
 in new development ; and, even as it was, I cannot conceive that the 
 Egyptians should have regarded their beetle-headed image of him 
 (Champoliion, ' Pantheon, ' pi. 12), without some occult scorn. It is the 
 most painful of all their types of any beneficent power ; and even 
 among those of evil influences, none can be compared with it, except 
 its opposite, the tortoise-headed demon of indolence. 
 
 Pasht (p. 24, line 32) is connected with the Greek Artemis, especially 
 in her offices of judgment and vengeance. She is usually lioness- 
 headed ; sometimes cat-headed • her attributes seeming often trivial or 
 ludicrous unless their full meaning is known ; but the enquiry is much 
 too wide to be followed here. The cat was sacred to her ; or rather to 
 the sun, and secondarily to her. She is alluded to in the text because 
 she is always the companion of Pthah (called ' the beloved of Pthah, * 
 it may be as Judgment, demanded and longed for by Truth's ; and it 
 may be well for young readers to have this fixed in their minds, even 
 by chance association. There are more statues of Pasht in the British 
 Museum than of any other Egyptian deity ; several of them fine in 
 workmanship; nearly all in dark stone, which may be, presumably, to 
 connect her, as the moon, with the night ; and in her office of avenger, 
 with grief. 
 
 Thoth (p. 27, line 17), is the Recording Angel of Judgment ; and the 
 Greek Hermes Phre (line 20), is the Sun. 
 
 Neith is the Egyptian spirit of divine wisdom ; and the Athena of the 
 Greeks. No sufficient statement of her many attributes, still less of their 
 meanings, can be shortly given ; but this should be noted respecting 
 the veiling of the Egyptian image of her by vulture wings— that as she 
 is, physically, the goddess of the air, this bird, the most powerful creat- 
 ure of the air known to the Egyptians, naturally became her symbol. 
 It had other significations ; but certainly this, when in connection with 
 Keith. As representing her, it was the most important sign, next to the 
 winged sphere, in Egyptian sculpture ; and, just as in Homer, Athena 
 
146 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 herself guides her heroes into battle, this symbol of wisdom, giving vie 
 tory, floats over the heads of the Egyptian kings. The Greeks, repre* 
 renting the goddess herself in human form, yet would not lose the 
 power of the Egyptian symbol, and changed it into an angel of victory. 
 First seen in loveliness on the early coins of Syracuse and Leontium, it 
 gradually became the received sign of all conquest, and the so-called 
 4 Victory ' of later times ; which, little by little, loses its truth, and is 
 accepted by the moderns only as a personification of victory itself, — not 
 as an actual picture of the living Angel who led to victory. There is a 
 wide difference between these two conceptions, — all the difference be- 
 tween insincere poetry, and sincere religion. This I have also endeav- 
 oured farther to illustrate in the tenth Lecture ; there is however one 
 part ®f Athena's character which it would have been irrelevant to dweU 
 upon there ; yet which I must not wholly leave unnoticed. 
 
 As the goddess of the air. she physically represents both its beneficent 
 calm, and necessary tempest: other storm-deities (as Chrysaor and 
 ^Eolus) being invested with a subordinate and more or less malignant 
 function, which is exclusively their own, and is related to that of 
 Athena as the power of Mars is related to hers in war. So also Virgil 
 makes her able to wield the lightning herself, while Juno cannot, but 
 must pray for the intervention of iEolus. She has precisely the corre- 
 spondent moral authority over calmness of mind, and just anger. She 
 soothes Achilles, as she incites Tydides ; her physical power over the 
 air being always hinted correlatively. She grasps Achilles by his hair — 
 as the wind would lift it— softly, 
 
 1 It fanned his check, it raised his hair, 
 Like a meadow gale in spring. 1 
 
 She does not merely turn the lance of Mars from Diomed ; but seizes it 
 in both her hands, and casts it aside, with a sense of making it vain, 
 like chaff in the wind; — to the shout of Achilles, she adds her own 
 voice of storm in heaven — but in all cases the moral power is still the 
 principal one — most beautifully in that seizing of Achilles by the hair, 
 which was the talisman of his life (because he had vowed it to the 
 Sperchius if he returned in safety), and which, in giving at Patroclus' 
 tomb, he, knowingly, yields up the hope of return to his country, and 
 signifies that he will die with his friend. Achilles and Tydides are, 
 above all other heroes, aided by her in war, because their prevailing 
 characters are the desire of justice, united in both with deep affections ; 
 and, in Achilles, with a passionate tenderness, which is the real root of 
 his passionate anger. Ulysses is her favourite chiefly in her office as 
 the goddess of conduct and design. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 147 
 
 Note IV. 
 
 Page 54. 
 ' Geometrical limitations. 1 
 
 Et is difficult, without a tedious accuracy, or without full illustration, to 
 express the complete relations of crystalline structure, which dispose 
 minerals to take, at different times, fibrous, massive, or foliated forms ; 
 and I am afraid this chapter will be generally skipped by the reader : 
 yet the arrangement itself will be found useful, if kept broadly in 
 mind ; and the transitions of state are of the highest interest, if the sub- 
 ject is entered upon with any earnestness. It would have been vain to 
 add to the scheme of this little volume any account of the geometrical 
 forms of crystals : an available one, though still far too difficult and too 
 copious, has been arranged by the Rev. Mr. Mitchell, for Orr's ' Circle 
 of the Sciences'; and, I believe, the 'nets' of crystals, which are 
 therein given to be <3ut out with scissors and put prettily together, will 
 be found more conquerable by young ladies than by other studenU. 
 They should also, when an opportunity occurs, he shown, at any public 
 library, the diagram of the crystallisation of quartz referred to poles, at 
 p. 8 of Cloizaux's ' Manuel de Mineralogie ' : that they may know what 
 work is ; and what the subject is. 
 
 With a view to more careful examination of the nascent states of 
 silica, I have made no allusion in this volume to the influence of mere 
 segregation, as connected with the crystalline power. It has only been 
 recently, during the study of the breccias alluded to in page 113, that I 
 have fully seen the extent to which this singular force often modifies 
 rocks in which at first its influence might hardly have been suspected ; 
 many apparent conglomerates being in reality formed chiefly by segre- 
 gation, combined with mysterious brokenly zoned structures, like those 
 of some malachites. I hope some day to know more of these and sev- 
 eral other mineral phenomena (especially of those connected with the 
 relative sizes of crystals), which otherwise I should have endeavoured 
 fco describe in this volume. 
 
 Note V. 
 
 Page 102. 
 * St. Barbara. 9 
 
 1 would have given the legends of St. Barbara, and St. Thomas, if 1 
 had thought it always well for young readers to have everything at once 
 told them which they may wish to know. They will remember the 
 stories better after taking some trouble to find them ; and the text is in 
 
148 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 telligible enough as it stands. The idea of St. Barbara, as there given 
 5s founded partly on her legend in Peter de Natalibus, partly on the 
 beautiful photograph of Van Eyck's picture of her at Antwerp : which 
 was sonic time since published at Lille. 
 
 Note VI. 
 
 Page 137. 
 
 ' King of the Valley of Diamonds.* 
 
 Isabel interrupted the Lecturer here, and was briefly bid to hold hei 
 tongue ; which gave rise to some talk, apart, afterwards, between L. 
 and Sibyl, of which a word or two may be perhaps advisably set down. 
 
 Sibyl. We shall spoil Isabel, certainly, if we don't mind: I was glad 
 you stopped her, and yet sorry ; for she wanted so much to ask about 
 the Valley of Diamonds again, and she has worked so hard at it, and 
 made it nearly all out by herself. She recollected Elisha's throwing in 
 the meal, which nobody else did. 
 
 L. But what did she want to ask ? 
 
 Sibyl. About the mulberry trees and the serpents ; we are all stopped 
 by that. Won't you tell us what it means ? 
 
 L. Now, Sibyl, I am sure you, who never explained yourself, should 
 be the last to expect others to do so. I hate explaining myself. 
 
 Sibyl. And yet how often you complain of other people for not say- 
 ing what they meant. How I have heard you growl over the three 
 stone steps to purgatory ; for instance ! 
 
 L. Yes; because Dante's meaning is worth getting at ; but mine mat- 
 ters nothing : at least, if ever I think it is of any consequence, I speak 
 it as clearly as may be. But you may make anything you like of the 
 serpent forests. I could have helped you to find out what they were, 
 by giving a little more detail, but it would have been tiresome. 
 
 Sibyl. It if much more tiresome not to find out. Tell us, please, as 
 Isabel says, because we feel so stupid. 
 
 L. There is no stupidity ; you could not possibly do more than guess 
 at anything so vague. But I think, you, Sibyl, at least, might have 
 recollected what first dyed the mulberry ? 
 
 Sibyl. So I did ; but that helped little ; I thought of Dante's forest 
 of suicides, too, but you would not simply have borrowed that ? 
 
 L. No. If I had had strength to use it, I should have stolen it, to 
 beat into another shape ; not borrowed it. But that idea of souls in 
 trees is as old as the world ; or at least, as the world of man. And I did 
 mean that there were souls in those dark branches ; the souls of all 
 those who had perished in misery through the pursuit of riches ; and 
 that the river was of their blood, gathering gradually, and flowing out 
 
NOTES. 
 
 149 
 
 of the valley. That I meant the serpents for the souls of those who had 
 lived carelessly and wantonly in their riches ; and who have all their 
 sins forgiven by the world, because they are rich: and therefore they 
 have seven crimson crested heads, for the seven mortal sins ; of which 
 they are proud : and these, and the memory and report of them, are the 
 chief causes of temptation to others, as showing the pleasantness and ab- 
 solving power of riches ; so. that thus they are singing serpents. And 
 the worms are the souls of the common money-getters and traffickers, 
 who do nothing but eat and spin : and who gain habitually by the dis- 
 tress or foolishness of others (as you see the butchers have been gaining 
 out of the panic at the cattle plague, among the poor), — so they are made 
 to eat the dark leaves, and spin, and perish. 
 
 Sibyl. And the souls of the great, cruel, rich people who oppress the 
 poor, and lend money to government to make unjust war, where are 
 they ? 
 
 L. They change into the ice, I believe, and are knit with the gold ; 
 and make the grave-dust of the valley. I believe so, at least, for no one 
 ever sees those souls anywhere. 
 
 (Sibyl censes questioning.) 
 
 Isabel (who has crept up to her side without any one's seeing). Oh, 
 Sibyl, please ask him about the fire-Hies ! 
 
 L. What, you there, mousie ! No ; I won't tell either Sibyl or you 
 about the fire-flies ; nor a word more about anything else. You ought 
 to be little fire-Hies yourselves, and find your way in twilight by your 
 own wits 
 
 Isabel. But you said they burned, you know ? 
 
 L. Yes ; and you may be fire-flies that way too, some of you, before 
 long, though I did not mean that. Away with you, children. You 
 have thought enough for to day. 
 
 NOTE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Sentence out of letter from May (who is staying with Isabel just now 
 at Cassel), dated 15th June, 1877 : — 
 
 "J am reading the Ethics with a nice Irish girl who is staying here, 
 and she's just as puzzled as I've always been about the fire-flies, and we 
 both want to know so much. — Please be a very nice old Lecturer, and 
 tell us, won't you ? " 
 
 Well, May, you never were a vain girl ; so could scarcely guess that I 
 meant them for the light, unpursued vanities, which yet blind us, con- 
 fused among the stars. One evening, as I came late into Siena, the 
 fire-flies were flying high on a stormy sirocco wind, — the stars themselves 
 no brighter, and all their host seeming, at moments, to fade as the in' 
 S3cts faded. 
 
FICTION FAIR AND FOUL 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 On the first mild — or, at least, the first bright — day of 
 March, in this year, I walked through what was once a 
 country lane, between the hostelry of the Half -moon at the 
 bottom of Herne Hill, and the secluded College of Dulwich. 
 
 In my young days, Croxsted Lane was a green bye-road 
 traversable for some distance by carts ; but rarely so trav- 
 ersed, and, for the most part, little else than a narrow strip 
 of untilled field, separated by blackberry hedges from the 
 better cared- for meadows on each side of it : growing more 
 weeds, therefore, than they, and perhaps in spring a primrose 
 or two — white archangel — daisies plenty, and purple thistles 
 in autumn. A slender rivulet, boasting little of its bright- 
 ness, for there are no springs at Dulwich, yet fed purely 
 enough by the rain and morning dew, here trickled — there 
 loitered — through the long grass beneath the hedges, and 
 expanded itself, where it might, into moderately clear and 
 deep pools, in which, under their veils of duck-weed, a fresh- 
 water shell or two, sundry curious little skipping shrimps, 
 any quantity of tadpoles in their time, and even sometimes a 
 tittlebat, offered themselves to my boyhood's pleased, and not 
 inaccurate, observation. There, my mother and I used to 
 gather the first buds of the hawthorn ; and there, in after 
 years, I used to walk in the summer shadows, as in a place 
 wilder and sweeter than our garden, to think over any 
 passage I wanted to make better than usual in Modern 
 Painters. 
 
 So, as aforesaid, on the first kindly day of this year, being 
 thoughtful more than usual of those old times, I went to look 
 again at the place. 
 
154 
 
 FICTION- FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 Often, both in those clays, and since, I have put myself 
 hard to it, vainly, to find words wherewith to tell of beautiful 
 tilings ; but beauty has been in the world since the world 
 was made, and human language can make a shift, somehow, 
 to give account of it, whereas the peculiar forces of devasta- 
 tion induced by modern city life have only entered the world 
 lately ; and no existing terms of language known to me are 
 enough to describe the forms of filth, and modes of ruin, that 
 varied themselves along the course of Croxsted Lane. The 
 fields on each side of it are now mostly dug up for building, 
 or cut through into gaunt corners and nooks of blind ground 
 by the wild crossings and concurrencies of three railroads. 
 Half a dozen handfuls of new cottages, with Doric doors, 
 are dropped about here and there among the gashed ground : 
 the lane itself, now entirely grassless, is a deep-rutted, heavy- 
 hillocked cart-road, diverging gatelessly into various brick- 
 fields or pieces of waste ; and bordered on each side by heaps 
 of — Hades only knows what ! — mixed dust of every unclean 
 thing that can crumble in drought, and mildew of every unclean 
 thing that can rot or rust in damp : ashes and rags, beer-bottles 
 and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery, shreds of 
 nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen gar- 
 bage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged with 
 out-torn nails, cigar-ends, pipe-bowls, cinders, bones, and ord- 
 ure, indescribable ; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or 
 fluttering foully here and there over all these, — remnants 
 broadcast, of every manner of newspaper, advertisement or 
 big-lettered bill, festering and flaunting out their last pub- 
 licity in the pits of stinking dust and mortal slime. 
 
 The lane ends now where its prettiest windings once began ; 
 being cut off by a cross-road leading out of Dulwich to a minor 
 railway station : and on the other side of this road, what was 
 of old the daintiest intricacy of its solitude is changed into a 
 straight, and evenly macadamised carriage drive, between new 
 houses of extreme respectability, with good attached gardens 
 and offices — most of these tenements being larger — all more 
 pretentious, and many, I imagine, held at greatly higher rent 
 than my father's, tenanted for twenty years at Heme HilL 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 155 
 
 And it became matter of curious meditation to me what must 
 here become of children resembling my poor little dreamy 
 quondam self in temper, and thus brought up at the same dis- 
 tance from London, and in the same or better circumstances of 
 worldly fortune ; but with only Croxsted Lane in its present 
 condition for their country walk. The trimly kept road be- 
 fore their doors, such as one used to see in the fashionable 
 suburbs of Cheltenham or Leamington, presents nothing to 
 their study but gravel, and gas-lamp posts ; the modern ad- 
 dition of a vermilion letter-pillar contributing indeed to the 
 splendour, but scarcely to the interest of the scene ; and a 
 child of any sense or fancy would hastily contrive escape from 
 such a barren desert of politeness, and betake itself to investi- 
 gation, such as might be feasible, of the natural history of 
 Croxsted Lane. 
 
 But, for its sense or fancy, what food, or stimulus, can it 
 find, in that foul causeway of its youthful pilgrimage ? What 
 would have happened to myself, so directed, I cannot clearly 
 imagine. Possibly, I might have got interested in the old 
 iron and wood-shavings ; and become an engineer or a car- 
 penter : but for the children of to-day, accustomed from the 
 instant they are out of their cradles, to the sight of this in- 
 finite nastiness, prevailing as a fixed condition of the universe, 
 over the face of nature, and accompanying all the operations 
 of industrious man, what is to be the scholastic issue? unless, 
 indeed, the thrill of scientific vanity in the primary analysis 
 of some unheard-of process of corruption — or the reward of 
 microscopic research in the sight of worms with more legs, 
 and acari of more curious generation than ever vivified the 
 more simply smelling plasma of antiquity. 
 
 One result of such elementary education is, however, al- 
 ready certain ; namely, that the pleasure which we may con- 
 ceive taken by the children of the coming time, in the analysis 
 of physical corruption, guides, into fields more dangerous and 
 desolate, the expatiation of imaginative literature : and that 
 the reactions of moral disease upon itself, and the conditions 
 of languidly monstrous character developed in an atmosphere 
 of low vitality, have become the most valued material of mod- 
 
156 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 ern fiction, and the most eagerly discussed texts of modern 
 philosophy. 
 
 The many concurrent reasons for this mischief may, I 
 believe, be massed under a few general heads. 
 
 I. There is first the hot fermentation and unwholesome 
 secrecy of the population crowded into large cities, each mote 
 in the misery lighter, as an individual soul, than a dead leaf, 
 but becoming oppressive and infectious each to his neighbour, 
 in the smoking mass of decay. The resulting modes of men- 
 tal ruin and distress are continually new ; and in a certain 
 sense, worth study in their monstrosity : they have accordingly 
 developed a corresponding science of fiction, concerned mainly 
 with the description of such forms of disease, like the botany 
 of leaf-lichens. 
 
 In De Balzac's story of Father Goriot, a grocer makes a 
 large fortune, of which he spends on himself as much as may 
 keep him alive ; and on his two daughters, all that can pro- 
 mote their pleasures or their pride. He marries them to men 
 of rank, supplies their secret expenses, and provides for his 
 favourite a separate and clandestine establishment with her 
 lover. On his deathbed, he sends for this favourite daughter, 
 who wishes to come, and hesitates for a quarter of an hour 
 between doing so, and going to a ball at which it has been for 
 the last month her chief ambition to be seen. She finally 
 goes to the ball. 
 
 This story is, of course, one of which the violent contrasts 
 and spectral catastrophe could only take place, or be con- 
 ceived, in a large city. A village grocer cannot make a large 
 fortune, cannot marry his daughters to titled squires, and 
 cannot die without having his children brought to him, if in 
 the neighbourhood, by fear of village gossip, if for no better 
 cause. 
 
 II. But a much more profound feeling than this mere 
 curiosity of science in morbid phenomena is concerned in the 
 production of the carefullest forms of modern fiction. The 
 disgrace and grief resulting from the mere trampling pressure 
 and electric friction of town life, become to the sufferers 
 peculiarly mysterious in their undeservedness, and frightful 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 157 
 
 in their inevitableness. The power of all surroundings over 
 them for evil ; the incapacity of their own minds to refuse the 
 pollution, and of their own wills to oppose the weight, of the 
 staggering mass that chokes and crushes them into perdition, 
 brings every law of healthy existence into question with them, 
 and every alleged method of help and hope into doubt. In- 
 dignation, without any calming faith in justice, and self-con- 
 tempt, without any curative self-reproach, dull the intelli- 
 gence, and degrade the conscience, into sullen incredulity of 
 all sunshine outside the dunghill, or breeze beyond the waft- 
 ing of its impurity ; and at last a philosophy develops itself, 
 partly satiric, partly consolatory, concerned only with the 
 regenerative vigour of manure, and the necessary obscurities 
 of fimetic Providence ; showing how everybody's fault is 
 somebody else's, how infection has no law, digestion no will, 
 and profitable dirt no dishonour. 
 
 And thus an elaborate and ingenious scholasticism, in what 
 may be called the Divinity of Decomposition, has established 
 itself in connection with the more recent forms of romance, 
 giving them at once a complacent tone of clerical dignity, and 
 an agreeable dash of heretical impudence ; while the incul- 
 cated doctrine has the double advantage of needing no labori- 
 ous scholarship for its foundation, and no painful self-denial 
 for its practice. 
 
 III. The monotony of life in the central streets of any great 
 modern city, but especially in those of London, where every 
 emotion intended to be derived by men from the sight of 
 nature, or the sense of art, is forbidden for ever, leaves the 
 craving of the heart for a sincere, yet changeful, interest, to be 
 fed from one source only. Under natural conditions the 
 degree of mental excitement necessary to bodily health is pro- 
 vided by the course of the seasons, and the various skill and 
 fortune of agriculture. In the country every morning of the 
 year brings with it a new aspect of springing or fading 
 nature ; a new duty to be fulfilled upon earth, and a new 
 promise or warning in heaven. No day is without its inno- 
 cent hope, its special prudence, its kindly gift, and its sublime 
 danger ; and in every process of wise husbandry, and every 
 
158 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 effort of contending or remedial courage, the wholesome pa& 
 sions, pride, and bodily power of the labourer are excited and 
 exerted in happiest unison. The companionship of domestic, 
 the care of serviceable, animals, soften and enlarge his life 
 with lowly charities, and discipline him in familiar wisdoms 
 and unboastful fortitudes ; while the divine laws of seed-time 
 which cannot be recalled, harvest which cannot be hastened, 
 and winter in which no man can work, compel the impatiences 
 and coveting of his heart into labour too submissive to be 
 anxious, and rest too sweet to be wanton. "What thought can 
 enough comprehend the contrast between such life, and that 
 in streets where summer and winter are only alternations of 
 heat and cold ; where snow never fell white, nor sunshine 
 clear ; where the ground is only a pavement, and the sky no 
 more than the glass roof of an arcade ; where the utmost 
 power of a storm is to choke the gutters, and the finest magic 
 of spring, to change mud into dust : where — chief and most 
 fatal difference in state, there is no interest of occupation for 
 any of the inhabitants but the routine of counter or desk 
 within doors, and the effort to pass each other without col- 
 lision outside ; so that from morning to evening the only pos- 
 sible variation of the monotony of the hours, and lightening 
 of the penalty of existence, must be some kind of mischief, 
 limited, unless by more than ordinary godsend of fatality, to 
 the fall of a horse, or the slitting of a pocket. 
 
 I said that under these laws of inanition, the craving of the 
 human heart for some kind of excitement could be supplied 
 from one source only. It might have been thought by any 
 other than a sternly tentative philosopher, that the denial of 
 their natural food to human feelings would have provoked a 
 reactionary desire for it : and that the dreariness of the street 
 would have been gilded by dreams of pastoral felicity. Ex- 
 perience has shown the fact to be otherwise ; the thoroughly 
 trained Londoner can enjoy no other excitement than that to 
 which he has been accustomed, but asks for that in continually 
 more ardent or more virulent concentration ; and the ulti- 
 mate power of fiction to entertain him is by varying to his 
 fancy the modes, and defining for his dulness the horrors, of 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 169 
 
 Death. In the single novel of Bleak House there are nine 
 deaths (or left for death's, in the drop scene) carefully wrought 
 out or led up to, either by way of pleasing surprise, as the 
 baby's at the brickmaker's, or finished in their threatenings 
 and sufferings, with as much enjoyment as can be contrived 
 in the anticipation, and as much pathology as can be concen- 
 trated in the description. Under the following varieties of 
 method : — 
 
 One by assassination . . Mr. Tulkinghorn. 
 
 One by starvation, with phthisis Joe. 
 
 One by chagrin . . . Richard. 
 
 One by spontaneous combustion Mr. Krook. 
 
 One by sorrow . . . Lady Dedlock's lover. 
 
 One by remorse . . . Lady Dedlock. 
 
 One by insanity . . . Miss Flite. 
 
 One by paralysis . . .Sir Leicester. 
 
 Besides the baby, by fever, and a lively young Frenchwoman 
 left to be hanged. 
 
 And all this, observe, not in a tragic, adventurous, or mili- 
 tary story, but merely as the further enlivenment of a narrative 
 intended to be amusing ; and as a properly representative 
 average of the statistics of civilian mortality in the centre of 
 London. 
 
 Observe further, and chiefly. It is not the mere number of 
 deaths (which, if we count the odd troopers in the last scene, 
 is exceeded in Old Mortality, and reached, within one or two, 
 both in Waverley and Guy Mannering) that marks the peculiar 
 tone of the modern novel. It is the fact that all these deaths, 
 but one, are of inoffensive, or at least in the world's estimate 
 respectable persons ; and that they are all grotesquely either 
 violent or miserable, purporting thus to illustrate the modern 
 theology that the appointed destiny of a large average of our 
 population is to die like rats in a drain, either by trap or 
 poison. Not, indeed, that a lawyer in full practice can be 
 usually supposed as faultless in the eye of heaven as a dove 
 or a woodcock ; but it is not, in former divinities, thought the 
 
160 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL, 
 
 will of Providence that he should be dropped by a shot from 
 a client behind his fire-screen, and retrieved in the morning 
 by his housemaid under the chandelier. Neither is Lady 
 Dedlock less reprehensible in her conduct than many women 
 of fashion have been and will be : but it would not therefore 
 have been thought poetically just, in old-fashioned morality, 
 that she should be found by her daughter lying dead, with 
 her face in the mud of a St. Giles's churchyard. 
 
 In the work of the great masters death is always either 
 heroic, deserved, or quiet and natural (unless their purpose be 
 totally and deeply tragic, when collateral meaner death is per- 
 mitted, like that of Polonius or Eoderigo). In Old Mortality, 
 four of the deaths, Bothwell's, Ensign Grahame's, Macbriar's, 
 and Evandale's, are magnificently heroic ; Burley's and Oli- 
 phant's long deserved, and swift ; the troopers', met in the 
 discharge of their military duty, and the old miser's, as gentle 
 as the passing of a cloud, and almost beautiful in its last words 
 of — now unselfish — care. 
 
 ' Ailie ' (he aye ca'd me Ailie, we were auld acquaintance,) 'Ailie, 
 take ye care and baud tlie gear weel thegither ; for the name of Morton 
 of Miln wood's gane out like the last sough of an auld sang. ' And sae 
 he fell out o' ae dwam into another, and ne'er spak a word mair, unless 
 it were something we cou'dna mak out, about a dipped candle being 
 gude eneugh to see to dee wi\ He cou'd ne'er bide to see a moulded 
 ane, and there was ane, by ill luck, on the table. 
 
 In Guy Mannering, the murder, though unpremeditated, of 
 a single person, (himself not entirely innocent, but at least by 
 heartlessness in a cruel function earning his fate,) is avenged 
 to the uttermost on all the men conscious of the crime ; Mr. 
 Bertram's death, like that of his wife, brief in pain, and each 
 told in the space of half-a-dozen lines ; and that of the 
 heroine of the tale, self-devoted, heroic in the highest, and 
 happy. 
 
 Nor is it ever to be forgotten, in the comparison of Scott's 
 with inferior work, that his own splendid powers were, even 
 *n early life, tainted, and in his latter years destroyed, by 
 modern conditions of commercial excitement, then first, but 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 161 
 
 rapidly, developing themselves. There are parts even in his 
 best novels coloured to meet tastes which he despised ; and 
 ~uany pages written in his later ones to lengthen his article 
 xor the indiscriminate market. 
 
 But there was one weakness of which his healthy mind re- 
 mained incapable to the last. In modern stories prepared for 
 more refined or fastidious audiences than those of Dickens, 
 the funereal excitement is obtained, for the most part, not by 
 the infliction of violent or disgusting death ; but in the sus- 
 pense, the pathos, and the more or less by all felt, and recog- 
 nised, mortal phenomena of the sick-room. The temptation, 
 to weak writers, of this order of subject is especially great, 
 because the study of it from the living — or dying — model is 
 so easy, and to many has been the most impressive part of 
 their own personal experience ; while, if the description be 
 given even with mediocre accuracy, a very large section of 
 readers will admire its truth, and cherish its melancholy. 
 Few authors of second or third rate genius can either record 
 or invent a probable conversation in ordinary life ; but few, 
 on the other hand, are so destitute of observant faculty as to 
 be unable to chronicle the broken syllables and languid move- 
 ments of an invalid. The easily rendered, and too surely 
 recognised, image of familiar suffering is felt at once to be 
 real where all else had been false ; and the historian of the gest- 
 ures of fever and words of delirium can count on the applause 
 of a gratified audience as surely as the dramatist who intro- 
 duces on the stage of his flagging action a carriage that can 
 be driven or a fountain that will flow. But the masters of 
 strong imagination disdain such work, and those of deep sen- 
 sibility shrink from it. 1 Only under conditions of personal 
 weakness, presently to be noted, would Scott comply with the 
 cravings of his lower audience in scenes of terror like the 
 death of Front-de-Bceuf. But he never once withdrew the 
 
 1 Nell, in the Old Curiosity Shop, was simply killed for the market, as 
 a butcher kills a lamb (see Forster's Life), and Paul was written under 
 the same conditions of illness which affected Scott — a part of the omi- 
 nous palsies, grasping alike author and subject, both in Dombey and 
 kittle Dorrit. 
 
162 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 sacred curtain of the sick-chamber, nor permitted the disgrace 
 of wanton tears round the humiliation of strength, or the 
 wreck of beauty. 
 
 IV. No exception to this law of reverence will be found in 
 the scenes in Cceur de Lion's illness introductory to the prin- 
 cipal incident in the Talisman. An inferior writer would 
 have made the king charge in imagination at the head of his 
 chivalry, or wander in dreams by the brooks of Aquitaine ; but 
 Scott allows us to learn no more startling symptoms of the 
 king's malady than that he was restless and impatient, and 
 could not wear his armour. Nor is any bodily weakness, or 
 crisis of danger, permitted to disturb for an instant the royalty 
 of intelligence and heart in which he examines, trusts and 
 obeys the physician whom his attendants fear. 
 
 Yet the choice of the main subject in this story and its 
 companion — the trial, to a point of utter torture, of knightly 
 faith, and several passages in the conduct of both, more es- 
 pecially the exaggerated scenes in the House of Baldringham, 
 and hermitage of Engedi, are signs of the gradual decline in 
 force of intellect and soul which those who love Scott best 
 have done him the worst injustice in their endeavours to dis- 
 guise or deny. The mean anxieties, moral humiliations, and 
 mercilessly demanded brain-toil, w r hich killed him, show their 
 sepulchral grasp for many and many a year before their final 
 victory ; and the states of more or less dulled, distorted, and 
 polluted imagination which culminate in Castle Dangerous, 
 cast a Stygian hue over St. Bonan's Well, The Fair Maid of 
 Perth, and Anne of Geierstein, which lowers them, the first 
 altogether, the other two at frequent intervals, into fellowship 
 with the normal disease which festers throughout the whole 
 body of our lower fictitious literature. 
 
 Fictitious ! I use the ambiguous word deliberately ; for it 
 is impossible to distinguish in these tales of the prison-house 
 how far their vice and gloom are thrown into their manufact- 
 ure only to meet a vile demand, and how far they are an in- 
 tegral condition of thought in the minds of men trained 
 from their youth up in the knowledge of Londinian and Pari 
 sian misery. The speciality of the plague is a delight in the 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 163 
 
 exposition of the relations between guilt and decrepitude ; 
 and I call the results of it literature ' of the prison-house,' be- 
 cause the thwarted habits of body and mind, which are the 
 jnmishment of reckless crowding in cities, become, in the 
 issue of that punishment, frightful subjects of exclusive inter- 
 est to themselves ; and the art of fiction in which they finally 
 delight is only the more studied arrangement and illustration, 
 by coloured firelights, of the daily bulletins of their own 
 wretchedness, in the prison calendar, the police news, and 
 the hospital report. 
 
 The reader will perhaps be surprised at my separating the 
 greatest work of Dickens, Oliver Twist, with honour, from 
 the loathsome mass to which it typically belongs. That book 
 is an earnest and uncaricatured record of states of criminal 
 life, written with didactic purpose, full of the gravest instruc- 
 tion, nor destitute of pathetic studies of noble passion. Even 
 the Mysteries of Paris and Gaboriau's Crime d'Augival are 
 raised, by their definiteness of historical intention and fore- 
 warning anxiety, far above the level of their order, and may 
 be accepted as photographic evidence of an otherwise incredi- 
 ble civilisation, corrupted in the infernal fact of it, down to 
 the genesis of such figures as the Vicomte d'Augival, the 
 Stabber, 1 the Skeleton, and the She-wolf. But the effectual 
 head of the whole cretinous school is the renowned novel in 
 which the hunchbacked lover watches the execution of his 
 
 1 Chourineur ' not striking with dagger-point, but ripping with knife- 
 edge. Yet I do him, and La Louve, injustice in classing them with the 
 two others ; they are put together only as parts in the same phantasm. 
 Compare with La Louve, the strength of wild virtue in the ' Louve- 
 cienne ' (Lucienne) of Gaboriau— she, province-born and bred ; and op- 
 posed to Parisian civilisation in the character of her sempstress friend. 
 1 De ce Paris, oil elle etait nee, elle savait tout— elle connaissait tout. 
 Eien ne l'etonnait, nul ne rintimidait. Sa science des details materiels 
 de l'existence etait inconcevable. Impossible de la duper ! — Eh bien ! 
 cette fille si laborieuse et si econome n'avait meme pas la plus vague 
 notion des sentiments qui sont l'honneur de la femme. Je n'avais pas 
 idee d'une si complete absence de sens moral ; d une si inconsciente 
 depravation, d'une impudence si eftrontement naive. ' — IJ Argent des 
 autre*, vol. i. p. 358. 
 
164 
 
 FICTION-FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 mistress from the tower of Notre-Dame ; and its strength 
 passes gradually away into the anatomical preparations, for 
 the general market, of novels like Poor Miss Finch, in which 
 the heroine is blind, the hero epileptic, and the obnoxious 
 brother is found dead with his hands dropped off, in the Arc- 
 tic regions. 1 
 
 1 The reader who cares to seek it may easily find medical evidence of 
 the physical effects of certain states of brain disease in producing es- 
 pecially images of truncated and Hermes-like deformity, complicated 
 with grossness. Horace, in the JSpodes, scoffs at it, but not without hor- 
 ror. Luca Signorelli and Raphael in their arabesques are deej>ly struck 
 by it : Durer, defying and playing with it alternately, is almost beaten 
 down again and again in the distorted faces, hewing halberts, and sus- 
 pended satyrs of his arabesques round the polyglot Lord's Prayer ; it 
 takes entire possession of Balzac in the Conies Drolatiques ; it struck 
 Scott in the earliest days of his childish ' visions' intensified by the axe- 
 stroke murder of his grand aunt ; L. i. 142, and see close of this note. 
 It chose for him the subject of the Heart of Midlothian, and produced 
 afterwards all the recurrent ideas of executions, tainting Nigel, almost 
 spoiling Quentin Durwarcl — utterly the Fair Maid of Perth : and cul- 
 minating in Pizarro, L. x. 149. It suggested all the deaths by falling, 
 or sinking, as in delirious sleep — Kennedy, Eveline Neville (nearly 
 repeated in Clara Mowbray), Amy Robsart, the Master of Ravens wood 
 in the quicksand, Morris, and Corporal Grace-be-here — compare the 
 dream of Gride, in Nicholas Nickleby, and Dickens's own last words, on 
 the ground, (so also, in my own inflammation of the brain, two years 
 ago, I dreamed that I fell through the earth and came out on the other 
 side). In its grotesque and distorting power, it produced all the figures 
 of the Lay Goblin, Pacolet, Flibbertigibbet, Cockledemoy, Geoffrey 
 Hudson, Fenella, and Nectabanus ; in Dickens it in like manner gives 
 Quilp, Krook, Smike, Smallweed, Miss Mowcher, and the dwarfs and 
 Wax- work of Nell's caravan ; and runs entirely wild in Barnaby Budge, 
 where, with a corps de drame composed of one idiot, two madmen, a 
 gentleman fool who is also a villain, a shop-boy fool who is also a black- 
 guard, a hangman, a shrivelled virago, and a doll in ribands — carrying 
 this company through riot and fire, till he hangs the hangman, one of 
 the madmen, his mother, and the idiot, runs the gentleman-fool through 
 in a bloody duel, and burns and crushes the shop-boy fool into shape- 
 lessness, he cannot yet be content without shooting the spare lover's leg 
 off, and marrying him to the doll in a wooden one ; the shapeless shop* 
 boy being finally also married in hoo wooden ones. It is this mutilation, 
 observe, which is the very sign manual of the plague ; joined, in the 
 artistic forms of it, with a love of thorniness — (in their mystic root, the 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 165 
 
 This literature of the Prison-house, understanding by the 
 word not only the cell of Newgate, but also and even more defi- 
 nitely the cell of the Hotel-Dieu, the Hopital des Fous, and 
 the grated corridor with the dripping slabs of the Morgue, 
 
 truncation of the limbless serpent and the spines of the dragon's wing. 
 Compare Modern Painters, vol. iv. , 'Chapter on the Mountain Gloom,' 
 s. 19) ; and in all forms of it, with petrifaction or loss of power by cold 
 in the blood, whence the last Darwinian process of the witches' charm 
 — 1 cool it with a baboon's blood, then the charm is firm and good.' The 
 two frescoes in the colossal handbills which have lately decorated the 
 streets of London (the baboon with the mirror, and the Maskelyne and 
 Cooke decapitation) are the final English forms of Raphael's arabesque 
 under this influence; and it is well worth while to get the number for 
 the week ending April 8, 1880, of Young Folks — 1 A magazine of in- 
 structive and entertaining literature for boys and girls of all ages,' con- 
 taining ' A Sequel to Desdichado ' (the modern development of Ivanhoe), 
 in which a quite monumental example of the kind of art in question 
 will be found as a leading illustration of this characteristic sentence, 
 11 See, good Cerberus,' ' said Sir Rupert, "my hand has been struck off. 
 You must make me a hand of iron, one icith springs in it, so that I can 
 make it grasp a dagger" The text is also, as it professes to be, instruc- 
 tive ; being the ultimate degeneration of what I have above called the 
 4 folly ' of Ivanhoe ; for folly begets folly down, and down ; and what- 
 ever Scott and Turner did wrong has thousands of imitators — their 
 wisdom none will so much as hear, how much less follow ! 
 
 In both of the Masters, it is always to be remembered that the evil 
 and good are alike conditions of literal vision : and therefore also, in- 
 separably connected with the state of the health. I believe the first 
 elements of all Scott's errors were in the milk of his consumptive nurse, 
 which all but killed him as an infant, L. i. 19 — and was without doubt 
 the cause of the teething fever that ended in his lameness (L. i. 20). 
 Then came (if the reader cares to know what I mean by Fors, let him 
 read the page carefully) the fearful accidents to his only sister, and her 
 death, L. i. 17; then the madness of his nurse, who planned his own 
 murder (21), then the stories continually told him of the executions at 
 Carlisle (24), his aunt's husband having seen them ; issuing, he himself 
 scarcely knows how, in the unacountable terror that came upon him at 
 the sight of statuary, 31 — especially Jacob's ladder ; then the murder of 
 Mrs. Swinton. and finally the nearly fatal bursting of the bloodvessel at 
 Kelso, with the succeeding nervous illness, 65-07 — solaced, while he 
 was being 4 bled and blistered till he had scarcely a pulse left,' by that 
 history of the Knights of Malta— fondly dwelt on and realised by actual 
 modelling of their fortress, which returned to his mind for the theme 
 of its last effort in passing away. 
 
106 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 having its central root thus in the He de Paris — or historically 
 and pre-eminently the ' Cite de Paris ' — is, when understood 
 deeply, the precise counter-corruption of the religion of the 
 Sainte Chapelle, just as the worst forms of bodily and mental 
 ruin are the corruption of love. I have therefore called it 
 'Fiction mecroyante/ with literal accuracy, and precision; 
 according to the explanation of the word which the reader 
 may find in any good French dictionary, 1 and round its Arctic 
 pole in the Morgue, he may gather into one Caina of gelid 
 putrescence the entire product of modern infidel imagination, 
 amusing itself with destruction of the body, and busying 
 itself with aberration of the mind. 
 
 Aberration, palsy, or plague, observe, as distinguished from 
 normal evil, just as the venom of rabies or cholera differs 
 from that of a wasp or a viper. The life of the insect and 
 serpent deserves, or at least permits, our thoughts ; not so 
 the stages of agony in the fury-driven hound. There is some 
 excuse, indeed, for the pathologic labour of the modern nov- 
 elist in the fact that he cannot easily, in a city population, 
 find a healthy mind to vivisect : but the greater part of such 
 amateur surgery is the struggle, in an epoch of wild literary 
 competition, to obtain novelty of material. The varieties of 
 asjoect and colour in healthy fruit, be it sweet or sour, may 
 be within certain limits described exhaustively. Not so the 
 blotches of its conceivable blight : and while the symmetries 
 of integral human character can only be traced by harmonious 
 and tender skill, like the branches of a living tree, the faults 
 and gaps of one gnawed away by corroding accident can be 
 shuffled into senseless change like the wards of a Chubb lock. 
 
 V. It is needless to insist on the vast field for this dice-cast 
 or card-dealt calamity which opens itself in the ignorance, 
 money-interest, and mean passion, of city marriage. Peasants 
 know each other as children — meet, as they grow up in test- 
 ing labour ; and if a stout farmers son marries a handless 
 girl, it is his own fault. Also in the patrician families of the 
 field, the young people know what they are doing, and marry 
 
 1 * Se dit par denigrement, dun chretien qui ne croit pas les dogmes 
 de sa religion.' — Fleming, vol. ii. p. 659. 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 a neighbouring estate, or a covetable title, with some concep- 
 tion of the responsibilities they undertake. But even among 
 these, their season in the confused metropolis creates licentious 
 and fortuitous temptation before unknown ; and in the lower 
 middle orders, an entirely new kingdom of discomfort and 
 disgrace has been preached to them in the doctrines of un- 
 bridled pleasure which are merely an apology for their pecul- 
 iar forms of illbreeding. It is quite curious how often the 
 catastrophe, or the leading interest, of a modern novel, turns 
 upon the want, both in maid and bachelor, of the common 
 self-command which was taught to their grandmothers and 
 grandfathers as the first element of ordinarily decent behav- 
 iour. Rashly inquiring the other day the plot of a modern 
 story from a female friend, I elicited, after some hesitation, 
 that it hinged mainly on the young people's 6 forgetting them- 
 selves in a boat ; J and I perceive it to be accepted as nearly 
 an axiom in the code of modern civic chivalry that the strength 
 of amiable sentiment is proved by our incapacity on proper 
 occasions to express, and on improper ones to control it. The 
 pride of a gentleman of the old school used to be in his power 
 of saying what he meant, and being silent when he ought, 
 (not to speak of the higher nobleness which bestowed love 
 where it was honourable, and reverence where it was due) ; 
 but the automatic amours and involuntary proposals of recent 
 romance acknowledge little further law of morality than the 
 instinct of an insect, or the effervescence of a chemical mixt- 
 ure. 
 
 There is a pretty little story of Alfred de Musset's,— La 
 Mouche, which, if the reader cares to glance at it, will save 
 me further trouble in explaining the disciplinarian authority 
 of mere old-fashioned politeness, as in some sort protective of 
 higher things. It describes,- with much grace and precision, 
 a state of society by no means pre-eminently virtuous, or en- 
 thusiastically heroic ; in which many people do extremely 
 wrong, and none sublimely right. But as there are heights 
 of which the achievement is unattempted, there are abysses 
 to which fall is barred ; neither accident nor temptation will 
 make any of the principal personages swerve from an adopted 
 
108 
 
 FICTION— FAIR ANh FOUL. 
 
 resolution, or violate an accepted principle of honour ; people 
 are expected as a matter of course to speak with propriety on 
 occasion, and to wait with patience when they are bid : those 
 who do wrong, admit it ; those who do right don't boast of 
 it ; everybody knows his own mind, and everybody has good 
 manners. 
 
 Nor must it be forgotten that in the worst days of the self- 
 indulgence which destroyed the aristocracies of Europe, their 
 vices, however licentious, were never, in the fatal modern 
 sense, 'unprincipled.' The vainest believed in virtue; the 
 vilest respected it. ' Chaque chose avait son nom,' J and the 
 severest of English moralists recognises the accurate wit, the 
 lofty intellect, and the unfretted benevolence, which redeemed 
 from vitiated surroundings the circle of d'Alembert and Har- 
 mon tel. 2 
 
 I have said, with too slight praise, that the vainest, in those 
 days, ' believed ' in virtue. Beautiful and heroic examples of 
 it were always before them ; nor was it without the secret sig- 
 nificance attaching to what may seem the least accidents in 
 the work of a master, that Scott gave to both his heroines of 
 the age of revolution in England the name of the queen of the 
 highest order of English chivalry. 3 
 
 It is to say little for the types of youth and maid which 
 alone Scott felt it a joy to imagine, or thought it honourable 
 to portray, that they act and feel in a sphere where they are 
 never for an instant liable to any of the weaknesses which 
 disturb the calm, or shake the resolution, of chastity and 
 courage in a modern novel. Scott lived in a country and time, 
 
 1 1 A son nom,' properly. The sentence is one o£ Victor Cherbuliez's, 
 in Prosper Randoce, which is full of other valuable ones. See the old 
 nurse's 4 ici has les choses vont de travers, comme un chien qui va a 
 vepres, p. 93 ; and compare Prosper's treasures, ' la petite Venus, et ie 
 petit Christ d'ivoire,' p. 121 ; also Madame Brehanne's request for the 
 divertissement of 1 quelque belle batterie a coups de couteau ' with Did- 
 ier's answer. * Helas ! madame, vous jouez de malheur, ici dans la 
 Drome, Ton se massacre aussi peu que possible,' p. 33. 
 
 2 Edgeworth's Tales (Hunter, 1827), * Harrington and Ormond,' vol. 
 iii. p. 260. 
 
 a Alice of Salisbury, Alice Lee, Alice Bridgnorth. 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 169 
 
 when, from highest to lowest, but chiefly in that dignified and 
 nobly severe 1 middle class to which he himself belonged, a 
 habit of serene and stainless thought was as natural to the peo- 
 ple as their mountain air. Women like Rose Bradwardine and 
 Ailie Dinmont were the grace and guard of almost every house- 
 hold (God be praised that the race of them is not yet extinct, 
 for all that Mall or Boulevard can do), and it has perhaps es- 
 caped the notice of even attentive readers that the compara- 
 tively uninteresting character of Sir Walter's heroes had always 
 been studied among a class of youths who were simply inca- 
 pable of doing anything seriously wrong ; and could only be 
 embarrassed by the consequences of their levity or impru- 
 dence. 
 
 But there is another difference in the woof of a Waverley 
 novel from the cobweb of a modern one, which depends on 
 Scott's larger view of human life. Marriage is by no means, 
 in his conception of man and woman, the most important busi- 
 ness of their existence ; 2 nor love the only reward to be pro- 
 posed to their virtue or exertion. It is not in his reading of 
 the laws of Providence a necessity that virtue should, either 
 by love or any other external blessing, he rewarded at all ; 3 
 and marriage is in all cases thought of as a constituent of the 
 happiness of life, but not as its only interest, still less its only 
 aim. And upon analysing with some care the motives of his 
 principal stories, we shall often find that the love in them is 
 merely a light by which the sterner features of character are 
 to be irradiated, and that the marriage of the hero is as sub- 
 ordinate to the main bent of the story as Henry the Fifth's 
 
 1 Scott's father was habitually ascetic. ' I have heard his son tell that 
 it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was good, 
 to taste it again, and say, "Yes— it is too good, bairns," and dash a 
 tumbler of cold water into his plate. ' — Lockhart s Life (Black, Edin- 
 burgh, 1869), vol. i. p. 312. In other places I refer to this book in the 
 simple form of * L. ' 
 
 2 A young lady sang to me, just before I copied out this page for press, 
 a Miss Somebody's 4 great song,' 'Live, and Love, and Die.' Had it 
 been written for nothing better than silkworms, it should at least have 
 added — Spin. 
 
 3 See passage of introduction to Ivanhoe, wisely quoted in L, vi 106. 
 
170 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 courtship of Katherine is to the battle of Agincourt. Nay, the 
 fortunes of the person who is nominally the subject of the tale 
 are often little more than a background on which grander 
 figures are to be drawn, and deeper fates forth-shadowed. The 
 judgments between the faith and chivalry of Scotland at Drum- 
 clog and Bothwell bridge owe little of their interest in the 
 mind of a sensible reader to the fact that the captain of the 
 Popinjay is carried a prisoner to one battle, and returns a 
 prisoner from the other : and Scott himself, while he watches 
 the white sail that bears Queen Mary for the last time from 
 her native land, very nearly forgets to finish his novel, or to 
 tell us — and with small sense of any consolation to be had out 
 of that minor circumstance, — that ' Eoland and Catherine were 
 united, spite of their differing faiths.' 
 
 Neither let it be thought for an instant that the slight, and 
 sometimes scornful, glance with which Scott passes over scenes 
 Which a novelist of our own day would have analysed with the 
 airs of a philosopher, and painted with the curiosity of a gos- 
 sip, indicate any absence in his heart of sympathy with the 
 great and sacred elements of personal happiness. An era like 
 ours, which has with diligence and ostentation swept its heart 
 clear of all the passions once known as loyalty, patriotism, and 
 piety, necessarily magnifies the apparent force of the one re- 
 maining sentiment which sighs through the barren chambers, 
 or clings inextricably round the chasms of ruin ; nor can it 
 but regard with awe the unconquerable spirit which still 
 tempts or betrays the sagacities of selfishness into error or 
 frenzy which is believed to be love. 
 
 That Scott was never himself, in the sense of the phrase as 
 employed by lovers of the Parisian school, £ ivre d'amour,' 
 may be admitted without prejudice to his sensibility, 1 and that 
 he never knew - l'amor che move '1 sol e l'altre stelle/ was the 
 chief, though unrecognised, calamity of his deeply chequered 
 life. But the reader of honour and feeling will not therefore 
 suppose that the love which Miss Vernon sacrifices, stooping 
 for an instant from her horse, is of less noble stamp, or less 
 
 1 See below, note, p. 25, on the conclusion of Woodstock. 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 171 
 
 enduring faith, than that which troubles and degrades the 
 whole existence of Consuelo ; or that the affection of Jeanie 
 Deans for the companion of her childhood, drawn like a field 
 of soft blue heaven beyond the cloudy wrack of her sorrow, 
 is less fully in possession of her soul than the hesitating and 
 self-reproachful impulses under which a modern heroine for- 
 gets herself in a boat, or compromises herself in the cool of 
 the evening. 
 
 I do not wish to return over the waste ground we have trav- 
 ersed, comparing, point by point, Scott's manner with those 
 of Bermondsey and the Faubourgs ; but it may be, perhaps, 
 interesting at this moment to examine, with illustration from 
 those Waver! ey novels which have so lately retracted the atten- 
 tion of a fair and gentle public, the universal conditions of 
 ' style/ rightly so called, which are in all ages, and above all 
 local currents or w T avering tides of temporary manners, pil- 
 lars of what is for ever strong, and models of what is for ever 
 fair. 
 
 But I must first define, and that within strict horizon, the 
 works of Scott, in w T hich his perfect mind may be known, and 
 his chosen ways understood. 
 
 His great works of prose fiction, excepting only the first 
 half -volume of Wauerley, were all w T ritten in twelve years, 
 1814-26 (of his own age forty-three to fifty-five), the actual 
 time employed in their composition being not more than a 
 couple of months out of each year ; and during that time only 
 iihe morning hours and spare minutes during the professional 
 day. ' Though the first volume of Waverley was begun long 
 ago, and actually lost for a time, yet the other two were begun 
 and finished between the 4th of June and the first of July, 
 during all which I attended my duty in court, and proceeded 
 without loss of time or hindrance of business.' 1 
 
 Few of the maxims for the enforcement of which, in Mod- 
 ern Painters, long ago, I got the general character of a lover 
 of paradox, are more singular, or more sure, than the state- 
 ment, apparently so encouraging to the idle, that if a great 
 
 i L. iv. 177. 
 
172 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 thing can be done at all, it can be done easily. But it is in 
 that kind of ease with which a tree blossoms after long years 
 of gathered strength, and all Scott's great writings were the 
 recreations of a mind confirmed in dutiful labour, and rich 
 with organic gathering of boundless resource. 
 
 Omitting from our count the two minor and ill-finished 
 sketches of the Black Dwarf and Legend of Montrose, and, for 
 a reason presently to be noticed, the unhappy St. Bonan's, the 
 memorable romances of Scott are eighteen, falling into three 
 distinct groups, containing six each. 
 
 The first group is distinguished from the other two by 
 characters of strength and felicity which never more appeared 
 after Scott was struck down by his terrific illness in 1819. 
 It includes Waverley, Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Bob Boy , 
 Old Mortality, and The Heart of Midlothian. 
 
 The composition of these occupied the mornings of his 
 happiest days, between the ages of 43 and 48. On the 8th of 
 April, 1819 (he was 48 on the preceding 15th of August) he 
 began for the first time to dictate — being unable for the ex- 
 ertion of writing — The Bride of Lammermuir, ■ the affection- 
 ate Laidlaw beseeching him to stop dictating, when his audi- 
 ble suffering filled every pause. "Nay, Willie," he answered 
 " only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the 
 cry as well as all the wool to ourselves ; but as for giving 
 over work, that can only be when I am in woollen." ' 1 From 
 this time forward the brightness of joy and sincerity of in- 
 evitable humour, which perfected the imagery of the earlier 
 novels, are wholly absent, except in the two short intervals of 
 health unaccountably restored, in which he wrote Bedgauntlet 
 and Nigel. 
 
 It is strange, but only a part of the general simplicity of 
 Scott's genius, that these revivals of earlier power were un- 
 conscious, and that the time of extreme weakness in which he 
 wrote St. Bonans Well, was that in which he first asserted his 
 own restoration. 
 
 It is also a deeply interesting characteristic of his noble 
 nature that he never gains anything by sickness ; the whole 
 
 1 L. vi. 67. 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 173 
 
 man breathes or faints as one creature ; the ache that stiffens 
 a limb chills his heart, and every pang of the stomach 
 paralyses the brain. It is not so with inferior minds, in the 
 workings of which it is often impossible to distinguish native 
 from narcotic fancy, and throbs of conscience from those of 
 indigestion. Whether in exaltation or languor, the colours of 
 mind are always morbid, which gleam on the sea for the 
 ' Ancient Mariner/ and through the casements on ' St. Agnes' 
 Eve ; ' but Scott is at once blinded and stultified by sickness ; 
 never has a fit of the cramp without spoiling a chapter, and ia 
 perhaps the only author of vivid imagination who never wrote 
 a foolish word but when he was ill. 
 
 It remains only to be noticed on this point that any 
 strong natural excitement, affecting the deeper springs of his 
 heart, would at once restore his intellectual powers in all 
 their fullness, and that, far towards their sunset : but that 
 the strong will on which he prided himself, though it could 
 trample upon pain, silence grief, and compel industry, never 
 could warm his imagination, or clear the judgment in his 
 darker hours. 
 
 I believe that this power of the heart over the intellect is 
 common to all great men : but what the special character of 
 emotion was, that alone could lift Scott above the power of 
 death, I am about to ask the reader, in a little while, to ob- 
 serve with joyful care. 
 
 The first series of romances then, above named, are all that 
 exhibit the emphasis of his unharmed faculties. The second 
 group, composed in the three years subsequent to illness ail 
 but mortal, bear every one of them more or less the seal of it 
 
 They consist of the Bride of Lammermuir, Ivanhoe, the 
 Monastery, the Abbot, Kenilworth, and the Pirate. 1 The marks 
 of broken health on all these are essentially twofold — pre- 
 vailing melancholy, and fantastic improbability. Three of 
 the tales are agonizingly tragic, the Abbot scarcely less so in 
 its main event, and Ivanhoe deeply wounded through all its 
 
 I I One other such novel, and there's an end ; but- who can last for 
 ever ? who ever lasted so long V ' — Sydney Smith (of the Pirate) tc 
 Jeffrey, December 30, 1821. (Letters* vol. ii. x>. 223.) 
 
174 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 bright panoply ; while even in that most powerful of the 
 series, the impossible archeries and axestrokes, the incredibly 
 opportune appearances of Locksley, the death of Ulrica, and 
 the resuscitation of Athelstane, are partly boyish, partly fever- 
 ish. Caleb in the Bride, Triptolemus and Halcro in the 
 Pirate, are all laborious, and the first incongruous ; half a 
 volume of the Abbot is spent in extremely dull detail of Ro- 
 land's relations with his fellow-servants and his mistress, 
 which have nothing whatever to do with the future story ; 
 and the lady of Avenel herself disappears after the first 
 volume, 'like a snaw wreath when it's thaw, Jeanie.' The 
 public has for itself pronounced on the Monastery, though as 
 much too harshly as it has foolishly praised the horrors of 
 Bavenswood and the nonsense of Ivanhoe ; because the modern 
 public finds in the torture and adventure of these, the kind 
 of excitement which it seeks at an opera, while it has no 
 sympathy whatever with the pastoral happiness of Glendearg, 
 or with the lingering simplicities of superstition which give 
 historical likelihood to the legend of the White Lady. 
 
 But both this despised tale and its sequel have Scott's 
 heart in them. The first was begun to refresh himself in the 
 intervals of artificial labour on Imnhoe. c It was a relief,' he 
 said, ' to interlay the scenery most iamiliar to me 1 with the 
 strange world for which I had to draw so much on imagi- 
 nation.' 3 Through all the closing scenes of the second he is 
 
 1 L. vi. p. 188. Compare the description of Fairy Dean, vii. 192. 
 
 2 All, alas ! were now in a great measure so written. Ivanhoe, The 
 Monastery, The Abbot and Kenilworth were all published between De- 
 cember 1819 and January 1821, Constable & Co. giving five thousand 
 guineas for the remaining copyright of them, Scott clearing ten thou- 
 sand before the bargain was completed ; and before the Fortunes oj 
 Nigel issued from the press Scott had exchanged instruments and re- 
 ceived his bookseller's bills for no less than four ' works of fiction,' not 
 one of them otherwise described in the deeds of agreement, to be pro- 
 duced in unbroken succession, each of them to Ml up at least three volumes^ 
 but with proper saving clauses as to increase of copy money in case any of 
 them should run to four ; and within two years all this anticipation had 
 Veen wiped off by Peveril of the Pcak> QuerUin Durward } St. Ronaris 
 We'd, and Reel gauntlet 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 175 
 
 raised to his own true level by bis love for the queen. And 
 within the code of Scott's work to which I am about to appeal 
 for illustration of his essential powers, I accept the Monastery 
 and Abbot, and reject from it the remaining four of this group. 
 
 The last series contains two quite noble ones, Redgauntlet 
 and Nigel ; two of very high value, Durward and Woodstock ; 
 the slovenly and diffuse Fever it, written for the trade ; the 
 sickly Tales of the Crusaders, and the entirely broken and dis- 
 eased St. Romans Well. This last I throw out of count alto- 
 gether, and of the rest, accept only the four first named as 
 sound work ; so that the list of the novels in which I propose 
 to examine his methods and ideal standards, reduces itself to 
 these following twelve (named in order of production) : 
 Waverley, Guy Mannering, the Antiquary, Rob Roy, Old Mor- 
 tality, the Heart of Midlothian, the Monastery, the Abbot, the 
 Fortunes of Nigel, Quentin Durward, and Woodstock. 1 
 
 It is, however, too late to enter on my subject in this arti- 
 cle, which I may fitly close by pointing out some of the merely 
 verbal characteristics of his style, illustrative in little ways of 
 the questions we have been examining, and chiefly of the one 
 which may be most embarrassing to many readers, the differ- 
 ence, namely, between character and disease. 
 
 One quite distinctive charm in the Waverleys is their modi- 
 fied use of the Scottish dialect ; but it has not generally been 
 observed, either by their imitators, or the authors of different 
 taste who have written for a later public, that there is a differ- 
 ence between the dialect of a language, and its corruption. 
 
 A dialect is formed in any district where there are persons 
 of intelligence enough to use the language itself in all its fine- 
 ness and force, but under the particular conditions of life, 
 climate, and temper, which introduce words peculiar to the 
 scenery, forms of word and idioms of sentence peculiar to the 
 race, and pronunciations indicative of their character and dis- 
 position. 
 
 1 Woodstock was finished 26th March 1826. He knew then of his 
 ruin ; and wrote in bitterness, but not in weakness. The closing pages 
 are the most beautiful of the book, But a month afterwards Lady Scott 
 died ; and he never wrote glad word more. 
 
176 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 Thus ' burn ' (of a streamlet) is a word possible only in a 
 country where there are brightly running waters, 'lassie,' a 
 word possible dnly where girls are as free as the rivulets, and 
 * auld,' a form of the southern ' old,' adopted by a race of 
 finer musical ear than the English. 
 
 On the contrary, mere deteriorations, or coarse, stridulent, 
 and, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, ' broad ' forms of 
 utterance, are not dialects at all, having nothing dialectic in 
 them, and all phrases developed in states of rude employment, 
 and restricted intercourse, are injurious to the tone and nar- 
 rowing to the power of the language they affect. Mere 
 breadth of accent does not spoil a dialect as long as the speak- 
 ers are men of varied idea and good intelligence ; but the mo- 
 ment the life is contracted by mining, mill work, or any op- 
 pressive and monotonous labour, the accents and phrases be- 
 come debased. It is part of the popular folly of the day to 
 find pleasure in trying to write and spell these abortive, crip- 
 pled, and more or less brutal forms of human speech. 
 
 Abortive, crippled, or brutal, are however not necessarily 
 ' corrupted ' dialects. Corrupt language is that gathered by 
 ignorance, invented by vice, misused by insensibility, or 
 minced and mouthed by affectation, especially in the attempt 
 to deal with words of which only half the meaning is under- 
 stood, or half the sound heard. Mrs. Gamp's e aperiently so ' 
 — and the ' undermined ' with primal sense of undermine, of 
 — I forget which gossip, in the Mill on the Floss, are master- 
 and mistress pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprop's 'al- 
 legories on the banks of the Nile 9 are in a somewhat higher 
 order of mistake : Miss Tabitha Bramble's ignorance is vul- 
 garised by her selfishness, and Winifred Jenkins' by her con- 
 • ceit. The ' wot ' of Noah Claypole, and the other degradations 
 of cockneyism (Sam Weller and his father are in nothing more 
 admirable than in the power of heart and sense that can 
 purify even these) ; the 'trewth' of Mr. Chadband, and 
 6 natur ' of Mr. Squeers, are examples of the corruption of 
 words by insensibility : the use of the word 'bloody' in mod- 
 ern low English is a deeper corruption, not altering the form 
 of the word, but defiling the thought in it. 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 177 
 
 Thus much being understood, I shall proceed to examine 
 thoroughly a fragment of Scott's Lowland Scottish dialect ; 
 not choosing it of the most beautiful kind ; on the contrary, 
 it shall be a piece reaching as low down as he ever allows 
 Scotch to go — it is perhaps the only unfair patriotism in him, 
 that if ever he wants a word or two of really villanous slang, 
 he gives it in English or Dutch — not Scotch. 
 
 I had intended in the close of this paper to analyse and com- 
 pare the characters of Andrew Fair service and Richie Moni- 
 plies for examples, the former of innate evil, unaffected by ex- 
 ternal influences, and undiseased, but distinct from natural 
 goodness as a nettle is distinct from balm or lavender ; and 
 the latter of innate goodness, contracted and pinched by cir- 
 cumstance, but still undiseased, as an oak-leaf crisped by frost, 
 not by the worm. This, with much else in my mind, I must 
 put off ; but the careful study of one sentence of Andrew's 
 will give us a good deal to think of. 
 
 I take his account of the rescue of Glasgow' Cathedral at the 
 time of the Reformation. 
 
 Ah ! it's a brave kirk — nane o' yere whigmaleeries and 
 curliewurlies and opensteek hems about it — a' solid, weel- 
 jointed mason-wark, that will stand as lang as the warld, keep 
 hands and gunpowther aff it. It had amaist a douncome lang 
 syne at the Reformation, when they pu'd doun the kirks of 
 St. Andrews and Perth, and thereawa', to cleanse them o' Pap- 
 ery, and idolatry, and image-worship, and surplices, and sic- 
 like rags o' the muckle hure that sitteth on seven hills, as if 
 ane wasna braid eneugh for her auld hinder end. Sae the 
 commons o' Renfrew, and o' the Barony, and the Gorbals, and 
 a' about, they behoved to come into Glasgow ae fair morning, 
 to try their hand on purging the High Kirk o' Popish nick- 
 nackets. But the townsmen o' Glasgow, they were feared 
 their auld edifice might slip the girths in gaun through siccan 
 rough physic, sae they rang the common bell, and assembled 
 the train-bands wi' took o' drum. By good luck, the worthy 
 James Rabat was Dean o' Guild that year — (and a gude ma- 
 son he was himsell, made him the keener to keep up the auld 
 bigging), and the trades assembled, and offered downright 
 battle to the commons, rather than their kirk should coup the 
 crans, as others had done elsewhere, Ic wasna for luve o" 
 
178 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 Paperie — na, na ! — nane could ever say that o' the trades o' 
 Glasgow — Sae they sune came to an agreement to take a' the 
 idolatrous statues of sants (sorrow be on them !) out o' their 
 neuks — And sae the bits o' stane idols were broken in pieces 
 by Scripture warrant, and flung into the Molenclinar burn, and 
 the auld kirk stood as crouse as a cat when the flaesare kaimed 
 aff her, and a'body was alike pleased. And I hae heard wise 
 folk say, that if the same had been done in ilka kirk in Scot- 
 land, the Reform wad just hae been as pure as it is e'en now, 
 and we wad hae mair Christian -like kirks ; for I hae been sae 
 lang in England, that nae thing will drived out o' my head, 
 that the dog-kennel at Osbaldistone-Hall is better than mony 
 a house o' God in Scotland. 
 
 Now this sentence is in the first place a piece of Scottish 
 history of quite inestimable and concentrated value. Andrew's 
 temperament is the type of a vast class of Scottish — shall we 
 call it ■ soio-thistlian ' — mind, which necessarily takes the view 
 of either Pope or saint that the thistle in Lebanon took of the 
 cedar or lilies in Lebanon ; and the entire force of the pas- 
 sions which, in the Scottish revolution, foretold and forearmed 
 the French one, is told in this one paragraph ; the coarseness 
 of it, observe, being admitted, not for the sake of the laugh, 
 any more than an onion in broth merely for its flavour, but 
 for the meat of it ; the inherent constancy of that coarseness 
 being a fact in this order of mind, and an essential part of the 
 history to be told. 
 
 Secondly, observe that this speech, in the religious passion 
 of it, such as there may be, is entirely sincere. Andrew is a 
 thief, a liar, a coward, and, in the Fair service from which he 
 takes his name, a hypocrite ; but in the form of prejudice, 
 which is all that his mind is capable of in the place of religion, 
 he is entirely sincere. He does not in the least pretend detes- 
 tation of image worship to please his master, or any one else ; 
 he honestly scorns the * carnal morality 1 as dowd and fusion- 
 less as rue-leaves at Yule ' of the sermon in the upper cathe- 
 dral ; and when wrapt in critical attention to the * real savour 
 o' doctrine' in the crypt, so completely forgets the hypocrisy of 
 
 1 Compare Mr. Spurgeon's not unfrequent orations on the same sub- 
 ject. 
 
FICTION— PAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 179 
 
 his fair service as to return his master's attempt to disturb 
 him with hard punches of the elbow. 
 
 Thirdly. He is a man of no mean sagacity, quite up to the 
 average standard of Scottish common sense, not a low one ; 
 and, though incapable of understanding any manner of lofty 
 thought or passion, is a shrewd measurer of weaknesses, and 
 not without a spark or two of kindly feeling. See first his 
 sketch of his master's character to Mr. Hammorgaw, begin- 
 ning : ' He's no a'thegither sae void o' sense, neither ; ' and 
 then the close of the dialogue : ' But the lad's no a bad lad 
 after a', and he needs some carefu' body to look after him.' 
 
 Fourthly. He is a good workman ; knows his own business 
 well, and can judge of other craft, if sound, or otherwise. 
 
 All these four qualities of him must be known before we 
 can understand this single speech. Keeping them in mind, 
 I take it up, word by word. 
 
 You observe, in the outset, Scott makes no attempt what- 
 ever to indicate accents or modes of pronunciation by changed 
 spelling, unless the word becomes a quite definitely new and 
 scarcely writeable one. The Scottish way of pronouncing 
 ' James,' for instance, is entirely peculiar, and extremely pleas- 
 ant to the ear. But it is so, just because it does not change 
 the word into Jeerns, nor into Jims, nor into Jawms. A mod- 
 ern writer of dialects would think it amusing to use one or 
 other of these ugly spellings. But Scott writes the name in 
 pure English, knowing that a Scots reader will speak it right- 
 ly, and an English one be wise in letting it alone. On the 
 other hand he writes 6 weel ' for £ well,' because that word is 
 complete in its change, and may be very closely expressed by 
 the double e. The ambiguous c u's in c gude ' and £ sune ' are 
 admitted, because far liker the sound than the double o would 
 be, and that in 6 hure/ for grace' sake, to soften the word ; — 
 so also ' flaes ' for c fleas.' 'Mony ' for ' many ' is again posi- 
 tively right in sound, and ' neuk 9 differs from our 6 nook ' in 
 sense, and is not the same word at all, as we shall presently see„ 
 
 Secondly, observe, not a word is corrupted in any indecent 
 haste, slowness, slovenliness, or incapacity of pronunciation. 
 There is no lisping, drawling, slobberiug, or snuffling : the 
 
180 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 speech is as clear as a bell and as keen as an arrow : and its 
 elisions and contractions are either melodious, (' na,' for 'not/ 
 — c pu'd/ for 'pulled,') or as normal as in a Latin verse. The 
 long words are delivered without the slightest bungling ; and 
 ' bigging ' finished to its last g. 
 
 I take the important words now in their places. 
 
 Brave. The old English sense of the word in ' to go brave ' 
 retained, expressing Andrew's sincere and respectful admira- 
 tion. Had he meant to insinuate a hint of the church's being 
 too fine, he would have said £ braw.' 
 
 Kirk. This is of course just as pure and unprovincial a 
 w T ord as 'Kirche,' or ' eglise.' 
 
 Whigmaleerie. I cannot get at the root of this word, but it 
 is one showing that the speaker is not bound by classic rules, 
 but will use any syllables that enrich his meaning. ' Nip- 
 per ty-tipperty ' (of his master's * poetry-nonsense ') is another 
 word of the same class. ' Curlieurlie ' is of course just as pure 
 as Shakespeare's 6 Hurly-burly.' But see first suggestion of 
 the idea to Scott at Blair-Adam (L. vi. 264). 
 
 Opensteek hemx. More description, or better, of the later 
 Gothic cannot be put into four syllables. ' Steek,' melodious 
 for stitch, has a combined sense of closing or fastening. And 
 note that the later Gothic, being precisely what Scott knew 
 best (in Melrose) and liked best, it is, here as elsewhere, quite 
 as much himself 1 as Frank, that he is laughing at, when he 
 laughs with Andrew, whose £ opensteek hems ' are only a ruder 
 metaphor for his own ' willow-wreaths changed to stone.' 
 
 Gunpoivthe?\ ' -Ther • is a lingering vestige of the French 
 £ -dre.' 
 
 Syne. One of the melodious and mysterious Scottish words 
 which have partly the sound of wind and stream in them, and 
 partly the range of softened idea which is like a distance of 
 blue hills over border land (' far in the distant Cheviot's blue '). 
 Perhaps even the least sympathetic ' Engiisher ' might recog- 
 nise this, if he heard ' Old Long Since ' vocally substituted 
 
 1 There are three definite and intentional portraits of himself, in the 
 novels, each giving a separate part of himself : Mr. Oldbtick, Frank Os* 
 baldistone, and Alan Fairford. 
 
FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 181 
 
 for the Scottish words to the air. I do not know the root; 
 but the word's proper meaning is not ' since/ but before or 
 after an interval of some duration, 4 as weel sune as syne/ 
 ' But first on Sawnie gies a ca'. Syne, bauldly in she enters.' 
 
 Behoved (to come). A rich word, with peculiar idiom, al- 
 ways used more or less ironically of anything done under a 
 partly mistaken and partly pretended notion of duty. 
 
 Siccan. Far prettier, and fuller in meaning than 'such.' 
 It contains an added sense of wonder ; and means properly 
 ' so great ' or c so unusual.' 
 
 Took (o* drum). Classical f tuck ' from Italian ' toccata,' the 
 preluding 'touch' or flourish, on any instrument (but see 
 Johnson under word £ tucket,' quoting Othello). The deeper 
 Scottish vowels are used here to mark the deeper sound of 
 the bass drum, as in more solemn warning. 
 
 Bigging. The only word in all the sentence of which the 
 Scottish form is less melodious than the English, ' and what 
 for no,' seeing that Scottish architecture is mostly little be- 
 yond Bessie Bell's and Mary Gray's ? * They biggit a bow're 
 by yon burnside, and theekit it ow're wi rashes.' But it is 
 pure Anglo-Saxon in roots ; see glossary to Fairbairn's edition 
 of the Douglas Virgil, 1710. 
 
 Coup. Another of the much-embracing words ; short for 
 i upset/ but with a sense of awkwardness as the inherent 
 cause of fall ; compare Bichie Moniplies (also for sense of 
 f behoved ') : ' Ae auld hirplin deevil of a potter behoved just 
 to step in my way, and offer me a pig (earthern pot — etym. 
 dub.), as he said cc just to put my Scotch ointment in ;" and I 
 gave him a push, as but natural, and the tottering deevil 
 coupit owre amang his own pigs, and damaged a score of 
 them/ So also Dandie Dinmont in the postchaise : ' 'Od ! I 
 hope they'll no coup us.' 
 
 The Grans. Idiomatic ; root unknown to me, but it means 
 in this use, full, total, and without recovery. 
 
 Molendinar. From * molendinum,' the grinding-place. I do 
 not know if actually the local name/ or Scott's invention. 
 
 1 Andrew knows Latin, and might have coined the word in his con- 
 ceit ; but, writing to a kind friend in Glasgow, I find the brook wa$ 
 
182 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 Compare Sir Piercie's ' Molinaras/ But at all events used 
 here with bye-sense of degradation of the formerly idle saints 
 to grind at the mill. 
 
 Grouse. Courageous, softened with a sense of comfort. 
 
 Ilka. Again a word w T ith azure distance, including the 
 whole sense of ' each ' and ' every/ The reader must carefully 
 and reverently distinguish these comprehensive words, which 
 gather two or more perfectly understood meanings into one 
 chord of meaning, and are harmonies more than words, from 
 the above-noted blunders between two half -hit meanings, 
 struck as a bad piano-player strikes the edge of another note. 
 In English we have fewer of these combined thoughts ; so 
 that Shakespeare rather plays with the distinct lights of his 
 words, than melts them into one. So again Bishop Douglas 
 spells, and doubtless spoke, the word • rose/ differently, ac- 
 cording to his purpose ; if as the chief or governing ruler of 
 flowers, 'rois/ but if only in her own beauty, rose. 
 
 Christian-like. The sense of the decency and order proper 
 to Christianity is stronger in Scotland than in any other coun- 
 try, and the word ' Christian ' more distinctly opposed to 
 'beast/ Hence the back-handed cut at the English for their 
 over-pious care of dogs. 
 
 I am a little surprised myself at the length to which this 
 examination of one small piece of Sir Walter's first-rate work 
 has carried us, but here I must end for this time, trusting, if 
 the Editor of the Nineteenth Century permit me, yet to tres- 
 pass, perhaps more than once, on his readers' patience ; but, 
 at all events, to examine in a following paper the technical 
 characteristics of Scott's own style, both in prose and verse, 
 
 called ' Molyndona ' even before the building of the Sub-dean Mill in 
 1446. See also account of the locality in Mr. George's admirable vol- 
 ume, Old Glasgow, pp. 129, 149, &c. The Protestantism of Glasgow, 
 since throwing that powder of saints into her brook Kidron, lias pre- 
 sented it with other pious offerings ; and my friend goes on to say that 
 the brook, once famed for the purity of its waters (much used for bleach- 
 ing\ 'has for nearly a hundred years been a crawling stream of loath- 
 someness. It is now bricked over, and a carriage-way made on the top 
 of it ; underneath the foul mess still passes through the heart of the 
 city, till it falls into the Clyde close to the harbour/ 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 183 
 
 together with Byron's, as opposed to our fashionably recent 
 dialects and rhythms ; the essential virtues of language, in 
 both the masters of the old school, hinging ultimately, little 
 as it might be thought, on certain unalterable views of theirs 
 concerning the code called £ of the Ten Commandments/ 
 wholly at variance with the dogmas of automatic morality 
 which, summed again by the witches' line, ' Fair is foul, and 
 foul is fair,' hover through the fog and filthy air of our pros- 
 perous England. 
 
 John Euskin. 
 
 \ He haled greetings in the market-place, and there were gener- 
 ally loiterers in the streets to persecute him either about the 
 events of the day, or about some petty pieces of business.' 
 
 These lines, which the reader will find near the beginning 
 of, the sixteenth chapter of the first volume of the Antiquary, 
 contain two indications of the old man's character, which, re- 
 ceiving the ideal of him as a portrait of Scott himself, are of 
 extreme interest to me. They mean essentially that neither 
 Monkbarns nor Scott had any mind to be called of men, 
 Kabbi, in mere hearing of the mob ; and especially that they 
 hated to be drawn back out of their far-away thoughts, or 
 forward out of their long-ago thoughts, by any manner of 
 ' daily ' news, whether printed or gabbled. Of wdiich two 
 vital characteristics, deeper in both the men, (for I must 
 always speak of Scott's creations as if they were as real as 
 himself,) than any of their superficial vanities, or passing en- 
 thusiasms, I have to speak more at another time. I quote the 
 passage just now, because there was one piece of the daily 
 news of the year 1815 which did extremely interest Scott, and 
 materially direct the labour of the latter part of his life ; nor 
 is there any piece of history in this whole nineteenth century 
 quite so pregnant with various instruction as the study of the 
 reasons which influenced Scott and Byron in their opposite 
 views of the glories of the battle of Waterloo. 
 
 But I quote it for another reason also. The principal 
 greeting which Mr. Oldbuck on this occasion receives in the 
 market-place, being compared with the speech of Andrew 
 
184 
 
 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 Fairservice, examined in my first paper, will furnish me with 
 the text of what I have mainly to say in the present one. 
 
 ' " Mr. Oldbuck," said the town-clerk (a more important 
 person, who came in front and ventured to stop the old gentle- 
 man), "the provost, understanding you were in town, begs on 
 no account that you'll quit it without seeing him ; he wants 
 to speak to ye about bringing the water frae the Fairwell 
 spring through a part o' your lands." 
 
 ' " What the deuce ! — have they nobody's land but mine to 
 cut and carve on? — I won't consent, tell them." 
 
 ' " And the provost," said the clerk, going on, without 
 noticing the rebuff, " and the council, wad be agreeable that 
 you should hae the auld stanes at Donagild's Chapel, that ye 
 was wussing to hae." 
 
 c " Eh ? — what ? — Oho ! that's another story — Well, well, 
 I'll call upon the provost, and we'll talk about it." 
 
 ' " But ye maun speak your mind on't forthwith, Monk- 
 barns, if ye want the stanes ; for Deacon Harlewalls thinks 
 the carved through-stanes might be put with advantage on 
 the front of the new council-house — that is, the twa cross- 
 legged figures that the callants used to ca' Bobbin and Bob- 
 bin, ane on ilka door-cheek ; and the other stane, that they 
 ca'd Ailie Dailie, abune the door. It will be very tastefu', the 
 Deacon says, and just in the style of modern Gothic." 
 
 * " Good Lord deliver me from this Gothic generation ! " 
 exclaimed the Antiquary, — " a monument of a knight-templar 
 on each side of a Grecian porch, and a Madonna on the top 
 of it ! — 0 crimini ! — Well, tell the provost I wish to have the 
 stones, and we'll not differ about the water-course.— It's lucky 
 I happened to come this way to-day." 
 
 ' They parted mutually satisfied ; but the wily clerk had 
 most reason to exult in the dexterity he had displayed, since 
 the whole proposal of an exchange between the monuments 
 (which the council had determined to remove as a nuisance, 
 because they encroached three feet upon the public road) and 
 the privilege of conveying the water to the burgh, through 
 the estate, of Monkbarns, was an idea which had originated 
 with himself upon the pressure of the moment.' 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 185 
 
 In this single page of Scott, will the reader please note the 
 kind of prophetic instinct with which the great men of every 
 age mark and forecast its destinies? The water from the 
 Fairwell is the future Thirlmere carried to Manchester ; the 
 ' auld stanes ' 1 at Donagild's Chapel, removed as a nuisance, 
 
 1 The following fragments out of the letters in ray own possession, 
 written by Scott to the builder of Abbots tor d, as the outer decorations 
 of the house were in process of completion, will show how accurately 
 Scott had pictured himself in Monkbarns. 
 
 ' Abbotsford : April 21, 1817. 
 1 Dear Sir, — Nothing can be more obliging than your attention to the 
 old stones. You have been as true as the sundial itself/ [The sundial 
 had just been erected.] 4 Of the two I would prefer the larger one, as 
 it is to be in front of a parapet quite in the old taste. But in case of 
 accidents it will be safest in your custody till I come to town again on 
 the 12th of May. Your former favours (which were weighty as accept- 
 able) have come safely out here, and will be disposed of with great 
 effect. » 
 
 ! Abbotsford : July 30. 
 4 1 fane}' the Tolbooth still keeps its feet, but, as it must soon descend, 
 I hope you will remember me. I have an important use for the niche 
 above the door ; and though many a man has got a niche in the Tol- 
 booth by building, I believe I am the first that ever got a niche out of 
 it on such an occasion. For which I have to thank your kindness, and 
 to remain very much your obliged humble servant, 
 
 ' Walter Scott.' 
 4 August 16. 
 
 ' My dear Sir, — I trouble you with this [sic] few lines to thank you 
 for the very accurate drawings and measurements of the Tolbooth door, 
 and for your kind promise to attend to my interest and that of Abbots^ 
 ford in the matter of the Thistle and Fleur de Lis. Most of our scutch- 
 eons are now mounted, and look very well, as the house is something 
 after the model of an old hall (not a castle), where such things are well 
 in character.' [Alas — Sir Walter, Sir Walter !] 'I intend the old lion 
 to predominate over a well which the children have christened the 
 Fountain of the Lions. His present den, however, continues to be the 
 hall at Castle Street.' 
 
 ' September 5. 
 
 1 Dear Sir, — I am greatly obliged to you for securing the stone. I am 
 not sure that I will put up the gate quite in the old form, but I would 
 like to secure the means of doing so. The ornamental stones are now 
 
18G 
 
 FICTION-FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 foretell the necessary view taken by modern cockneyism, 
 Liberalism, and progress, of all things that remind them of 
 the noble dead, of their father's fame, or of their own duty ; 
 and the public road becomes their idol, instead of the saint's 
 shrine. Finally, the roguery of the entire transaction — the 
 mean man seeing the weakness of the honourable, and 'best- 
 ing ' him — in modern slang, in the manner and at the pace of 
 modern trade — ' on the pressure of the moment.' 
 
 But neither are these things what I have at present quoted 
 the passage for. 
 
 I quote it, that w r e may consider how much wonderful and 
 various history is gathered in the fact, recorded for us in this 
 piece of entirely fair fiction, that in the Scottish borough of 
 Fairport, (Montrose, really,) in the year 17 — of Christ, the 
 knowledge given by the pastors and teachers provided for its 
 children by enlightened Scottish Protestantism, of their 
 fathers' history, and the origin of their religion, had resulted 
 in this substance and sum ; — that the statues of two crusading 
 knights had become, to their children, Eobin and Bobbin ; 
 and the statue of the Madonna, Ailie Bailie. 
 
 A marvellous piece of history, truly : and far too compre- 
 hensive for general comment here. Only one small piece of 
 it I must carry forward the readers' thoughts upon. 
 
 The pastors and teachers aforesaid, (represented typically in 
 another part of this errorless book by Mr. Blattergowl) are 
 
 put up, and have a very happy effect. If you will have the kindness 
 to let me know when the Tolbooth door comes down, I will send in my 
 carts for the stones ; I have an admirable situation for it. I suppose the 
 door itself [he means, the wooden one] ' will be kept for the new jail ; 
 if not, and not otherwise wanted, I would esteem it curious to possess 
 it. Certainly I hope so many sore hearts will not pass through the 
 celebrated door when in my possession as heretofore/ 
 
 1 September 8. 
 
 4 1 should esteem it very fortunate if I could have the door also, 
 though I suppose it is modern, having been burned down at the time of 
 Porte o us-mob. 
 
 ' I am very much obliged to the gentlemen who thought these re- 
 mains of the Heart of Midlothian are not ill bestowed on their intended 
 possessor.' 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 187 
 
 not, whatever else they may have to answer for, answerable 
 for these names. The names are of the children's own choos- 
 ing and bestowing, but not of the children's own inventing. 
 1 Robin ' is a classically endearing cognomen, recording the 
 errant heroism of old days — the name of the Bruce and of 
 Rob Roy. 'Bobbin • is a poetical and symmetrical fulfilment 
 and adornment of the original phrase. ' Ailie ' is the last 
 echo of ' Ave,' changed into the softest Scottish Christian 
 name familiar to the children, itself the beautiful feminine 
 form of royal 1 Louis;' the 'Dailie' again symmetrically 
 added for hinder and more musical endearment. The last 
 vestiges, you see, of honour for the heroism and religion of 
 their ancestors, lingering on the lips of babes and sucklings. 
 
 But what is the meaning of this necessity the children find 
 themselves under of completing the nomenclature rhythmi- 
 cally and rhymingly ? Note first the difference carefully, and 
 the attainment of both qualities by the couplets in question. 
 Rhythm is the syllabic and quantitative measure of the words, 
 in which Robin, both in weight and time, balances Bobbin ; 
 and Dailie holds level scale with Ailie. But rhyme is the 
 added correspondence of sound ; unknown and undesired, so 
 far as we can learn,. by the Greek Orpheus, but absolutely 
 essential to, and, as special virtue, becoming titular of, the 
 Scottish Thomas. 
 
 The 6 Ryme,' 1 you may at first fancy, is the especially 
 childish part of the work. Not so. It is the especially chiv- 
 alric and Christian part of it. It characterises the Christian 
 chant or canticle, as a higher thing than a Greek ode, melos, 
 or hymnos, or than a Latin carmen. 
 
 Think of it, for this again is wonderful ! That these chil- 
 dren of Montrose should have an element of music in their 
 souls which Homer had not, — wfaiph a melos of David the 
 Prophet and King had not, — which Orpheus and Amphion 
 had not, — which Apollo's unrymed oracles became mute at 
 the sound of. 
 
 1 Henceforward, not in affectation, but for the reader's better con- 
 venience, I shall continue to spell ' Ryrne ' without our wrongly 
 added h. 
 
188 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 A strange new equity this, — melodious justice and judg- 
 ment as it were, — in all words spoken solemnly and ritualist- 
 ically by Christian human creatures ; — Robin and Bobbin — 
 by the Crusader's tomb, up to ' Dies iree, dies ilia/ at judg- 
 ment of the crusading soul. 
 
 You have to understand this most deeply of all Christian 
 minstrels, from first to last ; that they are more musical, be- 
 cause more joyful, than any others on earth : ethereal min- 
 strels, pilgrims of the sky, true to the kindred points of 
 heaven and home ; their joy essentially the sky-lark's, in 
 light, in purity ; but, with their human eyes, looking for the 
 glorious appearing of something in the sky, which the bird 
 cannot. 
 
 This it is that changes Etruscan murmur into Terza rima — 
 Horatian Latin into Provencal troubadour's melody ; not, be- 
 cause less artful, less wise. 
 
 Here is a little bit, for instance, of French ryming just 
 before Chaucer's time— near enough to our own French to be 
 intelligible to us yet. 
 
 ' O quant tres-glorieuse vie, 
 Quant cil quit out pent et maistrie, 
 Veult esprouver pour necessaire, 
 Ne pour quant ii ne blasma mie 
 La vie de Marthe sa mie : 
 Mais il lui donna exemplaire 
 D'autrement vivre, et de bien plaire 
 A Dieu ; et plut de bien a faire : 
 Pour se conclut-il que Marie 
 Qui estoit a ses piedz sans braire, 
 Et pensait d'entendre et de taire, 
 Estleut la plus saine partie. 
 
 La meilleur partie esleut-eiie 
 Et la plus saine et la plus belle, 
 Qui ja ne luy sera ostee 
 Car par verite se fut celle 
 Qui fut tousjours fresche et nouvelle, 
 D'aymer Dieu et d'en estre aymee; 
 Car jusqu'au cueur fut entam$e, 
 Et si ardamment enflamee, 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 189 
 
 Que tous-jours ardoit l'estincelle ; 
 Par quoi elle fut visitee 
 Et de Dieu premier comfortee ; 
 Car charite est trop ysnelle.' 
 
 The only law of metre, observed in this song, is that each 
 line shall be octosyllabic : 
 
 Qui fut | tous jours | fresche et | nouvelle, 
 B'autre | ment vi | vret de | bien (ben) plaire, 
 Et pen | soit den J tendret | de taire 
 
 But the reader must note that words which were two-syllabled 
 in Latin mostly remain yet so in the French. 
 
 La xi | e de | Marthe | sa mie, 
 although mie, which is pet language, loving abbreviation of 
 arnica through amie, remains monosyllabic. But vie elides its 
 e before a vowel : 
 
 Car Mar- | the me | nait vie | active 
 Et Ma- | ri-e | contemp | lative ; 
 
 and custom endures many exceptions. Thus Marie may be 
 three-syllabled as above, or answer to mie as a dissyllable ; 
 but vierge is always, I think, dissyllabic, vier-ge, with even 
 stronger accent on the -ge, for the Latin -go. 
 
 Then, secondly, of quantity, there is scarcely any fixed law. 
 The metres may be timed as the minstrel chooses — fast or 
 slow — and the iambic current checked in reverted eddy, as 
 the words chance to come. 
 
 But, thirdly, there is to be rich ryming and chiming, no 
 matter how simply got, so only that the words jingle and 
 tingle together with due art of interlacing and answering in 
 different parts of the stanza, correspondent to the involutions 
 of tracery and illumination. The whole twelve-line -stanza 
 is thus constructed with two rymes only, six of each, thus 
 arranged : 
 
 A A B | A A B | BBA | BBA | 
 
 dividing the verse thus into four measures, reversed in ascent 
 and descent, or descant more properly ; and doubtless with 
 
190 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 correspondent phases in the voice-given, and duly accompany- 
 ing, or following, music ; Thomas the Eymer's own precept, 
 that ' tong is chefe in mynstrelsye,' being always kept faithfully 
 in mind. 1 
 
 Here then you have a sufficient example of the pure chant 
 of the Christian ages ; which is always at heart joyful, and 
 divides itself into the four great forms, Song of Praise, Song 
 of Prayer, Song of Love, and Song of Battle ; praise, however, 
 being the keynote of passion through all the four forms ; ac- 
 cording to the first law which I have already given in the laws 
 of Fesole ; 6 all great Art is Praise/ of which the contrary is 
 also true, all foul or miscreant Art is accusation, Sia/3o\^ : 
 ' She gave me of the tree and I did eat ' being an entirely 
 museless expression on Adam's part, the briefly essential con- 
 trary of Love-song. 
 
 With these four perfect forms of Christian chant, of which 
 we may take for pure examples the ' Te Deum/ the ' Te Lucis 
 Ante,' the ' Amor che nella mente/ 2 and the ' Chant de Poland/ 
 are mingled songs of mourning, of Pagan origin (whether 
 Greek or Danish), holding grasp still of the races that have 
 once learned them, in times of suffering and sorrow ; and 
 songs of Christian humiliation or grief, regarding chiefly the 
 sufferings of Christ, or the conditions of our own sin : while 
 through the entire system of these musical complaints are 
 interwoven moralities, instructions, and related histories, in 
 illustration of both, passing into Epic and Eom antic verse, 
 which gradually, as the forms and learnings of society increase, 
 becomes less joyful, and more didactic, or satiric, until the 
 
 1 L. ii. 278. 
 
 - 'Che nella mente mia rac/iona.' Love — you observe, the highest 
 Reasonableness, instead of French ivrcsse, or even Shakespearian ' mere 
 folly • ; and Beatrice as the Goddess of Wisdom in this third song of the 
 ConvitOy to be compared with the Revolutionary Goddess of Reason : 
 remembering of the "whole poem chiefly the line : — 
 
 ' Costei penso chi che mosso Puniverso.' 
 
 (See Lyell's Canzoniere, p. 104.) 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 191 
 
 last echoes of Christian joy and melody vanish in the ' Vanity 
 of human wishes.' 
 
 And here I must pause for a minute or two to separate the 
 different branches of our inquiry clearly from one another. 
 For one thing, the reader mast please put for the present out 
 of his head all thought of the progress of ' civilisation ' — that 
 is to say, broadly, of the substitution of wigs for hair, gas for 
 candles, and steam for legs. This is an entirely distinct mat- 
 ter from the phases of policy and religion. It has nothing to 
 do with the British Constitution, or the French Revolution, 
 or the unification of Italy. There are, indeed, certain subtle 
 relations between the state of mind, for instance, in Venice, 
 which makes her prefer a steamer to a gondola, and that 
 which makes her prefer a gazetteer to a duke ; but these re- 
 lations are not at all to be dealt with until we solemnly under- 
 stand that whether men shall be Christians and poets, or 
 infidels and dunces, does not depend on the way they cut 
 their hair, tie their breeches, or light their fires. Dr. John- 
 son might have worn his wig in fulness conforming to his 
 dignity, without therefore coming to the conclusion that 
 human wishes were vain ; nor is Queen Antoinette's civilised 
 hair-powder, as opposed to Queen Bertha's savagely loose 
 hair, the cause of Antoinette's laying her head at last in scaf- 
 fold dust, but Bertha in a pilgrim-haunted tomb. 
 
 Again, I have just now used the words 'poet' and 'dunce,' 
 meaning the degree of each quality possible to average human 
 nature. Men are eternally divided into the two classes of poet 
 (believer, maker, and praiser) and dunce (or unbeliever, un- 
 maker, and dispraiser). And in process of ages they have the 
 power of making faithful and formative creatures of them- 
 selves, or unfaithful and reformative. And this distinction 
 between the creatures who, blessing, are blessed, and evermore 
 benedicti, and the creatures who, cursing, are cursed, and ever- 
 more maledicti, is one going through all humanity; antediluvian 
 in Cain and Abel, diluvian in Ham and Shem. And the ques- 
 tion for the public of any given period is not whether they are 
 a constitutional or unconstitutional vulgus, but whether they 
 are a benignant or malignant vulgus. So also, whether it $ 
 
192 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 indeed the gods who have given any gentleman the grace to 
 despise the rabble, depends wholly on whether it is indeed the 
 rabble, or he, who are the malignant persons. 
 
 But yet again. This difference between the persons to 
 whom Heaven, according to Orpheus, has granted \ the hour 
 of delight,' 1 and those whom it has condemned to the hour 
 of detestableness, being, as I have just said, of all times and 
 nations, — it is an interior and more delicate difference which 
 we are examining in the gift of Christian, as distinguished from 
 unchristian, song. Orpheus, Pindar, and Horace are indeed 
 distinct from the prosaic rabble, as the bird from the snake ; 
 but between Orpheus and Palestrina, Horace and Sidney, 
 there is another division, and a new power of music and song 
 given to the humanity which has hope of the Eesurrection. 
 
 This is the root of all life and all rightness in Christian 
 harmony, whether of word or instrument ; and so literally, 
 that in precise manner as this hope disappears, the power of 
 song is taken away, and taken away utterly. "When the Chris- 
 tian falls back out of the bright hope of the Eesurrection, even 
 the Orpheus song is forbidden him. Not to have known the 
 hope is blameless : one may sing, unknowing, as the swan, or 
 Philomela. But to have known and fall away from it, and to 
 declare that the human wishes, which are summed in that one 
 — 'Thy kingdom come'— are vain ! The Fates ordain there 
 shall be no singing after that denial. 
 
 For observe this, and earnestly. The old Orphic song, with 
 its dim hope of yet once more Eurydice, — the Philomela song 
 — granted after the cruel silence, — the Halcyon song — 
 with its fifteen days of peace, were all sad, or joyful only in 
 some vague vision of conquest over death. But the Johnso- 
 nian vanity of wishes is on the whole satisfactory to Johnson — 
 accepted with gentlemanly resignation by Pope — triumphantly 
 and with bray of penny trumpets and blowing of steam- 
 whistles, proclaimed for the glorious discovery of the civilised 
 ages, by Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Adam Smith, and 
 
 1 wpau rrjs repif/ios— Plato, Laws, ii., Steph. 6G9. 'Hour' having here 
 nearly the power of 1 Fate 9 with added sense of being a daughter of 
 Themis, 
 
FICTION-FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 193 
 
 Co. There is no God, but have we not invented gunpowder? 
 — who wants a God, with that in his pocket? 1 There is no 
 Resurrection, neither angel nor spirit ; but have we not paper 
 and pens, and cannot every blockhead print his opinions, and 
 the Day of Judgment become Republican, with everybody for 
 a judge, and the flat of the universe for the throne ? There 
 is no law, but only gravitation and congelation, and we are 
 stuck together in an everlasting hail, and melted together in 
 everlasting mud, and great w T as the day in w T hich our worships 
 were born. And there is no Gospel, but only, whatever we've 
 got, to get more, and, wherever we are, to go somewhere else. 
 And are not these discoveries, to be sung of, and drummed 
 of, and fiddled of, and generally made melodiously indubitable 
 in the eighteenth century song of praise ? 
 
 The Fates will not have it so. No word of song is possible, 
 in that century, to mortal lips. Only polished versification, 
 sententious pentameter and hexameter, until, having turned 
 out its toes long enough without dancing, and pattered with 
 its lips long enough without piping, suddenly Astrsea returns 
 to the earth, and a Day of Judgment of a sort, and there bursts 
 out a song at last again, a most curtly melodious triplet of 
 Amphisbcenic ryme. 'Ca ira. 1 
 
 Amphisbsenic, fanged in each ryme with fire, and obeying 
 Ercildoune's precept, 'Tong is chefe of mynstrelsye, ' to the 
 syllable. — Don Giovanni's hitherto fondly chanted 'Andiam, 
 andiam,' become suddenly impersonal and prophetic : It shall 
 go, and you also. A cry — before it is a song, then song and 
 
 1 4 Gunpowder is one of the greatest inventions of modern times, and 
 what has given such a superiority to civilised nations over barbarous 1 ! 
 {Evenings at Home — fifth, evening. ) No man can owe more than I both 
 to Mrs. Barbauld and Miss Edgeworth ; and I only wish that in the sub- 
 stance of what they wisely said, they had been more listened to. Never- 
 theless, the germs of all modern conceit and error respecting manufact- 
 ure and industry, as rivals to Art and to Genius, are concentrated in 
 '■Evenings at Home 1 and k Harry and Lucy '-^being all the while them- 
 selves works of real genius, and prophetic of things that have yet to be 
 learned and fulfilled. See for instance the paper, ' Things by their Right 
 Names/ following the one from which I have just quoted (The Ship\ 
 and closing the first volume of the old edition of the Evenings. 
 
194 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 accompaniment together — perfectly done ; and the march ' to- 
 wards the field of Mars. The two hundred and fifty thousand 
 — they to the sound of stringed music — preceded by young 
 girls with tricolor streamers, they have shouldered soldier- 
 wise their shovels and picks, and with one throat are singing 
 ira.' 1 
 
 Through all the springtime of 1790, £ from Brittany to Bur- 
 gundy, on most plains of France, under most city walls, there 
 march and constitutionally wheel to the Qa-iraing mood of 
 fife and drum — our clear glancing phalanxes ; — the song of 
 the two hundred and fifty thousand, virgin led, is in the long 
 light of July.' Nevertheless, another song is yet needed, for 
 phalanx, and for maid. For, two springs and summers having 
 gone — amphisbsenic, — on the 28th of August 1792, ' Dumou- 
 riez rode from the camp of Maulde, eastwards to Sedan. 9 2 
 
 And Longwi has fallen basely, and Brunswick and the Prus- 
 sian king will beleaguer Verdun, and Clairfait and the Aus- 
 trians press deeper in over the northern marches, Cimmerian 
 Europe behind. And on that same night Dumouriez as- 
 sembles council of war at his lodgings in Sedan. Prussians 
 here, Austrian s there, triumphant both. With broad highway 
 to Paris and little hindrance — we scattered, helpless here and 
 there — what to advise ? The generals advise retreating, and 
 retreating till Paris be sacked at the latest day possible. 
 Dumouriez, silent, dismisses them, — keeps only, with a sign, 
 Thouvenot. Silent, thus, when needful, yet having voice, it 
 appears, of what musicians call tenor-quality, of a rare kind. 
 Rubini-esque, even, but scarcely producible to fastidious ears 
 at opera. The seizure of the forest of Argonne follows — the 
 cannonade of V almy. The Prussians do not march on Paris 
 this time, the autumnal hours of fate pass on — pa ira — and on 
 the 6th of November, Dumouriez meets the Austrians also. 
 4 Dumouriez wide-winged, they wide-winged — at and around 
 Jemappes, its green heights fringed and maned with red fire. 
 And Dumouriez is swept back on this wing and swept back 
 
 1 Carlyle, French Revolution (Chapman, 1869), vol. ii. p. 70 ; conf. p, 
 25, and the fa ira at Arras, vol. iii. p. 276. 
 * Ibid, iii, 26. 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 195 
 
 on that, and is like to be swept back utterly, when he rushes 
 up in person, speaks a prompt word or two, and then, with 
 clear tenor-pipe, uplifts the hymn of the Marseillaise, ten 
 thousand tenor or bass pipes joining, or say some forty thou- 
 sand in all, for every heart leaps up at the sound ; and so, with 
 rhythmic march melody, they rally, they advance, they rush 
 death-defying, and like the fire whirlwind sweep all manner 
 of Austrians from the scene of action/ Thus, through the 
 lips of Dumouriez, sings Tyrteus, Rouget cle Lisle, 1 'Aux 
 armes — marchons ! ' Iambic measure with a witness ! in what 
 wide strophe here beginning — in what unthought-of anti- 
 strophe returning to that council chamber in Sedan ! 
 
 While these two great songs were thus being composed, 
 and sung, and danced to in cometary cycle, by the French 
 nation, here in our less giddy island there rose, amidst hours 
 of business in Scotland and of idleness in England, three 
 troubadours of quite different temper. Different also them- 
 selves, but not opponent ; forming a perfect chord, and ad- 
 verse all the three of them alike to the French musicians, in 
 this main point — that while the £7a ira and Marseillaise were 
 essentially songs of blame and wrath, the British bards wrote, 
 virtually, always songs of praise, though by no means psalmody 
 in the ancient keys. On the contrary, all the three are alike 
 moved by a singular antipathy to the priests, and are pointed 
 at with fear and indignation by the pietists, of their day ; — 
 not without latent cause. For they are all of them, with the 
 most loving service, servants of that world which the Puritan 
 and monk alike despised ; and, in the triple chord of their 
 song, could not but appear to the religious persons around 
 them as respectively and specifically the praisers — Scott of the 
 world, Burns of the flesh, and Byron of the devil. 
 
 To contend with this carnal orchestra, the religious world, 
 having long ago rejected its Catholic Psalms as antiquated 
 and unscientific, and finding its Puritan melodies sunk into 
 faint jar and twangle from their native trumpet-tone, had 
 nothing to oppose but the innocent, rather than religious, 
 
 1 Carlyle, French Revolution^ iii, 106, the last sentence altered in a 
 word or two. 
 
196 
 
 FICTION-FAIR AND.FOVL, 
 
 verses of the school recognised as that of the English Lakes 
 very creditable to them ; domestic at once and refined ; ob- 
 serving the errors of the world outside of the Lakes with a 
 pitying and tender indignation, and arriving in lacustrine 
 seclusion at many valuable principles of philosophy, as pure 
 as the tarns of their mountains, and of corresponding depth. 1 
 
 I have lately seen, and with extreme pleasure, Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold's arrangement of "Wordsworth's poems ; and read w T ith 
 sincere interest his high estimate of them. But a great poet's 
 work never needs arrangement by other hands ; and though 
 it is very proper that Silver How should clearly understand 
 and brightly praise its fraternal Eydal Mount, we must not 
 forget that, over yonder, are the Andes, all the while. 
 
 Wordsworth's rank and scale among poets were determined 
 by himself, in a single exclamation : — 
 
 * What was tlie great Parnassus' self to thee, 
 Mount Skiddaw I ' 
 
 Answer his question faithfully, and you have the relation 
 between the great masters of the Muse's teaching, and the 
 pleasant fingerer of his pastoral flute among the reeds of 
 Eydal. 
 
 Wordsworth is simply a Westmoreland peasant, with con- 
 siderably less shrewdness than most border Englishmen or 
 Scotsmen inherit ; and no sense of humour : but gifted (in 
 this singularly) with vivid sense of natural beauty, and a 
 pretty turn for reflections, not always acute, but. as far as they 
 reach, medicinal to the fever of the restless and corrupted 
 life around him. Water to parched lips may be better than 
 Samian wine, but do not let us therefore confuse the qualities 
 of wine and water. I much doubt there being many in- 
 glorious Miltons in our country churchyards ; but I am very 
 sure there are many Wordsworths resting there, who were in- 
 ferior to the renowned one only in caring less to hear them- 
 selves talk. 
 
 1 I have been greatly disappointed, in taking soundings of our most 
 majestic mountain pools, to find them, in no case, verge on the un- 
 fathomable. 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUR 
 
 197 
 
 With an honest and kindly heart, a stimulating egoism, a 
 wholesome contentment in modest circumstances, and such 
 sufficient ease, in that accepted state, as permitted the passing 
 of a good deal of time in wishing that daisies could see the 
 beauty of their own shadows, and other such profitable 
 mental exercises, Wordsworth has left us a series of studies 
 of the graceful and happy shepherd life of our lake country, 
 which to me personally, for one, are entirely sweet and pre- 
 cious ; but they are only so as the mirror of an existent reality 
 in many ways more beautiful than its picture. 
 
 But the other clay I went for an afternoon's rest into the 
 cottage of one of our country people of old statesman class ; 
 cottage lying nearly midway between two village churches, 
 but more conveniently for downhill walk towards one than 
 the other. I found, as the good housewife made tea for me, 
 that nevertheless she went up the hill to church. £ Why do 
 not you go to the nearer church ? ' I asked. ' Don't you like 
 the clergyman V 6 Oh no, sir,' she answered, 6 it isn't that ; 
 but you know I couldn't leave my mother.' ' Your mother ! 
 
 she is buried at H then ? ' ' Yes, sir ; and you know I 
 
 couldn't go to church anywhere else.' 
 
 That feelings such as these existed among the peasants, not 
 of Cumberland only, but of all the tender earth that gives 
 forth her fruit for the living, and receives her dead to peace, 
 might perhaps have been, to our great and endless comfort, 
 discovered before now, if Wordsworth had been content to 
 tell us what he knew of his own villages and people, not as 
 the leader of a new and only correct school of poetry, but 
 simply as a country gentleman of sense and feeling, fond of 
 primroses, kind to the parish children, and reverent of the 
 spade with which Wilkinson had tilled his lands : and I am 
 by no means sure that his influence on the stronger minds of 
 his time was anywise hastened or extended by the spirit of 
 tunefulness under whose guidance he discovered that heaven 
 rhymed to seven, and Foy to boy. 
 
 Tuneful nevertheless at heart, and of the heavenly choir, I 
 gladly and frankly acknowledge him ; and our English litera- 
 ture enriched with a new and a singular virtue in the aerial 
 
FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 purity and healthful Tightness of his quiet song ; — but aerial 
 only, — not ethereal ; and lowly in its privacy of light. 
 
 A measured mind, and calm ; innocent, unrepentant ; help- 
 ful to sinless creatures and scatheless, such of the flock as do 
 not stray. Hopeful at least, if not faithful ; content with in- 
 timations of immortality such as may be in skipping of lambs, 
 and laughter of children, — incurious to see in the hands the 
 print of the JSTails. 
 
 A gracious and constant mind ; as the herbage of its native 
 hills, fragrant and pure ; — yet, to the sweep and the shadow, 
 the stress and distress, of the greater souls of men, as the 
 tufted thyme to the laurel wilderness of Tempe, — as the 
 gleaming euphrasy to the dark branches of Dodona. 
 
 [I am obliged to defer the main body of this paper to next 
 month, — revises penetrating all too late into my lacustrine 
 seclusion ; as chanced also unluckily with the preceding paper, 
 in which the reader will perhaps kindly correct the consequent 
 misprints, p. 29, 1. 20, of • scarcely ' to \ securely,' and p. 31, 
 1. 34, 'full/ with comma, to 'fall,' without one ; noticing be- 
 sides that Red gauntlet has been omitted in the italicised 
 list, p. 25, 1. 16 ; and that the reference to note 2 should 
 not be at the word 'imagination/ p. 24, but at the word 
 'trade,' p. 25, 1. 7. My clear old friend, Dr. John Brown, 
 sends me, from Jamieson's Dictionary, the following satisfac- 
 tory end to one of my difficulties : — £ Coup the crans.' The 
 language is borrowed from the ' cran,' or trivet on which 
 small pots are placed in cookery, which is sometimes turned 
 with its feet uppermost by an awkward assistant, Thus it 
 signifies to be completely upset.] 
 
 John Euskin. 
 
 [Byron.] 
 
 * Parching summer hath no warrant 
 
 To consume this crystal well ; 
 Rains, that make each brook a torrent, 
 Neither sully it, nor swell. ' 
 
 So was it, year by year, among the unthought-of hills. Lit- 
 tle Duddon and child Botha ran clear and glad ; and laughed 
 
FICTION— FAIll AND FOUL. 
 
 199 
 
 from ledge to pool, and opened from pool to mere, translucent, 
 through endless days of peace. 
 
 But eastward, between her orchard plains, Loire locked her 
 embracing dead in silent sands ; dark with blood rolled Iser ; 
 glacial-pale, Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts 
 forgot their people, and their father's house. 
 
 Nor unsullied, Tiber ; nor unsworn, Arno and AuMus ; and 
 Euroclydon high on Heiie's wave ; meantime, let our happy 
 piety glorify the garden rocks with snowdrop circlet, and 
 breathe the spirit of Paradise, where life is wise and innocent. 
 
 Maps many have w r e, now-a-days clear in display of earth 
 constituent, air current, and ocean tide. Shall we ever en- 
 grave the map of meaner research, whose shadings shall con- 
 tent themselves in the task of showing the depth, or drought, 
 — the calm, or trouble, of Human Compassion ? 
 
 For this is indeed all that is noble in the life of Man, and 
 the source of all that is noble in the speech of Man. Had it 
 narrowed itself then, in those days, out of all the world, into 
 this peninsula between Cockermouth and Shap ? 
 
 Not altogether so ; but indeed the Vocal piety seemed con- 
 clusively to have retired (or excursed ?) into that mossy her- 
 mitage, above Little Langdale. The £7?ivocal piety, with the 
 uncomplaining sorrow, of Man, may have had a somewhat 
 wider range, for aught we know : but history disregards those 
 items ; and of firmly proclaimed and sw r eetly canorous religion, 
 there really seemed at that juncture none to be reckoned upon, 
 east of Ingleborough, or north of Criffel. Only under Furness 
 Fells, or by Bolton Priory, it seems we can still write Ecclesi- 
 astical Sonnets, stanzas on the force of Prayer, Odes to Duty, 
 and complimentary addresses to the Deity upon His endurance 
 for adoration. Far otherwise, over yonder, by Spezzia Bay, 
 and Ravenna Pineta, and in ravines of Hartz. There, the 
 softest voices speak the wildest words ; and Keats discourses 
 of Endymion, Shelley of Demogorgon, Goethe of Lucifer, and 
 Burger of the Besurrection of Death unto Death — while even 
 Puritan Scotland and Episcopal Anglia produce for us only 
 these three minstrels of doubtful tone, who show but small 
 respect for the * unco guid,' put but limited faith in gifted 
 
200 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 Gtelfillan, and translate with unflinching frankness the Mor+ 
 
 gante Maggiore. 1 
 
 Dismal the aspect of the spiritual world, or at least the 
 sound of it, might well seem to the eyes and ears of Saints 
 (such as we had) of the period — dismal in angels' eyes also assur- 
 edly ! Yet is it possible that the dismalness in angelic sight 
 may be otherwise quartered, as it were, from the way of mor- 
 tal heraldry ; and that seen, and heard, of angels, — again I say 
 — hesitatingly — is it possible that the goodness of the Unco 
 Guid, and the gift of Gilfillan, and the word of Mr. Blatter- 
 gowl, may severally not have been the goodness of God, the gift 
 of God, nor the word of God : but that in the much blotted 
 and broken efforts at goodness, and in the careless gift which 
 they themselves despised, 2 and in the sweet ryme and murmur 
 of their unpurposed words, the Spirit of the Lord had, indeed, 
 wandering, as in chaos days on lightless waters, gone forth 
 in the hearts and from the lips of those other three strange 
 prophets, even though they ate forbidden bread by the altar 
 of the poured-out ashes, and even though the wild beast of the 
 desert found them, and slew. 
 
 This, at least, I know, that it had been well for England, 
 though all her other prophets, of the Press, the Parliament, 
 the Doctor's chair, and the Bishop's throne, had fallen silent ; 
 so only that she had been able to understand with her heart 
 here and there the simplest line of these, her despised. 
 
 1 ' It must be put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for 
 verse ; and you will see what was permitted in a Catholic country and a 
 bigoted age to Churchmen, on the score of Religion — and so tell those 
 buffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy. 
 
 ' 1 write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and I 
 must go and buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just gone 
 with the Countess G. in Count G.'s coach and six. Our old Cardinal is 
 dead, and the new one not appointed yet— but the masquing goes on the 
 same.' (Letter to Murray, 355th in Moore, dated Ravenna, Feb. 7, 
 1828.) ' A dreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody's 
 wife, except your neighbour's.' 
 
 2 See quoted infra the mock, by Byron, of himself and all other mod- 
 ern poets, Juan, canto iii. stanza 86, and compare canto xiv. stanza 8. 
 In reference of future quotations the first numeral will stand always foi 
 canto ; the second for stanza ; the third, if necessary, for line. 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 201 
 
 I take one at mere chance : 
 
 1 Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky ? ' 1 
 
 Well, I don't know ; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and 
 observed, with truth, that its clouds took a sober colouring 
 in consequence of his experiences. It is much if, indeed, this 
 sadness be unselfish, and our eyes have kept loving watch o'er 
 Man's Mortality. I have found it difficult to make any one 
 now-a-days believe that such sobriety can be ; and that Tur- 
 ner saw deeper crimson than others in the clouds of Goldau. 
 But that any should yet think the clouds brightened by Man's 
 immortality instead of dulled by his death, — and, gazing on 
 the sky, look for the day when every eye must gaze also — for 
 behold, He cometh with the clouds — this it is no more possi- 
 ble for Christian England to apprehend, however exhorted by 
 her gifted and guid. 
 
 c But Byron was not thinking of such things ! ' — He, the 
 reprobate ! how should such as he think of Christ ? 
 
 Perhaps not wholly as you or I think of Him. Take, at 
 chance, another line or two, to try : 
 
 ' Carnage (so Wordsworth tells yon) is God's daughter ; 2 
 If he speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and 
 Just now, behaved as in the Holy Land.' 
 
 Blasphemy, cry you, good reader ? Are you sure you under- 
 stand it? The first line I gave you was easy Byron— almost 
 shallow Byron — these are of the man in his depth, and you 
 will not fathom them, like a tarn, — nor in a hurry. 
 
 'Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.' How did Car- 
 nage behave in the Holy Land then? You have all been 
 greatly questioning, of late, whether the sun, which you find 
 to be now going out, ever stood still. Did you in any lagging- 
 minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect what he 
 
 1 Island, ii. 16, where see context. 
 
 2 Juan, viii. 5 ; but, by your Lordship's quotation, Wordsworth says 
 * instrument '—not ' daughter.' Your Lordship had better have said 
 'Infant' and taken the Woolwich authorities to witness: only Infant 
 would not have rynied. 
 
202 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 was bid stand still for? or if not — will you please look — and 
 what, also, going forth again as a strong man to run his course, 
 he saw, rejoicing ? 
 
 ' Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah — and 
 fought against Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the 
 king thereof into the hand of Israel, and he smote it with the 
 edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein.' And 
 from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to Kirjath-Arba, and 
 Sarah's grave in the Amorites' land, c and Joshua smote all the 
 country of the hills and of the south — and of the vale and of 
 the springs, and all their kings ; he left none remaining, but 
 utterly destroyed all that breathed — as the Lord God of Israel 
 commanded.' 
 
 Thus { it is written : ' though you perhaps do not so often 
 hear these texts preached from, as certain others about taking 
 away the sins of the world. I wonder how the world would 
 like to part with them ! hitherto it has always preferred part- 
 ing first with its Life — and God has taken it at its word. 
 But Death is not His Begotten Son, for all that ; nor is the 
 death of the innocent in battle carnage His ' instrument for 
 working out a pure intent ' as Mr. Wordsworth puts it ; but 
 Man's instrument for working out an impure one, as Byron 
 would have you to know. Theology perhaps less orthodox, 
 but certainly more reverent ; — neither is the Woolwich Infant 
 a Child of God ; neither does the iron-clad ' Thunderer ' utter 
 thunders of God — which facts, if you had had the grace or 
 sense to learn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blas- 
 phemy, it had been better at this day for you, and for many 
 a savage soul also, by Euxine shore, and in Zulu and Afghan 
 lands. 
 
 It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of 
 these lines that I quoted them ; but to note this main point 
 of Byron's own character. He was the first great Englishman 
 who felt the cruelty of war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. 
 Its guilt had been known to George Fox — its folly shown 
 practically by Penn. But the compassion of the pious world 
 had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its 
 stock of Barabbases unhanged if possible : and, till Byron 
 
FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 203 
 
 came, neither Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught 
 the pity and the pride of men that 
 
 * The drying up a single tear has more 
 Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.' 1 
 
 Such pacific verse would not indeed have been acceptable to 
 the Edinburgh volunteers on Portobello sands. But Byron 
 can write a battle song too, when it is his cue to fight. If 
 you look at the introduction to the Isles of Greece, namely the 
 8oth and 86th stanzas of the 3rd canto of Don Juan, — you 
 will find — what will you not find, if only you understand 
 them ! ' He ' in the first line, remember, means the typical 
 modern poet. 
 
 ' Thus usually, when he was asked to sing, 
 
 He gave the different nations something national. 
 
 'Twas all the same to him — •' God save the King " 
 Or " Qa ira" according to the fashion all ; 
 
 His muse made increment of anything 
 
 From the high lyric down to the low rational : 
 
 If Pindar sang horse-races, what should hinder 
 
 Himself from being as pliable as Pindar ? 
 
 'In France, for instance, he would write a chanson ; 
 
 In England a six-canto quarto tale ; 
 In Spain, he d make a ballad or romance on 
 
 The last war— much the same in Portugal ; 
 In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on 
 
 Would be old Goethe's — (see what says de Stael) 
 In Italy he d ape the ' Trecentisti 
 In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t* ye. 
 
 Note first here, as we did in Scott, the concentrating and 
 foretelling power. The < God Save the Queen ' in England, 
 fallen hollow now, as the ' Qa ira ' in France— not a man in 
 
 1 Juan, viii. 3; compare 14 and 63, with all its lovely context GI- 
 GS : then 82, and afterwards slowly and with thorough attention, the 
 Devil's speech, beginning, ' Yes, Sir, you forget ' in scene 2 of The De- 
 formed Transformed : then Sardanapalus's, act i. scene 2, beginning ' he 
 is gone, and on his finger bears my signet,' and finally, the Vision oj 
 Judgment, stanzas 3 to 5. 
 
204 
 
 FICTION—FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 France knowing where either France or * that ' (whatevei 
 ' that ' may be) is going to ; nor the Queen of England dar- 
 ing, for her life, to ask the tiniest Englishman to do a single 
 thing he doesn't like ; — nor any salvation, either of Queen or 
 Kealm, being any more possible to God, unless under the 
 direction of the Royal Society : then, note the estimate of 
 height and depth in poetry, swept in an instant, ' high lyric 
 to low rational.' Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's height, too, 
 all the while, no man better) ; then, the poetic power of 
 France — resumed in a word — Beranger ; then the cut at 
 Marmion, entirely deserved, as we shall see, yet kindly given, 
 for everything he names in these two stanzas is the best of its 
 kind ; then Romance in Spain on — the last war, (present war 
 not being to Spanish poetical taste), then, Goethe the real 
 heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the Trecentisti 
 which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism ! 
 that also being the best thing Italy has done through Eng- 
 land, whether in Rossetti's £ blessed damozels ' or Burne 
 Jones's ' days of creation.' Lastly comes the mock at himself 
 — the modern English Greek — (followed up by the 'degener- 
 ate into hands like mine ' in the song itself) ; and then — to 
 amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles voice. We 
 have had one line of him in his clearness — five of him in his 
 depth — sixteen of him in his play. Hear now but these, out 
 of his whole heart : — 
 
 ' What, — silent yet ? and silent all? 
 Ah no, the voices of the dead 
 Sound like a distant torrent's fall, 
 
 And answer, " Let one living head, 
 But one, arise — we corne — we come : M 
 — 'Tis but the living who are dumb.' 
 
 Resurrection, this, you see like Burger's ; but not of death 
 unto death. 
 
 * Sound like a distant torrent's fall.' I said the whole heart 
 of Byron was in this passage. First its compassion, then its 
 indignation, and the third element, not yet examined, that 
 love of the beauty of this world in which the three — unholy 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 205 
 
 — children, of its Fiery Furnace were like to each other ; but 
 Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love Scotland 
 more than Nature itself : for Bums the moon must rise over 
 Cumnock Hills, — for Scott, the Rymer's glen divide the 
 Eildons ; but, for Byron, Loch-na-Gar with Ida, looks o'er 
 Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee and the Bruar change 
 into voices of the dead on distant Marathon. 
 
 Yet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier 
 rest : — 
 
 ' And silence aids — though the steep hills 
 Send to the lake a thousand rills ; 
 In summer tide, so soft they weep, 
 The sound but lulls the ear asleep ; 
 Your horse's hoof -tread sounds too rude, 
 So stilly is the solitude. 
 
 Naught living meets the eye or ear, 
 But well I ween the dead are near ; 
 For though, in feudal strife, a foe 
 Hath laid our Lady's Chapel low, 
 Yet still beneath the hallowed soil, 
 The peasant rests him from his toil, 
 And, dying, bids his bones be laid 
 Where erst his simple fathers prayed.' 
 
 And last take the same note of sorrow — with Burns's finger 
 on the fall of it : 
 
 4 Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens, 
 Ye hazly shaws and briery dens, 
 Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens 
 
 Wi' toddlin' din, 
 Or foamm' Strang wi' hasty stens 
 
 Frae lin to lin.' 
 
 As you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by 
 the great masters, does not a sense come upon you of some 
 element in their passion, no less than in their sound, different, 
 specifically, from that of 'Parching summer hath no warrant'? 
 Is it more profane, think you— or more tender-— nay, perhaps, 
 in the core of it, more true ? 
 
206 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 For instance, when we are told that 
 
 * Wharfe, as he moved along, 
 To matins joined a mournful voice,' 
 
 is this disposition of the river's mind to pensive psalmody 
 quite logically accounted for by the previous statement 
 (itself by no means rhythmically dulcet,) that 
 
 * The boy is in the arms of Wharfe, 
 And strangled by a merciless force ' ? 
 
 Or, when we are led into the improving reflection, 
 
 4 How sweet were leisure, could it yield no more 
 Then 'mid this wave- washed churchyard to recline, 
 From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine ! ' 
 
 — is the divinity of the extract assured to us by its being 
 made at leisure, and in a reclining attitude — as compared 
 with the meditations of otherwise active men, in an erect one ? 
 Or are we perchance, many of us, still erring somewhat in 
 our notions alike of Divinity and Humanity, — poetical ex- 
 traction, and moral position ? 
 
 On the chance of its being so, might I ask hearing for just 
 a few words more of the school of Belial ? 
 
 Their occasion, it must be confessed, is a quite unjustifiable 
 one. Some very wicked people — mutineers, in fact — have 
 retired, misanthropically, into an unfrequented part of the 
 country, and there find themselves safe, indeed, but extremely 
 thirsty. Whereupon Byron thus gives them to drink : 
 
 1 A little stream came tumbling from the height 
 And straggling into ocean as it might. 
 Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray 
 And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray, 
 Close on the wild wide ocean, — yet as pure 
 And fresh as Innocence ; and more secure. 
 Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep 
 As the shy chamois' eye overlooks the steep, 
 While, far below, the vast and sullen swell 
 Of ocean's Alpine azure rose and fell. \ 1 
 ■ Island, iii. 3, and compare, of shore surf, the 'slings its high flakes* 
 shivered into sleet ' of stanza 7. 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 207 
 
 Now, I beg, with such authority as an old workman may take 
 concerning his trade, having also looked at a waterfall or two 
 in my time, and not unfrequently at a wave, to assure the 
 reader that here is entirely first-rate literary work. Though 
 Lucifer himself had written it, the thing is itself good, and 
 not only so, but unsurpassably good, the closing line being 
 probably the best concerning the sea yet written by the race 
 of the sea-kings. 
 
 But Lucifer himself could not have written it ; neither any 
 servant of Lucifer. I do not doubt but that most readers 
 were surprised at my saying, in the close of my first paper, 
 that Byron's ' style ' depended in any wise on his views re- 
 specting the Ten Commandments. That so all-important a 
 thing as ' style' should depend in the least upon so ri- 
 diculous a thing as moral sense : or that Allegra's father, 
 watching her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any 
 remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide, — or check, — his 
 poetical passion, may alike seem more than questionable to 
 the liberal and chaste philosophy of the existing British 
 public. But, first of all, putting the question of who writes, 
 or speaks, aside, do you, good reader, know good c style ' 
 when you get it ? Can you say, of half-a-dozen given lines 
 taken anywhere out of a novel, or poem, or play, That is 
 good, essentially, in style, or bad, essentially? and can you 
 say why such half-dozen lines are good, or bad? 
 
 I imagine that in most cases, the reply would be given with 
 hesitation, yet if you will give me a little patience, and take 
 some accurate pains, I can show you the main tests of style in 
 the space of a couple of pages. 
 
 I take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner 
 highest, i. e. kingly, and heroic, style : the first example in 
 expression of anger, the second of love. 
 
 (1) 1 We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us, 
 His present, and your pains, we thank you for, 
 When we have match'd our rackets to these balls, 
 We will in France, by God s grace, play a Bet, 
 ►Shall fetiike his father's crown into (lie hazard.* 
 
208 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 (2) ' My gracious Silence, hail ! 
 
 Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home 
 That weep'st to see me triumph ? Ah, my dear, 
 Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, 
 And mothers that lack sons. 7 
 
 Let us note, point by point, the conditions of greatness 
 common to both these passages, so opposite in temper. 
 
 A. Absolute command over all passion, however intense ; 
 this the first-of -first conditions, (see the King's own sentence 
 just before, ' We are no tyrant, but a Christian King, Unto 
 whose grace our passion is as subject As are our wretches 
 fettered in our prisons') ; and with this self-command, the 
 supremely surveying grasp of every thought that is to be ut- 
 tered, before its utterance ; so that each may come in its 
 exact place, time, and connection. The slightest hurry, the 
 misplacing of a word, or the unnecessary accent on a syllable, 
 would destroy the ' style ' in an instant. 
 
 B. Choice of the fewest and simplest words that can be 
 found in the compass of the language, to express the thing 
 meant : these few words being also arranged in the most 
 straightforward and intelligible way ; allowing inversion only 
 when the subject can be made primary without obscurity : 
 (thus, ' his present, and your pains, we thank you for ' is bet- 
 ter than ' we thank you for his present and your pains/ 
 because the Dauphin's gift is by courtesy put before the Am- 
 bassador s pains ; but ' when to these balls our rackets we have 
 matched ' would have spoiled the style in a moment, because — 
 I was going to have said, ball and racket are of equal rank, 
 and therefore only the natural order proper ; but also here 
 the natural order is the desired one, the English racket to 
 have precedence of the French ball. In the fourth line the 
 6 in France ' comes first, as announcing the most important 
 resolution of action ; the ' by God's grace ' next, as the only 
 condition rendering resolution possible ; the detail of issue 
 follows with the strictest limit in the final word. The King 
 does not say ' danger,' far less 6 dishonour/ but ' hazard ' only ; 
 of that he is, humanly speaking, sure. 
 
 C. Perfectly emphatic and clear utterance of the chosen 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 209 
 
 words ; slowly in the degree of their importance, with omis- 
 sion however of every word not absolutely required ; and 
 natural use of the familiar contractions of final dissyllable. 
 Thus, ' play a set shall strike ■ is better than ' play a set that 
 shall strike,' and 'match'd' is kingly short — no necessity could 
 have excused ! matched ' instead. On the contrary, the three 
 first words, ' We are glad/ would have been spoken by the 
 king more slowly and fully than any other syllables in the 
 whole passage, first pronouncing the kingly ' we ' at its proud- 
 est, and then the 6 are ' as a continuous state, and then the 
 ' glad,' as the exact contrary of what the ambassadors ex- 
 pected him to be. 1 
 
 D. Absolute spontaneity in doing all this, easily and neces- 
 sarily as the heart beats. The king cannot speak otherwise 
 than he does — nor the hero. The words not merely come to 
 them, but are compelled to them. Even lisping numbers 
 1 come,' but mighty numbers are ordained, and inspired. 
 
 E. Melody in the words, changeable with their passion 
 fitted to it exactly and the utmost of which the language is 
 capable — the melody in prose being Eolian and variable — in 
 verse, nobler by submitting itself to stricter law. I will 
 enlarge upon this point presently. 
 
 F. Utmost spiritual contents in the words ; so that each 
 carries not only its instant meaning, but a cloudy companion- 
 ship of higher or darker meaning according to the passion 
 — nearly always indicated by metaphor : ' play a set ' — some- 
 times by abstraction — (thus in the second passage ' silence ' 
 for silent one) sometimes by description instead of direct epi- 
 thet (' coffined ' for dead) but always indicative of there being- 
 more in the speaker's mind than he has said, or than he can 
 say, full though his saying be. On the quantity of this 
 attendant fulness depends the majesty of style ; that is to 
 
 1 A modern editor — of whom I will not use the expressions which 
 occur to me — finding the ' we ' a redundant syllable in the iambic line, 
 prints 'we're/ It is a little thing — but I do not recollect, in the forty 
 years of my literary experience, any piece of editor's retouch quite so 
 base. But I don't read the new editions much ; that must be allowed 
 for. 
 
210 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 say, virtually, on the quantity of contained thought in briefest 
 words, such thought being primarily loving and true : and 
 this the sum of all — that nothing can be well said, but with 
 truth, nor beautifully, but by love. 
 
 These are the essential conditions of noble speech in prose 
 and verse alike, but the adoption of the form of verse, and 
 especially rymed verse, means the addition to all these quali- 
 ties of one more ; of music, that i3 to say, not Eolian merely, 
 but Apolline ; a construction or architecture of words fitted 
 and befitting, under external laws of time and harmony. 
 
 When Byron says ' rhyme is of the rude/ 1 he means that 
 Burns needs it, — while Henry the Fifth does not, nor Plato, 
 nor Isaiah — yet in this need of it by the simple, it becomes all 
 the more religious : and thus the loveliest pieces of Christian 
 language are all in ryme — the best of Dante, Chaucer, Doug- 
 las, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney. 
 
 I am not now able to keep abreast with the tide of modern 
 scholarship ; (nor, to say the truth, do I make the effort, the 
 
 1 Island, ii. 5. I was going to say, * Look to the context,' but am fain 
 to give it here ; for the stanza, learned by heart, ought to be our school- 
 introduction to the literature of the world. 
 
 * Such was this ditty of Tradition's days, 
 Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys 
 In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign 
 Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine ; 
 Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye, 
 But yields young history all to harmony ; 
 A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre 
 In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. 
 For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave 
 Bung from the rock, or mingled with the wave, 
 Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side, 
 Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide, 
 Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear. 
 Than all the columns Conquert's minions rear ; 
 Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme 
 For sages' labours or the student's dream ; 
 Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil — 
 The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil. 
 Such was this rude rhyme — rhyme is of the rude, 
 But such inspired the Norseman's solitude, 
 Who came and conquer d ; such, wherever rise 
 Lands which no foes destroy or civilise, 
 Exist ; and what can our accomplish'd art 
 Of verse do more than reach the awakenM heart ? 5 
 
FICTION-FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 211 
 
 first edge of its waves being mostly muddy, and apt to make 
 a shallow sweep of the shore refuse :) so that I have no better 
 book of reference by me than the confused essay on the an- 
 tiquity of ryme at the end of Turner s Anglo-Saxons. I cannot 
 however conceive a more interesting piece of work, if not yet 
 done, than the collection of sifted earliest fragments known 
 of rymed song in European languages. Of Eastern I know 
 nothing ; but, this side Hellespont, the substance of the mat- 
 ter is all given in King Canute's impromptu 
 
 1 Gaily (or is it sweetly ? — I forget which, and it's no matter) sang the 
 
 monks of Ely, 
 As Knut the king came sailing l>y ; ' 
 
 much to be noted by any who make their religion lugubrious, 
 and their Sunday the eclipse of the w T eek. And observe fur- 
 ther, that if Milton does not ryme, it is because his faculty of 
 Song was concerning Loss, chiefly ; and he has little more 
 than faculty of Croak, concerning Gain ; while Dante, though 
 modern readers never go further with him than into the Pit, 
 is stayed only by Casella in the ascent to the Rose of Heaven. 
 So, Gibbon can write in his manner the Fall of Rome ; but 
 Virgil, in his manner, the rise of it ; and finally Douglas, in 
 his manner, bursts into such rymed passion of praise both of 
 Rome and Virgil, as befits a Christian Bishop, and a good sub- 
 ject of the Holy See. 
 
 ' Master of Masters — sweet source, and springing well, 
 Wide where over all ringes thy heavenly bell ; 
 
 Why should I then with dull forehead and vain, 
 
 With rude ingene, and barane, emptive brain, 
 
 With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tongue 
 
 Presume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung, 
 
 Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear? 
 
 Ea. na— not so ; but kneel when I them hear. 
 
 But farther more — and lower to descend 
 
 Forgive me, Virgil, if I thee offend 
 
 Pardon thy scolar, suffer him to ryme 
 
 Since thou wast but ane mortal man sometime, 1 
 
212 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 ' Before honour is humility.' Does not clearer light come 
 for you on that law after reading these nobly pious words ? 
 And note you ivhose humility ? How is it that the sound of 
 the bell comes so instinctively into his chiming verse ? This 
 gentle singer is the son of — Archibald Bell-the-Cat ! 
 
 And now perhaps you can read with right sympathy the 
 scene in Marmion between his father and King James. 
 
 • His hand the monarch sudden took— 
 Now, by the Bruce's soul, 
 Angus, my hasty speech forgive, 
 For sure as doth his spirit live 
 As he said of the Douglas old 
 I well may say of you, — 
 That never king did subject hold. 
 In speech more free, in war more bold, 
 More tender and more true : 
 And while the king his hand did strain 
 The old man's tears fell down like rain.' 
 
 I believe the most infidel of scholastic readers can scarcely 
 but perceive the relation between the sweetness, simplicity, 
 and melody of expression in these passages, and the gentle- 
 ness of the passions they express, while men who are not 
 scholastic, and yet are true scholars, will recognise further in 
 them that the simplicity of the educated is lovelier than the 
 simplicity of the rude. Hear next a piece of Spenser's teach- 
 ing how rudeness itself may become more beautiful even by 
 its mistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly, 
 
 * Ye shepherds ' daughters that dwell on the green, 
 
 Hye you there apace ; 
 Let none come there but that virgins been 
 
 To adorn her grace : 
 And when you come, whereas she in place, 
 See that your rudeness do not you disgrace ; 
 
 Bind your fillets fast, 
 
 And gird in your waste, 
 I or more fineness, with a taudry lace.' 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 213 
 
 * Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbine 
 
 With gylliflowers ; 
 Bring coronations, and sops in wine, 
 
 Worn of paramours ; 
 Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies 
 And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies ; 
 
 The pretty paunce 
 
 And the chevisaunce 
 Shall match with the fair flowre-delice. ' 1 
 
 Two short pieces more only of master song, and we have 
 enough to test all by. 
 
 (2) * No more, no more, since thou art dead, 
 
 Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed, 
 No more, at yearly festivals, 
 
 We cowslip balls 
 Or chains of columbines shall make, 
 For this or that occasion's sake. 
 No, no! our maiden pleasures be 
 Wrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee.' 3 
 
 (3) ' Death is now the phoenix rest, 
 
 And the turtle's loyal breast 
 To eternity doth rest. 
 Truth may seem, but cannot be ; 
 Beauty brag, but 'tis not she : 
 Truth and beauty buried be/ 3 
 
 If now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, 
 you turn to Byron, and glance over, or recall to memory, 
 enough of him to give means of exact comparison, you will, 
 or should, recognise these following kinds of mischief in him. 
 First, if any one offends him — as for instance Mr. Southey, or 
 Lord Elgin — c his manners have not that repose that marks 
 the caste,' &c. This defect in his Lordship's style, being my- 
 
 1 Shepherd's Calendar. 4 Coronati in,' loyal-pastoral for Carnation ; 
 * sops in wine,' jolly-pastoral for double pink; 4 paunce,' thoughtless 
 pastoral for pansy ; \ chevisaunce ' I don't know, (not in Gerarde) ; 
 4 flowre-delice ' — pronounce dellice — half made up of ' delicate ' and * de* 
 licious.' 
 
 Herrick, Dirge for Jephthah's Daughter, 3 Passionate Pilgrim. 
 
211 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AN I) FOUL. 
 
 self scrupulously and even painfully reserved in the use of 
 vituperative language, I need not say how deeply I de- 
 plore. 1 
 
 Secondly. In the best and most violet-bedded bits of his 
 work there is yet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier 
 verse, a strange taint ; and indefinable — evening flavour of 
 Covent Garden, as it were ; — not to say, escape of gas in the 
 Strand. That is simply what it proclaims itself — London air. 
 If he had lived all his life in Green-head .Ghyll, things would 
 of course have been different. But it was his fate to come to 
 town — modern town — like Michael's son ; and modern Lon- 
 don (and Venice) are answerable for the state of their drains, 
 not Byron. 
 
 Thirdly. His melancholy is without any relief whatsoever ; 
 his jest sadder than his earnest ; while, in Elizabethan work, 
 all lament is full of hope, and ail pain of balsam. 
 
 Of this evil he has himself told you the cause in a single 
 line, prophetic of all things since and now. c Where he gazed, 
 a gloom pervaded space.' 2 
 
 So that, for instance, while Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to 
 town, being an exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, 
 on Westminster Bridge, remarking how the city now did like 
 a garment wear the beauty of the morning ; Byron, rising 
 somewhat later, contemplated only the garment which the 
 beauty of the morning had by that time received for wear 
 from the city : and again, while Mr. Wordsworth, in irrepres- 
 sible religious rapture, calls God to witness that the houses 
 seem asleep, Byron, lame demon as he was, flying smoke- 
 drifted, unroofs the houses at a glance, and sees what the 
 
 1 In this point, compare the Curse of Minerva with the Tears of the 
 Muses. 
 
 2 'He,' — Lucifer; { Vision of Judgment, 24). It is precisely because 
 Byron was not his servant, that he could see the gloom. To the Devil's 
 true servants, their Master's presence brings both cheerfulness and pros- 
 perity ; — with a delightful sense of their own wisdom and virtue ; and 
 of the * progress' of things in general : — in smooth sea and fair weather, 
 — and with no need either of helm touch, or oar toil : as when once one 
 is well within the edge of Maelstrom. 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 215 
 
 mighty cockney heart of them contains in the still lying of it, 
 and will stir up to purpose in the waking business of it, 
 
 * The sordor of civilisation, mixed 
 With all the passions which Man's fall hath fixed.* 1 
 
 Fourthly, with this steadiness of bitter melancholy, there is 
 joined a sense of the material beauty, both of inanimate na- 
 ture, the lower animals, and human beings, which in the iri- 
 descence, colour-depth, and morbid (I use the word deliberately) 
 mystery and softness of it, — with other qualities indescribable 
 by any single words, and only to be analysed by extreme care, 
 — is found, to the full, only in five men that I know of in 
 modern times ; namely Bousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, 
 and myself, — differing totally and throughout the entire group 
 of us, from the delight in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and 
 the Trecentisti ; and separated, much more singularly, from 
 the cheerful joys of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Scott, by its 
 unaccountable affection for ' Kokkes blak 9 and other forms 
 of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans, which to 
 Shakespeare were only Alpine rheum ; and the Via Malas and 
 Diabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned none 
 but lost souls to climb, or cross ; — all this love of impending 
 mountains, coiled thunder-clouds, and dangerous sea, being 
 joined in us with a sulky, almost ferine, love of retreat in val- 
 leys of Charmettes, gulphs- of Spezzia, ravines of Olympus, low 
 lodgings in Chelsea, and close brushwood at Coniston. 
 
 And, lastly, also in the whole group of us, glows volcanic 
 instinct of Astrasan justice returning not to, but up out of, the 
 earth, which will not at all suffer us to rest any more in Pope's 
 serene 6 whatever is, is right ; ' but holds, on the contrary, pro- 
 found conviction that about ninety-nine hundredths of what- 
 ever at present is, is wrong : conviction making four of us, 
 
 1 Island, ii. 4 ; perfectly orthodox theology, you observe ; no denial 
 of the fall,— nor substitution of Bacterian birth for it. Nay, nearly 
 Evangelical theology, in contempt for the^human heart ; but with deeper 
 than Evangelical humility, acknowledging also what is sordid in its 
 civilisation. 
 
216 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 according to our several manners, leaders of revolution for 
 the poor, and declarers of political doctrine monstrous to the 
 ears of mercenary mankind ; and driving the fifth, less san- 
 guine, into mere painted-melody of lament over the fallacy of 
 Hope and the implacabieness of Fate. 
 
 In Byron the indignation, the sorrow, and the effort are 
 joined to the death : and they are the parts of his nature (as 
 of mine also in its feebler terms), which the selfishly comforta- 
 ble public have, literally, no conception of whatever ; and from 
 which the piously sentimental public, offering up daily the 
 pure emotion of divine tranquillity, shrink with anathema not 
 unembittered by alarm. 
 
 Concerning which matters I hope to speak further and with 
 more precise illustration in my next paper ; but, seeing that this 
 present one has been hitherto somewhat sombre, and perhaps, 
 to gentle readers, not a little discomposing, I will conclude it 
 with a piece of light biographic study, necessary to my plan, 
 and as conveniently admissible in this place as afterwards ; — 
 namely, the account of the manner in which Scott — whom we 
 shall always find, as aforesaid, to be in salient and palpable 
 elements of character, of the World, worldly, as Burns is of the 
 Flesh, fleshly, and Byron of the Deuce, damnable, — spent his 
 Sunday. 
 
 As usual, from Lockhart's farrago we cannot find out the 
 first thing we want to know, — w T hether Scott worked after his 
 week-day custom, on the Sunday morning. But, I gather, 
 not ; at all events his household and his cattle rested (L. iii. 
 108). I imagine he walked out into his woods, or read quietly 
 in his study. Immediately after breakfast, whoever was in 
 the house, ' Ladies and gentlemen, I shall read prayers at 
 eleven, when I expect you all to attend ' (vii. 306). Question 
 of college and other externally unanimous prayers settled for 
 us very briefly : ' if you have no faith, have at least manners.' 
 He read the Church of England service, lessons and all, the 
 latter, if interesting, eloquently (ibid.). After the service, one 
 of Jeremy Taylor's sermons (vi. 188). After the sermon, if the 
 weather was fine, walk with his family, do'gs included and 
 guests, to cold picnic (iii. 109), followed by short extempore 
 
FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 217 
 
 biblical novelettes ; for he had his Bible, the Old Testa- 
 ment especially, by heart, it having been his mother's last gift 
 to him (vi. 174). These lessons to his children in Bible his- 
 tory were always given, whether there was picnic or not. For 
 the rest of the afternoon he took his pleasure in the woods 
 with Tom Purdie, who also always appeared at his master's 
 elbow on Sunday after dinner was over, and drank long life 
 to the laird and his lady and all the good company, in a quaigh 
 of whiskey or a tumbler of wine, according to his fancy (vi. 
 195). Whatever might happen on the other evenings of the 
 week, Scott always dined at home on Sunday ; and with old 
 friends : never, unless inevitably, receiving any person with 
 whom he stood on ceremony (v. 335). He came into the room 
 rubbing his hands like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, 
 his Peppers and Mustards gambolling about him, ' and even 
 the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail with sympa- 
 thy.' For the usquebaugh of the less honoured week-days, at 
 the Sunday board he circulated the champagne briskly during 
 dinner, and considered a pint of claret each man's fair share 
 afterwards (v. 339). In the evening, music being to the Scot- 
 tish worldly mind indecorous, he read aloud some favourite 
 author, for the amusement or edification of his little circle. 
 Shakespeare it might be, or Dry den, — Johnson, or Joanna 
 Baillie, — Crabbe, or Wordsworth. But in those days 'Byron 
 was pouring out his spirit fresh and full, and if a new piece 
 from his hand had appeared, it was sure to be read by Scott the 
 Sunday evening afterwards ; and that with such delighted em- 
 phasis as showed how completely the elder bard had kept up 
 his enthusiasm for poetry at pitch of youth, and all his admira- 
 tion of genius, free, pure, and unstained by the least drop of 
 literary jealousy ? (v. 341). 
 
 With such necessary and easily imaginable varieties as 
 chanced in having Dandy Dinmont or Captain Brown for 
 guests at Abbotsford, or Colonel Mannering, Counsellor Pley- 
 clell, and Dr. Kobertson in Castle Street, such was Scott's 
 habitual Sabbath : a day, we perceive, of eating the fat, (din- 
 ner, presumably not cold, being a work of necessity and mercy 
 — thou also, even thou, Saint Thomas of Trumbull, hast 
 
218 
 
 FICTION— FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 thine !) and drinking the sweet, abundant in the manner of 
 Mr. Southey's cataract of Lodore, — £ Here it comes, sparkling.' 
 A day bestrewn with coronations and sops in wine ; deep in 
 libations to good hope and fond memory ; a day of rest to 
 beast, and mirth to man, (as also to sympathetic beasts that 
 can be merry,) and concluding itself in an Orphic hour of de- 
 light, signifying peace on Tweedside, and goodwill to men, 
 there or far away ; — always excepting the French, and Boney. 
 
 ' Yes, and see what it all came to in the end/ 
 
 Not so, dark-virulent Minos-Mucklewrath ; the end came of 
 quite other things : of these, came such length of days and 
 peace as Scott had in his Fatherland, and such immortality as 
 he has in all lands. 
 
 Nathless, firm, though deeply courteous, rebuke, for his 
 sometimes overmuch light-mindedness, was administered to 
 him by the more grave and thoughtful Byron. For the Lord 
 Abbot of Newstead knew his Bible by heart as well as Scott, 
 though it had never been given him by his mother as her dear- 
 est possession. Knew it, and, what was more, had thought of 
 ifc, and sought in it what Scott had never cared to think, 
 nor been fain to seek. 
 
 And loving Scott well, and always doing him every possible 
 pleasure in the way he sees to be most agreeable to him — as, 
 for instance, remembering with precision, and writing down 
 the very next morning, every blessed word that the Prince 
 Regent had been pleased to say of him before courtly audi- 
 ence, — he yet conceived that such cheap ryming as his own 
 Bride of Abydos, for instance, which he had written from be- 
 ginning to end in four days, or even the travelling reflections 
 of Harold and Juan on men and women, were scarcely steady 
 enough Sunday afternoon's reading for a patriarch-Merlin like 
 Scott. So he dedicates to him a work of a truly religious ten- 
 dency, on which for his own part he has done his best, — the 
 drama of Gain. Of which dedication the virtual significance 
 to Sir Walter might be translated thus. Dearest and last of 
 Border soothsayers, thou hast indeed told us of Black Dwarfs, 
 and of White Maidens, also of Grey Friars, and Green Fairies ; 
 also of sacred hollies by the well, and haunted crooks in the 
 
FICTION-FAIR AND FOUL. 
 
 219 
 
 glen. But of the bushes that the black dogs rend in the 
 woods of Phlegethon ; and of the crooks in the glen, and the 
 bickerings of the burnie where ghosts meet the mightiest of 
 us ; and of the black misanthrope, who is by no means yet a 
 dwarfed one, and concerning whom wiser creatures than 
 Hobbie Elliot may tremblingly ask ' Gude guide us, what's 
 yon ? ' hast thou yet known, seeing that thou hast yet told, 
 nothing. 
 
 Scott may perhaps have his answer. We shall in good time 
 hear. 
 
 John Euskin. 
 
THE 
 
 ELEMENTS OF DRAWING 
 
 IN 
 
 THREE LETTERS TO BEGINNERS 
 
 "WITH ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN Br THE AUTHOR 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 It may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a Manual of 
 Drawing, I ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing 
 should be learned ; but those reasons appear to me so many 
 and so weighty, that I cannot quickly state or enforce them. 
 With the reader's permission, as this volume is too large al- 
 ready, I will waive all discussion respecting the importance 
 of the subject, and touch only on those points which may ap- 
 pear questionable in the method of its treatment. 
 
 In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use of 
 children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think 
 it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary 
 practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be con- 
 tinually scrawling on what paper it can get ; and should be 
 allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given 
 for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It should 
 be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon 
 as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs 
 the paper with shapeless stains, the colour-box may be taken 
 away till it knows better : but as soon as it begins painting 
 red coats on soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should 
 have colours at command ; and, without restraining its choice 
 of subject in that imaginative and historical art, of a military 
 tendency, which children delight in, (generally quite as valu- 
 able, by the way, as any historical art delighted in by their 
 elders,) it should be gently led by the parents to try to draw, 
 in such childish fashion as may be, the things it can see and 
 
224 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 likes, — birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit. In later years, 
 the indulgence of using the colour should only be granted as 
 a reward, after it has shown care and progress in its drawings 
 with pencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints 
 should always be within a boy's reach : in these days of cheap 
 illustration he can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales 
 without good woodcuts in it, and should be encouraged to copy 
 what he likes best of this kind ; but should be firmly restricted 
 to a few prints and to a few books. If a child has many toys, 
 it will get tired of them and break them ; if a boy has many 
 prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them ; it is by 
 the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleas- 
 ure in them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The 
 parents need give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as 
 far as drawing is concerned, beyond insisting upon economi- 
 cal and neat habits with his colours and paper, showing him 
 the best way of holding pencil and rule, and, so far as they 
 take notice of his work, pointing out where a line is too short 
 or too long, or too crooked, when compared with the copy ; 
 accuracy being the first and last thing they look for. If the 
 child shows talent for inventing or grouping figures, the par- 
 ents should neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with 
 it frankly, or show pleasure in what it has done, just as they 
 show pleasure in seeing it well, or cheerful ; but they must 
 not praise it for being clever, any more than they would praise 
 it for being stout. They should praise it only for what costs 
 it self-denial, namely attention and hard work ; otherwise 
 they will make it work for vanity's sake, and always badly. 
 The best books to put into its hands are those illustrated 
 by George Cruikshank or by Eichter. (See Appendix.) At 
 about the age of twelve or fourteen, it is quite time enough 
 to set youth or girl to serious work ; and then this book will, 
 I think, be useful to them ; and I have good hope it may be 
 so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to know 
 something of the first principles of art. 
 
 Yet observe, that the method of study recommended is not 
 brought forward as absolutely the best, but only as the best 
 which I can at present devise for an isolated student. It is 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 225 
 
 very likely that farther experience in teaching may enable me 
 to modify it with advantage in several important respects ; but 
 I am sure the main principles of it are sound, and most of the 
 exercises as useful as they can be rendered without a master's 
 superintendence. The method differs, however, so materially 
 from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a w r ord 
 or two of explanation may be needed to justify what might 
 otherwise be thought wilful eccentricity. 
 
 The manuals at present published on the subject of drawing 
 are all directed, as far as I know, to one or other of two ob- 
 jects. Either they propose to give the student a power of dex- 
 terous sketching with pencil or water-colour, so as to emulate 
 (at considerable distance) the slighter work of our second-rate 
 artists ; or they propose to give him such accurate command 
 of mathematical forms as may afterwards enable him to design 
 rapidly and cheaply for manufactures. When drawing is taught 
 as an accomplishment, the first is the aim usually proposed ; 
 while the second is the object kept chiefly in view at Marl- 
 borough House, and in the branch Government Schools of 
 Design. 
 
 Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, 
 to the end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet pos- 
 sible ; only, it seems to me, that we are all too much in the 
 habit of confusing art as applied to manufacture, with manufact- 
 ure itself. For instance, the skill by which an inventive work- 
 man designs and moulds a beautiful cup, is skill of true art ; but 
 the skill by which that cup is copied and afterwards multi- 
 plied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture : and the faculties 
 which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original 
 piece, are not to be developed by the same system of instruc- 
 tion as those which enable another to produce a maximum 
 number of approximate copies of it in a given time. Farther : 
 it is surely inexpedient that any reference to purposes of 
 manufacture should interfere with the education of the artist 
 himself. Try first to manufacture a Eaphael ; then let Raph- 
 ael direct your manufacture. He will design you a plate, or 
 cup, or a house, or a palace, whenever you want it, and de- 
 sign them in the most convenient and rational way ; but da 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 not let your anxiety to reach the platter and the cup interfere 
 with your education of the Raphael. Obtain first the best 
 work you can, and the ablest hands, irrespective of any con- 
 sideration of economy or facility of production. Then leave 
 your trained artist to determine how far art can be popular- 
 ised, or manufacture ennobled. 
 
 Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual 
 temper and character) the excellence of an artist, as such, 
 depends wholly on refinement of perception, and that it is 
 this, mainly, which a master or a school can teach ; so 
 that while powers of invention distinguish man from man, 
 powers of perception distinguish school from school. All 
 great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of 
 sight : and the only rule which I have, as yet, found to be 
 without exception respecting art, is that all great art is deli- 
 cate. 
 
 Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following system 
 is to obtain, first, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost of 
 the pupil's power, a delicate method of work, such as may 
 ensure his seeing truly. For I am nearly convinced, that 
 when once we see keenly enough, there is very little difficulty 
 in drawing what we see ; but, even supposing that this diffi- 
 culty be still great, I believe that the sight is a more im- 
 portant thing than the drawing ; and I would rather teach 
 drawing that my pupils may learn to love Nature, than teach 
 the looking at Nature that they may learn to draw. It is 
 surely also a more important thing for young people and un- 
 professional students, to know how to appreciate the art of 
 others, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the 
 modes of sketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with 
 this power of judgment. No person trained to the superficial 
 execution of modern w T ater-colour painting, can understand 
 the work of Titian or Leonardo ; they must for ever remain 
 blind to the refinement of such men's pencilling, and the pre- 
 cision of their thinking. But, however slight a degree of 
 manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the 
 mode recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for 
 it that he cannot go once through the advised exercises without 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 227 
 
 beginning to understand what masterly work means ; and, by 
 the time he has gained some proficiency in them, he will have 
 a pleasure in looking at the painting of the great schools, and 
 a new perception of the exquisiteness of natural scenery, such 
 as would repay him for much more labour than I have asked 
 him to undergo. 
 
 That labour is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it 
 possible that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil 
 works unassisted by a master. For the smooth and straight 
 road which admits unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be 
 dull as well as smooth ; and the hedges need to be close and 
 trim when there is no guide to warn or bring back the erring 
 traveller. The system followed in this work will, therefore, 
 at first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are familiar 
 with the practice of our class at the Working Men's College ; 
 for there, the pupil, having the master at his side to extricate 
 him from such embarrassments as his first efforts may lead 
 into, is at once set to draw from a solid object, and soon finds 
 entertainment in his efforts and interest in his difficulties. 
 Of course the simplest object which it is possible to set before 
 the eye is a sphere ; and practically, I find a child's toy, a 
 white leather ball, better than anything else ; as the gradations 
 on balls of plaster of Paris, which I use sometimes to try the 
 strength of pupils who have had previous practice, are a little 
 too delicate for a beginner to perceive. It has been objected 
 that a circle, or the outline of a sphere, is one of the most 
 difficult of all lines to draw. It is so ; but I do not want it to 
 be drawn. All that his study of the ball is to teach the pupil, 
 is the way in which shade gives the appearance of projection. 
 This he learns most satisfactorily from a sphere ; because any 
 solid form, terminated by straight lines or flat surfaces, owes 
 some of its appearance of projection to its perspective ; but in 
 the sphere, what, without shade, was a flat circle, becomes, 
 merely by the added shade, the image of a solid ball ; and this 
 fact is just as striking to the learner, whether his circular out- 
 line be true or false. He is, therefore, never allowed to 
 trouble himself about it ; if he makes the ball look as oval as 
 an egg, the degree of error is simply pointed out to him, and 
 
228 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 he does better next time, and better still the next. But his 
 mind is always fixed on the gradation of shade, and the out- 
 line left to take, in due time, care of itself. I call it outline, 
 for the sake of immediate intelligibility, — strictly speaking, it 
 is merely the edge of the shade ; no pupil in my class being 
 ever allowed to draw an outline, in the ordinary sense. It is 
 pointed out to him, from the first, that Nature relieves one 
 mass, or one tint, against another ; but outlines none. The 
 outline exercise, the second suggested in this letter, is recom- 
 mended, not to enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as the 
 only means by which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of 
 eye, and discipline his hand. When the master is by, errors 
 in the form and extent of shadows can be pointed out as 
 easily as in outline, and the handling can be gradually cor- 
 rected in details of the work. Bat the solitary student can 
 only find out his own mistakes by help of the traced limit, and 
 can only test the firmness of his hand by an exercise in which 
 nothing but firmness is required ; and during which all other 
 considerations (as of softness, complexity, &c.) are entirely 
 excluded. 
 
 Both the system adopted at the Working Men's College, 
 and that recommended here, agree, however, in one principle, 
 which I consider the most important and special of all that 
 are involved in my teaching : namely, the attaching its full 
 importance, from the first, to local colour. I believe that the 
 endeavour to separate, in the course of instruction, the ob- 
 servation of light and shade from that of local colour, has 
 always been, and must always be, destructive of the student's 
 power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as much 
 as it retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader's time 
 by any discussion of the principle here, but I wish him to 
 note it as the only distinctive one in my system, so far as it is 
 a system. For the recommendation to the pupil to copy faith- 
 fully, and without alteration, whatever natural object he 
 chooses to study, is serviceable, among other reasons, just be- 
 cause it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and teaches 
 people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle 
 or stirrups ; my main object being, at first, not to get my 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 229 
 
 pupils to hold their reins prettily, but to " sit like a jack- 
 anapes, never off." 
 
 In these written instructions, therefore, it has always been 
 with regret that I have seen myself forced to advise anything 
 like monotonous or formal discipline. But, to the unassisted 
 student, such formalities are indispensable, and I am not with- 
 out hope that the sense of secure advancement, and the pleas- 
 ure of independent effort, may render the following out of 
 even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible to the 
 solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should be other- 
 wise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome, I can only 
 desire him to consider whether the acquirement of so great a 
 power as that of pictorial expression of thought be not worth 
 some toil ; or whether it is likely, in the natural order of 
 matters in this working world, that so great a gift should be 
 attainable by those who will give no price for it. 
 
 One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find 
 I have not imposed upon him : namely, learning the laws of 
 perspective. It would be worth while to learn them, if he 
 could do so easily ; but without a master's help, and in the 
 way perspective is at present explained in treatises, the diffi- 
 culty is greater than the gain. For perspective is not of the 
 slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw the 
 rounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot draw 
 the sweep of a sea bay ; you can foreshorten a log of wood 
 by it, but you cannot foreshorten an arm. Its laws are too 
 gross and few to be applied to any subtle form ; therefore, as 
 you must learn to draw the subtle forms by the eye, certainly 
 you may draw the simple ones. No great painters ever 
 trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them 
 know its laws ; they draw everything by the eye, and, nat- 
 urally enough, disdain in the easy parts of their work rules 
 which cannot help them in difficult ones. It would take 
 about a month's labour to draw imperfectly, by laws of per- 
 spective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in five 
 minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a 
 head, or bending the curves of a pattern in and out among 
 the folds of drapery. It is true that when perspective way 
 
230 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 first discovered, everybody amused themselves with it ; and 
 all the great painters put fine saloons and arcades behind 
 their madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in per. 
 spective : but even this was generally done by them only to 
 catch the public eye, and they disdained the perspective so 
 much, that though they took the greatest pains with the cir- 
 clet of a crown, or the rim of a crystal cup, in the heart of 
 their picture, they would twist their caj)itals of columns and 
 towers of churches about in the background in the most wan- 
 ton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only 
 they left just perspective enough to please the public. In 
 modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except David 
 Koberts, knows so much perspective as would enable him to 
 draw a Gothic arch to scale, at a given angle and distance. 
 Turner, though he was professor of perspective to the Royal 
 Academy, did not know what he professed, and never, as far 
 as I remember, drew a single building in true perspective in 
 his life ; he drew them only with as much perspective as suited 
 him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and twisted 
 his buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. 
 I do not justify this ; and would recommend the student at 
 least to treat perspective with common civility, but to pay no 
 court to it. The best way he can learn it, by himself, is by 
 taking a pane of glass, fixed in a frame, so that it can be set 
 upright before the eye, at the distance at which the proposed 
 sketch is intended to be seen. Let the eye be placed at some 
 fixed point, opposite the middle of the pane of glass, but as 
 high or as low as the student likes ; then with a brush at the 
 end of a stick, and a little body-colour that will adhere to the 
 glass, the lines of the landscape may be traced on the glass, 
 as you see them through it. When so traced they are all in 
 true perspective. If the glass be sloped in any direction, the 
 lines are still in true perspective, only it is perspective cal- 
 culated for a sloping plane, while common perspective always 
 supposes the plane of the picture to be vertical. It is good, 
 in early practice, to accustom yourself to enclose your subject, 
 before sketching it, with a light frame of wood held upright 
 before you ; it will show you what you may legitimately take 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 231 
 
 into your picture, and what choice there is between a narrow 
 foreground near you, and a wide one farther off ; also, what 
 height of tree or building you can properly take in, &c.* 
 
 Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following pages, 
 because I do not think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn 
 to any good purpose by an amateur. As accessaries in land- 
 scape, they are just to be drawn on the same principles as 
 anything else. 
 
 Lastly : If any of the directions given subsequently to the 
 student should be found obscure by him, or if at any stage of 
 the recommended practice he finds himself in difficulties 
 which I have not provided enough against, he may apply by 
 letter to Mr. Ward, w T ho is my under drawing-master at the 
 Working Men's College (45 Great Ormond Street), and who 
 will give any required assistance, on the lowest terms that 
 can remunerate him for the occupation of his time. I have 
 not leisure myself in general to answer letters of inquiry, 
 however much I may desire to do so ; but Mr. Ward has al- 
 ways the power of referring any question to me when he 
 thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however, that enough 
 guidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence of 
 any serious embarrassment ; and I believe that the student 
 who obeys its directions will find, on the whole, that the best 
 answer of questions is perseverance ; and the best drawing- 
 masters are the woods and hills. 
 
 * If the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more of 
 perspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Runciman (of 49 
 Accacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing-master, and 
 to whom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly, easily, and 
 rightly. 
 
THE 
 
 ELEMENTS OF DRAWING-. 
 
 LETTER I 
 
 on first practice. 
 
 My Dear Reader : 
 
 Whether this book is to be of use to you or not, depends 
 wholly on your reason for wishing to learn to draw. If you 
 desire only to possess a graceful accomplishment, to be able 
 to converse in a fluent manner about drawing, or to amuse 
 yourself listlessly in listless hours, I cannot help you : but if 
 you wish to learn drawing that you may be able to set down 
 clearly, and usefully, records of such things as cannot be de- 
 scribed in words, either to assist your own memory of them, 
 or to convey distinct ideas of them to other people ; if you 
 wish to obtain quicker perceptions of the beauty of the 
 natural world, and to preserve something like a true image of 
 beautiful things that pass away, or which you must yourself 
 leave ; if, also, you wish to understand the minds of great 
 painters, and to be able to appreciate their work sincerely, 
 seeing it for yourself, and loving it, not merely taking up the 
 thoughts of other people about it ; then I can help you, or, 
 which is better, show you how to help yourself. 
 
 Only you must understand, first of all, that these powers 
 which indeed are noble and desirable, cannot be got without 
 work. It is much easier to learn to draw well, than it is to 
 learn to play well on any musical instrument ; but you know 
 that it takes three or four years of practice, giving three or 
 
234 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 four hours a day, to acquire even ordinary command over the 
 keys of a piano ; and you must not think that a masterly com- 
 mand of your pencil, and the knowledge of what may be done 
 with it, can be acquired without painstaking, or in a very 
 short time. The kind of drawing which is taught, or sup- 
 posed to be taught, in our schools, in a term or two, perhaps 
 at the rate of an hour's practice a week, is not drawing at all. 
 It is only the performance of a few dexterous (not always even 
 that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil ; profitless 
 alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of vanity, 
 and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person, 
 after being taught what is, in polite circles, called " drawing," 
 will try to copy the commonest piece of real work — suppose 
 a lithograph on the titlepage of a new opera air, or a woodcut 
 in the cheapest illustrated newspaper of the day — they will 
 find themselves entirely beaten. And yet that common litho- 
 graph was drawn with coarse chalk, much more difficult to 
 manage than the pencil of which an accomplished young lady 
 is supposed to have command ; and that woodcut was drawn 
 in urgent haste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards ; 
 and both were done by people whom nobody thinks of as ar- 
 tists, or praises for their power ; both were done for daily 
 bread, with no more artist's pride than any simple handicrafts- 
 men feel in the work they live by. 
 
 Do not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing, any more 
 than a new language, without some hard and disagreeable la- 
 bour. But do not, on the other hand, if you are ready and 
 willing to pay this price, fear that you may be unable to get 
 on for want of special talent. It is indeed true that the per- 
 sons who have peculiar talent for art, draw instinctively and 
 get on almost without teaching ; though never without toil 
 It is true, also, that of inferior talent for drawing there are 
 many degrees ; it will take one person a much longer time 
 than another to attain the same results, and the results thus 
 painfully attained are never quite so satisfactory as those got 
 with greater ease when the faculties are naturally adapted to 
 the study. But I have never yet, in the experiments I have 
 made, met with a person who could not learn to draw at all ; 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 235 
 
 and, in general, there is a satisfactory and available power in 
 every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all per- 
 sons have the power of learning French, Latin, or arithmetic, 
 in a decent and useful degree, if their lot in life requires them 
 to possess such knowledge. 
 
 Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain amount 
 of pains, and to bear a little irksomeness and a few disappoint- 
 ments bravely, I can promise you that an hour's practice a day 
 for six months, or an hour's practice every other day for 
 twelve months, or, disposed in whatever way you find conve- 
 nient, some hundred and fifty hours' practice, will give you 
 sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever you want to 
 draw, and a good judgment, up to a certain point, of other 
 people's work : of which hours, if you have one to spare at 
 present, we may as well begin at once. 
 
 EXERCISE i. 
 
 Everything that you can see, in the world around you, pre- 
 sents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of 
 different colours variously shaded.* Some of these patches of 
 
 * (N. B. This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous or curious 
 readers. You may miss it if you are in a hurry, or are willing to take 
 the statement in the text on trust.) 
 
 The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We 
 see nothing but flat colours ; and it is only by a series of experiments 
 that we find out that a stain of black or grey indicates the dark side of 
 a solid substance, or that a faint hue indicates that the object in which 
 it appears is far away. The whole technical power of painting depends 
 on our recovery of what may be called the innocence of the eye ; that is 
 to say, a sort of childish perception of these flat stains of colour, merely 
 as such, without consciousness of what they signify, as a blind man 
 would see them if suddenly gifted with sight. 
 
 For instance ; when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain 
 directions, it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat dusty- 
 looking yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly en- 
 dowed with sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by the 
 sun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was green, and part 
 a dusty yellow (very nearly of the colour of primroses) ; and, if there 
 were primroses near, we should think that the sunlighted grass was an- 
 other mass of plants of the same sulphur-yellow colour. We should try 
 
238 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DUA WING. 
 
 colour have an appearance of lines or texture within them, as 
 a piece of cloth or slik has of threads, or an animal's skin 
 shows texture of hairs ; but whether this be the case or not, 
 the first broad aspect of the thing is that of a patch of some 
 definite colour ; and the first thing to be learned is, how to 
 produce extents of smooth colour, without texture. 
 
 This can only be done properly with a brush ; but a brush, 
 being soft at the point, causes so much uncertainty in the 
 touch of an unpractised hand, that it is hardly possible to 
 learn to draw first with it, and it is better to take, in early 
 practice, some instrument with a hard and fine point, both 
 that we may give some support to the hand, and that by work- 
 ing over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention may 
 be properly directed to all the most minute parts of it; Even 
 
 to gather some of them, and then find that the colour went away from 
 the grass when we stood between it and the sun, but not from the prim- 
 roses ; and by a series of experiments we should find out that the sun 
 was really the cause of the colour in the one, — not in the other. We 
 go through such processes of experiment unconsciously in childhood ; 
 and having once come to conclusions touching the signification of certain 
 colours, we always suppose that we see what we only know, and have 
 hardly any consciousness of the real aspect of the signs we have learned 
 to interpret. Very few people have any idea that sunlighted grass is 
 yellow. 
 
 Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as 
 nearly as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the col- 
 ours of nature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at once in 
 the sunlighted grass the precise relation between the two colours that 
 form its shade aud light. To him it does not seem shade and light, but 
 bluish green barred with gold. 
 
 Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great fact 
 about sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience and 
 touch to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white, vari- 
 ously gradated and spotted ; this other thing near you, which by expe- 
 rience you know to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of brown, 
 variously darkened and veined ; and so on : and the whole art of Paint- 
 ing consists merely in perceiving the shape and depth of these patches 
 of colour, and putting patches of the same size, depth, and shape on ean^ 
 vas. The only obstacle to the success of painting is, that many of the 
 real colours are brighter and paler than it is possible to put on canvas : 
 we must put darker ones to represent them. 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 237 
 
 the best artists need occasionally to study subjects with a 
 pointed instrument, in order thus to discipline their atten- 
 tion : and a beginner must be content to do so for a consider- 
 able period. 
 
 Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves about differ- 
 ences of colour, we must be able to lay on one colour properly, 
 in whatever gradations of depth and whatever shapes we want. 
 We will try, therefore, first to lay on tints or patches of grey, 
 of whatever depth we want, with a pointed instrument. 
 Take any finely-pointed steel pen (one of Gillott's lithographic 
 crow-quills is best), and a piece of quite smooth, but not shin- 
 ing, note-paper, cream-laid, and get some ink that has stood 
 already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite black, and 
 as thick as it can be without clogging the pen. Take a rule, 
 and draw four straight lines, so as to enclose a square or 
 nearly a square, about as large as a, Fig. 1. I say nearly a 
 square, because it does not in the least matter whether it is 
 quite square or not, the object being merely to get a space 
 enclosed by straight lines. 
 
 Now, try to fill in that square space with crossed lines, so 
 completely and evenly that it shall look like a square patch of 
 grey silk or cloth, cut out and laid on the white paper, as at b. 
 Cover it quickly, first with straightish lines, in any direction 
 you like, not troubling yourself to draw them much closer or 
 neater than those in the square a. Let them quite dry before 
 retouching them. (If you draw three or four squares side by 
 side, you may always be going on with one while the others 
 are drying). Then cover these lines with others in a different 
 direction, and let those dry ; then in another direction still, 
 and let those dry. Always wait long enough to run no risk 
 of blotting, and then draw the lines as quickly as you can. 
 
 b 
 
 Fig. 1. 
 
238 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 Each ought to be laid on as swiftly as the dash of the pen of a 
 good writer ; but if you try to reach this great speed at first 
 you will go over the edge of the square, which is a fault in 
 this exercise. Yet it is better to do so now and then than to 
 draw the lines very slowly ; for if you do, the pen leaves a lit- 
 tle dot of ink at the end of each line, and these dots spoil 
 your work. So draw each line quickly, stopping always as 
 nearly as you can at the edge of the square. The ends of lines 
 which go over the edge are afterwards to be removed with the 
 penknife, but not till you have done the whole work, other- 
 wise } r ou roughen the paper, and the next line that goes over 
 the edge makes a blot. 
 
 When you have gone over the whole three or four times, 
 you will find some parts of the square look darker than other 
 parts. Now try to make the lighter parts as dark as the rest, 
 so that the whole may be of equal depth or darkness. You 
 will find, on examining the work, that where it looks darkest 
 the lines are closest, or there are some much darker lines, 
 than elsewhere ; therefore you must put in other lines, or 
 little scratches and dots, between the lines in the paler parts ; 
 and where there are very conspicuous dark lines, scratch them 
 out lightly with the penknife, for the eye must not be attracted 
 by any line in particular. The more carefully and delicately 
 you fill in the little gaps and holes the better ; you will get on 
 faster by doing two or three squares perfectly than a great 
 many badly. As the tint gets closer and begins to look even, 
 work with very little ink in your pen, so as hardly to make 
 any mark on the paper ; and at last, where it is too dark, use 
 the edge of your penknife very lightly, and for some time, to 
 wear it softly into an even tone. You will find that the great- 
 est difficulty consists in getting evenness : one bit will always 
 look darker than another bit of your square ; or there will be 
 a granulated and sandy look over the whole. When you find 
 your paper quite rough and in a mess, give it up and begin 
 another square, but do not rest satisfied till you have done 
 your best with every square. The tint at last ought at lead 
 to be as close and even as that in b, Fig. 1. You will find, 
 however, that it is very difficult to get a pale tint ; because, 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 239 
 
 naturally, the ink lines necessary to produce a close tint at all, 
 blacken the paper more than you want. You must get over 
 this difficulty not so much by leaving the lines wide apart as 
 by trying to draw them excessively fine, lightly and swiftly ; 
 being very cautious in filling in ; and, at last, passing the pen- 
 knife over the whole. By keeping several squares in progress 
 at one time, and reserving your pen for the light one just 
 when the ink is nearly exhausted, you may get on better. 
 The paper ought, at last, to look lightly and evenly toned all 
 over, with no lines distinctly visible. 
 
 EXERCISE II. 
 
 As this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be well 
 to vary it by proceeding with another at the same time. The 
 power of shading rightly depends mainly on lightness of hand 
 and keenness of sight ; but there are other qualities required 
 in drawing, dependent not merely on lightness, but steadiness 
 of hand ; and the eye, to be perfect in its power, must be 
 made accurate as well as keen, and not only see shrewdly, but 
 measure justly. 
 
 Possess yourself, therefore, of any cheap work on botany 
 containing outline plates of leaves and flowers, it does not 
 matter whether bad or good : " Baxter's British Flowering 
 Plants " is quite good enough. Copy any of the simplest out- 
 lines, first with a soft pencil, following it, by the eye, as nearly 
 as you can ; if it does not look right in proportions, rub out 
 and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it is right \ 
 when you have got it to your mind, lay tracing-paper on the 
 book, on this paper trace the outline you have been copying, 
 and apply it to your own ; and having thus ascertained the 
 faults, correct them all patiently, till you have got it as nearly 
 accurate as may be. Work with a very soft pencil, and do not 
 rub out so hard* as to spoil the surface of your paper ; never 
 
 * Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate drawing, 
 than India-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper less : but it 
 crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides, you waste 
 the good bread, which is wrong ; and your drawing will not for a long 
 
240 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 mind how dirty the paper gets, but do not roughen it ; and 
 let the false outlines alone where they do not really interfere 
 with the true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to 
 hew and shape your drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. 
 When you have got it as right as you can, take a quill pen, 
 not very fine at the point ; rest your hand on a book about an 
 inch and a half thick, so as to hold the pen long ; and go over 
 your pencil outline with ink, raising your pen point as seldom 
 as possible, and never leaning more heavily on one part of 
 the line than on another. In most outline drawings of the 
 present day, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect 
 of shade ; all such outlines are bad, but they will serve well 
 enough for your exercises, provided you do not imitate this 
 character : it is better, however, if you can, to choose a 
 book of pure outlines. It does not in the least matter 
 whether your pen outline be thin or thick ; but it matters 
 greatly that it should be equal, not heavier in one place than 
 in another. The power to be obtained is that of drawing an 
 even line slowly and in any direction ; all dashing lines, or 
 approximations to penmanship, are bad. The pen should, as 
 it were, walk slowly over the ground, and you should be able 
 at any moment to stop it, or to turn it in any other direction, 
 like a well-managed horse. 
 
 As soon as you can copy every curve sloichj and accurately, 
 you have made satisfactory progress ; but you will find the 
 difficulty is in the dowries*. It is easy to draw what appears 
 to be a good line with a sweep of the hand, or with what is 
 called freedom ; * the real difficulty and masterliness is in 
 
 while be worth the crumbs. So use India-rubber very lightly ; or, if 
 heavily pressing it only, not passing it over the paper, and leave what 
 pencil marks that will not come away so, without minding them. In a 
 finished drawing the uneffaced penciling is often serviceable, helping 
 ihe general tone, and enabling you to take out little bright lights. 
 
 * What is usually so much sought after under the term ''freedom" is 
 the character of the drawing of a great master in a hurry, whose hand 
 is so thoroughly disciplined, that when pressed for time he can let it lly 
 as it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of a great master 
 at real work is never free : its swiftest dash is under perfect government. 
 Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause within a hair's breadth of any 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 241 
 
 never letting the hand be free, but keeping it under entire 
 control at every part of the line. 
 
 EXERCISE III. 
 
 Meantime, you are always to be going on with your shaded 
 squares, and chiefly with these, the outline exercises being 
 taken up only for rest. 
 
 As soon as you find you have some command of the pen as 
 a shading instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you 
 choose, try to produce gradated spaces like Fig. 2., the dark 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 tint passing gradually into the lighter ones. Nearly all ex- 
 pression of form, in drawing, depends on your power of gra- 
 dating delicately ; and the gradation is always most skilful 
 which passes from one tint into another very little paler. Draw, 
 therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your work, as in Fig. 
 2., and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to black, 
 passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so that every 
 
 appointed mark, in their fastest touches ; and follow, within a hair's 
 breadth, the previously intended curve. You must never, therefore, 
 aim at freedom. It is not required of your drawing that it should be 
 free, but that it should be right: in time you will be able to do right 
 easily, and then your work will be free in the best sense ; but there is 
 no merit in doing wrong easily. 
 
 These remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading, 
 which, it will be remembered, are to be made as quickly as possible. 
 The reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter it is 
 at the ends, and therefore the more easily joined with other lines, and 
 concealed by them ; the object in perfect shading being to conceal the 
 lines as much as possible. 
 
 And observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of 
 hand than accuracy of eye for outline ; for there are no outlines in Nat- 
 ure, and the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he draws 
 them at all. Do not, therefore, he discouraged if you find mistakes 
 continue to occur in your outlines ; bo content at present if you find your 
 hand gaining command over the curve;-. 
 
242 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING. 
 
 part of the band may have visible change in it. The percep. 
 tion of gradation is very deficient in all beginners (not to say, 
 in many artists), and you will probably, for some time, think 
 your gradation skilful enough when it is quite patchy and im- 
 perfect. By getting a piece of grey shaded riband, and com- 
 paring it with your drawing, you may arrive, in early stages 
 of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction with it. Widen 
 your band little by little as you get more skilful, so as to give 
 the gradation more lateral space, and accustom yourself at the 
 same time to look for gradated spaces in Nature. The sky is 
 the largest and the most beautiful ; watch it at twilight, after 
 the sun is down, and try to consider each pane of glass in the 
 window you look through as a piece of paper coloured blue, 
 or grey, or purple, as it happens to be, and observe how quietly 
 and continuously the gradation extends over the space in the 
 window, of one or two feet square. Observe the shades on 
 the outside and inside of a common white cup or bowl, which 
 make it look round and hollow ;'* and then on folds of white 
 drapery ; and thus gradually you will be led to observe the 
 more subtle transitions of the light as it increases or declines 
 on flat surfaces. At last, when your eye gets keen and true, 
 you will see gradation on everything in Nature. 
 
 But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw from 
 any objects in which the gradations are varied and compli- 
 cated ; nor will it be a bad omen for your future progress, and 
 for the use that art is to be made of by you, if the first thing 
 at which you aim should be a little bit of sky. So take any 
 narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see, between 
 the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or through 
 the corner of a pane in the window you like best to sit at, and 
 try to gradate a little space of white paper as evenly as that 
 is gradated — as tenderly you cannot gradate it without colour, 
 no, nor with colour either ; but you may do it as evenly ; or, 
 if you get impatient with your spots and lines of ink, when 
 you look at the beauty of the sky, the sense you will have 
 gained of that beauty is something to be thankful for. But 
 
 * If you can get any pieces of dead white porcelain, not glazed, they 
 will be useful models. 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 243 
 
 you ought not to be impatient with your pen and ink ; for all 
 great painters, however delicate their perception of colour, are 
 fond of the peculiar effect of light which may be got in a pen- 
 and-ink sketch, and in a woodcut, by the gleaming of the white 
 paper between the black lines ; and if you cannot gradate well 
 with pure black lines, you will never gradate well with pale 
 ones. By looking at any common woodcuts, in the cheap 
 publications of the day, you may see how gradation is given 
 to the sky by leaving the lines farther and farther apart ; but 
 you must make your lines as fine as you can, as well as far 
 apart, towards the light ; and do not try to make them long 
 or straight, but let them cross irregularly in any direction easy 
 to your hand, depending on nothing but their gradation for 
 your effect. On this point of direction of lines, however, I 
 shall have to tell you more presently ; in the meantime, do not 
 trouble yourself about it. 
 
 EXERCISE IV. 
 
 As soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the pen, 
 take an H. or HH. pencil, using its point to produce shade, 
 from the darkest possible to the palest, in exactly the same 
 manner as the pen, lightening, however, now with India-rubber 
 instead of the penknife. You will find that ail pale tints of 
 shade are thus easily producible with great precision and ten- 
 derness, but that you cannot get the same dark power as with 
 the pen and ink, and that the surface of the shade is apt to 
 become glossy and metallic, or dirty -looking, or sandy. Perse- 
 vere, however, in trying to bring it to evenness with the fine 
 point, removing any single speck or line that may be too black, 
 with the point of the knife : you must not scratch the whole 
 with the knife as you do the ink. If you find the texture very 
 speckled- looking, lighten it all over with India-rubber, and 
 recover it again with sharp, and excessively fine touches of the 
 pencil point, bringing the parts that are too pale to perfect 
 evenness with the darker spots. 
 
 You cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in 
 doing this ; work with it as if you were drawing the down on 
 a butterfly's wing. 
 
244 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF Bit A WING. 
 
 At this stage of your progress, if not before, you may be 
 assured that some clever friend will come in, and hold up his 
 hands in mocking amazement, and ask you who could set you 
 to that " niggling ; " and if you persevere in it, you will have to 
 sustain considerable persecution from your artistical acquaint- 
 ances generally, who will tell you that all good drawing de- 
 pends on " boldness." But never mind them. You do not 
 hear them tell a child, beginning music, to lay its little hand 
 with a crash among the keys, in imitation of the great mas- 
 ters ; yet they might, as reasonably as they may tell you to be 
 bold in the present state of your knowledge. Bold, in the 
 sense of being undaunted, yes ; but bold in the sense of being 
 careless, confident, or exhibitory, — no, — no, and a thousand 
 times no ; for, even if you were not a beginner, it would be 
 bad advice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be done 
 quickly, but good and beautiful work is generally done slowly; 
 you will find no boldness in the way a flower or a bird's wing- 
 is painted ; and if Nature is not bold at her work, do you 
 think you ought to be at yours f So never mind what people 
 say, but w T ork with your pencil point very patiently ; and if 
 you can trust me in anything, trust me when I tell you, that 
 though there are all kinds and ways of art, — large work for 
 large places, small work for narrow places, slow work for 
 people who can wait, and quick work for people who cannot, 
 — there is one quality, and, I think, only one, in which all 
 great and good art agrees ; — it is all delicate art. Coarse art 
 is always bad art. You cannot understand this at present, 
 because you do not know yet how much tender thought, and 
 subtle care, the great painters put into touches that at first 
 look coarse ; but, believe me, it is true, and you will find it 
 is so in due time. 
 
 You will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays at 
 pencil drawing, by noticing that more delicate gradations 
 are got in an instant by a chance touch of the India-rubber, 
 than by an hour's labour with the point ; and you may won- 
 der why I tell you to produce tints so painfully, which might, 
 it appears, be obtained with ease. But there are two reasons : 
 the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 245 
 
 able to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and 
 direction you wish ; not in any wise vaguely, as the India-rub- 
 ber does it ; and, secondly, that all natural shadows are more 
 or less mingled with gleams of light. In the darkness of 
 ground there is the light of the little pebbles or dust ; in the 
 darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves ; in the darkness 
 of flesh, transparency ; in that of a stone, granulation : in 
 every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot be 
 represented by the leaden tone wdiich you get by rubbing, or 
 by an instrument known to artists as the " stump." When 
 you can manage the point properly, you will indeed be able 
 to do much also with this instrument, or with your fingers ; 
 but then you will have to retouch the flat tints afterwards, so 
 as to put life and light into them, and that can only be done 
 with the point. Labour on, therefore, courageously, with that 
 only. 
 
 When you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly with 
 the pencil point, get a good large alphabet, and try to tint the 
 letters into shape with the pencil point. Do not outline them 
 first, but measure their height and extreme breadth with the 
 
 compasses, as a b, a c, Fig. 3., and then scratch in their shapes 
 gradually ; the letter A, enclosed within the lines, being in 
 what Turner would have called a " state of forwardness." 
 Then, when you are satisfied with the shape of the letter, 
 draw pen and ink lines firmly round the tint, as at d, and re- 
 
 EXERCISE V. 
 
 V 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
246 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, 
 
 move any touches outside the limit, first with the India-rub- 
 ber, and then with the penknife, so that all may look clear and 
 right. If you rub out any of the pencil inside the outline of 
 the letter, retouch it, closing it up to the inked line. The 
 straight lines of the outline are all to be ruled * but the curved 
 lines are to be drawn by the eye and hand ; and you will soon 
 find what good practice there is in getting the curved letters, 
 such as Bs, Cs, &c, to stand quite straight, and come into 
 accurate form. 
 
 All these exercises are very irksome, and they are not to be 
 persisted in alone ; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect 
 power in any of them. An entire master of the pencil or 
 brush ought, indeed, to be able to draw any form at once, as 
 Giotto his circle ; but such skill as this is only to be expected 
 of the consummate master, having pencil in hand all his life, 
 and all day long, hence the force of Giotto's proof of his skill ; 
 and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully, without at- 
 taining even an approximation to such a power ; the main 
 point being, not that every line should be precisely what we 
 intend or wish, but that the line which we intended or wished 
 to draw should be right. If we alw T ays see rightly and mean 
 rightly, we shall get on, though the hand may stagger a little ; 
 but if we mean w T rongry, or mean nothing, it does not matter 
 how firm the hand is. Do not, therefore, torment yourself 
 because you cannot do as well as you would like ; but work 
 patiently, sure that every square and letter will give you a 
 certain increase of power ; and as soon as you can draw your 
 letters pretty well, here is a more amusing exercise for you. 
 
 * Artists who glance at this book may be surprised at this permission. 
 My chief reason is, that I think it more necessary that the pupil's eye 
 should be trained to accurate perception of the relations of curve and 
 right lines, by having the latter absolutely true, than that he should 
 practice drawing straight lines. But also, 1 believe, though I am not 
 quite sure of this, that he never ought to be able to draw a straight line. 
 I do not believe a perfectly trained hand ever can draw a line without 
 some curvature in it, or some variety of direction. Prout could draw 
 a straight line, but I do not believe Raphael could, nor Tintoret. A 
 great draughtsman can, as far as I have observed, draw every line but a 
 Straight one. 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE, 
 
 247 
 
 EXERCISE VI. 
 
 Choose any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly bare 
 of leaves, and which you can see against the sky, or against a 
 pale wall, or other light ground : it must not be against strong 
 light, or you will find the looking at it hurts your eyes ; nor 
 must it be in sunshine, or you will be puzzled by the lights on 
 the boughs. But the tree must be in shade ; and the sky 
 blue, or grey, or dull white. A wiiolly grey or rainy day is 
 the best for this practice. 
 
 You will see that all the boughs of the tree are dark against 
 the sky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to be laid 
 down in a map with absolute accuracy ; and, without the least 
 thought about the roundness of the stems, map them all out 
 in flat shade, scrawling them in with pencil, just as you did 
 the limbs of your letters ; then correct and alter them, rub- 
 bing out and out again, never minding how much your paper 
 is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every bough 
 is exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right 
 in curvature and in thickness. Look at the white interstices 
 between them with as much scrupulousness as if they were 
 little estates which you had to survey, and draw maps of, for 
 some important lawsuit, involving heavy penalties if you cut 
 the least bit of a corner off any of them, or gave the hedge 
 anywhere too deep a curve ; and try continually to fancy the 
 whole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white ground. 
 Do not take any trouble about the little twigs, which look like 
 a confused network or mist ; leave them all out * drawing 
 only the main branches as far as you can see them distinctly, 
 your object at present being not to draw a tree, but to learn 
 how to do so. When you have got the thing as nearly right 
 as you can — and it is better to make one good study than 
 twenty left unnecessarily inaccurate — take your pen, and put a 
 fine outline to all the boughs, as you did to your letter, taking 
 
 * Or, if you feel able to do so, scratch them in with confused quick 
 touches, indicating the general shape of the cloud or mist of twigs 
 round the main branches ; but do not take much trouble about them. 
 
248 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 care, as far as possible, to put the outline within the edge of 
 the shade, so as not to make the boughs thicker : the main 
 use of the outline is to affirm the whole more clearly ; to do 
 away with little accidental roughnesses and excrescences, and 
 especially to mark where boughs cross, or come in front of 
 each other, as at such points their arrangement in this kind 
 of sketch is unintelligible without the outline. It may per- 
 fectly well happen that in Nature it should be less distinct 
 
 Fig. 4. 
 
 than your outline will make it ; but it is better in this kind of 
 sketch to mark the facts clearly. The temptation is always to 
 be slovenly and careless, and the outline is like a bridle, and 
 forces our indolence into attention and precision. The out- 
 line should be about the thickness of that in Fig. 4., which 
 represents the ramification of a small stone pine, only I have 
 not endeavoured to represent the pencil shading within the 
 outline, as I could not easily express it in a woodcut ; and you 
 have nothing to do at present with the indication of the foli- 
 age above, of which in another place. You may also draw 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 249 
 
 your trees as much larger than this figure as you like ; only, 
 however large they may be, keep the outline as delicate, and 
 draw the branches far enough into their outer sprays to give 
 quite as slender ramification as you have in this figure, other- 
 wise you do not get good enough practice out of them. 
 
 You cannot do too many studies of this kind : every one 
 will give you some new notion about trees : but when you 
 are tired of tree boughs, take any forms whatever which are 
 drawn in flat colour, one upon another ; as patterns on any 
 kind of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance), executed in 
 two colours only ; and practice drawing them of the right 
 shape and size by the eye, and filling them in with shade of 
 the depth required. 
 
 In doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of 
 representing depth of colour by depth of shade. Thus a pat- 
 tern of ultramarine blue will have to be represented by a 
 darker tint of grey than a pattern of yellow. 
 
 And now it is both time for you to begin to learn the me- 
 chanical use of the brush, and necessary for you to do so in 
 order to provide yourself with the gradated scale of colour 
 which you will want. If you can, by any means, get acquainted 
 with any ordinarily skilful water-colour painter, and prevail 
 on him to show you how to lay on tints with a brush, by all 
 means do so ; not that you are yet, nor for a long while yet, 
 to begin to colour, but because the brush is often more con- 
 venient than the pencil for laying on masses or tints of shade, 
 and the sooner you know how to manage it as an instrument 
 the better. If, however, you have no opportunity of seeing 
 how water-colour is laid on by a workman of any kind, the 
 following directions will help you : — 
 
 EXERCISE VII. 
 
 Get a shilling cake of Prussian blue. Dip the end of it in 
 water so as to take up a drop, and rub it in a w r hite saucer 
 till you cannot rub much more, and the colour gets dark, 
 thick, and oily-looking. Put two teaspoonfuls of water to the 
 colour you have rubbed down, and mix it well up with a 
 camel's-hair brush about three quarters of an inch long. 
 
250 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 Then take a piece of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol board 
 or pasteboard ; divide it, with your pencil and rule, into 
 squares as large as those of the very largest chess-board : they 
 need not be perfect squares, only as nearly so as you can 
 quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard on something sloping as 
 much as an ordinary desk ; then, dipping your brush into the 
 colour you have mixed, and taking up as much of the liquid 
 as it will carry, begin at the top of one of the squares, and 
 lay a pond or runlet of colour along the top edge. Lead this 
 pond of colour gradually downwards, not faster at one place 
 than another, but as if you were adding a row of bricks to a 
 building, all along (only building down instead of up), dip- 
 ping the brush frequently so as to keep the colour as full in 
 that, and in as great quantity on the paper, as you can, so 
 only that it does not run down anywhere in a little stream. 
 But if it should, never mind ; go on quietly with your square 
 till you have covered it all in. When you get to the bottom, 
 the colour will lodge there in a great wave. Have ready a 
 piece of blotting-paper ; dry your brush on it, and with the 
 dry brush take up the superfluous colour as you would with a 
 sponge, till it all looks even. 
 
 In leading the colour down, you will find your brush con- 
 tinually go over the edge of the square, or leave little gaps 
 within it. Do not endeavour to retouch these, nor take much 
 care about them ; the great thing is to get the colour to lie 
 smoothly where it reaches, not in alternate blots and pale 
 patches ; try, therefore, to lead it over the square as fast as 
 possible, with such attention to your limit as you are able to 
 give. The use of the exercise is, indeed, to enable you finally 
 to strike the colour up to the limit with perfect accuracy ; but 
 the first thing is to get it even, the power of rightly striking 
 the edge comes only by time and practice ; even the greatest 
 artists rarely can do this quite perfectly. 
 
 When you have done one square, proceed to do another 
 which does not communicate with it. When you have thus 
 done all the alternate squares, as on a chess-board, turn the 
 pasteboard upside down, begin again with the first, and put 
 another coat over it, and so on over all the others. The use 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 251 
 
 of turning the paper upside down is to neutralise the increase 
 of darkness towards the bottom of the squares, which would 
 otherwise take place from the ponding of the colour. 
 
 Be resolved to use blotting-paper, or a piece of rag, instead 
 of your lips, to dry the brush. The habit of doing so, once 
 acquired, will save you from much partial poisoning. Take 
 care, however, always to draw the brush from root to point, 
 otherwise you will spoil it. You may even wipe it as you 
 would a pen when you want it very dry, without doing harm, 
 provided you do not crush it upwards. Get a good brush at 
 first, and cherish it ; it will serve you longer and better than 
 many bad ones. 
 
 When you have done the squares all over again, do them a 
 third time, always trying to keep your edges as neat as possi- 
 ble. When your colour is exhausted, mix more in the same 
 proportions, two teaspoonfuls to as much as you can grind 
 with a drop ; and when you have done the alternate squares 
 three times over, as the paper will be getting very damp, and 
 dry more slowly, begin on the white squares, and bring them 
 up to the same tint in the same way. The amount of jagged 
 dark line which then will mark the limits of the squares will 
 be the exact measure of your unskilfulness. 
 
 As soon as you tire of squares draw circles (with com- 
 passes) ; and then draw straight lines irregularly across cir- 
 cles, and fill up the spaces so produced between the straight 
 line and the circumference ; and then draw any simple shapes 
 of leaves, according to the exercise No. 2., and fill up those, 
 until you can lay on colour quite evenly in any shape you 
 want. 
 
 You will find in the course of this practice, as you cannot 
 always put exactly the same quantity of water to the colour, 
 that the darker the colour is, the more difficult it becomes 
 to lay it on evenly. Therefore, when yon have gained some 
 definite degree of power, try to fill in the forms required witli 
 a full brush, and a dark tint, at once, instead of laying several 
 coats one over another ; always taking care that the tint, how- 
 ever dark, be quite liquid ; and that, after being laid on, so 
 much of it is absorbed as to prevent its forming a black line 
 
252 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF J) 11 A WING. 
 
 at the edge as it dries. A little experience will teach you how 
 apt the colour is to do this, and how to prevent it ; not that it 
 needs always to be prevented, for a great master in water- 
 colours will sometimes draw a firm outline, when he wants 
 one, simply by letting the colour dry in this way at the 
 edge. 
 
 When, however, you begin to cover complicated forms with 
 the darker colour, no rapidity will prevent the tint from dry- 
 ing irregularly as it is led on from part to part. You will then 
 .find the following method useful. Lay in the colour very 
 pale nnd liquid ; so pale, indeed, that you can only just see 
 where it is on the paper. Lead it up to all the outlines, and 
 make it precise in form, keeping it thoroughly wet every- 
 where. Then, when it is ail in shape, take the darker colour, 
 and lay some of it into the middle of the liquid colour. It will 
 spread gradually in a branchy kind of way, and you may now 
 lead it up to the outlines already determined, and play it w T ith 
 the brush till it fills its place well ; then let it dry, and it will 
 be as flat and pure as a single dash, yet defining all the com- 
 plicated forms accurately. 
 
 Having thus obtained the power of laying on a tolerably 
 fiat tint, you must try to lay on a gradated one. Prepare the 
 colour with three or four teaspoonfuls of water ; then, when it 
 is mixed, pour away about two-thirds of it, keeping a teaspoon - 
 ful of pale colour. Sloping your paper as before, draw two 
 pencil lines all the way down, leaving a space between them of 
 the width of a square on your chess-board. Begin at the top 
 of your paper, between the lines ; and having struck on the 
 first brushful of colour, and led it clown a little, dip your 
 brush deep in water, and mix up the colour on the plate 
 quickly with as much more water as the brush takes up at 
 that one dip : then, with this paler colour, lead the tint 
 farther down. Dip in water again, mix the colour again, and 
 thus lead down the tint, always dipping in water once between 
 each replenishing of the brush, and stirring the colour on the 
 plate well, but as quickly as you can. Go on until the colour 
 has become so pale that you cannot see it ; then wash your 
 brush thoroughly in water, and carry the wave down a little 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 253 
 
 farther with that, and then absorb it with the dry brush, and 
 leave it to dry. 
 
 If you get to the bottom of your paper before your colour 
 gets pale, you may either take longer paper, or begin, with 
 the tint as it was when you left off, on another sheet ; but be 
 sure to exhaust it to pure whiteness at last. When all is 
 quite dry, recommence at the top with another similar mixt- 
 ure of colour, and go down in the same way. Then again, 
 and then again, and so continually until the colour at the top 
 of the paper is as dark as your cake of Prussian blue, and 
 passes down into pure white paper at the end of your column, 
 with a perfectly smooth gradation from one into the other. 
 
 You will find at first that the paper gets mottled or wavy, 
 instead of evenly gradated ; this is because at some places you 
 have taken up more water in your brush than at others, or 
 not mixed it thoroughly on the plate, or led one tint too far 
 before replenishing with the next. Practice only will enable 
 you to do it well ; the best artists cannot always get grada- 
 tions of this kind quite to their minds ; nor do they ever leave 
 them on their pictures without after touching. 
 
 As you get more power, and can strike the colour more 
 quickly down, you will be able to gradate in less compass ; * 
 beginning with a small quantity of colour, and adding a drop 
 of water, instead of a brushful ; with finer brushes, also, you 
 may gradate to a less scale. But slight skill will enable you 
 to test the relations of colour to shade as far as is necessary 
 for your immediate progress, which is to be done thus : — 
 
 Take cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black, of 
 cobalt, and vermilion ; and prepare gradated columns (exactly 
 as you have done with the Prussian blue) of the lake and 
 blue-black. f Cut a narrow slip all the way down, of each gra- 
 dated colour, and set the three slips side by side ; fasten them 
 down, and rule lines at equal distances across all the three, so 
 as to divide them into fifty degrees, and number the degrees 
 
 * It is more difficult, at first, to get, in colour, a narrow gradation than 
 an extended one ; but the ultimate difficulty is, as with the pen, to make 
 the gradation go far. 
 
 \ Of course, all the columns of colour are to be of equal length. 
 
254 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 of each, from light to dark, 1, 2, 3, &c. If you have gradated 
 them rightly, the darkest part either of the red or blue will 
 be nearly equal in power to the darkest part of the blue-black, 
 and any degree of the black slip will also, accurately enough 
 for our purpose, balance in weight the degree similarly num- 
 bered in the red or the blue slip. Then, when you are draw- 
 ing from objects of a crimson or blue colour, if you can match 
 their colour by any compartment of the crimson or blue in 
 your scales, the grey in the compartment of the grey scale 
 marked with the same number is the grey which must repre- 
 sent that crimson or blue in your light and shade drawing. 
 
 Next, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion. 
 You will find that you cannot darken these beyond a certain 
 point ; * for yellow and scarlet, so long as they remain yellow 
 and scarlet, cannot approach to black ; we cannot have, prop- 
 erly speaking, a dark yellow or dark scarlet. Make your 
 scales of full yellow, blue, and scarlet, half-way down ; pass- 
 ing then gradually to white. Afterwards use lake to darken 
 the upper half of the vermilion and gamboge ; and Prussian 
 blue to darken the cobalt. You will thus have three more 
 scales, passing from white nearly to black, through yellow and 
 orange, through sky-blue, and through scarlet. By mixing 
 the gamboge and Prussian blue you may make another with 
 green ; mixing the cobalt and lake, another with violet ; the 
 sepia alone will make a forcible brown one ; and so on, until 
 you have as many scales as you like, passing from black to 
 white through different colours. Then, supposing your scales 
 properly gradated and equally divided, the compartment or 
 degree No. 1. of the grey will represent in chiaroscuro the 
 No. 1. of all the other colours ; No. 2. of grey the No. 2. of 
 the other colours, and so on. 
 
 It is only necessary, however, in this matter that you should 
 understand the principle ; for it would never be possible for 
 you to gradate your scales so truly as to make them prac- 
 tically accurate and serviceable ; and even if you could, unless 
 you had about ten thousand scales, and were able to change 
 
 * The degree of darkness you can reach with the given colour is al' 
 ways indicated by the colour of the solid cake in the box. 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 255 
 
 them faster than ever juggler changed cards, you could not 
 in a day measure the tints on so much as one side of a frost- 
 bitten apple : but when once you fully understand the 
 principle, and see how all colours contain as it were a certain 
 quantity of darkness, or power of dark relief from white — 
 some more, some less ; and how this pitch or power of each 
 ma}' be represented by equivalent values of grey, you will 
 soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an approximation by a 
 glance of the eye, without any measuring scale at all. 
 
 You must now go on, again with the pen, drawing patterns, 
 and any shapes of shade that you think pretty, as veinings in 
 marble, or tortoiseshell, spots in surfaces of shells, &c., as 
 tenderly as you can, in the darknesses that correspond to 
 their colours ; and when you find you can do this success- 
 fully, it is time to begin rounding. 
 
 EXERCISE VIII. 
 
 Go out into your garden, or into the road, and pick up the 
 first round or oval stone you can find, not very white, nor 
 very dark ; and the smoother it is the better, only it must not 
 shine. Draw your table near the window, and put the stone, 
 which I will suppose is about the size of a in Fig. 5. (it had 
 better not be much larger), on a piece of not very white 
 paper, on the table in front of you. Sit so that the light may 
 come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil point in- 
 terferes with your sight of your work. You must not let 
 the sun fall on the stone, but only ordinary light : therefore 
 choose a window which the sun does not come in at. If you 
 can shut the shutters of the other windows in the room it will 
 be all the better ; but this is not of much consequence. 
 
 Now, if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything : 
 I mean, anything that is drawable. Many things (sea foam, 
 for instance) cannot be drawn at all, only the idea of them 
 more or less suggested ; but if you can draw the stone 
 rightly, every thing within reach of art is also within yours. 
 
 For all drawing depends, primarily, on your power of rep- 
 resenting Roundness. If you can once do that, all the rest is 
 easy and straightforward ; if you cannot do that, nothing 
 
256 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 else that you may be able to do will be of any use. For 
 Nature is all made up of roundnesses ; not the roundness of 
 perfect globes, but of variously curved surfaces. Boughs are 
 rounded, leaves are rounded, stones are rounded, clouds are 
 rounded, cheeks are rounded, and curls are rounded : there 
 is no more flatness in the natural world than there is vacancy. 
 The world itself is round, and so is all that is in it, more or 
 less, except human work, which is often very flat indeed. 
 
 Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round 
 stone, and you have won the battle. 
 
 Look your stone antagonist boldly in the face. You will 
 see that the side of it next the window is lighter than most of 
 the paper : that the side of it farthest from the window is 
 darker than the paper ; and that the light passes into the 
 dark gradually, while a shadow is thrown to the right on the 
 paper itself by the stone : the general appearance of things 
 being more or less as in a, Fig. 5., the spots on the stone 
 excepted, of which more presently. 
 
 Now, remember always what was stated in the outset, that 
 every thing you can see in Nature is seen only so far as it is 
 lighter or darker than the things about it, or of a different 
 colour from them. It is either seen as a patch of one colour 
 on a ground of another ; or as a pale thing relieved from a 
 dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And if you 
 can put on patches of colour or shade of exactly the same 
 size, shape, and gradations as those on the object and its 
 ground, you will produce the appearance of the object and 
 its ground. The best draughtsman — Titian and Paul Veronese 
 themselves — could do no more than this ; and you will soon 
 be able to get some power of doing it in an inferior way, if 
 you once understand the exceeding simplicity of what is to be 
 done. Suppose you have a brown book on a white sheet of 
 paper, on a red tablecloth. You have nothing to do but to 
 put on spaces of red, w 7 hite, and brown, in the same shape, 
 and gradated from dark to light in the same degrees, and 
 your drawing is done. If you will not look at what you see, 
 if you tiy to put on brighter or duller colours than are there, 
 if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 257 
 
 your paper with " vigorous " lines, or to produce anything, in 
 fact, but the plain, unaffected, and finished tranquillity of the 
 thing before you, you need not hope to get on. Nature will 
 show you nothing if you set 
 yourself up for her master. 
 But forget yourself, and try 
 to obey her, and you will find 
 obedience easier and happier 
 than you think. 
 
 The real difficulties are to 
 get the refinement of the 
 forms and the evenness of the 
 gradations. You may depend 
 upon it, when you are dissat- 
 isfied with your work, it is 
 always too coarse or too un- 
 even. It may not be wrong 
 — in all probability is not 
 wrong, in any (so-called) 
 great point. But its edges 
 are not true enough in out- 
 line ; and its shades are in 
 blotches, or scratches, or full 
 of white holes. Get it more 
 tender and more true, and 
 you will find it is more pow- 
 erful. 
 
 Do not, therefore, think 
 your drawing must be weak 
 because you have a finely 
 pointed pen in your hand. 
 Till you can draw with that, 
 you can draw w r ith nothing ; 
 when you can draw with that, 
 
 you can draw with a log of wood charred at the end. 
 boldness and power are only to be gained by care. Even in 
 fencing and dancing, all ultimate ease depends on early preci- 
 sion in the commencement ; much more in singing or drawing, 
 
 True 
 
258 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 Now, I do not want you to copy Fig. 5., but to copy the 
 stone before you in the way that Fig. 5. is done. To which 
 end, first measure the extreme length of the stone with com- 
 passes, and mark that length on your paper ; then, between 
 the points marked, leave something like the form of the stone 
 in light, scrawling the paper all over, round it, as at 6, Fig. 5. 
 You cannot rightly see what the form of the stone really is 
 till you begin finishing, so sketch it in quite rudely ; only 
 rather leave too much room for the high light, than too little : 
 and then more cautiously fill in the shade, shutting the light 
 gradually up, and putting in the dark cautiously on the dark 
 side. You need not plague yourself about accuracy of shape, 
 because, till you have practised a great deal, it is impossible 
 for you to draw 7 that shape quite truly, and you must gradu- 
 ally gain correctness by means of these various exercises : 
 what you have mainly to do at present is, to get the stone to 
 look solid and round, not much minding what its exact con- 
 tour is — only draw it as nearly right as you can without vexa- 
 tion ; and you will get it more right by thus feeling your way 
 to it in shade, than if you tried to draw the outline at first. 
 For you can see no outline ; what you see is only a certain 
 space of gradated shade, with other such spaces about it ; and 
 those pieces of shade you are to imitate as nearly as you can, 
 by scrawling the paper over till you get them to the right 
 shape, with the same gradations which they have in Nature. 
 And this is really more likely to be done well, if you have to 
 fight your way through a little confusion in the sketch, than 
 if you have an accurately traced outline. For instance, I w r as 
 going to draw, beside a, another effect on the stone ; reflected 
 light bringing its dark side out from the background : but 
 when I had laid on the first few touches, I thought it would 
 be better to stop, and let you see how I had begun it, at b. 
 In which beginning it will be observed that nothing is so de- 
 termined but that I can more or less modify, and add to or 
 diminish the contour as I work on, the lines which suggest 
 the outline being blended w T ith the others if I do not w r ant 
 them ; and the having to fill up the vacancies and conquer the 
 irregularities of such a sketch, will probably secure a higher 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 259 
 
 completion at last, than if half an hour had been spent in 
 getting a true outline before beginning. 
 
 In doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing too 
 dark. In order to ascertain what the shades of it really are, 
 cut a round hole, about half the size of a pea, in a piece of 
 white paper, the colour of that you use to draw on. Hold 
 this bit of paper, with the hole in it, between you and your 
 stone ; and pass the paper backwards and forwards, so as 
 to see the different portions of the stone (or other subject) 
 through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole 
 looks like one of the patches of colour you have been accus- 
 tomed to match, only changing in depth as it lets different 
 pieces of the stone be seen through it. You will be able thus 
 actually to match the colour of the stone, at any part of it, by 
 tinting the paper beside the circular opening. And you will 
 find that this opening never looks quite black, but that all the 
 roundings of the stone are given by subdued greys.* 
 
 You will probably find, also, that some parts of the stone, 
 or of the paper it lies on, look luminous through the open- 
 ing, so that the little circle then tells as a light spot instead 
 of a dark spot. "When this is so, you cannot imitate it, for 
 you have no means of getting light brighter than white paper : 
 but by holding the paper more sloped towards the light, you 
 will find that many parts of the stone, which before looked 
 light through the hole, then look dark through it ; and if you 
 can place the paper in such a position that every part of the 
 stone looks slightly dark, the little hole will tell always as a 
 spot of shade, and if your drawing is put in the same light, 
 you can imitate or match every gradation. Y'ou will be 
 amazed to find, under these circumstances, how slight the 
 differences of tint are, by which, through infinite delicacy of 
 gradation, Nature can express form. 
 
 If any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a 
 light through the hole, that part you need not hope to imitate. 
 Leave it white, you can do no more. 
 
 When you have done the best you can to get the general 
 
 * The figure a, Fig. 5., is very dark, but this is to give an example of 
 all kinds of depth of tint, without repeated figures. 
 
260 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 form, proceed to finish, by imitating the texture and all the 
 cracks and stains of the stone as closely as you can ; and note, 
 in doing this, that cracks or fissures of any kind, whether be- 
 tween stones in walls, or in the grain of timber or rocks, or in 
 any of the thousand other conditions they present, are never 
 expressible by single black lines, or lines of simple shadow, 
 A crack must always have its complete system of light and 
 shade, however small its scale. It is in reality a little ravine, 
 with a dark or shady side, and light or sunny side, and, 
 usually, shadow in the bottom. This is one of the instances 
 in which it may be as well to understand the reason of the 
 appearance ; it is not often so in drawing, for the aspects of 
 things are so subtle and confused that they cannot in general 
 be explained ; and in the endeavour to explain some, we are 
 sure to lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate of 
 the importance of those on which the attention is fixed, causes 
 us to exaggerate them, so that merely scientific draughtsmen 
 caricature a third part of Nature, and miss two-thirds. The 
 best scholar is he whose eye is so keen as to see at once how 
 the thing looks, and who need not, therefore, trouble himself 
 with any reasons why it looks so : but few people have this 
 acuteness of perception ; and to those who are destitute of it, 
 a little pointing out of rule and reason will be a help, espe- 
 cially when a master is not near them. I never allow my own 
 pupils to ask the reason of anything, because, as I watch their 
 work, I can always show them how the thing is, and what ap- 
 pearance they are missing in it ; but when a master is not by 
 to direct the sight, science may, here and there, be allowed 
 to do so in his stead. 
 
 Generally, then, every solid illumined object — for instance, 
 the stone you are drawing — has a light side turned towards 
 the light, a dark side turned away from the light, and a shad- 
 ow, which is cast on something else (as by the stone on the 
 paper it is set upon). You may sometimes be placed so as to 
 see only the light side and shadow, and sometimes only the 
 dark side and shadow, and sometimes both, or either, without 
 the shadow ; but in most positions solid objects will show 
 all the three, as the stone does here. 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 261 
 
 Hold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as you 
 sit now with your side to the window, so that the flat of your 
 hand is turned to the window. You will see one side of your 
 hand distinctly lighted, the other distinctly in shade. Here 
 are light side and dark side, with no seen shadow ; the shadow 
 being detached, perhaps on the table, perhaps on the other 
 side of the room ; you need not look for it at present. 
 
 Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgeways, as you 
 hold your hand, wave it up and down past the side of your 
 hand which is turned from the light, the paper being, of 
 course, farther from the window. You w T ill see, as it passes a 
 strong gleam of light strike on your hand, and light it con- 
 siderably on its dark side. This light is reflected light. It is 
 thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes first in com- 
 ing from the window) to the surface of your hand, just as a 
 ball would be if somebody threw it through the window at the 
 wall and you caught it at the rebound. 
 
 Next, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece 
 of scarlet cloth. You will see that the gleam of light falling 
 on your hand, as you wave the book is now reddened. Take 
 a blue book, and you will find the gleam is blue. Thus every 
 object will cast some of its own colour back in the light that 
 it reflects. 
 
 Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect light 
 to your hand : every object in the room, on that side of it, re- 
 flects some, but more feebly, and the colours mixing all to- 
 gether form a neutral * light, which lets the colour of your 
 hand itself be more distinctly seen than that of any object 
 which reflects light to it ; but if there were no reflected light, 
 that side of your hand would look as black as a coal. 
 
 Objects are seen, therefore in general, partly by direct light, 
 and partly by light reflected from the objects around them, 
 or from the atmosphere and clouds. The colour of their light 
 sides depends much on that of the direct light, and that of 
 the dark sides on the colours of the objects near them. It is 
 
 * Nearly neutral in ordinary circumstances, but yet with quite differ- 
 ent tones in its neutrality, according to the colours of the various re- 
 flected rays that compose it. 
 
262 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 therefore impossible to say beforehand what colour an object 
 will have at any point of its surface, that colour depending 
 partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations of 
 rays reflected from other things. The only certain fact about 
 dark sides is, that their colour will be changeful, and that a 
 picture which gives them merely darker shades of the colour 
 of the light sides must assuredly be bad. 
 
 Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are drawing 
 on. You will see one side of each finger lighted, one side dark, 
 and the shadow of your hand on the paper. Here, therefore, 
 are the three divisions of shade seen at once. And although 
 the paper is wdiite, and your hand of a rosy colour somewhat 
 darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow all along, 
 just under the finger which casts it, is darker than the flesh, 
 and is of a very deep grey. The reason of this is, that much 
 light is reflected from the paper to the dark side of your fin- 
 ger, but very little is reflected from other things to the paper 
 itself in that chink under your finger. 
 
 In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate, the 
 part of the shadow nearest the object, is darker than the dark 
 side of the object. I say in general, because a thousand ac- 
 cidents may interfere to prevent its being so. Take a little 
 bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or the ink-bottle, and play it about 
 a little on the side of your hand farthest from the window ; 
 you will presently find you are throwing gleams of light all 
 over the dark side of your hand, and in some positions of the 
 glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow al- 
 together, and you will see your hand dark on the white paper. 
 Nov/ a stupid painter would represent, for instance, a drinking- 
 glass beside the hand of one of his figures, and because he 
 had been taught by rule that " shadow was darker than 
 the dark side," he would never think of the reflection from 
 the glass, but paint a dark grey under the hand, just as if no 
 glass were there. But a great painter would be sure to think 
 of the true effect, and paint it ; and then comes the stupid 
 critic, and wonders why the hand is so light on its dark side. 
 
 Thus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a rule in 
 matters of art ; yet it is useful for you to remember that, in 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 a general way, a shadow is darker than the dark side of the 
 thing that casts it, supposing the colours otherwise the same ; 
 that is to say, when a white object casts a shadov> r on a white 
 surface, or a dark object on a dark surface : the rule will not 
 hold if the colours are different, the shadow of a black object 
 on a white surface being, of course, not so dark, usually, as 
 the black thing casting it. The only way to ascertain the ulti- 
 mate truth in such matters is to look: for it ; but, in the mean- 
 lime, you will be helped by noticing that the cracks in the 
 stone are little ravines, on one side of which the light strikes 
 sharply, wiiile the other is in shade. This dark side usually 
 casts a little darker shadow at the bottom of the crack ; and 
 the general tone of the stone surface is not so bright as the 
 light bank of the ravine. And, therefore, if you get the sur- 
 face of the object of a uniform tint, more or less indicative of 
 shade, and then scratch out a white spot or streak in it of any 
 shape ; by putting a dark touch beside this white one, you 
 may turn it, as you choose, into either a ridge or an incision, 
 into either a boss or a cavity. If you put the dark touch on 
 the side of it nearest the sun, or rather, nearest the place that 
 the light comes from, you w 7 ill make it a cut or cavity ; if you 
 put it on the opposite side, you will make it a ridge or mound : 
 and the complete success of the effect depends less on depth 
 of shade than on the rightness of the drawing ; that is to say, 
 on the evident correspondence of the form of the shadow' with 
 the form that casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or any- 
 thing irregularly shaped, you will gain far more by a little 
 patience in following the forms carefully, though with slight 
 touches, than by laboured finishing of textures of surface and 
 transparencies of shadow 7 . 
 
 When you have got the whole well into shape, proceed to 
 lay on the stains and spots with great care, quite as much as 
 you gave to the forms. Very often, spots or bars of local 
 colour do more to express form than even the light and shade, 
 and they are always interesting as the means by which Nature 
 carries light into her shadows, and shade into her lights, an 
 art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking 
 of composition. Fig. 5. is a rough sketch of a fossil sea-urchin, 
 
2G4 
 
 TEE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 in which the projections of the shell are of black flint, coming 
 through a chalky surface. These projections form dark spots 
 in the light ; and their sides, rising out of the shadow, form 
 smaller whitish spots in the dark. You may take such scat- 
 tered lights as these out with the penknife, provided you are 
 just as careful to place them rightly, as if you got them by a 
 more laborious process. 
 
 "When you have once got the feeling of the way in w r hich 
 gradation expresses roundness and projection, you may try 
 your strength on anything natural or artificial that happens 
 to take your fancy, provided it be not too complicated in 
 form. I have asked you to draw a stone first, because any 
 irregularities and failures in your shading will be less offensive 
 to you, as being partly characteristic of the rough stone sur- 
 face, than they would be in a more delicate subject ; and you 
 may as well go on drawing rounded stones of different shapes 
 for a little while, till you find you can really shade delicately. 
 You may then take up folds of thick white drapery, a napkin 
 or towel thrown carelessly on the table is as good as anything, 
 and try to express them in the same way ; only now you will 
 find that your shades must be wrought with perfect unity and 
 tenderness, or you will lose the flow of the folds. Always re- 
 member that a little bit perfected is worth more than many 
 scrawls ; whenever you feel yourself inclined to scrawl, give 
 up work resolutely, and do not go back to it till next day. 
 Of course your towel or napkin must be put on something 
 that may be locked up, so that its folds shall not be disturbed 
 till you have finished. If you find that the folds will not look 
 right, get a photograph of a piece of drapery (there are plenty 
 now to be bought, taken from the sculpture of the cathedrals 
 of Eheims, Amiens, and Chartres, which will at once educate 
 your hand and your taste), and copy some piece of that ; you 
 will then ascertain what it is that is wanting in your studies 
 from nature, whether more gradation, or greater watchfulness 
 of the disposition of the folds. Probably for some time you will 
 find yourself failing painfully in both, for drapery is very diffi- 
 cult to follow in its sweeps ; but do not lose courage, for the 
 greater the difficulty, the greater the gain in the effort. If 
 
OJS FIRST PHAGTICM 
 
 265 
 
 your eye is more just in measurement of form than delicate in 
 perception of tint, a pattern on the folded surface will help 
 you. Try whether it does or not ; and if the patterned 
 drapery confuses you, keep for a time to the simple white 
 one ; but if it helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs 
 (tartans, and simple chequered designs are better at first than 
 flowered ones), and even though it should confuse you, begin 
 pretty soon to use a pattern occasionally, copying all the dis- 
 tortions and perspective modifications of it among the folds 
 with scrupulous care. 
 
 Neither must you suppose yourself condescending in doing 
 this. The greatest masters are always fond of drawing pat- 
 terns ; and the greater they are, the more pains they take to 
 do it truly. * Nor can there be better practice at any time, as 
 introductory to the nobler complication of natural detail. 
 For when you can draw the spots which follow the folds of a 
 printed stuff, you will have some chance of following the spots 
 which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as he leaps ; 
 but if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly you will 
 never be able to draw the creature. So the cloudings on a 
 piece of wood, carefully drawn, will be the best introduction 
 to the drawing of the clouds of the sky, or the waves of the 
 sea ; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask drapery, well 
 rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the living 
 leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket, or a violet bank. 
 
 Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings of 
 books, or other finely textured substances, do not trouble 
 yourself, as yet, much about the woolliness or gauziness of the 
 thing ; but get it right in shade and fold, and true in pattern. 
 We shall see, in the course of after-practice, how the penned 
 
 * If we had any business with the reasons of this, I might, perhaps, 
 he able to show you some metaphysical ones for the enjoyment, by 
 truly artistical minds, of the changes wrought by light, and shade, and 
 perspective in patterned surfaces ; but this is at present not to the 
 point ; and all that you need to know is that the drawing of such things 
 is good exercise, and moreover a kind of exercise which Titian, Vero- 
 nese, Tintoret, Giorgione, and Turner, all enjoyed, and strove to excel 
 in. 
 
266 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OP BRA WING. 
 
 lines may be made indicative of texture ; bufc at present at 
 tend only to the light, and shade, and pattern. You will be 
 puzzled at first by lustrous surfaces, but a little attention will 
 show you that the expression of these depends merely on the 
 right drawing of their light, and shade, and reflections. Put 
 a small black japanned tray on the table in front of some 
 books ; and you will see it reflects the objects beyond it as in 
 a little black rippled pond ; its own colour mingling always 
 with that of the reflected objects. Draw these reflections oi 
 the books properly, making them dark and distorted, as you 
 will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the 
 lustre to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished 
 objects in general practice ; only you should do one or two in 
 order to understand the aspect of any lustrous portion of 
 other things, such as you cannot avoid ; the gold, for instance, 
 on the edges of books, or the shining of silk and damask, in 
 which lies a great part of the expression of their folds. Ob- 
 serve, also, that there are very few things which are totally 
 without lustre : you w T ill frequently find a light which puzzles 
 you, on some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of 
 another object. 
 
 And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure me that 
 with the point of the pen or pencil you can lay on any form 
 and shade you like, I give you leave to use the brush with one 
 colour, — sepia, or blue-black, or mixed cobalt and blue-black, 
 or neutral tint ; and this will much facilitate your study, and 
 refresh you. But, preliminarily, you must do one or two more 
 exercises in tinting. 
 
 EXERCISE IX. 
 
 Prepare your colour as before directed. Take a brush full 
 of it, and strike it on the paper in any irregular shape ; as the 
 brush gets dry sweep the surface of the paper with it as if you 
 were dusting the paper very lightly ; every such sweep of the 
 brush will leave a number of more or less minute interstices 
 in the colour. The lighter and faster every dash the better. 
 Then leave the whole to dry, and as soon as it is dry, with lit- 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 267 
 
 tie colour in your brush, so that you can bring it to a fine 
 point, fill up all the little interstices one by one, so as to make 
 the whole as even as you can, and fill in the larger gaps with 
 more colour, always trying to let the edges of the first and of 
 the newly applied colour exactly meet, and not lap over each 
 Dther. When your new colour dries, you will find it in places 
 a little paler than the first. Retouch it, therefore, trying to 
 get the whole to look quite one piece. A very small bit of 
 colour thus filled up with your very best care, and brought to 
 look as if it had been quite even from the first, will give you 
 better practice and more skill than a great deal filled in care- 
 lessly ; so do it with your best patience, not leaving the most 
 minute spot of white ; and do not fill in the large pieces first 
 and then go to the small, but quietly and steadily cover in the 
 whole up to a marked limit ; then advance a little farther, and 
 so on ; thus always seeing distinctly what is done and what 
 undone. 
 
 exercise x. 
 
 Lay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole 
 square of paper. Let it dry. Then another coat over four- 
 fifths of the square, or thereabouts, leaving the edge rather ir- 
 regular than straight, and let it dry. Then another coat over 
 three-fifths ; another over two-fifths ; and the last over one- 
 fifth ; so that the square may present the appearance of grad- 
 ual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker than the 
 one beyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in the 
 former exercise, when filling up the interstices), try, with 
 small touches, like those used in the pen etching, only a little 
 broader, to add shade delicately beyond each edge, so as to 
 lead the darker tints into the paler ones imperceptibly. By 
 touching the paper very lightly, and putting a multitude of 
 little touches, crossing and recrossing in every direction, you 
 will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints, outside of 
 each, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite them ten- 
 derly with the next tint. The whole square, when done, 
 should look evenly shaded from dark to pale, with no bars ; 
 
268 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 only a crossing texture of touches, something like chopped 
 straw, over the whole. * 
 
 Next, take your rounded pebble ; arrange it in any light 
 and shade you like ; outline it very loosely with the pencil. 
 Put on a wash of colour, prepared very pale, quite flat over 
 all of it, except the highest light, leaving the edge of your 
 colour quite sharp. Then another wash, extending only over 
 the darker parts, leaving the edge of that sharp also, as in 
 tinting the square. Then another wash over the still darker 
 parts, and another over the darkest, leaving each edge to dry 
 sharp. Then, with the small touches, efface the edges, rein- 
 force the darks, and work the whole delicately together, as you 
 would with the pen, till you have got it to the likeness of the 
 true light and shade. You will find that the tint underneath 
 is a great help, and that you can now get effects much more 
 subtle and complete than with the pen merely. 
 
 The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you may 
 not trouble or vex the colour, but let it lie as it falls suddenly 
 on the paper ; colour looks much more lovely when it has been 
 laid on with a dash of the brush, and left to dry in its own 
 way, than when it has been dragged about and disturbed ; so 
 that it is always better to let the edges and forms be a little 
 wrong, even if one cannot correct them afterwards, than to 
 lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very great masters in water- 
 colour can lay on the true forms at once with a dash, and bad 
 masters in water-colour lay on grossly false forms with a dash, 
 and leave them false ; for people in general, not knowing false 
 from true, are as much pleased with the appearance of power 
 in the irregular blot as with the presence of power in the de- 
 termined one ; but ive, in our beginnings, must do as much as 
 we can with the broad dash, and then correct with the point, 
 till we are quite right. We must take care to be right, at 
 whatever cost of pains ; and then gradually we shall find we 
 can be right with freedom. 
 
 I have hitherto limited you to colour mixed with two 01 
 
 * The use of acquiring this habit of execution is that you may be able^ 
 when you begin to colour, to let one hue be seen in minute portions, 
 gleaming between the touches of another. 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 269 
 
 three teaspoonfuls of water ; but in finishing your light and 
 shade from the stone, you may. as you efface the edge of the 
 palest coat towards the light, use the colour for the small 
 touches with more and more water, till it is so pale as not to 
 be perceptible. Thus you may obtain a perfect gradation to 
 the light. And in reinforcing the darks, when they are very 
 dark, you may use less and less water. If you take the colour 
 tolerably dark on your brush, only always liquid (not pasty), 
 and dash away the superfluous colour on blotting-paper, you 
 will find that, touching the paper very lightly with the dry 
 brush, you can, by repeated touches, produce a dusty kind of 
 bloom, very valuable in giving depth to shadow ; but it re- 
 quires great patience and delicacy of hand to do this properly. 
 You will find much of this kind of work in the grounds and 
 shadows of William Hunt's drawings.* 
 
 As you get used to the brush and colour, you will gradually 
 find out their ways for yourself, and get the management of 
 them. Nothing but practice will do this perfectly ; but you 
 will often save yourself much discouragement by remembering 
 what I have so often asserted, — that if anything goes wrong, 
 it is nearly sure to be refinement that is wanting, not force ; 
 and connexion, not alteration. If you dislike the state your 
 drawing is in, do not lose patience with it, nor dash at it, nor 
 alter its plan, nor rub it desperately out, at the place you 
 think wrong ; but look if there are no shadows you can gra- 
 date more perfectly ; no little gaps and rents you can fill ; no 
 forms you can more delicately define : and do not rush at any 
 of the errors or incompletions thus discerned, but efface or 
 supply slowly, and you will soon find your drawing take 
 another look. A very useful expedient in producing some 
 effects, is to wet the paper, and then lay the colour on it, more 
 or less wet, according to the effect you want. You will soon 
 see how prettily it gradates itself as it dries ; when dry, you 
 can reinforce it with delicate stippling when you want it 
 darker. Also, while the colour is still damp on the paper, by 
 drying your brush thoroughly, and touching the colour with 
 the brush so dried, you may take out soft lights with great 
 * William Hunt, of the Old Water-colour Society. 
 
270 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 tenderness and precision. Try all sorts of experiments of thia 
 kind, noticing how the colour behaves ; but remembering al- 
 ways that your final results must be obtained, and can only 
 be obtained, by pure work with the point, as much as in the 
 pen drawing. 
 
 You will find also, as you deal with more and more compli- 
 cated subjects, that Nature's resources in light and shade are 
 so much richer than yours, that you cannot possibly get all, or 
 anything like all, the gradations of shadow in any given group. 
 When this is the case, determine first to keep the broad masses 
 of things distinct : if, for instance, there is a green book, and 
 a white piece of paper, and a black inkstand in the group, be 
 sure to keep the white paper as a light mass, the green book 
 as a middle tint mass, the black inkstand as a dark mass ; and 
 do not shade the folds in the paper, or corners of the book, so 
 as to equal in depth the darkness of the inkstand. The great 
 difference between the masters of light and shade, and imper- 
 fect artists, is the power of the former to draw so delicately 
 as to express form in a dark-coloured object with little light, 
 and in a light-coloured object with little darkness ; and it is 
 better even to leave the forms here and there unsatisfactorily 
 rendered than to lose the general relations of the great masses. 
 And this observe, not because masses are grand or desirable 
 things in your composition (for with composition at present 
 you have nothing whatever to do), but because it is a fact that 
 things do so present themselves to the eyes of men. and that 
 we see paper, book, and inkstand as three separate things, be- 
 fore we see the wrinkles, or chinks, or corners of any of the 
 three. Understand, therefore, at once, that no detail can be 
 as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in the reality ; and 
 strive to keep all your shadows and marks and minor mark- 
 ings on the masses, lighter than they appear to be in Nature , 
 you are sure otherwise to get them too dark. You will in 
 doing this find that you cannot get the projection of things 
 sufficiently shown ; but never mind that ; there is no need 
 that they should appear to project, but great need that 
 their relations of shade to each other should be preserved 
 All deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration oi 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 271 
 
 shadow ; and whenever you see it, you may be sure the draw- 
 ing is more or less bad ; a thoroughly fine drawing or paint- 
 ing will always show a slight tendency towards flatness. 
 
 Observe, on the other hand, that however white an object 
 may be, there is always some small point of it whiter than the 
 rest. You must therefore have a slight tone of grey over 
 everything in your picture except on the extreme high lights ; 
 even the piece of white paper, in your subject, must be toned 
 slightly down, unless (and there are a thousand chances to 
 one against its being so) it should all be turned so as fully to 
 front the light. By examining the treatment of the white ob- 
 jects in any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese or 
 Titian, you will soon understand this.* 
 
 As soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing with the 
 brush the undulations of surfaces and the relations of masses, 
 you may proceed to draw more complicated and beautiful 
 things.f And first, the boughs of trees, now not in mere dark 
 relief, but in full rounding. Take the first bit of branch or 
 stump that comes to hand, with a fork in it ; cut off the ends 
 of the forking branches, so as to leave the whole only about 
 a foot in length ; get a piece of paper the same size, fix your 
 bit of branch in some place where its position will not be 
 altered, and draw it thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full 
 size ; striving, above all things, to get an accurate expression 
 of its structure at the fork of the branch. "When once you 
 
 * At Marlborough House, among the four principal examples of Tur- 
 ner's later water-colour drawing, perhaps the most neglected is that of 
 lishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of his most wonderful works, 
 though unfinished. If you examine the larger white fishing-boat sail, 
 you will find it has a little spark of pure white in its right-hand upper 
 corner, about as large as a minute pin's head, and that all the surf ace of 
 the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, 
 and you will begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing 
 of the Cupid in Correggio's large picture in the National Gallery is fo- 
 cussed to two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light 
 on the white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing child- 
 faun, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify the same thing. 
 
 r I shall not henceforward number the exercises recommended ; as 
 they are distinguished only by increasing difficulty of subject, not by 
 cl-ifierence of method. 
 
272 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 have mastered the tree at its ai^mpits, you will have little more 
 trouble with it. 
 
 Always draw whatever the background happens to be, ex- 
 actly as you see it. "Wherever you have fastened the bough, 
 you must draw whatever is behind it, ugly or not, else you will 
 never know whether the light and shade are right ; they may 
 appear quite wrong to you, only for w r ant of the background. 
 
 And this general law is to be ob- 
 served in all your studies : what- 
 ever you draw, draw completely 
 and unalteringly, else you never 
 know if what you have done is 
 right, or whether you could have 
 done it rightly had you tried. 
 There is nothing visible out of 
 which you may not get useful 
 practice. 
 
 Next, to put the leaves on your 
 boughs. Gather a small twig with 
 four or five leaves on it, put it into 
 water, put a sheet of light-col- 
 oured or white paper behind it, 
 so that all the leaves may be re- 
 lieved in dark from the white 
 field ; then sketch in their dark 
 shape carefully with pencil as you 
 did the complicated boughs, in 
 order to be sure that all their 
 masses and interstices are right in 
 shape before you begin shading, 
 and complete as far as you can 
 with pen and ink, in the manner of Fig. 6., which is a young 
 shoot of lilac. 
 
 You will probably, in spite of all your pattern drawings, be 
 at first puzzled by leaf foreshortening ; especially because the 
 look of retirement or projection depends not so much on the 
 perspective of the leaves themselves as on the double sight of 
 the two eyes. Now there are certain artifices by which good 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE, 
 
 273 
 
 painters can partly conquer this difficulty ; as slight exaggera- 
 tions of force or colour in the nearer parts, and of obscurity 
 in the more distant ones ; but you mast not attempt anything 
 of this kind. When you are first sketching the leaves, shut 
 one of your eyes, fix a point in the background, to bring the 
 point of one of the leaves against, and so sketch the whole 
 bough as you see it in a fixed position, looking with one eye 
 only. Your drawing never can be made to look like the ob- 
 ject itself, as you see that object with both eyes,* but it can be 
 made perfectly like the object seen with one, and you must be 
 content when you have got a resemblance on these terms. 
 
 In order to get clearly at the notion of the thing to be done, 
 take a single long leaf, hold it with its point towards you, and 
 as flat as you can, so as to see nothing of it but its thinness, 
 as if you wanted to know how thin it was ; outline it so. 
 Then slope it down gradually towards you, and watch it as it 
 lengthens out to its full length, held perpendicularly down 
 before you. Draw it in three or four different positions be- 
 tween these extremes, with its ribs as they appear in each 
 position, and you will soon fiijd out how it must be. 
 
 Draw first only two or three of the leaves ; then larger clus- 
 ters ; and practise, in this way, more and more complicated 
 pieces of bough and leafage, till you find you can master the 
 most difficult arrangements, not consisting of more than ten 
 or twelve leaves. You will find as you do this, if you have an 
 opportunity of visiting any gallery of pictures, that you take a 
 much more lively interest than before in the work of the great 
 masters ; you will see that very often their best backgrounds 
 are composed of little more than a few sprays of leafage, care- 
 fully studied, brought against the distant sky ; and that an- 
 other wreath or two form the chief interest of their fore- 
 grounds. If you live in London you may test your progress 
 accurately by the degree of admiration you feel for the leaves 
 of vine round the head of the Bacchus, in Titian's Bacchus 
 
 * If you understand the principle of the stereoscope you will know 
 why ; if not, it does not matter ; trust me for the truth of the state- 
 ment, as I cannot explain the principle without diagrams and much loss 
 «>£ time. 
 
274 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WING. 
 
 and Ariadne. All this, however, will not enable you to dra\t 
 a mass of foliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece 
 of vegetation, that it is only one or two of the nearer clusters 
 that you can by any possibility draw in this complete manner. 
 The mass is too vast, and too intricate, to be thus dealt with. 
 
 You must now therefore have recourse to some confused 
 mode of execution, capable of expressing the confusion of 
 Nature. And, first, you must understand what the character 
 of that confusion is. If you look carefully at the outer sprays 
 of any tree at twenty or thirty yards' distance, you will see 
 them defined against the sky in masses, which, at first, look 
 quite definite ; but if you examine them, you will see, mingled 
 with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct lines, which are, 
 
 some of them, stalks of leaves, and some, leaves seen with the 
 edge turned towards you, and coming into sight in a broken 
 way ; for, supposing the real leaf shape to be as at a, Fig. 7., 
 this, when removed some yards from the eye, will appear dark 
 against the sky, as at b; then, w T hen removed some yards 
 farther still, the stalk and point disappear altogether, the mid- 
 dle of the leaf becomes little more than a line ; and the result 
 is the condition at c, only with this farther subtlety in the look 
 of it, inexpressible in fche woodcut, that the stalk and point of 
 the leaf, though they have disappeared to the eye, have yet 
 some influence in checking the light at the places where they 
 exist, and cause a slight dimness about the part of the leaf 
 which remains visible, so that its perfect effect could only be 
 rendered by two layers of colour^ one subduing the sky tone 
 
 a 
 
 C 
 
 Fig. 7. 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 275 
 
 a little, the next drawing the broken portions of the le#f, as xt 
 c, and carefully indicating the greater darkness of the spot in 
 the middle, where the under side of the leaf is. 
 
 This is the perfect theory of the matter. In practice we 
 cannot reach such accuracy ; but we shall be able to render 
 the general look of the foliage satisfactorily by the following 
 mode of practice. 
 
 Gather a spray of any tree, about a foot or eighteen inches 
 long. Fix it firmly by the stem in anything that will support 
 it steadily ; put it about eight feet away from you, or ven ft 
 
 Fig. 8. 
 
 you are far-sighted. Put a sheet of not very white paper 
 behind it, as usual. Then draw very carefully, first placing 
 them with pencil, and then filling them up with ink, every 
 leaf, mass and stalk of it in simple black profile, as you see 
 them against the paper: Fig. 8. is a bough of Phillyrea so 
 drawn. Do not be afraid of running the leaves into a black 
 mass when they come together ; this exercise is only to teach 
 you what the actual shapes of such masses are when seen 
 against the sky. 
 
 Make two careful studies of this kind of one bough of every 
 common tree — oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, &c. ; in fact, if you 
 
27G 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING. 
 
 are goo<J, and industrious, you will make one such study care* 
 fully at least three times a week, until you have examples of 
 every sort of tree and shrub you can get branches of. You 
 are to make two studies of each bough, for this reason — all 
 masses of foliage have an upper and under surface, and the 
 side view of them, or profile, shows a wholly different organisa- 
 tion of branches from that seen in the view from above. They 
 are generally seen more or less in profile, as you look at the 
 whole tree, and Nature puts her best composition into the 
 profile arrangement. But the view from above or below oc- 
 curs not unfrequently, also, and it is quite necessary you 
 should draw it if you wish to understand the anatomy of the 
 tree. The difference between the two views is oiten far greater 
 
 than you could easily conceive. For instance, in Fig. 9., a is 
 the upper view, and b the j)rofile, of a single spray of Philly- 
 rea. Fig. 8. is an intermediate view of a larger bough ; seen 
 from beneath, but at some lateral distance also. 
 
 When you have done a few branches in this manner, take 
 one of the drawings, and put it first a yard away from you, 
 then a yard and a half, then two yards ; observe how the thin- 
 ner stalks and leaves gradually disappear, leaving only a vague 
 and slight darkness where they were, and make another study 
 of the effect at each distance, taking care to draw nothing 
 more than you really see, for in this consists all the difference 
 between what would be merely a miniature drawing of the 
 leaves seen near, and & full-size drawing of the same leaves at 
 a distance. By full size, I mean the size which they would 
 really appear of if their outline were traced through a pane of 
 
 Fig. 9. 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 277 
 
 glass held at the same distance from the eye at which you 
 mean to hold your drawing. You can always ascertain this 
 full size of any object by holding your paper upright before 
 you, at the distance from your eye at which you wish your 
 drawing to be seen. Bring its edge across the object you 
 have to draw, and mark upon this edge the points where the 
 outline of the object crosses, or goes behind, the edge of the 
 paper. You will always find it, thus measured, smaller than 
 you supposed. 
 
 When you have made a few careful experiments of this 
 kind on your own drawings, (which are better for practice, at 
 first, than the real trees, because the black profile in the draw- 
 ing is quite stable, and does not shake, and is not confused by 
 sparkles of lustre on the leaves,) you may try the extremities 
 of the real trees, only not doing mucli at a time, for the 
 brightness of the sky will dazzle and perplex your sight. And 
 this brightness causes, I believe, some loss of the outline 
 itself ; at least the chemical action of the light in a photograph 
 extends much within the edges of the leaves, and, as it were, 
 eats them away so that no tree extremity, stand it ever so 
 still, nor any other form coming against bright sky, is truly 
 drawn by a photograph ; and if you once succeed in drawing a 
 few sprays rightly, you will find the result much more lovely 
 and interesting than any photograph can be. 
 
 All this difficult}', however, attaches to the rendering merely 
 the dark form of the sprays as they come against the sky. 
 Within those sprays, and in the heart of the tree, there is a 
 complexity of a much more embarrassing kind ; for nearly all 
 leaves have some lustre, and all are more or less translucent 
 (letting light through them) ; therefore, in any given leaf, 
 besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows and fore- 
 shortenings, there are three series of circumstances which 
 alter or hide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by other 
 leaves— often very forcibly. Secondly, light reflected from 
 its lustrous surface, sometimes the blue of the sky, sometimes 
 the white of clouds, or the sun itself flashing like a star. 
 Thirdly, forms and shadows of other leaves, seen as darkness 
 through the translucent parts of the leaf ; a most important 
 
•278 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WING. 
 
 element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected by landscape 
 artists in general. 
 
 The consequence of all this is, that except now and then by 
 chance, the form of a complete leaf is never seen ; but a mar- 
 vellous and quaint confusion, very definite, indeed, in its evi- 
 dence of direction of growth, and unity of action, but wholly 
 indefinable and inextricable, part by part, by any amount of 
 patience. You cannot possibly work it out in fac simile, 
 though you took a twelvemonth's time to a tree ; and you 
 must therefore try to discover some mode of execution which 
 will more or less imitate, by its own variety and mystery, the 
 variety and mystery of Nature, without absolute delineation 
 of detail. 
 
 Now I have led you to this conclusion by observation of 
 tree form only, because in that the thing to be proved is clear- 
 est. But no natural object exists which does not involve in 
 some part or parts of it this inimitableness, this mystery of 
 quantity, which needs peculiarity of handling and trick of 
 touch to express it completely. If leaves are intricate, so is 
 moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur and hair, and 
 texture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods 
 and dexterities of handling are wholly useless if you have not 
 gained first the thorough knowledge of the form of the thing ; 
 so that if you cannot draw a branch perfectly, then much less 
 a tree ; and if not a wreath of mist perfectly, much less a 
 flock of clouds ; and if not a single grass blade perfectly, 
 much less a grass bank ; yet having once got this power over 
 decisive form, you may safely — and must, in order to perfec- 
 tion of work — carry out your knowledge by every aid of method 
 and dexterity of hand. 
 
 But, in order to find out what method can do, you must now 
 look at Art as well as at Nature, and see what means paint- 
 ers and engravers have actually employed for the expression 
 of these subtleties. Whereupon arises the question, what 
 opportunity have you to obtain engravings? You ought, if it 
 is at all in your power, to possess yourself of a certain num- 
 ber of good examples of Turner's engraved works : if this be 
 not in your power, you must just make the best use you can 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 279 
 
 of the shop windows, or of any plates of which you can obtain 
 a loan. Very possibly, the difficulty of getting sight of them 
 may stimulate you to put them to better use. But, supposing 
 your means admit of your doing so, possess yourself, first, of 
 the illustrated edition either of Rogers's Italy or Rogers's 
 Poems, and then of about a dozen of the plates named in the 
 annexed lists. The prefixed letters indicate the particular 
 points deserving your study in each engraving.* Be sure, 
 
 * If you can, get first the plates marked with a star. The letters 
 mean as follows: — 
 
 a stands for architecture, including distant grouping of towns, cottages, 
 
 c clouds, including mist and aerial effects, 
 /'foliage. 
 
 ft ground, including low hills, when not rocky. 
 I effects of light. 
 
 m mountains, or bold rocky ground. 
 
 p power of general arrangement and effect. 
 
 q quiet water. 
 
 r running or rough water ; or rivers, even if calm, when their line of 
 flow is beautifully marked. 
 
 From tlw England Series. 
 
 a cfr. 
 
 afl. 
 a I q r. 
 
 Arundel. 
 
 Ashby de la Zouche. 
 Barnard Castle. * 
 Bolton Abbey. 
 Buckf astleigh. * 
 Caernarvon. 
 Castle Upnor. 
 Colchester. 
 Cowes. 
 
 Dartmouth Cove. 
 Flint Castle.* 
 Knaresborough. * 
 High Force of Tees. * 
 
 afq. Trematon. 
 afp. Lancaster. 
 
 elm r. Lancaster Sands.* 
 
 / m r. 
 
 />*• 
 a I p. 
 c I q. 
 afl 
 Iq. 
 cfP- 
 c I q. 
 afgl 
 
 a gf. Launceston. 
 cflr. Leicester Abbey. 
 f r. Ludlow. 
 afl. Margate. 
 a I q. Orford. 
 cp. Plymouth. 
 
 f. Powis Castle. 
 I ni q. Prudhoe Castle. 
 
 flmr. Chain Bridge over Tees * 
 
 m r. 
 
 m q. Ulleswater. 
 
 / m. Valle Crucis. 
 
 From ilie Keepsake. 
 
 mp q. 
 m. 
 
 Arona. 
 
 Drachenfells. 
 Marley.* 
 
 p. St. Germain en Laye. 
 I p q. Florence. 
 I m. Bally burgh Ness. * 
 
280 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 therefore, that your selection includes, at all events, one plate 
 marked with each letter — of course the plates marked with two 
 or three letters are, for the most part, the best. Do not get 
 more than twelve of these plates, nor even all the twelve at first. 
 For the more engravings you have, the less attention you 
 will pay to them. It is a general truth, that the enjoyment 
 derivable from art cannot be increased in quantity, beyond a 
 certain point, by quantity of possession ; it is only spread, as 
 it were, over a larger surface, and very often dulled by find- 
 ing ideas repeated in different works. Now, for a beginner, 
 it is always better that his attention should be concentrated 
 on one or two good things, and all his enjoyment founded on 
 them, than that he should look at many, with divided thoughts. 
 He has much to discover ; and his best way of discovering it 
 is to think long over few things, and w T atch them earnestly. It 
 is one of the worst errors of this age to try to know and to 
 see too much : the men who seem to know everything, never 
 in reality know anything rightly. Beware of hand-book knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 These engravings are, in general, more for you to look at 
 
 From tlie Bible Series. 
 
 f m. Mount Lebanon. a c g. Joppa. 
 
 m. Rock of Moses at Sinai. dp q. Solomons Pools." 
 
 a I m. Jericho. a I. Santa Saba. 
 
 a L Pool of Bethesda. 
 
 From Scotfs Works. 
 
 p r. Melrose. c m, Glencoe. 
 
 / r. Dry burgh. * c m. Loch Coriskin. 
 
 a I. Caerlaveroek. 
 
 From the "Rive 
 
 a q. Chateau of Amboise, with 
 large bridge on right. 
 
 Ipr. Rouen, looking down the 
 river, poplar^ on right.* 
 
 a I p. Rouen, with cathedral and 
 
 rainbow, avenue on the left 
 
 rs of France." 
 
 a p. Rouen Cathedral. 
 f p. Pont de I'Arehe. 
 flp. View on the Seine, with 
 
 avenue. 
 a c p. Bridge of Meulan. 
 . c gp r. Caudebec. * 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 281 
 
 than to cop}' ; and they will be of more use to you when we 
 come to talk of composition, than they are at present ; still, it 
 will do you a great deal of good, sometimes to try how far 
 you can get their delicate texture, or gradations of tone ; as 
 your pen-and-ink drawing will be apt to incline too much to 
 a scratchy and broken kind of shade. For instance, the text- 
 ure of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its tiled 
 roof, in the vignette at p. 227. of Kogers's Poems, is as ex- 
 quisite as work can possibly be ; and it will be a great and 
 profitable achievement if you can at all approach it. In like 
 manner, if you can at all imitate the dark distant country at 
 p. 7., or the sky at p. 80., of the same volume, or the foliage 
 at pp. 12. and 144., it will be good gain ; and if you can once 
 draw the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9. of the 
 " Italy," or the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25., or the 
 moonlight at p. 223., you will find that even Nature herself 
 cannot afterwards very terribly puzzle you with her torrents, 
 or towers, or moonlight. 
 
 You need not copy touch for touch, but try to get the same 
 effect. And if you feel discouraged by the delicacy required, 
 and begin to think that engraving is not drawing, and that 
 copying it cannot help you to draw, remember that it differs 
 from common drawing only by the difficulties it has to en- 
 counter. You perhaps have got into a careless habit of think- 
 ing that engraving is a mere business, easy enough when one 
 has got into the knack of it. On the contrary, it is a form of 
 drawing more difficult than common drawing, by exactly so 
 much as it is more difficult to cut steel than to move the pen- 
 cil over paper. It is true that there are certain mechanical 
 aids and methods which reduce it at certain stages either to 
 pare machine work, or to more or less a habit of hand and 
 arm ; but this is not so in the foliage you are trying to copy, 
 of which the best and prettiest parts are always etched — that 
 is, draw T n with a fine steel point and free hand : only the line 
 made is white instead of black, which renders it much more 
 difficult to judge of what you are about. And the trying to 
 copy these plates will be good for you, because it will awaken 
 you to the real labour and skill of the engraver, and make you 
 
282 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING. 
 
 understand a little how people must work, in this world, who 
 have really to do anything in it. 
 
 Do not, however, suppose that I give you the engraving as 
 a model — far from it ; but it is necessary you should be able 
 to do as well * before you think of doing better, and you will 
 find many little helps and hints in the various work of it. 
 Only remember that all engravers' foregrounds are bad ; 
 whenever you see the peculiar wriggling parallel lines of mod- 
 ern engravings become distinct, you must not copy ; nor ad- 
 mire : it is only the softer masses, and distances ; and portions 
 of the foliage in the plates marked $ which you may copy. 
 The best for this purpose, if you can get it, is the " Chain 
 bridge over the Tees," of the England series ; the thicket on 
 the right is very beautiful and instructive, and very like 
 Turner. The foliage in the "Ludlow" and "Powis" is also 
 remarkably good. 
 
 Besides these line engravings, and to protect you from what 
 harm there is in their influence, you are to provide yourself, if 
 possible, with a Kembrandt etching, or a photograph of one 
 (of figures, not landscape). It does not matter of what sub- 
 ject, or whether a sketchy or finished one, but the sketchy 
 ones are generally cheapest, and will teach you most. Copy 
 it as well as you can, noticing especially that Kembrandt's 
 most rapid lines have steady pmp>ose ; and that they are laid 
 with almost inconceivable precision when the object becomes 
 at all interesting. The "Prodigal Son," " Death of the Vir- 
 gin," " Abraham and Isaac," and such others, containing in- 
 cident and character rather than chiaroscuro, will be the most 
 instructive. You can buy one ; copy it well ; then exchange 
 it, at little loss, for another ; and so, gradually, obtain a good 
 knowledge of his system. Whenever you have an opportunity 
 of examining his work at museums, &c, do so with the great- 
 est care, not looking at many things, but a long time at each. 
 You must also provide yourself, if possible, with an engraving 
 of Albert Durer's. This you will not be able to copy ; but 
 
 * As well ; — not as minutely : the diamond cuts finer lines on the steel 
 than you can draw on paper with your pen ; but you must be able to 
 get tones as even, and touches as firm. 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 283 
 
 you must keep it beside you, and refer to it as a standard of 
 precision in line. If you can get one with a wing in it, it will 
 be best. The crest with the cock, that with the skul] and 
 satyr, and the " Melancholy," are the best you could have, but 
 any will do. Perfection in chiaroscuro drawing lies between 
 these two masters, Kembrandt and Durer. Rembrandt is 
 often too loose and vague ; and Durer has little or no effect of 
 mist or uncertain ty. If you can see anywhere a drawing by 
 Leonardo, you will find it balanced between the two charac- 
 ters ; but there are no engravings which present this perfec- 
 tion, and your style will be best formed, therefore, by alter- 
 nate study of Rembrandt and Durer. Lean rather to Durer ; 
 it is better for amateurs to err on the side of precision than 
 on that of vagueness : and though, as I have just said, you 
 cannot copy a Durer, yet try every now and then a quarter of 
 an inch square or so, and see how much nearer you can come ; 
 you cannot possibly try to draw the leafly crown of the "Mel- 
 ancholia " too often. 
 
 If you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Durer, you may 
 still learn much by carefully studying any of George Cruik- 
 shank's etchings, or Leech's woodcuts in Punch, on the free 
 side ; with Alfred Rethel's and Richter's * on the severe side. 
 But in so doing you will need to notice the following points : 
 
 When either the material (as the copper or wood) or the 
 time of an artist, does not permit him to make a perfect draw- 
 ing, — that is to say, one in which no lines shall be prominently 
 visible, — and he is reduced to show the black lines, either 
 drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is better to make these 
 lines help, as far as may be, the expression of texture and 
 form. You will thus find many textures, as of cloth or grass 
 or flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by Leech 
 with zigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines ; and you 
 will see that Alfred Rethel and Richter constantly express the 
 direction and rounding of surfaces by the direction of the 
 lines which shade them. All these various means of expression 
 will be useful to you, as far as you can learn them, provided 
 
 * See, for account of these plates, the Appendix on 44 Works to he 
 studied/' 
 
284 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DMA WING. 
 
 you remember that they are merely a kind of shorthand ; tell- 
 ing certain facts, not in quite the right way, but in the only 
 possible way under the conditions : and provided in any after 
 use of such means, you never try to show your own dexterity ; 
 but only to get as much record of the object as you can in a 
 given time ; and that you continually make efforts to go be- 
 yond shorthand, and draw portions of the objects rightly. 
 
 And touching this question of direction of lines as indicating 
 that of surface, observe these few points : 
 
 If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far as 
 they can indicate any thing by their direction, they should ex- 
 plain rather than oppose the general character of the object. 
 
 Fig. 10. 
 
 Thus, in the piece of woodcut from Titian, Fig. 10., the lines 
 are serviceable by expressing, not only the shade of the trunk, 
 but partly also its roundness, and the flow of its grain. And 
 Albert Durer, whose work was chiefly engraving, sets himself 
 always thus to make his lines as valuable as possible ; telling 
 much by them, both of shade and direction of surface : and if 
 you were ahvays to be limited to engraving on copper (and did 
 not want to express effects of mist or darkness, as well as deli- 
 cate forms), Albert Durer's way of work would be the best ex- 
 ample for you. But, inasmuch as the perfect way of drawing 
 is by shade without lines, and the great painters always con- 
 ceive their subject as complete, even when they are sketching 
 
ON FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 285 
 
 it most rapidly, you will find that, when they are not limited 
 in means, they do not much trust to direction of line, but will 
 often scratch in the shade of a rounded surface with nearly 
 straight lines, that is to say, with the easiest and quickest hues 
 possible to themselves. 
 When the hand is free, 
 the easiest line for it to 
 draw is one inclining 
 from the left upward to 
 the right, or vice versa, 
 from the right down- 
 wards to the left ; and 
 when done very quick- 
 ly, the line is hooked 
 a little at the end by 
 the effort at return to 
 the next. Hence, you 
 will always find the pen- 
 cil, chalk, or pen sketch 
 of a very great master 
 full of these kind of 
 lines ; and even if he 
 draws carefully, you will 
 find him using simple 
 straight lines from left to 
 right, when an inferior 
 master will have used 
 curved ones. Fig. 11. is 
 a fair facsimile of part 
 of a sketch of Raphael's, 
 which exhibits these 
 characters very distinct- 
 ly. Even the careful drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are 
 shaded most commonly with straight lines ; and you may 
 always assume it as a point increasing the probability of a 
 drawing being by a great master if you find rounded surfaces, 
 such as those of cheeks or lips, shaded with straight lines. 
 But you will also now understand how easy it must be for 
 
 Fig. 11. 
 
280 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 dishonest dealers to forge or imitate scrawled sketches like 
 Figure 11., and pass litem for the work of great masters ; and 
 how the power of determining the genuineness of a drawing 
 depends entirely on your knowing the facts of the object 
 drawn, and perceiving whether the hasty handling is all con- 
 ducive to the expression of those truths. In a great man's 
 work, at its fastest, no line i3 thrown away, and it is not by 
 the rapidity, but the economy of the execution that you know 
 him to be great. Now to judge of this economy, you must 
 know exactly what he meant to do, otherwise you cannot of 
 course discern how far he has done it ; that is, you must know 
 the beauty and nature of the thing he was drawing. All judg- 
 ment of art thus finally founds itself on knowledge of Nature. 
 
 But farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic, or im- 
 petuous execution is never affectedly impetuous. If a great 
 man is not in a hurry, he never pretends to be ; if he has no 
 eagerness in his heart, he puts none into his hand ; if he 
 thinks his effect would be better got with two lines, he never, 
 to show his dexterity, tries to do it with one. Be assured, 
 therefore (and this is a matter of great importance), that you 
 will never produce a great drawing by imitating the execution 
 of a great master. Acquire his knowledge and share his feel- 
 ings, and the easy execution will fall from your hand as it did 
 from his ; but if you merely scrawl because he scrawled, or 
 blot because he blotted, you will not only never advance in 
 power, but every able draughtsman, and every judge whose 
 opinion is worth having, will know you for a cheat, and de- 
 spise you accordingly. 
 
 Again, observe respecting the use of outline : 
 All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple reason, 
 that an artist of any power can always do more, and tell more, 
 by quitting his outlines occasionally, and scratching in a few 
 lines for shade, than he can by restricting himself to outline 
 only. Hence the fact of his so restricting himself, whatever 
 may be the occasion, shows him to be a bad draughtsman, 
 and not to know how to apply his power economically. This 
 hard law, however, bears only on drawings meant to remain 
 in the state in which you see them ; not on those which were 
 
OX FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 287 
 
 meant to be proceeded with, or for some mechanical use. It 
 is sometimes necessary to draw pure outlines, as an incipient 
 arrangement of a composition, to be filled up afterwards with 
 colour, or to be pricked through and used as patterns or 
 tracings ; but if, with no such ultimate object, making the 
 drawing wholly for its own sake, and meaning it to remain in 
 the state he leaves it, an artist restricts himself to outline, he 
 is a bad draughtsman, and his work is bad. There is no ex- 
 ception to this law. A good artist habitually sees masses, not 
 edges, and can in every case make his drawing more expres- 
 sive (with any given quantity of work) by rapid shade than by 
 contours ; so that all good work whatever is more or less 
 touched with shade, and more or less interrupted as outline. 
 
 Hence, the published works of Ketsch, and all the English . 
 imitations of them, and all outline engravings from pictures, 
 are bad work, and only serve to corrupt the public taste, and 
 of such outlines, the worst are those which are darkened in 
 some part of their course by way of expressing the dark side, 
 as Flaxman's from Dante, and such others ; because an out- 
 line can only be true so long as it accurately represents the 
 form of the given object with one of its edges. 
 Thus, the outline a and the outline h, Fig. 12., are JL 
 both true outlines of a ball ; because, however thick ( ) CJ 
 the line may be, whether we take the interior or 
 
 o 
 
 exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws a 
 true circle. But c is a false outline of a ball, be- Fief 12 
 cause either the inner or outer edge of the black line 
 must be an untrue circle, else the line could not be thicker in 
 one place than another. Hence all " force," as it is called, is 
 gained by falsification of the contours ; so that no artist whose 
 eye is true and fine could endure to look at it. It does indeed 
 often happen that a painter, sketching rapidly, and trying again 
 and again for some line which he cannot quite strike, blackens 
 or loads the first line by setting others beside and across it ; and 
 then a careless observer supposes it has been thickened on 
 purpose ; or, sometimes also, at a place where shade is after- 
 wards to enclose the form, the painter will strike a broad dash 
 of this shade beside his outline at once, looking as if he meant 
 
288 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 to thicken the outline ; whereas this broad line is only the 
 first instalment of the future shadow, and the outline is real- 
 ly drawn with its inner edge. And thus, far from good 
 draughtsmen darkening the lines which turn away from the 
 light, the tendency with them is rather to darken them to- 
 wards the light, for it is there in general that shade will 
 ultimately enclose them. The best example of this treatment 
 that I know is Raphael's sketch, in the Louvre, of the head of 
 the angel pursuing Heliodorus, the one that shows part of the 
 left eye ; where the dark strong lines which terminate the 
 nose and forehead towards the light are opposed to tender 
 and light ones behind the ear, and in other places towards 
 the shade. You will see in Fig. 11. the same principle 
 variously exemplified ; the principal dark lines, in the head 
 and drapery of the arms, being on the side turned to the 
 light. 
 
 All these refinements and ultimate principles, however, do 
 not affect your drawing for the present. You must try to 
 make your outlines as equal as possible ; and employ pure 
 outline only for the two following purposes : either (1.) to 
 steady your hand, as in Exercise II, for if you cannot draw 
 the line itself, you will never be able to terminate your shadow 
 in the precise shape required, when the line is absent ; or (2.) 
 to give you shorthand memoranda of forms, when you are 
 pressed for time. Thus the forms of distant trees in groups 
 are defined, for the most part, by the light edge of the round- 
 ed mass of the nearer one being shown against the darker 
 part of the rounded mass of a more distant one ; and to draw 
 this properly, nearly as much work is required to round each 
 tree as to round the stone in Fig. 5. Of course you cannot 
 often get time to do this ; but if you mark the terminal line 
 of each tree as is done by Durer in Fig. 13., you will get a 
 most useful memorandum of their arrangement, and a very 
 interesting drawing. Only observe in doing this, you must 
 not, because the procedure is a quick one, hurry that proced- 
 ure itself. You will find, on copying that bit of Durer, that 
 every one of his lines is firm, deliberate, and accurately 
 descriptive as far as it goes. It means a bush of such a size 
 
OK FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 289 
 
 and such a shape, definitely observed and set down ; it con- 
 tains a true " signalement " of every nut-tree, and apple-tree, 
 and higher bit of hedge, all round that village. If you have 
 not time to draw thus carefully, do not draw at all — you are 
 merely wasting your work and spoiling your taste. When 
 you have had four or five years' practice you may be able to 
 make useful memoranda at a rapid rate, but not yet ; except 
 sometimes of light and shade, in a way of which I will tell 
 vou presently. And this use of outline, note farther, is wholly 
 confined to objects which have edges or limits. You can out- 
 
 Fig. 13. 
 
 line a tree or a stone, when it rises against another tree or 
 stone ; but you cannot outline folds in drapery, or waves in 
 water ; if these are to be expressed at all it must be by some 
 sort of shade, and therefore the rule that no good drawing can 
 consist throughout of pure outline remains absolute. You 
 see, in that woodcut of Durer's, his reason for even limiting 
 himself so much to outline as he has, in those distant woods 
 and plains, is that he may leave them in bright light, to be 
 thrown out still more by the dark sky and the dark village 
 spire ; and the scene becomes real and sunny only by the ad- 
 dition of these shades. 
 
290 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 Understandings then, thus much of the use of outline, we 
 will go back to our question about tree drawing left un- 
 answered at page 60. 
 
 We were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among the 
 leaves. Nov/, it is quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder, 
 to any extent ; but the difficulty is to keep organisation in 
 the midst of mystery. And you will never succeed in doing 
 this unless you lean always to the definite side, and allow your- 
 self rarely to become quite vague, at least through all your 
 
 r. 14. Fig. 15. 
 
 'early practice. So, after your single groups of leaves, your 
 first step must be to conditions like Figs. 14. and 15., which 
 are careful facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful woodcut 
 of Durer's, the Flight into Egypt. Copy these carefully, — 
 never mind how little at a time, but thoroughly ; then trace 
 the Durer, and apply it to your drawing, and do not be con- 
 tent till the one fits the other, else your eye is not true enough 
 to carry you safely through meshes of real leaves. And in 
 the course of doing this, you will find that not a line nor dot 
 of Durer's can be displaced without harm ; that all add to 
 
OJST FIRST PRACTICE. 
 
 291 
 
 the effect, and either express something, or illumine some- 
 thing, or relieve something. If, afterwards, you copy any of 
 the pieces of modern tree drawing, of which so many rich 
 examples are given constantly in our cheap illustrated periodi- 
 cals (any of the Christmas numbers of last year's Illustrated 
 News or Times are full of them), you will see that, though 
 good and forcible general effect is produced, the lines are 
 
 Fig. 16. 
 
 thrown in by thousands without special intention, and might 
 just as well go one way as another, so only that there be 
 enough of them to produce all together a well-shaped effect 
 of intricacy : and you will find that a little careless scratch- 
 ing about with your pen will bring you very near the same 
 result without an effort ; but that no scratching of pen, nor 
 any fortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and 
 thought, will imitate so much as one leaf of Durer s. Yet 
 
292 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 there is considerable intricacy and glittering confusion in the 
 interstices of those vine leaves of his, as well as of the grass. 
 
 When you have got familiarised to this firm manner, you 
 may draw from Nature as much as you like in the same way ; 
 and when you are tired of the intense care required for this, 
 you may fall into a little more easy massing of the leaves, as in 
 Fig. 10. p. 66.) This is facsimiled from an engraving after 
 Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in manner, the 
 leaves being a little too formal ; still, it is a good enough 
 model for your times of rest ; and when you cannot carry the 
 thing even so far as this, you may sketch the forms of the 
 masses, as in Fig. 16.,* taking care always to have thorough 
 command over your hand ; that is, not to let the mass take a 
 free shape because your hand ran glibly over the paper, but 
 because in nature it has actually a free and noble shape, and 
 you have faithfully followed the same. 
 
 And now that we have come to questions of noble shape, as 
 well as true shape, and that we are going to draw from nature 
 at our pleasure, other considerations enter into the business, 
 which are by no means confined to first practice, but extend 
 to all practice ; these (as this letter is long enough, I should 
 think, to satisfy even the most exacting of correspondents) I 
 will arrange in a second letter ; praying you only to excuse 
 the tiresomeness of this first one — tiresomeness inseparable 
 from directions touching the beginning of any art, — and to 
 believe me, even though I am trying to set you to dull and 
 hard work. 
 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 
 J. Rtjskin. 
 
 * This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it looks like 
 it. You will find it explained presently. 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 293 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 sketching from nature. 
 
 My dear Reader : — 
 
 The work we have already gone through together has, I 
 hope, enabled you to draw with fair success, either rounded 
 and simple masses, like stones, or complicated arrangements 
 of form, like those of leaves ; provided only these masses or 
 complexities will stay quiet for you to copy, and do not ex- 
 tend into quantity so great as to baffle your patience. But if 
 we are now to go out to the fields, and to draw anything like 
 a complete landscape, neither of these conditions will any 
 more be observed for us. The clouds will not wait while we 
 copy their heaps or clefts ; the shadows will escape from us 
 as we try to shape them, each, in its stealthy minute march, 
 still leaving light where its tremulous edge had rested the 
 moment before, and involving in eclipse objects that had 
 seemed safe from its influence ; and instead of the small 
 clusters of leaves which we could reckon point by point, em- 
 barrassing enough even though numerable, we have now 
 leaves as little to be counted as the sands of the sea, and 
 restless, perhaps, as its foam. 
 
 In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imitation 
 becomes more or less impossible. It is always to be aimed 
 at so far as it is possible ; and when you have time and op- 
 portunity, some portions of a landscape may, as you gain 
 greater skill, be rendered with an approximation almost to 
 mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you may reach, 
 there will always be need of judgment to choose, and of speed 
 to seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive ; and you 
 must give more and more effort daily to the observance of 
 characteristic points, and the attainment of concise methods. 
 
 I have directed your attention early to foliage for two 
 reasons. First, that it is always accessible as a study ; and 
 secondly, that its modes of growth present simple examples 
 
294 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 of the importance of leading or governing lines. It is bj 
 seizing these leading lines, when we cannot seize all, that like- 
 ness and expression are given to a portrait, and grace and a 
 kind of vital truth to the rendering of every natural form. I 
 call it vital truth, because these chief lines are always ex- 
 pressive of the past history and present action of the thing. 
 They show in a mountain, first, how it was built or heaped 
 up ; and secondly, how it is now being worn away, and from 
 what quarter the wildest storms strike it. In a tree, they 
 show what kind of fortune it has had to endure from its 
 childhood ; how troublesome trees have come in its way, and 
 pushed it aside, and tried to strangle or starve it ; where and 
 when kind trees have sheltered it, and grown up lovingly 
 together with it, bending as it bent ; what winds torment it 
 most ; what boughs of it behave best, and bear most fruit ; 
 and so on. in a wave or cloud, these leading lines show the 
 run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of change which 
 the water or vapour is at any moment enduring in its form, as 
 it meets shore, or counterwave, or melting sunshine. Now 
 remember, nothing distinguishes great men from inferior 
 men more than their always, whether in life or in art, knowing 
 the way things are going. Your dunce thinks they are stand- 
 ing still, and draws them all fixed ; your wise man sees the 
 change or changing in them, and draws them so — the animal 
 iu its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course, 
 the mountain in its wearing away. Try always, whenever you 
 look at a form, to see the lines in it which have had power 
 over its past fate, and will have power over its futurity. Those 
 are its awful lines ; see that you seize on those, whatever else 
 you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16. (p. 291.) grew round 
 the root of a stone pine, on the brow of a crag at Sestri, near 
 Genoa, and all the sprays of it are thrust away in their first 
 budding by the great rude root, and spring out in every 
 direction round it, as water splashes when a heavy stone is 
 thrown into it. Then, when they have got clear of the root, 
 they begin to bend up again ; some of them, being little stone 
 pines themselves, have a great notion of growing upright, if 
 they can ; and this struggle of theirs to recover their straight 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 295 
 
 road towards the sky, after being obliged to grow sideways 
 in their early years, is the effort that will mainly influence 
 their future destiny, and determine if they are to be crabbed, 
 forky pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts 
 nourish them, with bared red lightning of angry arms towards 
 the sea ; or if they are to be goodly and solemn pines, with 
 trunks like pillars of temples, and the purple burning of their 
 branches sheathed in deep globes of cloudy green. Those, 
 then, are their fateful lines ; see that you give that spring and 
 resilience, whatever you leave ungiven : depend upon it, their 
 chief beauty is in these. 
 
 So in trees in general and bushes, large or small, you will 
 notice that, though the boughs spring irregularly and at vari- 
 ous angles, there is a tendency in all to stoop less and less as 
 they near the top of the tree. This structure, typified in the 
 simplest possible terms at 
 c, Fig. 17., is common to 
 all trees, that I know of, 
 and it gives them a certain 
 plumy character, and as- 
 pect of unity in the hearts 
 of their branches, which are 
 essential to their beauty. 
 The stem does not merely send off a w T ild branch here and 
 there to take its own way, but all the branches share in one 
 great fountain-like impulse ; each has a curve and a path to 
 take which fills a definite place, and each terminates all its 
 minor branches at its outer extremity, so as to form a great 
 outer curve, whose character and proportion are peculiar for 
 each species ; that is to say, the general type or idea of a tree 
 is not as a, Fig. 17., but as b, in which, observe, the boughs 
 ail carry their minor divisions right out to the bounding 
 curve ; not but that smaller branches, by thousands, ter- 
 minate in the heart of the tree, but the idea and main pur- 
 pose in every branch are to carry all its child branches 
 well out to the air and light, and let each of them, however 
 small, take its part in filling the united flow of the bounding 
 curve, so that the type of each separate bough is again not a, 
 
296 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 but b, Fig. 18. ; approximating, that is to say, so far to the 
 structure of a plant of broccoii as to throw the great mass of 
 spray and leafage out to a rounded surface ; therefore, beware 
 
 of getting into a care- 
 less habit of drawing 
 I J ^Sjy^J^^ boughs with succes- 
 
 J^ -* iTs^ s * ve swee P s °f t ne P en 
 
 \j£ Jf or brush, one hanging 
 
 ^ to the other, as in Fig. 
 
 a FlG> m 19. If you look at 
 
 the tree-boughs in any 
 painting of Wilson's, you will see this structure, and nearly every 
 other that is to be avoided, in their intensest types. You will 
 also notice that "Wilson never conceives a tree as a round mass, 
 but flat, as if it had been pressed and dried. Most people, in 
 drawing pines, seem to fancy, in the same way, that the boughs 
 come out only on two sides of 
 the trunk, instead of all round 
 it; always, therefore, take more 
 pains in trying to draw the 
 boughs of trees that grow to- 
 wards you, than those that go 
 off to the sides ; anybody can FlG 19 
 
 draw the latter, but the fore- 
 shortened ones are not so easy. It will help you in drawing them 
 to observe that in most trees the ramification of each branch, 
 though not of the tree itself, is more or less flattened, and 
 approximates, in its position, to the look of a hand held out 
 to receive something, or shelter something. If you take a 
 looking-glass, and hold your hand before it slightly hollowed, 
 with the palm upwards, and the fingers open, as if you were 
 going to support the base of some great bowl, larger than you 
 could easily hold, and sketch your hand as you see it in the 
 glass, with the points of the fingers towards you, it will ma- 
 terially help you in understanding the way trees generally 
 hold out their hands ; and if then you will turn yours with its 
 palm downwards, as if you were going to try to hide some- 
 thing, but with the fingers expanded, you will get a good type 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 297 
 
 of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and such other 
 spreading trees. 
 
 Fig. 20. will give you a good idea of the simplest way in 
 
 Fig. 20. 
 
 which these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed ; if 
 you copy it carefully, you will be surprised to find how the 
 touches all group together, in expressing the plumy toss of the 
 tree branches, and the springing of the bushes out of the bank, 
 
298 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 and the undulation of the ground : note the careful drawing of 
 the footsteps made by the climbers of the little mound on the 
 left.* It is facsimiled from an etching of Turner's, and is as 
 good an example as you can have of the use of pure and firm 
 lines ; it will also show you how the particular action in foli- 
 age, or anything else to which you wish to direct attention, 
 may be intensified by the adjuncts. The tall and upright trees 
 are made to look more tall and upright still, because their line 
 is continued below by the figure of the farmer with his stick ; 
 and the rounded bushes on the bank are made to look more 
 rounded because their line is continued in one broad sweep 
 by the black dog and the boy climbing the wall. These fig- 
 ures are placed entirely with this object, as we shall see more 
 fully hereafter when we come to talk about composition ; but, 
 if you please, we will not talk about that yet awhile. What I 
 have been telling you about the beautiful lines and action of 
 foliage has nothing to do with composition, but only with fact, 
 and the brief and expressive representation of fact. But there 
 will be no harm in your looking forward, if } t ou like to do so, 
 to the account, in Letter III. of the "Law of Radiation," and 
 reading what it said there about tree growth : indeed it would 
 in some respects have been better to have said it here than 
 there, only it would have broken up the account of the princi- 
 ples of composition somewhat awkwaidly. 
 
 Now, although the lines indicative of action are not always 
 quite so manifest in other things as in trees, a little attention 
 will soon enable you to see that there are such lines in ev- 
 erything. In an old house roof, a bad observer and bad 
 draughtsman will only see and draw the spotty irregularity of 
 tiles or slates all over ; but a good draughtsman will see all the 
 bends of the under timbers, where they are weakest and the 
 weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the run of the 
 water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and where it 
 lies long and feeds the moss ; and he will be careful, however 
 few slates he draws, to mark the way they bend together to- 
 wards those hollows (which have the future fate of the roof in 
 them), and crowd gradually together at the top of the gable, 
 * It is meant, I believe, for "Salt Hill." 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 299 
 
 parity diminishing in perspective, partly, perhaps, diminished 
 on purpose (they are so in most English old houses) by the 
 slate-layer. So in ground, there is always the direction of the 
 run of the water to be noticed, which rounds the earth and cuts 
 it into hollows ; and, generally, in any bank, or height worth 
 drawing, a trace of bedded or other internal structure besides,, 
 The figure 20. will give you some idea of the way in which 
 such facts may be expressed by a few lines. Do you not feel 
 the depression in the ground all down the bill, where the foot- 
 steps are, and how the people always turn to the left at the 
 top, losing breath a little, and then how the water runs down 
 in that other hollow towards the valley, behind the roots of 
 the trees ? 
 
 Now, I want you in your first sketches from nature to aim 
 exclusively at understanding and representing these vital facts 
 of form ; using the pen — not now the steel, but the quill — 
 firmly and steadily, never scrawling with it, but saying to your- 
 self before you lay on a single touch, — " That leaf is the main 
 one, that bough is the guiding one, and this touch, so long, so 
 broad, means that part of it," — point or side or knot, as the 
 case may be. Resolve always, as you look at the thing, what 
 you will take, and what miss of it, and never let your hand run 
 away with you, or get into any habit or method of touch. If 
 you want a continuous line, your hand should pass calmly from 
 one end of it to the other, without a tremor ; if you want a 
 shaking and broken line, your hand should shake, or break off, 
 as easily as a musician's finger shakes or stops on a note : only 
 remember this, that there is no general way of doing any thing ; 
 no recipe can be given you for so much as the drawing of a 
 cluster of grass. The grass may be ragged and stiff, or tender 
 and flowing ; sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or rank and languid ; 
 fresh or dry ; lustrous or dull : look at it, and try to draw it 
 as it is, and don't think how somebody " told you to do grass." 
 So a stone may be round and angular, polished or rough, 
 cracked all over like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and 
 broad as the breast of Hercules. It may be as flaky as a wafer, 
 as powdery as a field puff-ball ; it may be knotted like a ship's 
 hawser, or kneaded like hammered iron, or knit like a Damas- 
 
300 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 cus sabre, or fused like a glass bottle, or crystallised like a hoar- 
 frost, or veined like a forest leaf : look at it, and don't try to 
 remember how anybody told you to " do a stone." 
 
 As soon as you find that your hand obeys you thoroughly, 
 and that you can render any form with a firmness and truth 
 approaching that of Turner's and Durer's work,* you must add 
 a simple but equally careful light and shade to your pen draw- 
 ing, so as to make each study as complete as possible : for 
 which you must prepare yourself thus. Get, if you have the 
 means, a good impression of one plate of Turner's Liber Studi- 
 orum ; if possible, one of the subjects named in the note below. f 
 
 * I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Durer in their 
 strength, that is to say, in their imagination or power of design. But 
 you may approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner, 
 f The following are the most desirable plates : 
 
 Grande Chartreuse. Pembury Mill. 
 
 iEsacus and Hesperie. Little Devil's Bridge. 
 
 Cephalus and Procris. River Wye {not Wye and Severn). 
 
 Source of Arveron. Holy Island. 
 
 Ben Arthur. Clyde. 
 
 Watermill. Lauffenbourg. 
 
 Hindhead Hill. Blair Athol. 
 
 Hedging and Ditching. Alps from Grenoble. 
 
 Dumblane Abbey. Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook, 
 
 Morpeth. trees, and castle on the right.) 
 
 Calais Pier. 
 
 If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be serviceable, 
 except only the twelve following, which are quite useless : — 
 
 1. Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above. 
 
 2. Interior of church. 
 
 3. Scene with bridge, and trees above ; figures on left,, one playing a 
 pipe. 
 
 4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine. 
 
 5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church 
 seen through them. 
 
 6. Fifth Plague of Egypt. 
 
 7. Tenth Plague of Egypt. 
 
 8. Rivaulx Abbey. 
 
 9. Wye and Severn. 
 
 10. Scene with castle in centre, cows under trees on the left. 
 
 11. Martello Towers. 
 
 12. Calm. 
 
 It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original etch* 
 
SKETCH TNG FROM NATURE. 
 
 301 
 
 If you cannot obtain, or even borrow for a little while, any of 
 these engravings, you must use a photograph instead (how, 
 I will tell you presently) ; but, if you can get the Turner, 
 it will be best. You will see that it is composed of a firm 
 etching in line, with mezzotint shadow laid over it. You must 
 first copy the etched part of it accurately ; to which end put 
 the print against the window, and trace slowly with the great- 
 est care every black line ; retrace this on smooth drawing- 
 paper ; and, finally, go over the whole with your pen, looking 
 at the original plate always, so that if you err at all, it may 
 be on the right side, not making a line which is too curved 
 or too straight already in the tracing, more curved or more 
 straight, as you go over it, And in doing this, never work 
 after you are tired, nor to " get the thing done," for if it is 
 badly done, it will be of no use to you. The true zeal and 
 patience of a quarter of an hour are better than the sulky and 
 inattentive labour of a whole day. If you have not made the 
 touches right at the first going over with the pen, retouch 
 them delicately, with little ink in your pen, thickening or rein- 
 
 ings ; if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself alone, for it is 
 not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by Turner, but to a very 
 careful one : only observe, the Source of Arveron, Raglan, and Dum- 
 blane were not etched by Turner ; and the etchings of those three are 
 not good for separate study, though it is deeply interesting to see how 
 Turner, apparantly provoked at the failure of the beginnings in the 
 Arveron and Raglan, took the plates up himself, and either conquered 
 or brought into use the bad etching by his marvellous engraving. The 
 Dumblane was, however, well etched by Mr. Lupton, and beautifully 
 engraved by him. The finest Turner etching is of an aqueduct with a 
 stork standing in a mountain stream, not in the published series ; and 
 next to it, are the unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crowhurst. 
 Turner seems to have been so fond of these plates that he kept retouch- 
 ing and finishing them, and never made up his mind to let them go. 
 The Via Mala is certainly, in the state in which Turner left it, the finest 
 of the whole series : its etching is, as I said, the best after that of the 
 aqueduct. Figure 20.. above, is part of another fine unpublished etch- 
 ing, " Windsor, from Salt Hill." Of the published etchings, the finest 
 are the Ben Arthur, iEsacus, Cephalus, and Stone Pines, with the Girl 
 washing at a Cistern ; the three latter are the more generally instructive. 
 Hind head Hill. Isis, Jason, and Morpeth, are also very desirable. 
 
302 THE ELEMENTS OF DIM WING. 
 
 forcing them as they need : you cannot give too much care ta 
 tLe facsimile. Then keep this etched outline by you, in order 
 to study at your ease the way in which Turner uses his line 
 as preparatory for the subsequent shadow ; * it is only in get- 
 ting the two separate that you will be able to reason on this. 
 Next, copy once more, though for the fourth time, any part of 
 this etching which you like, and put on the light and shade 
 with the brush, and any brown colour that matches that of the 
 plate ; f working it with the point of the brush as delicately as 
 if you were drawing with pencil, and dotting and cross-hatching 
 as lightly as you can touch the paper, till you get the grada- 
 tions of Turner's engraving. In this exercise, as in the former 
 one, a quarter of an inch worked to close resemblance of the 
 copy is worth more than the whole subject carelessly done. 
 Not that in drawing afterwards from nature, you are to be 
 obliged to finish every gradation in this way, but that, once 
 having fully accomplished the drawing something rightry, you 
 will thenceforward feel and aim at a higher perfection than you 
 could otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey you, 
 and bring out quickly and clearly the loveliest results, with a 
 submissiveness which it would have wholly refused if 3 r ou had 
 not put it to severest w 7 ork. Nothing is more strange in art 
 than the way that chance and materials seem to favour you, 
 when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make your- 
 self quite independent of chance, get your result in spite of it, 
 and from that day forward all things will somehow fall as you 
 would have them. Show the camel' s-hair, and the colour in 
 it, that no bending nor blotting are of any use to escape }~our 
 will ; that the touch and the shade shall finally be right, if it 
 cost you a year's toil ; and from that hour of corrective convic- 
 tion, said camel's-hair will bend itself to all your wishes, and no 
 blot will dare to transgress its appointed border. If you can- 
 not obtain a print from the Liber Studiorum, get a photo- 
 
 * You will find more notice of this point in the account of Harding's 
 tree-drawing, a little farther on. 
 
 f The impressions vary so much in colour that no brown can be speci- 
 fied. 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 303 
 
 graph * of some general landscape subject, with high hills and a 
 tillage, or picturesque town, in the middle distance, and some 
 calm water of varied character (a stream with stones in it, if 
 possible), and copy any part of it you like, in this same brown 
 colour, working, as I have just directed you to do from the 
 Liber, a great deal with the point of the brush. You are un- 
 der a twofold disadvantage here, however ; first, there are 
 portions in every photograph too delicately done for you at 
 present to be at all able to copy ; and secondly, there are por- 
 tions always more obscure or dark than there would be in the 
 real scene, and involved in a mystery which you will not be 
 able, as yet, to decipher. Both these characters will be advan- 
 tageous to you for future study, after you have gained expe- 
 rience, but they are a little against you in early attempts at 
 tinting ; still you must fight through the difficulty, and get 
 the power of producing delicate gradations with brown or 
 grey, like those of the photograph. 
 
 Now observe ; the perfection of work would be tinted shad- 
 ow, like photography, without any obscurity or exaggerated 
 darkness ; and as long as your effect depends in anywise on 
 visible lines, your art is not perfect, though it may be first-rate 
 of its kind. But to get complete results in tints merely, re- 
 quires both long time and consummate skill ; and you will find 
 that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint dashed over or under 
 them, get more expression of facts than you could reach in any 
 other way, by the same expenditure of time. The use of the 
 Liber Studiorum print to you is chiefly as an example of the 
 simplest shorthand of this kind, a shorthand which is yet capa- 
 ble of dealing with the most subtle natural effects ; for the 
 firm etching gets at the expression of complicated details, as 
 leaves, masonry, textures of ground, &c, while the overlaid tint 
 enables you to express the most tender distances of sky, and 
 forms of playing light, mist or cloud. Most of the best draw- 
 ings by the old masters are executed on this principle, the 
 touches of the pen being useful also to give a look of trans- 
 parency to shadows, which could not otherwise be attained 
 
 * You had better get such a photograph, even if you have a Liber 
 print as well. 
 
304 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING. 
 
 but by great finish of tinting ; and if you have access to any 
 ordinarily good public gallery, or can make friends of any 
 printsellers who have folios of old drawings, or facsimiles of 
 them, you will not be at a loss to find some example of this 
 unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of photographs also 
 are now taken from the best drawings by the old masters, and 
 I hope that our Mechanics' Institutes, and other societies 
 organized with a view to public instruction, will not fail to 
 possess themselves of examples of these, and to make them 
 accessible to students of drawing in the vicinity ; a single print 
 from Turner's Liber, to show the unison of tint with pen 
 etching, and the " St. Catherine," lately photographed by 
 Thurston Thompson, from Eaphael's drawing in the Louvre, 
 to show the unity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, 
 would be all that is necessary, and would, I believe, be in 
 many cases more serviceable than a larger collection, and 
 certainly than a whole gallery of second-rate prints. Two 
 such examples are peculiarly desirable, because all other 
 modes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk separately, or 
 colour separately, may be seen by the poorest student in any 
 cheap illustrated book, or in shop windows. But this unity 
 of tinting w T ith line he cannot generally see but by some es- 
 pecial enquiry, and in some out of the way places he could 
 not find a single example of it. Supposing that this should 
 be so in your own case, and that you cannot meet with any 
 example of this kind, try to make the matter out alone, 
 thus : 
 
 Take a small and simple photograph ; allow yourself half an 
 hour to express its subjects with the pen only, using some per- 
 manent liquid colour instead of ink, outlining its buildings or 
 trees firmly, and laying in the deeper shadows, as you have 
 been accustomed to do in your bolder pen drawings ; then, 
 when this etching is dry, take your sepia or grey, and tint it 
 over, getting now the finer gradations of the photograph ; and 
 finally, taking out the higher lights with penknife or blot- 
 ting-paper. You will soon find what can be done in this way *, 
 and by a series of experiments you may ascertain for yourself 
 how far the pen may be made serviceable to reinforce shadows, 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 305 
 
 mark characters of texture, outline unintelligible masses, and 
 so on. The more time you have, the more delicate you may 
 make the pen drawing, blending it with the tint ; the less you 
 have, the more distinct you must keep t'he two. Practice in 
 this way from one photograph, allowing yourself sometimes 
 only a quarter of an hour for the whole thing, sometimes an 
 hour, sometimes two or three hours ; in each case drawing the 
 whole subject in full depth of light and shade, but with such 
 degree of finish in the parts as is possible in the given time. 
 And this exercise, observe, you will do well to repeat fre- 
 quently whether you can get prints and drawings as well as 
 photographs, or not. 
 
 And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber Stu- 
 diorum, or its photographic substitute, faithfully, you have 
 the complete means in your power of working from nature on 
 all subjects that interest you, which you should do in four dif- 
 ferent ways. 
 
 First. When you have full time, and your subject is one 
 that will stay quiet for you, make perfect light and shade 
 studies, or as nearly perfect as you can, with grey or brown 
 colour of any kind, reinforced and defined with the pen. 
 
 Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so rich 
 in detail that you feel you cannot complete it intelligibly in 
 light and shade, make a hasty study of the effect, and give the 
 3*est of the time to a Dureresque expression of the details. If 
 the subject seems to you interesting, and there are points 
 about it which you cannot understand, try to get five spare 
 minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer memorandum ; 
 not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer sketch 
 into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your ex- 
 perience of the aspect of things, and know that such and such 
 a look of a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means 
 that sort of tower or cottage near ; while, also, this nearer 
 sketch will be useful to prevent any future misinterpretation 
 of your own work. If you have time, however far your light 
 and shade study in the distance may have been carried, it is al- 
 ways well, for these reasons, to make also your Dureresque 
 and your near memoranda ; for if your light and shade draw- 
 
306 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 ing be good, much of the interesting detail must be lost in it, 
 or disguised. 
 
 Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily and 
 quickly with a soft pencil, dashed over when done with one 
 tolerably deep tone of grey, which will fix the pencil. "While 
 this fixing colour is wet, take out the higher lights with the 
 dry brush ; and, when it is quite dry, scratch out the highest 
 lights with the penknife. Five minutes, carefully applied, will 
 do much by these means. Of course the paper is to be white. 
 I do not like studies on grey paper so well ; for you can get 
 more gradation by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it 
 on cunningly a little darker here and there, than you can with 
 body-colour white, unless you are consummately skilful. 
 There is no objection to your making your Dureresque mem- 
 oranda on grey or yellow paper, and touching or relieving 
 them with white ; only, do not depend much on your white 
 touches, nor make the sketch for their sake. 
 
 Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful study nor 
 for Dureresque detail, sketch the outline with pencil, then 
 dash in the shadows with the brush boldly, trying to do as 
 much as you possibly can at once, and to get a habit of expe- 
 dition and decision ; laying more colour again and again into 
 the tints as they dry, using every expedient which your prac- 
 tice has suggested to you of carrying out your chiaroscuro in 
 the manageable and moist material, taking the colour off 
 here with the dry brush, scratching out lights in it there with 
 the wooden handle of the brush, rubbing it in with your fin- 
 gers, drying it off with your sponge, &c. Then, when the 
 colour is in, take your pen and mark the outline characters 
 vigorously, in the manner of the Liber Studiorum. This kind 
 of study is very convenient for carrying away pieces of effect 
 which depend not so much on refinement as on complexity, 
 strange shapes of involved shadows, sudden effects of sky, &c. ; 
 and it is most useful as a safeguard against any too servile or 
 slow habits which the minute copying may induce in you ; for 
 although the endeavour to obtain velocity merely for velocity's 
 sake, and dash for display's sake, is as baneful as it is despica- 
 ble ; there are a velocity and a dash which not only are com- 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 307 
 
 patible with perfect drawing, but obtain certain results which 
 cannot be had otherwise. And it is perfectly safe for you to 
 study occasionally for speed and decision, while your contin- 
 ual course of practice is such as to ensure your retaining an 
 accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such 
 circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting ; and you 
 will find yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration than 
 negligence. 
 
 Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of 
 landscape scenery you are passing through, to get into the 
 habit of making memoranda of the shapes of shadows. You 
 will find that many objects of no essential interest in them- 
 
 Fig. 21. 
 
 selves, and neither deserving a finished study, nor a Durer- 
 esque one, may yet become of singular value in consequence 
 of the fantastic shapes of their shadows ; for it happens often, 
 in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important 
 element than the substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, 
 Fig. 21., seen within a few yards of it, as in the figure, the 
 arrangement of timbers to which the shadows are owing is 
 perceptible ; but at half a mile's distance, in bright sunlight, 
 the timbers would not be seen ; and a good painter's expres- 
 sion of the bridge w r ould be merely the large spot, and the 
 crossed bars, of pure grey ; wholly without indication of their 
 
308 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WING. 
 
 cause, as in Fig. 22. a ; and if we saw T it at still greater dis- 
 tances, it would appear, as in Fig. 22. b and c, diminishing at 
 last to a strange, unintelligible, spider-like spot of grey on 
 the light hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his 
 distances, continually reduces his objects 
 to these shadow abstracts ; and the singu- 
 lar, and to many persons unaccountable, 
 effect of the confused touches in Turner's 
 distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough 
 accuracy and intense meaning of the 
 shadow abstracts. 
 
 Studies of this kind are easily made 
 when you are in haste, with an F. or HB. 
 pencil : it requires some hardness of the 
 point to ensure your drawing delicately 
 enough when the forms of the shadows are 
 very subtle ; they are sure to be so some- 
 where, and are generally so everywhere. 
 The pencil is indeed a very precious in- 
 strument after you are master of the pen 
 and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, 
 is both, and will draw a line with the pre- 
 cision of the one and the gradation of the other ; nevertheless, 
 it is so unsatisfactory to see the sharp touches, on which the 
 best of the detail depends, getting gradually deadened by time, 
 or to find the places where force was wanted look shiny, and 
 like a fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the steady 
 use of the pen, or brush, and colour, whenever time admits of 
 it ; keeping only a small memorandum-book in the breast- 
 pocket, with its well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on 
 passing opportunities : but never being without this. 
 
 Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which you are 
 at first to draw from nature. But it may perhaps be service- 
 able to you, if I also note one or two points respecting your 
 choice of subjects for study, and the best special methods of 
 treating some of them ; for one of by no means the least dif- 
 ficulties which you have at first to encounter is a peculiar in- 
 stinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners, to 
 
 Fig. 22, 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 309 
 
 fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given 
 scene. There are many things in every landscape which can 
 be drawn, if at all, only by the most accomplished artists ; and 
 I have noticed that it is nearly always these which a beginner 
 will clash at ; or, if not these, it will be something wdiich, 
 though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for a picture, and in 
 which, when he has drawn it, he will have little pleasure. As 
 some slight protection against this evil genius of beginners, 
 the following general warnings may be useful : 
 
 1. Do not draw things that you love, on account of their 
 associations ; or at least do not draw them because you love 
 them ; but merely when you cannot get anything else to draw. 
 If you try to draw places that you love, you are sure to be al- 
 ways entangled amongst neat brick walls, iron railings, gravel 
 walks, greenhouses, and quickset hedges ; besides that you 
 will be continually led into some endeavour to make your 
 drawing pretty, or complete, which will be fatal to your prog- 
 ress. You need never hope to get on, if you are the least 
 anxious that the drawing you are actually at work upon 
 should look nice when it is done. All you have to care about 
 is to make it right, and to learn as much in doing it as possi- 
 ble. So then, though when you are sitting in your friend's 
 parlour, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you may 
 draw any thing that is there, for practice ; even the fire-irons 
 or the pattern on the carpet : be sure that it is for practice, and 
 not because it is a beloved carpet, nor a friendly poker and 
 tongs, nor because you wish to please your friend by drawing 
 her room. 
 
 Also, never make presents of your drawings. Of course I 
 am addressing you as a beginner — a time may come when 
 your work will be precious to everybody ; but be resolute not 
 to give it away till you know that it is worth something (as 
 soon as it is worth anything you will know that it is so). If 
 any one asks you for a present of a drawing, send them a 
 couple of cakes of colour and a piece of Bristol board : those 
 materials are, for the present, of more value in that form than 
 if you had spread the one over the other. 
 
 The main reason for this rule is, however, that its observ- 
 
310 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAW J NO. 
 
 ance will much protect you from the great danger of trying to 
 make your drawings pretty. 
 
 2. Never, by choice, draw anything polished ; especially if 
 complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain orna- 
 ments, chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A shining 
 knob of a piece of furniture does not matter if it comes in 
 your way ; but do not fret yourself if it will not look right, 
 and choose only things that do not shine. 
 
 3. Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly diffi- 
 cult to draw, and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, 
 wdrn, and clumsy -looking things as much as possible ; for in- 
 stance, you cannot have a more difficult or profitless study 
 than a newly-painted Thames wherry, nor a better study than 
 an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low-tide : in general, 
 everything that you think very ugly w r ill be good for you to 
 draw. 
 
 4. Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one thing 
 is seen through another. You will constantly find a thin tree 
 standing before your chosen cottage, or between you and the 
 turn of the river ; its near branches all entangled with the 
 distance. It is intensely difficult to represent this ; and 
 though, when the tree is there, you must not imaginariiy cut 
 it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look for sub- 
 jects that fall into definite masses, not into network ; that is, 
 rather for a cottage with a dark tree beside it, than for one 
 with a thin tree in front of it ; rather for a mass of wood, soft, 
 blue, and rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion of 
 intricate stems. 
 
 5. Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges. 
 Perhaps nothing in the whole compass of landscape .is so 
 utterly unpicturesque and unmanageable as the ordinary 
 English patchwork of field and hedge, with trees dotted 
 over it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the cattle 
 line. 
 
 Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill, 
 and that the subject overmasters you. It is much better that 
 it should, than that you should think you had entirely mastered 
 it But at first, and even for some time, you must be pre- 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 311 
 
 pared for very discomfortable failure ; which, nevertheless, 
 will not be without some wholesome result. 
 
 As, however, I have told you what most definitely to avoid, 
 I may, perhaps, help you a little by saying what to seek. In 
 general, all banks are beautiful things, and will reward work 
 better than large landscapes. If you live in a lowland coun- 
 try, you must look for places where the ground is broken to 
 the river's edges, with decayed posts, or roots of trees ; or, if 
 by great good luck there should be such things within your 
 reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy mill-dams, 
 &c. Nearly every other mile of road in chalk country will 
 present beautiful bits of broken bank at its sides ; better in 
 form and colour than high chalk cliffs. In woods, one or two 
 trunks, with the flowery ground below, are at once the richest 
 and easiest kind of study : a not very thick trunk, say nine 
 inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy running up it sparingly, 
 is an easy, and always a rewarding subject. 
 
 Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are always 
 beautiful, when drawn carefully, provided they are not modern 
 rows of pattern cottages, or villas with Ionic and Doric por~ 
 ticos. Any old English village, or cluster of farm-houses, 
 drawn with all its ins and outs, and haystacks, and palings, 
 is sure to be lovely ; much more a French one. French land- 
 scape is generally as much superior to English as Swiss land- 
 scape is to French ; in some respects, the French is incom- 
 parable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I 
 have recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit no 
 rivalship in their expression of graceful rusticity and cheerful 
 peace, and in the beauty of component lines. 
 
 In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens ; a 
 rustic garden is in every way beautiful. If you have time, 
 draw all the rows of cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken 
 fences, and wandering eglantines, and bossy roses : you can- 
 not have better practice, nor be kept by anything in pure? 
 thoughts. 
 
 Make intimate friends of all the brooks in your neighbour- 
 hood, and study them ripple by ripple. 
 
 Village churches in England are not often good subjects ; 
 
312 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 there is a peculiar meanness about most of them, and awk- 
 wardness of line. Old manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins 
 are usually, with us, too prim, and cathedrals too orderly. I 
 do not think there is a single cathedral in England from 
 which it is possible to obtain one subject for an impressive 
 drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or jarring 
 vergerism about them. 
 
 If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger 
 is redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to 
 draw a piece of rounded rock, with its variegated lichens, 
 quite rightly, getting its complete roun dings, and all the pat- 
 terns of the lichen in true local colour. Till you can do this, 
 it is of no use your thinking of sketching among hills ; but 
 when once you have done this, the forms of distant hills will 
 be comparatively easy. 
 
 When you have practised for a little time from such of these 
 subjects as may be accessible to you, you will certainly find 
 difficulties arising which will make you wish more than ever 
 for a master's help : these difficulties will vary according to 
 the character of your own mind (one question occurring to 
 one person, and one to another), so that it is impossible to 
 anticipate them all ; and it would make this too large a book 
 if I answered all that I can anticipate ; you must be content to 
 work on, in good hope that nature will, in her own time, in- 
 terpret to you much for herself ; that farther experience on 
 your own part will make some difficulties disappear ; and that 
 others will be removed by the occasional observation of such 
 artists' work as may come in your way. Nevertheless, I will 
 not close this letter without a few general remarks, such as 
 may be useful to you after you are somewhat advanced in 
 power ; and these remarks may, I think, be conveniently ar- 
 ranged under three heads, having reference to the drawing of 
 vegetation, water, and skies. 
 
 And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps, we have 
 said enough about trees already ; yet if you have done as you 
 were bid, and tried to draw them frequently enough, and 
 carefully enough, you will be ready by this time to hear a 
 little more of them. You will also recollect that we left our 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 313 
 
 question, respecting the mode of expressing intricacy of leaf- 
 age, partly unsettled in the first letter. I left it so because I 
 wanted you to learn the real structure of leaves, by drawing 
 them for yourself, before I troubled you with the most subtle 
 considerations as to method in drawing them. And by this 
 time, I imagine, you must have found out two principal things, 
 universal facts, about leaves ; namely, that they always, in 
 the main tendencies of their lines, indicate a beautiful diver- 
 gence of growth, according to the law of radiation, already 
 referred to ;* and the second, that this divergence is never 
 formal, but carried out with endless variety of individual line. 
 I must now press both these facts on your attention a little 
 farther. 
 
 You may perhaps have been surprised that I have not yet 
 spoken of the works of J. D. Harding, especially if you happen 
 to have met with the passages referring to them in ? Modern 
 Painters, " in which they are highly praised. They are deserv- 
 edly praised, for they are the only works by a modern 
 draughtsman which express in any wise the energy of trees, 
 and the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking. 
 There are no lithographic sketches which, for truth of general 
 character, obtained with little cost of time, at all rival Hard- 
 ing's. Calame, Robert, and the other lithographic landscape 
 ske tchers are altogether inferior in power, though sometimes 
 a little deeper in meaning. But you must not take even 
 Harding for a model, though you may use his works for occa- 
 sional reference ; and if you can afford to buy his " Lessons on 
 Trees," f it will be serviceable to you in various ways, and will 
 at present help me to explain the point under consideration. 
 And it is well that I should illustrate this point by reference 
 to Harding's works, because their great influence on young 
 students renders it desirable that their real character should 
 be thoroughly understood. 
 
 * See the closing letter in this volume. 
 
 f Bogue, Fleet Street. If you are not acquainted with Harding's 
 works (an unlikely supposition, considering their popularity), and can- 
 not meet with the one in question, the diagrams given here will enable 
 you to understand all that is needful for our purposes. 
 
314 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 You will find, first, in the title-page of the " Lessons on 
 Trees," a pretty woodcut, in which the tree stems are drawn 
 with great truth, and in a very interesting arrangement of lines. 
 Plate 1. is not quite worthy of Mr. Harding, tending too much 
 to make his pupil, at starting, think everything depends on 
 black dots ; still the main lines are good, and very charac- 
 teristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2., we come to the 
 point at issue. The first examples in that plate are given to 
 the pupil that he may practise from them till his hand gets 
 into the habit of arranging lines freely in a similar manner ; 
 and they are stated by Mr. Harding to be universal in appli- 
 cation ; " all outlines expressive of foliage," he says, " are but 
 modifications of them." They consist of groups of lines, 
 more or less resembling our Fig. 23. ; and the characters es- 
 pecially insisted upon are, that they 
 "tend at their inner ends to a common 
 centre ; " that " their ends terminate in 
 [are enclosed by] ovoid curves ; " and 
 that " the outer ends are most em- 
 phatic." 
 
 Now, as thus expressive of the great laws of radiation and 
 enclosure, the main principle of this method of execution 
 confirms, in a very interesting way, our conclusions respect- 
 ing foliage composition. The reason of the last rule, that the 
 outer end of the line is to be most emphatic, does not indeed 
 at first appear ; for the line at one end of a natural leaf is not 
 more emphatic than the line at the other : but ultimately, in 
 Harding's method, this darker part of the touch stands more 
 or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the leaf mass ; 
 and, as Harding uses these touches, they express as much of 
 tree character as any mere habit of touch can express. But, 
 unfortunately, there is another law of tree growth, quite as 
 fixed as the law of radiation, which this and all other conven- 
 tional modes of execution wholly lose sight of. This second 
 law is, that the radiating tendency shall be carried out only 
 as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual individual 
 caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the mo- 
 ment a touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 315 
 
 of the leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its 
 unity of growth with its companions in the radiating group. 
 
 It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the 
 cluster may be, nor how large or vague. "You can hardly 
 have a more formal one 
 than b in Fig. 9. p. 276., 
 nor a less formal one 
 than this shoot of Span- 
 ish chestnut, shedding 
 its leaves, Fig. 24. ; but 
 in either of them, even 
 the general reader, un- 
 practised in any of the 
 previously recommend- 
 ed exercises, must see 
 that there are wandering 
 lines mixed with the 
 radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones : and 
 if he takes the pen and tries to copy either of these ex- 
 amples, he will find that neither play of hand to left nor to 
 right, neither a free touch nor a firm touch, nor any learnable 
 or describable touch whatsoever, will enable him to produce, 
 currently, a resemblance of it ; but that he must either draw 
 it slowly, or give it up. And (which makes the matter worse 
 still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close to you, 
 or seeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may 
 draw the entire outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light 
 upon it, and is ever so little a way off, you will miss, as we 
 have seen, a point of a leaf here, and an edge there ; some of 
 the surfaces will be confused by glitter, and some spotted 
 with shade ; and if you look carefully through this confusion 
 for the edges or dark stems which you really can see, and put 
 only those down, the result will be neither like Fig. 9. nor 
 Fig. 24., but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work 
 as Fig. 25.* 
 
 * I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it being 
 impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant foliage in a 
 woodcut. 
 
31G 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expression 
 of these three laws that all good drawing of landscape consists. 
 There is, first, the organic unit;/; the law, whether of radiation, 
 or parallelism, or concurrent action, which rales the masses of 
 herbs and trees, of rocks, and clouds, and waves ; secondly, the 
 individual liberty of the members subjected to these laws of 
 unity ; and, lastly, the mystery under which the separate char- 
 acter of each is more or less concealed. 
 
 I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic 
 law. This is the first distinction between good artists and bad 
 artists. Your common sketcher or bad painter puts his leaves 
 on the trees as if they were moss tied to sticks ; he cannot see 
 the lines of action or grow th ; he scatters the shapeless clouds 
 over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps of associated curves 
 
 Fig. 25. 
 
 which the real clouds are following as they fly ; and he breaks 
 his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly unconscious 
 of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen, or 
 of the lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, 
 it is the main delight of the great draughtsman to trace these 
 laws of government ; and his tendency to error is always in 
 the exaggeration of their authority rather than in its denial. 
 
 Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual character 
 and liberty of the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks. And here- 
 in the great masters separate themselves finally from the 
 inferior ones ; for if the men of inferior genius ever express 
 law at all, it is by the sacrifice of individuality. Thus, Salva- 
 tor Rosa has great perception of the sweep of foliage and 
 rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or mist 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 317 
 
 wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, 
 has great feeling for masses of form and harmony of colour ; 
 but in the detail gives nothing but meaningless touches ; not 
 even so much as the species of tree, much less the variety of 
 its leafage, being ever discernable. Now, although both these 
 expressions of government and individuality are essential to 
 masterly work, the individuality is the more essential, and the 
 more difficult of attainment ; and, therefore, that attainment 
 separates the great masters finally from the inferior ones. It 
 is the more essential, because, in these matters of beautiful 
 arrangement in visible things, the same rules hold that hold 
 in moral things. It is a lamentable and unnatural thing to 
 see a number of men subject to no government, actuated by 
 no ruling principle, and associated by no common affection : 
 but it would be a more lamentable thing still, were it possible 
 to see a number of men so oppressed into assimilation as to 
 have no more any individual hope or character, no differences 
 in aim, no dissimilarities of 'passion, no irregularities of judg- 
 ment ; a society in which no man could help another, since 
 none would be feebler than himself ; no man admire another, 
 since none would be stronger than himself ; no man be grateful 
 to another, since by none he could be relieved ; no man rever- 
 ence another, since by none he could be instructed ; a society 
 in which every soul would be as the syllable of a stammerer 
 instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would 
 walk as in a frightful dream, seeing spectres of himself, in 
 everlasting multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a 
 speechless darkness. Therefore it is that perpetual differ- 
 ence, play, and change in groups of form are more essential 
 to them even than their being subdued by some great gather- 
 ing law : the law is needful to them for their perfection and 
 their power, but the difference is needful to them for their life. 
 
 And here it may be noted in passing, that if you enjoy the 
 pursuit of analogies and types, and have any ingenuity of 
 judgment in discerning them, you may always accurately 
 ascertain what are the noble characters in a piece of paint- 
 ing, by merely considering what are the noble characters 
 of man in his association with his fellows. What grace of 
 
818 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING. 
 
 manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of 
 line and refinement of form are in the association of visi- 
 ble objects. What advantage or harm there may be in sharp- 
 ness, ruggedness, or quaintness in the dealings or conversa- 
 tions of men ; precisely that relative degree of advantage or 
 harm there is in them as elements of pictorial composition. 
 What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or relieve 
 human souls ; that power, precisely in the same relative 
 degree, play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh 
 the expression of a picture. And what goodness or greatness 
 we can conceive to arise in companies of men, from chastity 
 of thought, regularity of life, simplicity of custom, and bal- 
 ance of authority ; precisely that kind of goodness and great- 
 ness may be given to a picture by the purity of its colour, the 
 severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses. 
 
 You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analo- 
 gies too far. They cannot be pushed too far ; they are so 
 precise and complete, that the farther you pursue them, the 
 clearer, the more certain, the more useful you will find them. 
 They will not fail you in one particular, or in any direction of 
 enquiry. There is no moral vice, no moral virtue, which has 
 not its precise prototype in the art of painting ; so that you 
 may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the art, or the 
 art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness 
 and quietness, feebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, 
 pride and modesty, and all other such habits, and every con- 
 ceivable modification and mingling of them, may be illustrated, 
 with mathematical exactness, by conditions of line and colour ; 
 and not merely these definable vices and virtues, but also 
 every conceivable shade of human character and passion, from 
 the righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king, to the inno- 
 cent or faultful simplicity of the shepherd boy. 
 
 The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however, to 
 the investigation of the higher branches of composition, mat- 
 ters which it would be quite useless to treat of in this book ; 
 and I only allude to them here, in order that you may under- 
 stand how the utmost nobleness of art are concerned in this 
 minute work, to which I have set you in your beginning of it 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 319 
 
 For it is only by the closest attention, and the most noble 
 execution, that it is possible to express these varieties of in- 
 dividual character, on which all excellence of portraiture de- 
 pends, whether of masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves. 
 
 Now you will be able to understand, among other matters, 
 wherein consists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, 
 of the tree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent in so far as it 
 fondly observes, with more truth than any other work of the 
 kind, the great laws of growth and action in trees : it fails — 
 and observe, not in a minor, but in a principal point — because 
 it cannot rightly render any one individual detail or incident 
 of foliage. And in this it fails, not from mere carelessness or 
 in completion, but of necessity ; the true drawing of detail 
 being for evermore impossible to a hand which has contracted 
 a habit of execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf, 
 and stops, and says calmly — That leaf is of such and such a 
 character ; I will give him a friend who will entirely suit him : 
 then he considers w r hat his friend ought to be, and having 
 determined, he draws his friend. This process may be as 
 quick as lightning when the master is great — one of the sons 
 of the giants ; or it may be slow and timid : but the process 
 is always gone through , no touch or form is ever added to 
 another by a good painter without a mental determination 
 and affirmation. But when the hand has got into a habit, 
 leaf No. 1. necessitates leaf No. 2. ; you cannot stop, your 
 hand is as a horse with the bit in its teeth ; or rather is, for 
 the time, a machine, throwing out leaves to order and pattern, 
 all alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however pain- 
 fully ; make it understand that it is not to have its own way 
 any more, that it shall never more slip from one touch to 
 another without orders ; otherwise it is not you who are the 
 master, but your fingers. You may therefore study Hard- 
 ing's drawing, and take pleasure in it ; * and you may properly 
 admire the dexterity w T hich applies the habit of the hand so 
 
 * His lithographic sketches, those, for instance, in the Park and the 
 Forest, and his various lessons on foliage, possess greater merit than the 
 more ambitious engravings in his u Principles and Practice of Art. " There 
 are many useful remarks, however, dispersed through this latter work. 
 
320 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WING. 
 
 well, and produces results on the whole so satisfactory : but 
 you must never copy it, otherwise your progress will be at 
 once arrested. The utmost you can ever hope to do, would 
 be a sketch in Harding's manner, but of far inferior dexter- 
 ity ; for he has given his life's toil to gain his dexterity, and 
 you, I suppose, have other things to work at besides drawing. 
 You would also incapacitate yourself from ever understanding 
 what truly great work was, or what Nature was ; but by the 
 earnest and complete study of facts, you will gradually come 
 to understand the one and love the other more and more, 
 whether you can draw well yourself or not. 
 
 I have yet to say a few words respecting the third law 
 above stated, that of mystery ; the law, namely, that nothing- 
 is ever seen perfectly, but only by fragments, and under vari- 
 ous conditions of obscurity.* This last fact renders the vis- 
 ible objects of Nature complete as a type of the human nature. 
 We have, observe, first, Subordination ; secondly, Individual- 
 ity ; lastly, and this not the least essential character, Incom- 
 prehensibility ; a perpetual lesson in every serrated point and 
 shining vein which escape or /deceive our sight among the 
 forest leaves, how little we may hope to discern clearly, or 
 judge justly, the rents and veins of the human heart ; how 
 much of all that is round us, in men's actions or spirits, which 
 we at first think w r e understand, a closer and more loving- 
 watchfulness w r ould show to be full of mystery, never to be 
 either fathomed or withdrawn. 
 
 The expression of this final character in landscape has never 
 been completely reached by any except Turner ; nor can you 
 hope to reach it at all until you have given much time to the 
 practice of art. Only try always when you are sketching any 
 object with a view to completion in light and shade, to draw 
 only those parts of it which you really see definitely ; preparing 
 for the after development of the forms by chiaroscuro. It is 
 this preparation by isolated touches for a future arrangement 
 of superimposed light and shade which renders the etchings 
 of the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as examples and so 
 
 * On this law you will do well, if you can get access to it, to look at 
 the fourth chapter of the fourth volume of " Modern Painters." 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 321 
 
 peculiar. The character exists more or less in them exactly 
 in proportion to the pains that Turner has taken. Thus the 
 iEsacus and Hesperie was wrought out with the greatest pos- 
 sible care ; and the princi- 
 pal branch on the near tree 
 is etched as in Fig. 26. The 
 work looks at first like a 
 scholar's instead of a mas- 
 ter's ; but when the light 
 and shade are added, every 
 touch falls into its place, 
 and a perfect expression of 
 grace and complexity re- 
 sults. Nay even before the 
 
 broken lines, especially 
 where the expression is 
 given of the way the stem 
 loses itself in the leaves, are 
 more true than the monotonous though graceful leaf-drawing 
 which, before Turner's time, had been employed, even by the 
 best masters, in their distant masses. Fig. 27. is sufficiently 
 characteristic of the manner of the old woodcuts after Titian ; 
 in whicfc you see, the leaves are too much of one shape, like 
 
 bunches of fruit ; and the boughs 
 too completely seen, besides be- 
 ing somewhat soft and leathery 
 in aspect, owing to the want of 
 angles in their outline. By great 
 men like Titian, this somewhat 
 conventional structure was only 
 given in haste to distant masses ; 
 and their exquisite delineation 
 of the foreground, kept their 
 conventionalism from degeneracy : but in the drawing of 
 the Caracci and other derivative masters, the conventional- 
 
 Fig. 2fL 
 
322 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DUA WING. 
 
 ism prevails everywhere, and sinks gradually into scrawled 
 work, like Fig. 28., about the worst which it is possible to get 
 into the habit of using, though an ignorant person might per- 
 haps suppose it more "free/ 3 and therefore better than Fig. 
 26. Note, also, that in noble outline drawing, it does not 
 
 i« c \ One point more remains to 
 
 Fl ° 28- be noted about trees, and I 
 
 have done. In the minds of our ordinary water-colour artists, 
 a distant tree seems only to be conceived as a flat green blot, 
 grouping pleasantly with other masses, and giving cool colour 
 to the landscape, but differing nowise, in texture, from the 
 blots of other shapes, which these painters use to express stones, 
 or water, or figures. But as soon as you have drawn trees 
 carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed 
 more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of 
 their softness of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even 
 piece of colour, but a more or less globular mass of a downy 
 or bloomy texture, partly passing into a misty vagueness. I 
 find, practically, this lovely softness of far-away trees the most 
 difficult of all characters to reach, because it cannot be got by 
 mere scratching or roughening the surface, but is always as- 
 sociated with such delicate expressions of form and growth 
 as are only imitable by very careful drawing. The penknife 
 
 follow that a bough is wrong- 
 ly drawn, because it looks con- 
 tracted unnaturally some- 
 where, as in Fig. 26., just 
 above the foliage. Very often 
 the muscular action which is 
 to be expressed by the line, 
 runs into the middle of the 
 branch, and the actual outline 
 of the branch at that place may 
 be dimly seen, or not at all : 
 and it is then only by the 
 future shade that its actual 
 shape, or the cause of its dis- 
 appearance, will be indicated. 
 
SKETCH IN 0 FROM NATURE. 
 
 323 
 
 passed lightly over this careful drawing, will do a good deal ; 
 but you must accustom yourself, from the beginning, to aim 
 much at this softness in the lines of the drawing itself, by 
 crossing them delicately, and more or less effacing and con- 
 fusing the edges. You must invent, according to the char- 
 acter of tree, various modes of execution adapted to express 
 its texture ; but always keep this character of softness in your 
 mind and in your scope of aim ; for in most landscapes it is the 
 intention of nature that the tenderness and transparent infini- 
 tude of her foliage should be felt, even at the far distance, in the 
 most distinct opposition to the solid masses and fiat surfaces 
 of rocks or buildings. 
 
 II. We were, in the second place, to consider a little the 
 modes of representing water, of which important feature of 
 landscape I have hardly said anything yet. 
 
 Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conventional 
 lines, whose horizontality is supposed to convey the idea of its 
 surface. In paintings, white dashes or bars of light are used 
 for the same purpose. 
 
 But these and all other such expedients are vain and ab- 
 surd. A piece of calm water always contains a picture in it- 
 self, an exquisite reflection of the objects above it. If you 
 give the time necessary to draw these reflections, disturbing 
 them here and there as you see the breeze or current disturb 
 them, you will get the effect of the water ; but if you have 
 not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient will give 
 you a true efFect. The picture in the pool needs nearly as 
 much delicate drawing as the picture above the pool ; except 
 only that if there be the least motion on the water, the hori- 
 zontal lines of the images will be diffused and broken, while 
 the vertical ones will remain decisive, and the oblique ones 
 decisive in proportion to their steepness. 
 
 A few close studies will soon teach you this : the only thing 
 you need to be told is to watch carefully the lines of disturb- 
 ance on the surface, as when a bird swims across it, or a fish 
 rises, or the current plays round a stone, reed, or other ob- 
 stacle. Take the greatest pains to get the curves of these 
 
324 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 lines true ; the whole value of your careful drawing of the re- 
 flections may be lost by your admitting a single false curve of 
 ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) 
 if you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more 
 unity and delicacy : if your reflections are only soft and gra- 
 dated enough, they are nearly sure to give you a pleasant 
 effect. When you are taking pains, w r ork the softer reflections, 
 where they are drawn out by motion in the water, with 
 touches as nearly horizontal as may be ; but when you are in 
 a hurry, indicate the place and play of the images with verti- 
 cal lines. The actual construction of a calm elongated reflec- 
 tion is with horizontal lines : but it is often impossible to draw 
 the descending shades delicately enough with a horizontal 
 touch ; and it is best always when you are in a hurry, and 
 sometimes when you are not, to use the vertical touch. When 
 the ripples are large, the reflections become shaken, and must 
 be drawn w T ith bold modulatory descending lines. 
 
 I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the greatest 
 possible importance to draw, the curves of the shore rightly. 
 Their perspective is, if not more subtle, at least more strin- 
 gent than that of any other lines in Nature. It will not be 
 detected by the general observer, if you miss the curve of a 
 branch, or the sweep of a cloud, or the perspective of a build- 
 ing ; * but every intelligent spectator will feel the difference 
 between a rightly drawn bend of shore or shingle, and a false 
 one. Absolutely right, in difficult river perspectives seen from 
 heights, I believe no one but Turner ever has been yet ; and 
 observe, there is no rule for them. To develope the curve 
 mathematically would require a knowledge of the exact quan- 
 tity of water in the river, the shape of its bed 4 and the hard- 
 ness of the rock or shore ; and even with these data, the prob- 
 lem would be one which no mathematician could solve but 
 approximatively. The instinct of the eye can do it ; nothing 
 else. 
 
 If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the 
 
 * The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of build- 
 ings is of little consequence : but he will find it so ultimately. See the 
 remarks on this point in the Preface. 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE, 
 
 325 
 
 great differences between the aspect of the reflected image 
 and that of the object casting it ; and if yon wish to know the 
 law of reflection, it is simply this : Suppose all the objects 
 above the water actually reversed (not in appearance, but in 
 fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in form and 
 in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then, whatever you 
 can see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid ob- 
 jects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflec- 
 tion, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so re- 
 versed. 
 
 If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water, 
 take a mirror, lay it horizontally on the table, put some books 
 and papers upon it, and draw them and their reflections ; 
 moving them about, and watching how their reflections alter, 
 and chiefly how their reflected colours and shades differ from 
 their own colours and shades, by being brought into other 
 oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a more impor- 
 tant character in water painting than mere difference in form. 
 
 When you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you will 
 see shadows on the bottom, or on the surface, continually 
 modifying the reflections ; and in a clear mountain stream, 
 the most wonderful complications of effect resulting from the 
 shadows and reflections of the stones in it, mingling with the 
 aspect of the stones themselves seen through the water. Do 
 not be frightened at the complexity ; but, on the other hand, 
 do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out 
 everything that you see, and distinguishing each component 
 part of the effect. There will be, first, the stones seen through 
 the w r ater, distorted always by refraction, so that if the gen- 
 eral structure of the stone shows straight parallel lines above 
 the water, you may be sure they will be bent where they 
 enter it ; then the reflection of the part of the stone above the 
 water crosses and interferes with the part that is seen through 
 it, so that you can hardly tell which is which ; and w T herever 
 the reflection is darkest, you will see through the water best, 
 and vice versa. Then the real shadow of the stone crosses 
 both these images, and where that shadow falls, it makes the 
 water more reflective, and where the sunshine falls, you will 
 
326 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DMA WING. 
 
 see more of the surface of the water, and of any dust or motea 
 that may be floating on it : but whether you are to see, at the 
 same spot, most of the bottom of the water, or of the reflec- 
 tion of the objects above, depends on the position of the eye. 
 The more you look down into the water, the better you see 
 objects through it ; the more you look along it, the eye being 
 low, the more you see the reflection of objects above it. 
 Hence the colour of a given space of surface in a stream will 
 entirely change while you stand still in the same spot, merely 
 as you stoop or raise your head ; and thus the colours with 
 which water is painted are an indication of the position of the 
 spectator, and connected inseparably with the perspective of 
 the shores. The most beautiful of all results that I know in 
 mountain streams is when the water is shallow, and the stones 
 at the bottom are rich reddish-orange and black, and the 
 water is seen at an angle which exactly divides the visible 
 colours between those of the stones and that of the sky, and 
 the sky is of clear, full blue. The resulting purple obtained 
 by the blending of the blue and the orange-red, broken by 
 the play of innumerable gradations in the stones, is indescrib- 
 ably lovely. 
 
 All this seems complicated enough already ; but if there be 
 a strong colour in the clear water itself, as of green or blue 
 in the Swiss lakes, all these phenomena are doubly involved ; 
 for the darker reflections now become of the colour of the 
 water. The reflection of a black gondola, for instance, at 
 Venice, is never black, but pure dark green. And, farther, 
 the colour of the water itself is of three kinds : one, seen on 
 the surface, is a kind of milky bloom ; the next is seen where 
 the waves let light through them, at their edges ; and the 
 third, shown as a change of colour on the objects seen through 
 the water. Thus, the same wave that makes a white object 
 look of a clear blue, when seen through it, will take a red or 
 violet-coloured bloom on its surface, and will be made pure 
 emerald green by transmitted sunshine through its edges. 
 With all this, however, you are not much concerned at pres- 
 ent, but I tell it you partly as a preparation for what we have 
 afterwards to say about colour, and partly that you may ap> 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 327 
 
 proach lakes and streams with reverence, and study them as 
 carefully as other things, not hoping to express them by a 
 few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.* 
 Not but that much may be done by tremulous blots, when 
 you know precisely what you mean by them, as you will see 
 by many of the Turner sketches, which are now framed at the 
 National Gallery ; but you must have painted water many 
 and many a day — yes, and all day long — before you can hope 
 to do anything like those. 
 
 III. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before passing 
 to the clouds, I say nothing special about ground f But 
 there is too much to be said about that to admit of my saying- 
 it here. You will find the principal laws of its structure ex- 
 amined at length in the fourth volume of " Modern Painters ;" 
 and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully Plate 21., 
 which I have etched after Turner with great pains, it will 
 give you as much help as you need in the linear expression of 
 ground-surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession 
 of masses in irregular ground : much may be done in this 
 way by careful watching of the perspective diminutions of 
 its herbage, as well as by contour ; and much also by shad- 
 ows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree trunks on 
 any undulating ground with entire carefulness, you will be 
 surprised to find how much they explain of the form and dis- 
 tance of the earth on which they fall. 
 
 Passing then to skies, note that there is this great peculiar- 
 ity about sky subject, as distinguished from earth subject 
 
 * It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in water, 
 so as to make the liquid definitely blue : fill a large white basin with 
 the solution, and put anything you like to florvt on it, or lie in it ; wal- 
 nut shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, &c. Then study the effects 
 of the reflections, and of the stems of the flowers or submerged portions 
 of the floating objects, as they appear through the blue liquid ; noting 
 especially how, as you lowor your head and look along the surface, you 
 see the reflections clearly ; and how, as you raise your head, you lose 
 the reflections, and see the submerged stems clearly. 
 
 f Respecting Architectural Drawing, see the notice of the works of 
 Prout in the Appendix. 
 
328 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WI1VG. 
 
 that the clouds, not being much liable to man's interference, 
 are always beautifully arranged. You cannot be sure of this 
 in any other features of landscape. The rock on which the 
 effect of a mountain scene especially depends is always pre- 
 cisely that which the roadmaker blasts or the landlord quar- 
 ries ; and the spot of green which Nature left with a special 
 purpose by her dark forest sides, and finished with her most 
 delicate grasses, is always that which the farmer ploughs or 
 builds upon. But the clouds, though we can hide them with 
 smoke, and mix them with poison, cannot be quarried nor 
 built over, and they are always therefore gloriously arranged ; 
 so gloriously, that unless you have notable powers of memory 
 you need not hope to approach the effect of any sky that in- 
 terests you. For both its grace and its glow depend upon 
 the united influence of every cloud within its compass : they 
 all move and burn together in a marvellous harmony ; not a 
 cloud of them is out of its appointed place, or fails of its part 
 in the choir : and if you 1 are not able to recollect (which in 
 the case of a complicated sky it is impossible you should) pre- 
 cisely the form and position of all the clouds at a given mo- 
 ment, you cannot draw the sky at ail ; for the clouds will not 
 fit if you draw one part of them three or four minutes before 
 another. You must try therefore to help what memory you 
 have, by sketching at the utmost possible speed the whole 
 range of the clouds ; marking, by any shorthand or symbolic 
 work you can hit upon, the peculiar character of each, as trans- 
 parent, or fleecy, or linear, or modulatory ; giving afterwards 
 such completion to the parts as your recollection will enable 
 you to do. This, however, only when the sky is interesting 
 from its general aspect ; at other times, do not try to draw 
 all the sky, but a single cloud : sometimes a round cumulus 
 will stay five or six minutes quite steady enough to let you 
 mark out his principal masses : and one or two white or crim- 
 son lines which cross the sunrise will often stay without se- 
 rious change for as long. And in order to be the readier in 
 drawing them, practise occasionally drawing lumps of cotton, 
 which will teach you better than any other stable thing the 
 kind of softness there is in clouds. For you will find when 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATUHIH. 
 
 329 
 
 you have made a few genuine studies of sky, and then look at 
 any ancient or modern painting, that ordinary artists have 
 always fallen into one of two faults : either, in rounding the 
 clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged as a heap of 
 stones tied up in a sack, or they represent them not as 
 rounded at all, but as vague wreaths of mist or flat lights in 
 the sky ; and think they have done enough in leaving a little 
 white paper between dashes of blue, or in taking an irregular 
 space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as solid as 
 flour-sacks ; bat, on the other hand, they are neither spongy 
 nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculpt- 
 ured mist ; sculptured is a perfectly accurate word ; they are 
 not more drifted into form than they are carved into form, the 
 warm air around them cutting them into shape by absorbing 
 the visible vapour beyond certain limits ; hence their angular 
 and fantastic outlines, as different from a swollen, spherical, 
 or globular formation, on the one hand, as from that of flat 
 films or shapeless mists on the other. And the worst of all 
 is, that while these forms are difficult enough to draw on any 
 terms, especially considering that they never stay quiet, they 
 must be drawn also at greater disadvantage of light and 
 shade than any others, the force of light in clouds being 
 wholly unattainable by art ; so that if we put shade enough 
 to express their form as positively as it is expressed in reality, 
 we must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides. 
 Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed 
 with them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage. Out- 
 line them often with the pen, as you can catch them here and 
 there ; one of the chief uses of doing this will be, not so much 
 the memorandum so obtained as the lesson you will get re - 
 specting the softness of the cloud- outlines. You will always 
 find yourself at a loss to see where the outline really is ; and 
 when drawn it will always look hard and false, and will as- 
 suredly be either too round or too square, however often you 
 alter it, merely passing from the one fault to the other and 
 back again, the real cloud striking an inexpressible mean be- 
 tween roundness and squareness in all its coils or battlements. 
 I speak at present, of course, only of the cumulus cloud : the 
 
330 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 lighter wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot be outlined j 
 — they can only be sketched, like locks of hair, by many lines 
 of the pen. Firmly developed bars of cloud on the horizon 
 are in general easy enough, and may be drawn with decision. 
 When you have thus accustomed yourself a little to the plac- 
 ing and action of clouds, try to work out their light and shade, 
 just as carefully as you do that of other things, looking exclu- 
 sively for examples of treatment to the vignettes in Rogers's 
 Italy and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you 
 have access to some examples of Turner's own work. No 
 other artist ever yet drew the sky : even Titian's clouds, and 
 Tintoret's, are conventional. The clouds in the "Ben Ar- 
 thur," " Source of Arveron," and "Calais Pier," are among 
 the best of Turner's storm studies ; and of the upper clouds, 
 the vignettes to Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples 
 as you need. 
 
 And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky, so, for 
 the present, let our last be. I do not advise you to be in any 
 haste to master the contents of my next letter. If you have 
 any real talent for drawing, you will take delight in the dis- 
 coveries of natural loveliness, which the studies I have already 
 proposed will lead you into, among the fields and hills ; and 
 be assured that the more quietly and single-heartedly you 
 take each step in the art, the quicker, on the whole, will your 
 progress be. I would rather, indeed, have discussed the sub- 
 jects of the following letter at greater length, and in a separate 
 work addressed to more advanced students ; but as there are 
 one or two things to be said on composition which may set the 
 young artist's mind somewhat more at rest, or furnish him 
 with defence from the urgency of ill-advisers, I will glance 
 over the main heads of the matter here ; trusting that my do- 
 ing so may not beguile you, my dear reader, from your seri- 
 ous work, or lead you to think me, in occupying part of this 
 book with talk not altogether relevant to it, less entirely or 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 331 
 
 LETTER III 
 
 on colour and composition. 
 
 My Dear Reader : — 
 
 If you have been obedient, and have hitherto done all 
 that I have told you, I trust it has not been without much 
 subdued remonstrance, and some serious vexation. For I 
 should be sorry if, when you were led by the course of your 
 study to observe closely such things as are beautiful in colour, 
 you had not longed to paint them, and felt considerable dif- 
 ficulty in complying with your restriction to the use of black, 
 or blue, or grey. You ought to love colour, and to think noth- 
 ing quite beautiful or perfect without it ; and if you really do 
 love it, for its own sake, and are not merely desirous to colour 
 because you think painting a finer thing than drawing, there 
 is some chance you may colour w r ell. Nevertheless, you need 
 not hope ever to produce anything more than pleasant helps 
 to memory, or useful and suggestive sketches in colour, unless 
 you mean to be wholly an artist. You may, in the time which 
 other vocations leave at your disposal, produce finished, 
 beautiful, and masterly drawings in light and shade. But to 
 colour well, requires your life. It cannot be done cheaper. 
 The difficulty of doing right is increased — not twofold nor 
 threefold, but a thousandfold, and more— by the addition of 
 colour to your work. For the chances are more than a thou- 
 sand to one against your being right both in form and colour 
 with a given touch : it is difficult enough to be right in form, 
 if you attend to that only ; but when you have to attend, at 
 the same moment, to a much more subtle thing than the form, 
 the difficulty is strangely increased — and multiplied almost to 
 infinity by this great fact, that, while form is absolute, so that 
 you can say at the moment you draw any line that it is either 
 right or wrong, colour is wholly relative. Every hue through- 
 out your work is altered by every touch that you add in other 
 places ; so that what was warm a minute ago, becomes cold 
 
332 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 when you have put a hotter colour in another place, and what 
 was in harmony when you left it, becomes discordant as you 
 set other colours beside it ; so that every touch must be laid, 
 not with a view to its effect at the time, but with a view to its 
 effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is afterwards to 
 be done being previously considered. You may easily under- 
 stand that, this being so, nothing but the devotion of life, and 
 great genius besides, can make a colourist. 
 
 But though you cannot produce finished coloured drawings 
 of any value, you may give yourself much pleasure, and be of 
 great use to other people, by occasionally sketching with a 
 view to colour only ; and preserving distinct statements of cer- 
 tain colour facts — as that the harvest-moon at rising was of 
 such and such a red, and surrounded by clouds of such and 
 such a rosy grey ; that the mountains at evening were in truth 
 so deep in purple ; and the waves by the boat's side were in- 
 deed of that incredible green. This only, observe, if you have 
 an eye for colour ; but you may presume that you have this, if 
 you enjoy colour. 
 
 And, though of course you should always give as much form 
 to your subject as your attention to its colour will admit of, 
 remember that the whole value of what you are about depends, 
 in a coloured sketch, on the colour merely. If the colour is 
 wrong, everything is wrong : just as, if you are singing, and 
 sing false notes, it does not matter how true the words are. If 
 you sing at all, you must sing sweetly ; and if you colour at 
 all, you must colour rightly. Give up all the form, rather 
 than the slightest part of the colour : just as, if you felt your- 
 self in danger of a false note, you would give up the word, and 
 sing a meaningless sound, if you felt that so you could save 
 the note. Never mind though your houses are all tumbling 
 clown — though your clouds are mere blots, and your trees 
 mere knobs, and your sun and moon like crooked sixpences — 
 so only that trees, clouds, houses, and sun or moon, are of the 
 right colours. Of course, the discipline you have gone through 
 will enable you to hint something of form, even in the fast- 
 est sweep of the brush ; but do not let the thought of form 
 hamper you in the least, when you begin to make coloured 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 
 
 333 
 
 memoranda. If you want the form of the subject, draw it in 
 black and white. If you want its colour, take its colour, and 
 be sure you have it, and not a spurious, treacherous, half- 
 measured piece of mutual concession, with the colours all 
 wrong, and the forms still anything but right. It is best to 
 get into the habit of considering the coloured work merely as 
 supplementary to your other studies ; making your careful 
 drawings of the subject first, and then a coloured memoran- 
 dum separately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful in hue, 
 and entirely minding its own business. This principle, how- 
 ever, bears chiefly on large and distant subjects ; in fore- 
 grounds and near studies, the colour cannot be had without a 
 good deal of definition of form. For if you do not map the 
 mosses on the stones accurately, you will not have the right 
 quantity of colour in each bit of moss pattern, and then none 
 of the colours will look right ; but it always simplifies the work 
 much if you are clear as to your point of aim, and satisfied, 
 when necessary, to fail of all but that. 
 
 Now, of course, if I were to enter into detail respecting 
 colouring, which is the beginning and end of a painter's craft, 
 I should need to make this a work in three volumes instead of 
 three letters, and to illustrate it in the costliest way. I only 
 hope at present to set you pleasantly and profitably to work, 
 leaving you, within the tethering of certain leading-strings, to 
 gather what advantages you can from the works of art of 
 which every year brings a greater number within your reach ; 
 — and from the instruction which, every year, our rising artists 
 will be more ready to give kindly, and better able to give wisely. 
 
 And, first, of materials. Use hard cake colours, not moist 
 colours : grind a sufficient quantity of each on your palette 
 every morning, keeping a separate plate, large and deep, for 
 colours to be used in broad washes, and wash both plate and 
 palette every evening, so as to be able always to get good 
 and pure colour when you need it ; and force yourself into 
 cleanly and orderly habits about your colours. The two best 
 colourists of modern times, Turner and Kossetti,* afford us, I 
 
 * I give Rossetti this preeminence, because, though the leading Pre- 
 Raphaelites have all about equal power over colour in the abstract 
 
334: 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 am sorry to say, no confirmation of this precept by their prac- 
 tice. Turner was, and Rossetti is, as slovenly in all their pro- 
 cedures as men can well be ; but the result of this was, with 
 Turner, that the colours have altered in all his pictures, and in 
 many of his drawings ; and the result of it. with Rossetti is, 
 that, though his colours are safe, he has sometimes to throw 
 aside work that w T as half done, and begin over again. William 
 Hunt, of the Old Water-colour, is very neat in his practice ; 
 so, I believe, is Mulready ; so is John Lewis ; and so are the 
 leading Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti only excepted. And there 
 can be no doubt about the goodness of the advice, if it were 
 only for this reason, that the more particular you are about 
 your colours the more you will get into a deliberate and 
 methodical habit in using them, and all true speed in colouring 
 comes of this deliberation. 
 
 Use Chinese white, well ground, to mix with your colours 
 iu order to pale them, instead of a quantity of water. You 
 will thus be able to shape your masses more quietly, and play 
 the colours about with more ease ; they will not damp your 
 paper so much, and you will be able to go on continually, and 
 lay forms of passing cloud and other fugitive or delicately 
 shaped lights, otherwise unattainable except by time. 
 
 This mixing of white with the pigments, so as to render 
 them opaque, constitutes 6oc/?/-colour drawing as opposed to 
 transparent-colour drawing and you will, perhaps, have it often 
 said to you that this body-colour is " illegitimate." It is jusfc 
 as legitimate as oil-painting, being, so far as handling is con- 
 cerned, the same process, only without its uncleanliness, its 
 unwholesomeness, or its inconvenience ; for oil will not dry 
 quickly, nor carry safely, nor give the same effects of atmos- 
 phere without tenfold labour. And if you hear it said that the 
 body-colour looks chalky or opaque, and, as is very likely, 
 think so yourself, be yet assured of this, that though certain 
 
 Rossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest for render- 
 ing colour under effects of light ; and of these two, Rossetti composes with 
 richer fancy, and with a deeper sense of beauty, Hunt s stern realism 
 leading him continually into harshness. Rossetti s carelessness, to do 
 him justice, is only in water-colour, never in oil. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 335 
 
 effects of glow and transparencies of gloom are not to be 
 readied without transparent colour, those glows and glooms 
 are not the noblest aim of art. After many years' study of 
 the various results of fresco and oil painting in Italy, and of 
 body-colour and transparent colour in England, I am now en- 
 tirely convinced that the greatest things that are to be done 
 in art must be done in dead colour. The habit of depending 
 on varnish or on lucid tints transparency, makes the painter 
 comparatively lose sight of the nobler translucence which is 
 obtained by breaking various colours amidst each other : and 
 even when, as by Correggio, exquisite play of hue is joined 
 with exquisite transparency, the delight in the depth almost 
 always leads the painter into mean and false chiaroscuro ; it 
 leads him to like dark backgrounds instead of luminous ones,* 
 and to enjoy, in general, quality of colour more than grandeur 
 of composition, and confined light rather than open sunshine : 
 so that the really greatest thoughts of the greatest men have 
 always, so far as I remember, been reached in dead colour, 
 
 * All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the rise 
 of the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown trees, 
 would have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to work in 
 dead colour. Any colour will do for some people, if it is browned and 
 shining ; but fallacy in dead colour is detected on the instant. I even 
 believe that whenever a painter begins to icish that he could touch any 
 portion of his work with gam, he is going wrong. 
 
 It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish be- 
 tween translucency and lustre. Translucency, though, as I have said 
 above, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful ; but lustre, or 
 sldniness, is always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of my best painter- 
 friends (the u best " being understood to attach to both divisions of that 
 awkward compound word;, tried the other day to persuade me that 
 lustre was an ignobleness in anything ; and it was only the fear of trea- 
 son to ladies' eyes, and to mountain streams, and to morning dew, which 
 kept me from yielding the point to him. One is apt always to generalise 
 too quickly in such matters ; but there can be no question that lustre is 
 destructive of loveliness in colour, as it is of intelligibility in form. 
 Whatever may be the pride of a young beauty in the knowledge that 
 her eyes shine (though perhaps even eyes are most beautiful in dimness), 
 she would be sorry if her cheeks did ; and which of us would wish to 
 polish a ro^e ? 
 
338 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 and the noblest oil pictures of Tintoret and Veronese are those 
 which are likest frescos. 
 
 Besides all this, the fact is, that though sometimes a little 
 chalky and coarse-looking, body-colour is, in a sketch, infi- 
 nitely liker nature than transparent colour : the bloom and 
 mist of distance are accurately and instantly represented by 
 the film of opaque blue {quite accurately, I think, by nothing 
 else); and for ground, rocks, and buildings, the earthy and 
 solid surface is, of course, always truer than the most finished 
 and carefully wrought work in transparent tints can ever be. 
 
 Against one thing, however, I must steadily caution you. 
 All kinds of colour are equally illegitimate, if you think they 
 will allow you to alter at your pleasure, or blunder at your 
 ease. There is no vehicle or method of colour which admits 
 of alteration or repentance ; you must be right at once, or 
 never ; and you might as well hope to catch a rifle bullet in 
 your hand, and put it straight, when it was going wrong, as 
 to recover a tint once spoiled. The secret of all good colour 
 in oil, w r ater, or anything else, lies primarily in that sentence 
 spoken to me by Mulready : "Know what you have to do." 
 The process may be a long one, perhaps : you may have to 
 ground with one colour ; to touch it with fragments of a 
 second ; to crumble a third into the interstices ; a fourth into 
 the interstices of the third ; to glaze the whole with a fifth ; 
 and to reinforce in points with a sixth : but whether you 
 have one, or ten, or twenty processes to go through, you must 
 go straight through them, knowingly and foreseeingly all the 
 way ; and if you get the thing once wrong, there is no hope 
 for you but in washing or scraping boldly down to the white 
 ground, and beginning again. 
 
 The drawing in body-colour will tend to teach you all this, 
 more than any other method, and above all it will prevent you 
 from falling into the pestilent habit of sponging to get text- 
 ure ; a trick which has nearly ruined our modern water-colour 
 school of art. There are sometimes places in which a skilful 
 artist will roughen his paper a little to get certain conditions 
 of dusty colour with more ease than he could otherwise ; and 
 sometimes a skilfully rased piece of paper will, in the midst 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 
 
 337 
 
 of transparent tints, answer nearly the purpose of chalky 
 body-colour in representing the surfaces of rocks or buildings. 
 But artifices of this kind are always treacherous in a tyro's 
 hands, tempting him to trust in them ; and you had better 
 always work on white or grey paper as smooth as silk ;* and 
 never disturb the surface of your colour or paper, except 
 finally to scratch out the very highest lights if you are using 
 transparent colours. 
 
 I have said above that body-colour drawing will teach you 
 the use of colour better than working with merely transparent 
 tints ; but this is not because the process is an easier one, 
 but because it is a more complete one, and also because it in- 
 volves some working with transparent tints in the best way. 
 You are not to think that because you use body-colour you 
 may make any kind of mess that you like, and yet get out of 
 it. But you are to avail yourself of the characters of your 
 material, which enable you most nearly to imitate the proc- 
 esses of Nature. Thus, suppose you have a red rocky cliff 
 to sketch, with blue clouds floating over it. You paint your 
 cliff first firmly, then take your blue, mixing it to such a tint 
 (and here is a great part of the skill needed), that when it is 
 laid over the red, in the thickness required for the effect of 
 the mist, the warm rock-colour showing through the blue 
 cloud-colour, may bring it to exactly the hue you want ; (your 
 upper tint, therefore, must be mixed colder than you want it ;) 
 then you lay it on, varying it as you strike it, getting the 
 forms of the mist at once, and, if it be rightly done, with ex- 
 quisite quality of colour, from the warm tint's showing 
 through and between the particles of the other. When it is 
 dry, you may add a little colour to retouch the edges where 
 they want shape, or heighten the lights where they want 
 roundness, or put another tone over the whole ; but you can 
 
 * Bat not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed imperial, or 
 grey paper that feels slightly adhesive to the hand, is best. Coarse, 
 gritty, and sandy papers are fit only for blotters and blunderers ; no 
 good draughtsman would lay a line on them. Turner worked much on 
 a thin tough paper, dead in surface ; rolling up his sketches in tight 
 bundles that would go deep into his pockets. 
 
338 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WING. 
 
 take none away. If you touch or disturb the surface, or by 
 any untoward accident mix the under and upper colours to- 
 gether, all is lost irrecoverably. Begin your drawing from 
 the ground again if you like, or throw it into the fire if you 
 like. But do not waste time in trying to mend it.* 
 
 This discussion of the relative merits of transparent and 
 opaque colour has, however, led us a little beyond the point 
 where we should have begun ; we must go back to our palette, 
 if you please. Get a cake of each of the hard colours named 
 in the note below f and try experiments on their simple com- 
 binations, by mixing each colour with every other. If you 
 like to do it in an orderly way, you may prepare a squared 
 piece of pasteboard, and put the pure colours in columns at 
 
 * I insist upon this unalterability of colour the more because I address 
 you as a beginner, or an amateur ; a great artist can sometimes get out 
 of a difficulty with credit, or repent without confession. Yet even 
 Titian's alterations usually show as stains on his work. 
 
 f It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with few colours ; 
 it saves time to have enough tints prepared without mixing, and you 
 may at once allow yourself these twenty-four. If you arrange them 
 in your colour-box in the order I have set them down, you will always 
 easily put your finger on the one you want. 
 
 Cobalt. 
 Black. 
 
 Lemon yellow. 
 Raw sienna. 
 Mars orange. 
 Brown madder. 
 
 Smalt. 
 Gamboge. 
 Cadmium yellow. 
 Burnt sienna. 
 Ext' t of vermilion. 
 Burnt umber. 
 
 Antwerp blue. 
 Emerald green. 
 Yellow ochre. 
 Light red 
 Carmine. 
 Vandyke brown. 
 
 Prussian blue. 
 Hooker* s green. 
 Roman ochre. 
 Indian red. 
 Violet carmine. 
 Sepia. 
 
 Antwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent colours, but 
 you need not care much about permanence in your own work as yet, 
 and they are both beautiful ; while Indigo is marked by Field as more 
 fugitive, still, and is very ugly. Hooker's green is a mixed colour, put 
 in the box merely to save you loss of time in mixing gamboge and 
 Prussian blue. No. 1. is the best tint of it. Violet carmine is a noble 
 colour for laying broken shadows with, to be worked into afterwards 
 with other colours. 
 
 If you wish to take up colouring seriously, you had better get Field's 
 " Chromatography " at once ; only do not attend to anything it says 
 about principles or harmonies of colour ; but only to its statements of 
 practical serviceableness in pigments, and of their operations on each 
 other when mixed, &c. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 339 
 
 the top find side ; the mixed tints being given at the inter- 
 sections, thus (the letters standing for colours ) : 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 d 
 
 e 
 
 f 
 
 a ab 
 
 ac 
 
 a d 
 
 ae 
 
 af 
 
 b - 
 
 be 
 
 bd 
 
 be 
 
 bf 
 
 c — 
 
 
 cd 
 
 c e 
 
 cf 
 
 d - 
 
 
 
 de 
 
 df 
 
 e — 
 
 
 
 
 ef 
 
 &c. 
 
 
 
 
 
 This will give you some general notion of the characters of 
 mixed tints of two colours only, and it is better in practice 
 to confine yourself as much as possible to these, and to get 
 more complicated colours, either by putting a third over the 
 first blended tint, or by putting the third into its interstices. 
 Nothing but watchful practice will teach you the effects that 
 colours have on each other when thus put over, or beside, each 
 other. 
 
 When you have got a little used to the principal combi- 
 nations, place yourself at a window which the sun does not 
 shine in at, commanding some simple 
 piece of landscape ; outline this landscape 
 roughly ; then take a piece of white card- ^k<-f 
 board, cut out a hole in it about the size * 
 of a large pea ; and supposing R is the a 
 room, a d the window, and you are sitting 
 at a, Fig. 29., hold this cardboard a little 
 outside of the window, upright, and in 
 the direction b d, parallel a little turned 
 to the side of the window, or so as to catch more light, as at 
 a d, never turned as at c d, or the paper will be dark. Then 
 you will see the landscape, bit by bit, through the circular 
 hole. Match the colours of each important bit as nearly 
 as you can, mixing your tints with white, beside the aperture. 
 When matched, put a touch of the same tint at the top of 
 your paper, writing under it : " dark tree colour," " hill col- 
 our," "field colour," as the case may by. Then wash the tint 
 
 Fig. 29. 
 
340 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 away from beside the opening, and the cardboard will be 
 ready to match another piece of the landscape.* When you 
 have got the colours of the principal masses thus indicated, 
 lay on a piece of each in your sketch in its right place, and 
 then proceed to complete the sketch in harmony with them ; 
 by your eye. 
 
 In the course of your early experiments, you will be much 
 struck by two things : the first, the inimitable brilliancy of 
 light in sky and in sun-lighted things : and the second, that 
 among the tints which you can imitate, those which you 
 thought the darkest will continually turn out to be in reality 
 the lightest. Darkness of objects is estimated by us, under 
 ordinary circumstances, much more by knowledge than by 
 sight ; thus, a cedar or Scotch fir, at 200 yards oif, will be 
 thought of darker green than an elm or oak near us ; because 
 we know by experience that the peculiar colour they exhibit, 
 at that distance, is the sign of darkness of foliage. But when 
 we try them through the cardboard, the near oak will be found, 
 indeed, rather dark green, and the distant cedar, perhaps, pale 
 gray-purple. The quantity of purple and grey in Nature is, 
 by the way, another somewhat surprising subject of dis- 
 covery. 
 
 Well, having ascertained thus your principal tints, you may 
 proceed to fill up your sketch ; in doing which observe these 
 following particulars : 
 
 1. Many portions of your subject appeared through the 
 aperture in the paper brighter than the paper, as sky, sun- 
 lighted grass, &c. Leave these portions, for the present, 
 white ; and proceed with the parts of which you can match 
 the tints. 
 
 * A more methodical, though, under general circumstances, uselessly 
 prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the sheet 
 of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip of cardboard 
 an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening, and match each 
 colour beside one of the circular openings. You will thus have no occa- 
 sion to wash any of the colours away. But the first rough method is 
 generally all you want, as after a little practice, you only need to look 
 at the hue through the opening in order to be able to transfer it to your 
 drawing at once. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 341 
 
 2. As you tried your subject with the cardboard, you must 
 have observed how many changes of hue took place over small 
 spaces. In filling up your work, try to educate your eye to 
 perceive these differences of hue without the help of the card- 
 board, and lay them deliberately, like a mosaic-worker, as sep- 
 arate colours, preparing each carefully on your palatte, and 
 laying it as if it were a patch of coloured cloth, cut out, to be 
 fitted neatly by its edge to the next patch ; so that the fault of 
 your work may be, not a slurred or misty look, but a patched 
 bed-cover look, as if it had all been cut out with scissors. For 
 instance, in drawing the trunk of a birch tree, there will be 
 probably white high lights, then a pale rosy grey round them 
 oil the light side, then a (probably greenish) deeper grey on 
 the dark side, varied by reflected colours, and over all, rich 
 black strips of bark and brown spots of moss. Lay first the 
 rosy grey, leaving white for the high lights and for the spots of 
 moss, and not touching the dark side. Then lay the grey for 
 the dark side,* fitting it well up to the rosy grey of the light, 
 leaving also in this darker grey the white paper in the places 
 for the black and brown moss ; then prepare the moss colours 
 separately for each spot, and lay each in the white place left 
 for it. Not one grain of white, except that purposely left for 
 the high lights, must be visible when the work is done, even 
 through a magnifying-glass, so cunningly must you fit the 
 edges to each other. Finally, take your background colours, 
 and put them on each side of the tree-trunk, fitting them care- 
 fully to its edge. 
 
 Fine work you would make of this, wouldn't you, if you had 
 not learned to draw first, and could not now draw a good out- 
 line for the stem, much less terminate a colour mass in the 
 outline you wanted ? 
 
 Your work will look very odd for some time, when you first 
 begin to paint in this way* and before you can modify it, as I 
 shall tell you presently how ; but never mind ; it is of the 
 greatest possible importance that you should practice this sep- 
 arate laying on of the hues, for all good colouring finally de- 
 pends on it. It is, indeed, often necessary, and sometimes de* 
 sirable, to lay one colour and form boldly over another : thus, 
 
IM2 TIIE ELEMENTS OF JJRA WING. 
 
 in laying leaves on blue sky, it is impossible always in large 
 pictures, or when pressed for time, to till in the blue through 
 the interstices of the leaves ; and the great Venetians con- 
 stantly lay their blue ground first, and then, having let it dry, 
 strike the golden brown over it in the form of the leaf, leaving 
 the under blue to shine through the gold, and subdue it to the 
 olive green they want. But in the most precious and perfect 
 work each leaf is inlaid, and the blue worked round it : and, 
 whether you use one or other mode of getting your result, it is 
 equally necessary to be absolute and decisive in your laying the 
 colour. Either your ground must be laid firmly first, and then 
 your upper colour struck upon it in perfect form, for ever, 
 thenceforward, unalterable ; or else the two colours must be 
 individually put in their places, and led up to each other till 
 they meet at their appointed border, equally, thenceforward, 
 unchangeable. Either process, you see, involves absolute de- 
 cision. If you once begin to slur, or change, or sketch, or try 
 this way and that with your colour, it is all over with it and 
 with you. You will continually see bad copyists trying to imi- 
 tate the Venetians, by daubing their colours about, and re- 
 touching, and finishing, and softening : when every touch and 
 every added hue only lead them farther into chaos. There is 
 a dog between two children in a Veronese in the Louvre, which 
 gives the copyist much employment. He has a dark ground 
 behind him, which Veronese has painted first, and then when 
 it was dry, or nearly so, struck the locks of the dog's white 
 hair over it with some half-dozen curling sweeps of his brush, 
 right at once, and forever. Had one line or hair of them gone 
 wrong, it would have been wrong forever ; no retouching could 
 linve mended it. The poor copyists daub in first some back- 
 ground, and then some dog's hair ; then retouch the back- 
 ground, then the hair, work for hours at it, expecting it always 
 to come right to-morrow — " when it is finished." They may 
 work for centuries at it, and they will never do it. If they can 
 do it with Veronese's allowance of work, half a dozen sweeps 
 of the hand over the dark background, well ; if not, they may 
 ask the dog himself whether it will ever come right, and get 
 true answer from him — on Launce's conditions : " If he say 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 313 
 
 'ay/ it will ; if he say 'no/ it will ; if he shake his tail and 
 say nothing, it wilL" 
 
 Whenever you lay on a mass of colour, be sure that how- 
 ever large it may be, or however small, it shall be gradated. 
 No colour exists in Nature under ordinary circumstances with- 
 out gradation. If you do not see this, it is the fault of your 
 inexperience ; you will see it in due time, if you practise 
 enough. But in general you may see it at once. In the birch 
 trunk, for instance, the rosy grey must be gradated by the 
 roundness of the stem till it meets the shaded side ; similarly 
 the shaded side is gradated by reflected light. Accordingly, 
 whether by adding water, or white paint, or by unequal force 
 of touch (this you will do at pleasure, according to the texture 
 you wish to produce), you must, in every tint you lay on, make 
 it a little paler at one part than another, and get an even gra- 
 dation between the two depths. This is very like laying down 
 a formal law or recipe for you ; but you will find it is merely 
 the assertion of a natural fact. It is not indeed physically 
 impossible to meet with an ungradated piece of colour, but it 
 is so supremely improbable, that you had better get into the 
 habit of asking yourself invariably, when you are going 
 to copy a tint, — not "Is that gradated?" but " Which way is 
 it gradated ? " and at least in ninety-nine out of a hundred in- 
 stances, you will be able to answer decisively after a careful 
 glance, though the gradation may have been so subtle that 
 you did not see it at first. And it does not matter how small 
 the touch of colour may be, though not larger than the smallest 
 pin's head, if one part of it is not darker than the rest, it is a 
 bad touch ; for it is not merely because the natural fact is so, 
 that your colour should be gradated ; the preciousness and 
 pleasantness of the colour itself depends more on this than on 
 any other of its qualities, for gradation is to colours just what 
 curvature is to lines, both being felt to be beautiful by the 
 pure instinct of every human mind, and both, considered as 
 types, expressing the law of gradual change and progress in 
 the human soul itself. What the difference is in mere beauty 
 between a gradated and ungradated colour, may be seen easily 
 by laying an even tint of rose-colour on paper, 'and putting a 
 
344 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WING. 
 
 rose leaf beside it. The victorious beauty of the rose as 
 compared with other flowers, depends wholly on the deli- 
 cacy and buantity of its colour gradations, all other flowers 
 being either less rich in gradation, not having so many folds 
 of leaf ; or less tender, being patched and veined instead of 
 flushed. 
 
 4. But observe, it is not enough in general that colour 
 should be gradated by being made merely paler or darker at 
 one place than another. Generally colour changes as it dimin- 
 ishes, and is not merely darker at one spot, but also purer at 
 one spot than anywhere else. It does not in the least follow 
 that the darkest spot should be the purest ; still less so that the 
 lightest should be the purest. Very often the two gradations 
 more or less cross each other, one passing in one direction 
 from paleness to darkness, another in another direction from 
 purity to dullness, but there will almost always be both of 
 them, however reconciled ; and you must never be satisfied 
 with a piece of colour until you have got both : that is to say, 
 every piece of blue that you lay on must be quite blue only at 
 some given spot, nor that a large spot ; and must be gradated 
 from that into less pure blue — greyish blue, or greenish blue, 
 or purplish blue, over all the rest of the space it occupies. 
 And this you must do in one of three w r ays : either, while the 
 colour is wet, mix it with the colour which is to subdue it, 
 adding gradually a little more and a little more ; or else, when 
 the colour is quite dry, strike a gradated touch of another 
 colour over it, leaving only a point of the first tint visible : or 
 else, lay the subduing tints on in small touches, as in the ex- 
 ercise of tinting the chess-board. Of each of these methods 
 I have something to tell you separately : but that is distinct 
 from the subject of gradation, which I must not quit without 
 once more pressing upon you the preeminent necessity of in- 
 troducing it everywhere. I have profound dislike of anything 
 like habit of hand, and yet, in this one instance, I feel almost 
 tempted to encourage you to get into a habit of never touch- 
 ing paper with colour, without securing a gradation. You 
 will not in Turner's largest oil pictures, perhaps six or seven 
 feet long by four or five high, find one spot of colour as large 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 
 
 345 
 
 as a grain of wheat ungraclated : and you will find in practice, 
 that brilliancy of hue, and vigour of light, and even the aspect 
 of transparency in shade, are essentially dependent on fchis 
 character alone ; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting far 
 more from equality of colour than from nature of colour. 
 Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a 
 gravel pit, a little whitening, and some coal-dust, and I will 
 paint you a luminous picture, if you give me time to gradate 
 my mud, and subdue my dust : but though you had the red 
 of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and 
 amber for the gold, you cannot paint a luminous picture, if 
 you keep the masses of those colours unbroken in purity, and 
 unvarying in depth. 
 
 5. Next note the three processes by which gradation and 
 other characters are to be obtained : 
 
 A. Mixing while the colour is wet. 
 
 You may be confused by my first telling you to lay on the 
 hues in separate patches, and then telling you to mix hues to- 
 gether as you lay them on : but the separate masses are to be 
 laid, when colours distinctly oppose each other at a given 
 limit ; the hues to be mixed, when they palpitate one through 
 the other, or fade one into the other. It is better to err a lit- 
 tle on the distinct side. Thus I told you to paint the dark 
 and light sides of the birch trunk separately, though in reality, 
 the two tints change, as the trunk turns away from the light, 
 gradually one into the other : and, after being laid separately 
 on, will need some farther touching to harmonize them : but 
 they do so in a very narrow space, marked distinctly all the 
 way up the trunk ; and it is easier and safer, therefore, to 
 keep them separate at first. Whereas it often happens that 
 the whole beauty of two colours will depend on the one being 
 continued well through the other, and playing in the midst of 
 it : blue and green often do so in water : blue and grey, or 
 purple and scarlet, in sky ; in hundreds of such instances the 
 most beautiful and truthful results ma}' be obtained by laying 
 one colour into the other while wet ; judging wisely how far 
 it will spread, or blending it with the brush in somewhat 
 thicker consistence of wet body-colour ; only observe, never 
 
346 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING. 
 
 mix in this way two mixtures ; let the colour you lay into the 
 other be always a simple, not a compound tint. 
 B. Laying one colour over another. 
 
 If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and, after it is quite 
 dry, strike a little very wet carmine quickly over it, you will 
 obtain a much more brilliant red than by mixing the carmine 
 and vermilion. Similarly, if you lay a dark colour first, and 
 strike a little blue or white body-colour lightly over it, you 
 will get a more beautiful grey than by mixing the colour and 
 the blue or white. In very perfect painting, artifices of this 
 kind are continually used ; but I would not have you trust 
 much to them ; they are apt to make you think too much of 
 quality of colour. I should like you to depend on little more 
 than the dead colours, simply laid on, only observe always 
 this, that the less colour you do the work with, the better it 
 will always be : * so that if you have laid a red colour, and 
 you want a purple one above, do not mix the purple on your 
 palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower the red, but take 
 a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it lightly over 
 the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus pro- 
 duce the required purple ; and if you want a green hue over 
 a blue one, do not lay a quantity of green on the blue, but a 
 little yellow, and so on, always bringing the under colour into 
 service as far as you possibly can. If, however, the colour be- 
 neath is wholly opposed to the one you have to lay on, as, 
 suppose, if green is to be laid over scarlet, you must either 
 remove the required parts of the under colour daintily first 
 with your knife, or with water ; or else, lay solid white over 
 it massively, and leave that to dry, and then glaze the white 
 with the upper colour. This is better, in general, than laying 
 the upper colour itself so thick as to conquer the ground, 
 which, in fact, if it be a transparent colour, you cannot do. 
 
 * If colours were twenty times as costly as they are, we should have 
 many more good painters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer I 
 would lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colours except black, 
 Prussian blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I would leave 
 for students. I don't say this jestingly; I believe such a tax would do 
 more to advance real art than a great many schools of design. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 347 
 
 Thus, if you have to strike warm boughs and leaves of trees 
 over blue sky, and they are too intricate to have their places 
 left for them in laying the blue, it is better to lay them first in 
 solid white, and then glaze with sienna and ochre, than to mix 
 the sienna and white ; though, of course, the process is longer 
 and more troublesome. Nevertheless, if the forms of touches 
 required are very delicate, the after glazing is impossible. 
 You must then mix the warm colour thick at once, and so use 
 it : and this is often necessary for delicate grasses, and such 
 other fine threads of light in foreground work. 
 
 C. Breaking one colour in small points through or over an- 
 other. 
 
 This is the most important of all processes in good modern* 
 oil and water-colour painting, but you need not hope to attain 
 very great skill in it. To do it well is very laborious, and re- 
 quires such skill and delicacy of hand as can only be acquired 
 by unceasing practice. But you will find advantage in noting 
 the following points : 
 
 (a.) In distant effects of rich subjects, wood, or rippled 
 water, or broken clouds, much may be done by touches or 
 crumbling dashes of rather dry colour, with other colours after- 
 wards put cunningly into the interstices. The more you prac- 
 tise this, when the subject evidently calls for it, the more your 
 eye will enjoy the higher qualities of colour. The process is, 
 in fact, the carrying out of the principle of separate colours 
 to the utmost possible refinement ; using atoms of colour in 
 juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note, in filling up 
 minute interstices of this kind, that if you want the colour 
 you fill them with to show brightly, it is better to put a rather 
 positive point of it, with a little white left beside or round it 
 in the interstice, than to put a pale tint of the colour over the 
 whole interstice. Yellow or orange will hardly show, if pale, 
 in small spaces ; but they show brightly in firm touches, how- 
 ever small, with white beside them. 
 
 (6.) If a colour is to be darkened by superimposed portions 
 
 * I say modern, because Titian's quiet way of blending colours, which 
 is the perfectly right one. is not understood now by any artist. The besb 
 colour we reach is got by stippling ; but this not quite right. 
 
348 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING. 
 
 of another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the uppermost 
 colour in rather vigorous small touches, like finely chopped 
 straw, over the under one, than to lay it on as a tint, for two 
 reasons : the first, that the play of the two colours together is 
 pleasant to the eye ; the second, that much expression of form 
 may be got by wise administration of the upper dark touches. 
 In distant mountains they may be made pines of, or broken 
 crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you choose ; in clouds 
 they may indicate the direction of the rain, the roll and out- 
 line of the cloud masses ; and in water, the minor weaves. All 
 noble effects of dark atmosphere are got in good water-colour 
 drawing by these two expedients, interlacing the colours, or 
 retouching the lower one with fine darker drawing in an 
 upper. Sponging and washing for dark atmospheric effect is 
 barbarous, and mere tyro's work, though it is often useful for 
 passages of delicate atmospheric light. 
 
 (<?.) When you have time, practice the production of mixed 
 tints by interlaced touches of the pure colours out of which 
 they are formed, and use the process at the parts of your 
 sketches where you wish to get rich and luscious effects. Study 
 the works of William Hunt, of the Old Water-colour Society, 
 in this respect, continually, and make frequent memoranda 
 of the variegations in flowers ; not painting the flower com- 
 pletely, but laying the ground colour of one petal, and paint- 
 ing the spots on it with studious precision : a series of single 
 petals of lilies, geraniums, tulips, &c, numbered with proper 
 reference to their position in the flower, will be interesting to 
 t you on many grounds besides those of art. Be careful to get the 
 gradated distribution of the spots well followed in the calceo- 
 larias, foxgloves, and the like; and work out the odd, indefinite 
 hues of the spots themselves with minute grains of pure inter- 
 kced colour, otherwise you will never get their richness or 
 bloom. You will be surprised to find, as you do this, first 
 the universality of the law of gradation we have so much in- 
 sisted upon ; secondly, that Nature is just as economical of 
 her fine colours as I have told you to be of yours. You w r ould 
 think, by the way she paints, that her colours cost her some- 
 thing enormous : she will only give you a single pure touch} 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 349 
 
 just where the petal turns into light ; but down in the bell all 
 \s subdued, and under the petal all is subdued, even in the 
 showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when 
 you look close, only dusty grey, or green, or purple, or every 
 colour in the world at once, only a single gleam or streak of 
 pure blue in the centre of it. And so with all her colours. 
 Sometimes I have really thought her miserliness intolerable : 
 in a gentian, for instance, the way she economises her ultra- 
 marine down in the bell is a little too bad. 
 
 Next, respecting general tone. I said, just now, that, for 
 the sake of students, my tax should not be laid on black or 
 on white pigments ; but if you mean to be a colourist, you 
 must lay a tax on them yourselves w T hen you begin to use true 
 colour ; that is to say, you must use them little and make of 
 them much. There is no better test of your colour tones be- 
 ing good, than your having made the white in your picture 
 precious, and the black conspicuous. 
 
 I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean merely glit- 
 tering or brilliant ; it is easy to scratch white seagulls out of 
 black clouds and dot clumsy foliage with chalky dew ; but, 
 when white is well managed, it ought to be strangely deli- 
 cious — tender as well as bright — like inlaid mother of pearl, or 
 white roses w T ashed in milk. The eye ought to seek it for 
 rest, brilliant though it may be ; and to feel it as a space of 
 strange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing of the 
 colours. This effect you can only reach by general depth of 
 middle tint, by absolutely refusing to allow any white to exist 
 except where you need it, and by keeping the white itself sub- 
 dued by grey, except at a few points of chief lustre. 
 
 Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous. How- 
 ever small a point of black may be, it ought to catch the eye, 
 otherwise your work is too heavy in the shadow. All the or- 
 dinary shadows should be of some colour — never black, nor 
 approaching black, they should be evidently and always of a 
 luminous nature, and the black should look strange among 
 them ; never occurring except in a black object, or in small 
 points indicative of intense shade in the very centre of masses 
 of shadow. Shadows of absolutely negative grey, however, 
 
350 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WING. 
 
 may be beautifully used with white, or with gold ; but still 
 though the black thus, in subdued strength, becomes spa* 
 cious, it should always be conspicuous ; the spectator should 
 notice this grey neutrality with some wonder, and enjoy, all 
 the more intensely on account of it, the gold colour and 
 the white which it relieves. Of all the great colourists 
 Velasquez is the greatest master of the black chords. His 
 black is more precious than most other people's crimson. 
 
 It is not, however, only white and black which you must 
 make valuable ; you must give rare worth to every colour you 
 use ; but the white and black ought to separate themselves 
 quaintly from the rest, while the other colours should be con- 
 tinually passing one into the other, being all evidently com- 
 panions in the same gay world ; while the white, black, and 
 neutral grey should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of 
 them. You may melt your crimson into purple, your purple 
 into blue and your blue into green, but you must not melt any 
 of them into black. You should, however, try, as I said, to 
 give preciousness to all your colours ; and this especially by 
 never using a grain more than will just do the work, and 
 giving each hue the highest value by opposition. All fine 
 colouring, like fine drawing, is delicate ; and so delicate that 
 if, at last, you see the colour you are putting on, you are put- 
 ting on too much. You ought to feel a change wrought in 
 the general tone, by touches of colour which individually are 
 too pale to be seen ; and if there is one "atom of any colour in 
 the whole picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom hurts 
 it. 
 
 Notice also, that nearly all good compound colours are odd 
 colours. You shall look at a hue in a good painter's work ten 
 minutes before you know what to call it. You thought it was 
 brown, presently, you feel that it is red ; next that there is, 
 somehow, yellow in it ; presently af terwards that there is blue 
 in it. If you try to copy it you will always find your colour 
 too warm or too cold — no colour in the box will seem to have 
 any affinity with it ; and yet it will be as pure as if it were 
 laid at a single touch with a single colour. 
 
 As to the choice and harmony of colours in general, if you 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 351 
 
 cannot choose and harmonize them by instinct, you* will never 
 do it at all. If you need examples of utterly harsh and horri- 
 ble colour, you may find plenty given in treatises upon colour- 
 ing, to illustrate the laws of harmony ; and if you want to 
 colour beautifully, colour as best pleases yourself at quiet 
 times, not so as to catch the eye, nor to look as if it were 
 clever or difficult to colour in that way, but so that the colour 
 may be pleasant to you when you are happy, or thoughtful. 
 Look much at the morning and evening sky, and much at 
 simple flowers — dog-roses, wood hyacinths, violets, poppies, 
 thistles, heather, and such like — as Nature arranges them in 
 the woods and fields. If ever any scientific person tells you 
 that two colours are " discordant," make a note of the two 
 colours, and put them together whenever you can. I have 
 actually heard people say that blue and green were discord- 
 ant ; the two colours which Nature seems to intend never to be 
 separated and never to be felt, either of them, in its full beauty 
 without the other ! — a peacock's neck, or a blue sky through 
 green leaves, or a blue wave with green lights though it, being 
 precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds at sunrise, in this 
 coloured world of ours. If you have a good eye for colours, you 
 will soon find out how constantly Nature puts purple and green 
 together, purple and scarlet, green and blue, yellow and neu- 
 tral grey, and the like ; and how she strikes these colour-con- 
 cords for general tones, and then works into them with innu- 
 merable subordinate ones ; and you will gradually come to 
 like what she does, and find out new and beautiful chords of 
 colour in her work every day. If you enjoy them, depend 
 upon it you will paint them to a certain point right : or, at 
 least, if you do not enjoy them, you are certain to paint them 
 wrong. If colour does not give you intense pleasure, let it 
 alone ; depend upon it, you are only tormenting the eyes and 
 senses of people who feel colour, whenever you touch it ; and 
 that is unkind and improper. You will find, also, your power 
 of colouring depend much on your state of health and right 
 balance of mind ; when you are fatigued or ill you will not 
 see colours well, and when you are ill-tempered you will not 
 choose them well : thus, though not infallibly a test of char- 
 
352 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WING. 
 
 acter in individuals, colour power is a great sign of mental 
 health in nations ; when they are in a state of intellectual de- 
 cline, their colouring always gets dull.* You must also take 
 great care not to be misled by affected talk about colour from 
 people who have not the gift of it : numbers are eager and 
 voluble about it who probably never in all their lives received 
 one genuine colour-sensation. The modern religionists of the 
 school of Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil 
 and chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer 
 than strawberries and plums. 
 
 Take care also never to be misled into any idea that colour 
 can help or display form ; colour f always disguises form, 
 and is meant to do so. 
 
 It is a favourite dogma among modern writers on colour 
 that " warm colours 99 (reds and yellows) "approach" or ex- 
 press nearness, and " cold colours " (blue and grey) " retire " 
 or express distance. So far is this from being the case, that 
 no expression of distance in the world is so great as that of 
 the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colours, as such, are 
 absolutely inexpressive respecting distance. It is their quality 
 (as depth, delicacy, &c.) which expresses distance, not their 
 
 * The worst general character that colour can possibly have is a prev- 
 alent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a decaying heap 
 of vegetables ; this colour is accurately indicative of decline or paralysis 
 in missal-painting. 
 
 f That is to say, local colour inherent in the object. The gradations 
 of colour in the various shadows belonging to various lights exhibit form, 
 and therefore no one but a colourist can ever draw forms perfectly (see 
 " Modern Painters/' vol. iv. chap. iii. at the end) ; but all notions of ex- 
 plaining form by superimposed colour, as in architectural mouldings^ 
 are absurd. Colour adorns form, but does not interpret it. An apple i? 
 prettier, because it is striped, but it does not look a bit rounder ; and a 
 cheek is prettier because it is flushed, but you would see the form of the 
 cheek bone better if it were not. Colour may, indeed, detach one shape 
 from another, as in grounding a bas-relief, but it always diminishes* 
 the appearance of projection, and whether you put blue, purple, red, 
 yellow, or green, for your ground, the bas-relief will be just as clearly 
 or just as imperfectly relieved, as long as the colours are of equal depth 
 The blue ground will not retire the hundredth part of an inch more 
 than the red one. 
 
vN COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 353 
 
 tint. A blue bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one 
 will not look an inch farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in 
 the upper sky, will always appear to be beyond a blue cloud 
 close to us, as it is in reality. It is quite true that in certain 
 objects, blue is a sign of distance ; but that is not because 
 blue is a retiring colour, but because the mist in the air is 
 blue, and therefore any warm colour which has not strength 
 of light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its 
 blue : but blue is no more, on this account, a " retiring col- 
 our," than brown is a retiring colour, because, when stones 
 are seen through brown water, the deeper they lie the browner 
 they look ; or than yellow is a retiring colour, because when 
 objects are seen through a London fog, the farther off they 
 are the yellower they look. Neither blue, nor yellow, nor red, 
 can have, as such, the smallest power of expressing either near- 
 ness or distance : they express them only under the peculiar 
 circumstances which render them at the moment, or in that 
 place, signs of nearness or distance. Thus, vivid orange in an 
 orange is a sign of nearness, for if you put the orange a great 
 way off, its colour will not look so bright ; but vivid orange 
 in sky is a sign of distance, because you cannot get the colour 
 of orange in a cloud near you. So purple in a violet or a 
 hyacinth is a sign of nearness, because the closer you ]ook at 
 them the more purple you see. But purple in a mountain i3 
 a sign of distance, because a mountain close to you is not 
 purple, but green or grey. It may, indeed, be generally as- 
 sumed that a tender or pale colour will more or less express 
 distance, and a powerful or dark colour nearness ; but even 
 this is not always so. Heathery hills will usually give a pale 
 and tender purple near, and an intense and dark purple far 
 away ; the rose colour of sunset on snow is pale on the snow 
 at your feet, deep and full on the snow in the distance ; and 
 the green of a Swiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the 
 beach, but intense as an emerald in the sunstreak, six miles 
 from shore. And in any case, when the foreground is in strong 
 light, with much water about it, or white surface, casting in- 
 tense reflections, all its colours may be perfectly delicate, pale, 
 and faint ; while the distance, when it is in shadow, may re- 
 
354 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 lieve the whole foreground with intense darks of purple, blue 
 green, or ultramarine blue. So that, on the whole, it is quite 
 hopeless and absurd to expect any help from laws of " aerial 
 perspective." Look for the natural effects, and set them down 
 as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and never alter a colour 
 because it won't look in its right place. Put the colour 
 strong, if it be strong, though far off ; faint, if it be faint, 
 though close to you. Why should you suppose that Nature 
 always means you to know exactly how far one thing is from 
 another ? She certainly intends you always to enjoy her col- 
 ouring, but she does not wish you always to measure her 
 space. You would be hard put to it, every time you painted 
 the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000 miles of 
 distance in " aerial perspective." 
 
 There is, however, I think, one law about distance, which 
 has some claims to be considered a constant one : namely, 
 that dullness and heaviness of colour are more or less indica- 
 tive of nearness. All distant colour is pure colour : it may 
 not be bright, but it is clear and lovely, not opaque nor soiled ; 
 for the air and light coming between us and any earthy 
 or imperfect colour, purify or harmonise it ; hence a bad 
 colourist is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance. I do 
 not of course mean that you are to use bad colours in your 
 foreground by way of making it come forward ; but only that 
 a failure in colour, there, will not put it out of its place ; 
 while a failure in colour in the distance will at once do away 
 with its remoteness : your dull-coloured foreground will still 
 be a foreground, though ill-painted ; but your ill-painted 
 distance will not be merely a dull distance, — it will be no 
 distance at all. 
 
 I have only one thing more to advise you, namely, never to 
 colour petulantly or hurriedly. You will not, indeed, be able, 
 if you attend properly to your colouring, to get anything like 
 the quantity of form you could in a chiaroscuro sketch ; never- 
 theless, if you do not dash or rush at your work, nor do it 
 lazily, you may always get enough form to be satisfactory. An 
 extra quarter of an hour, distributed in quietness over the 
 course of the whole study, may just make the difference 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 355 
 
 between a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly and 
 obscure one. If you determine well beforehand what outline 
 each piece of colour is to have ; and, when it is on the paper, 
 guide it without nervousness, as far as you can, into the form 
 required ; and then, after it is dry, consider thoroughly what 
 touches are needed to complete it, before laying one of them 
 on ; you will be surprised to find how masterly the work will 
 soon look, as compared with a hurried or ill-considered sketch. 
 In no process that I know of — least of all in sketching — can 
 time be really gained by precipitation. It is gained only by 
 caution ; and gained in all sorts of ways : for not only truth 
 of form, but force of light, is always added by an intelligent 
 and shapely laying of the shadow colours. You may often 
 make a simple flat tint, rightly gradated and edged, express a 
 complicated piece of subject without a single retouch. The 
 two Swiss cottages, for instance, with their balconies, and 
 glittering windows, and general character of shingly eaves, are 
 expressed in Fig. 30., with 
 one tint of grey, and a 
 few dispersed spots and 
 lines of it ; all of which 
 you ought to be able to 
 lay on without more than 
 thrice dipping your 
 brush, and without a 
 single touch after the : 
 tint is dry. 
 
 Here, then, for I cannot 
 without coloured illustra- 
 tions tell you more, I must leave you to follow out the subject 
 for yourself, with such help as } T ou may receive from the water- 
 colour drawings accessible to you ; or from any of the little 
 treatises on their art which have been published lately by our 
 water-colour painters.* But do not trust much to works of this 
 kind. You may get valuable hints from them as to mixture 
 
 * See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one more point 
 connected with the management of colour, under the head " Law of 
 Harmony. 7 ' 
 
 Fig. 30. 
 
356 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 of colours ; and here and there you will find a useful artifice 
 or process explained ; but nearly all such books are written 
 only to help idle amateurs to a meretricious skill, and they 
 are full of precepts and principles which may, for the most 
 part, be interpreted by their precise negatives, and then acted 
 upon with advantage. Most of them praise boldness, when 
 the only safe attendant spirit of a beginner is caution ; — 
 advise velocity, when the first condition of success is delibera- 
 tion ; — and plead for generalisation, when all the foundations 
 of power must be laid in knowledge of specialty. 
 
 And now, in the last place, I have a few things to tell you 
 respecting that dangerous nobleness of consummate art, — Com- 
 position. For though it is quite unnecessary for you yet 
 awhile to attempt it, and it may be inexpedient for you to at- 
 tempt it at all, you ought to know what it means, and to look 
 for and enjoy it in the art of others. 
 
 Composition means, literally and simply, putting several 
 things together, so as to make one thing out of them ; the 
 nature and goodness of which they all have a share in produc- 
 ing. Thus a musician composes an air, by putting notes to- 
 gether in certain relations ; a poet composes a poem, by put- 
 ting thoughts and words in pleasant order ; and a painter a 
 picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colours in pleasant 
 order. 
 
 In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the 
 result of composition. A paviour cannot be said to compose 
 the heap of stones which he empties from his cart, nor the 
 sower the handful of seed which he scatters from his hand. 
 It is the essence of composition that everything should be in 
 a determined place, perform an intended part, and act, in 
 that part, advantageously for everything that is connected 
 with it. 
 
 Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the type, in 
 the arts of mankind, of the Providential government of the 
 world.* It is an exhibition, in the order given to notes, or 
 colours, or forms, of the advantage of perfect fellowship, dis- 
 
 * See farther, on this subject, u Modern Painters, 5 ' vol. iv. chap, viii 
 §6- 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 
 
 357 
 
 cipline, and contentment. In a well-composed air, no note* 
 however short or low, can be spared, but the least is as neces- 
 sary as the greatest : no note, however prolonged, is tedious ; 
 but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its duration : 
 no note, however high, is tyrannous ; the others prepare for 
 and are benefited by, its exaltation : no note, however low, is 
 overpowered, the others prepare for, and sympathise with, its 
 humility : and the result is, that each and every note has a 
 value in the position assigned to it, which by itself, it never 
 possessed, and of which by separation from the others, it 
 would instantly be deprived. 
 
 Similarly, in a good poem, each word and thought enhances 
 the value of those which precede and follow it ; and every syl- 
 lable has a loveliness which depends not so much on its ab- 
 stract sound as on its position. Look at the same word in a 
 dictionary, and you will hardly recognise it. 
 
 Much more in a great picture ; every line and colour is so 
 arranged as to advantage the rest. None are inessential, 
 however slight ; and none are independent, however forcible. 
 It is not enough that they truly represent natural objects ; but 
 they must fit into certain places, and gather into certain har- 
 monious groups : so that, for instance, the red chimney of a 
 cottage is not merely set in its place as a chimney, but that it 
 may affect, in a certain way pleasurable to the eye, the pieces 
 of green or blue in other parts of the picture ; and we ought 
 to see that the work is masterly, merely by the positions and 
 quantities of these patches of green, red, and blue, even at a 
 distance which renders it perfectly impossible to determine 
 what the colours represent : or to see whether the red is a 
 chimney, or an old woman's cloak ; and whether the blue is 
 smoke, sky, or water. 
 
 It seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in all we 
 do, of the great laws of Divine government and human polity, 
 that composition in the arts should strongly affect every order 
 of mind, however unlearned or thoughtless. Hence the pop- 
 ular delight in rhythm and metre, and in simple musical 
 melodies. But it is also appointed that power of composition 
 in the fine arts should be an exclusive attribute of great intellect 
 
358 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 All men can more or less copy what they see, and, more or. 
 less, remember it : powers of reflection and investigation are 
 also common to us all, so that the decision of inferiority in 
 these rests only on questions of degree. A. has a better mem- 
 ory than B., and C. reflects more profoundly than D. But 
 the gift of composition is not given at all to more than one 
 man in a thousand ; in its highest range, it does not occur 
 above three or four times in a century. 
 
 It follows, from these general truths, that it is impossible to 
 give rules which will enable you to compose. You might 
 much more easily receive rules to enable you to be witty. If 
 it were possible to be witty by rule, wit would cease to be 
 either admirable or amusing : if it were possible to compose 
 melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not have been 
 born : if it were possible to compose pictures by rule, Titian 
 and Veronese would be ordinary men. The essence of com- 
 position lies precisely in the fact of its being unteachable, in 
 its being the operation of an individual mind of range and 
 power exalted above others. 
 
 But though no one can invent by rule, there are some sim- 
 pie laws of arrangement which it is well for you to know, be- 
 cause, though they will not enable you to produce a good pict- 
 ure, they will often assist you to set forth what goodness may 
 be in your work in a more telling way than you could have 
 done otherwise ; and by tracing them in the work of good 
 composers, you may better understand the grasp of their 
 imagination, and the power it possesses over their materials. 
 I shall briefly state the chief of these laws. 
 
 1. THE LAW OF PRINCIPALITY. 
 
 The great object of composition being always to secure 
 unity ; that is, to make out of many things one whole ; the 
 first mode in which this can be effected is, by determining 
 that one feature shall be more important than all the rest, and 
 that the others shall group with it in subordinate positions. 
 
 This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus 
 the group of two leaves, a, Fig. 31., is unsatisfactory, because 
 it has no leading leaf ; but that at b fs prettier, because it has 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 359 
 
 i 
 
 a bead or master leaf ; and c more satisfactory still, because 
 the subordination of the other members to this head leaf is 
 made more manifest by their 
 gradual loss of size as they fall 
 back from it. Hence part of 
 the pleasure we have in the 
 Greek honeysuckle ornament, 
 and such others. 
 
 Thus, also, good pictures have always one light larger or 
 brighter than the other lights, or one figure more prominent 
 than the other figures, or one mass of colour dominant over all 
 the other masses ; and in general you will find it much bene- 
 fit your sketch if you manage that there shall be one light on 
 the cottage wall, or one blue cloud in the sky, which may attract 
 the eye as leading light, or leading gloom, above all others. 
 But the observance of the rule is often so cunningly concealed 
 by the great composers, that its force is hardly at first trace- 
 able ; and you will generally find that they are vulgar pictures 
 in which the law is strikingly manifest. This may be simply 
 illustrated by musical melody ; for instance, in such phrases 
 as this : 
 
 one note (here the upper g) rules the whole passage, and has 
 the full energy of it concentrated in itself. Such passages, 
 corresponding to completely subordinated compositions in 
 painting, are apt to be wearisome if often repeated. But in 
 such a phrase as this : 
 
 3e 
 
 iii n 1 1 j & 
 
 it is very difficult to say, which is the principal note. The a 
 in the last bar is lightly dominant, but there is a very equal 
 
3G0 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WING. 
 
 current of power running through the whole ; and such pas- 
 sages rarely weary. And this principle holds through vast 
 scales of arrangement ; so that in the grandest compositions, 
 such as Paul Veronese's Marriage in Cana, or Raphael's Dis- 
 puta, it is not easy to fix at once on the principal figure ; and 
 very commonly the figure which is really chief does not catch 
 the eye at first, but is gradually felt to be more and more 
 conspicuous as w r e gaze. Thus in Titian's grand composition 
 of the Cornaro Family, the figure meant to be principal is a 
 youth of fifteen or sixteen, whose portrait it was evidently the 
 painter's object to make as interesting as possible. But a 
 grand Madonna, and a St. George with a drifting banner, and 
 many figures more, occupy the centre of the picture, and first 
 catch the eye ; little by little we are led away from them to a 
 gleam of pearly light in the lower corner, and find that, from 
 the head which it shines upon, w T e can turn our eyes no more. 
 
 As, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design are more 
 or less exemplified, it will, on the whole, be an easier w r ay of 
 explaining them to analyse one composition thoroughly, than 
 to give instances from various works. I shall therefore take 
 one of Turner's simplest ; which will allow us, so to speak, 
 easily to decompose it, and illustrate each law by it as we 
 proceed. 
 
 Figure 32. is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the whole 
 subject ; the old bridge over the Moselle at Coblentz, the 
 town of Coblentz on the right, Ehrenbreitstein on the left. 
 The leading or master feature is, of course the tower on the 
 bridge. It is kept from being too principal by an important 
 group on each side of it ; the boats, on the right, and Ehren- 
 breitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass, and more 
 forcible in colour, but they are broken into small divisions, 
 while the tower is simple, and therefore it still leads. Ehren- 
 breitstein is noble in its mass, but so reduced by aerial per- 
 spective of colour that it cannot contend with the tower, which 
 therefore holds the eye, and becomes the key of the picture 
 We shall see presently how the very objects which seem at 
 first to contend wdth it for the mastery are made, occultly to 
 increase its preeminence. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 3G1 
 
 2. THE LAW OF REPETITION. 
 
 Another important means of expressing unity is to mark 
 some kind of sympathy among the different objects, and per- 
 haps the pleasantest, because most surprising, kind of sym- 
 pathy, is when one group imitates or repeats another ; not in 
 the way of balance or symmetry, but subordinately, like a far- 
 away and broken echo of it. Prout has insisted much on this 
 law in all his writings on composition ; and I think it is even 
 
 Fig. 32. 
 
 more authoritatively present in the minds of most great com- 
 posers than the law of principality. It is quite curious to sea 
 the pains that Turner sometimes takes to echo an important 
 passage of colour ; in the Pembroke Castle for instance, there 
 are two fishing-boats, one with a red, and another with a white 
 sail. In a line with them, on the beach, are two fish in pre- 
 cisely the same relative positions ; one red and one white. It 
 is observable that he uses the artifice chiefly in pictures where 
 lie wishes to obtain an expression of repose : in my notice of 
 the plate of Scarborough, in the series of the " Harbours of 
 England," I have already had occasion to dw T ell on this point ; 
 
362 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING: 
 
 and I extract in the note * one or two sentences which explain 
 the principle. In the composition I have chosen for our illus- 
 tration, this reduplication is employed to a singular extent. 
 The tower, or leading feature, is first repeated by the low echo 
 of it to the left ; put your finger over this lower tower, and see 
 how the picture is spoiled. Then the spires of Coblentz are 
 all arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality does 
 not matter ; when we are composing a great picture, we must 
 play the towers about till they come right, as fearlessly as if 
 they were chessmen instead of cathedrals). The dual arrange- 
 ment of these towers would have been too easily seen, were it 
 not for a little one which pretends to make a triad of the lasfc 
 group on the right, but is so faint as hardly to be discernible : 
 it just takes off the attention from the artifice, helped in doing 
 so by the mast at the head of the boat, which, however, has 
 instantly its own duplicate put at the stern. f Then there is 
 the large boat near, and its echo beyond it. That echo is di- 
 vided into two again, and each of those two smaller boats has 
 two figures in it ; while two figures are also sitting together 
 on the great rudder that lies half in the water, and half aground. 
 Then, finally, the great mass of Ehrenbreitstein, which ap-, 
 pears at first to have no answering form, has almost its fac- 
 simile in the bank on which the girl is sitting ; this bank is 
 as absolutely essential to the completion of the picture as any 
 object in the whole series. All this is done to deepen the ef- 
 fect of repose. 
 
 Symmetry or the balance of parts or masses in nearly equal 
 opposition, is one of the conditions of treatment under the 
 
 * "In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are peace- 
 ful things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in events, that 
 one day should be like another day, or one history the repetition of an- 
 other history, being more or less results of quietness, while dissimilarity 
 and non -succession are results of interference and disquietude. Thus, 
 though an echo actually increases the quantity of sound heard, its rep- 
 etition of the note or syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable in no 
 other way ; hence also the feeling of calm given to a landscape by the 
 voice of a cuckoo." 
 
 f This is obscure in the rude woodcut, the masts being so delicate 
 that they are confused among the lines of reflection. In the original 
 they have orange light upon them, relieved against purple behind. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 363 
 
 law of Repetition. For the opposition, in a symmetrical ob- 
 ject, is of like things reflecting each other ; it is not the bal- 
 ance of contrary natures (like that of day and night) but of 
 like natures or like forms ; one side of a leaf being set like the 
 reflection of the other in water. 
 
 Symmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accurate. 
 She takes the greatest care to secure some difference between 
 the corresponding things or parts of things ; and an approx- 
 imation to accurate symmetry is only permitted in animals 
 because their motions secure perpetual difference between the 
 balancing parts. Stand before a mirror ; hold your arms in 
 precisely the same position at each side, your head upright 
 your body straight ; divide your hair exactly in the middle, 
 and get it as nearly as you can into exactly the same shape 
 over each ear. and you will see the effect of accurate symme- 
 try ; you will see, no less, how all grace and power in the 
 human form result from the interference of motion and life 
 with symmetry, and from the reconciliation of its balance with 
 its changefulness. Your position, as seen in the mirror, is 
 the highest type of symmetry as understood by modern ar- 
 chitects. 
 
 In many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the balance 
 of harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest sources of 
 their power : almost any works of the early painters, Angelico, 
 Perugino, Giotto, &c, will furnish you with notable instances 
 of it. The Madonna of Perugino in the National Gallery, with 
 the angel Michael on one side and Raphael on the other, is as 
 beautiful an example as you can have. 
 
 In landscape, the principle of balance is more or less carried 
 out, in proportion to the wish of the painter to express dis- 
 ciplined calmness. In bad compositions as in bad archi- 
 tecture, it is formal, a tree on one side answering a tree on 
 the other ; but in good compositions, as in graceful statues, it 
 is always easy, and sometimes hardly traceable. In the Co- 
 blentz, however, you cannot have much difficulty in seeing how 
 the boats on one side of the tower and the figures on the other 
 are set in nearly equal balance : the tower, as a central mas3 
 uniting both. 
 
364 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 3. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY. 
 
 Another important and pleasurable way of expressing unity, 
 is by giving some orderly succession to a number of objects 
 more or less similar. And this succession is most interesting 
 when it is connected with some gradual change in the aspect 
 or character of the objects. Thus the succession of the pillars 
 of a cathedral aisle is most interesting when they retire in 
 perspective, becoming more and more obscure in distance ; so 
 the succession of mountain promontories one behind another, 
 on the flanks of a valley ; so the succession of clouds, fading 
 farther and farther towards the horizon ; each promontory 
 and each cloud being of different shape, yet all evidently fol- 
 lowing in a calm and appointed order. If there be no change 
 at all in the shape or size of the objects, there is no continuity ; 
 there is only repetition — monotony. It is the change in shape 
 which suggests the idea of their being individually free, and 
 able to escape, if they liked, from the law that rules them, 
 and yet submitting to it. I will leave our chosen illustrative 
 composition for a moment to take up another, still more ex- 
 pressive of this law. It is one of Turners most tender studies, 
 a sketch on Calais Sands at sunset ; so delicate in the expres- 
 sion of wave and cloud, that it is of no use for me to try to 
 reach it witli any kind of outline in a woodcut ; but the rough 
 sketch, Fig. 33., is enough to give an idea of its arrangement. 
 The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest expres- 
 sion of repose, together with the enchanted lulling, monoto- 
 nous motion of cloud and wave. All the clouds are moving 
 in innumerable* ranks after the sun, meeting towards the 
 point in the horizon where he has set ; and the tidal waves 
 gain in winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy 
 haste in which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges : 
 just folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece 
 of ruffled silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and 
 clap their hands, and then going on again, each in its silent 
 hurry, drawing pointed arches on the sand as their thin edges 
 intersect in parting ; but all this would not have been enough 
 expressed without the line of the old pier-timbers, black witb 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 
 
 365 
 
 weeds, strained and bent by the storm waves, and now seem- 
 ing to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts escap- 
 ing slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea. 
 
 I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration 
 of this law of continuance in the subject chosen for our gen- 
 eral illustration. It was simply that gradual succession of the 
 retiring arches of the bridge which induced Turner to paint 
 the subject at all ; and it was this same principle which led 
 him always to seize on subjects including long bridges where- 
 ever he could find them ; but especially, observe, unequal 
 
 Fiq. 33. 
 
 bridges, having the highest arch at one side rather than at 
 the centre. There is a reason for this, irrespective of general 
 laws of composition, and connected with the nature of rivers, 
 which I may as well stop a minute to tell you about, and let 
 you rest from the study of composition. 
 
 All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like 
 lo lean a little on one side : they cannot bear to have their 
 channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, 
 have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get 
 cool under ; one shingly shore to play over, where they may 
 be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, and another steep shore, 
 under which they can pause, and purify themselves, and get 
 
866 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING. 
 
 their strength of waves fully together for due occasion. 
 Rivers in this wa} r are just like wise men, who keep one side 
 of their life for play, and another for work ; and can be brill- 
 iant, and chattering, and transparent, when they are at ease, 
 and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they set 
 themselves to their main purpose. And rivers are just in this 
 divided, also, like wicked and good men : the good rivers have 
 serviceable deep places all along their banks, that ships can 
 sail in ; but the wicked rivers go scoopingly irregularly under 
 their banks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no 
 boat can row over without being twisted against the rocks ; 
 and pools like wells, which no one can get out of but the 
 water-kelpie that lives at the bottom ; — but, wicked or good, 
 the rivers all agree in having two kinds of sides. Now the 
 natural way in which a village stonemason therefore throws 
 a bridge over a strong stream is, of course, to build a great 
 door to let the cat through, and little doors to let the kittens 
 through ; a great arch for the great current, to give it room 
 in flood time, and little arches for the little currents along 
 the shallow shore. This, even without any prudential respect 
 for the floods of the great current, he would do in simple 
 economy of work and stone ; for the smaller your arches are, 
 the less material you want on their flanks. Two arches over 
 the same span of river, supposing the butments are at the 
 same depth, are cheaper than one, and that by a great deal ; 
 so that, where the current is shallow, the village mason makes 
 his arches many and low ; as the water gets deeper, and it 
 becomes troublesome to build his piers up from the bottom, 
 he throws his arches wider ; at last he comes to the deep 
 stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of that, he 
 throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with another 
 little one or so gains the opposite shore. Of course as arches 
 are wider they must be higher, or they will not stand ; so the 
 roadway must rise as the arches widen. And thus we have 
 the general type of bridge, with its highest and widest arch 
 towards one side, and a train of minor arches running over 
 the flat shore on the other ; usually a steep bank at the river- 
 side next the large arch ; always, of course, a flat shore on 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 367 
 
 the side of the small ones ; and the bend of the river assuredly 
 concave towards this flat, cutting round, with a sweep into 
 the steep bank ; or, if there is no steep bank, still assuredly 
 cutting into the shore at the steep end of the bridge. 
 
 Now this kind of bridge, sympathising, as it does, with the 
 spirit of the river, and marking the nature of the thing it has 
 to deal with and conquer, is the ideal of a bridge ; and all en- 
 deavours to do the thing in a grand engineer's manner, with 
 a level roadway and equal arches, are barbarous ; not only be- 
 cause all monotonous forms are ugly in themselves, but be- 
 cause the mind perceives at once that there has been cost 
 uselessly thrown away for the sake of formality.* 
 
 Well, to return to our continuity. We see that the Tur- 
 nerian bridge in Fig. 32. is of the absolutely perfect type, and 
 is still farther interesting by having its main arch crowned by 
 a watch-tower. But as I want you to note especially what 
 perhaps was not the case in the real bridge, but is entirely 
 Turner's doing, you will find that though the arches diminish 
 gradually, not one is regularly diminished — they are all of 
 
 * The cost of art in getting a bridge level is always lost, for you must 
 get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and you only can 
 make the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther back, and pre- 
 tending to have got rid of it when you have not, but have only wasted 
 money in building an unnecessary embankment. Of course, the bridge 
 should not be difficultly or dangerously steep, but the necessary slope, 
 whatever it may be, should be in the bridge itself, as far as the bridge 
 can take it, and not pushed aside into the approach, as in our Waterloo 
 road ; the only rational excuse for doing which is that when the slope 
 must be long it is inconvenient to put on a drag at the top of the bridge, 
 and that any restiveness of the horse is more dangerous on the bridge 
 than on the embankment. To this I answer : first, it is not more dan- 
 gerous in reality, though it looks so, for the bridge is always guarded by 
 an effective parapet, but the embankment is sure to have no parapet, or 
 only a useless rail ; and secondly, that it is better to have the slope on 
 the bridge, and make the roadway wide in proportion, so as to be quite 
 safe, because a little waste of space on the river is no loss, but your 
 wide embankment at the side loses good ground ; and so my picturesque 
 bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to see them built again 
 some day, instead of the frightful straight-backed things which we 
 fancy are fine, and accept from the pontifical rigidities of the engineer* 
 ing mind. 
 
368 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 different shapes and sizes : you cannot see this clearly in Fig. 
 32., but in the larger diagram, Fig. 34., opposite, you will 
 with ease. This is indeed also part of the ideal of a bridge, 
 because the lateral currents near the shore are of course ir- 
 regular in size, and a simple builder would naturally vary his 
 arches accordingly ; and also, if the bottom was rocky, build 
 his piers where the rocks came. But it is not as a part of 
 bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble composition, that 
 this irregularity is introduced by Turner. It at once raises 
 the object thus treated from the lower or vulgar unity of rigid 
 law to the greater unity of clouds, and waves, and trees, and 
 human souls, each different, each obedient, and each in har- 
 monious service. 
 
 4. THE LAW OF CURVATURE. 
 
 There is, however, another point to be noticed in this bridge 
 of Turner's. Not only does it slope away unequally at its 
 sides, but it slopes in a gradual though very subtle curve. 
 And if you substitute a straight line for this curve (drawing 
 one with a rule from the base of the tower on each side to the 
 ends of the bridge, in Fig. 34., and effacing the curve), you 
 will instantly see that the design has suffered grievously. 
 Ton may ascertain, by experiment, that all beautiful objects 
 whatsoever are thus terminated by delicately curved lines, ex- 
 cept where the straight line is indispensable to their use or 
 stability : and that when a complete system of straight lines, 
 throughout the form, is necessary to that stability, as in ciys- 
 tals, the beauty, if any exists, is in colour and transparency, 
 not in form. Cut out the shape of any crystal you like, in 
 white wax or wood, and put it beside a white lily, and you 
 will feel the force of the curvature in its purity, irrespective 
 of added colour, or other interfering elements of beauty. 
 
 Weil, as curves are more beautiful than straight lines, it is 
 necessary to a good composition that its continuities of object, 
 mass, or colour should be, if possible, in curves, rather than 
 btraight lines or angular ones. Perhaps one of the simplest 
 and prettiest examples of a graceful continuity of this kind is 
 in the line traced at any moment by the corks of a net as it 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 
 
370 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF 1)11 A WING. 
 
 is being drawn : nearly every person i3 more or less attracted 
 by the beauty of the dotted line. Now it is almost always 
 possible, not only to secure such a continuity in the arrange- 
 ment or boundaries of objects which, like these bridge arches 
 or the corks of the net, are actually connected with each other, 
 but — and this is a still more noble and interesting kind of 
 continuity — among features which appear at first entirely 
 separate. Thus the towers of Ehrenbreitstein, on the left, in 
 Fig. 32., appear at first independent of each other; but when 
 
 Fig. 85. 
 
 I give their profile, on a larger scale, Fig. 35., the reader may 
 easily perceive that there is a subtle cadence and harmony 
 among them. The reason of this is, that they are all bounded 
 by one grand curve, traced by the dotted line ; out of the 
 seven towers, four precisely touch this curve, the others only 
 falling back from it here and there to keep the eye from dis 
 covering it too easily. 
 
 And it is not only always possible to obtain continuities of 
 this kind : it is, in drawing large forest or mountain forms es- 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 sential to truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein might or 
 might not in reality fall into such a curve, but assuredly the 
 basalt rock on which they stand did ; for all mountain forms 
 not cloven into absolute precipice, nor covered by straight 
 slopes of shales, are more or less governed by these great 
 curves, it being one of the aims of Nature in all her work to 
 produce them. The reader must already know this, if he has 
 been able to sketch at all among the mountains ; if not, let 
 him merely draw for himself, carefully, the outlines of any 
 low hills accessible to him, where they are tolerably steep, or 
 of the woods which grow on them. The steeper shore of the 
 Thames at Maidenhead, or any of the downs at Brighton or 
 Dover, or, even nearer, about Croydon (as Addington Hills), 
 are easily accessible to a Londoner ; and he will soon find not 
 only how constant, but how graceful the curvature is. Grace- 
 ful curvature is distinguished from ungraceful by two charac- 
 ters : first, its moderation, that is to say, its close approach to 
 straightness in some parts of its course ; * and, secondly, by 
 its variation, that is to say, its never remaining equal in de- 
 gree at different parts of its course. 
 
 This variation is itself twofold in all good curves. 
 
 A. There is, first, a steady change through the whole line 
 from less to more curvature, or more to less, so that no part 
 
 Pig. 36. 
 
 of the line is a segment of a circle, or can be drawn by com- 
 passes in any way whatever. Thus, in Fig. 36., a is a bad 
 curve, because it is part of a circle, and is therefore monoto- 
 nous throughout ; but b is a good curve, because it continu- 
 ally changes its direction as it proceeds. 
 
 * I cannot waste space here by reprinting what 1 have said in other 
 books: but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the notices of this 
 part of our subject in ''Modern Painters," vol. iv. chap, xviii., and 
 '•Stones of Venice/' vol. iii. chap. i. § 8. 
 
372 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING, 
 
 Fig. 37. 
 
 The first difference between good and bad drawing of trea 
 boughs consists in observance of this fact. Thus, when I put 
 leaves on the line 6, as in Fig. 37., you 
 can immediately feel the springiness 
 of character dependent on the change- 
 fulness of the curve. You may put 
 leaves on the other line for yourself, 
 but you will find you cannot make a right tree spray of it. 
 For all tree boughs, large or small, as well as all noble nat- 
 ural lines whatsoever, agree in this character ; and it is a 
 point of primal necessity that 
 your eye should always seize 
 and your hand trace it. Here 
 are two more portions of good 
 curves, with leaves put on them 
 at the extremities instead of the 
 flanks, Fig. 38. ; and two show- 
 ing the arrangement of masses 
 of foliage seen a little farther 
 off, Fig. 39., which you may in 
 like manner amuse yourself by 
 turning into segments of circles 
 ■ — you will see with what result, 
 beside you by this time, many good studies of tree boughs 
 carefully made, in which you may study 
 variations of curvature in their most 
 complicated and lovely forms.* 
 
 B. Not only does every good curve 
 vary in general tendency, but it is 
 modulated, as it proceeds, by myriads 
 of subordinate curves. Thus the out- 
 lines of a tree trunk are never as at a 3 
 Fig. 40, but as at b. So also in waves, 
 clouds, and all other nobly formed masses. Thus another 
 essential difference between good and bad drawing, or good 
 and bad sculpture, depends on the quantity and refinement 
 
 * If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without haying 
 gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch of the 
 
 Fig. 38. 
 
 I hope, however, you have 
 
 Fig. 89. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 
 
 373 
 
 of minor curvatures carried, by good work, into the great lines. 
 Strictly speaking, however, this is not variation in large curves, 
 but composition of large curves out of 
 small ones ; it is an increase in the quantity 
 of the beautiful element, but not a change 
 in its nature. 
 
 5. THE LAW OF RADIATION. 
 
 We hdve hitherto been concerned only 
 with the binding of our various objects 
 into beautiful lines or processions. The 
 next point we have to consider is, how we 
 may unite these lines or processions them- 
 selves, so as to make groups of them. 
 
 Now, there are two kinds of harmonies of 
 lines. One in wdiich, moving more or less 
 side by side, they variously, but evidently 
 with consent, retire from cr approach each 
 other, intersect or oppose each other : cur- 
 rents of melody in music, for different 
 voices, thus approach and cross, fall and 
 rise, in harmony ; so the waves of the sea, 
 as they approach the shore, flow into one 
 another or cross, but with a great unity 
 through all ; and so various lines of com- 
 position often flow harmoniously through 
 and across each other in a picture. But the most simple and 
 perfect connexion of lines is by radiation ; that is, by their 
 all springing from one point, or closing towards it : and this 
 harmony is often, in Nature almost always, united with the 
 other ; as the boughs of trees, though they intersect and play 
 amongst each other irregularly, indicate by their general ten- 
 dency their origin from one root. An essential part of the 
 beauty of all vegetable form is in this radiation : it is seen 
 most simply in a single flower or leaf, as in a convolvulus 
 
 ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4. page 30., and examine the curves of 
 its boughs one by one, trying them by the conditions here stated undei 
 the heads A. and B. 
 
371 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 bell, or chestnut leaf ; but more beautifully in the compli- 
 cated arrangements of the large boughs and sprays. For 
 a leaf is only a flat piece of radiation ; but the tree throws its 
 branches on all sides, and even in every profile view of it, 
 which presents a radiation more or less correspondent to that 
 of its leaves, it is more beautiful, because varied by the free- 
 dom of the separate branches. I believe it has been ascer- 
 tained that, in all trees, the angle at which, in their leaves, 
 the lateral ribs are set on their central rib is approximately 
 the same at which the branches leave the 
 great stem ; and thus each section of the 
 tree would present a kind of magnified 
 view of its own leaf, were it not for the in- 
 terfering force of gravity on the masses of 
 foliage. This force in proportion to their 
 age, and the lateral leverage upon them, 
 bears them downwards at the extremities, 
 so that, as before noticed, the lower the 
 bough grows on the stem, the more it droops 
 (Fig. 17, p. 295.) ; besides this, nearly all 
 beautiful trees have a tendency to divide into two or more 
 principal masses, which give a prettier and more complicated 
 symmetry than if one stem ran all the way up the centre. 
 Fig. 41. may thus be considered the simplest type of tree 
 radiation, as opposed to leaf radiation. In this figure, how- 
 ever, all secondary ramification is unrepresented, for 
 the sake of simplicity ; but if we take one half of 
 such a tree, and merely give two secondary branches 
 to each main branch (as represented in the general 
 
 Fig. 41. 
 
 Fig. 42. 
 
 branch structure shown at b, Fig. 18., p. 296), we 
 shall have the form, Fig. 42. This I consider the 
 perfect general type of tree structure ; and it is curi- 
 ously connected with certain forms of Greek, Byzan- 
 tine, and Gothic ornamentation, into the discussion 
 of which, however, we must not enter here. It will be ob- 
 served, that both in Figs. 41. and 42. all the branches so spring 
 from the main stem as very nearly to suggest their united 
 radiation from the root e. This is by no means universally 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 375 
 
 Fig. 43. 
 
 / 
 
 the case ; but if the branches do not bend towards a point in 
 the root, they at least converge to some point or other. In 
 the examples in Fig. 43., the mathematical centre of curvature, 
 a, is thus, in one case, on the 
 ground at some distance from 
 the root, and in the other, near 
 the top of the tree. Half, only, 
 of each tree is given, for the 
 sake of clearness : Fig. 44 
 gives both sides of another ex- 4 
 ample, in which the origins of a ^* 
 curvature are below the root. 
 As the positions of such points 
 may be varied without end, and as the arrangement of the lines 
 is also farther complicated by the fact of the boughs springing 
 for the most part in a spiral order round the tree, 
 and at proportionate distances, the systems of curva- 
 ture which regulate the form of vegetation are quite 
 infinite. Infinite is a word easily said, and easily 
 written, and people do not always mean it when they 
 say it ; in this case I do mean it ; the number of 
 systems is incalculable, and even to furnish any 
 thing like a representative number of types, I should 
 \{J have to give several hundreds of figures such as 
 Fig. 44.* 
 
 Thus far, however, we have only been speaking 
 of the great relations of stem and branches. The 
 jf \l forms of the branches themselves are regulated by 
 I I still more subtle laws, for they occupy an interme- 
 nt & cliate position between the form of the tree and of 
 fiq. 44 - the leaf. The leaf has a fiat ramification ; the tree 
 a completely rounded one ; the bough is neither rounded nor 
 flat, but has a structure exactly balanced between the two, in 
 a half-flattened, half-rounded flake, closely resembling in shape 
 one of the thick leaves of an artichoke or the flake of a fir cone ; 
 by combination forming the solid mass of the tree, as the 
 
 * The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these figures 
 is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by compasses. 
 
376 TEE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 leaves compose the artichoke head. I have before pointed out 
 to you the general resemblance of these branch flakes to an 
 extended hand ; but they may be more accurately represented 
 by the ribs of a boat. If you can imagine a very broad-headed 
 
 and flattened boat applied 
 by its keel to the end of a 
 main branch,* as in Fig. 
 45 , the lines which its ribs 
 will take, and the general 
 contour of it, as seen in dif- 
 ferent directions, from above and below ; and from one side and 
 another, will give you the closest approximation to the per- 
 spectives and foreshortenings of a well-grown branch-flake. 
 Fig. 25. above, page 316., is an unharmed and unrestrained 
 shoot of healthy young oak ; and if you compare it with Fig. 
 45., you will understand at once the action of the lines of leaf- 
 age ; the boat only failing as a type in that its ribs are too 
 nearly parallel to each other at the sides, while the bough 
 sends all its ramification well forwards, rounding to the head 3 
 that it may accomplish its part 
 in the outer form of the whole 
 tree, yet always securing the 
 compliance with the great uni- 
 versal law that the branches 
 nearest the root bend most 
 back ; and, of course, throw- 
 ing some always back as well as forwards ; the appearance of 
 reversed action being much increased, and rendered more 
 striking and beautiful, by perspective. Figure 25. shows the 
 perspective of such a bough as it is seen from below ; Fig. 46, 
 gives rudely the look it would have from above. 
 
 You may suppose, if you have not already discovered, what 
 
 * I hope the reader understands that these woodcuts are merely fac- 
 similes of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to illustrate my 
 meaning as I write — often sadly scrawled if I want to get on to some- 
 thing else. This one is really a little too careless ; but it would take 
 more time and trouble to make a proper drawing of so odd a boat than 
 the matter is worth. It will answer the purpose well enough as it is. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 377 
 
 subtleties of perspective and light and shade are involved in 
 the drawing of these branch-flakes, as you see them in differ- 
 ent directions and actions ; now raised, now depressed ; 
 touched on the edges by the wind, or lifted up and bent back 
 so as to show all the white under surfaces of the leaves shiver- 
 ing in light, as the bottom of a boat rises white with spray at 
 the surge-crest ; or drooping in quietness towards the dew of 
 the grass beneath them in windless mornings, or bowed down 
 under oppressive grace of deep-charged snow. Snow time, by 
 the way, is one of the best for practice in the placing of tree 
 masses ; but you will only be able to understand them thor- 
 oughly by beginning with a single bough and a few leaves 
 placed tolerably even, as in Fig. 38. page 372. First one with 
 three leaves, a central and two lateral ones, as at a ; then with 
 five, as at b, and so on ; directing your whole attention to the 
 expression, both by contour and light and shade, of the boat- 
 like arrangements, which in your earlier studies, will have 
 been a good deal confused, partly owing to your inexperience, 
 and partly to the depth of shade, or absolute blackness of mass 
 required in those studies. 
 
 One thing more remains to be noted, and I will let you out 
 of the wood. You see that in every generally representative 
 figure I have surrounded the radiating branches with a dotted 
 line : such lines do indeed terminate every vegetable form ; 
 and you see that they are themselves beautiful curves, which, 
 according to their flow, and the width or narrowness of the 
 spaces they enclose, characterize the species of tree or leaf, 
 and express its free or formal action, its grace of youth or 
 weight of age. So that, throughout all the freedom of her 
 wildest foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an encom- 
 passing limit ; and marking a unity in the whole tree, caused 
 not only by the rising of its branches from a common root, 
 but by their joining in one work, and being bound by a com- 
 mon law. And having ascertained this, let us turn back for a 
 moment to a point in leaf structure which, I doubt not, you 
 must already have observed in your earlier studies, but which 
 it is well to state here, as connected with the unity of the 
 branches in the great trees. You must have noticed, I should 
 
378 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DEA WING. 
 
 think, that whenever a leaf is compound, — that is to say, di- 
 vided into other leaflets which in any way repeat or imitate 
 the form of the whole leaf, — those leaflets are not symmetrical, 
 as the whole leaf is, but always smaller on the side towards 
 the point of the great leaf, so as to express their subordination 
 to it, and show, even when they are pulled off, that they are 
 not small independent leaves, but members of one large leaf- 
 Fig. 47., which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine, with- 
 out its minor divisions on the edges, will illustrate the prin- 
 ciple clearly. It is composed of a central large mass, A, and 
 two lateral ones, of which the one on the right only is lettered, 
 
 A 
 
 Fig. 47. 
 
 B. Each of these masses is again composed of three others, 
 a central and two lateral ones ; but observe, the minor one, a 
 of A, is balanced equally by its opposite ; but the minor b 1 
 of B is larger than its opposite b 2. Again, each of these 
 minor masses is divided into three ; but while the central 
 mass, a of A, is symmetrically divided, the b of B is un sym- 
 metrical, its largest side-lobe being lowest. Again b 2, the 
 lobe c 1 (its lowest lobe in relation to e) is larger than c 2 : 
 and so also in b 1. So that universally one lobe of a lateral 
 leaf is always larger than the other, and the smaller lobe is 
 that which is nearer the central mass ; the lower leaf, as it 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 370 
 
 were by courtesy, subduing some of its own dignity or power, 
 in the immediate presence of the greater or captain leaf ; and 
 always expressing, therefore, its own subordination and sec- 
 ondary character. This law is carried out even in single 
 leaves. As far as I know, the upper half, towards the point 
 of the spray, is always the smaller ; and a slightly different 
 curve, more convex at the springing, is used for the lower 
 side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of the whole leaf ; 
 so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every sub- 
 ordinate leaf throughout the tree, is made to depend on its 
 confession of its own lowliness and subjection. 
 
 And now, if we bring together in one view the principles 
 we have ascertained in trees, we shall find they may be 
 summed under four great laws ; and that all perfect * vege- 
 table form is appointed to express these four laws in noble 
 balance of authority. 
 
 1. Support from one living root. 
 
 2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given 
 point, either in the root, or in some stated connexion with it. 
 
 3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and 
 happiness according to its needs, by irregularities of action 
 both in its play and its work, either stretching out to get its 
 required nourishment from light and rain, by finding some 
 sufficient breathing-place among the other branches, or knot- 
 ting and gathering itself up to get strength for any load which 
 its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any stress of its 
 storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves ; or playing hither and 
 thither as the fitful sunshine may tempt its young shoots, in 
 their undecided states of mind about their future life. 
 
 4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within 
 certain limits, expressive of its kindly fellowship and f rater- 
 
 * Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature de- 
 pendent, as in runners and climbers ; or which is susceptible of continual 
 injury without materially losing the power of giving pleasure by its 
 aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses, I have not, of course, space 
 here to explain these minor distinctions, but the laws above stated apply 
 to all the more important trees and shrubs likely to be familiar to the 
 student. 
 
380 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 nity with the boughs in its neighborhood ; and to work with 
 them according to its power, magnitude, and state of health, 
 to bring out the general perfectness of the great curve, and 
 circumferent stateliness of the whole tree. 
 
 I think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the moral 
 analogies of these laws ; you may, perhaps, however, be a little 
 puzzled to see the meeting of the second one. It typically 
 expresses that healthy human actions should spring radiantly 
 (like rays) from some single heart motive ; the most beautiful 
 systems of action taking place when this motive lies at the 
 root of the whole life, and the action is clearly seen to proceed 
 from it ; while also many beautiful secondary systems of action 
 taking place from motives not so deep or central, but in some 
 beautiful subordinate connexion with the central or life motive. 
 
 The other laws, if you think over them, you will find equally 
 significative ; and as you draw trees more and more in their 
 various states of health and hardship, you will be every day 
 more struck by the beauty of the types they present of the 
 truths most essential for mankind to know ; * and you will see 
 what this vegetation of the earth, which is necessary to our 
 life, first, as purifying the air for us and then as food, and just 
 as necessary to our joy in all places of the earth, — what these 
 trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as we contem- 
 plate them, and read or hear their lovely language, written or 
 spoken for us, not in frightful black letters, nor in dull sen- 
 
 * There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of leaves 
 upon the ground ; shadows which are the most likely of all to attract 
 attention, by their pretty play and change. If yon examine them, you 
 will find that the shadows do not take the forms of the leaves, hut that, 
 through eac*h interstice, the light falls, at a little distance, in the form 
 of a round or oval spot ; that is to say, it produces the image of the sun 
 itself, cast either vertically or obliquely, in circle or ellipse according to 
 the slope of the ground. Of course the sun's rays produce the same 
 effect, when they fall through any small aperture : but the openings be- 
 tween leaves are the only ones likely to show it to an ordinary observer, 
 or to attract his attention to it by its frequency, and lead him to think 
 what this type may signify respecting the greater Sun ; and how it may 
 show us that, even when the opening through which the earth receives 
 light is too small to let us see the Sun himself, the ray of light that 
 enter*, ii it comes straight from Him, will still bear with it His image* 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 381 
 
 ♦tences, but in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving words, 
 and blossomed brightness of odoriferous wit, and sweet whis- 
 pers of unintrusive wisdom, and playful morality. 
 
 Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever my 
 reader may be ; but leave it we must, or we shall compose no 
 more pictures to-day. 
 
 This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action in 
 arising from, or proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps, 
 of all principles of composition, the most influential in pro- 
 ducing the beauty of groups of form. Other laws make them 
 forcible or interesting, but this generally is chief in rendering 
 them beautiful. In the arrangement of masses in pictures, it 
 is constantly obeyed by the great composers ; but, like the 
 law of principality, with careful concealment of its imperative- 
 ness, the point to which the lines of main curvature are 
 directed being very often far away out of the picture. Some- 
 times, however, a system of curves will be employed definitely 
 to exalt, by their concurrence, the value of some leading ob- 
 ject, and then the law becomes traceable enough. 
 
 In the instance before us, the principal object being, as we 
 have seen, the tower on the bridge, Turner has determined 
 that his system of curvature should have its origin in the top 
 of this tower. The diagram Fig. 34. page 369, compared with 
 Fig. 32. page 361, will show how this is done. One curve joins 
 the two towers, and is continued by the back of the figure 
 sitting on the bank into the piece of bent timber. This is a 
 limiting curve of great importance, and Turner has drawn a 
 considerable part of it with the edge of the timber very care- 
 fully, and then led the eye v^> to the sitting girl by some white 
 spots and indications of a ledge in the bank ; then the passage 
 to the tops of the towers cannot be missed. 
 
 The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half an 
 inch of its course by the rudder ; it is then taken up by the 
 basket and the heads of the figures, and leads accurately to the 
 tower angle. The gunwales of both the boats begin the next 
 two curves, which meet in the same point ; and all are cen- 
 tralised by the long reflection which continues the vertical lines. 
 
 Subordinated to this first system of curves there is another, 
 
382 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 begun by the small crossing bar of wood inserted in the angle 
 behind the rudder ; continued by the bottom of the bank on 
 which the figure sits, interrupted forcibly beyond it,* but 
 taken up again by the water-line leading to the bridge foot, 
 and passing on in delicate shadows under the arches, not 
 easily shown in so rude a diagram, towards the other ex- 
 tremity of the bridge. This is a most important curve, in- 
 dicating that the force and sweep of the river have indeed 
 been in old times under the large arches ; while the antiquity 
 of the bridge is told us by the long tongue of land, either of 
 carted rubbish, or washed down by some minor stream, which 
 has interrupted this curve, and is now used as a landing-place 
 for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise, of which 
 some bales and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately 
 beneath the great tower. A common composer would have 
 put these bales to one side or the other, but Turner knows 
 better ; he uses them as a foundation for his tower, adding to 
 its importance precisely as the sculptured base adorns a pil- 
 lar ; and he farther increases the aspect of its height by throw- 
 ing the reflection of it far down in the nearer water. All the 
 great composers have this same feeling about sustaining their 
 vertical masses : you will constantly find Prout using the 
 artifice most dexterously (see, for instance, the figure with the 
 wheelbarrow under the great tower, in the sketch of St. 
 Nicolas, at Prague, and the white group of figures under the 
 tower in the sketch of Augsburg ; and Veronese, Titian, and 
 Tintoret continually put their principal figures at bases of 
 pillars. Turner found out their secret very early, the most 
 prominent instance of his composition on this principle being 
 the drawing of Turin from the Superga, in Hake well's Italy. 
 
 * In the smaller figure (32.), it will be seen that this interruption is 
 caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge ; and this object is 
 serviceable as beginning another system of curves leading out of the 
 picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as not to be easily repre- 
 sented in outline. As it is unnecessary to the explanation of our point 
 here, it has been omitted in the larger diagram, the direction of the 
 curve it begins being indicated by the dashes only. 
 
 % Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 383 
 
 I chose Fig. 20., already given to illustrate foliage drawing, 
 chiefly because, being another instance of precisely the same 
 arrangement, it will serve to convince you of its being inten- 
 tional. There, the vertical, formed by the larger tree, is con- 
 tinued by the figure of the farmer, and that of one of the 
 smaller trees by his stick. The lines of the interior mass of 
 the bushes radiate, under the law of radiation, from a point 
 behind the farmer s head ; but their outline curves are carried 
 on and repeated, under the law of continuity, by the curves of 
 the dog and boy — by the way, note the remarkable instance 
 in these of the use of darkest lines towards the light ; — all 
 more or less guiding the eye up to the right, in order to bring 
 it finally to the Keep of Windsor, which is the central object 
 of the picture, as the bridge tower is in the Goblentz. The 
 wall on which the boy climbs answers the purpose of contrast- 
 ing, both in direction and character, with these greater 
 curves ; thus corresponding as nearly as possible to the minor 
 tongue of land in the Coblentz. This, however, introduces us 
 to another law, which we must consider separately. 
 
 6. THE LAV/ OF CONTRAST. 
 
 Of course the character of everything is best manifested by 
 Contrast. Rest can only be enjoyed after labour ; sound, to 
 be heard clearly, must rise out of silence ; light is exhibited 
 by darkness, darkness by light ; and so on in all things. Now 
 in art every colour has an opponent colour, which, if brought 
 near it, will relieve it more completely than any other ; so, 
 also, every form and line may be made more striking to the 
 eye by an opponent form or line near them ; a curved line is 
 set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one, and so 
 on ; and in all good work nearly double the value, which any 
 given colour or form would have uncombined, is given to each 
 by contrast.* 
 
 * If you happen to meet with the plate of Durer's representing a coat 
 of arms with a skuil in the shield, note the value given to the concave 
 curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage carried 
 round it in front ; and the use of the blank white part of the shield in 
 ©pposing the rich folds of the dress. 
 
384 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BliA WING. 
 
 In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the arti- 
 fice vulgarises a picture. Great painters do not commonly, 
 or very visibly, admit violent contrast. They introduce it by 
 stealth and with intermediate links of tender change ; allow- 
 ing, indeed, the opposition to tell upon the mind as a surprise, 
 but not as a shock. * 
 
 Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 35. , the main cur- 
 rent of the lines being downwards, in a convex swell, they are 
 suddenly stopped at the lowest tower by a counter series of 
 beds, directed nearly straight across them. This adverse force 
 sets off and relieves the great curvature, but it is reconciled to 
 it by a series of radiating lines below, which at first sympa- 
 thize with the oblique bar, then gradually get steeper, till they 
 meet and join in the fall of the great curve. No passage, 
 however intentionally monotonous, is ever introduced by a 
 good artist without some slight counter current of this kind ; 
 so much, indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of 
 it, that they will even do things purposely ill or unsatisfact- 
 orily, in order to give greater value to their well-doing in other 
 places. In a skilful poet's versification the so-called bad or 
 inferior lines are not inferior because he could not do them 
 better, but because he feels that if all were equally weighty, 
 there would be no real sense of weight anywhere ; if all were 
 equally melodious, the melody .itself would be fatiguing ; and 
 he purposely introduces the labouring or discordant verse, 
 that the full ring may be felt in his main sentence, and the 
 finished sweetness in his chosen rhythm.f And continually in 
 painting, inferior artists destroy their work by giving too much 
 
 * Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light to 
 oppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never set 
 behind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the mountain's 
 edge. 
 
 f " A prudent chief not always must display 
 His powers in equal ranks and fair array, 
 But with the occasion and the place comply, 
 Conceal his force ; nay, seem sometimes to fly. 
 Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, 
 Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream. " 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 385 
 
 of all that they think is good, while the great painter gives 
 just enough to be enjoyed, and passes to an opposite kind of 
 enjoyment, or to an inferior slate of enjoyment: he gives a 
 passage of rich, involved, exquisitely wrought colour, then 
 passes away into slight, and pale and simple colour ; he paints 
 for a minute or two with intense decision, then suddenly be- 
 comes, as the spectator thinks, slovenly; but he is not slovenly: 
 you could not have taken any more decision from him just 
 then ; you have had as much as is good for you ; he paints 
 over a great space of his picture forms of the most rounded 
 and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a freak, 
 
 gives you a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn. 
 Perhaps the most exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the w r orld 
 of painting is the arrow point, laid sharp against the white 
 side and among the flowing hair of Correggio's Antiope. It is 
 quite singular how very little contrast will sometimes serve to 
 make an entire group of forms interesting which would other- 
 wise have been valueless. There is a good deal of picturesque 
 material, for instance, in this top of an old tower, Fig. 48., 
 tiles and stones and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled ; 
 but. all would have been unsatisfactory if there had not hap- 
 pened to be that iron ring on the inner wail, which by its 
 
 Fig. 48. 
 
386 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 vigorous, black circular line precisely opposes all the square 
 and angular characters of the battlements and roof. Draw 
 the tower without the ring, and see what a difference it will 
 make. 
 
 One of the most importent applications of the law of con- 
 trast is in association with the law of continuity, causing an 
 unexpected but gentle break in a continuous series. This 
 artifice is perpetual in music, and perpetual also in good illu- 
 mination ; the way in which little surprises of change are pre- 
 pared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental design, 
 being one of the most subtle characteristics of the work of 
 the good periods. We take, for instance, a bar of ornament 
 between two written columns of an early 14th century MS., 
 and at the first glance we suppose it to be quite monotonous 
 all the way up, composed of a winding tendril, with alter- 
 nately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud. Presently, however, we 
 see that, in order to observe the law of principality there is 
 one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud, nearly half-way up, which 
 forms a centre to the whole rod ; and when we begin to ex- 
 amine the order of the leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let 
 a stand for scarlet bud, b for blue leaf, c for two blue leaves 
 on one stalk, s for a stalk without a leaf, and r for the large 
 red leaf. Then counting from the ground, the order begins 
 as follows : 
 
 b, b, a ; b, s, b, a ; b, b, a ; b, b, a ; and we think we shall have 
 two b's and an a all the way, when suddenly it becomes b, a; 
 
 b, r ; 6, a ; b, a ; b, a ; and we think we are going to have b, a 
 continued ; but no : here it becomes b, s ; b, s ; b, a ; b, s ; b, s; 
 
 c, h ; b, s ; b, s ; and we think we are surely going to have b, s 
 continued, but behold it runs away to the end with a quick b, b, 
 a ; b, b, b, b ! * Very often, however, the designer is satisfied 
 with one surprise, but I never saw a good illuminated border 
 without one at least ; and no series of any kind is ever intro- 
 duced by a great composer in a painting without a snap some- 
 where. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Eome, 
 with the large balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell's 
 
 * I am describing from a MS., circa 1300, of Gregory's k ' Decretalia M 
 in my own possession. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 387 
 
 Italy series : the single baluster struck out of the line, and 
 showing the street below through the gap, simply makes the 
 whole composition right, when otherwise, it would have been 
 stiff and absurd. 
 
 If you look back to Fig. 48. you will see, in the arrange- 
 ment of the battlements, a simple instance of the use of such 
 variation. The whole top of the tower, though actually three 
 sides of a square, strikes the eye as a continuous series of five 
 masses. The first two, on the left, somewhat square and 
 blank ; then the next two higher and richer, the tiles being 
 seen on their slopes. Both these groups being couples, there 
 is enough monotony in the series to make a change pleasant ; 
 and the last battlement, therefore, is a little higher than the 
 first two, — a little lower than the second two, — and different 
 in shape from either. Hide it with your finger, and see how 
 ugly and formal the other four battlements look. 
 
 There a**e in this figure several other simple illustrations of 
 the laws we have been tracing. Thus the whole shape of the 
 wall's mas? being square, it is well, still for the sake of con- 
 trast, to oppose it not only by the element of curvature, in the 
 ring, and lines of the roof below, but by that of sharpness ; 
 hence the pleasure which the eye takes in the projecting point 
 of the roof. Also because the walls are thick and sturdy, it is 
 w r ell to contrast their strength with weakness ; therefore we 
 enjoy the evident decrepitude of this roof as it sinks between 
 them. The whole mass being nearly white, we want a con- 
 trasting shadow somewhere ; and get it, under our piece of 
 decrepitude. This shade, with the tiles of the wall below, 
 forms mother pointed mass, necessary to the first by the law 
 of repetition. Hide this inferior angle with your finger, and 
 see how ugly the other looks. A sense of the law of sym- 
 metry, though you might hardly suppose it, has some share in 
 the feeling with which you look at the battlements ; there is 
 a certain pleasure in the opposed slopes of their top, on one 
 side down to the left, on the other to the right. Still less 
 would you think the law of radiation had anything to do with 
 the matter : but if you take the extreme point of the black 
 shadow on the left for a centre and follow first the low curve 
 
388 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 of the eaves of the wall, it will lead yon, if you continue it, to 
 the point of the tower cornice ; follow the second curve, the 
 top of the tiles of the wall, and it will strike the top of the 
 right-hand battlement ; then draw a curve from the highest 
 point of the angle battlement on the left, through the points 
 of the roof and its dark echo ; and you will see how the whole 
 top of the tower radiates from this lowest dark point. There 
 are other curvatures crossing these main ones, to keep them 
 from being too conspicuous. Follow the curve of the upper 
 roof, it will take you to the top of the highest battlement ; and 
 the stones indicated at the right-hand side of the tower are 
 more extended at the bottom, in order to get some less direct 
 expression of sympathy, such as irregular stones may be cap- 
 able of, with the general flow of the curves from left to right. 
 
 You may not readily believe, at first, that all these laws are 
 indeed involved in so trifling a piece of composition. But as 
 you study longer, you will discover that these laws, and many 
 more, are obeyed by the powerful composers in every touch : 
 that literally, there is never a dash of their pencil which is 
 not carrying out appointed purposes of this kind in twenty 
 various ways at once ; and that there is as much difference, in 
 way of intention and authority, between one of the great com- 
 posers ruling his colours, and a common painter confused by 
 them, as there is between a general directing the march of an 
 army, and an old lady carried off her feet by a mob. 
 
 7. THE LAW OF INTERCHANGE. 
 
 Closely connected with the law of contrast is a law which 
 enforces the unity of opposite things, by giving to each a 
 portion of the character of the other. If, for instance, you 
 divide a shield into two masses of colour, all the way down- 
 suppose blue and white, and put a bar, or figure of an animal, 
 partly on one division, partly on the other, you will find it 
 pleasant to the eye if you make the part of the animal blue 
 which comes upon the white half, and white which comes 
 upon the blue half. This is done in heraldry, partly for the 
 sake of perfect intelligibility, but yet more for the sake of de- 
 light in interchange of colour, since, in all ornamentation 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 389 
 
 whatever, the practice is continual, in the ages of good de- 
 sign. 
 
 Sometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of contrasts ; 
 as that, after red has been for some time on one side, and 
 blue on the other, red shall pass to blue's side and blue to 
 red's. This kind of alternation takes place simply in four- 
 quartered shields ; in more subtle pieces of treatment, a little 
 bit only of each colour is carried into the other, and they are 
 as it were dovetailed together. One of the most curious facts 
 which will impress itself upon you, when you have drawn some 
 time carefully from Nature in light and shade, is the appear- 
 ance of intentional artifice with which contrasts of this alter- 
 nate kind are produced by her ; the artistry with which she 
 will darken a tree trunk as long as it comes against light sky, 
 and throw sunlight on it precisely at the spot where it comes 
 against a dark hill, and similarly treat all her masses of shade 
 and colour, is so great, that if you only follow her closely, 
 every one who looks at your drawing with attention will 
 think that } t ou have been inventing the most artifically and 
 unnaturally delightful interchanges of shadow that could pos- 
 sibly be devised by human wit. 
 
 You will find this law of interchange insisted upon at length 
 by Prout in his "Lessons on Light and Shade :" it seems, of 
 all his principles of composition, to be the one he is most con- 
 scious of ; many others he obeys by instinct, but this he for- 
 mally accepts and forcibly declares. 
 
 The typical purpose of the lav/ of interchange is, of course, 
 to teach us how opposite natures may be helped and strength- 
 ened by receiving each, as far as they can, some impress or 
 imparted power, from the other. 
 
 8. THE LAW OF CONSISTENCY. 
 
 It is to be remembered, in the next place, that while con- 
 trast exhibits the characters of things, it very often neutralises 
 or paralyses their power. A number of white things may be 
 shown to be clearly white by opposition of a black thing, but 
 if you want the full power of their gathered light, the black 
 thing may be seriously in our way. Thus, while contrast 
 
390 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF BRA WING. 
 
 displays things, it is unity and sympathy which employ them, 
 concentrating the power of several into a mass. And, not in 
 art merely, but in all the affairs of life, the wisdom of man is 
 continually called upon to reconcile these opposite methods of 
 exhibiting, or. using, the materials in his power. By change 
 he gives them pleasantness, and by consistency value ; by 
 change he is refreshed, and by perseverence strengthened. 
 
 Hence many compositions address themselves to the specta- 
 tor by aggregate force of colour or line, more than by contrasts 
 of either ; many noble pictures are painted almost exclu- 
 sively in various tones of red, or grey, or gold, so as to be in- 
 stantly striking by their breadth of flush, or glow, or tender 
 coldness, these qualities being exhibited only by slight and 
 subtle use of contrast. Similarly as to form ; some composi- 
 tions associate massive and rugged forms, others slight and 
 graceful ones, each with few interruptions by lines of con^ 
 trary character. And, in general, such compositions possess 
 higher sublimity than those which are more mingled in their 
 elements. They tell a special tale, and summon a definite 
 state of feeling, while the grand compositions merely please 
 the eye. 
 
 This unity or breadth of character generally attaches most 
 to the works of the greatest men ; their separate pictures 
 have all separate aims. We have not, in each, grey colour set 
 against sombre, and sharp forms against soft, and loud passages 
 against low ; but we have the bright picture, with its delicate 
 sadness ; the sombre picture, with its single ray of relief ; the 
 stern picture, with only one tender group of lines ; the soft 
 and calm picture, with only one rock angle at its flank ; and 
 so on. Hence the variety of their work, as well as its im- 
 pressiveness. The principal bearing of this law, however, is 
 on the separate masses or divisions of a picture : the charac- 
 ter of the whole composition may be broken or various, if we 
 please, but there must certainly be a tendency to consistent 
 assemblage in its divisions. As an army may act on several 
 points at once, but can only act effectually by having some- 
 where formed and regular masses, and not wholly by skir- 
 mishers ; so a picture may be various in its tendencies, but 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 391 
 
 must be somewhere united and coherent in its masses. Good 
 composers are always associating their colours in great 
 groups ; binding their forms together by encompassing lines, 
 and securing, by various dexterities of expedient, what they 
 themselves call " breadth : " that is to say, a large gathering 
 of each kind of thing into one place ; light being gathered to 
 light, darkness to darkness, and colour to colour. If, how- 
 ever, this be done by introducing false lights or false col- 
 ours, it is absurd and monstrous ; the skill of a painter con- 
 sists in obtaining breadth by rational arrangement of his 
 objects, not by forced or wanton treatment of them. It is an 
 easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another all black 
 or brown ; but not an easy matter to assemble all the circum- 
 stances which will naturally produce white in one place, and 
 brown in another. Generally speaking, how T ever, breadth will 
 result in sufficient degree from fidelity of study : Nature is 
 always broad ; and if you paint her colours in true relations, 
 you will paint them in majestic masses. If you find your 
 work look broken and scattered, it is, in all probability, not 
 only ill composed, but untrue. 
 
 The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or scatter- 
 ing of light and colour, has a certain contrasting charm, and 
 is occasionally introduced with exquisite effect by good com- 
 posers.* Still, it is never the mere scattering, but the 
 order discernible through this scattering, which is the real 
 source of pleasure ; not the mere multitude, but the con- 
 stellation of multitude. The broken lights in the work of a 
 good painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not unshep- 
 herded ; speaking of life and peace : the broken lights of a 
 bad painter fall like hailstones, and are capable only of mis- 
 chief, leaving it to be wished they were also of dissolution. 
 
 * One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice, is 
 little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes of scat- 
 tered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe great part 
 of their power to infinitude of division ; order being marked through 
 this division. 
 
392 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 9. THE LAW OF HAKMONY. 
 
 This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one of com- 
 position as of truth, but it must guide composition, and is 
 properly, therefore, to be stated in this place. 
 
 Good drawing is, as we have seen, an abstract of natural 
 facts ; you cannot represent all that you would, but must 
 continually be falling short, whether you will or no, of the 
 force, or quantity, of Nature. Now, suppose that your means 
 and time do not admit of your giving the depth of colour in 
 the scene, and that you are obliged to paint it paler. If you 
 paint all the colours proportionately paler, as if an equal 
 quantity of tint had been washed away from each of them, 
 you still obtain a harmonious, though not an equally forcible 
 statement of natural fact. But if you take away the colours 
 unequally, and leave some tints nearly as deep as they are in 
 Nature, while others are much subdued, you have no longer 
 a true statement. You cannot say to the observer, " Fancy 
 all those colours a little deeper, and you will have the actual 
 fact." However he adds in imagination, or takes away, some- 
 thing is sure to be still wrong. The picture is out of har- 
 mony. 
 
 It will happen, however, much more frequently, that you 
 have to darken the whole system of colours, than to make 
 them paler. You remember, in your first studies of colour 
 from Nature, you were to leave the passages of light which 
 were too bright to be imitated, as white paper. But, in com- 
 pleting the picture, it becomes necessary to put colour into 
 them ; and then the other colours must be made darker, in 
 some fixed relation to them. If you deepen all proportion- 
 ately, though the whole scene is darker than reality, it is only 
 as if you were looking at the reality in a lower light : but if, 
 while you darken some of the tints, you leave others undark- 
 ened, the picture is out of harmony, and will not give the im- 
 pression of truth. 
 
 It is not, indeed, possible to deepen all the colours so much 
 as to relieve the lights in their natural degree ; you would 
 merely sink most of your colours, if you tried to do so, into a 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 393 
 
 broad mass of blackness : but it is quite possible to lower 
 them harmoniously, and yet more in some parts of the pict- 
 ure than in others, so as to allow you to show the light you 
 want in a visible relief. In well-harmonised pictures this is 
 done by gradually deepening the tone of the picture towards 
 the lighter parts of it, without materially lowering it in the 
 very dark parts ; the tendency in such pictures being, of 
 course, to include large masses of middle tints. But the 
 principal point to be observed in doing this, is to deepen 
 the individual tints without dirtying or obscuring them. It 
 is easy to lower the tone of the picture by washing it over 
 with grey or brown ; and easy to see the effect of the land- 
 scape, when its colours are thus universally polluted with 
 black, by using the black convex mirror, one of the most 
 pestilent inventions for falsifying nature and degrading art 
 which ever was put into an artist's hand.* For the thing re- 
 quired is not to darken pale yellow by mixing grey with it, 
 but to deepen the pure yellow ; not to darken crimson by 
 mixing black with it, but by making it deeper and richer crim- 
 son : and thus the required effect could only be seen in Nat- 
 ure, if you had pieces of glass of the colour of every object 
 in your landscape, and of every minor hue that made up those 
 colours, and then could see the real landscape through this 
 deep gorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this 
 with glass, but you can do it for yourself as you work ; that 
 is to say, you can put deep blue for pale blue, deep gold for 
 pale gold, and so on, in the proportion you need ; and then 
 you may paint as forcibly as you choose, but your work will 
 still be in the manner of Titian, not of Caravaggio or Spagno- 
 letto, or any other of the black slaves of painting."}* 
 
 * I fully believe that the strange grey gloom, accompanied by consid- 
 erable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art must be 
 owing to the use of this mischievous instrument ; the French landscape 
 always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the dark mirror, 
 and painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the veil of its pervpr- 
 sion. 
 
 * Various other parts of this subject are entered into, especially in 
 their bearing on the idual of painting, in "Modern Painters," vol. iv v 
 chap. iii. 
 
394 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. 
 
 Supposing those scales of colour, which I told you to pre- 
 pare in order to show you the relations of colour to grey, were 
 quite accurately made, and numerous enough, you would have 
 nothing more to do, in order to obtain a deeper tone in any 
 given mass of colour, than to substitute for each of its hues 
 the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you wanted, 
 that is to say, if you want to deepen the whole two degrees, 
 substituting for the yellow No. 5. the yellow No. 7., and for 
 the red No. 9. the red No. 11., and so on; but the hues of 
 any object in Nature are far too numerous, and their degrees 
 too subtle, to admit of so mechanical a process. Still, you 
 may see the principle of the whole matter clearly by taking a 
 group of colours out of your scale, arranging them prettify, 
 and then washing them all over with grey : that represents 
 the treatment of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange 
 the same group of colours, with the tints five or six degrees 
 deeper in the scale ; and that will represent the treatment of 
 Nature by Titian. 
 
 You can only, however, feel your way fully to the right of 
 the thing by working from Nature. 
 
 The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this 
 kind is a good thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with 
 some white clouds in it. Paint the clouds in true and ten- 
 derly gradated white ; then give the sky a bold full blue, 
 bringing them well out ; then paint the trunk and leaves 
 grandly dark against all, but in such glowing dark green and 
 brown as you see they will bear. Afterwards proceed to 
 more complicated studies, matching the colours carefully first 
 by your old method ; then deepening each colour with its own 
 tint, and being careful, above all things, to keep truth of equal 
 change when the colours are connected with each other, as in 
 dark and light sides of the same object. Much more aspect 
 and sense of harmony are gained by the precision with which 
 you observe the relation of colours in dark sides and light 
 sides, and the influence of modifying reflections, than by mere 
 accuracy of added depth in independent colours. 
 
 This harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is the most 
 important of those which the artist has to regard. But there 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 395 
 
 are all kinds of harmonies in a picture, according to its mode 
 of production. There is even a harmony of touch. If you 
 paint one part of it very rapidly and forcibly, and another part 
 slowly and delicately, each division of the picture may be right 
 separately, but they will not agree together : the whole will be 
 effectless and valueless, out of harmony. Similarly, if you paint 
 one part of it by a yellow light in a warm day, and another by a 
 grey light in a cold day, though both may have been sunlight, 
 and both may be well toned, and have their relative shadows 
 truly cast, neither will look like light : they will destroy each 
 other's power, by being out of harmony. These are only broad 
 and definable instances of discordance ; but there is an extent 
 of harmony in all good work much too subtle for definition ; 
 depending on the draughtsman's carrying everything he draws 
 up to just the balancing and harmonious point, in finish, and 
 colour, and depth of tone, and intensity of moral feeling, and 
 style of touch, all considered at once ; and never allowing him- 
 self to lean too emphatically on detached parts, or exalt one 
 thing at the expense of another, or feel acutely in one place 
 and coldly in another. If you have got some of Cruikshank's 
 etchings, you will be able, I think, to feel the natuie of harmo- 
 nious treatment in a simple kind, by comparing them with any 
 of Richter's illustrations to the numerous German story-books 
 lately published at Christmas, with all the German stories 
 spoiled. Cruikshank's work is often incomplete in character 
 and poor in incident, but, as drawing, it is perfect in harmony. 
 The pure and simple effects of daylight which he gets by his 
 thorough mastery of treatment in this respect, are quite unri- 
 valled, as far as I know, by any other work executed with so 
 few touches. His vignettes to Grimm's German stories, 
 already recommended, are the most remarkable in this quality. 
 Richter's illustrations, on the contrary, are of a very high 
 stamp as respects understanding of human character, with in- 
 finite playfulness and tenderness of fancy ; but, as drawings, 
 they are almost unendurably out of harmony, violent blacks in 
 one place being continually opposed to trenchant white in 
 another ; and, as is almost sure to be the case with bad har- 
 monists, the local colour hardly felt anywhere. All German 
 
396 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DllA WING. 
 
 work is apt to be out of harmony, in consequence of its too fre» 
 quent conditions of affectation, and its wilful refusals of fact ; 
 as well as b} r reason of a feverish kind of excitement, which 
 dwells violently on particular points, and makes all the lines of 
 thought in the picture to stand on end, as it were, like a cat's 
 fur electrified ; while good work is always as quiet as a couchant 
 leopard, and as strong. 
 
 I have now stated to you all the laws of composition which 
 occur to me as capable of being illustrated or defined ; but 
 there are multitudes of others which, in the present state of 
 my knowledge, I cannot define, and others which I never 
 hope to define ; and these the most important, and connected 
 with the deepest powers of the art. Among those which I 
 hope to be able to explain when I have thought of them more, 
 are the laws which relate to nobleness and ignobleness ; that 
 ignobleness especially which w T e commonly call " vulgarity," 
 and which, in its essence, is one of the most curious subjects 
 of inquiry connected with human feeling. Among those 
 which I never hope to explain, are chiefly laws of expression, 
 and others bearing simply on simple matters ; but, for that 
 very reason, more influential than any others. These are, 
 from the first, as inexplicable as our bodily sensations are ; it 
 being just as impossible, I think, to explain why one succes- 
 sion of musical notes * shall be noble and pathetic, and such 
 as might have been sung by Casella to Dante, and why an- 
 other succession is base and ridiculous, and would be fit only 
 for the reasonably good ear of Bottom, as to explain why we 
 like sweetness, and dislike bitterness. The best part of every 
 great work is always inexplicable : it is good because it is 
 good ; and innocently gracious, opening as the green of the 
 earth, or falling as the dew of heaven. 
 
 But though you cannot explain them, you may always render 
 
 * In all the best arrangements of colour, the delight occasioned by 
 their mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be reasoned 
 about ; we like it just as we like an air in music, bufc cannot reason any 
 refractory person into liking it, if they do not: and yet there is dis- 
 tinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a good taste and bad taste respect 
 irig it, as also in music. 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 
 
 397 
 
 yourself more and more sensitive to these higher qualities by 
 the discipline which you generally give to your character, and 
 this especially with regard to the choice of incidents ; a kind 
 of composition in some sort easier than the artistical arrange- 
 ments of lines and colours, but in every sort nobler, because 
 addressed to deeper feelings. 
 
 For instance, in the "Datur Hora Quieti," the last vignette 
 to Roger's Poems, the plough in the foreground has three pur- 
 poses. The first purpose is to meet the stream of sunlight on 
 the river, and make it brighter by opposition ; but any dark 
 object whatever would have done this. Its second purpose is 
 by its two arms, to repeat the cadence of the group of the two 
 ships, and thus give a greater expression of repose ; but two 
 sitting figures would have done this. Its third and chief, or 
 pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned in the furrow (the 
 vessels also being moored, and having their sails down), to be 
 a type of human labour closed with the close of day. The 
 parts of it on which the hand leans are brought most clearly 
 into sight ; and they are the chief dark of the picture, because 
 the tillage of the ground is required of man as a punishment ; 
 but they make the soft light of the setting sun brighter, be- 
 cause rest is sweetest after toil. These thoughts may never 
 occur to us as we glance carelessly at the design ; and yet 
 their under current assuredly affects the feelings, and increases, 
 as the painter meant it should, the impression of melancholy, 
 and of peace. 
 
 Again, in the " Lancaster Sands," which is one of the plates 
 I have marked as most desirable for your possession ; the 
 stream of light which falls from the setting sun on the ad- 
 vancing tide stands similarly in need of some force of near 
 object to relieve its brightness. But the incident which Tur 
 nor has here adopted is the swoop of an angry seagull at a dog, 
 who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his feet, 
 and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected 
 boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns 
 us of the sea's advance just as surely as the abandoned plough 
 told us of the ceased labour of the day. 
 
 It is not, however, so much in the selection of single in* 
 
398 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING. 
 
 cidents of this kind as in the feeling which regulates the an 
 rangement of the whole subject that the mind of a great com- 
 poser is known. A single incident may be suggested by a 
 felicitous chance, as a pretty motto might be for the heading 
 of a chapter. But the great composers so arrange all their 
 designs that one incident illustrates another, just as one colour 
 relieves another. Perhaps the " Heysham," of the Yorkshire 
 series which, as to its locality, may be considered a companion 
 to the last drawing we have spoken of, the " Lancaster Sands," 
 presents as interesting an example as we could find of Turner's 
 feeling in this respect. The subject is a simple north-country 
 village, on the shore of-Morecambe Bay ; not in the common 
 sense, a picturesque village : there are no pretty bow- windows, 
 or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance to the rustic doors, 
 or quaint gables ; nothing but a single street of thatched and 
 chiefly clay-built cottages, ranged in a somewhat monotonous 
 line, the roofs so green with moss that at first we hardly dis- 
 cern the houses from the fields and trees. The village street 
 is closed at the end by a wooden gate, indicating the little 
 traffic there is on the road through it, and giving it something 
 the look of a large farmstead, in which a right of way lies 
 through the yard. The road which leads to this gate is full 
 of ruts, and winds down a bad bit of hill between two broken 
 banks of moor ground, succeeding immediately to the few 
 enclosures which surround the village ; they can hardly be 
 called gardens ; but a decayed fragment or two of fencing 
 fill the gaps in the bank ; and a clothes-line, with some 
 clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a smock-frock, is 
 stretched between the trunks of some stunted willows ; a very 
 small haystack and pigstye being seen at the back of the cot- 
 tage beyond. An empty, two-wheeled, lumbering cart, drawn 
 by a pair of horses with huge wooden collars, the driver sitting 
 lazily in the sun, sideways on the leader, is going slowly home 
 along the rough road, it being about country dinner-time, 
 At the end of the village there is a better house, with three 
 chimneys and a dormer window in its roof, and the roof is of 
 stone shingle instead of thatch, but very rough. This house 
 is no doubt the clergyman's ; there is some smoke from one 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 
 
 399 
 
 of its chimneys, none from any other in the village ; this 
 smoke is from the lowest chimney at the back, evidently that 
 of the kitchen, and it is rather thick, the fire not having been 
 long lighted. A few hundred yards from the clergyman's 
 house, nearer the shore, is the church, discernible from the 
 cottage only by its low-arched belfry, a little neater than one 
 would expect in such a village ; perhaps lately built by the 
 Puseyite incumbent ; * and beyond the church, close to the 
 sea, are two fragments of a border war-tower, standing on 
 their circular mound, worn on its brow deep into edges and 
 furrows by the feet of the village children. On the bank of 
 moor, which forms the foreground, are a few cows, the carter's 
 dog barking at a vixenish one : the milkmaid is feeding an- 
 other, a gentle white one, which turns its head to her, expect- 
 ant of a handful of fresh hay, which she has brought for it in 
 her blue apron, fastened up round her waist ; she stands with 
 her pail on her head, evidently the village coquette, for she 
 has a neat bodice, and pretty striped petticoat under the blue 
 apron, and red stockings. Nearer us, the cowherd, barefooted, 
 stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for the ground is 
 thistly and not pleasurable to bare feet) ; — whether boy or 
 girl we are not sure ; it may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out 
 bonnet on, or a girl with a pair of ragged trowsers on ; prob- 
 ably the first, as the old bonnet is evidently useful to keep the 
 sun out of our eyes when we are looking for strayed cows 
 among the moorland hollow r s, and helps us at present to watch 
 (holding the bonnet's edge down) the quarrel of the vixenish 
 cow with the dog, which, leaning on our long stick, we allow 
 to proceed without any interference. A little to the right the 
 hay is being got in, of which the milkmaid has just taken her 
 apronful to the white cow ; but the hay is very thin, and can- 
 not well be raked up because of the rocks ; we must glean it 
 
 * " Puseyism " was unknown in the days when this drawing was made ; 
 but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be call ecclesiastical 
 sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated condition, forms one of the 
 principal elements of " Puseyism, v — I use this word regretfully, no other 
 existing which will serve for it, — had been known and felt in our wild 
 northern districts long before. 
 
400 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF DRA WING. 
 
 like corn, hence the smallness of our stack behind the willows; 
 and a woman is pressing a bundle of it hard together, kneel- 
 ing against the rock's edge, to carry it safely to the hay-cart 
 without dropping any. Beyond the village is a rocky hill, 
 deep set with brushwood, a square crag or two of limestone 
 emerging here and there, with pleasant turf on their brows, 
 heaved in russet and mossy mounds against the sky, which, 
 clear and calm, and as golden as the moss, stretches down be- 
 hind it towards the sea. A single cottage just shows its roof 
 over the edge of the hill, looking seaward ; perhaps one of the 
 village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may have built it 
 there, that his mother may first see the sails of his ship when- 
 ever it runs into the bay. Then under the hill, and beyond 
 the border tower, is the blue sea itself, the waves flowing in 
 over the sand in long curved lines, slowly ; shadows of cloud 
 and gleams of shallow water on white sand alternating — miles 
 away ; but no sail is visible, not one fisherboat on the beach, 
 not one dark speck on the quiet horizon. Beyond all are the 
 Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun, with rosy light on 
 all their crags. 
 
 I should think the reader cannot but feel the kind of har- 
 mony there is in this composition ; the entire purpose of the 
 painter to give us the impression of wild, yet gentle, country 
 life, monotonous as the succession of the noiseless waves, pa- 
 tient and enduring as the rocks ; but peaceful, and full of 
 health and quiet hope, and sanctified by the pure mountain 
 air and baptismal dew of heaven, falling softly between days 
 of toil and nights of innocence. 
 
 All noble composition of this kind can be reached only by 
 instinct : you cannot set yourself to arrange such a subject ; 
 you may see it, and seize it, at all times, but never laboriously 
 invent it. And your power of discerning what is best in ex- 
 pression, among natural subjects, depends wholly on the tem- 
 per in which you keep your own mind ; above all, on your 
 living so much alone as to allow it to become acutely sensitive 
 in its own stillness. The noisy life of modern days is wholly 
 incompatible with any true perception of natural beauty. If 
 you go down into Cumberland by the railroad, live in some 
 
ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION 
 
 401 
 
 frequented hotel, and explore the hills with merry companions, 
 however much you may enjoy your tour or their conversation, 
 depend upon it you will never choose so much as one pictorial 
 subject rightly ; you will not see into the depth of any. But 
 take knapsack and stick, walk towards the hills by short day's 
 journeys — ten or twelve miles a day — taking a week from some 
 starting-place sixty or seventy miles away : sleep at the pretty 
 little wayside inns, or the rough village ones ; then take the 
 hills as they tempt you, following glen or shore as your eye 
 glances or your heart guides, wholly scornful of local fame or 
 fashion, and of everything which it is the ordinary traveller's 
 duty to see or pride to do. Never force yourself to admire 
 anything when you are not in the humour ; but never force 
 yourself away from what you feel to be lovely, in search of 
 anything better : and gradually the deeper scenes of the natural 
 world will unfold themselves to you in still increasing fulness 
 of passionate power ; and your difficulty will be no more to 
 seek or to compose subjects, but only to choose one from 
 among the multitude of melodious thoughts with which you 
 will be haunted, thoughts which will of course be noble or 
 original in proportion to your own depth of character and 
 general power of mind : for it is not so much by the consid- 
 eration you give to any single drawing, as by the previous 
 discipline of your powers of thought, that the character 
 of your composition will be determined. Simplicity of life 
 will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty of 
 scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life 
 will make you enjoy coarse colours and affected forms. Habits 
 of patient comparison and accurate judgment will make your 
 art precious, as they will make your actions wise ; and every 
 increase of noble enthusiasm in your living spirit will be 
 measured by the reflection of its light upon the works of 
 your hands. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
APPEIH)IX. 
 
 THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 
 
 The worst danger by far, to which a solitary student is ex- 
 posed, is that of liking things that he should not. It is not 
 so much his difficulties, as his tastes, which he must set him- 
 self to conquer ; and although, under the guidance of a master, 
 many works of art may be made instructive, which are only 
 of partial excellence (the good and bad of them being duly 
 distinguished), his safeguard, as long as he studies alone, will 
 be in allowing himself to possess only things, in their way, so 
 free from faults, that nothing he copies in them can seriously 
 mislead him, and to contemplate only those works of art which 
 he knows to be either perfect or noble in their errors. I will 
 therefore set down in clear order, the names of the masters 
 whom you may safely admire, and a few of the books which 
 you may safely possess. In these days of cheap illustration, 
 the danger is always rather of your possessing too much than 
 too little. It may admit of some question, how far the look- 
 ing at bad art may set off and illustrate the characters of the 
 good ; but, on the whole, I believe it is best to live always on 
 quite wholesome food, and that our taste of it will not be made 
 more acute by feeding, however temporarily, on ashes. Of 
 course the works of the great masters can only be serviceable 
 to the student after he has made considerable progress him- 
 self. It only wastes the time and dulls the feelings of young 
 persons, to drag them through picture galleries ; at least, unless 
 they themselves wish to look at particular pictures. Generally, 
 young people only care to enter a picture gallery when there 
 is a chance of getting leave to run a race to the other end of 
 
404 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 it ; and they had better do that in the garden below. If, 
 however, they have any real enjoyment of pictures, and w T ant 
 to look at this one or that, the principal point is never to dis- 
 turb them in looking at what interests them, and never to 
 make them look at what does not. Nothing is of the least 
 use to young people (nor, by the way, of much use to old ones), 
 but what interests them ; and therefore, though it is of great 
 importance to put nothing but good art into their possession, 
 yet when they are passing though great houses or galleries, 
 they should be allowed to look precisely at what pleases them : 
 if it is not useful to them as art, it will be in some other way : 
 and the healthiest way in which art can interest them is when 
 they look at it, not as art, but because it represents something 
 they like in nature. If a boy has had his heart filled by the 
 life of some great man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck 
 portrait of him, to see what he was like, that is the whole- 
 somest way in which he can begin the study of portraiture ; if he 
 love mountains, and dwell on a Turner drawing because he sees 
 in it a likeness to a Yorkshire scar, or an Alpine pass, that is 
 the wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of land- 
 scape ; and if a giiTs mind is filled with dreams of angels and 
 saints, and she pauses before an Angelico because she thinks 
 it must surely be indeed like heaven, that is the wholesomest 
 way for her to begin the study of religious art. 
 
 When, however, the student has made some definite prog- 
 ress, and every picture becomes really a guide to him, false 
 or true, in his own work, it is of great importance that he 
 should never so much as look at bad art ; and then, if the 
 reader is willing to trust me in the matter, the following- 
 advice will be useful to him. In which, with his permission, 
 I will quit the indirect and return to the epistolary address, 
 as being the more convenient. 
 
 First, in Galleries of Pictures : 
 
 1. You may look, with trust in their being always right, at 
 Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velas- 
 quez ; the authenticity of the picture being of course estab- 
 lished for you by proper authority. 
 
 2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however 
 
THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 
 
 405 
 
 question of right and wrong,* at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, 
 Francia, Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Vandyck, 
 Rembrandt, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, and the modern 
 Pre-Raphaelites.f You had better look at no other painters 
 than these, for you run a chance, otherwise, of being led far 
 off the road, or into grievous faults, by some of the other 
 great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens ; and of 
 being, besides, corrupted in taste by the base ones, as Murillo, 
 Salvator, Claude, Gasper Poussin, Teniers, and such others. 
 You may look, however, for examples of evil, with safe univer- 
 sality of reprobation, being sure that everything you see is 
 bad, at Domenichino, the Caracci, Bronzino, and the figure 
 pieces of Salvator. 
 
 Among those named for study under question, you cannot 
 look too much at, nor grow too enthusiastically fond of, An- 
 gelico, Correggio, Reynolds, Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites ; 
 but, if you find yourself getting especially fond of any of the 
 others, leave off looking at them, for you must be going wrong- 
 some way or other. If, for instance, you begin to like Rem- 
 brandt or Leonardo especially, you are losing your feeling for 
 colour ; if you like Van Eyck or Perugino especially, you 
 must be getting too fond of rigid detail ; and if you like 
 Vandyck or Gainsborough especially, you must be too much 
 attracted by gentlemanly flimsiness. 
 
 Secondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art, such 
 as you may be able to get yourself, or to see at private houses 
 or in shops, the works of the following masters are the most 
 desirable, after the Turners, Rembrandts, and Durers, which 
 I have asked you to get first : 
 
 1. Samuel Prout. 
 
 All his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest 
 * I do not mean necessarily to imply inferiority of rank, in saying 
 that this second class of painters have questionable qualities. The great- 
 est men have often many faults, and sometimes their faults are a part 
 of their greatness ; but such men are not, of course, to be looked upon 
 by the student with absolute implicitness of faith. 
 
 t Including under this term, John Lewis, and William Hunt of the 
 Old Water-colour, who, take him all in all, is the best painter of still 
 life, I believe, that ever existed. 
 
406 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 value, wholly unrivalled in power of composition, and in love 
 and feeling of architectural subject. His somewhat man- 
 nered linear execution, though not to be imitated in your own 
 sketches from Nature, may be occasionally copied, for disci- 
 pline's sake, with great advantage ; it will give you a peculiar 
 steadiness of hand, not quickly attainable in any other way 
 and there is no fear of your getting into any faultful manner- 
 ism as long as you cany out the different modes of more 
 delicate study above recommended. 
 
 If you are interested in architecture, and wish to make it 
 your chief study, you should draw much from photographs of 
 it ; and then from the architecture itself, with the same com- 
 pletion of detail and gradation, only keeping the shadows of 
 due paleness, in photographs they are always about four times 
 as dark as they ought to be ; and treat buildings with as 
 much care and love as artists do their rock foregrounds, draw- 
 ing all the moss and weeds, and stains upon them. But if, 
 without caring to understand architecture, you merely want 
 the picturesque character of it, and to be able to sketch it 
 fast, you cannot do better than take Prout for your exclusive 
 master ; only do not think that you are copying Prout by 
 drawing straight lines with dots at the end of them. Get 
 first his "Rhine," and draw the subjects that have most hills, 
 and least architecture in them, with chalk on smooth paper, 
 till you can lay on his broad flat tints, and get his gradations 
 of light, which are very wonderful ; then take up the archi- 
 tectural subjects in the " Rhine," and draw again and again 
 the groups of figures, &c, in his "Microcosm," and "Les- 
 sons on Light and Shadow." After that, proceed to copy 
 the grand subjects in the sketches in "Flanders and Ger- 
 many ; " or in " Switzerland and Italy," if you cannot get the 
 Flanders ; but the Switzerland is very far inferior. Then 
 work from Nature, not trying to Proutise Nature, by break- 
 ing smooth buildings into rough ones, but only drawing what 
 you see, with Prout's simple method and firm lines. Don't copy 
 his coloured works. They are good, but not at all equal to 
 his chalk and pencil drawings, and you will become a mere 
 imitator, and a very feeble imitator, if you use colour at all in 
 
THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 
 
 407 
 
 Prout's method. I have not space to explain why this is so, 
 it would take a long piece of reasoning; trust me for the 
 statement. 
 
 2. John Lewis. 
 
 His sketches in Spain, lithographed by himself, are very 
 valuable. Get them, if you can, and also some engravings 
 (about eight or ten, I think, altogether) of wild beasts, exe- 
 cuted by his own hand a long time ago ; they are very 
 precious in every way. The series of the "Alhambra" is 
 rather slight, and few of the subjects are lithographed by him- 
 self ; still it is well worth having. 
 
 But let no lithographic work come into the house, if you 
 can help it, nor even look at any, except Prout's, and those 
 sketches of Lewis's. 
 
 3. George Cruikshank. 
 
 If you ever happen to meet w r ith the two volumes of 
 " Grimm's German Stories," which w r ere illustrated by him 
 long ago, pounce upon them instantly ; the etchings in them 
 are the finest things, next to Kembrandt's, that, as far as I 
 know, have been done since etching was invented. You can- 
 not look at them too much, nor copy them too often. 
 
 All his works are very valuable, though disagreeable when 
 they touch on the worst vulgarities of modern life ; and often 
 much spoiled by a curiously mistaken type of face, divided so 
 as to give too much to the mouth and eyes, and leave too little 
 for forehead, the eyes being set about two thirds up, instead 
 of at half the height of the head. But his manner of work is 
 always right ; and his tragic pow r er, though rarely developed, 
 and warped by habits of caricature, is, in reality, as great as 
 his grotesque power. 
 
 There is no fear of his hurting your taste, as long as your 
 principal work lies among art of so totally different a charac- 
 ter as most of that which I have recommended to you ; and 
 you may, therefore, get great good by copying almost anything 
 of his that may come in your way ; except only his illustra- 
 ions lately published to "Cinderella," and "Jack and the 
 
408 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Beanstalk/' and "Tom Thumb," which are much over-labour* 
 ed, and confused in line. You should get them, but do not 
 copy them. 
 
 4. Alfred Eethel. 
 
 I only know two publications by him ; one, the " Dance of 
 Death," with text by Eeinick, published in Leipsic, but to be 
 had now of any London bookseller for the sum, I believe, of 
 eighteen pence, and containing six plates full of instructive 
 character ; the other, of two plates only, "Death the Avenger," 
 and "Death the Friend." These two are far superior to the 
 " Todtentanz," and, if you can get them, will be enough in 
 themselves, to show all that Rethel can teach you. If you 
 dislike ghastly subjects, get "Death the Friend" only. 
 
 5. Bewick. 
 
 The execution of the plumage in Bewick's birds is the most 
 masterly thing ever yet done in wood-cutting ; it is just worked 
 as Paul Veronese would have worked in wood, had he taken 
 to it. His vignettes, though too coarse in execution, and 
 vulgar in types of form, to be good copies, show, nevertheless, 
 intellectual power of the highest order ; and there are pieces 
 of sentiment in them, either pathetic or satirical, which have 
 never since been equalled in illustrations of this simple kind ; 
 the bitter intensity of the feeling being just like that which 
 characterises some of the leading Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick is 
 the Burns of painting. 
 
 6. Blake. 
 
 The " Book of Job," engraved by himself, is of the highest 
 rank in certain characters of imagination and expression ; in 
 the mode of obtaining certain effects of light it will also be a 
 very useful example to you. In expressing conditions of glar- 
 ing and flickering light, Blake is greater than Rembrandt. 
 
 7. Richter. 
 
 I have already told you what to guard against in looking at 
 his works. I am a little doubtful whether I have done well in 
 including them in this catalogue at all ; but the fancies in them 
 are so pretty and numberless, that I must risk, for their sak§ 
 
THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 
 
 409 
 
 the chance of hurting you a little in judgment of style. If 
 you want to make presents of story-books to children, his are 
 the best you can now get. 
 
 8. Eossetti. 
 
 An edition of Tennyson, lately published, contains wood- 
 cuts from drawings by Rossetti and other chief Pre-Raphaelite 
 masters. They are terribly spoiled in the cutting, and gene- 
 rally the best part, the expression of feature, entirely lost ; * 
 still they are full of instruction, and cannot be studied too 
 closely. But observe, respecting these wood-cuts, that if you 
 have been in the habit of looking at much spurious work, in 
 which sentiment, action, and style are borrowed or artificial, 
 you will assuredly be offended at first by all genuine work, 
 which is intense in feeling. Genuine art, which is merely 
 art, such as Veronese's or Titian's, may not offend you, though 
 the chances are that you will not care about it : but genuine 
 works of feeling, such as Maude and Aurora Leigh in poetry, 
 or the grand Pre-Raphaelite designs in painting, are sure to 
 offend you ; and if you cease to work hard, and persist in 
 looking at vicious and false art, they will continue to offend 
 you. It will be well, therefore, to have one type of entirely 
 false art, in order to know what to guard against. Flaxman's 
 outlines to Dante contain, I think, examples of almost every 
 kind of falsehood and feebleness which it is possible for a 
 trained artist, not base in thought, to commit or admit, botli 
 in design and execution. Base or degraded choice of subject, 
 such as you will constantly find in Teniers and others of the 
 Dutch painters, I need not, I hope, warn you against ; you 
 will simply turn away from it in disgust ; while mere bad or 
 feeble drawing, which makes mistakes in every direction at 
 once, cannot teach you the particular sort of educated fallacy 
 
 * This is especially the case in the St. Cecily, Rossetti' s first illustra- 
 tion to the " palace of art," which would have been the best in the book 
 had it been well engraved. The whole work should be taken up again, 
 and done by line engraving, perfectly ; and wholly from Pre-Raphaelite 
 designs ; with which no other modern work can bear the least compari- 
 son. 
 
410 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 in question. But, in these designs of Flaxman's, you have 
 gentlemanly feeling, and fair knowledge of anatomy, and firm 
 setting down of lines, all applied in the foolishest and worst 
 possible way ; you cannot have a more finished example of 
 learned error, amiable want of meaning, and bad drawing 
 with a steady hand.* Retsch's outlines have more real ma- 
 terial in them than Flaxman's, occasionally showing true fancy 
 and power ; in artistic principle they are nearly as bad, and in 
 taste worse. All outlines from statuary, as given in works on 
 classical art, will be very hurtful to you if you in the least like 
 them ; and nearly all finished line engravings. Some particu- 
 lar prints I could name which possess instructive qualities, 
 but it would take too long to distinguish them, and the best 
 way is to avoid line engravings of figures altogether. If you 
 happen to be a rich person, possessing quantities of them, and 
 if you are fond of the large finished prints from Raphael, Cor- 
 reggio, &c, it is wholly impossible that you can make any 
 
 * The praise I have given incidentally to Flaxman's sculpture in the 
 "Seven Lamps," and elsewhere, refers wholly to his studies from Nature, 
 and simple groups in marble, which were always good and interesting. 
 Still, I have overrated him, even in this respect ; and it is generally to 
 be remembered that, in speaking of artists whose works I cannot be sup- 
 posed to have specially studied, the errors I fall into will always be on 
 the side of praise. For, of course, praise is most likely to be given 
 when the thing praised is above one's knowledge ; and, therefore, as our 
 knowledge increases, such things may be found less praiseworthy than 
 we thought. But blame can only be justly given when the thing blamed 
 is below one's level of sight ; and, practically, I never do blame any- 
 thing until I have got well past it, and am certain that there is demon- 
 strable falsehood in it, I believe, therefore, all my blame to be wholly 
 trustworthy, having never yet had occasion to repent of one depreciatory 
 word that I have ever written, while I have often found that, with re- 
 spect to things I had not time to study closely, I was led too far by sud- 
 den admiration, helped, perhaps, by peculiar associations, or other de- 
 ceptive accidents ; and this the more, because I never care to check an 
 expression of delight, thinking the chances are, that, even if mistaken, 
 it will do more good than harm ; but I weigh every word of blame with 
 scrupulous caution. I have sometimes erased a strong passage of blamo 
 from second editions of my books ; but this was only when I found it 
 offended the reader without convincing him, never because I repented 
 of it myself. 
 
THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 
 
 411 
 
 progress in knowledge of real art till you have sold them all 
 — or burnt them, which would be a greater benefit to the 
 world. I hope that some day, true and noble engravings will 
 be made from the few pictures of the great schools, which the 
 restorations undertaken by the modern managers of foreign 
 galleries may leave us ; but the existing engravings have 
 nothing whatever in common with the good in the works they 
 profess to represent, and if you like them, you like in the 
 originals of them hardly anything but their errors. 
 
 Finally, your judgment will be, of course, much affected by 
 your taste in literature. Indeed, I know many persons who 
 have the purest taste in literature, and yet false taste in art, 
 and it is a phenomenon which puzzles me not a little : but I 
 have never known any one with false taste in books, and true 
 taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest importance to you, 
 not only for art's sake, but for all kinds of sake, in these days 
 of book deluge, to keep out of the salt swamps of literature, 
 and live on a rocky island of your own, with a spring and a 
 lake in it, pure and good. I cannot, of course, suggest the 
 choice of your library to you, every several mind needs differ- 
 ent books ; but there are some books which we all need, and 
 assuredly, if you read Homer,* Plato, iEschylus, Herodotus, 
 Dante,*)- Shakspeare, and Spenser, as much as you ought, you 
 will not require wide enlargement of shelves to right and left 
 of them for purposes of perpetual study. Among modern 
 books, avoid generally magazine and review literature. Some- 
 times it may contain a useful abridgement or a wholesome piece 
 of criticism ; but the chances are ten to one it will either waste 
 your time or mislead you. If you want to understand any sub- 
 ject whatever, read the best book upon it you can hear of ; 
 not a review of the book. If you don't like the first book you 
 
 * Chapman's, if not the original. 
 
 f Carey's or Cayley's, if not the original. I do not know which are 
 the best translations of Plato. Herodotus and iEschylus can only be 
 read in the original. It may seem strange that I name books like these 
 for " beginners : " but all the greatest books contain food for all ages ; 
 and an intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to enjoy much, 
 even in Plato, by the time they are fifteen or sixteen. 
 
412 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 try, seek for another ; but do not hope ever to understand the 
 subject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially 
 that class of literature which has a knowing tone ; it is the 
 most poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is 
 full of admiration and awe ; it may contain firm assertion or 
 stern satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor asserts haughtily, 
 and it always leads you to reverence or love something with 
 your whole heart. It is not always easy to distinguish the 
 satire of the venomous race of books from the satire of the 
 noble and pure ones ; but in general you may notice that th<j 
 cold-blooded Crustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at 
 sentiment ; and the warm-blooded, human books, at sin. Then, 
 in general, the more you can restrain your serious reading to 
 reflective or lyric poetry, history, and natural history, avoiding 
 fiction and the drama, the healthier your mind will become. 
 Of modern poetry keep to Scott, Wordsworth, Keats, Crabbe, 
 Tennyson, the two Brownings, Lowell, Longfellow, and Cov- 
 entry Patmore, whose " Angel in the House " is a most finished 
 piece of writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess of quiet 
 modern domestic feeling; while Mrs. Browning's "Aurora 
 Leigh " is, as far as I know, the greatest poem which the cen- 
 tury has produced in any language. Cast Coleridge at once 
 aside, as sickly and useless ; and Shelley as shallow and ver- 
 bose ; Byron, until your taste is fully formed, and you are able 
 to discern the magnificence in him from the wrong. Never 
 read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself ; 
 there is, perhaps, rather too much than too little in the world 
 already. 
 
 Of reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and Helps. 
 Carlyle is hardly to be named as a writer for " beginners," 
 because his teaching, though to some of us vitally necessary 
 may to others be hurtful. If you understand and like him, 
 read him ; if he offends you, you are not yet ready for him, 
 and perhaps may never be so ; at all events, give him up, as 
 you would sea-bathing if you found it hurt you, till you are 
 stronger. Of fiction, read Sir Charles Grandison, Scott's 
 novels, Miss Edgeworth's, and, if you are a young lady, 
 Madame de Genlis', the French Miss Edgeworth; making 
 
THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 
 
 413 
 
 these, I mean, your constant companions. Of course you 
 must, or will read other books for amusement, once or twice ; 
 but you will find that these have an element of perpetuity in 
 them, existing in nothing else of their kind : while their pe- 
 culiar quietness and repose of manner will also be of the great- 
 est value in teaching you to feel the same characters in art. 
 Read little at a time, trying to feel interest in little things, 
 and reading not so much for the sake of the story as to get ac- 
 quainted with the pleasant people into whose company these 
 writers bring you. A common book will often give you much 
 amusement, but it is only a noble book which will give you 
 dear friends. Remember also that it is of less importance to 
 you in yo ur earlier years, that the books you read should be 
 clever, than that they should be right. I do not mean oppres- 
 sively or repulsively instructive ; but that the thoughts they 
 express should be just, and the feelings they excite generous. 
 It is not necessary for you to read the wittiest or the most 
 suggestive books : it is better, in general, to hear what is al- 
 ready known, and may be simply said. Much of the literature 
 of the present day, though good to be read by persons of ripe 
 age, has a tendency to agitate rather than confirm, and leaves 
 its readers too frequently in a helpless or hopeless indignation, 
 the worst possible state into which the mind of youth can be 
 thrown. It may, indeed, become necessary for you, as you 
 advance in life, to set your hand to things that need to be 
 altered in the world, or apply your heart chiefly to what must 
 be pitied in it, or condemned ; but, for a young person, the 
 safest temper is one of reverence, and the safest place one of 
 obscurity. Certainly at present, and perhaps through all your 
 life, your teachers are wisest when they make you content in 
 quiet virtue, and that literature and art are best for you which 
 point out, in common life and familiar things, the objects for 
 hopeful labour, and for humble love.