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 [Library of Con.i 
 
 SEP 22 1900 
 
 Copyright aotry 
 
 OKOR Q!V!SI0N, 
 
 OCT 13 1900 
 
 
 Copyright, 1900 
 By Dana Estes & Company 
 
 Electrotyped and printed 
 by Fish Printing Company, Boston 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Nature Studies . 
 
 II. Nature and Art 
 
 III. Sky and Cloud . 
 
 IV. About the Earth 
 V. Jewels of the Earth 
 
 VI. The Mountain Kingdom 
 
 VII. About Water 
 
 VIII. Color Studies . 
 
 IX. Trees and Their Ministry 
 
 X. Plants and Flowers . 
 
 XI. Grass, Moss and Lichen 
 
 XII. A Charm of Birds 
 
 9 
 
 47 
 
 33 
 
 127 
 
 J 59 
 
 181 ^ 
 221 «"" 
 
 249 
 
 273 
 299 
 
 343 
 359 
 
INTRODUCTION, 
 
 The general impression about volumes 
 of selections is, perhaps, correct, namely; — 
 that their object is, that by one individual's 
 careful research many individuals may be 
 enabled to obtain a superficial knowledge 
 of an author's writings. 
 
 This volume of " Nature Studies " has 
 been compiled with no such intention. On 
 the contrary, its object is simply to serve 
 as a guide to the rich harvests about " the 
 universe of visible things which have no 
 faculty of speech," but which are ripe for 
 gleaning in John Ruskin's complete works. 
 Hence the compiler's choice of extracts has 
 been made to suggest the wealth of truth 
 and beauty to be found, and to awaken a 
 thirst for fuller knowledge of these treas- 
 ures rather than to satisfy that thirst. This 
 
6 INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 explains why, in many cases, the quotations 
 may seem fragmentary and abrupt. But in 
 every instance they can be verified and 
 amplified by reference to the Illustrated 
 Cabinet Edition of John Ruskin's Works 
 published by Dana Estes and Company. 
 
The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God : 
 to him who does not search it out, darkness, as it is to 
 him who does infinity. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Chap. II, p. 129. 
 
 The whole heart of Nature seems thirsting to give, 
 
 and still to give. 
 
 — In Montibus Sanctis, Chap. II, p. 1 31. 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 i. 
 
 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 The living inhabitation of the world — 
 the grazing and nesting in it, — the spiritual 
 power of the air, the rocks, the waters, — to 
 be in the midst of it, and rejoice and won- 
 der at it, and help it if I could, — happier 
 if it needed no help of mine, — this was 
 the essential love of Nature in me, this the 
 root of all that I have usefully become, 
 and the light of all that I have rightly 
 
 learned. — Praterita, Vol. I, Chap. IX, p. 142. 
 
 As the art of life is learned, it will be 
 found at last that all lovely things are also 
 necessary : — the wild flower by the wayside, 
 as well as the tended corn; and the wild 
 birds and creatures of the forest, as well 
 as the tended cattle : because man doth not 
 live by bread only, but also by the desert 
 manna: by every wondrous word and 
 unknowable work of God. 
 
 — Unto This Last, Essay IV, p. 224. 
 
 9 
 
io NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 If we take full view of the matter, we shall 
 find that the love of Nature, wherever it has 
 existed, has been a faithful and sacred ele- 
 ment of human feeling ; that is to say, sup- 
 posing all circumstances otherwise the same 
 with respect to two individuals, the one who 
 loves nature most will be always found to 
 have more faith in God than the other. It 
 is intensely difficult, owing to the confusing 
 and counter influences which always mingle 
 in the data of the problem, to make this 
 abstraction fairly ; but so far as we can do 
 it, so far, I boldly assert, the result is con- 
 stantly the same; the nature-worship will be 
 found to bring with it such a sense of the 
 presence and power of a Great Spirit as no 
 mere reasoning can either induce or con- 
 trovert; and where that nature-worship is 
 innocently pursued, — i. e., with due respect 
 to other claims on time, feeling, and exertion, 
 and associated with the higher principles of 
 religion, — it becomes the channel of certain 
 sacred truths, which by no other means can 
 be conveyed. 
 
 . . . Instead of supposing the love of 
 Nature necessarily connected with the faith- 
 lessness of the age, I believe it is connected 
 properly with the benevolence and liberty 
 of the age; that it is precisely the most 
 
NATURE STUDIES. n 
 
 healthy element which distinctively belongs 
 to us; and that out of it, cultivated no longer 
 in levity or ignorance, but in earnestness and 
 as a duty, results will spring of an importance 
 at present inconceivable; and lights arise, 
 which, for the first time in man's history, will 
 reveal to him the true nature of his life, the 
 true field for his energies, and the true rela- 
 tions between him and his Maker. 
 
 —Modem Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVII, p. 375, 376. 
 
 Ideas of beauty are among the noblest 
 which can be presented to the human mind, 
 invariably exalting and purifying it according 
 to their degree ; and it would appear that we 
 are intended by the Deity to be constantly 
 under their influence, because there is not 
 one single object in Nature which is not 
 capable of conveying them, and which, to 
 the rightly perceiving mind, does not pre- 
 sent an incalculably greater number of 
 beautiful than of deformed parts; there 
 being in fact scarcely anything, in pure, 
 undiseased nature, like positive deformity, 
 but only degrees of beauty, or such slight 
 and rare points of permitted contrast as may 
 render all around them more valuable by 
 their opposition, spots of blackness in crea- 
 tion, to make its colors felt. 
 
 — Modem Painters^ Vol. I, Part I, Sect. I, Chap. VI, p. 102. 
 
12 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Whenever people don't look at Nature, 
 they always think they can improve her. 
 
 — The Two Paths, Lecture I, p. 22. 
 
 The real majesty of the appearance of 
 the thing to us, depends upon the degree 
 in which we ourselves possess the power of 
 understanding it, — that penetrating, posses- 
 sion-taking power of the imagination — the 
 very life of the man, considered as a seeing 
 creature. . . . 
 
 Examine the nature of your own emotion, 
 (if you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you 
 will find all the brightness of that emotion 
 hanging, like dew on gossamer, on a curious 
 web of subtle fancy and imperfect knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 First, you have a vague idea of its size, 
 coupled with wonder at the work of the 
 great Builder of its walls and foundations, 
 then an apprehension of its eternity, a 
 pathetic sense of its perpetualness, and your 
 own transientness, as of the grass upon its 
 sides; then, and in this very sadness, a sense 
 of strange companionship with past gener- 
 ations in seeing what they saw. They did 
 not see the clouds that are floating over your 
 head ; nor the cottage wall on the other side 
 of the field ; nor the road by which you are 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 13 
 
 travelling. But they saw that. The wall of 
 granite in the heavens was the same to them 
 as to you. They have ceased to look upon 
 it; you will soon cease to look also, and 
 the granite wall will be for others. Then, 
 mingled with these more solemn imagina- 
 tions, come the understandings of the gift 
 and glories of the Alps, the fancying forth of 
 all the fountains that well from its rocky 
 walls, and strong rivers that are born out of 
 its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that 
 wind between its cliffs, and all the chalets 
 that gleam among its clouds, and happy 
 farmsteads couched upon its pastures ; 
 while together with the thoughts of these, rise 
 strange sympathies with all the unknown of 
 human life, and happiness, and death, signi- 
 fied by that narrow white flame of the ever- 
 lasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky. 
 These images, and far more than these, 
 lie at the root of the emotion which you feel 
 at the sight of the Alp. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. X, p. 176. 
 
 By the Word, or Voice, or Breath, or 
 Spirit, the heavens and earth, and all the 
 host of them, were made; and in it they 
 exist. It is your life ; and speaks to you 
 always, so long as you live nobly. ... It 
 
i 4 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 may come to you in clouds — it may come 
 to you in the stillness of deserts. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. II, Letter XXXVI, p. 121. 
 
 Under natural conditions the degree of 
 mental excitement necessary to bodily health 
 is provided 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 innocent 
 hope, its special prudence, its kindly gift and 
 its sublime danger ; arid in every process of 
 wise husbandry, and every effort of contend- 
 ing or remedial courage, the wholesome pas- 
 sions, pride, and bodily power of the laborer 
 are excited and exerted in happiest unison : 
 
 While the divine laws of seed-time which 
 cannot be recalled, harvests which cannot 
 be hastened, and winter in which no man 
 can work, compel the impatiences and cov- 
 eting of his heart into labor too submissive 
 to be anxious, and rest too sweet to be 
 
 Wanton. — The Ethics of the Dust, Lecture X, pp. 157, 158. 
 
 The woods, which I had only looked on 
 as wilderness, fulfilled I then saw, in their 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 15 
 
 beauty, the same laws which guided the 
 clouds, divided the light, and balanced the 
 wave. " He hath made everything beautiful, 
 in his time," became for me thenceforward 
 the interpretation of the bond between the 
 human mind and all visible things. 
 
 — Prcetorita, Vol. II, Chap. IV, p. 253. 
 
 Whatever beauty there may result from 
 effects of light on foreground objects, from 
 the dew of the grass, the flash of the cas- 
 cade, the glitter of the birch trunk, or the 
 fair daylight hues of darker things (and 
 joyfulness there is in all of them) there is 
 yet a light which the eye invariably seeks 
 with a deeper feeling of the beautiful, the 
 light of the declining or breaking day, and 
 the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like 
 watch-fires in the green sky of the horizon ; 
 a deeper feeling, I say, not perhaps more 
 acute, but having more of spiritual hope 
 and longing. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part III, Sect. I, Chap. V, p. 265. 
 
 Among the hours of his life to which the 
 writer looks back with peculiar gratitude, as 
 having been marked by more than ordinary 
 fulness of joy or clearness of teaching, is one 
 passed, now some years ago, near time of 
 
1 6 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 sunset, among the broken masses of pine 
 forest which skirt the course of the Ain, 
 above the village of Champagnole, in the 
 Jura. It is a spot which has all the solem- 
 nity, with none of the savageness, of the 
 Alps; where there is a sense of a great 
 power beginning to be manifested in the 
 earth, and of a deep and majestic concord 
 in the rise of the long low lines of piny 
 hills ; the first utterance of those mighty 
 mountain symphonies, soon to be more 
 loudly lifted and wildly broken along the 
 battlements of the Alps. But their strength 
 is as yet restrained; and the far-reaching 
 ridges of pastoral mountain succeed each 
 other, like the long and sighing swell which 
 moves over quiet waters from some far-off 
 stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness 
 pervading that vast monotony. The de- 
 structive forces and the stern expression of 
 the central ranges are alike withdrawn. No 
 frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of 
 ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures : 
 no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair 
 ranks of her forests ; no pale, defiled, or furi- 
 ous rivers send their rude and changeful 
 ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by 
 eddy, the clear streams wind along their 
 well-known beds ; and under the dark quiet- 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 17 
 
 ness of the undisturbed pines, there springs 
 up, year by year, such company of joyful 
 flowers as I know not the like of among all 
 the blessings of the earth. It was Spring- 
 time, too; and all were coming forth in 
 clusters crowded for very love; there was 
 room enough for all, but they crushed their 
 leaves into all manner of strange shapes 
 only to be nearer each other. There was 
 the wood anemone, star after star, closing 
 every now and then into nebulae ; and there 
 was the oxalis, troop by troop like virginal 
 processions of the Mois de Marie, the dark 
 vertical clefts in the limestone choked up 
 with them as with heavy snow, and touched 
 with ivy on the edges — ivy as light and 
 lovely as the vine ; and ever and anon, a 
 blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in 
 sunny places ; and in the more open ground, 
 the vetch, and comfrey, and mezereon, and 
 the small sapphire buds of the Polygala 
 Alpina, and the wild strawberry, just a 
 blossom or two, all showered amidst the 
 golden softness of deep, warm, amber- 
 colored moss. I came out presently on 
 the edge of the ravine; the solemn mur- 
 mur of its waters rose suddenly from 
 beneath, mixed with the singing of the 
 thrushes among the pine boughs ; and on 
 
1 8 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 the opposite side of the valley, walled all 
 along as it was by grey cliffs of limestone, 
 there was a hawk sailing slowly off their 
 brow, touching them nearly with his wings, 
 and with the shadow of the pines flicker- 
 ing upon his plumage from above; but 
 with a fall of a hundred fathoms under his 
 breast, and the curling pools of the green 
 river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath 
 him, their foam globes moving with him 
 as he flew. 
 
 — Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. VI, p. 168. 
 
 The truths of Nature are one eternal 
 change — one infinite variety. There is no 
 bush on the face of the globe exactly like 
 another bush ; there are no two trees in the 
 forest whose boughs bend into the same 
 network; nor two leaves on the same tree 
 which could not be told one from the other, 
 nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. I, Chap. II, p. 134. 
 
 For every distance from the eye there is a 
 peculiar kind of beauty, or a different system 
 of lines of form : the sight of that beauty is 
 reserved for that distance, and for that alone. 
 If you approach nearer, that kind of beauty 
 is lost, and another succeeds, to be dis- 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 19 
 
 organised and reduced to strange incom- 
 prehensible means and appliances in its turn. 
 If you desire to perceive the great harmonies 
 of the form of a rocky mountain, you must 
 not ascend upon its sides. All there is 
 disorder and accident, or seems so : sudden 
 starts of its shattered beds hither and thither; 
 ugly struggles of unexpected strength from 
 under the ground ; fallen fragments, toppling 
 one over another into more helpless fall. 
 Retire from it, and, as your eye commands 
 it more and more, as you see the ruined 
 mountain world with a wider glance, behold ! 
 dim sympathies begin to busy themselves in 
 the disjointed mass; line binds itself into 
 stealthy fellowship with line; group by 
 group, the helpless fragments gather them- 
 selves into ordered companies ; new captains 
 of hosts and masses of battalions become 
 visible, one by one, and far away answers of 
 foot to foot, and of bone to bone, until the 
 powerless chaos is seen risen up with girded 
 loins, and not one piece of all the unregard 
 heap could now be spared from the mystic 
 
 whole. — The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXI, p. 245. 
 
 The work of the great spirit of Nature is 
 as deep and unapproachable in the lowest as 
 in the noblest objects — the Divine Mind is 
 
20 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 as visible in its full energy of operation on 
 every lowly bank and mouldering stone, as 
 in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and 
 settling the foundation of the earth. And 
 to the rightly perceiving mind, there is the 
 same infinity, the same majesty, the same 
 power, the same unity, and the same per- 
 fection, manifest in the casting of the clay 
 as in the scattering of the cloud, in the 
 mouldering of the dust as in the kindling of 
 the day-star. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. IV, p. 91. 
 
 The Val di Nievole is some five miles wide 
 by thirty long, and is simply one field of corn 
 or rich grassland. . . . There are poppies 
 and bright ones, too, about the banks and 
 roadsides; but the corn of Val di Nievole 
 is too proud to grow with poppies, and is 
 set with wild gladiolus instead, deep violet. 
 Here and there a mound of crag rises out 
 of the fields, crested with stone-pine, and 
 studded all over with large stars of the white 
 rock-cistus. Quiet streams, filled with the 
 close crowds of the golden water-flag, wind 
 beside meadows painted with purple orchis. 
 On each side of the great plain is a wilder- 
 ness of hills veiled at their feet with a gray 
 cloud of olive woods. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter XVIII, p. 239. 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 21 
 
 The peculiar levity with which natural 
 scenery is regarded by a large number of 
 modern minds cannot be considered as 
 entirely characteristic of the age, inasmuch 
 as it never can belong to the greatest 
 intellects. 
 
 Men of any high mental power must be 
 serious, whether in ancient or modern days ; 
 a certain degree of reverence for fair scenery 
 is found in all our great writers without 
 exception. . . . 
 
 It is only the dull, the uneducated, or the 
 worldly, whom it is painful to meet on the 
 hill sides. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVI, p. 326. 
 
 It is not sufficient that the facts or the 
 features of Nature be around us, while they 
 are not within us. We may walk day by 
 day through grove and meadow, and scarcely 
 know more concerning them than is known 
 by bird and beast, that the one has shade for 
 the head, and the other softness for the foot. 
 It is not true that " the eye, it cannot choose 
 but see," unless we obey the following con- 
 dition, and go forth " in a wise passiveness," 
 free from that plague of our own hearts 
 which brings the shadow of ourselves, and 
 the tumult of our petty interests and impa- 
 
22 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 tient passions, across the light and calm of 
 Nature. We do not sit at the feet of our 
 mistress to listen to her teachings ; but we 
 seek her only to drag from her that which 
 may suit our purpose, to see in her the con- 
 firmation of a theory, or find in her fuel for 
 our pride. . . . 
 
 You may rest assured that those who do 
 not care for Nature, cannot see her. A few 
 of her phenomena lie on the surface: the 
 nobler number lie deep, and are the reward 
 of watching and of thought. 
 
 — Arrows of the Chacc, Letter I, pp. 31, 32. 
 
 Nature keeps whatever she has done 
 best, close sealed, until it is regarded with 
 reverence. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. V, p. 100. 
 
 Although in all lovely nature, there is, 
 first, an excellent degree of simple beauty, 
 addressed to the eye alone, yet often what 
 impresses us most will form but a very small 
 portion of that visible beauty. That beauty 
 may, for instance, be composed of lovely 
 flowers and glittering streams, and blue sky, 
 and white clouds ; and yet the thing which 
 impresses us most, and which we should 
 be sorriest to lose, may be a thin gray film 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 23 
 
 on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the 
 space of the scene it occupies, as a piece of 
 gossamer on a near at hand bush, nor in any 
 wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer ; 
 but, because the gossamer is known by us 
 for a little bit of spider's work, and the other 
 gray film is known to mean a mountain ten 
 thousand feet high, inhabited by a race of 
 noble mountaineers, we are solemnly im- 
 pressed by the aspect of it; and yet, all the 
 while the thoughts and knowledge which 
 cause us to receive this impression are so 
 obscure that we are not conscious of them. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVII, p. 353. 
 
 If it is not human design you are looking 
 for, there is more beauty in the next wayside 
 bank than in all the sun-blackened paper 
 you could collect in a lifetime. Go and look 
 at the real landscape, and take care of it; do 
 not think you can get the good of it in a 
 black stain portable in a folio. But if you 
 care for human thought and passion, then 
 learn yourselves to watch the course and fall 
 of the light by whose influence you live, and 
 to share in the joy of human spirits in the 
 heavenly gifts of sunbeam and shade. For 
 I tell you truly, that to a quiet heart, and 
 healthy brain, and industrious hand there is 
 
24 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 more delight, and use, in the dappling of 
 one wood-glade, with flowers and sunshine, 
 than to the restless, heartless, and idle could 
 be brought by a panorama of a belt of the 
 world, photographed round the equator. 
 
 — Lectures on Art, Lecture VI, p. 310. 
 
 I am Utopian and enthusiastic enough 
 to believe that the time will come when 
 the world will discover and understand 
 that God paints the clouds and shapes the 
 moss-fibres, that men may be happy in see- 
 ing Him at His work, and that in resting 
 quietly beside Him, and watching His work- 
 ing, and, — according to the power He has 
 communicated to ourselves, and the guidance 
 He grants, — in carrying out His purposes 
 of peace and charity among all His creatures, 
 are the only real happinesses that ever were, 
 or will be, possible to mankind. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVII, p. 381. 
 
 The study of Natural History is one emi- 
 nently addressed to the active energies of 
 body and mind. Nothing is to be got out 
 of it by dreaming, not always much by think- 
 ing. It is work for the hills and fields, — 
 work of foot and hand, knife and hammer. 
 
 — Arrows of the Chace, Letter VI, p. 133. 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 25 
 
 Last autumn I saw something bright; 
 low sunshine at six o'clock of an October 
 morning, glancing down a long bank of 
 fern covered with hoar-frost ... I noted it 
 as more beautiful than anything I had ever 
 seen, to my remembrance, in gladness and 
 infinitude of light. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter XV, p. 204. 
 
 Though Nature is constantly beautiful, 
 she does not exhibit her highest powers 
 of beauty constantly, for then they would 
 satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is 
 necessary to their appreciation that they 
 should be rarely shown. Her finest touches 
 are things that must be watched for; her 
 most perfect passages of beauty are the 
 most evanescent. She is constantly doing 
 something beautiful for us, but it is some- 
 thing which she has not done before and 
 will not do again: some exhibition of her 
 general powers in particular circumstances 
 which, if we do not catch at the instant it 
 is passing, will not be repeated for us. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. I, Chap. IV, p. 146. 
 
 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 
 
26 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 lovely flower) : that is Nature's way of stim- 
 ulating your attention. 
 
 — Aratra Pentelici> Lecture I, p. 298. 
 
 Landscape seems hardly to have exercised 
 any strong influence, as such, on any pagan 
 nation, or pagan artist. I have no time to 
 enter into any details on this, of course, most 
 intricate and difficult subject ; but I will only 
 ask you to observe, that wherever natural 
 scenery is alluded to by the ancients, it is 
 either agriculturally, with the kind of feeling 
 that a good Scotch farmer has; sensually, 
 in the enjoyment of sun or shade, cool 
 winds or sweet scents; fearfully, in a mere 
 vulgar dread of rocks dna desolate places, 
 as compared with the comfort of cities; or 
 finally, superstitiously, in the personification 
 or deification of natural powers generally 
 with much degradation of their impressive- 
 ness, as in the paltry fables of Ulysses 
 receiving the wind bags from y^Eolus, and 
 of the Cyclops hammering lightening sharp 
 at the ends on an anvil. 
 
 Of course you will here and there find 
 feeble evidences of a higher sensibility, 
 chiefly, I think, in Plato, yEschylus, Aris- 
 tophanes, and Virgil. Homer, though in 
 the epithets he applies to landscape always 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 27 
 
 thoroughly graphic, uses the same epithet 
 for rocks, seas, and trees, from one end of 
 his poem to the other, evidently without the 
 smallest interest in anything of the kind; 
 and in the mass of heathen writers the 
 absence of sensation on these subjects is 
 singularly painful. For instance, in that, to 
 my mind, most disgusting of all so-called 
 poems, the journey to Brundusium, you 
 remember that Horace takes exactly as 
 much interest in the scenery he is passing 
 through, as Sancho Panza would have done. 
 You will find on the other hand, that the 
 language of the Bible is specifically dis- 
 tinguished from all other early literature, by 
 its delight in natural imagery; and that the 
 dealings of God with His people are calcu- 
 lated peculiarly to awaken this sensibility 
 within them ; and that scenery is associated 
 in their minds with the immediate manifes- 
 tation and presence of the Divine Power . . . 
 and their literature is full of expressions, 
 not only testifying a vivid sense of the 
 power of Nature over man, but showing that 
 sympathy with natural things themselves, as 
 if they had human souls, which is the espe- 
 cial characteristic of true love of the works 
 of God. 
 
 — Lectures on Architecture and Painting, Lecture III, p. 289. 
 
28 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 I was up by the mill-stream this evening, 
 and climbed to the right of it, up among 
 the sloping waves of grass. I never was so 
 struck by their intense beauty, — the masses 
 of walnut shading them with their broad, 
 cool, clearly-formed foliage ; the glossy gray 
 stems of the cherry trees, as if bound round 
 tight with satin, twining and writhing against 
 the shadows : the tall pollards of oak set 
 here and there in the soft banks, as if to 
 show their smoothness by contrast, yet them- 
 selves beautiful, rugged, and covered with 
 deep brown and bright silver moss. Here 
 and there a chestnut — sharp, and soft, and 
 starry; and always the steep banks, one 
 above another, melting into terraces of pure 
 velvet, gilded with corn : here and there a 
 black — jet black — crag of slate breaking 
 into a frown above them, and mouldering 
 away down into the gloomy torrent, fringed 
 on its opposite edge, a grisly cliff, with 
 delicate birch and pine, rising against the 
 snow light of Mount Blanc. 
 
 — Prceterita, Vol. II, Chap. XI, p. 364. 
 
 The charts of the world which have been 
 drawn up by modern science have thrown 
 into a narrow space the expression of a 
 vast amount of knowledge, but I have 
 
NATURE SI U DIES. 29 
 
 never yet seen any one pictorial enough 
 to enable the spectator to imagine the kind 
 of contrast in physical character which 
 exists between Northern and Southern 
 countries. We know the difference in 
 detail, but we have not that broad glance 
 and grasp which would enable us to feel 
 them in their fulness. We know that gen- 
 tians grow on the Alps, and olives on the 
 Apennines; but we do not enough con- 
 ceive for ourselves that variegated mosaic 
 of the world's surface which a bird sees in 
 its migration, that difference between the 
 district of the gentian and of the olive 
 which the stork and the swallow see far off, 
 as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let 
 us, for a moment, try to raise ourselves 
 even above the level of their flight, and 
 imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath 
 us like an irregular lake, and all its ancient 
 promontories sleeping in the sun ; here and 
 there an angry spot of thunder, a gray 
 stain of storm, moving upon the burning 
 field ; and here and there a fixed wreath 
 of white volcano smoke, surrounded by its 
 circle of ashes ; but for the most part a 
 great peacefulness of light, Syria and 
 Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces 
 of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, 
 
3 o NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with 
 bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and 
 glowing softly with terraced gardens, and 
 flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed 
 among masses of laurel, and orange and 
 plumy palm, that abate with their gray- 
 green shadows the burning of the marble 
 rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry, slop- 
 ing under lucent sand. Then let us pass 
 farther towards the north, until we see 
 the orient colors change gradually into a 
 vast belt of rainy green, where the pas- 
 tures of Switzerland and poplar valleys of 
 France, and dark forests of the Danube 
 and Carpathians stretch from the mouths 
 of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen 
 through clefts in gray swirls of rain-cloud 
 and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, 
 spreading low along the pasture lands ; and 
 then, farther north still, to see the earth 
 heave into mighty masses of leaden rock 
 and heathy moor, bordering with a broad 
 waste of gloomy purple that belt of field 
 and wood, and splintering into irregular 
 and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, 
 beaten by storm and chilled by ice-drift, 
 and tormented by furious pulses of con- 
 tending tide, until the roots of the last 
 forests fail from among the hill ravines, and 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 31 
 
 the hunger of the north wind bites their 
 peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the 
 wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, death- 
 like, its white teeth against us out of the 
 polar twilight. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice ', Vol. II, Chap. VI, pp. 156, 157. 
 
 It had been wild weather when I left 
 Rome, and all across the Campagna the 
 clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, 
 with a clap of thunder or two, and break- 
 ing gleams of sun along the Claudian 
 aqueduct lighting up the infinity of its 
 arches like the bridge of chaos. But as I 
 climbed the long slope of the Alban 
 mount, the storm swept finally to the 
 north, and the noble outlines of the domes 
 of Albano and graceful darkness of its ilex 
 grove rose against pure streaks of alter- 
 nate blue and amber, the upper sky gradu- 
 ally flushing through the last fragments of 
 rain-cloud in deep, palpitating azure, half 
 ether and half dew. The noon-day sun 
 came slanting down the rocky slopes of 
 La Riccia, and its masses of entangled and 
 tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were 
 mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand 
 evergreens, were penetrated with it as with 
 rain. I cannot call it color, it was conflagra- 
 
32 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 tion. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like 
 the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoic- 
 ing trees sank into the valley in showers 
 of light, every separate leaf quivering with 
 buoyant and burning life ; each, as it turned 
 to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first 
 a torch and then an emerald. Far up into 
 the recesses of the valley, the green vistas 
 arched like the hollows of mighty waves 
 of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus 
 flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, 
 and silver flakes of orange spray tossed 
 into the air around them, breaking over 
 the gray walls of rock into a thousand 
 separate stars, fading and kindling alter- 
 nately as the weak wind lifted and let them 
 fall. Every blade of grass burned like the 
 golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden 
 gleams as the foliage broke and closed 
 above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a 
 cloud at sunset: the motionless masses of 
 dark rock — dark though flushed with scar- 
 let lichen, — casting their quiet shadows 
 across its restless radiance, the fountain 
 underneath them filling its marble hollow 
 with blue mist and fitful sound, and over all 
 — the multitudinous bars of amber and rose, 
 the sacred clouds that have no darkness, 
 and only exist to illumine, were seen in 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 33 
 
 fathomless intervals between the solemn 
 and orbed repose of the stone pines, pass- 
 ing to lose themselves in the last, white, 
 blinding lustre of the measureless line 
 where the Campagna melted into the blaze 
 of the sea. 
 
 —Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. II, Chap. II, pp. 256, 257. 
 
 There is not a cluster of weeds growing 
 in any cranny of ruin which has not a 
 beauty in all respects nearly equal, and, in 
 some, immeasurably superior, to that, of the 
 most elaborate sculpture of its stones. 
 
 — Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. Ill, p. 56. 
 
 With us, observe, the idea of the Divin- 
 ity is apt to get separated from the life 
 of nature; and imagining our God upon a 
 cloudy throne, far above the earth, and not 
 in the flowers or waters, we approach those 
 visible things with a theory that they are 
 dead, governed by physical laws, and so forth. 
 But coming to them, we find the theory fail ; 
 that they are not dead; that, say what we 
 choose about them, the instinctive sense of 
 their being alive is too strong for us ; and in 
 scorn of all physical law, the wilful fountain 
 sings, and the kindly flowers rejoice. And 
 then, puzzled and yet happy; pleased, and 
 
34 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 yet ashamed of being so ; accepting sympathy 
 from nature, which we do not believe it gives, 
 and giving sympathy to nature, which we do 
 not believe it receives, — mixing, besides, all 
 manner of purposeful play and conceit with 
 their involuntary fellowships, — we fall neces- 
 sarily into the curious web of hesitating 
 sentiment, pathetic fallacy, and wandering 
 fancy, which form a great part of our modern 
 view of nature. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XIII, p. 229. 
 
 The simplest forms of Nature are strangely 
 animated by the sense of the Divine pres- 
 ence; the trees and flowers seem all, in a 
 sort children of God. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVII, p. 383. 
 
 Look at the crest of the Alp, from the far- 
 away plains over which its light is cast, 
 whence human souls have communion with 
 it by their myriads. The child looks up to it 
 in the dawn, and the husbandman in the bur- 
 den and heat of the day, and the old man in 
 the going down of the sun, and it is to them 
 all as the celestial city on the world's horizon ; 
 dyed with the depth of heaven and clothed 
 with the calm of eternity. There was it set, 
 for holy dominion, by Him who marked for 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 35 
 
 the sun his journey, and bade the moon know 
 her going down. It was built for its place in 
 the far-off sky ; approach it, and as the sound 
 of the voice of man dies away about its 
 foundations, and the tide of human life, shal- 
 lowed upon the vast aerial shore, is at last 
 met by the Eternal " Here shall thy waves be 
 stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into 
 blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are 
 rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork sad- 
 dened into wasting snow, the storm-brands 
 of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own 
 ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XXI, p. 244. 
 
 I do not know that there is a district in 
 the world more calculated to illustrate this 
 power of the expectant imagination, than 
 that which surrounds the city of Fribourg 
 in Switzerland, extending from it towards 
 Berne. 
 
 It is an undulating district of gray sand- 
 stone, never attaining any considerable 
 height, but having enough of the mountain 
 spirit to throw itself into continual succes- 
 sion of bold slope and dale ; elevated, also, 
 just far enough above the sea to render the 
 pine a frequent forest tree along its irregu- 
 lar ridges. Through this elevated tract the 
 
36 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 river cuts its way in a ravine some five or 
 six hundred feet in depth, which winds for 
 leagues between the gentle hills, unthought 
 of, until its edge is approached: and then, 
 suddenly through the boughs of the firs, 
 the eye perceives, beneath, the green and 
 gliding stream, and the broad walls of 
 sandstone cliff that form its banks: hol- 
 lowed out where the river leans against 
 them, as it turns, into perilous overhang- 
 ing, and, on the other shore, at the same 
 spots, leaving little breadths of meadow 
 between them and the water, half-overgrown 
 with thicket, deserted in their sweetness, 
 inaccessible from above, and rarely visited 
 by any curious wanderers along the hardly 
 traceable footpath which struggles for exist- 
 ence beneath the rocks. And there the 
 river ripples and eddies and murmurs in 
 utter solitude. It is passing through the 
 midst of a thickly peopled country ; but 
 never was a stream so lonely. The fee- 
 blest and most far-away torrent among the 
 high hills has its companions; the goats 
 browse beside it; and the traveller drinks 
 from it, and passes over it with his staff; 
 and the peasant traces a new channel for 
 it down to his mill-wheel. But this stream 
 has no companions ; it flows on in infinite 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 37 
 
 seclusion, not secret nor threatening, but 
 a quietness of sweet daylight and open 
 air, — a broad space of tender and deep 
 desolateness, drooped into repose out of 
 the midst of human labor and life; the 
 waves plashing lowly, with none to hear 
 them; and the wild birds building in the 
 boughs, with none to fray them away; and 
 the soft, fragrant herbs rising and breathing, 
 and fading, with no hand to gather them; 
 — and yet all bright and bare to the clouds 
 above, and to the fresh fall of the passing 
 sunshine and pure rain. 
 
 But above the brows of those scarped 
 cliffs, all is in an instant changed. A few 
 steps only beyond the firs that stretch their 
 branches, angular, and wild, and white, like 
 forks of lightning, into the air of the ravine, 
 and we are in an arable country of the most 
 perfect richness; the swathes of its corn 
 glowing and burning from field to field : its 
 pretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards 
 and flowery gardens, and goodly with steep- 
 roofed storehouse and barn; its well-kept, 
 hard, park-like roads rising and falling from 
 hillside to hillside, or disappearing among 
 brown banks of moss, and thicket of the 
 wild raspberry and rose ; or gleaming through 
 lines of tall trees, half glade, half avenue, 
 
38 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 where the gate opens, or the gateless path 
 turns trustfully aside, unhindered, into the 
 garden of some statelier house, surrounded in 
 rural pride with its golden hives, and carved 
 granaries, and irregular domain of latticed 
 and espaliered cottages, gladdening to look 
 upon in their delicate homeliness — delicate, 
 yet, in some sort, rude. . . . For there is an 
 untamed strength even in all that soft and 
 habitable land. It is, indeed, gilded with 
 corn and fragrant with deep grass, but it is 
 not subdued to the plough or the scythe. It 
 gives at its own free will, — it seems to have 
 nothing wrested from it nor conquered from 
 it. It is not redeemed from desertness, but 
 unrestrained in fruitfulness, — a generous 
 land, bright with capricious plenty, and 
 laughing from vale to vale in fitful fulness, 
 kind and wild; nor this without some sterner 
 elements mingled in the heart of it. For 
 along all its ridges stand the dark masses 
 of innumerable pines, taking no part in its 
 gladness, asserting themselves forever as 
 fixed shadows, not to be pierced or banished 
 even in the intensest sunlight : fallen flakes 
 and fragments of the night, stayed in their 
 solemn squares in the midst of all the rosy 
 bendings of the orchard boughs, and yellow 
 effulgence of the harvest, and tracing them- 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 39 
 
 selves in black network and motionless 
 fringes against the blanched blue of the 
 horizon in its saintly clearness. And yet 
 they do not sadden the landscape, but seem 
 to have been set there chiefly to show how 
 bright everything else is round them; and all 
 the clouds look of purer silver, and all the 
 air seems filled with a whiter and more living 
 sunshine, when they are pierced by the sable 
 points of the pines ; and all the pastures look 
 of more glowing green where they run up 
 between the purple trunks ; and the sweet 
 field foot-paths skirt the edges of the forest 
 for the sake of its shade, sloping up and 
 down about the slippery roots, and losing 
 themselves every now and then hopelessly 
 among the violets, and ground ivy, and 
 brown sheddings of the fibrous leaves; and at 
 last plunging into some open aisle where the 
 light through the distant stems shows that 
 there is a chance of coming out again on the 
 other side, and coming out, indeed, in a little 
 while, from the scented darkness, into the 
 dazzling air and marvellous landscape, and 
 stretches still farther and farther in new wilful- 
 ness of grove and garden, until, at last, the 
 craggy mountains of Simmenthal rise out of it, 
 sharp into the rolling of the southern clouds. 
 
 — Modem Painters, Vol. IV, Part X, Chap. XI, pp. 173-177. 
 
40 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 There is a decisive instant in all matters; 
 and if you look languidly you are sure to 
 miss it. Nature seems always, somehow, try- 
 ing to make you miss it. " I will see that 
 through," you must say, "without turning 
 my head " ; or you won't see the trick of it 
 
 at all. — Mornings in Florence — Second Morning, p. 28. 
 
 That sentence of Genesis, " I have given 
 thee every green herb for meat," like all the 
 rest of the book, has a profound symbol- 
 ical as well as a literal meaning. It is not 
 merely the nourishment of the body, but 
 the food of the soul, that is intended. The 
 green herb is, of all nature, that which is 
 most essential to the healthy spiritual life 
 of man. Most of us do not need fine scen- 
 ery: the precipice and the mountain peak 
 are not intended to be seen by all men, — 
 perhaps, their power is greatest over those 
 who are unaccustomed to them. But trees, 
 and fields, and flowers were made for all, and 
 are necessary for all. God has connected the 
 labor which is essential to the bodily suste- 
 nance, with the pleasures which are healthi- 
 est for the heart: and while He made the 
 ground stubborn, He made its herbage fra- 
 grant, and its blossoms fair. The proudest 
 architecture that man can build has no 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 41 
 
 higher honor than to bear the image and 
 recall the memory of that grass of the field 
 which is, at once, the type and the support 
 of his existence : the goodly building is then 
 most glorious when it is sculptured into the 
 likeness of the leaves of Paradise; and the 
 great Gothic Spirit noble in its disquietude, 
 is also noble in its hold of nature ; it is 
 indeed, like the dove of Noah, in that she 
 found no rest upon the face of the waters — 
 but like her in this also, " Lo, in her mouth 
 was an olive branch, plucked off." 
 
 — The Stones of Venice^ Vol. II, Chap. VI, p. 202. 
 
 We know more certainly every day that 
 whatever appears to us harmful in the uni- 
 verse has some beneficent or necessary 
 operation : that the storm which destroys a 
 harvest brightens the sunbeams for harvests 
 yet unsown, and that the volcano which 
 buries a city preserves a thousand from de- 
 struction. But the evil is not for the time 
 less fearful, because we have learned it to 
 be necessary ; and we easily understand the 
 timidity or the tenderness of the spirit which 
 would withdraw itself from the presence of 
 destruction. . . . That man is greater, how- 
 ever, who contemplates with an equal mind 
 the alternations of terror and of beauty ; who, 
 
42 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 not rejoicing less beneath the sunny sky, 
 can bear also to watch the bars of twilight 
 narrowing on the horizon, and, not less 
 sensible to the blessing of the peace of 
 Nature, can rejoice in the magnificence of 
 the ordinance by which that peace is pro- 
 tected and secured. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. VI, p. 190. 
 
 "Not enjoying the beauty of things," goes 
 ever so much deeper than mere blindness. 
 
 — Hortus Inclusus, p. 63. 
 
 There are few so utterly lost, but that 
 they receive, and know that they receive, at 
 certain moments, strength of some kind, 
 or rebuke from the appealings of outward 
 things; and that it is not possible for a 
 Christian man to walk across so much as 
 a rood of the natural earth, with mind un- 
 agitated and rightly poised, without receiving 
 strength and hope from some stone, flower, 
 leaf, or sound, nor without a sense of a dew 
 falling upon him out of the sky. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part III, Sect. I, Chap. XV, p. 383. 
 
 All Nature, with one voice — with one 
 glory, is set to teach you reverence for the 
 life communicated to you from the Father 
 
NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 43 
 
 of Spirits. The song of birds, and their 
 plumage; the scent of flowers, their color, 
 their very existence, are in direct connection 
 with the mystery of that communicated life. 
 
 — The Eagle's Nest, Lecture VIII, p. 398. 
 
NATURE AND ART. 
 
Have no fear in judging between Nature and Art, 
 so only that you love both. If you can love one only, 
 then let it be Nature : you are safe with her : but do 
 not then attempt to judge the Art, to which you do not 
 care to give thought, or time. But if you love both, 
 you may judge between them fearlessly ; you may esti- 
 mate the last, by its making you remember the first, 
 and giving you the same kind of joy. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XXX, p. 345. 
 
II. 
 
 NATURE AND ART. 
 
 As you know more and more of the cre- 
 ated world, you will find that the true will 
 of its Maker is that its creatures should 
 be happy; — that He has made everything 
 beautiful in its time and its place, and that 
 it is chiefly by the fault of men, when 
 they are allowed the liberty of thwarting 
 His laws, that Creation groans or travails 
 in pain. The Love of God exists, and you 
 may see it, and live in it if you will. A 
 Spirit does actually exist which teaches the 
 ant her path, the bird her building, and 
 men, in an instinctive and marvellous way, 
 whatever lovely arts and noble deeds are 
 possible to them. Without it you can do 
 no good thing. ... In the possession of 
 it is your peace and your power. 
 
 — Lectures on Art, Lecture IV, p. 274. 
 
 True criticism of art never can consist 
 in the mere application of rules; it can 
 be just only when it is founded on quick 
 sympathy with the innumerable instincts 
 and changeful efforts of human nature, 
 
 47 
 
48 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 chastened and guided by unchanging love 
 of all things that God has created to be 
 beautiful, and pronounced to be good. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. II, p. 45. 
 
 Forms are not beautiful because they are 
 copied from Nature; only it is out of the 
 power of man to conceive beauty without 
 her aid. 
 
 — Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. IV, p. 102. 
 
 There are some landscapes w r hose best 
 character is sparkling, and there is a pos- 
 sibility of repose in the midst of brilliancy, 
 or embracing it, — as on the fields of sum- 
 mer sea, or summer land: 
 
 " Calm, and deep peace, on this high wold, 
 And on the dews that drench the furze, 
 And on the silvery gossamers, 
 That twinkle into green and gold" 
 
 And there are colorists who can keep 
 their quiet in the midst of a jewellery of 
 light; but, for the most part, it is better 
 to avoid breaking up either lines or 
 masses by too many points, and to make 
 the few points used exceedingly precious. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXIX, p. 340. 
 
NATURE AND ART. 49 
 
 High art, consists neither in altering 
 nor in improving Nature ; but in seeking 
 throughout Nature for " whatsoever things 
 are lovely, and whatsoever things are pure " ; 
 in loving these, in displaying to the ut- 
 most of the painter's power such loveli- 
 ness as is in them, and directing the 
 thoughts of others to them by winning 
 art, or gentle emphasis. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. Ill, p. 60. 
 
 The highest art in all kinds is that 
 which conveys the most truth. 
 
 — Arrows of the CAace, Vol. I, Letter VI, p. 140. 
 
 Art, followed as such, and for its own 
 sake, irrespective of the interpretation of 
 Nature by it, is destructive of whatever is 
 best and noblest in humanity ; but Nature 
 however simply observed, or imperfectly 
 known, is, in the degree of the affection 
 felt for it, protective and helpful to all 
 that is noblest in humanity. . . . 
 
 ... So long as Art is steady in the con- 
 templation and exhibition of natural facts, so 
 long she herself lives and grows ; and in her 
 own life and growth partly implies, partly 
 secures, that of the nation in the midst of 
 which she is practised. . . . 
 
5o NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Review for yourself the history of art, and 
 you will find this to be a manifest certainty, 
 that no great school ever yet existed which 
 had not for primal aim the representation 
 of some natural fact as truly as possible. 
 Wheresoever the search after truth begins, 
 there life begins; wheresoever that search 
 ceases, there life ceases. . . . 
 
 Depend upon it, the first universal char- 
 acteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as 
 the second is Truth. . . . Seize hold of God's 
 hand and look full in the face of His crea- 
 tion, and there is nothing He will not enable 
 you to achieve. 
 
 Thus, then, you will find — and the more 
 profound and accurate your knowledge 
 of the history of art the more assuredly 
 you will find — that the living power in 
 all the real schools, be they great or small, 
 is love of Nature. 
 
 — The Two Paths, Lecture I, pp. 16-30. 
 
 He who is closest to Nature is best. All 
 rules are useless, all labor is useless, if you 
 do not give facts. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part IV, Chap. X, p. 172. 
 
 I suppose you will not wish me to spend 
 any time in proving that imagination must 
 
NATURE AND ART. 51 
 
 be vigorous in proportion to the quantity 
 of material which it has to handle: and 
 that, just as we increase the range of what 
 we see, we increase the richness of what we 
 can imagine. Granting this, consider what 
 a field is opened to your fancy merely in 
 the subject-matter which architecture admits. 
 Nearly every other art is severely limited in 
 its subjects. . . . But is there anything within 
 range of sight, or conception, which may not 
 be of use to you, or in which your interest 
 may not be excited with advantage to your 
 art? . . . 
 
 . . . All the wide world of vegetation 
 blooms and bends for you ; the leaves trem- 
 ble that you may bid them be still under 
 the marble snow; the thorn and the thistle, 
 which the earth casts forth as evil, are to 
 you the kindliest servants ; no dying petal, 
 nor drooping tendril, is so feeble as to have 
 no more help for you; no robed pride of 
 blossom so kingly, but it will lay aside its 
 purple to receive at your hands the pale 
 immortality. Is there anything in common 
 life too mean, — in common things too triv- 
 ial, — to be ennobled by your touch ? 
 
 As there is nothing in life, so there is 
 nothing in lifelessness which has not its 
 lesson for you, or its gift; and when you 
 
52 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 are tired of watching the strength of the 
 plume and the tenderness of the leaf, you 
 may walk down to your rough river shore, 
 or into the thickest markets of your thor- 
 oughfares, and there is not a piece of torn 
 cable that will not turn into a perfect 
 moulding. . . . Yes, and if you gather up the 
 very sand, and break the stone on which 
 you tread, among its fragments of all but 
 invisible shells you will find forms that will 
 take their place, and that proudly, among 
 the starred traceries of your vaulting: and 
 you, who can crown the mountain with its 
 fortress, and the city with its towers, are 
 thus able also to give beauty to ashes, and 
 worthiness to dust. . . . 
 
 . . . Do not think it wasted time to sub- 
 mit yourselves to any influence which may 
 bring upon you any noble feeling. Rise 
 early, always watch the sunrise, and the 
 way the clouds break from the dawn; you 
 will cast your statue-draperies in quite 
 another than your common way, when the 
 remembrance of that cloud motion is with 
 you, and of the scarlet vesture of the 
 morning. Live always in the springtime 
 in the country; you do not know what 
 leaf-form means, unless you have seen the 
 buds burst, and the young leaves breathing 
 
NATURE AND ART. 53 
 
 low in the sunshine, and wondering at the 
 first shower of rain. 
 
 — The Two Paths, Lecture IV, pp. 95, 96, 100. 
 
 Where does Nature pause in her finish- 
 ing — that finishing which consists not in 
 the smoothing of surface, but the filling 
 of space, and the multiplication of life 
 and thought ? 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. IX, p. 166. 
 
 All most lovely forms and thoughts are 
 directly taken from natural objects. 
 
 — Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. IV, p. 101. 
 
 The things which Art does care to 
 know, are these: that in the heavens God 
 hath set a tabernacle for the sun, "which 
 is as a bridegroom coming out of his 
 chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to 
 run a race. His going forth is from the 
 end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the 
 ends of it, and there is nothing hid from 
 the heat thereof." 
 
 This, then, being the kind of truth with 
 which Art is exclusively concerned, how 
 is such truth as this to be ascertained 
 and accumulated? Evidently, and only, 
 by perception and feeling. Neither either 
 
54 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 by reasoning or report. Nothing must 
 come between Nature and the artists 
 sight ; nothing between God and the artist's 
 soul. Neither calculation nor hearsay, — be 
 it the most subtle of calculations, or the 
 wisest of sayings, — may be allowed to come 
 between the universe and the witness which 
 Art bears to its visible nature. . . . 
 
 The whole function of the artist in the 
 world is to be a seeing and feeling crea- 
 ture; to be an instrument of such tender- 
 ness and sensitiveness, that no shadow, 
 no hue, no line, no instantaneous and 
 evanescent expression of the visible things 
 around him, nor any of the emotions 
 which they are capable of conveying to 
 the spirit which has been given him, shall 
 either be left unrecorded, or fade from 
 the book of record. There is no great 
 painter, no great workman in any art, but 
 he sees more with the glance of a mo- 
 ment than he could learn by the labor of 
 a thousand hours. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. Ill, Chap. II, pp. 40, 41. 
 
 What is the purpose of your decora- 
 tion ? . . . We profess that it is to honor 
 the Deity; or, in other words, that it is 
 pleasing to Him that we should delight 
 
NATURE AND ART. 55 
 
 our eyes with blue and golden colors, and 
 solemnise our spirits by the sight of large 
 stones laid one on another, and ingen- 
 iously carved. 
 
 I do not think it can be doubted that 
 it is pleasing to Him when we do this ; 
 for He has Himself prepared for us, nearly 
 every morning and evening, windows 
 painted with Divine art, in blue and gold 
 and vermilion ; windows lighted from within 
 by the lustre of that heaven which we 
 may assume, at least with more certainty 
 than any consecrated ground, to be one of 
 His dwelling-places. Again, in every moun- 
 tain side, and cliff of rude seashore, He 
 has heaped stones one upon another of 
 greater magnitude than those of Chartres 
 Cathedral, and sculptured them with floral 
 ornament,— surely not less sacred because 
 living? 
 
 Must it not then be only because we 
 love our own work better than His, that 
 we respect the lucent glass, but not the 
 lucent clouds; that we weave embroidered 
 robes with ingenious fingers, and make 
 bright the gilded vaults we have beauti- 
 fully ordained — while yet we have not 
 considered the heavens the work of His 
 fingers : nor the stars of the strange vault 
 
5 6 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 which He has ordained. And do we dream 
 that by carving fonts and lifting pillars in 
 His honor, who cuts the way of the rivers 
 among the rocks, and at whose reproof the 
 pillars of the earth are astonished, we shall 
 obtain pardon for the dishonor done to the 
 hills and streams by which He has appointed 
 our dwelling-place; — for the infection of 
 their sweet air with poison; — for the burn- 
 ing up their tender grass and flowers with 
 
 tire. ... — Lectures on Art, Lect. II, p. 237. 
 
 The first thing we have to ask of dec- 
 oration is that it should indicate strong 
 liking, and that honestly. . . . 
 
 The second requirement in decoration, 
 is a sign of our liking the right thing. 
 And the right thing to be liked is God's 
 work, which He made for our delight and 
 contentment in this world. And all noble 
 ornamentation is the expression of man's 
 delight in God's work. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. II, p. 56. 
 
 This infinite universe is unfathomable, 
 inconceivable, in its whole; every human 
 creature must slowly spell out, and long 
 contemplate, such part of it as may be 
 possible for him to reach; then set forth 
 
NATURE AND ART. 57 
 
 what he has learned of it for those beneath 
 him; extricating it from infinity, as one 
 gathers a violet out of grass ; one does not 
 improve either violet or grass in gathering 
 it, but one makes the flower visible; and 
 the human being has to make its power 
 upon his own heart visible also, and to give 
 it the honor of the good thoughts it has 
 raised up in him, and to write upon it the 
 history of his own soul. And sometimes 
 he may be able to do more than this, and 
 to set it in strange lights, and display it 
 in a thousand ways before unknown : ways 
 specially directed to necessary and noble 
 purposes, for which he had to choose in- 
 struments out of the wide armory of God. 
 All this he may do-: and in this he is only 
 doing what every Christian has to do with 
 the written, as well as the created word, 
 "rightly dividing the word of truth." 
 
 — Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXX, p. 344. 
 
 Beware, in going to nature, of taking 
 the commonplace dogmas or dicta of art. 
 Look not for what is like Titian or like 
 Claude — but believe that everything which 
 God has made is beautiful, and that every- 
 thing which Nature teaches is true. 
 
 — Arrows of the Chace, Letter I, p. 38. 
 
58 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 There is but one grand style in the treat- 
 ment of all subjects, whatsoever, and that 
 style is based on the perfect knowledge, 
 and consists in the simple, unencumbered 
 rendering of the specific characters of the 
 given object. Every change, or abandon- 
 ment of such specific character, is as de- 
 structive of grandeur as it is of truth, 
 of beauty, of propriety. Every alteration of 
 the features of nature has its origin either 
 in powerless indolence or blind audacity, 
 in the folly which forgets, or the insolence 
 which desecrates, works which it is the pride 
 of angels to know, and their privilege to love. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. I, Preface to Second Edition, p. 27. 
 
 An architect should live as little in cities 
 as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let 
 him study there what nature understands by 
 a buttress, and what by a dome. 
 
 — Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. Ill, p. 99. 
 
 Human Art can only flourish when its 
 dew is Affection: its air, Devotion; the rock 
 of its roots, Patience; and its sunshine, God. 
 
 — The Laws of Fe sole, Chap. X, p. 135. 
 
 We need not hope to be able to imi- 
 tate, in general work, any of the subtly 
 
NATURE AND ART. 59 
 
 combined curvatures of Nature's highest 
 designing; on the contrary, their extreme 
 refinement renders them unfit for coarse 
 service or material. Lines which are lovely 
 in the pearly film of the Nautilus shell, 
 are lost in the gray roughness of stone; 
 and those which are sublime in the blue 
 of far away hills, are weak in the sub- 
 stance of incumbent marble. . . . 
 
 . . . No sculptor can in the least imitate 
 the peculiar character of accidental fracture : 
 he can obey or exhibit the laws of Nature, 
 but he cannot copy the felicity of her 
 fancies, nor follow the steps of her fury. 
 The very glory of a mountain is in the 
 revolutions which raised it into power, and 
 the forces which are striking it into ruin. 
 But we want no cold and careful imitation 
 of catastrophe; no calculated mockery of 
 convulsion; no delicate recommendation 
 of ruin. We are to follow the labor of 
 Nature, but not her disturbance ; to imitate 
 what she has deliberately ordained, not 
 what she has violently suffered, or strangely 
 permitted. . . . Beautiful ornament, wher- 
 ever found, or however invented, is always 
 either an intentional or unintentional copy 
 of some constant natural form. 
 
 r— The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XX, pp. 224, 225. 
 
60 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 For prolonged entertainment, no picture 
 can be compared with the wealth of interest 
 which may be found in the herbage of 
 the poorest field, or blossoms of the nar- 
 rowest copse. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. I, p. 249. 
 
 The art of man is the expression of his 
 rational and disciplined delight in the forms 
 and laws of the creation of which he forms 
 a part. . . . Fix, then, this in your mind — 
 that your art is to be the praise of some- 
 thing that you love, — be you small or great, 
 what healthy art is possible to you must 
 be the expression of your true delight in 
 a real thing, better than the art. 
 
 — The Laws of Fesole> Chap. I, pp. 11, 12. 
 
 Many forest trees present, in their acci- 
 dental contortions, types of the most com- 
 plicated spiral shafts, the plan being origi- 
 nally of a graceful shaft rising from several 
 roots; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find 
 models for every kind of shaft decoration, 
 so graceful or so gorgeous, as he will find 
 in the great forest aisle, when the strength 
 of the earth itself seems to rise from the 
 roots into the vaulting: but the shaft sur- 
 face, barred as it expands with wings of 
 
NATURE AND ART. 61 
 
 ebony and silver, is fretted with traceries 
 of ivy, marbled with purple moss, veined 
 with gray lichen, and tessellated by the rays 
 of the rolling heaven, with flitting fancies 
 of blue shadow and burning gold. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XXVI, p. 299. 
 
 The greater part of those delights by 
 which Nature recommends herself to man at 
 all times, cannot be conveyed by his imita- 
 tive work. He cannot make his grass green 
 and cool and good to rest upon, which 
 in Nature is its chief use to man ; nor 
 can he make his flowers tender and full 
 of color and of scent, which in Nature 
 are their chief powers of giving joy. Those 
 qualities which alone he can secure are 
 certain severe characters of form, such as 
 men only see in Nature on deliberate 
 examination, and by the full and set appli- 
 ance of sight and thought; a man must 
 lie down on the bank of grass on his 
 breast and set himself to watch and pene- 
 trate the intertwining of it, before he finds 
 that which is good to be gathered by the 
 architect. So then while Nature is at all 
 times pleasant to us, and while the sight 
 and sense of her work may mingle hap- 
 pily with all our thoughts, and labors, and 
 
62 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 times of existence, that image of her which 
 the architect carries away represents what 
 we can only perceive in her by direct 
 intellectual exertion of a similar kind in 
 order to understand it and feel it. 
 
 — T7ie Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chap. IV, p. 113. 
 
 All art, and all Nature, depend on the 
 " disposition of masses." Painting, sculpture, 
 music and poetry, depend equally on the 
 "proportion," whether of colors, stones, 
 notes, or words. Proportion is a principle, 
 not of architecture, but of existence. It is 
 by the law of proportion that stars shine, 
 that mountains stand, and rivers flow. 
 
 — Lectures on Architecture and Painting ; Lecture I, p. 274. 
 
 The true ideal of landscape is precisely 
 the same as that of the human form; it 
 is the expression of the specific — not the 
 individual, but the specific — characters of 
 every object, in their perfection; there is 
 an ideal form of every herb, flower, and 
 tree: it is that form to which every 
 individual of the species has a tendency 
 to arrive, freed from the influence of acci- 
 dent or disease. Every landscape painter 
 should have the specific characters of every 
 object he has to represent, rock, flower, or 
 
NATURE AND ART. 63 
 
 cloud; and in his highest ideal works, 
 all their distinctions will be perfectly ex- 
 pressed, broadly or delicately, slightly or 
 completely, according to the nature of the 
 subject, and the degree of attention which 
 is to be drawn to the particular object by 
 the part it plays in the composition. . . . 
 
 . . . Botanical or geological details are 
 not to be given as matters of curiosity 
 or subject of search, but as the ultimate 
 elements of every species of expression 
 and order of loveliness. . . . 
 
 . . . Every herb and flower of the field 
 has its specific, distinct, and perfect beauty; 
 it has its peculiar habitation, expression 
 and function. The highest art is that 
 which seizes this specific character, which 
 develops and illustrates it, which assigns 
 to it its proper position in the landscape, 
 and which, by means of it, enhances and 
 enforces the great impression which the 
 picture is intended to convey. Nor is it 
 of herbs and flowers alone that such sci- 
 entific representation is required. Every 
 class of rock, every kind of earth, every 
 form of cloud, must be studied with equal 
 industry, and rendered with equal pre- 
 cision. . . . 
 
 . . . Generalization, as the word is com- 
 
64 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 monly understood, is the act of a vulgar, 
 incapable, and unthinking mind. To see 
 in all mountains nothing but similar heaps 
 of earth; in all rocks, nothing but similar 
 concretions of solid matter ; in all trees, 
 nothing but similar accumulations of leaves, 
 is no sign of high feeling or extended 
 thought. The more we know, and the 
 more we feel, the more we separate ; we sepa- 
 rate to obtain a more perfect unity. , 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol.1, Preface, pp. 28-39. 
 
 Of all embellishments by which the 
 efforts of man can enhance the beauty of 
 natural scenery, those are the most effect- 
 ive which can give animation to the scene, 
 while the spirit which they bestow is in 
 unison with its general character. It is 
 generally desirable to indicate the pres- 
 ence of animated existence in a scene of 
 natural beauty; but only of such existence 
 as shall be imbued with the spirit, and 
 shall partake of the essence, of the beauty, 
 which, without it, would be dead. 
 
 — The Poetry of Architecture, p. 9. 
 
 It is ordained that, for our encourage- 
 ment, every step we make in the more 
 exalted range of science adds something 
 
NATURE AND ART. 65 
 
 also to its practical applicabilities ; that all 
 the great phenomena of nature, the knowl- 
 edge of which is desired by the angels 
 only, by us partly, as it reveals to farther 
 vision the being and the glory of Him in 
 whom they rejoice and we live, dispense 
 yet such kind influences and so much of 
 material blessing as to be joyfully felt by 
 all inferior creatures, and to be desired by 
 them with such single desire as the imper- 
 fection of their nature may admit; that 
 the strong torrents which, in their own 
 gladness fill the hills with hollow thunder 
 and the vales with winding light, have yet 
 their bounden charge of field to feed and 
 barge to bear ; that the fierce flames to 
 which the Alp owes its upheaval and the 
 volcano its terror, temper for us the metal 
 vein and quickening spring; and that for 
 our incitement, I say not our reward, for 
 knowledge is its own reward, herbs have 
 their healing, stones their preciousness, 
 and stars their times. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part III, Sect. 1, Chap. I, p. 228. 
 
 Nature is never mechanical in her ar- 
 rangements; she never allows two mem- 
 bers of her composition exactly to corre- 
 spond : accordingly, in every piece of art 
 
66 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 which is to combine, without gradations, 
 with landscape (as must always be the 
 case in monuments) we must not allow a 
 multitude of similar members; the design 
 must be a dignified and simple whole. 
 
 — The Poetry of Architecture ', p. 171. 
 
 The word truth, as applied to art, sig- 
 nifies the faithful statement, either to the 
 mind or senses, of any fact of Nature. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Part I, Sect. 1, Chap. V, p. 95. 
 
 Every geological formation has features 
 entirely peculiar to itself: definite lines of 
 fracture, giving rise to fixed resultant forms 
 of rock and earth ; peculiar vegetable prod- 
 ucts, among which still farther distinc- 
 tions are wrought out by variations of 
 climate and elevation. From such modi- 
 fying circumstances, arise the infinite vari- 
 eties of the orders of landscape, of which 
 each one shows perfect harmony among 
 its several features, and possesses an ideal 
 beauty of its own. . . . The level marshes 
 and rich meadows of the tertiary, the rounded 
 swells and short pastures of the chalk, the 
 square-built cliffs and cloven dells of the 
 lower limestone, the soaring peaks and ridgy 
 precipices of the primaries, having nothing 
 
NATURE AND ART. 67 
 
 in common among them — nothing which is 
 not distinctive and incommunicable. Their 
 very atmospheres are different — their clouds 
 are different — their humors of storm and 
 sunshine are different — their flowers, ani- 
 mals and forests are different. By each order 
 of landscape — and its orders, I repeat, are 
 infinite in number, corresponding not only 
 to the several species of rock, but to the 
 particular circumstances of the rock's depo- 
 sition or after treatment, and to the in- 
 calculable varieties of climate, aspect, and 
 human interference: by each order of land- 
 scape, I say, peculiar lessons are intended 
 to be taught, and distinct pleasures to be 
 conveyed: and it is as utterly futile to talk 
 of generalizing their impressions into an 
 ideal landscape, as to talk of amalgamating 
 all nourishment into one ideal food, gather- 
 ing all music into one ideal movement, 
 or confounding all thought into one ideal 
 idea. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Preface to Second Edition, p. 40. 
 
 No picture can be good which deceives 
 by its imitation, for the very reason that 
 nothing can be beautiful which is not true. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Part I, Sect. I, Chap. V, p. 99. 
 
68 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 In the edifices of Man there should be 
 found reverent worship and following, not 
 only of the spirit which rounds the pillars of 
 the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue 
 — which gives veining to the leaf, and polish 
 to the shell, and grace to every pulse that 
 agitates animal organization — but of that 
 also which reproves the pillars of the earth, 
 and builds up her barren precipices into the 
 coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy 
 cones of mountain purple into the pale arch 
 of the sky. 
 
 — The Seven Lamps of Architecture ; Chap. Ill, p. 72. 
 
 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 re- 
 sult in each will be as various as the kinds 
 of truth which each will apprehend; there- 
 fore, 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 industrious, 
 equally impressed with a humble desire to 
 render some part of what they saw in 
 Nature faithfully. . . . But one of them is 
 quiet in temperament, has a feeble memory, 
 no invention, and excessively keen sight. 
 
NATURE AND ART. 69 
 
 The other is impatient in temperament, has 
 a memory which nothing escapes, an inven- 
 tion 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 peb- 
 bles, the bubbles in the stream ; but he can 
 remember nothing, and invent nothing. . . . 
 
 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 
 gradation, and the very feebleness of his 
 sight is in some sort an advantage to him, in 
 making him more sensible of the aerial mys- 
 tery 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 forever; 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. . . . 
 
70 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Fancy how his paper will be covered with 
 stray symbols and blots, and undecipherable 
 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 to- 
 gether ; but none of them escaped, for all 
 that: they are sealed up in that strange store- 
 house 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 impress on them both. 
 But fancy the exquisite absurdity of expecting 
 either of them to possess any of the qualities 
 
 Of the Other. — Pre-Raphaelilism, pp. 252, 254. 
 
 To my own mind, there is no more beauti- 
 ful proof of benevolent design in the creation 
 of the earth, than the exact adaptation of its 
 materials to the art-power of man. The plas- 
 ticity and constancy under fire of clay : the 
 ductility and fusibility of gold and iron: 
 the consistent softness of marble, and the 
 fibrous toughness of wood, are in each 
 material carried to the exact degree which 
 
NATURE AND ART. 71 
 
 renders them provocative of skill by their 
 resistance, and full of reward for it by their 
 
 Compliance. — The Art of England, Lecture V, p. 322. 
 
 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. — Elements of Drawing, Preface, p. 226. 
 
 Observe that you do not wilfully use the 
 realistic power of art to convince yourselves 
 of historical or theological statements which 
 you cannot otherwise prove, and which you 
 wish to prove: — on the other hand, that 
 you do not check your imagination and 
 conscience while seizing the truths of which 
 they alone are cognizant, because you value 
 too highly the scientific interest which 
 attaches to the investigation of second 
 causes. 
 
 For instance, it may be quite possible to 
 show the conditions in water and electricity 
 which necessarily produce the craggy out- 
 line, the apparently self-contained silvery 
 light, and the sulphurous blue shadow of 
 a thunder-cloud, and which separate these 
 from the depth of the golden peace in the 
 dawn of a summer morning. . . . But it is 
 the function of the rightly-trained imagina- 
 
72 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 tion to recognise, in these, and such other 
 relative aspects, the unity of teaching which 
 impresses, alike on our senses and our con- 
 science, the eternal difference between good 
 and evil : and the rule, over the clouds of 
 heaven and over the creatures in the earth, 
 of the same Spirit which teaches to our own 
 hearts the bitterness of death, and strength 
 
 Of love. — Lectures on Art, Lecture II, p. 225. 
 
 The moral temper of the workman is 
 shown by his lovely forms and thoughts to 
 express, as well as by the force of his hand 
 
 in expression. —Lectures on Art, Lecture III, p. 245. 
 
 As soon as you have obtained the power 
 of drawing, I do not say a mountain, but 
 even a stone accurately, you will find that in 
 the grain, the lustre, and the cleavage-lines 
 of the smallest fragment of rock, there are 
 recorded forces of every order and magnitude, 
 from those which raise a continent by one vol- 
 canic effort, to those which at every instant 
 are polishing the apparently complete crystal 
 in its nest, and conducting the apparently 
 motionless metal in its vein, and that only 
 by the art of your own hand, and fidelity of 
 sight which it developes, you can obtain true 
 perception of these invincible and inimitable 
 
NATURE AND ART. 73 
 
 arts of the earth herself : while the compara- 
 tively slight effort necessary to obtain so 
 much skill as may serviceably draw moun- 
 tains in distant effect will be instantly 
 rewarded by what is almost equivalent to 
 a new sense of the conditions of their 
 
 Structure. — Lectures on Art, Lecture IV, p. 263. 
 
 The good architects have generally been 
 content, with God's arch, the arch of the 
 rainbow and of the apparent heaven, and 
 which the sun shapes for us as it sets and 
 
 rises. — The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. X, p. 134. 
 
 Oh, if people did but know how many 
 lines nature suggests without showing, what 
 different art should we have ! 
 
 — Arrows of the Chace, Letter I, p. 37. 
 
 Every archaeologist, every natural phil- 
 osopher, knows that there is a peculiar rigid- 
 ity of mind brought on by long devotion 
 to logical and analytical inquiries. . . . The 
 man who has gone, hammer in hand, over 
 the surface of a romantic country, feels no 
 longer, in the mountain ranges he has so 
 laboriously explored, the sublimity or mys- 
 tery with which they were veiled when he 
 first beheld them, and with which they are 
 
74 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 adorned in the mind of the passing traveller. 
 . . . And it would be with infinite gratitude 
 that he would regard the man, who, retain- 
 ing 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 wander- 
 ing light, and involve them in the unsearch- 
 ableness of stormy obscurity : should restore 
 to the divided anatomy its visible vitality of 
 operation, clothe naked crags with soft for- 
 ests, 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. 
 
 — Pre-Raphaelitism, pp. 279, 280. 
 
 Good painting, like nature's own work, is 
 infinite, and unreduceable. 
 
 — The Elements of Perspective^ Problem XX, p. 379. 
 
 We lay it down for a first principle, that 
 our graphic art, whether painting or sculp- 
 ture, is to produce something which shall 
 look as like Nature as possible. But now 
 
NATURE AND ART. 75 
 
 we must go one step farther, and say that 
 it is to produce what shall look like Nature 
 to people who know what Nature is like ! 
 You see this is at once a great restriction, as 
 well as a great exaltation of our aim. 
 
 — Aralra Pentelici, Lecture IV, p. 358. 
 
 The teaching of Nature is as varied and 
 infinite as it is constant ; and the duty of the 
 painter is to watch for every one of her les- 
 sons, and to give those in which she has 
 manifested each of her principles in the 
 most peculiar and striking way. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. I, Chap. IV, p. 147. 
 
 I think I am justified in considering those 
 forms to be most natural which are most fre- 
 quent ; or, rather, that on the shapes which 
 in the every-day world are familiar to the 
 eyes of men, God has stamped those charac- 
 ters of beauty which He has made it man's 
 nature to love. ... By frequency I mean 
 that limited and isolated frequency, which 
 is characteristic of all perfection ; not mere 
 multitude; as a rose is a common flower, but 
 yet there are not so many roses on the tree 
 as there are leaves. In this respect Nature 
 is sparing of her highest, and lavish of her 
 less, beauty ; but I call the flower as frequent 
 
76 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 as the leaf, because, each in its allotted quan- 
 tity, where the one is, there will ordinarily be 
 the other. 
 
 — Seven Lamps of Architecture, Lecture IV, pp. 102, 103. 
 
 In all drawing and sculpture, it is the 
 power of rounding, softly and perfectly, every 
 inferior mass which preserves the serenity, 
 as it follows the truth, of Nature, and which 
 demands the highest knowledge and skill 
 from the workman. 
 
 — Seven Lamps of Architecture, Letter III, p. 90. 
 
 It is one of the eternal principles of Nature, 
 that she will not have one line nor color, 
 nor one portion, nor atom of space without 
 a change in it. There is not one of her 
 shadows, tints, or lines that is not in a state 
 of perpetual variation: I do not mean in 
 time, but in space. There is not a leaf in 
 the world which has the same color visible 
 over its whole surface ; it has a white high- 
 light somewhere; and in proportion as it 
 curves to or from that focus, the color is 
 brighter or grayer. Pick up a common flint 
 from the roadside, and count, if you can, 
 its changes and hues of color. Every bit 
 of bare ground under your feet has in it a 
 thousand such — the gray pebbles, the warm 
 
NATURE AND ART. ' 77 
 
 ochre, the green of incipient vegetation, the 
 grays and blacks of its reflexes and shadows, 
 might keep a painter at work for a month, 
 if he were obliged to follow them touch for 
 touch: how much more, when the same 
 infinity of change is carried out with vast- 
 ness of object and space. 
 
 —Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. II, Chap. II, pp. 271, 272. 
 
 Consider what marble seems to have been 
 made for. Over the greater part of the 
 surface of the world, we find that a rock 
 has been providentially distributed, in a man- 
 ner particularly pointing it out as intended 
 for the service of man. Not altogether a 
 common rock, it is yet rare enough to 
 command a certain degree of interest and 
 attention wherever it is found; but not so 
 rare as to preclude its use for any pur- 
 pose to which it is fitted. It is exactly of 
 the consistence which is best adapted for 
 sculpture: that is to say, neither hard nor 
 brittle, nor flaky nor splintery, but uniform, 
 and delicately, yet not ignobly, soft, — exactly 
 soft enough to allow the sculptor to work it 
 without force, and trace on it the finest lines 
 of finished form ; and yet so hard as never to 
 betray the touch or moulder away beneath 
 the steel ; and so admirably crystallized, and 
 
78 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 of such permanent elements, that no rains 
 dissolve it, no time changes it, no atmos- 
 phere decomposes it: once shaped, it is 
 shaped forever, unless subjected to actual 
 violence or attrition. This rock, then, is 
 prepared by Nature for the sculptor and 
 architect, just as paper is prepared by the 
 manufacturer for the artist, with as great — 
 nay, with greater — care, and more perfect 
 adaptation of the material to the require- 
 ments. And of this marble paper, some is 
 white and some colored ; but more is colored 
 than white, because the white is evidently 
 meant for sculpture, and the colored for the 
 covering of large surfaces. 
 
 Now, if we would take Nature at her word, 
 and use this precious paper which she has 
 taken so much care to provide for us (it is 
 a long process, the making of that paper; 
 the pulp of it needing the subtlest possible 
 solution, and the pressing of it — for it is all 
 hot-pressed — having to be done under the 
 saw, or under something at least as heavy) ; 
 if, I say, we use it as Nature would have 
 us, consider what advantages would follow. 
 The colors of marble are mingled for us just 
 as if on a prepared palette. They are of all 
 shades and hues (except bad ones), some 
 being united and even, some broken, mixed, 
 
NATURE AND ART. 79 
 
 and interrupted, in order to supply, as far as 
 possible, the want of the painter's power of 
 breaking and mingling the color with the 
 brush. But there is more in the colors than 
 this delicacy of adaptation. There is history 
 in them. By the manner in which they are 
 arranged in every piece of marble, they 
 record the means by which that marble has 
 been produced, and the successive changes 
 through which it has passed. And in all 
 their veins and zones, and flame-like stain- 
 ings, or broken and disconnected lines, they 
 write various legends, never untrue, of the 
 former political state of the mountain king- 
 dom to which they belonged, of its infirmities 
 and fortitudes, convulsions and consolida- 
 tions, from the beginning of time. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. Ill, Chap. I, pp. 30, 31, 32. 
 
 From young artists in landscape, nothing 
 ought to be tolerated but simple bona fide 
 imitations of Nature. Their duty is neither 
 to choose, nor compose, nor imagine, nor 
 experimentalize: but to be humble and ear- 
 nest in following the steps of Nature, and 
 tracing the finger of God. 
 
 —Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. VI, Chap. Ill, p. 209. 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 
 
I hope to show, . . . what noble things these 
 clouds are, and with what feeling it seems to be 
 intended by their Creator that we should contemplate 
 them. —Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. VI, p. 113. 
 
III. 
 
 SKY AND CLOUD. 
 
 I understand the making- the firmament 
 to signify that, so far as man is concerned, 
 most magnificent ordinance of the clouds : — 
 the ordinance, that as the great plain of waters 
 was formed on the face of the earth, so also 
 a plain of waters should be stretched along 
 the height of air, and the face of the cloud 
 answer the face of the ocean ; and that this 
 upper and heavenly plain should be of 
 waters, as it were, glorified in their nature, 
 no longer quenching the fire, but now bear- 
 ing fire in their .own bosoms; no longer 
 murmuring only when the winds raise them 
 or rocks divide, but answering each other 
 with their own voices from pole to pole; 
 no longer restrained by established shores, 
 and guided through unchanging channels, 
 but going forth at their pleasure like the 
 armies of the angels, and choosing their 
 encampments upon the heights of the hills ; 
 no longer hurried downwards forever, mov- 
 ing but to fall, nor lost in lightless accumu- 
 lation of the abyss, but covering the east 
 and west with the waving of their wings, 
 
 83 
 
84 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 and robing the gloom of the farther infin- 
 ite with a vesture of divers colors, of which 
 the threads are purple and scarlet, and the 
 embroideries flame. 
 
 This I believe, is the ordinance of the 
 firmament ; and it seems to me that in the 
 midst of the material nearness of these 
 heavens God means us to acknowledge His 
 own immediate presence as visiting, judg- 
 ing, and blessing us. . . . " He doth set His 
 bow in the cloud," and thus renews, in the 
 sound of every drooping swathe of rain, His 
 promise of everlasting love. " In them hath 
 He set a tabernacle for the sun"; whose 
 burning ball, which without the firmament 
 would be seen as an intolerable and scorch- 
 ing circle in the blackness of vacuity, is by 
 that firmament surrounded with gorgeous 
 service, and tempered by mediatorial minis- 
 tries : by the firmament of clouds the golden 
 pavement is spread for His chariot wheels 
 at morning ; by the firmament of clouds the 
 temple is built for His presence to fill with 
 light at noon ; by the firmament of clouds 
 the purple veil is closed at evening round 
 the sanctuary of His rest; by the mists of the 
 firmament His implacable light is divided, 
 and its separated fierceness appeased into 
 the soft blue that fills the depth of distance 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 85 
 
 with its bloom, and the flush with which 
 the mountains burn as they drink the over- 
 flowing of the dayspring. And in this tab- 
 ernacling of the unendurable sun with men, 
 through the shadows of the firmament, God 
 would seem to set forth the stooping of His 
 own majesty to men, upon the throne of the 
 firmament. . . . And all those passings to 
 and fro of fruitful shower and grateful shade, 
 and all those visions of silver palaces built 
 about the horizon, and voices of moaning 
 winds and threatening thunders, and glories 
 of colored robe and cloven ray, are but to 
 deepen in our hearts the acceptance and 
 distinctness, and dearness of the simple 
 words, " Our Father, which art in heaven." 
 
 — Cceli Enarrant, Chap. I, pp. 159, 160. 
 — Also Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. VI. 
 
 The heavens declare — or make clear — the 
 honour of God. . . . These heavens, are the 
 real roof, as the earth is the real floor, of 
 God's house for you here. . . . That word 
 " cceli," in the first words of the Latin psalm, 
 means the "hollow place." It is the great 
 space, or, as we conceive it, vault, of Heaven. 
 It shows the glory of God in the existence 
 of the light by which we live. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. Ill, Letter LXXV, p. 402. 
 
86 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 It is a strange thing how little in general 
 people know about the sky. It is the part 
 of creation in which Nature has done more 
 for the sake of pleasing man, more for the 
 sole and evident purpose of talking to him 
 and teaching him, than in any other of her 
 works, and it is just the part in which we 
 least attend to her. There are not many of 
 her other works in which some more material 
 or essential purpose than the mere pleasing 
 of man is not answered by every part of their 
 organization ; but every essential purpose of 
 the sky might, so far as we know, be answered, 
 if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great 
 ugly black rain-cloud were brought up over 
 the blue, and everything well watered, and so 
 all left blue again till next time, with perhaps 
 a film of morning and evening mist for dew. 
 And instead of this, there is not a moment of 
 any day of our lives, when Nature is not pro- 
 ducing scene after scene, picture after picture, 
 glory after glory, and working still upon such 
 exquisite and constant principles of the most 
 perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is 
 all done for us, and intended for our per- 
 petual pleasure. And every man, wherever 
 placed, however far from other sources of 
 interest or of beauty, has this done for him 
 constantly. . . . The sky is for all ; bright as 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 87 
 
 it is, it is not " too bright, nor good, for human 
 nature's daily food " ; it is fitted in all its 
 functions for the perpetual comfort and ex- 
 alting of the heart, for the soothing it and 
 purifying it from its dross and dust. Some- 
 times gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes 
 awful, never the same for two moments to- 
 gether : almost human in its passions, almost 
 spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in 
 its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in 
 us, is as distinct, as its ministry of chastise- 
 ment or of blessing to what is mortal is essen- 
 tial. And yet we never attend to it, we never 
 make it a subject of thought, but as it has to 
 do with our animal sensations: . . . 
 
 If in our moments of utter idleness and 
 insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last re- 
 source, which of its phenomena do we speak 
 of? One says it has been wet, and another 
 it has been windy, and another it has been 
 warm. Who, among the whole chattering 
 crowd, can tell me of the forms and the preci- 
 pices of the chain of tall white mountains 
 that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? 
 Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out 
 of the south, and smote upon their summits 
 until they melted and mouldered away in a 
 dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the 
 dead clouds when the sunlight left them last 
 
88 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 night, and the west wind blew them before it 
 like withered leaves ? All has passed, unre- 
 gretted as unseen ; or if the apathy be ever 
 shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by 
 what is gross, or what is extraordinary; and 
 yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifes- 
 tations of the elemental energies, not in the 
 clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirl- 
 wind, that the highest characters of the sub- 
 lime are developed. God is not in the earth- 
 quake, nor in the fire, but in the still small 
 voice. They are but the blunt and the low 
 faculties of our nature, which can only be 
 addressed through lampblack and lightning. 
 It is in quiet and subdued passages of unob- 
 trusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, and 
 the perpetual, — that which must be sought 
 ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood, 
 — things which the angels work out for us 
 daily, and yet vary eternally, which are never 
 wanting, and never repeated, which are to be 
 found always yet each found but once ; it is 
 through these that the lesson of devotion 
 is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty 
 given. . . . 
 
 I fully believe, little as people in general 
 are concerned with art, more of their ideas 
 of sky are derived from pictures than from 
 reality, and that if we could examine the con- 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 89 
 
 ception formed in the minds of most educated 
 persons when we talk of clouds, it would 
 frequently be found composed of fragments 
 of blue and white reminiscences of the old 
 masters. . . . 
 
 . . . Now, if there be one characteristic 
 of the sky more valuable or necessary to 
 be rendered than another, it is that which 
 Wordsworth has given in the second book 
 of the Excursion: — 
 
 The chasm of sky above my head 
 Is Heaven's profoundest azure. No domain 
 For fickle, short-lived clouds, to occupy, 
 Or to pass through ; — but rather an abyss 
 In which the everlasting stars abide, [tempt 
 
 And whose soft gloom, and boundless depth, might 
 The curious eye to look for them by day. 
 
 And, in his American Notes, I remember 
 Dickens notices the same truth, describing 
 himself as lying drowsily on the barge deck, 
 looking not at, but through the sky. And 
 if you look intensely at the pure blue of 
 a serene sky, you will see that there is a 
 variety and fulness in its very repose. It is 
 not flat dead color, but a deep, quivering, 
 transparent body of penetrable air, in which 
 you trace or imagine short, falling spots of 
 deceiving light, and dim shades, faint, veiled 
 vestiges of dark vapor. 
 
 —Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Part II, Sect. Ill, Chap. I, pp. 314-318. 
 
9 o NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Between the heaven and man came the 
 cloud. 
 
 Has the reader any distinct idea of what 
 clouds are ? 
 
 That mist which lies in the morning so 
 softly in the valley, level and white, through 
 which the tops of the trees rise as if through 
 an inundation — why is it so heavy ? And 
 why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and 
 frail that it will melt away utterly into splen- 
 dor of morning, when the sun has shone on 
 it but a few moments more ? Those colossal 
 pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as 
 of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of 
 the high sun full on their fiery flanks — why 
 are they so light — their bases high over our 
 heads, high over the heads of Alps? Why 
 will these melt away, not as the sun rises, 
 but as he descends, and leave the stars of 
 twilight clear, while the valley vapor gains 
 again upon the earth like a shroud ? Or 
 that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder 
 clump of pines ; nay, which does not steal 
 by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet 
 round them, and yet — and yet, slowly ; now 
 falling in a fair waved line like a woman's 
 veil; now fading, now gone; we look away 
 for an instant, and look back, and it is there 
 again. What has it to do with that clump 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 91 
 
 of pines, that it broods by them and waves 
 itself among their branches, to and fro? 
 Has it hidden a cloudy treasure among" the 
 moss at their roots, which it watches thus? 
 Or has some strong enchanter charmed it 
 into fond returning, or bound it fast within 
 those bars of bough? And yonder filmy 
 crescent, bent like an archer's bow above 
 the snowy summit, the highest of all the 
 hill — that white arch which never forms 
 but over the supreme crest — how is it 
 stayed there, repelled apparently from the 
 snow — nowhere touching it, the clear sky 
 seen between it and the mountain edge, 
 yet never leaving it — poised as a white 
 bird hovers over its nest? 
 
 Or those war-clouds that gather on the 
 horizon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire; 
 how is their barbed strength bridled ? What 
 bits are these they are champing with their 
 vaporous lips; flinging off flakes of black 
 foam? Leagued leviathans of the Sea of 
 Heaven, out of their nostrils goeth smoke, 
 and their eyes are like the eyelids of the 
 morning: the sword of him that layeth at 
 them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor 
 the habergeon. Where ride the captains of 
 their armies ? Where are set the measures 
 of their march ? Fierce murmurers, answer- 
 
92 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 ing each other from morning until even- 
 ing — what rebuke is this which has awed 
 them into peace? — what hand has reined 
 them back by the way by which they came ? 
 
 I know not if the reader will think at first 
 that questions like these are easily answered. 
 So far from it, I rather believe that some of 
 the mysteries of the clouds never will be 
 understood by us at all. " Knowest thou the 
 balancing of the clouds ? " Is the answer 
 ever to be one of pride? "The wondrous 
 works of Him which is perfect in knowl- 
 edge ? " Is our knowledge ever to be so ? 
 
 It is one of the most discouraging con- 
 sequences of the varied character of this 
 work of mine, that I am wholly unable to 
 take note of the advance of modern science. 
 What has conclusively been discovered or 
 observed about clouds I know not; but by 
 the chance inquiry possible to me I find 
 no book which fairly states the difficulties 
 of accounting for even the ordinary aspects 
 of the sky. I shall, therefore, be able to 
 do little more than suggest inquiries to the 
 reader, putting the subject in a clear form 
 for him. All men accustomed to investiga- 
 tion will confirm me in saying that it is a 
 great step when we are personally quite cer- 
 tain what we do not know. First, then, I 
 
SKY AND CLOUD, 93 
 
 believe we do not know what makes clouds 
 float. Clouds are water, in some form or 
 another; but water is heavier than air, and 
 the finest form you can give a heavy thing 
 will not make it float in a light thing. On 
 it, yes, as a boat ; but in it, no. Clouds are 
 not boats, nor boatshaped, and they float in 
 the air, not on the top of it. " Nay, but 
 though unlike boats, may they not be like 
 feathers? If out of quill substance there 
 may be constructed eider-down, and out of 
 vegetable tissue, thistle-down, both buoyant 
 enough for a time, surely of water-tissue 
 may be constructed also water-down, which 
 will be buoyant enough for all cloudy pur- 
 poses." Not so. Throw out your eider 
 plumage in a calm day, and it will all come 
 settling to the ground — slowly indeed, to 
 aspect; but practically so fast that all 
 our finest clouds would be here in a 
 heap about our ears in an hour or two, if 
 they were only made of water feathers. 
 " But may they not be quill feathers, and 
 have air inside them? May not all their 
 particles be minute little balloons?" A 
 balloon only floats when the air inside 
 it is either specifically, or by heating, lighter 
 than the air it floats in. If the cloud-feath- 
 ers had warm air inside their quills, a cloud 
 
94 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 would be warmer than the air about it, 
 which it is not (I believe). And if the 
 cloud-feathers had hydrogen inside their 
 quills, a cloud would be unwholesome for 
 breathing, which it is not — at least so it 
 seems to me. 
 
 " But may they not have nothing inside their 
 quills?" Then they would rise, as bubbles 
 do through water, just as certainly as, if they 
 were solid feathers, they would fall. All our 
 clouds would go up to the top of the air, and 
 swim in eddies of cloud-foam. 
 
 " But is not that just what they do ? " No. 
 They float at different heights, and with 
 definite forms, in the body of the air itself. 
 If they rose like foam, the sky on a cloudy 
 day would look like a very large flat glass of 
 champagne seen from below, with a stream 
 of bubbles (or clouds) going up as fast as 
 they could to a flat foam-ceiling. 
 
 " But may they not be just so nicely 
 mixed out of something and nothing, as to 
 float where they are wanted ? " Yes : that is 
 just what they not only may, but must be: 
 only this way of mixing something and noth- 
 ing is the very thing I want to explain or have 
 explained, and cannot do it, nor get it done. 
 
 Except thus far. It is conceivable that 
 minute hollow spherical globules might be 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 95 
 
 formed of water, in which the enclosed vacu- 
 ity just balanced the weight of the enclosing 
 water, and that the arched sphere formed by 
 the watery film was strong enough to pre- 
 vent the pressure of the atmosphere from 
 breaking it in. Such a globule would float 
 like a balloon at the height in the atmosphere 
 where the equipoise between the vacuum it 
 enclosed, and its own excess of weight above 
 that of the air, was exact. It would, prob- 
 ably, approach its companion globules by 
 reciprocal attraction, and form aggregations 
 which might be visible. 
 
 This is, I believe, the view usually taken 
 by meteorologists. 
 
 Nevertheless, I state it as a possibility only, 
 not seeing how any known operation of phys- 
 ical law could explain the formation of such 
 molecules. This, however, is not the only dif- 
 ficulty. Whatever shape the water is thrown 
 into, it seems at first improbable that it should 
 lose its property of wetness. Minute division 
 of rain, as in " Scotch mist," makes it capable 
 of floating farther, or floating up and down a 
 little, just as dust will float, though pebbles 
 will not ; or gold-leaf, though a sovereign will 
 not ; but minutely divided rain wets as much 
 as any other kind, whereas a cloud, partially 
 always, sometimes entirely, loses its power 
 
96 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 of moistening. Some low clouds look, when 
 you are in them, as if they were made of 
 specks of dust, like short hair; and these 
 clouds are entirely dry. And also many 
 clouds will wet some substances, but not 
 others. So that we must grant further, if 
 we are to be happy in our theory, that the 
 spherical molecules are held together by 
 an attraction which prevents their adhering 
 to any foreign body, or perhaps ceases only 
 under some peculiar electric conditions. 
 
 The question remains, even supposing their 
 production accounted for — What intermedi- 
 ate states of water may exist between these 
 spherical hollow molecules and pure vapor? 
 
 Has the reader ever considered the rela- 
 tions of commonest forms of volatile sub- 
 stance ? The invisible particles which cause 
 the scent of a rose-leaf, how minute, how mul- 
 titudinous, passing richly away into the air 
 continually! The visible cloud of frankin- 
 cense — why visible? Is it in consequence 
 of the greater quantity, or larger size, of the 
 particles, and how does the heat act in throw- 
 ing them off in this quantity, or of this size ? 
 
 Ask the same questions respecting water. 
 It dries, that is, becomes volatile, invisibly, 
 at (any ?) temperature. Snow dries, as water 
 does. Under increase of heat, it volatilizes 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 97 
 
 faster, so as to become dimly visible in large 
 mass, as a heat-haze. It reaches boiling-point, 
 then becomes entirely visible. But compress 
 it, so that no air shall get between the watery 
 particles — it is invisible again. At the first 
 issuing from the steam-pipe the steam is trans- 
 parent ; but opaque, or visible, as it diffuses 
 itself. The water is indeed closer, because 
 cooler, in that diffusion : but more air is be- 
 tween its particles. Then this very question 
 of visibility is an endless one, wavering be- 
 tween form of substance and action of light. 
 The clearest (or least visible) stream becomes 
 brightly opaque by more minute division in 
 its foam, and the clearest dew in hoar-frost. 
 Dust, unperceived in shade, becomes con- 
 stantly visible in sunbeam ; and watery vapor 
 in the atmosphere, which is itself opaque, 
 when there is promise of fine weather, be- 
 comes exquisitely transparent ; and (question- 
 ably) blue, when it is going to rain. 
 
 Questionably blue ; for beside knowing 
 very little about water, we know what, except 
 by courtesy, must, I think, be called Nothing 
 — about air. Is it the watery vapor, or the 
 air itself, which is blue ? Are neither blue, 
 but only white, producing blue when seen over 
 dark spaces? If either blue, or white, why, 
 when crimson is their commanded dress, are 
 
98 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 the most distant clouds crimsonest ? Clouds 
 close to us, may be blue, but far off, golden — 
 a strange result, if the air is blue. And again, 
 if blue, why are rays that come through large 
 spaces of it red : and that Alp, or anything 
 else that catches far-away light, why colored 
 red at dawn and sunset? No one knows, I 
 believe. It is true that many substances, as 
 opal, are blue, or green, by reflected light, 
 yellow by transmitted; but air, if blue at all, 
 is blue always by transmitted light. . . . 
 
 But further: these questions of volatility, 
 and visibility, and hue, are all complicated 
 with those of shape. How is a cloud out- 
 lined ? Granted whatever you choose to ask 
 concerning its material, or its aspect, its lofti- 
 ness, and luminousness — how of its limita- 
 tion ? What hews it into a heap, or spins it 
 into a web ? Cold is usually shapeless, I sup- 
 pose, extending over large spaces equally, or 
 with gradual diminution. You cannot have, 
 in the open air, angles, and wedges, and coils, 
 and cliffs of cold. Yet the vapor stops sud- 
 denly, sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts 
 itself across the gates of heaven in likeness 
 of a brazen bar; or braids itself in and out, 
 and across and across, like a tissue of tapes- 
 try; or falls into ripples, like sand; or into 
 waving shreds and tongues, as fire. On what 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 
 
 99 
 
 anvils and wheels is the vapor pointed, twisted, 
 hammered, whirled, as the potter's clay? By 
 what hands is the incense of the sea built up 
 into domes of marble ? 
 
 And lastly, all these questions respecting 
 substance, and aspect and shape, and line, 
 and division, are involved with others as 
 inscrutable, concerning action. The curves 
 in which clouds move are unknown — nay, 
 the very method of their motion, or apparent 
 motion, how far it is by change of place, how 
 far by appearance in one place and vanish- 
 ing from another. And these questions 
 about movement lead partly far away into 
 high mathematics, where I cannot follow 
 them, and partly into theories concerning 
 electricity and infinite space, where I sup- 
 pose at present no one can follow them. 
 
 What, then, is the use of asking the ques- 
 tions ? 
 
 For my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and 
 perhaps the reader may. I think he ought. 
 He should not be less grateful for summer 
 rain, or see less beauty in the clouds of 
 morning, because they come to prove him 
 with hard questions : to which, perhaps, if we 
 look close at the heavenly scroll, we may find 
 also a syllable or two of answer illuminated 
 
 here and there. — CceK Enarrant, Chap. II, pp. 161-168. 
 — Also Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VII, Chap. I. 
 
 lire 
 
ioo NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 At whatever height they form, clouds may 
 be broadly considered as of two species only, 
 massive and striated. 
 
 The upper clouds, owing to their quiet- 
 ness and multitude, we may, perhaps, con- 
 veniently think of as the " cloud-flocks." . . . 
 Flocks of Admetus under Apollo's keeping. 
 Who else could shepherd such? He by 
 day, dog Sirius by night : or huntress Diana 
 herself — her bright arrows driving away 
 the clouds of prey that would ravage her 
 fair flocks. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. V, Part VII, Chap. II, pp. 149, 151. 
 
 Between the flocks of small countless 
 clouds which occupy the highest heavens, 
 and the gray undivided film of the true rain- 
 cloud, form the fixed masses or torn fleeces, 
 sometimes collected, and calm, sometimes 
 fiercely drifting, which are, nevertheless, 
 known under one general name of cumulus, 
 or heaped cloud. 
 
 The true cumulus, the most majestic 
 of all clouds, and almost the only one 
 which attracts the notice of ordinary ob- 
 servers, is for the most part windless: the 
 movement of its masses being solemn, con- 
 tinuous, inexplicable, a steady advance or 
 retiring, as if they were animated by an 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 101 
 
 inner will, or compelled by an unseen power. 
 They appear to be peculiarly connected 
 with heat, forming perfectly only in the 
 afternoon, and melting away in the even- 
 ing. Their noblest conditions are strongly 
 electric, and connect themselves with storm- 
 cloud and true thunder-cloud. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VII, Chap. Ill, p. 165. 
 
 Stand upon the peak of some isolated 
 mountain at daybreak, when the night mists 
 first rise from off the plains, and watch their 
 white and lake-like fields as they float in 
 level bays and winding gulfs about the 
 islanded summits of the lower hills, un- 
 touched yet by more than dawn, colder and 
 more quiet than a windless sea under the 
 moon of midnight; watch when the first 
 sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, 
 how the foam of their undulating surface 
 parts and passes away: and down under 
 their depths, the glittering city and green 
 pasture lie like Atlantis, between the white 
 paths of winding rivers: the flakes of light 
 falling every moment faster and broader 
 among the starry spires, as the wreathed 
 surges break and vanish above them, and 
 the confused crests and ridges of the dark 
 hills shorten their gray shadows upon the 
 
io2 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall 
 see those scattered mists rallying in the 
 ravines, and floating up toward you, along 
 the winding valleys, till they couch in quiet 
 masses, iridescent with the morning light, 
 upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, 
 whose leagues of massy undulation will melt 
 back into that robe of material light, until 
 they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear 
 again above, in the serene heaven, like a 
 wild, bright, impossible dream, foundation- 
 less and inaccessible, their very bases vanish- 
 ing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue 
 of the deep lake below. Wait yet a little 
 longer, and you shall see those mists gather 
 themselves into white towers, and stand like 
 fortresses along the promontories, massy 
 and motionless, only piled with every instant 
 higher and higher into the sky, and casting 
 longer shadows athwart the rocks ; and out 
 of the pale blue of the horizon you will see 
 forming and advancing a troop of narrow, 
 dark, pointed vapors, which will cover the 
 sky, inch by inch, with their gray network, 
 and take the light off the landscape with an 
 eclipse which will stop the singing of the 
 birds and motion of the leaves together: 
 and then you will see horizontal bars of 
 black shadow forming under them, and lurid 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 103 
 
 wreaths create themselves, you know not 
 how, along the shoulders of the hills; you 
 never see them form, but when you look 
 back to a place which was clear an instant 
 ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the 
 precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey. 
 And then you will hear the sudden rush of 
 the awakened wind, and you will see those 
 watch-towers of vapor swept away from their 
 foundations, and waving curtains of opaque 
 rain let down to the valleys, swinging from 
 the burdened clouds in black, bending 
 fringes, or pacing in pale columns along the 
 lake level, grazing its surface into foam as 
 they go. And then, as the sun sinks you 
 shall see the storm drift for an instant from 
 off the hills, leaving their broad sides smok- 
 ing, and loaded yet with snow-white torn, 
 steamlike rags of capricious vapor, now gone, 
 now gathered again; while the smouldering 
 sun, seeming not far away, but burning like 
 a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could 
 reach it, plunges through the rushing wind 
 and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it 
 meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air 
 about with blood. And then you shall hear 
 the fainting tempest die in the hollow of 
 the night, and you shall see a green halo 
 kindling on the summit of the eastern hills, 
 
io 4 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 brighter — brighter yet, till the large white 
 circle of the slow moon is lifted up among 
 the barred clouds, step by step, line by line ; 
 star after star she quenches with her kin- 
 dling light, setting in their stead an army 
 of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the 
 heaven, to give light upon the earth, which 
 move together, hand in hand, company by 
 company, troop by troop, so measured in 
 their unity of motion, that the whole heaven 
 seems to roll with them, and the earth to 
 reel under them. And then wait yet for one 
 hour, until the east again becomes purple, 
 and the heaving mountains, rolling against 
 it in darkness, like the waves of a wild sea, 
 are drowned one by one in the glory of 
 its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze 
 in their winding paths about the mountains, 
 like mighty serpents with scales of fire; 
 watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, 
 kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each 
 in itself a new morning: their long ava- 
 lanches cast down in keen streams brighter 
 than the lightning, sending his tribute of 
 driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the 
 heaven: the rose-light of their silent domes 
 flushing that heaven about them and above 
 them, piercing with purer light through its 
 purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 105 
 
 glory on every wreath as it passes by, until 
 the whole heaven — one scarlet canopy, — is 
 interwoven with a roof of waving flame, 
 and tossing, vault, beyond vault, as with the 
 drifted wings of many companies of angels. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. Ill, Chap. IV, 
 pp. 385-388. 
 
 Did you ever see one sunrise like another? 
 does not God vary His clouds for you every 
 morning and every night? though, indeed, 
 there is enough in the disappearing and 
 appearing of the great orb above the rolling 
 of the world, to interest all of us, one would 
 think, for as many times as we shall see it ; 
 and yet the aspect is changed for us daily. 
 
 — Lectures on Architecture and Painting, Lecture I, p. 220. 
 
 Concerning stars in the east — you can't 
 see the loveliest which appear there natu- 
 rally, — the Morning Star, namely, and his 
 fellows, — unless you get up in the morning. 
 
 If you resolve thus always, so far as may 
 be in your own power, to see the loveliest 
 which are there naturally you will soon come 
 to see them in a supernatural manner, with 
 a quite — properly so-called — "miraculous " 
 or " wonderful " light which will be a light in 
 your spirit, not in your eyes. And you will 
 
106 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 hear, with your spirit, the Morning Star and 
 his fellows sing together ; also, you will hear 
 the sons of God shouting together for joy 
 with them; particularly the little ones, — spar- 
 rows, greenfinches, linnets, and the like. 
 
 You will by persevering in the practice, 
 gradually discover that it is a pleasant thing 
 to see stars in the luminous east ; to watch 
 them fade as they rise : to hear their Master 
 say, " Let there be light, — and there is 
 light": to see the world made that day at 
 
 the Word : —Fors Clavigera, Vol. Ill, Letter LX, p. 79. 
 
 Last night the sky was all a spangle and 
 delicate glitter of stars, the glare of them 
 and spikiness softened off by a young 
 darling of a Moon. — Hortus indusus,^. 51. 
 
 Very wet all morning: the clouds drifting 
 like smoke from the hills, and hanging in 
 wreaths about the white churches on their 
 woody slopes. Kept in till three, then the 
 clouds broke. . . . The clouds were rising 
 gradually from the Apennines, fragments 
 entangled here and there in the ravines 
 catching the level sunlight like so many 
 tongues of fire : the dark blue outline of the 
 hills clear as crystal against a pale distant 
 purity of green sky, the sun touching here 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 107 
 
 and there upon their turfy precipices. . . . 
 A mass of higher mountains, plunging down 
 into broad valleys dark with olive, their sum- 
 mits at first gray with rain, then deep blue 
 with flying showers — the sun suddenly catch- 
 ing the near woods at their base, already 
 colored exquisitely by the autumn, with 
 such a burst of robing, — penetrating, glow 
 as Turner only could even imagine, set off 
 by the gray storm behind. 
 
 To the south, an expanse of sea, varied by 
 reflection of white Alpine cloud, and delicate 
 lines of most pure blue, the low sun sending 
 its line of light — forty miles long — from the 
 horizon ; . . . This continued till near sun- 
 set, when a tall double rainbow rose to the 
 east over the fiery woods, and as the sun 
 sank, the storm of falling rain on the moun- 
 tains became suddenly purple — nearly crim- 
 son ; the rainbow, its hues scarcely traceable, 
 one broad belt of crimson, the clouds above 
 
 all fire. — Praterita, Vol. II, Chap. Ill, pp. 227,228. 
 
 The first and most important character 
 of clouds, is dependent on the different 
 altitudes at which they are formed. The 
 atmosphere may be conveniently considered 
 as divided into three spaces, each inhabited 
 by clouds of specific character altogether 
 
108 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 different, though, in reality, there is no dis- 
 tinct limit fixed between them by Nature, 
 clouds being formed at every altitude, and 
 partaking according to their altitude, more 
 or less of the characters of the upper or 
 lower regions. The scenery of the sky is 
 thus formed of an infinitely graduated series 
 of systematic forms of cloud, each of which 
 has its own region in which alone it is 
 formed, and each of which has specific char- 
 acters which can only be properly deter- 
 mined by comparing them as they are 
 found clearly distinguished by intervals of 
 considerable space. I shall therefore con- 
 sider the sky as divided into three regions 
 — the upper region, or region of the cirrus : 
 the central region, or region of the stratus : 
 the lower region, or the region of the rain- 
 cloud. 
 
 The clouds which I wish to consider in 
 the upper region, never touch even the 
 highest mountains of Europe . . . they are 
 the motionless multitudinous lines of deli- 
 cate vapor with which the blue of the open 
 sky is commonly streaked or speckled after 
 several days of fine weather. . . . Their chief 
 characters are — first, Symmetry: They 
 are nearly always arranged in some definite 
 and evident order, commonly in long ranks 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 109 
 
 reaching sometimes from the zenith to the 
 horizon, each rank composed of an infinite 
 number of transverse bars of about the 
 same length, each bar thickest in the mid- 
 dle, and terminating in a traceless vapor- 
 ous point at each side; the ranks are in 
 the direction of the wind, and the bars of 
 course at right angles to it; these latter 
 are commonly slightly bent in the middle. 
 . . . Another frequent arrangement is in 
 groups of excessively fine, silky, parallel 
 fibres commonly radiating, or having a ten- 
 dency to radiate, from one of their extremi- 
 ties and terminating in a plumy sweep at 
 the other: — these are vulgarly known as 
 "mares' tails." . . . They differ from all 
 other clouds in having a plan and system ; 
 whereas other clouds, though there are cer- 
 tain laws which they cannot break, have 
 yet perfect freedom from anything like a 
 relative and general system of government. 
 The upper clouds are to the lower, what sol- 
 diers on parade are to a mixed multitude. 
 
 Secondly, Sharpness of Edge: — The edges 
 of the bars of the upper clouds, which are 
 turned to the wind, are often the sharpest 
 which the sky shows; . . . The outline of 
 a black thunder-cloud is striking, from the 
 great energy of the color or shade of the 
 
no NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 general mass; but as a line, it is soft and 
 indistinct, compared with the edge of the 
 cirrus, in a clear sky with a brisk breeze. . . . 
 
 Thirdly, Multitude: — The delicacy of 
 these vapors is sometimes carried into such 
 an infinity of division, that no other sensa- 
 tion of number that the earth or heaven can 
 give is so impressive. . . . 
 
 Fourthly, Purity of Color . . . their colors 
 are more pure and vivid, and their white 
 less sullied than those of any other clouds. 
 
 Lastly, Variety: — Variety is never so 
 conspicuous as when it is united with sym- 
 metry. The perpetual change of form in 
 other clouds, is monotonous in its very dis- 
 similarity, nor is difference striking where no 
 connection is implied ; but if through a range 
 of barred clouds, crossing half the heaven, all 
 governed by the same forces, and falling into 
 one general form, there be yet a marked and 
 evident dissimilarity between each member 
 of the great mass — one more finely drawn, 
 the next more delicately moulded, the next 
 more gracefully bent, — each broken into 
 differently modelled and variously numbered 
 groups, the variety is doubly striking, be- 
 cause contrasted with the perfect symmetry of 
 which it forms a part. . . . Such are the great 
 attributes of the upper cloud region. . . . 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. in 
 
 The colors of these clouds are so marvel- 
 lous in their changefulness, that they require 
 particular notice. If you watch for the 
 next sunset, when there are a considerable 
 number of these cirri in the sky, you will see, 
 especially at the zenith, that the sky does 
 not remain of the same color for two inches 
 together ; one cloud has a dark side of cold 
 blue, and a fringe of milky white; another, 
 above it, has a dark side of purple and an 
 tdge of red ; another, nearer the sun, has an 
 under-side of orange and an edge of gold; 
 these you will find mingled with, and passing 
 into the blue of the sky, which in places you 
 will not be able to distinguish from the cool 
 gray of the darker clouds, and which will be 
 itself full of gradation, now pure and deep, 
 now faint and feeble; and all this is done, 
 not in large pieces, nor on a large scale, but 
 over and over again in every square yard, so 
 that there is no single part nor portion of 
 the whole sky which has not in itself variety 
 of color enough for a separate picture, and 
 yet no single part which is like another, 
 or which has not some peculiar source of 
 beauty, and some peculiar arrangement of 
 color of its own. 
 
 — Modern Painters.Vol. I, Part II, Sect. Ill, Chap. II, pp. 329-338. 
 
ii2 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 An entirely glorious sunset . . . deep scar- 
 let and purest rose, on purple gray, in bars ; 
 and stationary, plumy, sweeping filaments 
 above in upper-sky — remaining in glory, 
 every moment best, changing from one 
 good into another (but only in color or 
 light — form steady), for half an hour full, 
 and the clouds afterwards fading into the 
 gray against amber twilight, stationary in 
 the same form for about two hours, at least. 
 The darkening rose-tint remained till half- 
 past ten ; the grand time being at nine. 
 The day had been fine, exquisite green 
 light on afternoon hills. 
 
 — The Storm- Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, Lecture I, p. 388. 
 
 Our boat shoots swiftly from beneath 
 the last bridge of Venice, and brings us 
 out into the open sea and sky. The pure 
 cumuli of cloud lie crowded and leaning 
 against one another, rank beyond rank, far 
 over the shining water, each cut away at 
 its foundation by a level line, trenchant and 
 clear, till they sink to the horizon like a 
 flight of marble steps, except where the 
 mountains meet them, and are lost in 
 them, barred across by the grey terraces of 
 those cloud foundations, and reduced into 
 one crestless bank of blue, spotted here 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 113 
 
 and there with strange flakes of wan, aerial, 
 greenish light, strewed upon them like snow. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. Ill, p. 33. 
 
 Are not all natural things, it may be 
 asked, as lovely near as far away ? Nay, 
 not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the 
 delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides, 
 and the rounded lustre of their magnifi- 
 cent rolling. They are meant to be be- 
 held far away ; they were shaped for their 
 place, high above your head ; approach 
 them, and they fuse into vague mists, or 
 whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous 
 
 Vapor. — The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXI, p. 244. 
 
 Never if you can help it, miss seeing 
 the sunset and the dawn. 
 
 — The Laws of Fesole, Chap. I, p. 20. 
 
 The cloud, or firmament, as we have seen, 
 signifies the ministration of the heavens to 
 man. That ministration may be in judg- 
 ment or mercy — in the lightning, or the 
 dew. But the bow, or color, of the cloud, 
 signifies always mercy, the sparing of life : 
 such ministry of the heaven, as shall feed 
 and prolong life. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. XI, p. 404. 
 
ii 4 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 The day had been fine, with scattered 
 clouds ; in the evening a most curious case 
 of floating cap clouds hooding the Mont 
 Blanc summit without touching it, like gos- 
 samer blown upward from a field; an awning 
 of slender threads waving like weeds in the 
 blue sky (as weeds in a brook current I 
 meant), and drawn out like floss silk as fine 
 
 as SnOW. — Prceterita, Vol. II, Chap. XI, p. 370. 
 
 Of one thing I am well assured, that so far 
 as the clouds are regarded, not as conceal- 
 ing the truth of other things, but as them- 
 selves true and separate creations, they are 
 not usually beheld by us with enough honor ; 
 we have too great veneration for cloudless- 
 
 neSS. — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. V, p. 1 1 1. 
 
 Note that there is this great peculiarity 
 about sky subject, as distinguished from 
 earth subject: — that the clouds, not being 
 much liable to man's interference are always 
 beautifully arranged . . . 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 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 115 
 
 interests 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 ; . . . Clouds are definite and very 
 beautiful forms of sculptured mist: sculp- 
 tured 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 vapor beyond certain limits, hence 
 their angular and fantastic outlines, as dif- 
 ferent from a swollen, spherical, or globular 
 formation, on the one hand, as from that of 
 flat films or shapeless mists on the other. 
 
 — The Elements of Drawings Letter II, pp. 327, 329. 
 
 In fine weather the sky was either blue or 
 clear in its light; the clouds either white 
 or golden, adding to, not abating, the lustre 
 of the sky. In wet weather, there were two 
 different species of clouds, — those of benefi- 
 cent rain, which for distinction's sake I will 
 call the non-electric rain-cloud, and those of 
 storm, usually charged highly with electricity. 
 The beneficent rain-cloud was indeed often 
 extremely dull and gray for days together, 
 
n6 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 but gracious nevertheless, felt to be doing 
 good, and often to be delightful after drought; 
 capable also of the most exquisite coloring, 
 under certain conditions; and continually 
 traversed in clearing by the rainbow: — and, 
 secondly, the storm-cloud, always majestic, 
 often dazzlingly beautiful, and felt also to be 
 beneficent in its own way, affecting the mass 
 of the air with vital agitation, and purging it 
 from the impurity of all mobific elements. 
 
 In the entire system of the firmament, 
 thus seen and understood, there appeared 
 . . . the incontrovertible and unmistakable 
 evidence of a Divine Power in creation, which 
 had fitted, as the air for human breath, so 
 the clouds for human sight and nourishment: 
 
 — the Father who was in heaven feeding day 
 by day the souls of His children with mar- 
 vels, and satisfying them with bread, and so 
 filling their hearts with food and gladness. 
 
 — The Storm- Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, Lecture I, p. 366. 
 
 The discovery by modern science that all 
 mortal strength is from the Sun while it has 
 thrown foolish persons into atheism, is, to 
 wise ones, the most precious testimony to 
 their faith yet given by physical Nature ; for 
 it gives us the arithmetical and measurable 
 assurance that men vitally active are living 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 117 
 
 sunshine, having the roots of their souls set 
 in sunlight, as the roots of a tree are in the 
 earth ; not that the dust is therefore the God 
 of the tree, but the Tree is the animation of 
 the dust, and the living soul of the sunshine. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. Ill, Letter LXIII, p. 148. 
 
 You cannot love the real Sun, that is to 
 say physical light and color, rightly, unless 
 you love the spiritual Sun, that is to say 
 justice and truth, rightly. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. Ill, Letter LXVI, p. 215. 
 
 All lovely clouds, remember, are quiet 
 clouds, — not merely quiet in appearance 
 because of their greater height and distance, 
 but quiet actually, fixed for hours, it may be, 
 in the same form and place. I have seen a 
 fair-weather cloud high over Coniston Old 
 Man, — not on the hill, observe, but a vertical 
 mile above it, — stand motionless, — change- 
 less, — for twelve hours together. From four 
 o'clock in the afternoon of one day I watched 
 it through the night by the north twilight, 
 till the dawn struck it with full crimson, at 
 four of the following July morning. 
 
 What is glorious and good in the heavenly 
 cloud, you can, if you will, bring also into 
 your lives, — which are indeed like it, in 
 
n8 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 their vanishing, but how much more in their 
 not vanishing, till the morning take them to 
 itself. As this ghastly phantasy of death is 
 to the mighty clouds of which it is written, 
 " The Chariots of God are twenty thousand, 
 even thousands of angels," are the fates to 
 which your passions may condemn you, — 
 or your resolution raise. You may drift 
 with the phrenzy of the whirlwind, — or be 
 fastened for your part in the pacified efful- 
 gence of the sky. 
 
 — The Art of England, Lecture VI, p. 356. 
 
 There is no effect of sky possible in the 
 lowlands which may not in equal perfec- 
 tion be seen among the hills; but there 
 are effects by tens of thousands, forever 
 invisible and inconceivable to the inhabit- 
 ant of the plains, manifested among the 
 hills in the course of one day. The mere 
 power of familiarity with the clouds, of 
 walking with them, and above them, alters 
 and renders clear our whole conception of 
 the baseless architecture of the sky; and 
 for the beauty of it, there is more in a 
 single wreath of early cloud, pacing its way 
 up an avenue of pines, or pausing among 
 the points of their fringes, than in all the 
 white heaps that fill the arched sky of the 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 119 
 
 plains from one horizon to the other. And 
 of the nobler cloud manifestations, — the 
 breaking of their troublous seas against the 
 crags, their black spray sparkling with light- 
 ning; or the going forth of the morning 
 along their pavements of moving marble, 
 level-laid between dome and dome of 
 snow; — of these things there can be as lit- 
 tle imagination or understanding in an in- 
 habitant of the plains as of the scenery of 
 another planet than his own. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part IV, Chap. XX, p. 432. 
 
 The moss-lands have one great advan- 
 tage over the forest-lands, namely, sight of 
 the sky. And not only sight of it, but 
 continual and beneficent help from it. 
 What they have to separate them from 
 barren rock, namely, their moss and 
 streams, being dependent on its direct 
 help, not on great rivers coming from dis- 
 tant mountain chains, nor on vast tracks 
 of ocean-mist coming up at evening, but 
 on the continued play and change of sun 
 and cloud. . . . 
 
 ... It would be strange, indeed, if there 
 were no beauty in the phenomena by which 
 this great renovating and purifying work 
 is done. And it is done almost entirely 
 
120 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 by the great Angel of the Sea — rain: the 
 Angel, observe, the messenger sent to a 
 special place on a special errand. Not the 
 diffused perpetual presence of the burden 
 of mist, but the going and returning of 
 intermittent cloud. All turns upon this 
 intermittence. Soft moss on stone and 
 rock; — cave-fern of tangled glen; wayside 
 well — perennial, patient, silent, clear ; steal- 
 ing through its square font of rough-hewn 
 stone : ever thus deep — no more — which 
 the winter wreck sullies not, the summer 
 thirst wastes not, incapable of stain as of 
 decline — where the fallen leaf floats unde- 
 cayed, and the insect darts undenting. 
 Cressed brook and ever-eddying river, 
 lifted even in flood scarcely over its step- 
 ping stones, — but through all sweet sum- 
 mer keeping tremulous music with harp- 
 strings of dark water among the silver 
 fingering of the pebbles. Far away in the 
 south the strong river gods have all hasted, 
 and gone down to the sea. Wasted and 
 burning, white furnaces of blasting sand, 
 their broad beds lie ghastly and bare ; but 
 here the soft wings of the Sea Angel droop 
 still with dew, and the shadows of their 
 plumes falter on the hills : strange laugh- 
 ings, and glitterings of silver streamlets, 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 121 
 
 born suddenly, and twined about the mossy 
 heights in trickling tinsel, answering to 
 them as they wave. 
 
 Nor are those wings colorless. We hab- 
 itually think of the rain-cloud only as dark 
 and gray: not knowing that we owe to it 
 perhaps the fairest, though not the most 
 dazzling of the hues of heaven. Often in 
 our English mornings, the rain-clouds in 
 the dawn form soft level fields, which melt 
 imperceptibly into the blue : or when of 
 less extent, gather into apparent bars, cross- 
 ing the sheets of broader cloud above ; and 
 all these bathed throughout in an unspeak- 
 able light of pure rose-color, and purple, 
 and amber, and blue ; not shining, but 
 misty-soft: the barred masses, when seen 
 nearer composed of clusters or tresses of 
 cloud, like floss silk; looking as if each 
 knot were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted 
 rain. No clouds form such skies, none are 
 so tender, various, inimitable. 
 
 For these are the robes of love of the 
 Angel of the Sea. To these that name is 
 chiefly given, the " spreading of the clouds," 
 from their extent, their gentleness, their 
 fulness of rain. Note how they are spoken 
 of in Job xxxvi. v. 29-31. " By them judge th 
 he the people: he giveth meat in abun- 
 
122 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 dance. With clouds he covereth the light. 
 He hath hidden the light in his hands, 
 and commanded that it should not return. 
 He speaks of it to his friend ; that it is his 
 possession, and that he may ascend thereto. 
 
 That, then, is the Sea Angel's message 
 to God's friends : that, the meaning of 
 those strange golden lights and purple 
 flushes before the morning rain. The rain 
 is sent to judge, and feed us ; but the light 
 is the possession of the friends of God, 
 and they may ascend thereto, — where the 
 tabernacle veil will cross and part its rays 
 no more. 
 
 But the Angel of the Sea has also an- 
 other message, — in the " great rain of his 
 strength," rain of trial, sweeping away ill- 
 set foundations. Then his robe is not 
 spread softly over the whole heaven, as a 
 veil, but sweeps back 'from his shoulders, 
 ponderous, oblique, terrible — leaving his 
 sword-arm free. 
 
 The approach of trial-storm, hurricane- 
 storm, is indeed in its vastness as the 
 clouds of the softer rain. But it is not 
 slow nor horizontal, but swift and steep: 
 swift with passion of ravenous winds, steep 
 as slope of some dark, hollowed hill. The 
 fronting clouds come leaning forward, one 
 
SKY AND CLOUD. 123 
 
 thrusting the other aside, or on ; impatient, 
 ponderous, impendent, like globes of rock, 
 tossed of Titans — Ossa on Olympus — but 
 hurled forward all, in one wave of cloud- 
 lava-cloud whose throat is as a sepulchre. 
 Fierce behind them rages the oblique 
 wrath of the rain, white as ashes, dense as 
 showers of driven steel : the pillars of it full 
 of ghastly life: Rain- Furies, shrieking as 
 they fly: — scourging, as with whips of scor- 
 pions : — the earth ringing and trembling 
 under them, heaven wailing wildly, the 
 trees stooped blindly down, covering their 
 faces, quivering in every leaf with horror, 
 ruins of their branches flying by them like 
 black stubble. . . . 
 
 . . . Nevertheless," the rain-cloud was, on 
 the whole, looked upon by the Greeks as 
 beneficent, so that it is boasted of in the 
 CEdipus Coloneus for its perpetual feed- 
 ing of the springs of Cephisus, and else- 
 where often : and the opening song of the 
 rain-cloud in Aristophanes is entirely beau- 
 tiful. . . . 
 
 . . . These heavens, then, "declare the 
 glory of God " that is, the light of God, the 
 eternal glory, stable and changeless. . . . 
 
 " And the firmament showeth His handi- 
 work? 
 
I2 4 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 The clouds, prepared by the hand of God 
 for the help of man, varied in their minis- 
 tration — veiling the inner splendor — show, 
 not His eternal glory, but His daily handi- 
 work. ..." Remember that thou magnify 
 His work which men behold." 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VII, Chap. IV, pp. 180-197. 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 
 
Rise up actively on the earth; learn what there is in 
 it, know its color and form, and the full measure and 
 make of it. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. Ill, p. 60. 
 
IV. 
 
 ABOUT THE EARTH. 
 
 God has lent us the Earth for our life; it 
 is a great entail. 
 
 — Seven Lamps of Architecture , Chap. VI, p. 176. 
 
 I hope the children of this generation may 
 know more than their fathers, and that the 
 study of the Earth, which hitherto has shown 
 them little more than the monsters of a 
 chaotic past, may at last interpret for them 
 the beautiful work of the creative present, 
 and lead them day by day to find a loveliness, 
 till then unthought' of, in the rock, and a 
 value, till then uncounted, in the gem. 
 
 — In Montibus Sanctis^ Chap. I, p. 122. 
 
 There are, broadly, three great dem- 
 onstrable periods of the Earth's history. 
 That in which it was crystallized; that in 
 which it was sculptured ; and that in which 
 it is now being unsculptured, or deformed. 
 These three periods interlace with each 
 other, and gradate into each other, — as the 
 periods of human life do. Something dies 
 in the child on the day that it is born, — 
 127 
 
128 NATURE STUDIES, 
 
 something is born in the man on the day 
 that he dies ; nevertheless, his life is broadly 
 divided into youth, strength, and decrepitude. 
 In such clear sense, the Earth has its three 
 ages ; of their length we know as yet nothing, 
 except that it has been greater than any man 
 
 had imagined. —Deucalion, Vol. I, Chap. I, p. 22. 
 
 The fruit of Earth, and its waters, and its 
 light — such as the strength of the pure rock 
 can grow — such as the unthwarted sun in 
 his season brings — these are your inherit- 
 ance. — Fors Clavigcra, Vol. I, Letter XVI, p. 219. 
 
 " And God said, Let the waters which are 
 under the heavens be gathered together unto 
 one place, and let the dry land appear." 
 
 We do not, perhaps, often enough con- 
 sider the deep significance of this sentence. 
 We are too apt to receive it as the descrip- 
 tion of an event vaster only in its extent, not 
 in its nature, than the compelling the Red 
 Sea to draw back, that Israel might pass by. 
 We imagine the Deity in like manner rolling 
 the waves of the greater ocean together on 
 a heap, and setting bars and doors to them 
 eternally. But there is a far deeper mean- 
 ing than this in the solemn words of Genesis, 
 and in the correspondent verse of the Psalm, 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 129 
 
 " His hands prepared the dry land." Up to 
 that moment the earth had been void, for it 
 had been without form. The command that 
 the waters should be gathered was the com- 
 mand that the earth should be sculp tiered. 
 The sea was not driven to his place in sud- 
 denly restrained rebellion, but withdrawn to 
 his place in perfect and patient obedience. 
 The dry land appeared, not in level sands, 
 forsaken by the surges, which those surges 
 might again claim for their own: but in 
 range beyond range of swelling hill and iron 
 rock, forever to claim kindred with the firma- 
 ment, and be companioned by the clouds of 
 heaven. 
 
 What space of time was in reality occupied 
 by the " day " of Genesis, is not at present, 
 of any importance for us to consider. By 
 what furnaces of fire the adamant was melted, 
 and by what wheels of earthquake it was 
 torn, and by what teeth of glacier and weight 
 of sea-waves it was engraven and finished 
 into its perfect form, we may perhaps en- 
 deavor to conjecture: but here, as in few 
 words the work is summed by the historian, 
 so in few broad thoughts it should be com- 
 prehended by us ; and as we read the mighty 
 sentence, " Let the dry land appear," we 
 should try to follow the finger of God, as 
 
130 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 it engraved upon the stone tables of the 
 earth the letters and the law of its ever- 
 lasting form: as, gulf by gulf, the channels 
 of the deep were ploughed; and, cape by 
 cape, the lines were traced, with Divine fore- 
 knowledge of the shores that were to limit 
 the nations; and, chain by chain, the moun- 
 tain walls were lengthened forth, and their 
 foundations fastened forever; and the com- 
 pass was set upon the face of the depth, and 
 the fields, and the highest part of the dust 
 of the world were made ; and the right hand 
 of Christ first strewed the snow on Lebanon, 
 and smoothed the slopes of Calvary. 
 
 It is not, I repeat, always needful, in 
 many respects it is not possible, to con- 
 jecture the manner, or the time, in which 
 this work was done ; but it is deeply neces- 
 sary for all men to consider the magnifi- 
 cence of the accomplished purpose, and 
 the depth of the wisdom and love which 
 are manifested in the ordinances of the 
 hills. For observe, in order to bring the 
 world into the form which it now bears, it 
 was not mere sculpture that was needed; 
 the mountains could not stand for a day 
 unless they were formed by materials alto- 
 gether different from those which consti- 
 tute the lower hills and the surfaces of the 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 131 
 
 valleys. A harder substance had to be 
 prepared for every mountain chain ; yet 
 not so hard but that it might be capable 
 of crumbling down into earth fit to nour- 
 ish the alpine forest and the alpine flower; 
 not so hard but that, in the midst of the 
 utmost majesty of its enthroned strength, 
 there should be seen on it the seal of 
 death, and the writing of the same sen- 
 tence that had gone forth against the hu- 
 man frame, " Dust thou art, and unto dust 
 thou shalt return." And with this perish- 
 able substance the most majestic forms 
 were to be framed that were consistent 
 with the safety of man; and the peak was 
 to be lifted, and the cliff rent, as high and 
 as steeply as was possible, in order to per- 
 mit the shepherd to feed his flocks upon 
 the slope, and the cottage to nestle be- 
 neath their shadow. 
 
 And observe, two distinct ends were to 
 be accomplished in the doing this. It was, 
 indeed, absolutely necessary that such emi- 
 nences should be created, in order to fit the 
 earth in anywise for human habitation ; for 
 without mountains the air could not be puri- 
 fied, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained, 
 and the earth must have become for the 
 most part desert plain, or stagnant marsh. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. VII, pp. 122-124. 
 
i 3 2 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 What infinite wonderfulness there is in 
 vegetation, considered, as indeed it is, as the 
 means by which the earth becomes the com- 
 panion of man — his friend and his teacher! 
 In the conditions which we have traced in 
 its rocks, there could only be seen prepara- 
 tion for his existence; — the characters which 
 enable him to live on it safely, and to work 
 with it easily — in all these it has been in- 
 animate and passive; but vegetation is to 
 it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the 
 soul of man. The earth in its depths must 
 remain dead and cold, incapable except of 
 slow crystalline change; but at its surface, 
 which human beings look upon and deal 
 with, it ministers to them through a veil of 
 strange intermediate being : which breathes, 
 but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its 
 appointed place ; passes through life without 
 consciousness, to death without bitterness; 
 wears the beauty of youth, without its pas- 
 sion; and declines to the weakness of age, 
 without its regret. 
 
 And in this mystery of intermediate being, 
 entirely subordinate to us, with which we 
 can deal as we choose, having just the 
 greater power as we have the less respon- 
 sibility for our treatment of the unsuffering 
 creature, most of the pleasures which we 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 133 
 
 need from the external world are gathered, 
 and most of the lessons we need are written, 
 all kinds of precious grace and teaching 
 being united in this link between the Earth 
 and Man ; wonderful in universal adaptation 
 to his need, desire and discipline; God's 
 daily preparation of the earth for him, with 
 beautiful means of life. First a carpet to 
 make it soft for him ; then, a colored fantasy 
 of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading 
 foliage to shade him from sunheat, and shade 
 also the fallen rain, that it may not dry 
 quickly back into the clouds, but stay to 
 nourish the springs among the moss. Stout 
 wood to bear this leafage; easily to be cut, 
 yet tough and light, to make houses for him, 
 or instruments (lance-shaft, or plough-handle, 
 according to his temper) ; useless it had been, 
 if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if 
 less elastic. Winter comes, and the shade 
 of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the 
 earth ; the strong boughs remain, breaking 
 the strength of winter winds. The seeds 
 which are to prolong the race, innumerable 
 according to the need, are made beautiful 
 and palatable, varied into infinitude of 
 appeal to the fancy of man, or provision 
 for his service; cold juice, or glowing spice, 
 or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving 
 
i 3 4 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge or lull- 
 ing charm ; and all these presented in forms 
 of endless change. Fragility or force, soft- 
 ness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; 
 unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, 
 or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils 
 on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid 
 arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wav- 
 ings to and fro with faintest pulse of sum- 
 mer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength 
 of rock, or binding the transience of the 
 sand; crests basking in sunshine of the des- 
 ert, or hiding by dripping spring and light- 
 less cave; foliage far tossing in entangled 
 fields beneath every wave of ocean — cloth- 
 ing with variegated, everlasting films, the 
 peaks of the trackless mountains or minister- 
 ing at cottage doors to every gentlest pas- 
 sion and simplest joy of humanity. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. I, pp. 22-24. 
 
 By truth of earth, we mean the faithful 
 representation of the facts and forms of the 
 bare ground, considered as entirely divested 
 of vegetation, through whatever disguise, or 
 under whatever modification the clothing 
 of the landscape may occasion. . . . 
 
 . . . The laws of the organization of the 
 Earth are distinct and fixed as those of the 
 animal frame, simpler and broader, but 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 135 
 
 equally authoritative and inviolable. . . . 
 They are in the landscape the foundation 
 of all other truths — the most necessary, 
 therefore, even if they were not in them- 
 selves attractive; but they are as beautiful 
 as they are essential. . . . 
 
 We find, according to this its internal 
 structure . . . that the Earth may be con- 
 sidered as divided into three great classes 
 of formation, which geology has already 
 named for us. Primary — the rocks, which, 
 though in position lower than all others, 
 rise to form the central peaks, or interior 
 nuclei of all mountain ranges. Secondary 
 — the rocks, which are laid in beds above 
 these, and which form the greater propor- 
 tion of all hill scenery. Tertiary — the 
 light beds of sand, gravel, and clay, which 
 are strewed upon the surface of all, form- 
 ing plains and habitable territory for man. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. I, pp. 25-30. 
 
 Mountains are, to the rest of the body 
 of the earth, what violent muscular action 
 is to the body of man. The muscles and 
 tendons of its anatomy are in the moun- 
 tain, brought out with fierce and convul- 
 sive energy, full of expression, passion and 
 strength; the plains and the lower hills 
 
136 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 are the repose and the effortless motion 
 of the frame, when its muscles lie dormant 
 and concealed beneath the lines of its 
 beauty, yet ruling those lines in their every 
 undulation. This, then, is the first grand 
 principle of the truth of the earth. 
 
 The spirit of the hills is action, that of 
 the lowlands, repose ; and between them 
 there is to be found every variety of mo- 
 tion and of rest: from the inactive plain, 
 sleeping like the firmament, with cities for 
 stars, to the fiery peaks, which, with heav- 
 ing bosoms and exulting limbs, with the 
 clouds drifting like hair from their bright 
 foreheads, lift up their Titan hands to 
 Heaven, saying, "I live forever!" 
 
 But there is this difference between the 
 action of the earth, and that of a living 
 creature, that while the exerted limbs mark 
 its bones and tendons through the flesh, 
 the excited earth casts off the flesh alto- 
 gether, and its bones come out from be- 
 neath. Mountains are the bones of the 
 earth, their highest peaks are invariably 
 those parts of its anatomy which in the 
 plains lie buried under five and twenty 
 thousand feet of solid thickness of super- 
 incumbent soil, and which spring up in the 
 mountain ranges in vast pyramids or wedges, 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 137 
 
 flinging their garment of earth away from 
 them on each side. The masses of the 
 lower hills are laid over and against their 
 sides, like the masses of lateral masonry 
 against the skeleton arch of an unfinished 
 bridge, except that they slope up to and 
 lean against the central ridge; and finally, 
 upon the slopes of these lower hills are 
 strewed the level beds of sprinkled gravel, 
 sand, and clay, which form the extent of 
 the champaign. Here then is another 
 grand principle of the truth of earth, that 
 the mountains must come from under all, 
 and be the support of all, and that every- 
 thing else must be laid in their arms, heap 
 above heap, the plains being the upper- 
 most. Such being the structure of the 
 framework of the earth, it is next to be 
 remembered, that all soil whatsoever, wher- 
 ever it is accumulated in greater quantity 
 than is sufficient to nourish the moss of the 
 wall-flower, has been so, either by the direct 
 transporting agency of water, or under the 
 guiding influence and power of water. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, pp. 27, 28. 
 
 The Earth, as a tormented and trembling 
 ball, may have rolled in space for myriads of 
 ages before humanity was formed from its 
 
138 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 dust; and as a devastated ruin it may con- 
 tinue to roll, when all that dust shall again 
 have been mingled with ashes that never 
 were warmed by life, or polluted by sin. 
 But for us the intelligible and substantial 
 fact is that the Earth has been brought, by 
 forces we know not of, into a form fitted for 
 our habitation ; on that form a gradual, but 
 destructive, change is continually taking 
 place. . . . But in the hand of the great 
 Architect . . . time and decay are as much 
 the instruments of His purpose as the forces 
 by which He first led forth the troops of 
 hills in leaping flocks: the lightning and 
 the torrent and the wasting and weariness of 
 innumerable ages, all bear their part in the 
 working out of one consistent plan ; and the 
 Builder of the temple forever stands beside 
 His work, appointing the stone that is to 
 fall, and the pillar that is to be abased, and 
 guiding all the seeming wildness of chance 
 and change, into ordained splendors and 
 foreseen harmonies. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XII, pp. 183, 185. 
 
 These are the two essential instincts of 
 humanity: the love of Order, and the love 
 of Kindness. By the love of order the moral 
 energy is to deal with the earth, and to dress 
 
 it and keep it. —Lectures on Art, Lecture III, p. 251. 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH, 139 
 
 The fulfilment of all human liberty -is in 
 the peaceful inheritance of the earth, with 
 its "herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yield- 
 ing fruit" after his kind; the pasture or 
 arable land, and the blossoming, or wooded 
 and fruited, land uniting the final elements 
 of life and peace, for body and soul. . . . 
 And as the work of war and sin has always 
 been the devastation of this blossoming 
 earth, whether by spoil or idleness, so the 
 work of peace and virtue is also that of the 
 first day of Paradise, to " Dress it and to 
 keep it." And that will always be the song 
 of perfectly accomplished Liberty, in her 
 industry, and rest, and shelter from troubled 
 thoughts in the calm of the fields. 
 
 — Time and Tide, Letter XXIV, pp. 227, 228. 
 
 Earth, — meant to be nourishing for you 
 
 and bloSSOming. —Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter V, p. 69. 
 
 What hinders us from covering as much 
 of the world as we like with pleasant shade, 
 and pure blossom, and goodly fruit? Who 
 forbids its valleys to be covered over with 
 corn, till they laugh and sing? Who pre- 
 vents its dark forests, ghostly and uninhab- 
 itable, from being changed into infinite 
 orchards, wreathing the hills with frail- 
 
140 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 floretted snow, far away to the half-lighted 
 horizon of April, and flushing the face of 
 all the autumnal earth with glow of clustered 
 
 food ? — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Chap. I, p. 22. 
 
 Do you remember the questioning to 
 Job ? — " Hath the rain a father — and who 
 hath begotten the drops of dew, — the hoary 
 frost of heaven — who hath gendered it?" 
 
 That rain and frost of heaven; and the 
 earth which they loose and bind ; these, 
 and the labor of your hands to divide 
 them, and subdue, are your wealth. . . . 
 
 The fruit of Earth, and its waters, and 
 its light — such as the strength of the 
 pure rock can grow — such as the un- 
 thwarted sun in his season brings — these 
 are your inheritance. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter XVI, p. 219. 
 
 As the first laws of line may best be 
 learned in the lines of the Earth, so also the 
 first laws of light may best be learned in 
 the light of the Earth. Not the hawthorn 
 blossom, nor the pearl, nor the grain of 
 mustard or manna, — not the smallest round 
 thing that lies as the hoar-frost on the 
 ground — but around it, and upon it, are 
 illuminated the laws that bade the Evening 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 141 
 
 and the Morning be the first day. . . . What- 
 ever the position of the Sun, and whatever 
 the rate of motion of any point on the 
 Earth through the minutes, hours, or days 
 of twilight, the meeting of the margins of 
 night and day is always constant in the 
 breadth of its zone of gradually expiring 
 light; and that in relation to the whole 
 mass of the globe, that passage from " glow 
 to gloom " is as trenchant and swift as 
 between the crescent of the new moon and 
 the dimness of the "Auld mune in her 
 
 airmS." — The Laws of Fesole, Chap. X, p. 1 18. 
 
 The simple fact that the sky is brighter 
 than the Earth, is not a precious truth, un- 
 less the Earth itself be first understood. 
 Despise the Earth, or slander it; fix your 
 eyes on its gloom and forget its loveliness; 
 and we do not thank you for your languid 
 or despairing perception of brightness in 
 
 heaven. —Modern Painters^ Vol. IV, Chap. Ill, p. 60. 
 
 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 
 
i 4 2 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 as to accomplish a gradual advance to love- 
 lier order, and more calmly, yet more deeply, 
 animated Rest. Nor has this conviction 
 ever fastened itself upon me more distinctly, 
 than during my endeavor to trace the laws 
 which govern the lowly framework of the 
 dust. For, through all the phases of tran- 
 sition and 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 Paros 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 puri- 
 fying each by the patient withdrawal of it 
 from the anarchy of the mass in which 
 it was mingled. Contracted by increasing 
 draught, till it must shatter into fragments, 
 it infuses continually a finer ichor into the 
 opening veins, and finds in its weakness the 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 143 
 
 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, declining, or rather let me say, 
 rising to repose, finishes the infallible lustre 
 of its crystalline beauty, under harmonies of 
 laws which are wholly beneficent, because 
 wholly inexorable. 
 
 — The Ethics of the Dust, Chap. X, pp. 139, 140. 
 
 About 500 B.C. ... at that culminating 
 period of the Greek religion we find, under 
 one governing Lord of all things, four sub- 
 ordinate elemental forces, and four spiritual 
 powers living in them, and commanding 
 them. The elements are of course the well- 
 known four of the ancient world — the 
 Earth, the waters, the fire, and the air. . . . 
 They are the rulers of the Earth that we 
 tread upon, and the air that we breathe. . . . 
 The rule of the first spirit, Demeter, the 
 Earth Mother, is over the Earth, first, as 
 the origin of all life — the dust from whence 
 we were taken. . . . 
 
 Secondly, as the receiver of all things 
 back at last into silence — "Dust thou art, 
 and unto dust shalt thou return." 
 
 — The Queen of the Air, Chap. I, p. 242. 
 
i 4 4 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 In the children of noble races, trained 
 by surrounding art, and at the same time 
 in the practice of great deeds, there is an 
 intense delight in the landscape of their 
 country as memorial ; a sense not taught 
 to them, nor teachable to any others; but 
 in them, innate; and the seal and reward 
 of persistence in great national life: — the 
 obedience and the peace of ages having 
 extended gradually the glory of the re- 
 vered ancestors also to the ancestral land ; 
 until the Motherhood of the dust, the mys- 
 tery of the Demeter from whose bosom we 
 came, and to whose bosom we return, sur- 
 rounds and inspires, everywhere, the local 
 awe of field and fountain ; the sacredness 
 of landmark that none may remove, and 
 of men that none may pollute, while rec- 
 ords of proud days, and of dear persons, 
 make every rock monumental with ghostly 
 inscription, and every path lovely with 
 
 noble deSOlateneSS. — Lectures on Art, Inaugural, p. 212. 
 
 Wherever there are high mountains, 
 there are hard rocks. Earth, at its strong- 
 est, has difficulty in sustaining itself above 
 the clouds ; and could not hold itself in 
 any noble height, if knitted infirmly. 
 
 — Deucalion, Chap. XV, p. 153. 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 145 
 
 The present conformation of the earth 
 appears dictated by supreme wisdom and 
 kindness. And yet its former state must 
 have been different from what it is now; 
 as its present one from that which it must 
 assume hereafter. Is this, therefore, the 
 earth's prime into which we are born; or 
 is it, with all its beauty, only the wreck of 
 Paradise ? 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XII, p. 182. 
 
 Earth and Air: — The deep of air that 
 surrounds the earth enters into union with 
 the earth at its surface, and with its waters; 
 so as to be the apparent cause of their as- 
 cending into life. First, it warms them, and 
 shades, at once, staying the heat of the sun's 
 rays in its own body, but warding their force 
 with its clouds. 
 
 It warms and cools at once, with traffic of 
 balm and frost; so that the white wreaths 
 are withdrawn from the field of the Swiss 
 peasant by the glow of Libyan rock. It 
 gives its own strength to the sea ; forms and 
 fills every cell of its foam ; sustains the 
 precipices, and designs the valleys of its 
 waves; gives the gleam to their moving 
 under the night, and the white fire to their 
 plains under sunrise ; lifts their voices along 
 
146 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 the rocks, bears above them the spray of 
 birds, pencils through them the dimpling of 
 unfooted sands. It gathers out of them a 
 portion in the hollow of its hand ; dyes, with 
 that, the hills into dark blue, and their gla- 
 ciers with dying rose : inlays with that, for 
 sapphire, the dome in which it has to set 
 the cloud; shapes out of that the heavenly 
 flocks: divides them, numbers, cherishes, 
 bears them on its bosom, calls them to their 
 journeys, waits by their rest; feeds them 
 from the brooks that cease not, and strews 
 with them the dews that cease. It spins 
 and weaves their fleece into wild tapestry, 
 rends it, and renews; and flits and flames, 
 and whispers, among the golden threads, 
 thrilling them with a plectrum of strange 
 fire that traverses them to and fro, and is 
 enclosed in them like life. 
 
 It enters into the surface of the earth, sub- 
 dues it, and falls together with it into fruitful 
 dust, from which can be moulded flesh: 
 it joins itself, in dew, to the substance of 
 adamant; and becomes the green leaf out 
 of the dry ground ; it enters into the sepa- 
 rated shapes of the earth it has tempered, 
 commands the ebb and flow of the current 
 of their life, fills their limbs with its own 
 lightness, measures their existence by its in- 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 147 
 
 dwelling pulse, moulds upon their lips the 
 words by which one soul can be known to 
 another ; is to them the hearing of the ear, 
 and the beating of the heart; and, passing 
 away, leaves them to the peace that hears 
 and moves no more. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air % Essay II, pp. 305, 306. 
 
 You all probably know that the ochreous 
 stain, which, perhaps, is often thought to 
 spoil the basin of your spring, is iron in a 
 state of rust. ... It is not a fault in the iron, 
 but a virtue, to be so fond of getting rusted, 
 for in that condition it fulfils its most im- 
 portant functions in the universe, and most 
 kindly duties to mankind. Nay, in a cer- 
 tain sense, and almost a literal one, we may 
 say that iron rusted is Living; but when 
 pure or polished, Dead. 
 
 You all probably know that in the mixed 
 air we breathe, the part of it essentially 
 needful to us is called oxygen ; and that this 
 substance is to all animals, in the most ac- 
 curate sense of the word, " breath of life." 
 Now it is this very same air which the iron 
 breathes when it gets rusty. It takes the 
 oxygen from the atmosphere as eagerly as 
 we do, though it uses it differently. The 
 iron keeps all that it gets; we, and other 
 
148 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 animals, part with it again; but the metal 
 absolutely keeps what it has once received 
 of this aerial gift; and the ochreous dust 
 which we so much despise is, in fact, just so 
 much nobler than pure iron, in so far as it 
 is iron and the air. Nobler, and more use- 
 ful — for indeed, the main service of this 
 metal, and of all other metals, to us, is . . . 
 in making the ground we feed from, and 
 nearly all the substances first needful to our 
 existence. For these are all nothing but 
 metals and oxygen — metals with breath put 
 into them. 
 
 Sand, lime, clay, and the rest of the 
 earths — potash and soda, and the rest of 
 the alkalies — are all of them metals which 
 have undergone this, so to speak, vital 
 change, and have been rendered fit for the 
 service of man by permanent unity with the 
 purest air which he himself breathes. . . . 
 
 . . . You think, perhaps, that your iron 
 is wonderfully useful in a pure form, but 
 how would you like the world, if all your 
 meadows, instead of grass, grew nothing 
 but iron wire — if all your arable ground, 
 instead of being made of sand and clay, 
 were suddenly turned into flat surfaces of 
 steel — if the whole earth, instead of its 
 green and glowing sphere, rich with forest 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH, 149 
 
 and flower, showed nothing, but the image 
 of the vast furnace of a ghastly engine — a 
 globe of black, lifeless, excoriated metal ? 
 It would be that, — probably it was once 
 that ; but assuredly it would be, were it not 
 that all the substance of which it is made 
 sucks and breathes the brilliancy of the at- 
 mosphere ; and as it breathes, softening from 
 its merciless hardness, it falls into fruitful 
 and beneficent dust ; gathering itself again 
 into the earths from which we feed, and the 
 stones from which we build ; — into the rocks 
 that frame the mountains, and the sands 
 that bind the sea. 
 
 Hence it is impossible for you to take up 
 the most insignificant pebble at your feet, 
 without being able to read, if you like, this 
 curious lesson in it. You look upon it at first 
 as if it were earth only, " Nay " it answers, 
 " I am not earth — I am earth and air in one ; 
 part of that blue heaven which you love, and 
 long for, is already in me ; it is all my life — 
 without it I should be nothing, and able for 
 nothing: I could not minister to you, nor 
 nourish you — I should be a cruel and help- 
 less thing; but, because there is, according 
 to my need and place in creation, a kind of 
 soul in me, I have become capable of good, 
 and helpful in the circles of vitality." 
 
i S o NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Thus far the same interest attaches to all 
 the earths, and all the metals of which they 
 are made ; but a deeper interest, and larger 
 beneficence belong to that ochreous earth 
 of iron which stains the marble of your 
 springs. It stains much besides that marble. 
 It stains the great earth wheresoever you 
 can see it, far and wide — it is the coloring 
 substance appointed to color the globe for 
 the sight, as well as subdue it to the service 
 of man. 
 
 You have just seen your hills covered with 
 snow, and, perhaps, have enjoyed, at first, 
 the contrast of their fair white with the dark 
 blocks of pine woods; but have you ever 
 considered how you would like them always 
 white — not pure white, but dirty white — 
 the white of thaw with all the chill of snow 
 in it, but none of its brightness? That is 
 what the color of the earth would be without 
 its iron ; that would be its color, not here or 
 there only, but in all places, and at all times. 
 Follow out that idea till you get it in some 
 detail. Think first of your pretty gravel 
 walks in your gardens, yellow and fine, like 
 plots of sunshine between the flower-beds; 
 fancy them all suddenly turned to the color 
 of ashes. That is what they would be with- 
 out iron ochre. Think of your winding 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 151 
 
 walks over the common, as warm to the eye 
 as they are dry to the foot, and imagine them 
 all laid down suddenly with gray cinders. 
 Then pass beyond the common into the 
 country, and pause at the first ploughed 
 field that you see sweeping up the hill sides 
 in the sun, with its deep brown furrows, and 
 wealth of ridges, all a-glow, heaved aside by 
 the ploughshare, like deep folds of a mantle of 
 russet velvet — fancy it all changed suddenly 
 into grisly furrows in a field of mud. That 
 is what it would be without iron. Pass on, 
 in fancy, over hill and dale, till you reach 
 the bending line of the sea shore ; go down 
 upon its breezy beach — watch the white 
 foam flashing among the amber of it, and all 
 the blue sea embayed in belts of gold ; then 
 fancy those circlets of far sweeping shore 
 suddenly put into mounds of mourning — 
 all those golden sands turned into gray slime, 
 the fairies no more able to call to each other, 
 " Come unto these yellow sands," but " Come 
 into these drab sands." That is what they 
 would be, without iron. . . . Thus far we 
 have only been considering the use and 
 pleasantness of iron in the common earth 
 of clay. But there are three kinds of earth 
 which in mixed mass and prevalent quantity, 
 form the world. Those are in common Ian- 
 
t$t NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 guage, the earths of clay, of lime, and of flint. 
 Many other elements are mingled with these 
 in sparing quantities; but the great frame 
 and substance of the earth is made of these 
 three, so that wherever you stand on solid 
 ground, in any country of the globe, the 
 thing that is mainly under your feet will be 
 either clay, limestone, or some condition of 
 the earth of flint, mingled with both. 
 
 These being what we have usually to deal 
 with, Nature seems to have set herself to 
 make these three substances as interesting 
 to us, and as beautiful for us, as she can. 
 The clay, being a soft and changeable sub- 
 stance, she doesn't take much pains about, 
 till it is baked; she brings the color into 
 it only when it receives a permanent form. 
 But the limestone and flint she paints, in 
 her own way, in their native state : and her 
 object in painting them seems to be much the 
 same as in her painting of flowers ; to draw 
 us, careless and idle human creatures, to 
 watch her a little, and see what she is about 
 — that being on the whole good for us, — 
 her children. For Nature is always carry- 
 ing on very strange work with this lime- 
 stone and flint of hers ; laying down beds of 
 them at the bottom of the sea; building 
 islands out of the sea; filling chinks and 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 153 
 
 veins in mountains with curious treasures; 
 petrifying mosses, and trees, and shells ; in 
 fact carrying. on all sorts of business, sub- 
 terranean or submarine, which it would be 
 highly desirable for us, who profit and live 
 by it, to notice as it goes on. And ap- 
 parently to lead us to do this, she makes 
 picture-books for us of limestone and flint ; 
 and tempts us, like foolish children as 
 we are, to read her books by the pretty 
 colors in them. The pretty colors in her 
 limestone-books form those variegated 
 marbles which all mankind have taken de- 
 light to polish and build with from the 
 beginning of time ; and the pretty colors in 
 her flint-books form those agates, jaspers, 
 cornelians, bloodstones, onyxes, cairngorms, 
 chrysoprases, which men have in like man- 
 ner taken delight to cut, and polish, and 
 make ornaments of, from the beginning of 
 time ; and yet, so much of babies are they, 
 and so fond of looking at the pictures in- 
 stead of reading the book, that I question 
 whether, after six thousand years of cutting 
 and polishing, there are above two or three 
 people out of any given hundred, who know, 
 or care to know, how a bit of agate or a bit 
 of marble was made, or painted. 
 
 How it was made, may not be always very 
 
154 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 easy to say; but with what it was painted 
 there is no manner of question. All those 
 beautiful violet veinings and variegations of 
 the marbles of Sicily and Spain, the glowing 
 orange and amber colors of those of Siena, 
 the deep russet of that Rosso antico, and the 
 blood-color of all the precious jaspers that 
 enrich the temples of Italy ; and finally, all 
 the lovely transitions of tint in the pebbles 
 of Scotland and the Rhine, which form, 
 though not the most precious, by far the 
 most interesting portion of our modern 
 jewellers' work; — all these are painted by 
 Nature with this one material only, variously 
 proportioned and applied — the oxide of 
 iron. . . . 
 
 But this is not all, nor the best part of the 
 work of iron. Its service in producing these 
 beautiful stones is only rendered to rich 
 people, who can afford to quarry and polish 
 them. But Nature paints for all the world, 
 poor and rich together ; and while, there- 
 fore, she thus adorns the innermost rocks 
 of her hills, to tempt your investigation, or 
 indulge your luxury, — she paints far more 
 carefully the outsides of the hills, which are 
 for the eyes of the shepherd and the plough- 
 man . . . Have you ever considered, in 
 speaking as we do so often of distant blue 
 
ABOUT THE EARTH. 155 
 
 hills, what it is that makes them blue ? To 
 a certain extent it is distance ; but distance 
 alone will not do it. Many hills look white, 
 however distant. That lovely dark purple 
 color of our Welch and Highland hills is 
 owing, not to their distance merely, but to 
 their rocks. Some of their rocks are, indeed, 
 too dark to be beautiful, being black or ashy 
 gray; owing to imperfect and porous struc- 
 ture. But when you see this dark color 
 dashed with russet and blue, and coming 
 out in masses among the green ferns, so 
 purple that you can hardly tell at first 
 whether it is rock or heather, then you 
 must thank your old friend, the oxide of 
 iron. 
 
 But this is not all. It is necessary for the 
 beauty of hill scenery that Nature should 
 color not only her soft rocks, but her hard 
 ones; and she colors them with the same 
 thing, only more beautifully. Perhaps you 
 have wondered at my use of the word 
 "purple " so often of stones: but the Greeks, 
 and still more the Romans, who had pro- 
 found respect for purple, used it of stone 
 long ago. You have all heard of "porphyry" 
 as among the most precious of the harder 
 massive stones. The color which gave it 
 that noble name, as well as that which gives 
 
i 5 6 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 the flush to all the rosy granite of Egypt — 
 yes, and to the rosiest summits of the Alps 
 themselves — is still owing to the same sub- 
 stance — your humble oxide of iron. 
 
 The Two Paths ) Lecture V, pp. 104- in. 
 
JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 
 
The history of a mineral is not given by ascertain- 
 ment of the number or the angles of the planes of 
 its crystals, but by ascertaining the manner in which 
 those crystals originate, increase, and associate. 
 
 — In Montibus Sanctis^ Chap. I, p. 116. 
 
JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 In the handful of shingle which you 
 gather from the sea-beach, which the indis- 
 criminate sea, with equality of eternal form, 
 has only educated to be, every one, round, 
 you will see little difference between the 
 noble and mean stones. But the jewel- 
 ler's trenchant education of them will tell 
 you another story. Even the meanest will 
 be better for it, but the noblest so much 
 better that you can class the two together 
 no more. The fair veins and colors are all 
 clear now, and so stern is Nature's intent 
 regarding this, that not only will the polish 
 show which is best, but the best will take the 
 most polish. You shall not merely see they 
 have more virtue than the others, but see 
 that more of virtue more clearly; and the less 
 virtue there is, the more dimly you shall see 
 
 what there is Of it— Time and Tide, Letter XXV, p. 230. 
 
 Pebble — or crystal : in Scotland the main 
 questions respecting these two main forms of 
 silica are put to us, with a close solicitude, 
 by the beautiful conditions of agate, and 
 the glowing colors of the Cairngorm, which 
 
 159 
 
160 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 have always variegated and illuminated the 
 
 favorite jewelry of Scottish laird and lassie. 
 
 May I hope, with especial reference to the 
 
 favorite gem 
 Of Scotland's mountain diadem, 
 
 to prevail on some Scottish mineralogist to 
 take up the . . . subject of the relation of 
 color in minerals to their state of substance ; 
 why, for instance, large and well-developed 
 quartz crystals are frequently topaz color or 
 smoke color, — never rose-color; while mas- 
 sive quartz may be rose-color, and pure white 
 or gray, but never smoke color ; again, why 
 amethyst quartz may continually, be infinitely 
 complex and multiplex in crystallization, but 
 never warped; while smoky quartz may 
 be continually found warped, but never, in 
 the amethystine way, multiplex ; why, again, 
 smoky quartz and Cairngorm are continu- 
 ally found in short crystals, but never in 
 long slender ones, — as, to take instance in 
 another mineral, white beryl is usually short 
 or even tabular, and green beryl long, almost 
 in proportion to its purity? 
 
 — In Montibus Sanctis , Chap. I, p. 112. 
 
 A sapphire is the same stone as a ruby ; 
 both are the pure earth of clay crystallized. 
 No one knows why one is red and the other 
 
JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 161 
 
 blue. A diamond is pure coal crystallized. 
 An opal, pure flint — in a state of fixed jelly. 
 
 — Hortus Inclusus, p. 66. 
 
 Pick up the ruby . . . and look carefully 
 at the beautiful hexagonal lines which 
 gleam on its surface. ... I do not know 
 what is the exact method of a ruby's con- 
 struction ; but you see by these lines, what 
 fine construction there is, even in this hard- 
 est of stones (after the diamond,) which 
 usually appears as a massive lump or knot. 
 There is therefore no real mineralogical dis- 
 tinction between needle crystals and knotted 
 crystals, but, practically crystallized masses 
 throw themselves into one of three groups 
 . . . 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 ' ; when they are in 
 folia, they make them 'foliated" ; when they 
 are in knots (or grains) ' granular.' Fibrous 
 rocks are comparatively rare, in mass; but 
 fibrous minerals are innumerable. . . . 
 
 . . . 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. 
 
 "Pure! Does that mean clear — trans- 
 
162 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 parent ? " " 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." . . . 
 
 ... I call their shape only their second 
 virtue, because it depends on time and acci- 
 dent, 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 
 rejecting impurity, if it has crystalline life 
 
 enough.— The Ethics of the Dust, Lecture IV, p. 53, V, p. 57. 
 
 It is seldom that any mineral crystallises 
 alone. Usually two or three, under quite 
 different crystalline laws, form together. 
 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 ! . . . They show 
 exactly the same varieties of temper that 
 human creatures might. Sometimes they 
 yield the required place with perfect grace 
 and courtesy; forming fantastic, but ex- 
 
JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 163 
 
 quisitely finished groups ; and sometimes 
 they will not yield at all ; but fight furiously 
 for their places, losing all shape and honor, 
 and even their own likeness, in the contest. 
 There is, in reality, more likeness 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 mineral than 
 between any two specimens of the same 
 flower ; and the friendships and wars of crys- 
 tals depend more definitely and curiously 
 on their varieties of disposition, than any 
 association 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 
 crystallise 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 
 
 Stones. — The Ethics of the Dust, Chap. VI, pp. 71, 72. 
 
 If you want to see the gracefullest and 
 happiest caprices of which dust is capable 
 you must go to the Hartz; — whether the 
 
1 64 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 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 -colored, carbonate of lime; which 
 comes out of a grey limestone. The gob- 
 lins 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 pres- 
 entation at court is to a young lady — after 
 which it is expected to set fashions — there's 
 no end to its pretty ways of behaving. First 
 it will make itself into pointed darts as fine 
 as hoar-frost; here, it is 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 beau- 
 tiful little plates, for them to eat off; pres- 
 ently it is in towers which they might be 
 imprisoned in; presently in caves and cells, 
 where they may make nun-gnomes of them- 
 selves, 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 these 
 are, all of them, necessarily, shapes that the 
 mineral takes in other places, they are all 
 
JEWELS OE THE EARTH. 165 
 
 taken here with such a grace that you recog- 
 nise the high caste and breeding of the 
 crystals wherever you meet them ; and know 
 at once they are Hartz-born. 
 
 — The Ethics of the Bttst, Lecture VIII, pp. 101, 102. 
 
 Today I've found a very soft purple agate, 
 that looks as if it were nearly melted away 
 with pity for birds and flies . . . and another 
 piece of hard wooden agate with only a little 
 ragged sky of blue here and there . . . and 
 a group of crystals with grass of Epidote 
 inside. . . . 
 
 I am delighted with your lovely gift. . . . 
 The perfection of the stone, its exquisite 
 color, and flawless clearness, and the delicate 
 cutting, which makes the light flash from it 
 like a wave of the Lake, make it ... a per- 
 fect mineralogical and heraldic jewel. . . . 
 
 — Hortus Inclususy pp. 47, 48. 
 
 Agates, I think of all stones, confess most 
 of their past history. . . . Observe, first, you 
 have the whole mass of the rock in motion, 
 either contracting itself, and so gradually 
 widening the cracks; or being compressed, 
 and thereby closing them, and crushing their 
 edges : — and if one part of its substance be 
 softer, at the given temperature, than another, 
 
1 66 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 probably squeezing that softer substance out 
 into the veins. Then the veins themselves, 
 when the rock leaves them open by its contrac- 
 tion, 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 constitu- 
 tion 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 decomposition of the rocks 
 themselves; and, at changing temperatures, 
 must exert relatively changing forces of de- 
 composition 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 
 
JEWELS OF THE EARTH, 167 
 
 their own affairs, in the midst of all this, as 
 best they may. They are wonderfully like 
 human creatures, — forget all that is going 
 on if they don't see it, however 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 sur- 
 rounding 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 themselves in, 
 and have changed their mind and ways con- 
 tinually; and have been tired, and taken 
 heart again; and have been sick, and got 
 well again; and thought they would try a 
 different 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 
 
1 68 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 been impressed by alarming circumstances, 
 and have become converted crystals, and be- 
 haved 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, 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 great- 
 est care of, and taught how to hold them- 
 selves 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 eat- 
 ing up thin ones, like great capitalists and 
 little laborers ; and politico-economic crystals 
 teaching the stupid ones how to eat each 
 other, and cheat each other; and foolish 
 crystals getting in the way of wise ones; 
 and impatient crystals spoiling the plans of 
 patient ones, irreparably; just as things go 
 on in the world. 
 
JEWELS OE THE EARTH. 169 
 
 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 all these, besides the 
 two great companies of war and peace, who 
 ally themselves, resolutely to attack, or reso- 
 lutely to defend. And for the close, you see 
 the broad shadow and deadly force of inevit- 
 able fate, above all this ; you see the multi- 
 tudes of crystals whose time has come ; not a 
 set time, as with us, but yet a time, sooner or 
 later, when they must all 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 gen- 
 eration is brought to life, framed out of their 
 
 ashes. — The Ethics of the Dust t Chap. IX, pp. 1 18-120. 
 
 Perhaps the best, though the most famil- 
 iar 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 manu- 
 
i 7 o NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 facturing 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 large manufacturing 
 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 
 war with each other, and destroy recipro- 
 cally each other's nature and power, com- 
 peting 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. Ridding 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 its own instincts of unity, and 
 
JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 171 
 
 it becomes not only white, but clear; not 
 only clear, but hard ; not 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 that a sapphire. 
 
 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 clear and hard, and 
 at last arranges itself in mysterious, infi- 
 nitely 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 thing in the world; and for the 
 blackness that it had, obtains in exchange 
 the power of reflecting all the rays of the 
 sun at once in the vividest blaze that any 
 solid thing can shoot. We call it then a 
 diamond. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VIII, Chap. I, pp. 205, 206. 
 
I 7 2 
 
 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 The black thing, which is one of the pret- 
 tiest 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, but this is the commonest state of 
 it, — opaque, and as black as jet. 
 
 — Ethics of the Dust y Lecture IX, p. in. 
 
 Seize firmly that first idea of the manna, 
 as the type of the bread which is the Word 
 of God; and then look on for the English 
 word " crystal " in Job, of Wisdom. " It can- 
 not be valued with the gold of Ophir, with 
 the precious onyx, or the sapphire : the gold 
 and the crystal shall not equal it, neither 
 shall it be valued with pure gold"; in 
 Ezekiel, " firmament of the terrible crystal," 
 or in the Apocalypse, "A sea of glass like 
 unto crystal, — water of life, clear as crystal," 
 — "light of the city like a stone most pre- 
 cious, even like a jasper stone, clear as 
 crystal." Your understanding the true 
 meaning of all these passages depends on 
 your distinct conception of the permanent 
 clearness and hardness of the Rock-crystal. 
 
 The three substances named here in the 
 first account of Paradise, stand generally as 
 types — the Gold of all precious metals : the 
 Crystal of all clear precious stones prized 
 
JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 173 
 
 for lustre ; the Onyx of all opaque precious 
 stones prized for colour. 
 
 Now note the importance of this grouping. 
 The Gold, or precious metal, is significant 
 of all that the power of the beautiful earth, 
 gold, and of the strong earth, iron, has done 
 for and against man. . . . 
 
 The Crystal is significant of all the power 
 that jewels, from diamonds down through 
 every Indian gem to the glass beads which 
 we now make for ball-dresses, have had over 
 the imagination and economy of men and 
 women — from the day that Adam drank of 
 the water of the crystal river till this hour. 
 
 The Onyx is the type of all stones ar- 
 ranged in bands of different colours : it means 
 primarily, nail-stone — showing a separation 
 like the white half-crescent at the root of the 
 finger-nail ; not without some idea of its sub- 
 jection to the laws of life. Of these stones, 
 part, which are flinty, are the material used 
 for cameos and all manner of engraved work 
 and pietra dura; but in the great idea of 
 banded or belted stones, they include the 
 whole range of marble, and especially ala- 
 baster, giving the name to the alabastra, or 
 vases used especially for the containing of 
 precious unguents, themselves more precious: 
 so that this stone, as best representative of 
 
174 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 all others, is chosen to be the last gift of men 
 to Christ, as gold is their first; incense with 
 both; at His birth, gold and frankincense; at 
 His death, alabaster and spikenard. 
 
 The two sources of the material wealth of 
 all nations were thus offered to the King 
 of men in their simplicity. But their power 
 among civilized nations has been owing to 
 their workmanship. And if we are to ask 
 whether the gold and the stones are to be 
 holy, much more have we to ask if the 
 worker in gold, and the worker in stone, are 
 to be conceived as exercising holy function. 
 
 Now, as we ask of a stone, to know what 
 it is, what it can do, or suffer, so of a human 
 creature, to know what it is, we ask what 
 it can do or suffer. So that we have two 
 scientific questions put to us in this matter: 
 how the stones came to be what they are — 
 or the law of Crystallization: and how the 
 jewellers came to be what they are — or the 
 law of Inspiration. 
 
 . . . The same tradition, whatever its 
 value, which gave us the commands we pro- 
 fess to obey for our moral law, implies also 
 the necessity of inspired instruction for the 
 proper practice of the art of jewellery; and 
 connects the richness of the earth in gold 
 and jewels with the pleasure of Heaven that 
 
JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 75 
 
 we should use them under its direction. 
 The scientific mind will of course draw back 
 in scorn from the idea of such possibility; 
 but then, the scientific mind can neither 
 design, itself, nor perceive the power of de- 
 sign, in others. And practically you will 
 find that all noble designs in jewellery what- 
 soever, from the beginning of the world till 
 now, has been either instinctive, — done, that 
 is to say, by tutorship of nature, with the 
 innocent felicity and security of purely 
 animal art, — Etruscan, Irish, Indian, or Peru- 
 vian gold being interwoven with a fine and 
 unerring grace of industry, like the touch of 
 the bee on its cell, and of the bird on her 
 nest, — or else, has been wrought into its 
 finer forms, under the impulse of religion in 
 sacred service, in crosier, chalice, and lamp : 
 and that the best beauty of its profane ser- 
 vice has been debased from these. And the 
 three greatest masters of design in jewellery, 
 the "facile principes" of the entire European 
 School, are — centrally, the one who defi- 
 nitely worked always with appeal for inspira- 
 tion — Angelico of Fesole ; and on each side 
 of him, the two most earnest reformers of 
 the morals of the Christian Church — Hol- 
 bein and Sandro Botticelli. 
 
 I have first answered the question — how 
 
176 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 men come to be jewellers. Next how do 
 stones come to be jewels ? It seems that by 
 all religious, no less than all profane, teach- 
 ing or tradition these substances are asserted 
 to be precious — useful to man, and sacred 
 to God. 
 
 There are three great laws by which they, 
 and the metals they are to be set in, are 
 prepared for us ; and at present all these 
 are mysteries to us. 
 
 The first, the mystery by which, "surely 
 there is a vein for the silver and a place for 
 the gold whence they find it" — 
 
 The second mystery is that of crystalli- 
 zation ; by which, obeying laws no less arbi- 
 trary than those by which the bee builds 
 her cell — the water produced by the sweet 
 miracles of cloud and spring freezes into the 
 hexagonal stars of the hoar-frost ; — the flint, 
 which can be melted and diffused like water, 
 freezes also, like water, into these hexagonal 
 towers of everlasting ice, and the clay, which 
 can be dashed on the potter's wheel as it 
 pleaseth the potter to make it, can be frozen 
 by the touch of Heaven into the hexagonal 
 star of Heaven's own colour — the sapphire. 
 
 The third mystery, the gathering of crys- 
 tals themselves into ranks or bands, by 
 which Scotch pebbles are made. . . . 
 
 — Deucalion, Vol. I, Chap. VII, pp. 66-71. 
 
JEWELS OF THE EARTH. 177 
 
 There are no natural objects out of which 
 more can be learned than stones. They 
 seem to have been created especially to re- 
 ward a patient observer. Nearly all other 
 objects in Nature can be seen to some ex- 
 tent, without patience, and are pleasant even 
 in being half seen. Trees, clouds and rivers 
 are enjoyed even by the careless : but the 
 stone under his foot has for carelessness 
 nothing in it but stumbling: no pleasure is 
 languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor 
 good of any kind : nothing but symbolism 
 of the hard heart and the unfatherly gift. 
 And yet, do but give it some reverence and 
 watchfulness, and there is bread of thought 
 in it, more than in any other lowly feature 
 of all the landscape. 
 
 For a stone, when it is examined, will be 
 found a mountain in miniature. The fine- 
 ness of Nature's work is so great, that, in a 
 slight block, a foot or two in diameter, she 
 can compress as many changes of form and 
 structure, on a small scale, as she needs for 
 her mountains on a large one ; and taking 
 moss for forests, and grains of crystal for 
 crags, the surface of a stone, in by far the plu- 
 rality of instances, is more interesting than 
 the surface of an ordinary hill, more fantastic 
 in form and incomparably richer in color. 
 
 —Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XVIII, pp. 376, 377. 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 
 
The mountain kingdom of which I claim possession 
 by the law of love. — Pra>terita> Vol. Ill, Chap. II, p. 412. 
 
 Your power of seeing mountains cannot be devel- 
 oped either by your vanity, your curiosity, or your 
 love of muscular exercise. It depends on the culti- 
 vation of the instrument of sight itself, and of the 
 soul that uses it. — Deucalion^ Vol. I, Chap. I, p. II. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 
 
 The glory of a cloud — without its wane ; 
 
 The stillness of the earth — but not its gloom ; 
 The loveliness of life — without its pain ; 
 
 The peace — but not the hunger of the tomb ! 
 Ye Pyramids of God ! around whose bases 
 
 The sea foams noteless in his narrow cup ; 
 
 And the unseen movements of the earth send up 
 A murmur which your lulling snow effaces 
 
 Like the deer's footsteps. Thrones imperishable ! 
 
 About whose adamantine steps the breath 
 
 Of dying generations vanisheth, 
 
 Less cognizable than clouds. . . . 
 
 — Poems — The Alps — p. 310. 
 
 The feeding of the rivers and the purify- 
 ing of the winds are the least of the services 
 appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of 
 the human heart for the beauty of God's 
 working — to startle its lethargy with the 
 deep and pure agitation of astonishment — 
 are their higher missions. They are as a 
 great and noble architecture; first giving 
 shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also 
 with mighty sculpture and painted legend. 
 It is impossible to examine in their con- 
 nected system the features of even the most 
 
 i8x 
 
i82 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 ordinary mountain scenery, without con- 
 cluding that it has been prepared in order 
 to unite, as far as possible, and in the clos- 
 est compass, every means of delighting and 
 sanctifying the heart of man. " As far as 
 possible" ; that is, as far as is consistent with 
 the fulfilment of the sentence of condem- 
 nation on the whole earth. Death must be 
 upon the hills ; and the cruelty of the tem- 
 pests smite them, and the brier and thorn 
 spring up upon them: but they so smite, as 
 to bring their rocks into the fairest forms; 
 and so spring, as to make the very desert 
 blossom as the rose. . . . Even among our 
 own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, 
 though often too barren to be perfectly 
 beautiful, and always too low to be per- 
 fectly sublime, it is strange how many deep 
 sources of delight are gathered into the 
 compass of their glens and vales ; and how, 
 down to the most secret cluster of their 
 far-away flowers, and the idlest leap of 
 their straying streamlets, the whole heart of 
 Nature seems still thirsting to give, and 
 still to give, shedding forth her everlasting 
 beneficence with a profusion so patient, so 
 passionate, that our utmost observance and 
 thankfulness are but, at last, neglect of her 
 nobleness, and apathy to her love. 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 183 
 
 But among the true mountains of the 
 greater orders the Divine purpose of appeal 
 at once to all the faculties of the human 
 spirit becomes still more manifest. Inferior 
 hills ordinarily interrupt, in some degree, 
 the richness of the valleys at their feet. . . . 
 
 . . . But the great mountains lift the low- 
 lands on their sides. Let the reader imagine, 
 first, the appearance of the most varied plain 
 of some richly cultivated country; let him 
 imagine it dark with graceful woods, and 
 soft with deepest pastures; let him fill the 
 space of it, to the utmost horizon, with in- 
 numerable and changeful incidents of scen- 
 ery and life; leading pleasant streamlets 
 through its meadows, strewing clusters of 
 cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet 
 footpaths through its avenues, and animat- 
 ing its fields with happy flocks, and slow 
 wandering spots of cattle : and when he has 
 wearied himself with endless imagining, and 
 left no space without some loveliness of its 
 own, let him conceive all this great plain, 
 with its infinite treasures of natural beauty 
 and happy human life, gathered up in God's 
 hands from one edge of the horizon to the 
 other, like a woven garment; and shaken 
 into deep falling folds, as the robes droop 
 from a king's shoulders ; all its bright rivers 
 
184 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 leaping into cataracts along the hollows 
 of its fall, and all its forests rearing them- 
 selves aslant against its slopes, as a rider 
 rears himself back when his horse plunges ; 
 and all its villages nestling themselves into 
 the new windings of its glens; and all its 
 pastures thrown into steep waves of green- 
 sward, dashed with dew along the edges of 
 their folds, and sweeping down into endless 
 slopes, with a cloud here and there lying 
 quietly, half on the grass, half in the air; 
 and he will have as yet, in all this lifted 
 world, only the foundation of one of the 
 great Alps. And whatever is lovely in the 
 lowland scenery becomes lovelier in this 
 change; the trees which grew heavily and 
 stiffly from the level line of plain assume 
 strange curves of strength and grace as they 
 bend themselves against the mountain side ; 
 they breathe more freely, and toss their 
 branches more carelessly as each climbs 
 higher, looking to the clear light above the 
 topmost leaves of its brother tree ; the flow- 
 ers which on the arable plain fell before the 
 plough, now find out for themselves unap- 
 proachable places, where year by year they 
 gather into happier fellowship, and fear no 
 evil : and the streams which in the level 
 land crept in dark eddies by unwholesome 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 185 
 
 banks, now move in showers of silver, and 
 are clothed with rainbows, and bring health 
 and life wherever the glance of their waves 
 can reach. 
 
 And although this beauty seems at first, 
 in its wildness, inconsistent with the service 
 of man, it is in fact more necessary to his 
 happy existence than all the level and easily 
 subdued land which he rejoices to possess. 
 
 ... It may not be profitless to review 
 briefly the nature of the three great offices 
 which mountain ranges are appointed to 
 fulfil, in order to preserve the health and 
 increase the happiness of mankind. 
 
 Their first use is of course to give motion 
 to (fresh) water. . . . 
 
 The second great use of mountains is to 
 maintain a constant change in the currents 
 and nature of the air. . . . 
 
 The third great use of mountains is to 
 cause perpetual change in the soils of the 
 earth. . . . 
 
 . . . And it is not, in reality, a degrading, 
 but a true, large, and ennobling view of the 
 mountain ranges of the world, if we compare 
 them to heaps of fertile and fresh earth, 
 laid up by a prudent gardener beside his 
 garden beds, whence, at intervals, he casts 
 on them some scattering of new and virgin 
 
186 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 ground. That which we so often lament 
 as convulsion or destruction is nothing else 
 than the momentary shaking of the dust 
 from the spade. . . . 
 
 I have not spoken of the local and pecul- 
 iar utilities of mountains : I do not count the 
 benefit of the supply of summer streams 
 from the moors of the higher ranges — of the 
 various medicinal plants which are nested 
 among their rocks — of the delicate pastur- 
 age which they furnish for cattle — of the 
 forests in which they bear timber for ship- 
 ping — the stones they supply for building, 
 or the ores of metal which they collect into 
 spots open to discovery, and easy for work- 
 ing. All these benefits are of a secondary 
 or a limited nature. But the three great 
 functions — those of giving motion and 
 change to water, air, and earth — are indis- 
 pensable to human existence ; they are oper- 
 ations to be regarded with as full a depth 
 of gratitude as the laws which bid the tree 
 bear fruit, or the seed multiply itself in the 
 earth. And thus those desolate and threat- 
 ening ranges of dark mountains, which, in 
 nearly all ages of the world, men have 
 looked upon with aversion or with terror, 
 and shrunk back from as if they were 
 haunted by perpetual images of death, are, 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 187 
 
 in reality, sources of life and happiness far 
 fuller and more beneficent than all the 
 bright fruitfulness of the plain. 
 
 The valleys only feed ; the mountains 
 feed and guard and strengthen us. We 
 take our ideas of fearfulness and sublimity 
 alternately from the mountains and the sea ; 
 but we associate them unjustly. The sea 
 wave, with all its beneficence, is yet devour- 
 ing and terrible, but the silent mass of the 
 blue mountain is lifted toward heaven in 
 a stillness of perpetual mercy; and the one 
 surge, unfathomable in its darkness, the 
 other, unshaken in its faithfulness, forever 
 bear the seal of their appointed symbolism, 
 
 " Thy Justice is like the Great Mountains 
 Thy Judgments are a great Deep." 
 
 — In Montibus Sanctis, Chap. II, pp. 130-139. 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Chap. VII. 
 
 In approaching any large mountain range, 
 the ground over which the spectator passes, 
 if he examine it with any intelligence, will 
 almost always arrange itself in his mind 
 under three great heads. There will be, 
 first, the ground of the plains or valleys he 
 is about to quit, composed of sand, clay, 
 gravel, rolled stones, and variously mingled 
 soils. . , . 
 
1 88 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 As he advances yet farther into the hill 
 district, he finds the rocks around him as- 
 suming a gloomier apd more majestic con- 
 dition. Their tint "darkens ; their outlines 
 become wild and irregular; and whereas 
 before they had only appeared at the road- 
 side in narrow ledges among the turf, or 
 glanced out from among the thickets above 
 the brooks in white walls and fantastic tow- 
 ers, they now rear themselves up in solemn 
 and shattered masses far and near; softened, 
 indeed, with strange harmony of clouded 
 colors, but possessing the whole scene with 
 their iron spirit ; and rising, in all proba- 
 bility, into eminences as much prouder in 
 actual elevation than those of the inter- 
 mediate rocks, as more powerful in their 
 influence over every minor feature of the 
 landscape. 
 
 And when the traveller proceeds to ob- 
 serve closely the materials of which these 
 nobler ranges are composed, he finds also 
 a complete change in their internal struc- 
 ture. They are no longer formed of delicate 
 sand or dust — each particle of that dust the 
 same as every other, and the whole mass 
 depending for its hardness merely on their 
 closely cemented unity; but they are now 
 formed of several distinct substances visibly 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 189 
 
 unlike each other; and not pressed, but 
 crystallized into one mass — crystallized into 
 a unity far more perfect than that of the 
 dusty limestone, but yet without the least 
 mingling of their several natures with each 
 other. . . . 
 
 . . . There is one lesson evidently in- 
 tended to be taught by the different char- 
 acters of these rocks, which we must not 
 allow to escape us. We have to observe, 
 first, the state of perfect powerlessness, and 
 loss of all beauty, exhibited in those beds 
 of earth in which the separate pieces or 
 particles are entirely independent of each 
 other, more especially in the gravel whose 
 pebbles have all been rolled into one shape ; 
 secondly, the greater degree of permanence, 
 power, and beauty, possessed by the rocks 
 whose component atoms have more affec- 
 tion and attraction for each other, though 
 all of one kind ; and lastly, the utmost form 
 and highest beauty of the rocks in which 
 the several atoms have all different shapes, 
 characters, and offices ; but are inseparably 
 united by some fiery or baptismal process 
 which has purified them all. . . . 
 
 . . . All these orders of substance agree 
 in one character, that of being more or less 
 frangible or soluble. . . . 
 
i 9 o NATURE STUDIES, 
 
 . . . Perfect permanence and absolute se- 
 curity were evidently in no wise intended. 
 It would have been as easy for the Creator 
 to have made mountains of steel as of gran- 
 ite, of adamant as of lime; but this was 
 clearly no part of the Divine counsels ; 
 mountains were to be destructible and 
 frail — to melt under the soft lambency of 
 the streamlet, to shiver before the subtle 
 wedge of the frost, to wither with untraceable 
 decay in their own substance — and yet, 
 under all these conditions of destruction, 
 to be maintained in magnificent eminence 
 before the eyes of men. 
 
 — In Montibus Sanctis, Chap. Ill, pp. 140-146. 
 — Modern Painters, Part V, the beginning of Chap. VIII. 
 
 The higher mountains have their scenes 
 of power and vastness, their blue precipices 
 and cloud -like snows; why should they 
 also have the best and fairest colors given 
 to their foreground rocks, and overburden 
 the human mind with wonder; while the less 
 majestic scenery, tempting us to the observ- 
 ance of details for which amidst the higher 
 mountains we had no admiration left, is yet, 
 in the beauty of those very details, as infe- 
 rior as it is in the scale of magnitude ? 
 
 I believe the answer must be, simply, that 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 191 
 
 it is not good for man to live among what 
 is most beautiful: — that he is a creature 
 incapable of satisfaction by anything upon 
 earth; and that to allow him habitually to 
 possess, in any kind whatsoever, the utmost 
 the earth can give, is the surest way to cast 
 him into lassitude or discontent. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XI, p. 172. 
 
 All mountains, in some degree, but es- 
 pecially those which are composed of soft 
 or decomposing substance, are delicately 
 and symmetrically furrowed by the descent 
 of streams. The traces of their action com- 
 mence at the very summits, fine as threads 
 and multitudinous, like the uppermost 
 branches of a delicate tree. They unite in 
 groups as they descend, concentrating 
 gradually into dark undulating ravines, into 
 which the body of the mountain descends 
 on each side, at first in a convex curve, but 
 at the bottom with the same uniform slope 
 on each side which it assumes in its final 
 descent to the plain, unless the rock be very 
 hard. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. Ill, p. 51. 
 
 I might devote half a volume to a descrip- 
 tion of the fantastic and incomprehensible 
 
192 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 arrangement of these rocks (slaty crystal- 
 lines) and their veins, but all that is necessary 
 for the general reader to know or remember, 
 is this broad fact of the undulation of their 
 whole substance. For there is something, it 
 seems to me, inexpressibly marvellous in this 
 phenomenon, largely looked at. It is to be 
 remembered that these are the rocks which, 
 on the average, will be oftenest observed by 
 the human race. The central granites are 
 too far removed, the lower rocks too common, 
 to be carefully studied; these slaty crystal- 
 lines form the noblest hills that are easily 
 accessible, and seem to be thus calculated 
 especially to attract observation, and reward 
 it. Well, we begin to examine them; and 
 first we find a notable hardness in them, and 
 a thorough boldness of general character, 
 which makes us regard them as very types 
 of perfect rocks. They have nothing of the 
 look of dried earth about them, nothing 
 petty or limited in the display of their bulk. 
 Where they are, they seem to form the 
 world ; no mere bank of a river here, or of a 
 lane there, peeping out among the hedges or 
 forests: but from the lowest valley to the 
 highest clouds, all is theirs — one adaman- 
 tine dominion and rigid authority of rock. 
 We yield ourselves to the impression of 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 193 
 
 their eternal, unconquerable stubbornness of 
 strength ; their mass seem the least yield- 
 ing, least to be softened, or in anywise dealt 
 with by external force, of all earthly sub- 
 stance. And, behold, as we look farther 
 into it, it is all touched and troubled, like 
 waves by a summer breeze ; rippled, far more 
 delicately than seas or lakes are rippled; 
 they only undulate along their surface — 
 this rock trembles through its every fibre, 
 like the chords of an ^Eolian harp — like the 
 stillest air of spring with the echoes of a 
 child's voice. Into the heart of all those 
 great mountains, through every tossing of 
 their boundless crests, and deep beneath all 
 their unfathomable defiles, flows that strange 
 quivering of their substance. Other and 
 weaker things seem to express their subjec- 
 tion to an Infinite power only by momentary 
 terrors ; as the weeds bow down before the 
 feverish wind, and the sound of the going in 
 the tops of the taller trees passes on before 
 the clouds, and the fitful opening of pale 
 spaces on the dark water as if some invisible 
 hand were casting dust abroad upon it, gives 
 warning of the anger that is to come, we 
 may well imagine that there is indeed a fear 
 passing upon the grass, and leaves, and 
 waters, at the presence of some great spirit 
 
i 9 4 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 commissioned to let the tempest loose : but 
 the terror passes, and their sweet rest is 
 perpetually restored to the pastures and the 
 waves. Not so to the mountains. They, 
 which at first seemed strengthened beyond 
 the dread of any violence or change, are yet 
 also ordained to bear upon them the symbol 
 of a perpetual Fear : the tremor which fades 
 from the soft lake and gliding river is sealed, 
 to all eternity, upon the rock; and while 
 things that pass visibly from birth to death 
 may sometimes forget their feebleness, the 
 mountains are made to possess a perpetual 
 memorial of their infancy, — that infancy 
 which the prophet saw in his vision : " I 
 beheld the earth, and lo, it was without 
 form, and void, and the heavens, and they 
 had no light. I beheld the mountains, and 
 lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved 
 lightly. 
 
 Thus far may we trace the apparent typi- 
 cal signification of the structure of those 
 noble rocks. The material uses of this 
 structure are not less important. These sub- 
 stances of the higher mountains, it is always 
 to be remembered, seem to be so hard as to 
 enable them to be raised into, and remain 
 in, the most magnificent forms. 
 
 — Modern Painters,Vo\. IV, Part V, Chap. IX, pp. 156-158. 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 195 
 
 The rocks which are destitute of mica, 
 or in which the mica lies irregularly, or in 
 which it is altogether absent, I shall call 
 Compact Crystallines. — Under this head 
 are embraced the large group of the gran- 
 ites, syenites, and porphries — rocks which 
 all agree in . . . variety of color. . . . The 
 method of their composition out of different 
 substances necessitates their being all more 
 or less spotted or dashed with various col- 
 ors; there being generally a prevalent ground 
 color, with other subordinate hues broken 
 over it, forming for the most part, tones of 
 silver grey, of warm, but subdued red, or 
 purple. Now there is in this a very mar- 
 vellous provision for the central ranges. 
 Other rocks, placed lower among the hills 
 receive color upon their surfaces from all 
 kinds of minute vegetation: but these 
 higher and more exposed rocks are liable to 
 be in many parts barren ; and the wild forms 
 into which they are thrown necessitate their 
 being often freshly broken, so as to bring 
 their pure color, untempered in anywise, 
 frankly into sight. Hence it is appointed 
 that this color shall not be raw or monoto- 
 nous, but composed — as all beautiful colors 
 must be composed — by mingling of many 
 hues in one. Not that there is any aim at 
 
i 9 6 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 attractive beauty in these rocks; they are 
 intended to constitute solemn and desolate 
 scenes; and there is nothing delicately or 
 variously disposed in their colors. Such 
 beauty would have been inconsistent with 
 their expression of power and terror, and 
 it is reserved for the marble and other rocks 
 of inferior office. But their color is grave 
 and perfect; closely resembling in many 
 cases, the sort of hue reached by cross- 
 checkering in the ground of fourteenth- 
 century manuscripts, and peculiarly calcu- 
 lated for distant effects of light; being for 
 the most part, slightly warm in tone, so as 
 to receive with full advantage the red and 
 orange rays of sunlight. This warmth is 
 almost always farther aided by a glowing 
 orange color, derived from the decompo- 
 sition of the iron which, though in small 
 quantity, usually is an essential element in 
 them: the orange hue forms itself in un- 
 equal veins and spots upon the surfaces 
 which have been long exposed, more or less 
 darkening them; and a very minute black 
 lichen, — so minute as to look almost like 
 spots of black paint — a little opposed and 
 warmed by the golden Lichen geographicus, 
 still farther subdues the paler hues of the 
 highest granite rocks. Now, when a surface 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 197 
 
 of this kind is removed to a distance of four 
 or five miles, and seen under warm light 
 through soft air, the orange becomes russet, 
 more or less inclining to pure red, accord- 
 ing to the power of the rays ; but the black 
 of the lichens becomes pure dark blue ; and 
 the result of their combination is that pecul- 
 iar reddish purple which is so strikingly the 
 characteristic of the rocks of the higher 
 Alps. . . . This second characteristic is a 
 tough hardness — a grave hardness, which 
 will bear many blows before it yields. . . . 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. VIII, p. 145. 
 
 Nature gives us in these mountains a 
 clear demonstration of her will. She is here 
 driven to make fracture the law of being. 
 She cannot tuft the rock-edges with moss, 
 or round them by water, or hide them with 
 leaves and roots. She is bound to produce a 
 form admirable to human beings, by contin- 
 ual breaking away of substance. And behold 
 — so soon as she is compelled to do this — she 
 changes the law of fracture itself. " Growth," 
 she seems to say, "is not essential to my 
 work, nor concealment, nor softness, but cur- 
 vature is ; and if I must produce my forms 
 by breaking them, the fracture itself shall 
 be in curves. If, instead of dew and sun- 
 
198 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 shine, the only instruments I am to use are 
 the lightning and the frost, then their forked 
 tongues and crystal wedges shall still work 
 out my laws of tender line. Devastation 
 instead of nurture may be the task of all my 
 elements, and age after age may only pro- 
 long the unrenovated ruin ; but the appoint- 
 ments of typical beauty which have been 
 made over all creatures shall not therefore 
 be abandoned ; and the rocks shall be ruled 
 in their perpetual perishing, by the same 
 ordinances that direct the bending of the 
 reed and the blush of the rose." 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XIV, p. 246. 
 
 As we pass beneath the hills which have 
 been shaken by earthquake and torn by 
 convulsion, we find that periods of perfect 
 repose succeeded those of destruction. The 
 pools of calm water lie clear beneath their 
 fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the 
 reeds whisper among their shadows ; the vil- 
 lage rises again over the forgotten graves, 
 and its church-tower, white through the 
 storm-twilight, proclaims a renewed appeal 
 to His protection in whose hand " are all the 
 corners of the earth, and the strength of the 
 hills is His also." There is no loveliness 
 of Alpine valley that does not teach the 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 199 
 
 same lesson. It is just where "the moun- 
 tain falling cometh to naught and the rock 
 is removed out of his place," that, in process 
 of years, the fairest meadows bloom between 
 the fragments, the clearest rivulets murmur 
 from their crevices among the flowers, and 
 the clustered cottages, each sheltered be- 
 neath some strength of mossy stone, now 
 to be removed no more, and with their pas- 
 tured flocks around them, safe from the 
 eagle's stoop, and the wolf's ravin, have 
 written upon their fronts, in simple words, 
 the mountaineers faith in the ancient prom- 
 ise " Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruc- 
 tion when it cometh." . . . 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XVIII, p. 391. 
 
 The best image which the world can give 
 of Paradise is in the slope of the meadows, 
 orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a 
 great Alp, with its purple' rocks and eternal 
 snows above; this excellence not being in 
 any wise referable to feeling, or individual 
 preferences, but demonstrable by calm enu- 
 meration of the number of lovely colors on 
 the rocks, the varied grouping of the trees, 
 and quantity of noble incidents in stream, 
 crag, or cloud, presented to the eye at any 
 given moment 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XX, p. 427. 
 
2oo NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 I do not know any district possessing more 
 pure or uninterrupted fulness of mountain 
 character (and that of the highest order), or 
 which appears to have been less disturbed 
 by foreign agencies, than that which borders 
 the course of the Trient between Valorsine 
 and Martigny. The paths which lead to it 
 out of the valley of the Rhone, rising at first 
 in steep circles among the walnut trees, like 
 winding stairs among the pillars of a Gothic 
 tower, retire over the shoulders of the hills 
 into a valley almost unknown, but thickly 
 inhabited by an industrious and patient 
 population. Along the ridges of the rocks, 
 smoothed by old glaciers into long, dark, 
 billowy swellings, like the backs of plunging 
 dolphins, the peasant watches the slow color- 
 ing of the tufts of moss and roots of herb 
 which, little by little, gather a feeble soil 
 over the iron substance; then, supporting the 
 narrow strip of clinging ground with a few 
 stones, he subdues it to the spade; and in 
 a year or two a little crest of corn is seen 
 waving upon the rocky casque. The irregu- 
 lar meadows run in and out like inlets 
 of lake among these harvested rocks, sweet 
 with perpetual streamlets, that seem always 
 to have chosen the steepest places to come 
 down, for the sake of the leaps, scattering 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 201 
 
 their handfuls of crystal this way and that, 
 as the wind takes them, with all the grace, 
 but with none of the formalism, of fountains; 
 divided into fanciful change of dash and 
 spring, yet with the seal of their granite 
 channels upon them, as the lightest play of 
 human speech may bear the seal of a past 
 toil, and closing back out of their spray to 
 lave the rigid angles, and brighten with 
 silver fringes and glassy films each lower 
 and lower step of sable stone ; until at last, 
 gathered all together again, — except, per- 
 haps, some chance drops caught on the 
 apple-blossom, where it has budded a little 
 nearer the cascade than it did last spring, — 
 they find their way down to the turf, and 
 lose themselves in that silently; with quiet 
 depth of clear water furrowing among the 
 grass blades, and looking only like their 
 shadow, but presently emerging again in 
 little startled gushes and laughing hurries, 
 as if they had remembered suddenly that the 
 day was too short for them to get clown the 
 hill. 
 
 Green field, and glowing rock, and glanc- 
 ing streamlet, all slope together in the sun- 
 shine towards the brows of the ravines, 
 where the pines take up their own dominion 
 of saddened shade : and with everlasting roar 
 
202 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder 
 down pale from the glaciers, filling all their 
 chasms with enchanted cold, beating them- 
 selves to pieces against the great rocks 
 that they have themselves cast down, and 
 forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly 
 poise. 
 
 The mountain paths stoop to these glens 
 in forky zigzags, leading to some gray and 
 narrow arch, all fringed under its shuddering 
 curves with the ferns that fear the light: a 
 cross of rough-hewn pine, iron-bound to its 
 parapet, standing dark against the lurid fury 
 of the foam. Far up the glen, as we pause 
 beside the cross, the sky is seen through the 
 openings in the pines, thin with excess of 
 light: and in its clear consuming flame 
 of white space, the summits of the rocky 
 mountains are gathered into solemn crowns 
 and circlets, all flushed in that strange, faint 
 silence of possession by the sunshine which 
 has in it so deep a melancholy : full of power, 
 yet as frail as shadows, lifeless like the walls 
 of a sepulchre, yet beautiful in tender fall of 
 crimson folds, like the veil of some sea-spirit, 
 that lives and dies as the foam flashes ; fixed 
 on a perpetual throne, stern against all 
 strength, lifted above all sorrow, and yet 
 effaced and melted utterly into the air by 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 203 
 
 that last sunbeam that has crossed to them 
 from between the two golden clouds. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XIX, pp. 393-395. 
 
 The footmark of a glacier is just as easily 
 recognizable as the trail of any well-known 
 animal. . . . 
 
 Its universal effect is to round and soften 
 the contours of the mountains subjected to 
 it; so that a glacier may be considered as 
 a vast instrument of friction, a white sand- 
 paper, applied slowly but irresistibly to all 
 the roughnesses of the hill which it covers. 
 And this effect is of course greatest when 
 the ice flows fastest, and contains more em- 
 bedded stones ; that is to say, greater toward 
 the lower part of a mountain than near its 
 summit 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XIII, pp. 217, 218. 
 
 I suppose that my readers must be gener- 
 ally aware that glaciers are masses of ice 
 in slow motion, at the rate of from ten to 
 twenty inches a day, and that the stones 
 which are caught between them and the 
 rocks over which they pass, or which are 
 embedded in the ice and dragged along by 
 it over those rocks, are of course subjected 
 to a crushing and grinding power altogether 
 
2o 4 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 unparalleled by any other force in constant 
 action. The dust to which these stones are 
 reduced by the friction is carried down by 
 the streams which flow from the melting 
 glacier, so that the water which in the morn- 
 ing may be pure, owing what little strength 
 it has chiefly to the rock springs, is in 
 the afternoon not only increased in volume, 
 but whitened with the dissolved dust of 
 granite, in proportion to the heat of the pre- 
 ceding hours of the day, and to the power 
 and size of the glacier which feeds it. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XII, pp. 179, 180. 
 
 Of the visible glaciers couched upon the 
 visible Alps two great facts are very clearly 
 ascertainable. . . . The first great fact to be 
 recognized concerning them is that they are 
 Fluid bodies. Sluggishly fluid, indeed, but 
 definitely and completely so; and therefore, 
 they do not scramble down, nor tumble 
 down, nor crawl down, nor slip down, but 
 flow down. They do not move like leeches, 
 nor like caterpillars, nor like stones, but like, 
 what they are made of, water. 
 
 The second fact is that last summer I was 
 able to cross the dry bed of a glacier, which 
 I had seen flowing two hundred feet deep, 
 over the same spot, forty years ago. And 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 205 
 
 then I saw, what I had before suspected, that 
 modern glaciers, like modern rivers, were 
 not cutting their beds deeper but filling 
 them up. — These, then, are the two facts I 
 wish to lay distinctly before you — first that 
 glaciers are fluent: and secondly, that they 
 are filling up their beds, not cutting them 
 
 deeper. —Deucalion, Chap. Ill, pp. 28, 30. 
 
 Sculpture by streams, or by gradual 
 weathering, is the finishing work by which 
 Nature brings her mountain forms into the 
 state in which she intends us generally to 
 observe and love them. The violent con- 
 vulsion or disruption by which she first 
 raises and separates the masses, may fre- 
 quently be intended to produce impressions 
 of terror rather than of beauty : but the laws 
 which are in constant operation on all noble 
 and enduring scenery must assuredly be in- 
 tended to produce results grateful to men. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XVII, p. 327. 
 
 One of the principal charms of mountain 
 scenery is its solitude . . . another feeling 
 with which one is impressed during a moun- 
 tain ramble is humility. 
 
 — Poetry of Architecture, pp. 34, 35. 
 
206 NATURE STUDIES, 
 
 It makes no difference to some men 
 whether a natural object be large or small, 
 whether it be strong or feeble. But loveli- 
 ness of color, perfectness of form, endlessness 
 of change, wonderfulness of structure, are 
 precious to all undiseased human minds; 
 and the superiority of the mountains in these 
 things to the lowland is, I repeat, as measur- 
 able as the richness of a painted window 
 matched with a white one, or the wealth of 
 a museum compared with that of a simply 
 furnished chamber. They seem to have 
 been built for the human race, as at once 
 their schools and cathedrals : full of treasures 
 of illuminated manuscript for the scholar, 
 kindly in simple lessons to the worker, quiet 
 in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in 
 holiness for the worshipper. And of these 
 great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates 
 of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream 
 and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of 
 purple traversed by the continual stars, — 
 of these, — it was written not long ago, by 
 one of the best of the poor human race for 
 whom they were built, wondering in himself 
 for whom their Creator could have made 
 them, and thinking to have entirely dis- 
 cerned the Divine intent in them — "They 
 are inhabited by the Beasts" — 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM, 207 
 
 Was it then indeed thus with us, and so 
 lately? Had mankind offered no worship 
 in their mountain churches ? Was all that 
 granite sculpture and floral painting done by 
 the angels in vain ? 
 
 Not so. It will need no prolonged thought 
 to convince us that in the hills the purposes of 
 their Maker have indeed been accomplished 
 in such measure as, through the sin or folly 
 of men, He ever permits them to be accom- 
 plished. It may not seem, from the general 
 language held concerning them, or from any 
 direct traceable results, that mountains have 
 had serious influence on human intellect: 
 but it will not, I think, be difficult to show 
 that their occult influence has been both 
 constant and essential to the progress of the 
 race. Consider, first, whether we can justly 
 refuse to attribute to their mountain scenery 
 some share in giving the Greeks and Italians 
 their intellectual lead among the nations of 
 Europe. There is not a single spot of land 
 in either of these countries from which 
 mountains are not discernible: almost always 
 they form the principal feature of the scenery. 
 . . . Nor would it be difficult to show that 
 every great writer of either of those nations, 
 however little definite regard he might mani- 
 fest for the landscape of his country, has 
 
2 o8 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 been mentally formed and disciplined by it, 
 so that even such enjoyment as Homer's of 
 the ploughed ground and popular groves 
 owes its intensity and delicacy to the excite- 
 ment of the imagination produced without 
 his own consciousness, by other and grander 
 features of the scenery to which he had been 
 accustomed from a child. 
 
 . . . Mountains have always possessed the 
 power, first, of exciting religious enthusiasm : 
 secondly, of purifying religious faith. These 
 two operations are partly contrary to one 
 another : for the faith of enthusiasm is apt to 
 be z/^pure; and the mountains, by exciting 
 morbid conditions of the imagination, have 
 caused in great part the legendary and 
 romantic form of belief; on the other hand, 
 by fostering simplicity of life and dignity 
 of morals, they have purified by action what 
 they falsified by imagination. But, even in 
 their first and most dangerous influence, it 
 is not the mountains that are to blame, but 
 the human heart. While we mourn over the 
 fictitious shape given to the religious visions 
 of the anchorite, we may envy the sin- 
 cerity and the depth of the emotion from 
 which they spring; in the deep feeling, we 
 have to acknowledge the solemn influences 
 of the hills : but for the erring modes or 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 209 
 
 forms of thought, it is human wilfulness, sin 
 and false teaching that are answerable. . . . 
 
 . . . And, in fact, much of the apparently 
 harmful influence of hills on the religion of 
 the world is nothing else than their general 
 gift of exciting the poetical and inventive 
 faculties, in peculiarly solemn tones of mind. 
 Their terror leads into devotional casts of 
 thought: their beauty and wildness prompt 
 the invention at the same time ; and where 
 the mind is not gifted with stern reasoning 
 powers, or protected by purity of teaching, 
 it is sure to mingle the invention with its 
 creed and the vision with its prayer. Strictly 
 speaking, we ought to consider the super- 
 stitions of the hills, universally, as a form of 
 poetry; regretting only that men have not 
 yet learned how to distinguish poetry from 
 well-founded faith. . . . 
 
 . . . Mark the significance of the earliest 
 mention of mountains in the Mosaic books ; 
 at least of those in which some Divine ap- 
 pointment or command is stated respecting 
 them. They are first brought before us as 
 refuges for God's people from the two judg- 
 ments of water and fire. The ark rests upon 
 the " mountains of Ararat " : and man, hav- 
 ing passed through that great baptism unto 
 death, kneels upon the earth first where it 
 
2io NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 is nearest heaven, and mingles with the 
 mountain clouds the smoke of his sacrifice 
 of thanksgiving. Again: from the midst of 
 the first judgment by fire, the command 
 of the Deity to His servant is, " Escape to 
 the mountain.". . . 
 
 The third mention, in way of ordinance, 
 is a far more solemn one : " Abraham lifted 
 up his eyes, and saw the place afar off." 
 "The Place," the Mountain of Myrrh, or of 
 bitterness chosen to fulfil to all the seed of 
 Abraham, far off and near, the inner mean- 
 ing of promise regarded in that vow : " I 
 will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from 
 whence cometh mine help." And the fourth, 
 is the delivery of the law on Sinai. 
 
 It seemed, then, to the monks, that the 
 mountains were appointed by their Maker 
 to be to man, refuges from Judgments, signs 
 of Redemption, and altars of Sanctification 
 and obedience; and they saw them after- 
 wards connected, in the manner the most 
 touching and gracious, with the death, after 
 his task had been accomplished, of the first 
 anointed Priest: the death in like manner, 
 of the first inspired Lawgiver; and, lastly, 
 with the assumption of His office by the 
 Eternal Priest, Lawgiver, and Saviour. 
 Observe the connection of these three 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 211 
 
 events . . . Try to realize that going forth 
 of Aaron from the midst of the congrega- 
 tion. . . . Try if you cannot walk, in thought, 
 with those two brothers, and the son, as 
 they passed the outmost tents of Israel, and 
 turned, while yet the dew lay round about 
 the camp, towards the slopes of Mount Hor ; 
 talking together for the last time, as step by 
 step, they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, 
 and hour after hour, beneath the ascend- 
 ing sun, the horizon grew broader as they 
 climbed, and all the folded hills of Idumea, 
 one by one subdued, showed amidst their 
 hollows in the haze of noon, the winding 
 of that long desert journey, now at last 
 to close. But who shall enter into the 
 thoughts of the High Priest, as his eyes 
 followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage ; 
 and through the silence of the arid and 
 endless hills, stretching even to the dim 
 peak of Sinai, the whole history of those 
 forty years was unfolded before him, and 
 the mystery of his own ministries revealed 
 to him ; and that other Holy of Holies, of 
 which the mountain peaks were the altars, 
 and the mountain clouds the veil, the fir- 
 mament of his Father's dwelling, opened to 
 him still more brighter and infinitely as he 
 drew nearer his death : until at last, on the 
 
212 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 shadeless summit — from him on whom sin 
 was to be laid no more — from him, on 
 whose heart the names of sinful nations 
 were to press their graven fire no longer, — 
 the brother and the son took breastplate 
 and ephod, and left him to his rest. 
 
 There is indeed a secretness in this calm 
 faith and deep restraint of sorrow, into which 
 it is difficult for us to enter : but the death of 
 Moses himself is more easily to be conceived: 
 and had in it circumstances still more touch- 
 ing, as far as regards the influence of the 
 external scene. For forty years Moses had 
 not been alone. The care and burden of all 
 the people, the weight of their woe and 
 guilt, and death, had been upon him con- 
 tinually . . . and now, at last, the command 
 came," Get thee up into this mountain." The 
 weary hands that had been so long stayed 
 up against the enemies of Israel, might lean 
 again upon the Shepherd's staff, and fold 
 themselves for the Shepherd's prayer — for 
 the Shepherd's slumber. Not strange to his 
 feet, though forty years unknown, the rough- 
 ness of the bare mountain-path, as he 
 climbed from ledge to ledge of Abarim : 
 not strange to his aged eyes the scattered 
 clusters of the mountain herbage, and the 
 broken shadows of the cliffs, indented far 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 213 
 
 across the silence of the uninhabited ravines : 
 scenes such as those among which, with 
 none, as now, beside him but God, he had 
 led his flocks so often; and which he had 
 left, how painfully! taking upon him the 
 appointed power, to make of the fenced city 
 a wilderness, and to fill the desert with songs 
 of deliverance. It was not to embitter the 
 last hours of his life that God restored to 
 him, for a day, the beloved solitudes he had 
 lost : and breathed the peace of the perpetual 
 hills around him, and cast the world in which 
 he had labored and sinned far beneath his 
 feet, in that mist of dying blue; — all sin, 
 all wandering, soon to be forgotten forever : 
 the Dead Sea — a type of God's anger 
 understood by him, of all men, most clearly, 
 who had seen the earth open her mouth, and 
 the sea his depth, to overwhelm the com- 
 panies of those who contended with his 
 Master — lay waveless beneath him: and 
 beyond it, the fair hills of Judah, and the 
 soft plains and banks of Jordan, purple in 
 the evening light as with the blood of 
 redemption, and fading in their distant ful- 
 ness into mysteries of promise and love. 
 There, with his unabated strength, his un- 
 dimmed glance, lying down upon the utmost 
 rocks, with angels waiting near to contend 
 
2i4 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 for the spoils of his spirit, he put off his 
 earthly armor. We do deep reverence to his 
 companion prophet, for whom the chariot of 
 fire came down from heaven: but was his 
 death less noble, whom his Lord Himself 
 buried in the vales of Moab, keeping, in the 
 secrets of the eternal counsels, the knowl- 
 edge of a sepulchre, from which he was to 
 be called, in the fulness of time, to talk with 
 that Lord, upon Hermon, of the death that 
 He should accomplish at Jerusalem ? 
 
 And lastly, let us turn our thoughts for 
 a few moments to the cause of the resurrec- 
 tion of these two prophets. . . . Consider, 
 therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to 
 the human feelings of our Lord. It was the 
 first definite preparation for His death. He 
 had foretold it to His disciples six days 
 before; then takes with Him the three 
 chosen ones into " an high mountain apart." 
 From an exceeding high mountain, at the 
 first taking on Him the ministry of life, He 
 had beheld, and rejected the kingdoms of 
 the earth, and their glory : now on a high 
 mountain, He takes upon Him the ministry 
 of death. 
 
 . . . The tradition is, that the Mount of 
 Transfiguration was the summit of Tabor: 
 but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM. 215 
 
 was it in any sense a mountain "apart"; 
 being in those years both inhabited and 
 fortified. All the immediately preceding 
 ministries of Christ had been at Cesarea 
 Philippi. There is no mention of travel 
 southward in the six days that intervened 
 between the warning given to His disciples, 
 and the going up into the hill. What other 
 hill could it be than the southward slope 
 of that goodly mountain, Hermon; — the 
 mount of fruitfulness, from which the 
 springs of Jordan descended to the valleys 
 of Israel. 
 
 Along its mighty forest avenues, until 
 the grass grew fair with the mountain lilies, 
 His feet dashed in the dew of Hermon, He 
 must have gone to pray His first recorded 
 prayer about death. ..." And as He prayed, 
 two men stood by Him." . . . One, from that 
 tomb under Abarim which His own hand 
 had sealed so long ago ; the other from the 
 rest into which he had entered without see- 
 ing corruption. There stood by Him Moses 
 and Elias, and spake of His decease. 
 Then, when the prayer is ended, the task 
 accepted, first, since the star paused over 
 Him at Bethlehem, the full glory falls upon 
 Him from heaven, and the testimony is 
 borne to His everlasting Sonship and power. 
 
216 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 " Hear ye Him." If, in their remembrance 
 of these things, and if in their endeavor 
 to follow in the footsteps of their Master, 
 religious men of by-gone days, closing them- 
 selves in the hill solitudes, forgot sometimes, 
 and sometimes feared, the duties they owed 
 to the active world, we may perhaps par- 
 don them more easily than we ought to 
 pardon ourselves, if we neither seek any 
 influence for good nor submit to it un- 
 sought, in scenes to which thus all the men 
 whose writings we receive as inspired, to- 
 gether with their Lord, retired whenever 
 they had any task or trial laid upon them 
 needing more than their usual strength of 
 spirit. Nor, perhaps, should we have un- 
 profitably entered into the mind of the 
 earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, 
 as we watch the chains of the snowy moun- 
 tains rise on the horizon, we should some- 
 times admit the memory of the hour in 
 which their Creator, among their solitudes, 
 entered on His travail for the salvation 
 of our race; and indulge the dream, that 
 as the flaming and trembling mountains 
 of the earth seem to be the monuments of 
 the manifesting of His terror on Sinai, — 
 these pure and white hills, near to the 
 heaven, and sources of all good to the 
 
THE MOUNTAIN KINGDOM, 217 
 
 earth, are the appointed memorials of that 
 Light of His Mercy, that fell, snow-like, on 
 the Mount of Transfiguration. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XX, pp. 432-473. 
 
ABOUT WATER. 
 
Murmuring voices melt along the shore : 
 The plash of waves comes softly. . . . 
 
 Poems, p. 183 — Saltzburg I, 
 
 The great Rivers that move like His eternity. 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part III, Sect. I, Chap. I, p. 222. 
 
VII. 
 
 ABOUT WATER. 
 
 Of all inorganic substances, acting in their 
 own proper nature, and without assistance or 
 combination, water is the most wonderful. 
 If we think of it as the source of all the 
 changefulness and beauty which we have 
 seen in clouds: then as the instrument by 
 which the earth we have contemplated 
 was modelled into symmetry, and its crags 
 chiselled into grace ; then as, in the form of 
 snow, it robes the mountains it has made, 
 with that transcendent light which we could 
 not have conceived if we had not seen ; then 
 as it exists in the form of the torrent — in 
 the iris which spans it, in the morning mist 
 which rises from it, in the deep crystalline 
 pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the 
 broad lake and glancing river: finally, in 
 that which is to all human minds the best 
 emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, 
 the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity 
 of the sea; what shall we compare to this 
 mighty, this universal element, for glory, and 
 for beauty? or how shall we follow its eternal 
 changefulness of feeling? It is like trying 
 to paint a soul. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. I, p. 92. 
 
222 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Every fountain and river, from the inch- 
 deep streamlet that crosses the village lane in 
 trembling clearness, to the massy and silent 
 march of the everlasting multitude of waters 
 in Amazon or Ganges, owe their play, and 
 purity, and power, to the ordained elevations 
 of the Earth. Gentle or steep, extended or 
 abrupt, some determined slope of the earth's 
 surface is of course necessary, before any 
 wave can so much as overtake one sedge 
 in its pilgrimage; and how seldom do we 
 enough consider, as we walk beside the 
 margins of our pleasant brooks, how beauti- 
 ful and wonderful is that ordinance, of which 
 every blade of grass that waves in their clear 
 water is a perpetual sign : that the dew and 
 rain fallen on the face of the earth shall find 
 no resting-place : shall find, on the contrary, 
 fixed channels traced for them, from the 
 ravines of the central crests down which they 
 roar in sudden ranks of foam, to the dark 
 hollows beneath the banks of lowland pas- 
 tures, round which they must circle slowly 
 among the stems and beneath the leaves of 
 the lilies : paths prepared for them, by which, 
 at some appointed rate of journey, they must 
 evermore descend, sometimes slow and some- 
 times swift, but never pausing: the daily 
 portion of the earth they have to glide over 
 
ABOUT WATER. 223 
 
 marked for them at each successive sunrise, 
 the place which has known them knowing 
 them no more, and the gateways of guarding 
 mountains opened for them in cleft and 
 chasm, none letting them in their pilgrim- 
 age : and, from far off, the great heart of the 
 sea calling them to itself! Deep calleth 
 unto deep. I know not which of the two 
 is the more wonderful, — that calm, gradated, 
 invisible slope of the champaign land, which 
 gives motion to the stream : or that passage 
 cloven for it through the ranks of hill, which, 
 necessary for the health of the land imme- 
 diately around them, would yet, unless so 
 supernaturally divided, have fatally inter- 
 cepted the flow of the waters from far-off 
 countries. When did the great spirit of 
 the river first knock at those adamantine 
 gates ? When did the porter open to it, and 
 cast his keys away forever, lapped in whirl- 
 ing sand? I am not satisfied — no one 
 should be satisfied — with that vague answer, 
 — the river cut its way. Not so. The river 
 found its way. I do not see that rivers, 
 in their own strength, can do much in cut- 
 ting their way; they are nearly as apt to choke 
 their channels up, as to carve them out. 
 Only give a river some little sudden power 
 in a valley, and see how it will use it. Cut 
 
224 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 itself a bed ? Not so, by any means, but fill 
 up its bed, and look for another, in a wild, 
 dissatisfied, inconsistent manner. Any way, 
 rather than the old one, will better please it ; 
 and even if it is banked up and forced to 
 keep to the old one, it will not deepen, but 
 do all it can to raise it, and leap out of it. 
 And although, wherever water has a steep 
 fall, it will swiftly cut itself a bed deep into 
 the rock or ground, it will not, when the 
 rock is hard, cut a wider channel than it 
 actually needs ; so that if the existing river 
 beds, through ranges of mountain, had in 
 reality been cut by the streams, they would 
 be found, wherever the rocks are hard, only in 
 the form of narrow and profound ravines — 
 like the well-known channel of the Niagara, 
 below the fall; not in that of extended 
 
 Valleys. — In Moniibus Sanctis, Chap. II, pp. 133, 134. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Chap. VII. 
 
 The sources of a river are usually half lost 
 among moss and pebbles, and its first move- 
 ments doubtful in direction : but, as the cur- 
 rent gathers force, its banks are determined, 
 and its branches are numbered. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. VI, p. 77. 
 
 It is strange how seldom rivers have been 
 named from their depth. Mostly they take 
 
ABOUT WATER. 225 
 
 at once some dear, companionable name; 
 and become gods, or at least living creat- 
 ures, to their refreshed people; if not thus 
 Pagan-named, they are noted by their color, 
 or their purity, — White River, Black River, 
 Rio Verde, Aqua Dolce, Fiume di Latte; 
 but scarcely ever, Deep River. 
 
 — St. Mark's Rest, Chap. Ill, p. 30. 
 
 All rivers, small or large, agree in one 
 character, they like to lean a little on one 
 side: they cannot bear to have their chan- 
 nels deepest in the middle, but will always, 
 if they can, have one bank to sun them- 
 selves 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 
 their strength of waves fully together for 
 due occasion. Rivers in this way are just 
 like wise men, who keep one side of their 
 life for play, and another for work: and 
 can be brilliant, and chattering, and trans- 
 parent, when they are at ease, and yet take 
 deep counsel on the other side when they 
 set themselves to the main purpose. And 
 rivers are just in this divided, also, like 
 wicked and good men; the good rivers 
 
226 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 have serviceable deep places all along their 
 banks, that ships can sail in ; but the wicked 
 rivers go scooping by irregularly under their 
 banks until they get full of strangling 
 eddies, which no boat can row over with- 
 out 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. 
 
 — The Elements of Drawings Letter III, pp. 365, 366. 
 
 The Tweed — a beautiful river, flowing 
 broad and bright over a bed of milk-white 
 pebbles, unless where, here and there, it 
 darkened into a deep pool, overhung by 
 the birches and alders which had survived 
 the statelier growth of the primitive for- 
 ests. . . . With the murmur, whisper and 
 low fall of these streamlets, unmatched 
 for mystery and sweetness, we must re- 
 member also the variable, but seldom wild, 
 thrilling of the wind among the recesses 
 of the glens. . . . 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. II, Letter XXXII, p. 50. 
 
 The far away edge of . . . ocean, where 
 the surf and the sandbank are mingled 
 
 with the Sky. — Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. I, p. 8. 
 
ABOUT WATER. 
 
 227 
 
 On the other side of the high town 
 (Geneva) the houses stand closer, leaving 
 yet space for a little sycamore-shaded walk, 
 whence one looks down on the whole 
 southern reach of Lake, opening wide to 
 the horizon, and edged there like the sea, 
 but in the summer sunshine looking as if 
 it was tlie one well of blue which the sun- 
 beams drank to make the sky of . . . This 
 was the view for full noon when the Lake 
 was brightest and bluest. . . . 
 
 . . . For all other rivers there is a surface, 
 with an underneath, and a vaguely displeas- 
 ing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone 
 flows like one lambent jewel ; its surface is 
 nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the 
 iridescent rush and translucent strength of 
 it blue to the shore, and radiant to the 
 depth. 
 
 Fifteen feet thick, of not flowing, but 
 flying water; not water, neither, — melted 
 glacier, rather, one should call it ; the force 
 of the ice is with it, and the wreathing of 
 the clouds, the gladness of the sky, and the 
 continuance of Time. 
 
 Waves of clear sea, are, indeed, lovely to 
 watch, but they are always coming or gone, 
 never in any taken shape to be seen for a 
 second. But here was one mighty wave 
 
228 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 that was always itself, and every fluted swirl 
 of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell. 
 No wasting away of the fallen foam, no 
 pause for gathering of power, no helpless ebb 
 of discouraged recoil: but alike through 
 bright day and lulling night, the never- 
 pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and 
 never-hushing whisper, and, while the sun 
 was up, the ever-answering glow of un- 
 earthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet-blue, 
 gentian-blue, peacock-blue, river-of-paradise 
 blue, glass of a painted window melted in 
 the sun, and the witch of the Alps flinging 
 the spun tresses of it forever from her snow. 
 The innocent way, too, in which the river 
 used to stop to look into every little corner. 
 Great torrents always seem angry, and 
 great rivers too often sullen; but there is 
 no anger, no disdain in the Rhone. It 
 seemed as if the mountain stream was in 
 mere bliss at recovering itself again out of 
 the lake-sleep, and raced because it rejoiced 
 in racing, fain yet to return and stay. There 
 were pieces of wave that danced all day as 
 if Perdita were looking on to learn : there 
 were little streams that skipped like lambs 
 and leaped like chamois, there were pools 
 that shook the sunshine all through them, 
 and were rippled in layers of overlaid ripples, 
 
ABOUT WATER, 229 
 
 like crystal sand, there were currents that 
 twisted the light into golden braids, and 
 inlaid the threads with turquoise enamel: 
 there were strips of stream that had certainly 
 above the lake been mill-streams, and were 
 looking busily for mills to turn again ; there 
 were shoots of stream that had once shot 
 fearfully into the air, and now sprang up 
 again laughing that they had only fallen a 
 foot or two; — and in the midst of all the 
 gay glittering and eddied lingering, the noble 
 bearing by of the midmost depth, so mighty, 
 yet so terrorless and harmless, with its swal- 
 lows skimming, instead of petrels, and the 
 dear old decrepit town as safe in the em- 
 bracing sweep of it, as if it were set in a 
 brooch of sapphire. 
 
 — Praterita, Vol. II, Chap. V, pp. 260-263. 
 
 All plains capable of cultivation are de- 
 posits from some kind of water — some from 
 swift and tremendous currents, leaving their 
 soil in sweeping banks and furrowed ridges 
 — others, and this is in mountain districts 
 almost invariably the case, by slow deposit 
 from a quiet lake in the mountain hollow, 
 which has been gradually filled by the soil 
 carried into it by streams, which soil is of 
 course finally left spread at the exact level 
 
230 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 of the surface of the former lake, as level as 
 the quiet water itself. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. I, p. 28. 
 
 Few people, comparatively, have ever 
 seen the effect on the sea of a powerful 
 gale continued without intermission for 
 three or four days and nights, and to those 
 who have not, I believe it must be unimag- 
 inable, not from the mere force or size of 
 surge, but from the complete annihilation 
 of the limit between sea and air. The 
 water from its prolonged agitation is beaten, 
 not into mere creaming foam, but into 
 masses of accumulated yeast, which hang 
 in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, 
 and where one curls over to break, form a 
 festoon like a drapery, from its edge : these 
 are taken up by the wind, not in dissipat- 
 ing dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, 
 coiling masses, which make the air white 
 and thick as with snow, only the flakes 
 are a foot or two long each : the surges 
 themselves are full of foam in their very 
 bodies, underneath, making them white all 
 through, as the water is under a great cata- 
 ract; and their masses, being thus half 
 water and half air, are torn to pieces by 
 the wind whenever they rise, and carried 
 
ABOUT WATER. 231 
 
 away in roaring smoke, which chokes and 
 strangles like actual water. Add to this, 
 that when the air has been exhausted of its 
 moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea 
 is caught by it and covers its surface not 
 merely with the smoke of finely divided 
 water, but with boiling mist; imagine 
 also the low rain-clouds brought down to 
 the very level of the sea, as I have often 
 seen them, whirling and flying in rags and 
 fragments from wave to wave; and finally, 
 conceive the surges themselves in their ut- 
 most pitch of power, velocity, vastness and 
 madness, lifting themselves in precipices 
 and peaks, furrowed with the whirl of as- 
 cent, through all this chaos; and you will 
 understand that there is indeed no dis- 
 tinction left between the sea and air, that 
 no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark 
 or natural evidence of position is left: that 
 the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all 
 cloud, and that you can see no farther in 
 any direction than you could see through 
 a cataract. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. Ill, 
 pp. 159, 160. 
 
 Let the reader note that the beryl-co\oxz& 
 water of the Lake of Zurich and the Lim- 
 mat gave, in old days, the perfectest type 
 
2 3 2 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 of purity, of all the Alpine streams. The 
 deeper blue of the Reuss and Rhone 
 grew dark at less depth, and always gave 
 some idea of the presence of a mineral 
 element, causing the color; while the Aar 
 had soiled itself with clay even before 
 reaching Berne. But the pale aquamarine 
 crystal of the Lake of Zurich, with the fish 
 set in it, some score of them — small and 
 great — to a cube fathom, and the rapid 
 fall and stainless ripple of the Limmat, 
 through the whole of its course under the 
 rocks of Baden to the Reuss, remained, 
 summer and winter, of a constant, sacred, 
 inviolable, super-natural loveliness. 
 
 — Prceteritd) Vol. Ill, Chap. II, p. 415. 
 
 Scottish streams — I know no other waters 
 to be compared with them ; — such streams 
 can only exist under very subtle concur- 
 rence of rock and climate. There must 
 be much soft rain, not (habitually) tearing 
 the hills down with floods ; and the rocks 
 must break irregularly and jaggedly. 
 
 . . . Farther, the loosely-breaking rock 
 must contain hard pebbles, to give the 
 level shore of white shingle through which 
 the brown water may stray wide, in rippling 
 threads. . . . The fords even of English 
 
ABOUT WATER, 233 
 
 rivers have given the names to half our 
 prettiest towns and villages: — but the 
 pure crystal of the Scottish pebbles, giv- 
 ing the stream its gradations of amber 
 to the edge, and the sound as of " ravishing 
 division to the lute," make the Scottish 
 fords the happiest pieces of all one's day 
 walk. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. II, Letter XXXII, p. 49. 
 
 Let us go down and stand by the beach — 
 of the great irregular sea, and count whether 
 the thunder of it is not out of time. One, — 
 two: — here comes a well-formed wave at 
 last, trembling a little at the top, but, on the 
 whole, orderly. So, crash among the shingle, 
 and up as far as this gray pebble : now stand 
 by and watch! Another: — Ah, careless 
 wave! Why couldn't you have kept your 
 crest on? it is all gone away into spray, 
 striking up against the cliffs there — I 
 thought as much — missed the mark by a 
 couple of feet! Another: — How now, im- 
 patient one! couldn't you have waited till 
 your friends reflux was done with, instead 
 of rolling yourself up with it in that unseemly 
 manner? You go for nothing. A fourth, 
 and a goodly one at last. What think we 
 of yonder slow rise, and crystalline hollow, 
 
234 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 without a flaw? Steady, good wave; not so 
 fast ; not so fast ; where are you coming to? — 
 By our architectural word, this is too bad; 
 two yards over the mark, and ever so much 
 of you in our face besides ; and a wave which 
 we had some hope of, behind there, broken 
 all to pieces out at sea, and laying a great 
 white table-cloth of foam all the way to the 
 shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off 
 it ! Alas, for these unhappy arrow shots of 
 Nature; she will never hit her mark with 
 those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of 
 them into the ideal shape, if we wait for a 
 thousand years. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXX, p. 343. 
 
 Most people think of waves as rising and 
 falling. But if they look at the sea carefully, 
 they will perceive that waves do not rise and 
 fall. They change. Change both place and 
 form, but they do not fall ; one wave goes on, 
 and on, and still on ; now lower, now higher, 
 now tossing its mane like a horse, now build- 
 ing itself together like a wall, now shaking, 
 now steady, but still the same wave, till 
 at last it seems struck by something, and 
 changes, one knows not how, becomes 
 another wave. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XII, p. 211. 
 
ABOUT WATER. 235 
 
 There is a sublimity and majesty in 
 monotony which there is not in rapid or 
 frequent variation. This is true throughout 
 all Nature. The greater part of the sub- 
 limity of the sea depends on its monotony. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. VI, p. 177. 
 
 It is a little valley of soft turf enclosed in 
 its narrow oval, by jutting rocks and broad 
 flakes of nodding fern. From one side of it 
 to the other winds, serpentine, a clear brown 
 stream, dropping into quicker ripple as it 
 reaches the end of the oval field, and then, 
 first islanding a purple and white rock with 
 an amber pool, it dashes away into a narrow 
 fall of foam under a thicket of mountain ash 
 and alder. The autumn sun, low but clear, 
 shines on the scarlet ash-berries, and on the 
 golden birch-leaves, which, fallen here and 
 there, when the breeze has not caught 
 them, rest quiet in the crannies of the purple 
 
 rOCk. — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. II, p. 264. 
 
 Stand for half an hour beside the fall of 
 Schaffhausen, or the north side where the 
 rapids are long, and watch how the vault of 
 water first bends, unbroken, in pure, polished 
 velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow 
 of the cataract, covering them with a dome 
 
236 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 of crystal twenty feet thick — so swift that its 
 motion is unseen except when a foam globe 
 from above darts over it like a falling star; 
 and how the trees are lighted above it under 
 all their leaves, at the instant that it breaks 
 into foam ; and how all the hollows of that 
 foam burn with green fire like so much shat- 
 tering chrysoprase ; and how, ever and anon, 
 startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray 
 leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, burst- 
 ing in the wind and driven away in dust, fill- 
 ing the air with light ; and how, through the 
 curdling wreaths of the restless, crashing 
 abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by 
 the foam in its body, shows purer than the 
 sky through white rain-cloud ; while the shud- 
 dering iris stoops in tremulous stillness over 
 all, fading and flushing alternately through 
 the choking spray and shattered sunshine, 
 hiding itself at last among the thick golden 
 leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with 
 the wild water ; their dripping masses lifted 
 at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by 
 some stronger gush from the cataract, and 
 bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar 
 dies away ; the dew gushing from their thick 
 branches through drooping clusters of emer- 
 ald herbage, and sparkling in white threads 
 along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding 
 
ABOUT WATER, 237 
 
 the lichens which chase and checker them 
 with purple and silver. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. II, p. 121. 
 
 Whenever a nation is in its right mind, 
 it always has a deep sense of divinity in the 
 gift of rain from heaven, filling its heart with 
 food and gladness ; and all the more when 
 that gift becomes gentle and perennial in the 
 
 flowing Of Springs. — Lecture on Art, Lecture IV, p. 268. 
 
 When water, not in very great body, runs 
 in a rocky bed much interrupted by hollows, 
 so that it can rest every now and then in a 
 pool as it goes along, it does not acquire 
 a continuous velocity of motion. It pauses 
 after every leap, and curdles about, and rests 
 a little, and then goes on again : and if in this 
 comparatively tranquil and rational state of 
 mind it meets with an obstacle, as a rock or 
 stone, it parts on each side of it with a little 
 bubbling foam, and goes around; if it comes 
 to a step in its bed, it leaps it lightly, and 
 then after a little plashing at the bottom, 
 stops again to take breath. But if its bed be 
 on a continuous slope, not much interrupted 
 by hollows, so that it cannot rest, or if its own 
 mass be so increased by flood that its usual 
 resting-places are not sufficient for it, but 
 
238 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 that it is perpetually pushed out of them by 
 the following current, before it has had time 
 to tranquillize itself, it of course gains veloc- 
 ity with every yard that it runs; the impetus 
 got at one leap is carried to the credit of 
 the next, until the whole stream becomes 
 one mass of unchecked, accelerating motion. 
 Now when water in this state comes to an 
 obstacle, it does not part at it, but clears it 
 like a race-horse; and when it comes to a 
 hollow, it does not fill it up and run out 
 leisurely at the other side, but it rushes down 
 into it and comes up again on the other side, 
 as a ship into the hollow of the sea. Hence 
 the whole appearance of the bed of the stream 
 is changed, and all the lines of the water 
 altered in their nature. The quiet stream is 
 a succession of leaps and pools, the leaps are 
 light and springy, and parabolic, and make 
 a great deal of splashing when they tumble 
 into the pool : then we have a space of quiet 
 curdling water, and another similar leap 
 below. But the stream, when it has gained 
 an impetus takes the shape of its bed, never 
 stops, is equally deep and equally swift every- 
 where, goes down into every hollow, not with 
 a leap, but with a swing, not foaming, nor 
 splashing, but in the bending line of a strong 
 sea-wave, and comes up again on the other 
 side over rock and ridge, with the ease of a 
 
ABOUT WATER, 239 
 
 bounding leopard ; if it meet a rock three 
 or four feet above the level of its bed, it will 
 neither part nor foam, nor express any con- 
 cern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth 
 dome of water, without apparent exertion, 
 coming down again as smoothly on the other 
 side; the whole surface of the surge being 
 drawn down into parallel lines by its extreme 
 velocity, but foamless, except in places where 
 the form of the bed opposes itself at some 
 direct angle to such a line of fall, and causes 
 a breaker; so that the whole river has the 
 appearance of a deep and raging sea, with 
 this only difference, that the torrent-waves 
 always break backwards, and sea-waves for- 
 wards. Thus, then, in the water which has 
 gained an impetus, . we have the most ex- 
 quisite arrangements of curved lines, perpetu- 
 ally changing from convex to concave, and 
 vice versa following every swell and hollow 
 of the bed with their modulating grace, and 
 all in unison of motion, presenting perhaps 
 the most beautiful series of inorganic forms 
 which Nature can possibly produce ; for the 
 sea runs too much into similar and concave 
 curves with sharp edges, but every motion 
 of the torrent is united, and all its curves are 
 modifications of beautiful life. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. Ill, 
 pp. 145, 146. 
 
2 4 o NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 You recollect Kingsley's expression — the 
 "crawling foam" of waves advancing on 
 sand. Tennyson has somewhere also used 
 with equal truth, the epithet, "climbing" 
 of the spray of breakers against vertical 
 rock. In either instance, the sea action is 
 literally " rampant " : and the course of a 
 great breaker, whether in its first proud 
 likeness to a rearing horse, or in the humble 
 and subdued gaining of the outmost verge 
 of its foam on the sand, or the intermediate 
 spiral whorl which gathers into lustrous 
 precision, like that of a polished shell, the 
 grasping force of a giant, you have the most 
 vivid sight and embodiment of literally ram- 
 pant energy. — ValD'Arno, Lecture VII, p. 318. 
 
 Reflections in Water: Let us stand on 
 the sea-shore on a cloudless night, with a full 
 moon over the sea, and a swell on the water. 
 Of course a long line of splendor will be 
 seen on the waves under the moon, reaching 
 from the horizon to our very feet. But are 
 those waves between the moon and us actu- 
 ally more illuminated than any other part of 
 the sea ? Not one whit. The whole surface 
 of the sea is under the same full light, but 
 the waves between the moon and us are the 
 only ones which are in a position to reflect 
 
ABOUT WATER. 241 
 
 that light to our eyes. The sea on both 
 sides of that path of light is in perfect dark- 
 ness — almost black. But is it so from 
 shadow ? Not so, for there is nothing to 
 intercept the moonlight from it; it is so 
 from position, because it cannot reflect any 
 of the rays which fall on it to our eyes, but 
 reflects instead the dark vault of the night 
 sky. Both the darkness and the light on 
 it, therefore — and they are as violently con- 
 trasted as well may be — are nothing but 
 reflections, the whole surface of the water 
 being under one blaze of moonlight, entirely 
 unshaded by any intervening object what- 
 soever. 
 
 Now, then, we can understand the cause 
 of chiaro-scuro of the sea by daylight with 
 lateral sun. Where the sunlight reaches 
 the water, every ripple, wave, or swell reflects 
 to the eye from some of its planes either the 
 image of the sun or some portion of the 
 neighboring bright sky. Where the cloud in- 
 terposes between the sun and sea, all these 
 luminous reflections are prevented, and 
 the raised planes of the waves reflect only 
 the dark under-surface of the cloud ; and 
 hence, by the multiplication of the images, 
 spaces of light and shade are produced, which 
 lie on the sea precisely in the position of real 
 
2 42 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 or positive lights and shadows — correspond- 
 ing to the outlines of the clouds — laterally 
 cast, and therefore seen in addition to, and 
 at the same time with, the ordinary or direct 
 reflection, vigorously contrasted, the lights 
 being often a blaze of gold, and the shadows 
 a dark leaden gray; and yet, they are no 
 more real lights, or real shadows, on the sea, 
 than the image of a black coat is a shadow 
 on a mirror, or the image of white paper a 
 light upon it. 
 
 Are there, then, no shadows whatsoever 
 upon the sea? Not so. My assertion is 
 simply that there are none on clear water 
 near the eye. I shall briefly state a few of 
 the circumstances which give rise to real 
 shadow in a distant effect. 
 
 Any admixture of opaque coloring matter, 
 as of mud, chalk, or powdered granite ren- 
 ders water capable of distinct shadow, which 
 is cast on the earthly and solid particles sus- 
 pended in the liquid. . . . 
 
 There is, however, a peculiarity in the 
 appearance of such shadows which require 
 especial notice. It is not merely the trans- 
 parency of water, but its polished surface, 
 and consequent reflective power, which 
 render it incapable of shadow. A perfectly 
 opaque body, if its power of reflection be 
 
ABOUT WATER. 243 
 
 perfect, receives no shadow, and therefore, 
 in any lustrous body, the incapability of 
 shadow is in proportion to the power of re- 
 flection. Now the power of reflection in 
 water varies with the angle of the impinging 
 ray, being of course greatest when that angle 
 is least ; and thus, when we look along the 
 water at a low angle, its power of reflection 
 maintains its incapability of shadow to a 
 considerable extent, in spite of its containing 
 suspended opaque matter; whereas, when 
 we look down upon water from a height, as 
 we then receive from it only rays which have 
 fallen on it at a large angle, a great number 
 of those rays are reflected from the surface, 
 but penetrate beneath the surface, and are 
 then reflected from the suspended opaque 
 matter: thus rendering shadows clearly 
 visible which, at a small angle, would have 
 been altogether unperceived. 
 
 But it is not merely the presence of opaque 
 matter which renders shadows visible on the 
 sea, from a height. The eye, when elevated 
 above the water, receives rays reflected from 
 the bottom, of which, when near the water, 
 it is insensible. 
 
 The actual color of the sea itself is 
 an important cause of shadow in distant 
 effect. . . . 
 
244 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 . . . The sea under shade is commonly of 
 a cold gray hue; in the sunlight it is sus- 
 ceptible of vivid and exquisite coloring : and 
 thus the forms of clouds are traced on its 
 surface, not by light and shade, but by vari- 
 ation of color by grays opposed to greens, 
 blues to rose-tints, etc. All such phenom- 
 ena are chiefly visible from a height and a 
 distance. Local color is, however, the cause 
 of one beautiful kind of chiaro-scuro, visible 
 when we are close to the water — shadows 
 cast, not on the waves, but through them, as 
 through misty air. 
 
 — Arrows of the Ckace t Vo\ % I, Miscellaneous Letter II, pp. 188, 190. 
 
 Water, of course, owing to its trans- 
 parency, possesses not a perfectly reflective 
 surface, like that of speculum metal, but a sur- 
 face whose reflective power is dependent on 
 the angle at which the rays to be reflected 
 fall. The smaller this angle, the greater 
 are the number of rays reflected. Now, 
 according to the number of rays reflected 
 is the force of the image of objects above, 
 and according to the number of rays trans- 
 mitted is the perceptibility of objects below 
 the water. Hence the visible transparency 
 and reflective power of water are in inverse 
 ratio. . . . 
 
ABOUT WATER. 245 
 
 It will be found on observation that under 
 a bank — suppose with dark trees above 
 showing spaces of bright sky, the bright sky 
 is reflected distinctly, and the bottom of the 
 water is in those spaces not seen : but in the 
 dark spaces of reflection we see the bottom 
 of the water, and the color of that bottom 
 and of the water itself mingles with and 
 modifies that of the color of the trees casting 
 the dark reflection. 
 
 This is one of the most beautiful circum- 
 stances connected with water surface, for by 
 these means a variety of color and a grace 
 and evanescence are introduced in the re- 
 flection otherwise impossible. . . . 
 
 . . . Water in shade is much more re- 
 flective than water in sunlight. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. I, pp. 97-99. 
 
 There is hardly a roadside pond or pool 
 which has not as much landscape in it as 
 above it. It is not the brown, muddy, dull 
 thing we suppose it to be ; it has a heart like 
 ourselves, and in the bottom of that there 
 are the boughs of the tall trees, and the 
 blades of the shaking grass, and all manner 
 of hues, of variable, pleasant light out of the 
 sky ; nay, the ugly gutter that stagnates over 
 the drain bars, in the heart of the foul city, 
 
246 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 is not altogether base ; down in that, if you 
 will look deep enough, you may see the dark 
 serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing 
 of pure clouds. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. V, Chap. I, p. 94. 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 
 
Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, color is the 
 holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. V, p. 146. 
 
VIII. 
 
 COLOR STUDIES. 
 
 The fact is, we none of us enough appre- 
 ciate the nobleness and sacredness of color : 
 Nothing is more common than to hear it 
 spoken of as a subordinate beauty, — nay, 
 even as the mere source of a sensual pleas- 
 ure ; and we might almost believe that we 
 were daily among men who 
 
 " Could strip, for aught the prospect yields 
 To them, their verdure from the fields ; 
 And take the radiance from the clouds 
 With which the sun his setting shrouds." 
 
 But it is not so. Such expressions are used 
 for the most part in thoughtlessness ; and if 
 the speakers would only take the pains to 
 imagine what the world and their own exist- 
 ence would become, if the blue were taken 
 from the sky, and the gold from the sunshine, 
 and the verdure from the leaves, and the 
 crimson from the blood which is the life of 
 man, the flush from the cheek, the darkness 
 from the eye, the radiance from the hair, — 
 if they could see but for an instant, white 
 human creatures living in a white world, — 
 
 they would soon feel what they owe to color. 
 249 
 
250 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 The fact is, that, of all God's gifts to the sight 
 of man, color is the holiest, the most divine, 
 the most solemn. We speak rashly of gay 
 color and sad color, for color cannot at once 
 be grave and gay. All good color is in some 
 degree pensive, the loveliest is melancholy, 
 and the purest and most thoughtful minds 
 are those which love color the most. . . . 
 
 I know no law more severely without ex- 
 ception than this of the connection of pure 
 color with profound and noble thought. . . . 
 
 Nor does it seem difficult to discern a 
 noble reason for this universal law. In that 
 heavenly circle which binds the statutes of 
 color upon the front of the sky, when it be- 
 came the sign of the covenant of peace, the 
 pure hues of divided light were sanctified to 
 the human heart for ever; nor this, it would 
 seem, by mere arbitrary appointment, but in 
 consequence of the fore-ordained and marvel- 
 lous constitution of those hues into a seven- 
 fold, or, more strictly still, a threefold order, 
 typical of the Divine nature itself. Observe 
 also the name Shem or Splendor, given to 
 that son of Noah in whom this covenant with 
 mankind was to be fulfilled, and see how that 
 name was justified by every one of the Asiatic 
 races which descended from him. Not with- 
 out meaning was the love of Israel to his 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 251 
 
 chosen son expressed by the coat " of many 
 colors "; not without deep sense of the sacred- 
 ness of that symbol of purity, did the lost 
 daughter of David tear it from her breast : — 
 " With such robes were the king's daughters 
 that were virgins apparelled." We know it 
 to have been by Divine command that the 
 Israelite, rescued from servitude, veiled the 
 tabernacle with its rain of purple and scarlet, 
 while the under sunshine flashed through 
 the fall of the color from its tenons of gold ; 
 but was it less by Divine guidance that the 
 Mede, as he struggled out of anarchy, encom- 
 passed his king with the sevenfold burning 
 of the battlements of Ecbatana ? — of which 
 one circle was golden like the sun, and an- 
 other silver like the moon; and then came 
 the great sacred chord of color, blue, purple, 
 and scarlet ; and then a circle white like the 
 day, and another dark, like night: so that 
 the city rose like a great mural rainbow, a 
 sign of peace amidst the contending of law- 
 less races, and guarded with color and shadow, 
 that seemed to symbolize the great order 
 which rules over Day, and Night, and Time, 
 the first organization of the mighty statutes, 
 — the law of the Medes and Persians that 
 altereth not. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. V, pp. 145-148. 
 
252 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 I have already, in the Stones of Venice, 
 insisted on the sacredness of color, and its 
 necessary connection with all pure and noble 
 feeling: — but perhaps, I have not yet enough 
 insisted on the simplest and readiest to hand 
 of all proofs, — the way, namely, in which 
 God has employed color in His creation as 
 the unvarying accompaniment of all that 
 is purest, most innocent and most precious : 
 while for things precious only in material 
 uses, or dangerous, common colors are re- 
 served. Consider for a little while what sort 
 of a world it would be if all flowers were 
 gray, all leaves black, and the sky brown. 
 . . . Then observe how constantly innocent 
 things are bright in color ; look at a dove's 
 neck, and compare it with the gray back of 
 a viper ; I have often heard talk of brilliantly 
 colored serpents: and I suppose there are 
 such — as there are gay poisons, like the 
 fox-glove and kalmia — types of deceit; but 
 all the venomous serpents I have really seen 
 are gray, brick-red or brown, variously mot- 
 tled; and the most awful serpent I have seen, 
 the Egyptian asp, is precisely of the color of 
 gravel, or only a little grayer. So again, the 
 crocodile and alligator are gray, but the inno- 
 cent lizard green and beautiful. I do not 
 mean that this rule is invariable, otherwise 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 253 
 
 it would be more convincing than the lessons 
 of the natural universe are intended ever to 
 be ; there are beautiful colors on the leopard 
 and tiger, and in the berries of the night- 
 shade: and there is nothing very notable 
 in the brilliancy of color either in sheep or 
 cattle : . . . but take a wider view of Nature, 
 and compare generally rainbows, sunrises, 
 roses, violets, butterflies, birds, goldfish, 
 rubies, opals, and corals, with alligators, hip- 
 popotami, lions, wolves, bears, swine, sharks, 
 slugs, bones, fungi, fogs, and corrupting, 
 stinging, destroying things in general, and 
 you will feel then how the question stands 
 between the colorist and chiaroscurists, — 
 which of them have Nature and life on their 
 side, and which have sin and death. . . . 
 
 All men, completely organized and justly 
 tempered enjoy color: it is meant for the 
 perpetual comfort and delight of the human 
 heart. It is richly bestowed on the highest 
 works of creation, and the eminent sign and 
 seal of perfection in them ; being associated 
 with life in the human body, with light in 
 the sky, with purity and hardness in the 
 earth, — death, night, and pollution of all 
 kinds being colorless. . . . 
 
 To color well requires real talent and 
 earnest study, and to color perfectly is the 
 
254 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 rarest and most precious power an artist can 
 possess. Every other gift may be errone- 
 ously cultivated, but this will guide to all 
 healthy, natural and forcible truth; the 
 student may be led into folly by philoso- 
 phers, and into falsehoods by purists; but 
 he is always safe if he holds the hands of a 
 colorist. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. Ill, pp. 75-80. 
 
 All the primary and secondary colors 
 are capable of infinitely various degrees of 
 intensity or depression : they pass through 
 every degree of increasing light, to perfect 
 light, or white : and of increasing shade, to 
 perfect absence of light, or black. And 
 these are essential in the harmony required 
 by sight ; so that no group of colors can be 
 perfect that has not white in it, nor any 
 that has not black ; or else the abatement or 
 modesty of them, in the tertiary gray. So 
 that these three form the limiting angles of 
 the field, or cloudy ground of the rainbow. 
 " I do set my bow in the cloud." 
 
 And the nine colors of which you here 
 see the essential group, have, as you know, 
 been the messenger Iris ; . . . 
 
 The names of these colors in ordinary 
 shields of knighthood are those given oppo- 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 255 
 
 site, in the left hand column. The names 
 given them in blazoning the shields of 
 nobles, are those of the correspondent 
 gems: 
 
 The Primary Colors. 
 
 1 Or . . . . Topaz 
 
 2 Gules . . . Ruby 
 
 3 Azure . . . Sapphire 
 
 The Secondary Colors. 
 
 4 Ecarlate . . . Jasper 
 
 5 Vert .... Emerald 
 
 6 Purpure . . . Hyacinth 
 
 The Tertiary Colors. 
 
 7 Argent . . . Carbuncle 
 
 8 Sable . . . Diamond 
 
 9 Colombin . . . Pearl 
 
 I. Or. Stands between the light and dark- 
 ness ; as the Sun, who, " rejoiceth as a strong 
 man to run his course, between the morning 
 and the evening. . . . 
 
 II. Gules (rose color) from the Persian 
 word "gul," for the rose. It is the exactly 
 central hue between the dark red, and pale 
 red, or wild-rose. It is the color of love, the 
 fulfilment of the joy and of the love of life 
 upon the earth. . . . The stone of it is the 
 Ruby. 
 
 III. Azure. The color of the blue sky in 
 
256 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 the height of it, at noon ; type of the fulfil- 
 ment of all joy and love in heaven, as the 
 rose-color, of the fulfilment of all joy and 
 love in earth. And the stone of this is the 
 Sapphire ; and because the loves of Earth 
 and Heaven are in truth one, the ruby and 
 sapphire are indeed the same stone ; and they 
 are colored as if by enchantment, — how, or 
 with what, no chemist has yet shown, — the 
 one azure and the other rose. . . . 
 
 IV. ficarlate (scarlet). I use the French 
 word because all other heraldic words for 
 colours are Norman French. . . . The color 
 meant — Carnation; zVzcarnation ; the color 
 of the body of man in its beauty ; of the 
 maid's scarlet blush in noble love; of the 
 youth's scarlet glow in noble war; the dye 
 of the earth into which heaven has breathed 
 its spirit: — incarnate strength — incarnate 
 modesty. The stone of it is the Jasper, 
 which is colored with the same iron that 
 colors the human blood. . . . 
 
 V. Vert (viridis) from the same root as 
 the words " virtue " and " virgin," — the color 
 of the green rod in budding spring; the 
 noble life of youth, born in the spirit, — as 
 the scarlet means, the life of noble youth, in 
 flesh. It is seen most perfectly in clear air 
 after the sun has set, — the blue of the upper 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 257 
 
 sky brightening down into it — and the stone 
 of it is the Emerald. . . . 
 
 VI. Purpure. The true purple of the 
 Tabernacle, " blue, purple, and scarlet " — 
 the kingly color, retained afterwards in all 
 manuscripts of the Greek Gospels. ... It 
 is rose color darkened or saddened with 
 blue; the color of love in noble or divine 
 sorrow. ... Its stone is the Jacinth, Hya- 
 cinth, or Amethyst, — "like to that sable 
 flower inscribed with woe." 
 
 In these six colors, then, you have the 
 rainbow, or angelic iris, of the light and 
 covenant of life. 
 
 VII. Argent. Silver, or snow-color; of 
 the hoar-frost on the earth, or the star of 
 the morning 
 
 VIII. Sable, (sable, sabulum) the color 
 of sand of the great hour-glass of the world, 
 outshaken. Its stone is the diamond, — 
 never yet, so far as I know, found but in 
 the sand. . . . 
 
 IX. Gray. (When deep, the second violet, 
 giving Dante's full chord of the seven colors.) 
 The abatement of light, the abatement of the 
 darkness, . . . the color of the turtle-dove, 
 with the message that the waters are abated. 
 ... Its stone is the Pearl. . . . 
 
 — Deucalion % Chap. VII, pp. 75-80. 
 
258 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Perhaps the great monotone grey of 
 Nature and of Time is a better color than 
 any that the human hand can give. 
 
 — Stones of Venice % Vol. II, Chap. IV, p. 94. 
 
 We have been speaking of what is con- 
 stant and necessary in Nature, of the 
 ordinary effects of daylight on ordinary 
 colors, and we repeat, that no gorgeousness 
 of the palette can reach even these. But it 
 is a widely different thing when Nature her- 
 self takes a coloring fit, and does something 
 extraordinary, something really to exhibit 
 her power. She has a thousand ways and 
 means of rising above herself, but incom- 
 parably the noblest manifestations of her 
 capability of color are in these sunsets 
 among the high clouds. I speak especially 
 of the moment before the sun sinks, when 
 his light turns pure rose-color, and when 
 this light falls upon a zenith covered with 
 countless cloud-forms of inconceivable deli- 
 cacy, threads and flakes of vapor, which 
 would in common daylight be pure snow 
 white, and which give therefore fair field to 
 the tone of light. There is then no limit 
 to the multitude, and no check to the inten- 
 sity of the hues assumed. The whole sky 
 from the zenith to the horizon becomes one 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 259 
 
 molten, mantling sea of color and fire ; every 
 black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple 
 and wave into unsullied, shadowless, crim- 
 son, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for 
 which there are no words in language, and 
 no ideas in the mind, — things which can 
 only be conceived while they are visible, — 
 the intense hollow blue of the upper sky 
 melting through it all, — showing here deep, 
 and pure, and lightless, there, modulated by 
 the filmy, formless body of the transparent 
 vapor till it is lost imperceptibly in its crim- 
 son and gold. 
 
 —Modern Pointers >Vo\. I, Part II, Sect. II, Chap. II, pp. 262, 263. 
 
 It is with interest and reverence to be 
 noted as a physical truth that in a state of joy- 
 ful and healthy excitement the eye becomes 
 more highly sensitive to the beauty of color, 
 and especially to the blue and red rays, while 
 in depression and disease all colors become 
 
 dim tO US. — The Art of England, Lecture VI, p. 351 . 
 
 Nature herself produces all her loveliest 
 colours in some kind of solid or liquid glass 
 or crystal. The rainbow is painted on a 
 shower of melted glass, and the colours of 
 the opal are produced in vitreous flint mixed 
 with water ; the green and blue, and golden 
 
2 6o NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 or amber brown of flowing water is in its 
 surface glossy, and in motion, 'splendidior 
 vitro * ! And the loveliest colours ever 
 granted to human sight — those of morning 
 and evening clouds before or after rain — 
 are produced on minute particles of finely- 
 divided water, or perhaps sometimes, ice. 
 But more than this. If you examine with 
 a lens some of the richest colours of flowers, 
 as, for instance, those of the gentian and 
 dianthus, you will find their texture is pro- 
 duced by a crystalline or sugary frost-work 
 upon them. In the lychnis of the high Alps, 
 the red and white have a kind of sugary 
 bloom, as rich as it is delicate. It is inde- 
 scribable: but if you can fancy very pow- 
 dery and crystalline snow mixed with the 
 softest cream, and then dashed with car- 
 mine, it may give you some idea of the 
 look of it. There are no colours, either in 
 the nacre of shells, or the plumes of birds 
 and insects, which are so pure as those 
 of clouds, opal, or flowers ; but the force of 
 purple and blue in some butterflies, and the 
 methods of clouding, and strength of bur- 
 nished lustre, in plumage like the peacock's, 
 give them more universal interest ; in some 
 birds, also, as in our own kingfisher, the 
 colour nearly reaches a floral preciousness. 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 261 
 
 The lustre in most, however, is metallic, 
 rather than vitreous; and the vitreous al- 
 ways gives the purest hue. Entirely com- 
 mon and vulgar compared with these, yet 
 to be noticed as completing the crystalline 
 or vitreous system, we have the colours of 
 gems. The green of the emerald is the 
 best of these; but at its best is as vulgar 
 as house-painting beside the green of birds' 
 plumage or of clear water. No diamond 
 shows colour so pure as a dewdrop : the ruby 
 is like the pink of an ill-dyed and half- 
 washed-out print, compared to the dianthus ; 
 and the carbuncle is usually quite dead 
 unless set with a foil, and even then is not 
 prettier than the seed of a pomegranate. 
 The opal is, however, an exception. When 
 pure and uncut in its native rock, it pre- 
 sents the most lovely colours that can be 
 seen in the world, except those of clouds. 
 
 — Lectures on Art., Lecture VII, pp. 311, 312. 
 
 You see the broad blue sky every day 
 over your heads ; but you do not for that 
 reason determine blue to be less or more 
 beautiful than you did at first; you are un- 
 accustomed to see stones as blue as the 
 sapphire, but you do not for that reason 
 think the sapphire less beautiful than other 
 
262 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 stones. The blue color is everlastingly 
 appointed by the Deity to be a source of 
 delight; and whether seen perpetually over 
 your head, or crystallised once in a thou- 
 sand years into a single and incomparable 
 stone, your acknowledgment of its beauty 
 is equally natural, simple and instantaneous. 
 
 — Lectures on Architecture and Paintings Lecture I, p. 228. 
 
 An entirely perfect summer light . . . 
 Divine beauty of western color on thyme 
 and rose — then twilight of clearest warm 
 amber far into night, of pale amber all 
 night long; hills dark-clear against it. And 
 so it continued, growing more intense in 
 blue and sunlight, all day . . . and so it went 
 glowing on . . . finally, new moon like a 
 lime-light reflected on breeze-struck water ; 
 traces, across dark calm, of reflected hills. 
 
 — The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, p. 388. 
 
 A color, in association with other colors, 
 is different from the same color seen by it- 
 self. It has a distinct and peculiar power, 
 upon the retina dependent on its associ- 
 ations. Consequently the color of any ob- 
 ject is not more dependent upon the nature 
 of the object itself, and the eye beholding 
 it, than on the color of the objects near it. 
 
 — Modern Painters, VoL I, Part II, Sect. I, Chap. V, p. 150. 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 263 
 
 A heavy rain-cloud raced us — and stooped 
 over us, stealing the blue inch by inch, till 
 it had left only a strip of amber-blue behind 
 the Apennines, the near hills thrown into 
 dark purple shade, the snow behind them, 
 first blazing — the only strong light in the 
 picture — then in shade, dark against the 
 pure sky; the gray above, warm and lurid — 
 a little washed with rain in parts ; below, a 
 copse of willow coming against the dark 
 purples, nearly pure Indian yellow, a little 
 touched with red. Then came a lovely bit 
 of aqueduct, with coats of shattered mosaic, 
 the hills seen through its arches, and pieces 
 of bright green meadow mixing with the 
 yellow of the willows. 
 
 — Praterita,Vo\, II, Chap. Ill, pp. 231, 232. 
 
 There is not a leaf in the world which has 
 the same color, visible over its whole surface ; 
 it has a white high light somewhere ; and in 
 proportion as it curves to or from that focus, 
 the color is brighter or grayer. Pick up a 
 common flint from the roadside, and count, 
 if you can, its changes and hues of color. 
 Every bit of bare ground under your feet 
 has in it a thousand such — the gray pebbles, 
 the warm ochre, the green of incipient vege- 
 tation, the grays and blacks of its reflexes 
 
264 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 and shadows, might keep a painter at work 
 for a month, if he were obliged to follow 
 them touch for touch. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. I, Part II, Sect. II, Chap. II, p. 271. 
 
 The best image which the world can give 
 of Paradise is in the slope of the meadows, 
 orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a 
 great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal 
 snows above; this excellence not being in 
 any wise a matter referable to feeling, or 
 individual preference, but demonstrable by 
 calm enumeration of the number of lovely 
 colors on the rocks, the varied grouping of 
 the trees, and quantity of noble incidents in 
 stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the eye 
 at any given moment. For consider the dif- 
 ference produced in the whole tone of land- 
 scape color by the introduction of purple, 
 violet, and deep ultramarine blue, which we 
 owe to mountains. In the ordinary lowland 
 landscape we have the blue of the sky ; the 
 green of grass ; the green of trees ; and cer- 
 tain elements of purple, far more rich and 
 beautiful than we generally should think, in 
 their bark and shadows (bare hedges and 
 thickets, or tops of trees, in subdued after- 
 noon sunshine, are nearly perfect purple, and 
 of an exquisite tone), as well as in ploughed 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 265 
 
 fields, and dark ground in general. But 
 among mountains, in addition to all this, 
 large unbroken spaces of pure violet and 
 purple are introduced in their distances; 
 and even near, by films of cloud passing over 
 the darkness of ravines or forests, blues are 
 produced of the most subtle tenderness; 
 these azures and purples passing into rose- 
 color of otherwise wholly unattainable deli- 
 cacy among the upper summits, the blue of 
 the sky being at the same time purer and 
 deeper than in the plains. Nay, in some 
 sense, a person who has never seen the rose- 
 color of the rays of dawn crossing a blue 
 mountain twelve or fifteen miles away, can 
 hardly be said to know what tenderness in 
 color means at all ; bright tenderness he may, 
 indeed, see in the sky or in a flower, but this 
 grave tenderness of the far-away hill-purples 
 he cannot conceive. 
 
 Together with this great source of pre- 
 eminence in mass of color, we have to esti- 
 mate the influence of the finished inlaying 
 and enamel-work of the color-jewelry on 
 every stone; and that of the continual variety 
 in species of flower; most of the mountain 
 flowers being, besides, separately lovelier 
 than the lowland ones. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XX, pp. 427, 429. 
 
266 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Respecting the various rocks — out of 
 them we may obtain almost every color 
 pleasant to human sight, not the less so for 
 being generally a little softened or saddened. 
 Thus we have the beautifully subdued reds, 
 reaching tones of deep purple, in the porphy- 
 ries, and of pale rose color, in the granites ; 
 every kind of silver and leaden gray, passing 
 into purple, in the slates; deep green, and 
 every hue of greenish gray, in the volcanic 
 rocks and serpentines; rich orange, and 
 golden brown in the gneiss; black in the 
 lias limestones ; and all these, together with 
 pure white, in the marbles. One color only 
 we hardly ever get in an exposed rock — that 
 dull brown which we noticed in speaking of 
 color generally, as the most repulsive of all 
 hues ; every approximation to it is softened 
 by nature, when exposed to the atmosphere, 
 into a purple gray. All this can hardly be 
 otherwise interpreted, than as prepared for 
 the delight and recreation of man; and I 
 trust that the time may soon come when 
 these beneficent and beautiful gifts of color 
 may be rightly felt and wisely employed, and 
 when the variegated fronts of our houses 
 may render the term "stone-color" as little 
 definite in the mind of the architect as that of 
 " flower-color " would be to the horticulturist. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XI, p. 178. 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 267 
 
 Scarlet color, — or pure red, intensified 
 by expression of light, — is, of all the three 
 primitive colors, that which is most distinc- 
 tive. Yellow is of the nature of simple light ; 
 blue, connected with simple shade ; but red 
 is an entirely abstract color. It is red to 
 which the color-blind are blind, as if to show 
 us that it was not necessary merely for the 
 service or comfort of man, but that there was 
 a special gift or teaching in this color. Ob- 
 serve, farther, that it is this color which the 
 sunbeams take in passing through the earth's 
 atmosphere. The rose of dawn and sunset 
 is the hue of the rays passing close over the 
 earth. It is also concentrated in the blood 
 of man. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. XI, p. 399. 
 
 Color is, in brief terms, the type of love. 
 Hence it is especially connected with the 
 blossoming of the earth ; and again, with its 
 fruits ; also, with the spring and fall of the 
 leaf, and with the morning and evening of 
 the day, in order to show the waiting of love 
 about the birth and death of man. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IX, Chap. XI, p. 405. 
 
 The Greek liked purple, as a general source 
 of enjoyment better than any other color, and 
 
268 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 so all healthy persons who have eye for color, 
 and are unprejudiced about it do. . . . 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XIV, p. 280. 
 
 Some three arrowflights further up into 
 the wood we come to a tall tree, which is at 
 first barren, but, after some little time, visibly 
 opens into flowers, of a color " less than that 
 of roses, but more than that of violets." It 
 certainly would not be possible, in words, 
 to come nearer to the definition of the exact 
 hue which Dante meant — that of the apple- 
 blossom. Had he employed any simple color- 
 phrase, as a " pale pink " or " violet pink " or 
 any such combined expression, he still could 
 not have completely got at the delicacy of 
 the hue ; he might perhaps have indicated its 
 kind, but not its tenderness ; but by taking 
 the rose-leaf as the type of the delicate red, 
 and then enfeebling this with the violet gray, 
 he gets, as closely as language can carry him, 
 to the complete rendering of the vision, 
 though it is evidently felt by him to be in 
 its perfect beauty ineffable; and rightly so 
 felt, for of all lovely things which grace the 
 spring time in our fair temperate zone, I am 
 not sure but this blossoming of the apple- 
 tree is the fairest. At all events, I find it 
 associated in my mind with four other kinds 
 
COLOR STUDIES. 269 
 
 of color, certainly principal among the gifts 
 of the northern earth, namely: 
 
 1st. Bell gentians growing close together, 
 mixed with lilies of the valley, on the Jura 
 pastures. 
 
 2d. Alpine roses with dew upon them, 
 under low rays of morning sunshine, touch- 
 ing the tops of the flowers. 
 
 3d. Bell heather in mass, in full light, at 
 sunset. 
 
 4th. White narcissus (red centered) in 
 mass, on the Vevay pastures, in sunshine 
 after rain. 
 
 And I know not where in the group to 
 place the wreaths of apple-blossoms in the 
 Vevay orchards, with the far-off blue of the 
 Lake of Geneva seen between the flowers. 
 
 —Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XIV, pp. 281, 282. 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 
 
If human life be cast among trees at all, the love 
 borne to them is a sure test of its purity. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. I, p. 24. 
 
IX. 
 
 TREES AND THEIR MINISTR V. 
 
 Being prepared for us in all ways, and 
 made beautiful, and good for food and 
 for building, and for instruments of our 
 hands, this race of plants, — (trees) — de- 
 serving boundless affection and admiration 
 from us, become in proportion to their 
 obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our 
 being in right temper of mind and way of 
 life, so that no one can be far wrong in 
 either who loves the trees enough, and every 
 one is assuredly wrong in both, who does 
 not love them, if his life has brought them 
 in his way. It is clearly possible to do with- 
 out them, for the great companionship of 
 the sea and sky are all that sailors need ; 
 and many a noble heart has been taught the 
 best it had to learn between dark stone walls. 
 Still if human life be cast among trees at 
 all, the love borne to them is a sure test of 
 its purity. . . . And sometimes I cannot but 
 think of the trees of the earth as capable 
 of a kind of sorrow, in that imperfect life of 
 theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves 
 in the warm spring-time in vain for men ; — 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. I, pp. 24-26. 
 273 
 
274 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 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 contemplate them, 
 and read or hear their lovely language, 
 written or spoken for us, not in frightful 
 black letters, nor in dull sentences, but in 
 fair green and shadowy shapes of waving 
 words, and blossomed brightness of odorif- 
 erous wit, and sweet whispers of unintrusive 
 wisdom, and playful morality. 
 
 — Tht Elements of Draiuing) Letter III, p. 380. 
 
 A very old forest tree is a thing subject 
 to the same laws of nature as ourselves; 
 it is an energetic being, liable to and ap- 
 proaching death ; its age is written on every 
 spray; and because we see it susceptible of 
 life and annihilation, like our own, we imag- 
 ine it must be capable of the same feelings, 
 and possess the same faculties, and, above 
 all others, memory: it is always telling us 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 275 
 
 about the past, never pointing to the future ; 
 we appeal to it, as to a thing which has seen 
 and felt during a life similar to our own, 
 though of ten times its duration, and there- 
 fore receive from it a perpetual impression 
 of antiquity. . . . This being the case, it is 
 evident that the chief feeling induced by 
 woody country is one of reverence for its 
 antiquity. There is a quiet melancholy 
 about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, 
 which is enhanced by the green and elastic 
 vigour of the young saplings : the noble form 
 of the forest aisles, and the subdued light 
 which penetrates their entangled boughs, 
 combine to add to the impression; and the 
 whole character of the scene is calculated 
 to excite conservative feeling. 
 
 — The Poetry of Architecture , Chap. I, p. 56. 
 
 Throughout all the freedom of her wildest 
 foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an 
 encompassing 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 common law. 
 
 — Elements of Drawing, Letter III, p. 377. 
 
276 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Building Plants. These will not live on 
 the ground, but eagerly raise edifices above 
 it. Each works hard with solemn fore- 
 thought all its life. Perishing, it leaves its 
 work in the form which will be most useful 
 to its successors — its own monument and 
 their inheritance. These architectural edi- 
 fices we call " Trees." ... In questioning the 
 true builders as to their modes of work, I 
 find that they are divisible into two great 
 classes — "Builders with the shield" and 
 " Builders with the sword." Builders with 
 the shield have expanded leaves, more or less 
 resembling shields, partly in shape, but still 
 more in office ; for under their lifted shadow 
 the young bud of the next year is kept from 
 harm. These are the gentlest of the builders, 
 and live in pleasant places, providing food 
 and shelter for man. Builders with the sword, 
 on the contrary, have sharp leaves in the 
 shape of swords, and the young buds, instead 
 of being as numerous as the leaves, crouch- 
 ing each under a leaf-shadow, are few in 
 number, and grow fearlessly, each in the 
 midst of a sheaf of swords. These builders 
 live in savage places, are sternly dark in 
 color, and though they give much health to 
 man by their merely physical strength, they 
 (with few exceptions) give him no food, and 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 277 
 
 imperfect shelter. Their mode of building is 
 ruder than that of the shield-builders, and 
 they in many ways resemble the pillar-plants 
 of the opposite order. We call them gener- 
 ally " Pines." . . . The chief mystery of vege- 
 tation, so far as respects external form, is 
 among the fair shield-builders. . . . 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. I, pp. 29, 31. 
 
 If you gather in summer time an outer 
 spray of any shield-leaved tree, you will find 
 it consists of a slender rod, throwing out 
 leaves, perhaps on every side, perhaps on two 
 sides only, with usually a cluster of closer 
 leaves at the end. ... If you look close you 
 will see small projecting points at the roots of 
 the leaves. These represent buds. Whether 
 you find them or not, they are there — visible, 
 or latent, does not matter. Every leaf has 
 assuredly an infant bud to take care of, laid 
 tenderly, as in a cradle, just where the leaf- 
 stalk forms a safe niche between it and the 
 main stem. The child-bud is thus fondly 
 guarded all summer ; but its protecting leaf 
 dies in the autumn ; and then the boy-bud 
 is put out to rough winter schooling, by 
 which he is prepared for personal entrance 
 into public life in the spring. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Chap. Ill, pp. 32, 33. 
 
278 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Having now some clear idea of the posi- 
 tion of the bud, we have now to examine the 
 forms and structure of its shield — the leaf 
 which guards it. You will form the best 
 general idea of the flattened leaf of shield- 
 builders by thinking of it as you would of a 
 mast and a sail. . . . To some extent, indeed, 
 it has yards also, ribs branching from the in- 
 nermost one ; only the yards of the leaf will 
 not run up and down, which is one essential 
 function of a sail-yard. 
 
 The analogy will, however, serve one step 
 more. As the sail must be on one side of 
 the mast, so the expansion of a leaf is on one 
 side of its central rib, or of its system of 
 ribs. It is laid over them as if it were 
 stretched over a frame, so that on the upper 
 surface it is comparatively smooth; on the 
 lower, barred. 
 
 . . . The leaves are the feeders of the plant. 
 Their own orderly habits of succession must 
 not interfere with their main business of 
 rinding food. Where the sun and air are, 
 the leaf must go, whether it be out of order 
 or not. So, therefore, in any group, the first 
 consideration with the young leaves is much 
 like that of young bees, how to keep out of 
 each other's way, that every one may at once 
 leave its neighbors as much free-air pasture 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 279 
 
 as possible, and obtain a relative freedom for 
 itself. This would be a quite simple matter 
 and produce other simply balanced forms, if 
 each branch, with open air all round it, had 
 nothing to think of but reconcilement of 
 interests among- its own leaves. But every 
 branch has others to meet or to cross, shar- 
 ing with them, in various advantage, what 
 shade or sun, or rain is to be had. Hence 
 every single leaf-cluster presents the general 
 aspect of a little family, entirely at unity 
 among themselves, but obliged to get their 
 living by various shifts, concessions, and in- 
 fringements of the family rules, in order not 
 to invade the privileges of other people in 
 their neighborhood. 
 
 And in the arrangement of these conces- 
 sions there is an exquisite sensibility among 
 the leaves. They do not grow each to his 
 own liking, till they run against one another, 
 and then turn back sulkily; but by a watch- 
 ful instinct, far apart, they anticipate their 
 companion's courses, as ships at sea, and in 
 every unfolding of their edged tissue, guide 
 themselves by the sense of each other's re- 
 mote presence, and by a watchful penetration 
 of leafy purpose in the far future. So that 
 every shadow which one casts on the next, 
 and every glint of sun which each reflects to 
 
2 8o NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 the next, and every touch which in toss of 
 storm each receives from the next, aid or 
 arrest the development of their advancing 
 form, and direct, as will be safest and best, 
 the curve of every fold and the current of 
 every vein. 
 
 — Modern Painters , Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. IV, pp. 43-57. 
 
 It is evident that the more leaves the 
 stalk has to sustain, the more strength it 
 requires. It might appear, therefore, not 
 unadvisable, that every leaf should as it 
 grew, pay a small tax to the stalk for its 
 sustenance; so that there might be no fear 
 of any number of leaves being too oppres- 
 sive to their bearer. Which, accordingly, 
 is just what the leaves do. Each, from the 
 moment of his complete majority, pays a 
 stated tax to the stalk ; that is to say, collects 
 for it a certain quantity of wood, or materials 
 for wood, and sends this wood, or what ulti- 
 mately will become wood, down the stalk to 
 add to its thickness. 
 
 " Down the stalk ? " Yes, and down a 
 great way farther. For, as the leaves, if they 
 did not thus contribute to their own support, 
 would soon be too heavy for the spray, so 
 if the spray, with its family of leaves, con- 
 tributed nothing to the thickness of the 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 281 
 
 branch, the leaf-families would soon break 
 down their sustaining branches. And, simi- 
 larly, if the branches gave nothing to the 
 stem, the stem would soon fall under its 
 boughs. Therefore, as each leaf adds to the 
 thickness of the shoot, so each shoot to the 
 branch, so each branch to the stem, and that 
 with so perfect an order and regularity of 
 duty, that from every leaf in all the count- 
 less crowd at the tree's summit, one slender 
 fibre, or at least fibre's thickness of wood, de- 
 scends through shoot, through spray, through 
 branch, and through stem ; and having thus 
 added, in its due proportion, to form the 
 strength of the tree, labors yet farther, and 
 more painfully to provide for its security: 
 and thrusting forward into the root, loses 
 nothing of its mighty energy, until, mining 
 through the darkness, it has taken hold in 
 cleft of rock or depth of earth, as extended 
 as the sweep of its green crest in the free 
 air. Such, at least, is the mechanical aspect 
 of the tree. The work of its construc- 
 tion, considered as a branch tower, partly 
 propped by buttresses, partly lashed by 
 cables, is thus shared in by every leaf. 
 But considering it as a living body to be 
 nourished, it is probably an inaccurate anal- 
 ogy to speak of the leaves being taxed for 
 
282 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 the enlargement of the trunk. Strictly 
 speaking the trunk enlarges by sustaining 
 them. For each leaf, however far removed 
 from the ground, stands in need of nour- 
 ishment derived from the ground, as well 
 as of that which it finds in the air; and it 
 simply sends its root down along the stem 
 of the tree, until it reaches the ground and 
 obtains the necessary mineral elements. 
 The trunk has been therefore called by 
 some botanists "a bundle of roots" but I 
 think inaccurately. It is rather a messen- 
 ger to the roots. A root, properly so called, 
 is a fibre, spongy, or absorbent at the ex- 
 tremity, which secretes certain elements 
 from the earth. The stem is by this defini- 
 tion, no more a cluster of roots than a clus- 
 ter of leaves, but a channel of intercourse 
 between the roots and the leaves. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. VI, pp. 68, 69, 
 
 So far as you can watch a tree, it is pro- 
 duced throughout by repetitions of the same 
 process, which repetitions, however, are arbi- 
 trarily directed so as to produce one effect at 
 one time, and another at another time. A 
 young sapling has his branches as much as 
 the tall tree. He does not shoot up in a 
 long thin rod, and begin to branch when he 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 283 
 
 is ten or fifteen feet high. . . . The young 
 sapling conducts himself with all the dignity 
 of a tree from the first,— only he so manages 
 his branches as to form a support for his 
 future life, in a strong straight trunk, that 
 will hold him well off the ground. Prudent 
 little sapling! — but how does he manage 
 this? how keep the young branches from 
 rambling about, till the proper time, or on 
 what plea dismiss them from his service if 
 they will not help his provident purpose? 
 So again, there is no difference in mode of 
 construction between the trunk of a pine and 
 its branch. But external circumstances so 
 far interfere with the results of this repeated 
 construction, that a stone pine rises for a 
 hundred feet like a pillar, and then suddenly 
 bursts into a cloud. It is the knowledge of 
 the mode in which such change may take 
 place which forms the true natural history of 
 trees : — or more accurately, their moral his- 
 tory. An animal is born with so many limbs, 
 and a head of such a shape. That is, strictly 
 speaking, not its history, but one fact of its 
 history ; a fact of which no other account can 
 be given than that it was so appointed. But 
 a tree is born without a head. It has got to 
 make its own head. It is born like a little 
 family from which a great nation is to spring; 
 
284 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 and at a certain time, under peculiar exter- 
 nal circumstances, this nation, every indi- 
 vidual of which remains the same in nature 
 and temper, yet gives itself a new political 
 constitution, and sends out branch colonies, 
 which enforce forms of law and life entirely 
 different from those of the parent state. 
 This is the history of the state. It is also 
 the history of a tree. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. VII, p. 82. 
 
 What the elm and oak are to England, the 
 olive is to Italy. ... Its classical associations 
 double its importance in Greece ; and in the 
 Holy Land the remembrances connected 
 with it are of course more touching than can 
 ever belong to any other tree of the field. 
 
 ... I do not want painters to tell me any 
 scientific facts about olive-trees. But it had 
 been well for them to have felt and seen the 
 olive-tree ; to have loved it for Christ's sake, 
 partly also for the helmed Wisdom's sake 
 which was to the heathen in some sort as 
 that nobler Wisdom which stood at God's 
 right hand, when He founded the earth and 
 established the heavens. To have loved it, 
 even to the hoary dimness of its delicate 
 foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as if the 
 ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 285 
 
 upon it forever; and to have traced, line by 
 line, the gnarled writhing of its intricate 
 branches, and the pointed fretwork of its 
 light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue 
 field of the sky, and the small rosy-white 
 stars of its spring blossoming, and the beads 
 of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its 
 topmost boughs — the right, in Israel, of the 
 stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, — and 
 more than all, the softness of the mantle, 
 silver grey, and tender like the down on a 
 bird's breast, with which, far away, it veils 
 the undulation of the mountains; — 
 
 Now the main characteristics of an olive- 
 tree are these. It has sharp and slender 
 leaves of a greyish green, nearly grey on the 
 under surface, and resembling, but somewhat 
 smaller than, those of our common willow. 
 Its fruit, when ripe, is black and lustrous ; 
 but of course so small, that unless in great 
 quantity, it is not conspicuous upon the tree. 
 Its trunk and branches are peculiarly fantas- 
 tic in their twisting, showing their fibres at 
 every turn ; and the trunk is often hollow, 
 and even rent into many divisions like sepa- 
 rate stems, but the extremities are exquisitely 
 graceful, especially in the setting out of the 
 leaves, and the notable and characteristic 
 effect of the tree in the distance is of a 
 
286 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 rounded and soft mass or ball of downy 
 foliage. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice* Vol. III. Conclusion, pp. 175, 177. 
 
 It may be said to be a universal law with 
 respect to the boughs of all trees that they 
 incline their extremities more to the ground 
 in proportion as they are lower on the trunk, 
 and that the higher their point of insertion 
 is, the more they share in the upward ten- 
 dency of the trunk itself. But yet there is 
 not a single group of boughs in any one tree 
 which does not show exception to this rule, 
 and present boughs lower in insertion, and 
 yet steeper in inclination than their neigh- 
 bors. Nor is this defect or deformity, but 
 the result of the constant habit of Nature to 
 carry variety into her very principles, and 
 make the symmetry and beauty of her laws 
 the more felt by the grace and accidentalism 
 with which they are carried out. No one 
 familiar with foliage could doubt for an 
 instant of the necessity of giving evidence 
 of this downward tendency in the boughs; 
 but it would be nearly as great an offence 
 against truth to make the law hold good with 
 every individual branch, as not to exhibit its 
 influence on the majority. 
 
 — Modern PaiHters> Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. II, p. 51. 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 287 
 
 Getting into a cart-road among some 
 young trees, where there was nothing to see 
 but the blue sky through thin branches I lay 
 down on the bank by the road-side to see if I 
 could sleep. But I couldn't, and the branches 
 against the blue sky began to interest me. . . . 
 Feeling gradually somewhat livelier ... I 
 took out my sketch-book and began to draw 
 a little aspen tree, on the other side of the 
 cart-road. . . . Languidly, but not idly, I 
 began to draw it; and as I drew, the languor 
 passed away : the beautiful lines insisted on 
 being traced, — without weariness. More and 
 more beautiful they became, as each rose out 
 of the rest, and took its place in the air. 
 With wonder increasing every instant, I saw 
 that they " composed " themselves, by finer 
 laws than any known of men. At last, the 
 tree was there, and everything that I had 
 thought before about trees, nowhere. . . . 
 The woods, which I had only looked on as 
 wilderness, fulfilled I then saw,in their beauty, 
 the same laws which guided the clouds, di- 
 vided the light, and balanced the wave. " He 
 hath made everything beautiful, in his time " 
 became for me thenceforward the interpreta- 
 tion of the bond between the human mind 
 and all visible things; and I returned along 
 the wood-road feeling that it had led me far : 
 
288 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 — farther than ever fancy had reached, or 
 theodolite measured. 
 
 — Pr<zterita> Vol. II, Chap. IV, pp. 251, 253. 
 
 Forms which can be no otherwise ac- 
 counted for may often be explained by refer- 
 ence to the natural features of the country, 
 or to anything which habit must have ren- 
 dered familiar, and therefore delightful. . . . 
 And to the force of this vital instinct we 
 have farther to add the influence of natural 
 scenery ; and chiefly of the groups and wil- 
 dernesses of the tree which is to the German 
 mind what the olive or palm is to the South- 
 ern, the spruce fir. The eye which has once 
 been habituated to the continual serration 
 of the pine forest, and to the multiplication 
 of its infinite pinnacles, is not easily offended 
 by the repetition of similar forms, nor easily 
 satisfied by the simplicity of flat or massive 
 outlines. Add to the influence of the pine, 
 that of the poplar, more especially in the 
 valleys of France ; but think of the spruce 
 chiefly, and meditate on the difference of 
 feeling with which the Northman would be 
 inspired by the frost-work wreathed upon its 
 glittering point, and the Italian by the dark 
 green depth of sunshine on the broad table 
 of the stone-pine (and consider by the way 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 289 
 
 whether the spruce fir be a more heavenly- 
 minded tree than those dark canopies of the 
 Mediterranean isles). 
 
 — Stones of Venice ; Vol. I, Chap. XIII, p. 156. 
 
 Of the many marked adaptations of nature 
 to the mind of man, it seems one of the most 
 singular that trees intended especially for the 
 adornment of the wildest mountains should 
 be in broad outline the most formal of trees. 
 The vine, which is to be the companion 
 of man, is waywardly docile in its growth, 
 falling into festoons beside his corn-fields, 
 or roofing his garden-walls, or casting its 
 shadow all summer upon his door. Associ- 
 ated always with the trimness of cultivation, 
 it introduces all possible elements of sweet 
 wildness. The pine, placed nearly always 
 among scenes disordered and desolate, brings 
 into them all possible elements of order and 
 precision. Lowland trees may lean to this 
 side and that, though it is but a meadow 
 breeze that bends them, or a bank of cowslips 
 from which their trunks lean aslope. But 
 let storm and avalanche do their worst, and 
 let the pine find only a ledge of vertical 
 precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow 
 straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot 
 down the stem ; — it shall point to the centre 
 of the earth as long as the tree lives. 
 
290 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Also it may be well for lowland branches 
 to reach hither and thither for what they 
 need, and to take all kinds of irregular shape 
 and extension. But the pine is trained to 
 need nothing, and to endure everything. It 
 is resolvedly whole, self-contained, deserving 
 nothing but Tightness, content with restricted 
 completion. Tall or short, it will be straight. 
 Small or large, it will be round. It may be 
 permitted also to these soft lowland trees 
 that they should make themselves gay with 
 show of blossom, and glad with pretty chari- 
 ties of fruitfulness. We builders with the 
 sword have harder work to do for man, 
 and must do it in close-set troops. To stay 
 the sliding of the mountain snows which 
 would bury him: to hold in divided drops, 
 at our sword-points the rain, which would 
 sweep him from his treasure-fields ; to nurse 
 in shade among our brown fallen leaves the 
 tricklings that feed the brooks in drought: 
 to give massive shield against the winter 
 wind, which shrieks through the bare 
 branches of the plain: — such service must 
 we do him steadfastly while we live. Our 
 bodies, also, are at his service : softer than 
 the bodies of other trees, though our toil is 
 harder than theirs. Let him take them as 
 pleases him, for his houses and ships. So 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 291 
 
 also it may be well for these timid lowland 
 trees to tremble with all their leaves, to turn 
 their paleness to the sky, if but a rush of rain 
 passes by them : or to let fall their leaves at 
 last, sick and sere. But we pines must live 
 carelessly amidst the wrath of clouds. We 
 only wave our branches to and fro when the 
 storm pleads with us, as men toss their arms 
 in a dream. 
 
 And finally, these weak lowland trees may 
 struggle fondly for the last remnants of life, 
 and send up feeble saplings again from their 
 roots when they are cut down. But we 
 builders with the sword perish boldly; our 
 dying shall be perfect and solemn, as our 
 warning ; we give up our lives without reluc- 
 tance and forever. 
 
 I wish the reader to fix his attention for a 
 moment on these two great characters of the 
 pine, its straightness and rounded perfect- 
 ness: both wonderful, and in their issue 
 lovely. I say, first, its straightness. . . . 
 Other trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the 
 form and sway of the ground, clothe it, with 
 soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly 
 its flatterers, partly its comforters. But the 
 pine rises in serene resistance, self-contained : 
 nor can I ever without awe stay long under 
 a great Alpine cliff, far from all house or 
 
292 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 work of men, looking up to its companies of 
 pine, as they stand on the inaccessible juts 
 and perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in 
 quiet multitudes, each like the shadow of the 
 one beside it — upright, fixed, spectral, as 
 troops of ghosts standing on the walls of 
 Hades, not knowing each other — dumb for- 
 ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry- 
 to them: — those trees never heard human 
 voice : they are far above all sound but of 
 the winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf 
 of theirs. All comfortless they stand, be- 
 tween the two eternities of the Vacancy and 
 the Rock ; yet with such iron will, that the 
 rock itself looks bent and shattered before 
 them — fragile, weak, inconsistent, compared 
 to their dark energy of delicate life, and 
 monotony of enchanted pride : unnumbered, 
 unconquerable. 
 
 Then note, farther, their perfectness. The 
 impression on most people's minds must 
 have been received more from pictures than 
 reality, so far as I can judge: — so ragged 
 they think the pine : whereas its chief char- 
 acter in health is green and full roundness. 
 It stands compact, like one of its own cones, 
 slightly curved on its side, finished and quaint 
 as a carved tree in some Elizabethan garden; 
 and instead of being wild in expression, forms 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTR Y. 293 
 
 the softest of all forest scenery; for other 
 trees show their trunks and twisting boughs ; 
 but the pine, growing either in luxuriant 
 mass or in happy isolation, allows no branch 
 to be seen. Summit behind summit rise its 
 pyramidal ranges, or down to the very grass 
 sweep the circlets of its boughs ; so that 
 there is nothing but green cone and green 
 carpet. Nor is it only softer, but in one 
 sense more cheerful than other foliage: for 
 it casts only a pyramidal shadow. Lowland 
 forest arches overhead, and chequers the 
 ground with darkness : but the pine, growing 
 in scattered groups, leaves the glades be- 
 tween emerald-bright. Its gloom is all its 
 own : narrowing into the sky, it lets the sun- 
 shine strike down to the dew. . . . 
 
 The third character which I want you to 
 notice in the pine is its exquisite fineness. 
 Other trees rise against the sky in dots and 
 knots, but this in fringes. You never see 
 the edges of it, so subtle are they. ... It 
 seems as if these trees, living always among 
 the clouds, had caught part of their glory 
 from them: and themselves the darkest of 
 vegetation, could yet add splendor to the 
 sun itself. . . . 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. IX, pp. 114-119. 
 
294 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Pagan sculptors seem to have perceived 
 little beauty in the stems of trees ; they were 
 little less than timber to them. . . . But with 
 Christian knowledge came a peculiar regard 
 for the forms of vegetation, from the root 
 upwards. The actual representation of the 
 entire trees required in many scripture sub- 
 jects, — as in the most frequent of Old Testa- 
 ment subjects, the Fall: — familiarised the 
 sculptors of bas-relief to the beauty of forms 
 before unknown ; while the symbolical name 
 given to Christ by the Prophets, "the Branch," 
 and the frequent expressions referring to this 
 image throughout every scriptural descrip- 
 tion of conversion gave an especial interest to 
 the Christian mind to this portion of vegeta- 
 tive structure. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XX, p. 230. 
 
 The green rod, or springing bough of a 
 tree — 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 expression, 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, con- 
 
TREES AND THEIR MINISTRY. 295 
 
 stantly, and without motive, does what is 
 right. You must train men to this by habit, 
 as you would the branch of a tree. 
 
 — The Ethics of the Dust, Lecture VII, p. 90. 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS 
 
 FOR 
 
 COMFORT AND DELIGHT, 
 
Lovely flowers growing in the open air, are the 
 proper guides of men to the places which their Maker 
 intended them to inhabit. — Proserpina^ Chap. IV, p. 63. 
 
 I 'm scarcely able to look at one flower because of 
 the two on each side, in my garden just now, I want 
 to have bees' eyes, there are so many lovely things. 
 
X. 
 
 PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 
 
 Flowers, like everything else that is lovely 
 in the visible world, are only to be seen 
 rightly with the eyes which the God who 
 made them gave us ; and neither with micro- 
 scopes nor spectacles. . . . The use of the 
 great mechanical powers may indeed some- 
 times be compatible with the due exercise 
 of our own ; but the use of instruments for 
 exaggerating the powers of sight necessarily 
 deprives us of the best pleasures of sight. A 
 flower is to be watched as it grows, in its 
 association with the earth, the air, and the 
 dew ; its leaves are to be seen as they expand 
 in sunshine ; its colors, as they embroider the 
 field, or illumine the forest. Dissect or mag- 
 nify them, and all you discover or learn at 
 last will be that oaks, roses, and daisies, are 
 all made of fibres and bubbles; and these, 
 again, of charcoal and water ; but for all their 
 peeping and probing, nobody knows how. 
 
 — Prceterita, Vol. II, Chap. X, p. 348. 
 
 Some fifty years ago the poet Goethe dis- 
 covered that all the parts of plants had a 
 
 299 
 
3°° 
 
 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 kind of common nature, and would change 
 into each other. Now this was a true dis- 
 covery, and a notable one ; and you will find, 
 that, in fact, all plants are composed of essen- 
 tially two parts — the leaf and root — one lov- 
 ing the light, the other darkness ; one liking 
 to be clean, the other to be dirty; one lik- 
 ing to grow for the most part up, the other 
 for the most part down; and each having 
 faculties and purposes of its own. But the 
 pure one, which loves the light, has, above all 
 things, the purpose of being married to an- 
 other leaf, and having child-leaves, and chil- 
 dren's children of leaves, to make the earth 
 fair forever. And when the leaves marry, 
 they put on wedding-robes, and are more 
 glorious than Solomon in all his glory, and 
 they have feasts of honey, and we call them 
 
 " Flowers." — Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter V, p. 62. 
 
 What we especially need at present for 
 educational purposes is to know, not the 
 anatomy of plants, but their biography — 
 how and where they live and die, their tem- 
 pers, benevolences, malignities, distresses, and 
 virtues. We want them drawn from their 
 youth to their age, from bud to fruit. We 
 ought to see the various forms of their di- 
 minished but hardy growth in cold climates, 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 301 
 
 or poor soils; and their rank or wild luxu- 
 riance, when full-fed, and warmly nursed. 
 And all this we ought to have drawn so 
 accurately, that we might at once compare 
 any given part of a plant with the same part 
 of any other, drawn on the like conditions. 
 
 — Lectures on Art> Lecture IV, p. 262. 
 
 Your garden is to enable you to obtain 
 such knowledge of plants as you may best 
 use in the country in which you live, by com- 
 municating it to others ; and teaching them 
 to take pleasure in the green herb, given for 
 meat, and the coloured flower, given for joy. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. II, Letter XLVI, p. 285. 
 " To dress it and to keep it." 
 
 That, then, was to be our work. Alas! 
 what work have we set ourselves upon in- 
 stead! How have we ravaged the garden 
 instead of kept it — feeding our war-horses 
 with flowers, and splintering its trees into 
 spear-shafts ! 
 
 " And at the East a flaming sword." 
 
 Is its flame quenchless? and are those 
 gates that keep the way indeed passable no 
 more ? or is it not rather that we no more 
 desire to enter? For what can we conceive 
 of that first Eden which we might not yet 
 
3° : 
 
 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 win back, if we chose ? It was a place full 
 of flowers, we say. Well: the flowers are 
 always striving to grow wherever we suffer 
 them ; and the fairer, the closer. There may 
 indeed have been a Fall of Flowers, as a 
 Fall of Man : but assuredly creatures such 
 as we are can now fancy nothing lovelier 
 than roses and lilies, which would grow for 
 us side by side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the 
 Earth was white and red with them, if we 
 cared to have it so. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. I, p. 21. 
 Rome, Whit Monday. 
 
 On the quiet road leading from under the 
 Palatine to the little church of St. Nereo 
 and Achilleo, I met, yesterday morning, 
 group after group of happy peasants ... in 
 Whit-Sunday dress . . . and the women all 
 with bright artificial roses in their hair. . . . 
 And the thing that struck me most in the 
 look of it was not so much the cheerfulness, 
 as the dignity ; — in a true sense, the becom- 
 ingness and decorousness of the ornament. 
 Among the ruins of the dead city, and the 
 worse desolation of the work of its modern 
 rebuilders, here was one element at least 
 of honour and order; — and, in these, of 
 delight. 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 303 
 
 And these are the real significances of the 
 flower itself. It is the utmost purification of 
 the plant, and the utmost discipline. Where 
 its tissue is blanched fairest, dyed purest, set 
 in strictest rank, appointed to most chosen 
 office, there — and created by the fact of this 
 purity and function — is the flower. 
 
 But created, observe, by the purity and 
 order, more than by the function. The 
 flower exists for its own sake — not for the 
 fruit's sake. The production of the fruit is 
 an added honour to it — is a granted conso- 
 lation to us for its death. But the flower is 
 the end of the seed,— not the seed of the 
 flower. You are fond of cherries, perhaps; 
 and think that the use of cherry blossom is 
 to produce cherries. Not at all. The use 
 of cherries is to produce cherry blossoms; 
 just as the use of bulbs is to produce hya- 
 cinths,— not of hyacinths to produce bulbs. 
 Nay, that the flower can multiply by bulb, or 
 root, or slip, as well as by seed, may show 
 you at once how immaterial the seed-forming 
 function is to the flower's existence. A 
 flower is to the vegetable substance what a 
 crystal is to the mineral. " Dust of sap- 
 phire," writes my friend Dr. John Brown to 
 me, of the wood hyacinths of Scotland in the 
 spring. Yes, that is so, — each bud more 
 
3 o4 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 beautiful, itself, than perfectest jewel — this, 
 indeed, jewel "of purest ray serene"; but, 
 observe you, the glory is in the purity, the 
 serenity, the radiance, — not in the mere con- 
 tinuance of the creature. 
 
 It is because of its beauty that its continu- 
 ance is worth Heaven's while. The glory of 
 it is in being, not in begetting ; and in the 
 spirit and substance, — not the change. . . . 
 
 Fasten well in your mind, then, the con- 
 ception of order and purity, as the essence 
 of the flower's being, no less than of the 
 crystal's. A ruby is not made bright to 
 scatter round it child-rubies ; nor a flower, 
 but in collateral and added honour, to give 
 birth to other flowers. Two main facts, 
 then, you have to study in every flower ; the 
 symmetry and order of it, and the perfection 
 of its substance; first the manner in which 
 the leaves are placed for beauty of form; 
 then the spinning and weaving and blanch- 
 ing of their tissue, for the reception of purest 
 colour, or refining to richest surface. 
 
 First, the order, the proportion, and 
 answering to each other, of the parts; for 
 the study of which it becomes necessary to 
 know what its parts are; and that a flower 
 consists essentially of — Well, I really don't 
 know what it consists essentially of. For 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 305 
 
 some flowers have bracts, and stalks, and 
 toruses, and calices, and corollas, and discs, 
 and stamens, and pistils, and ever so many- 
 odds and ends of things besides, of no use at 
 all, seemingly ; and others have no bracts, and 
 no stalks, and no toruses, and no calices, and 
 no corollas, and nothing recognizable for 
 stamens or pistils, — only when they come 
 to be reduced to this kind of poverty one 
 doesn't call them flowers; they get together in 
 knots, and one calls them catkins, or the like, 
 or forgets their existence altogether. . . . 
 
 And for farther embarrassment, a flower 
 not only is without essential consistence of a 
 given number of parts, but it rarely consists, 
 alone, of itself. One talks of a hyacinth as 
 of a flower ; but a hyacinth is any number of 
 flowers. One does not talk of "a heather"; 
 when one says " heath," one means the whole 
 plant, not the blossom, — because heath-bells, 
 though they grow together for company's 
 sake, do so in a voluntary sort of way, and 
 are not fixed in their places ; and yet, they 
 depend on each other for effect, as much as 
 a bunch of grapes. 
 
 — Proserpina % Vol. I, Chap. IV, pp. 48-50. 
 
 Perhaps few people have ever asked them- 
 selves why they admire a rose so much more 
 
306 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 than all other flowers. If they consider, 
 they will find, first that red is, in a delicately 
 gradated state, the loveliest of all pure 
 colors : and secondly, that in the rose there 
 is no shadow, except what is composed of 
 
 Color. —Modern Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. IV, p. 69. 
 
 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. . . . 
 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, 
 than 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 ; 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 307 
 
 but it never shares in the corolla's bright 
 passion of life. 
 
 — The Ethics of the Dust, Lecture X, p. 130. 
 
 The first joy of the year — its snowdrops, 
 the second, and cardinal one . . . the al- 
 mond bloSSOm. —Prceterita, Vol. I, Chap. I, p. 44. 
 
 A child's division of plants is into " trees 
 and flowers." If, however, we were to take 
 him in spring, after he had gathered his lap 
 full of daisies, from the lawn into the orchard, 
 and ask him how he would call those wreaths 
 of richer floret, whose frail petals tossed their 
 foam of promise between him and the sky, 
 he would at once see the need of some inter- 
 mediate name, and call them, perhaps, " tree- 
 flowers." If, then, we took him to a birch- 
 wood, and showed him that catkins were 
 flowers, as well as cherry-blossoms, he might, 
 with a little help, reach so far as to divide all 
 flowers into two classes; one, those that grew 
 on ground ; and another, those that grew on 
 trees. The botanist might smile at such a 
 division ; but an artist would not. To him, 
 as the child, there is something specific and 
 distinctive in those rough trunks that carry 
 the higher flowers. To him it makes the 
 main difference between one plant and an- 
 
3 o8 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 other, whether it is to tell as a light upon 
 the ground, or as a shade upon the sky. . . . 
 Plants are, indeed, broadly referable to two 
 great classes. The first we may, perhaps, 
 not inexpediently call Tented Plants. They 
 live in encampments, on the ground, as lilies; 
 or on surfaces of rock, or stems of other 
 plants, as lichens and mosses. They live — 
 some for a year, some for many years, some 
 for myriads of years: but, perishing they 
 pass on as the tented Arab passes; they 
 leave no memorials of themselves, except the 
 seed, or bulb, or root, which is to perpetuate 
 the race. 
 
 The other great class of plants we may 
 perhaps best call Building Plants. These 
 will not live on the ground, but eagerly raise 
 edifices above it. Each works hard with 
 solemn forethought all its life. Perishing, 
 it leaves its work in the form which will be 
 most useful to its successors — its own monu- 
 ment, and their inheritance. These archi- 
 tectural edifices we call " Trees." 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. II, p. 29. 
 
 The flowering part of a plant shoots out 
 or up, in some given direction, until, at a 
 stated period, it opens or branches into per- 
 fect form by a law just as fixed, and just 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 309 
 
 as inexplicable, as that which numbers the 
 joints of an animal's skeleton, and puts the 
 head on its right joint. In many forms of 
 flowers — fox-glove, aloe, hemlock, or blos- 
 som of maize — the structure of the flower- 
 ing part so far assimilates itself to that of a 
 tree, that we not unnaturally think of a tree 
 only as a large flower, or large remnant of 
 flower, run to seed. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. VII, p. 81. 
 
 Without entering at all into the history 
 of its fruitage, the life and death of the blos- 
 som itself is always an eventful romance, . . . 
 The grouping given to the various states of 
 form between bud and flower is always the 
 most important part of the design of the 
 plant; and in the modes of its death are 
 some of the most touching lessons, or sym- 
 bolisms, connected with its existence. The 
 utter loss and far scattered ruin of the cistus 
 and wild rose, — the dishonoured and dark 
 contortions of the convolvulus, — and the 
 pale wasting of the crimson heath of Apen- 
 nine, are strangely opposed by the quiet 
 closing of the brown bells of the ling, each 
 making of themselves a little cross as they 
 die ; and so enduring into the days of winter. 
 
 This grouping, then, and way of treating 
 
3 io NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 each other in their gathered company, is the 
 first and most subtle condition of form in 
 flowers : and observe — I don't mean, the 
 appointed and disciplined grouping, but the 
 wayward and accidental. 
 
 — Proserpina^ Vol. I, Chap. IX, pp. 51, 52. 
 
 Note, for a little bye piece of botany that 
 in Val D'Arno lilies grow among the corn 
 instead of poppies. The purple gladiolus 
 glows through all its green fields in early 
 
 Spring. — Val D'Arno, Lecture VI, p. 324. 
 
 The families of all the beautiful flowers 
 prepared for the direct service and delight of 
 man are constructed on these two primary 
 schemes,-— the rose representing the cinq- 
 fold radiation, and the lily the sixfold ; while 
 the fourfold, or cruciform, are on the whole 
 restricted to more servile utility. One plant 
 only, that I know of, in the Rose family, — 
 the tormentilla — subdues itself to the cruci- 
 form type with a grace in its simplicity which 
 makes it, in mountain pastures, the fitting 
 companion of the heathbell and thyme. 
 
 — The Laws of Fesole, Chap. V, p. 49. 
 
 With a little steady application, I suppose 
 we might soon know more than we do now 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 311 
 
 about the colors of flowers. . . . Perhaps also 
 in due time we may give some account of 
 that true gold (the only gold of intrinsic 
 value) which gilds buttercups; and under- 
 stand how the spots are laid, in painting a 
 
 pansy.— Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part IV, Chap. X, p. 125. 
 
 I have in my hand a small red poppy 
 which I gathered on Whit Sunday on the 
 palace of the Caesars. It is an intensely 
 simple, intensely floral, flower. All silk and 
 flame : a scarlet cup, perfect-edged all round, 
 seen among the wild grass far away, like a 
 burning coal fallen from Heaven's altars. 
 You cannot have a more complete, a more 
 stainless, type of flower absolute ; inside and 
 outside all flower. No sparing of colour 
 anywhere — no outside coarseness — no in- 
 terior secrecies: open as the sunshine that 
 creates it; fine-finished on both sides, down 
 to the extremest point of insertion on its 
 narrow stalk. . . . 
 
 A pure cup . . . that much at least you 
 cannot but remember, of poppy-form among 
 the corn-field: and it is best, in beginning, 
 to think of every flower as essentially a cup. 
 There are flat ones, but you will find that 
 most of these are really groups of flowers, 
 not single blossoms ; and there are out-of-the- 
 
3 i2 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 way and quaint ones, very difficult to define 
 as of any shape ; but even these have a cup to 
 begin with, deep down in them. You had 
 better take the idea of a cup or vase, as the 
 first, simplest, and most general form of true 
 flower. The botanists call it a corolla, which 
 means a garland, or a kind of crown. 
 
 — Proserpina, Vol. I, Chap. IV, pp. 52, 53. 
 
 We usually think of the poppy as a coarse 
 flower; but it is the most transparent and 
 delicate of all the blossoms of the field. The 
 rest — nearly all of them — depend on the 
 texture of their surfaces for colour. But 
 the poppy is painted glass ; it never glows so 
 brightly as when the sun shines through it. 
 Wherever it is seen — against the light or 
 with the light — always, it is a flame, and 
 warms the wind like a blown ruby. 
 
 — Proserpina, Vol. I, Chap. IV, p. 56. 
 
 Of the outward seemings and expressions 
 of plants, there are few but are in some way 
 good and therefore beautiful, as of humility, 
 and modesty, and love of places and things, 
 in the reaching out of their arms, and clasp- 
 ing of their tendrils ; and energy of resistance, 
 and patience of suffering, and beneficence 
 one towards another in shade and protection. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part III, Sect. I, Chap. XII, p. 336. 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS, 313 
 
 Flowers in a London ball-room are a 
 luxury : in a botanical garden, a delight of 
 the intellect; and in their native fields both. 
 
 — A Joy Forever > Addenda, 245. 
 
 I believe that there is often something in 
 the spring which weakens one by its very 
 tenderness ; the violets in the wood send one 
 home sorrowful that one isn't worthy to see 
 them, or else that one isn't one of them. 
 
 The oleanders are coming out . . . and 
 golden corn like Etruscan jewelry over all 
 the fields. 
 
 It is one of my pet discoveries that Homer 
 means the blue iris by the word translated 
 " violet." 
 
 The Lychnis ; — it is the kind of flower 
 that gives me pleasure and health and mem- 
 ory and hope ! 
 
 — Hortus Znclusus, Miscellaneous, pp. 65-68. 
 
 Flowers seem intended for the solace 
 of ordinary humanity ; children love them ; 
 quiet, tender, contented ordinary people love 
 them as they grow ; luxurious and disorderly 
 people rejoice in them gathered. They are 
 the cottager's treasure ; and in the crowded 
 town, mark, as with a little broken fragment 
 of rainbow, the windows of the workers in 
 
3H NATURE STUDIES, 
 
 whose heart rests the covenant of peace. 
 Passionate or religious minds contemplate 
 them with fond, feverish intensity ; the affec- 
 tion is seen severely calm in the works of 
 many old religious painters, and mixed with 
 more open and true country sentiment in 
 those of our own pre-Raphaelites. To the 
 child and the girl, the peasant and the 
 manufacturing operative, to the grisette and 
 the nun, the lover and monk, they are pre- 
 cious always. But to the men of supreme 
 power and thoughtfulness, precious only at 
 times; symbolically and pathetically often to 
 the poets, but rarely for their own sake. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. X, p. 129. 
 
 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 trouble 
 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. 
 
 — The Ethics of the Dust, Chap. VII, p. 84. 
 
 The Spirit in the plant,— that is to say, 
 its power of gathering dead matter out of the 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 315 
 
 wreck round it, and shaping it into its own 
 chosen shape, — is of course strongest at 
 the moment of its flowering, for it then not 
 only gathers, but forms, with the greatest 
 energy. 
 
 And where this Life is in it at full power, 
 its form becomes invested with aspects that 
 are chiefly delightful to our own human 
 passions; namely, first, with the loveliest 
 outlines of shape; and, secondly, with the 
 most brilliant phases of the primary colours, 
 blue, yellow, and red or white, the unison of 
 all ; and, to make it all more strange, this 
 time of peculiar and perfect glory is associ- 
 ated with relations of the plants or blossoms 
 to each other, correspondent to the joy of 
 love in human creatures, and having the 
 same object in the continuance of the 
 race. . . . 
 
 The main fact, then, about a flower is that 
 it is the part of the plant's form developed 
 at the moment of its intensest life : and this 
 inner rapture is usually marked externally for 
 us by the flush of one or more of the pri- 
 mary colours. What the character of the 
 flower shall be, depends entirely upon the 
 portion of the plant into which this rapture 
 of spirit has been put. Sometimes the life 
 is put into its outer sheath, and then the 
 
3 i6 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 outer sheath becomes white and pure, and 
 full of strength and grace ; sometimes the 
 life is put into the common leaves, just 
 under the blossom, and they become scarlet 
 or purple ; sometimes the life is put into the 
 stalks of the flower, and they flush blue ; 
 sometimes into its outer enclosure or calyx ; 
 mostly into its inner cup; but, in all cases, 
 the presence of the strongest life is asserted 
 by characters in which the human sight 
 takes pleasure, and which seem prepared 
 with distinct reference to us, or rather, bear, 
 in being delightful, evidence of having been 
 produced by the power of the same spirit 
 
 as OUr OWn. — The Queen of the Air, II, pp. 281, 282. 
 
 A snowdrop was to me, as to Wordsworth, 
 part of the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 — Prcetcrita, Vol. I, Chap. XVI, p. 183. 
 
 "What is a weed?" — "A plant in the 
 wrong place." 
 
 It is entirely true that a weed is a plant 
 that has got into a wrong place. . . . But 
 some plants never do! 
 
 Who ever saw a wood anemone or a heath 
 blossom in the wrong place ? Who ever saw 
 a nettle or hemlock in a right one ? And 
 yet, the difference between flower and weed 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 317 
 
 certainly does not consist merely in the 
 flower being innocent, and the weed sting- 
 ing and venomous. We do not call the 
 nightshade a weed in our hedges, nor the 
 scarlet agaric in our woods. But we do 
 the corncockle in our fields. . . . 
 
 . . . What is it, then, this temper in some 
 plants — malicious as it seems — intrusive, at 
 all events, or erring, which brings them out 
 of their places — thrusts them where they 
 thwart us and offend? Primarily, it is mere 
 hardihood and coarseness of make. A plant 
 that can live anywhere, will often live where 
 it is not wanted. But the delicate and tender 
 ones keep at home. You have no trouble in 
 " keeping down " the spring gentian. It re- 
 joices in its own Alpine home, and makes 
 the earth as like heaven as it can, but yields 
 as softly as the air, if you want it to give 
 place. 
 
 But a plant may be hardy, and coarse of 
 make, and able to live anywhere, and yet be 
 no weed. Nevertheless, mere coarseness of 
 structure, indiscriminate hardihood, is at least 
 a point of some unworthiness in a plant. 
 That it should have no choice of home, no 
 love of native land, is ungentle; much more 
 if such discrimination as it has, be immodest, 
 and incline it, seemingly, to open on much- 
 
318 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 traversed places, where it may be continually 
 seen of strangers. 
 
 The tormentilla gleams in showers along 
 the mountain turf; her delicate crosslets are 
 separate, though constellate, as the rubied 
 daisy. But the king-cup — (blessings be upon 
 it always no less) — crowds itself sometimes 
 into too burnished flame of inevitable gold. 
 I don't know if there was anything in the 
 darkness of this last spring to make it 
 brighter in resistance; but I never saw any 
 space of full warm yellow, in natural colour, 
 so intense as the meadows; . . . nor did I 
 know perfectly what purple and gold meant, 
 till I saw a field of park land embroidered a 
 foot deep with king-cup and clover. 
 
 — Proserpina^ Vol. I, Chap. VI, pp. 77, 80. 
 
 On fine days when the grass was dry I 
 used to lie down on it, and draw the blades 
 as they grew, with the ground herbage of 
 buttercups or hawkweed mixed among them, 
 until every square foot of meadow or mossy 
 bank, became an infinite picture and posses- 
 sion to me, and the grace and adjustment 
 to each other of growing leaves, a subject of 
 more curious interest to me than the com- 
 position of any painter's masterpiece. 
 
 — Pr<zterita> Vol. II, Chap. X, p. 348. 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 319 
 
 Every kind of knowledge may be sought 
 from ignoble motives, and for ignoble ends ; 
 and in those who so possess it, it is ignoble 
 knowledge; while the very same knowledge 
 is in another mind an attainment of the 
 highest dignity, and conveying the greatest 
 blessing. This is the difference between the 
 mere botanist's knowledge of plants and the 
 great poet's or painter's knowledge of them. 
 The one notes their distinctions for the sake 
 of swelling his herbarium, the other, that he 
 may render them vehicles of expression and 
 emotion. The one counts the stamens, and 
 affixes a name, and is content; the other 
 observes every character of the plant's color 
 and form ; considering each of its attributes 
 as an element of expression, he seizes on its 
 lines of grace or energy, rigidity or repose ; 
 notes the feebleness or the vigor, the seren- 
 ity or tremulousness of its hues ; observes its 
 local habits, its love or fear of peculiar places, 
 its nourishment or destruction by particular 
 influences; he associates it in his mind with 
 all the features of the situation it inhabits, 
 and the ministering agencies necessary to its 
 support. Thenceforward the flower is to 
 him a living creature, with histories written 
 on its leaves, and passions breathing in its 
 motion. Its occurrence in his picture is no 
 
3 2o NATURE STUDIES, 
 
 mere point of color, no meaningless spark 
 of light. It is a voice rising from the earth, 
 — a new chord of the mind's music. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. I, Preface, pp. 37, 38. 
 
 Though I would fain hold, if I might, 
 " the faith that every flower enjoys the air it 
 breathes," neither do I ever crush or gather 
 one without some pain, yet our feeling for 
 them has in it more of sympathy than of 
 actual love, as receiving from them in delight 
 far more than we can give ; for love, I think 
 chiefly grows in giving, at least its essence 
 is the desire of doing good, or giving happi- 
 ness, and we cannot feel the desire of that of 
 which we cannot conceive, so that if we con- 
 ceive not of a plant as capable of pleasure, 
 we cannot desire to give it pleasure, that 
 is, we cannot love it in the entire sense of the 
 term. Nevertheless, the sympathy of very 
 lofty and sensitive minds usually reaches so 
 far as to the conception of life in the plant, 
 and so to love, as with Shelley, of the sensi- 
 tive plant, and Shakespeare always, as he has 
 taught us in the sweet voices of Ophelia and 
 Perdita, and Wordsworth always, as of the 
 daffodils, and the celandine. 
 
 "It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold, 
 This neither is its courage nor its choice, 
 But its necessity in being old," — 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 321 
 
 and so all other great poets (that is to say, 
 great seers ; ) nor do I believe that any mind, 
 however rude, is without some slight per- 
 ception or acknowledgment of joyfulness in 
 breathless things, as most certainly there 
 are none but feel instinctive delight in the 
 appearance of such enjoyment. 
 
 For it is a matter of easy demonstration, 
 that setting the characters of typical beauty 
 aside, the pleasure afforded by every organic 
 form is in proportion to its appearance of 
 healthy vital energy; as in a rose-bush, set- 
 ting aside all considerations of gradated 
 flushing of color and fair folding of line, 
 which it shares with the cloud or the snow- 
 wreath, we find in and through all this, cer- 
 tain signs pleasant and acceptable as signs 
 of life and enjoyment in the particular indi- 
 vidual plant itself. Every leaf and stalk is 
 seen to have a function, to be constantly 
 exercising that function, and as it seems 
 solely for the good and enjoyment of the 
 plant It is true that reflection will show us 
 that the plant is not living for itself alone, 
 that its life is one of benefaction, that it gives 
 as well as receives, but no sense of this 
 whatsoever mingles with our perception of 
 physical beauty in its forms. Those forms 
 which appear to be necessary to its health, 
 
322 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 the symmetry of its leaflets, the smoothness 
 of its stalks, the vivid green of" its shoots, are 
 looked upon by us as signs of the plant's own 
 happiness and perfection : they are useless 
 to us except as they give us pleasure in our 
 sympathizing with that of the plant, and if 
 we see a leaf withered or shrunk or worm- 
 eaten, we say it is ugly, and feel it to be 
 most painful, not because it hurts us, but 
 because it seems to hurt the plant, and con- 
 veys to us an idea of pain and disease and 
 failure of life in it 
 
 —Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part III, Sect. I, Chap. I, pp. 326, 327. 
 
 The leaves of the herbage at our feet take 
 all kind of strange shapes, as if to invite us 
 to examine them. Star-shaped, heart-shaped, 
 spear-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, 
 cleft, furrowed, serrated, sinuated ; in whorls, 
 in tufts, in spires, in wreaths, endlessly ex- 
 pressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same 
 from footstalk to blossom; they seem per- 
 petually to tempt our watchfulness, and take 
 delight in outstripping our wonder. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. VIII, p. 130. 
 
 Wood hyacinths — flakes of blue fire — 
 The wood hyacinth is the best representative 
 of the tribe of flowers which the Gauls called 
 
 " Asphodel." — Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter VI, p. 76. 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 323 
 
 Compare Milton's flowers in Lycidas with 
 Perdita's. In Milton it happens, I think, 
 generally, in the case before us most cer- 
 tainly, that the imagination is mixed and 
 broken with fancy, and so the strength of 
 the imagery is part of iron and part of clay. 
 
 Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, 
 
 The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 
 
 The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet — 
 
 The glowing violet, 
 
 The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine, 
 
 With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, 
 
 And every flower that sad embroidery wears. 
 
 Then hear Perdita: — 
 
 O Proserpina 
 For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall 
 From Dis's wagon. Daffodils 
 That come before the swallow dares — and take 
 The winds of March with beauty. Violets, dim, 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
 Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses 
 That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
 Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady 
 Most incident to maids. 
 
 Observe how the imagination in these last 
 lines goes into the very inmost soul of every 
 flower, after having touched them all at first 
 with that heavenly timidness, the shadow 
 of Proserpine's ; and gilded them with celes- 
 tial gathering, and never stops on their spots, 
 
324 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 or their bodily shape, while Milton sticks in 
 the stains upon them, and puts us off with 
 that unhappy freak of jet in the very flower 
 that without this bit of paper-staining would 
 have been the most precious to us of all. 
 " There is pansies, that's for thoughts." 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. II, Part III, Sect. II, Chap. Ill, p. 418. 
 
 Just as distinctly as the daisy and butter- 
 cup are meadow flowers, the violet is a bank 
 flower, and would fain grow always on a 
 steep slope, towards the sun. And it is so 
 poised on its stem that it shows, when grow- 
 ing on a slope, the full space and opening of 
 its flower, — not at all, in any strain of mod- 
 esty, hiding itself, though it may easily be, 
 by grass or mossy stone, " half hidden," — 
 but to the full showing itself, and intending 
 to be lovely and luminous, as fragrant, to the 
 uttermost of its soft power. . . . 
 
 The native color of the violet is violet; 
 and the white and yellow kinds, though 
 pretty in their place and way, are not to 
 be thought of in generally meditating the 
 flowers quality or power. A white violet 
 is to black ones what a black man is to 
 white ones; and the yellow varieties are, I 
 believe, properly pansies, — but the true vio- 
 let which I have just now called "black" 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 325 
 
 with gerarde, "the blacke or purple violet 
 have a great prerogative above others " and 
 all the nobler species of the pansy itself are 
 of full purple, inclining, however, in the 
 ordinary wild violet to blue. 
 
 . . . The reader must remember that he 
 cannot know what violet colour really is, un- 
 less he watch the flower in its early growth. 
 It becomes dim in age, and dark when it is 
 gathered — at least when it is tied in bunches ; 
 — but I am under the impression that the 
 colour actually deadens also, — at all events, 
 no other single flower of the same quiet 
 colour lights up the ground near it as a 
 violet will. The bright hounds-tongue looks 
 merely like a spot of bright paint; but a 
 young violet glows like painted glass. 
 
 — Proserpina, Vol. II, Chap. I, pp. 166-170. 
 
 The vervain is the ancient flower sacred 
 to domestic purity and cheerful service. . . . 
 The dianthus means, translating that Greek 
 name — " Flower of God" — and it is of all 
 the wild flowers in Greece the brightest and 
 richest in its divine beauty. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. Ill, Letter LXXIV, p. 379. 
 
 Queen Violet, Sweet Violet. — I believe 
 it is the earliest of its race, sometimes called 
 
326 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 " Martia," March Violet. ... It is the queen 
 not only of the violet tribe, but of all low- 
 growing flowers, in sweetness of scent — vari- 
 ously applicable and serviceable in domestic 
 economy — the scent of the lily of the valley 
 seems less capable of preservation or use 
 
 Ophelia's Pansy — The wild heart's-ease 
 of Europe: its proper color an exquisitely 
 clear purple in the upper petals, gradated 
 into deep blue in the lower ones : the centre, 
 gold. Not larger than a violet, but perfectly 
 formed, and firmly set in all its petals. . . . 
 Quite one of the most lovely things that 
 Heaven has made. . . . 
 
 . . . The old English names of Violets are 
 many — " Love in Idleness " — making Lys- 
 ander, as Titania, much wandering in mind 
 and for a time mere "kits run the street" 
 (or run the wood?) "Call me to you" — 
 with " Herb Trinity " from its three colors 
 purple, blue and gold, variously blended in 
 different countries ? " Three faces under a 
 hood" describes the English variety only. 
 Said to be the ancestress of all the florists 
 pansies. . . . 
 
 . . . My Viola aurea is the Rock-violet of 
 the Alps : one of the bravest, brightest, and 
 dearest of little flowers. . . . 
 
 . . . What the colors of flowers, or of birds, 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 327 
 
 or of precious stones, or of the sea and air, 
 and the blue mountains, and the evening and 
 the morning, and the clouds of Heaven were 
 given for — they only know who can see 
 them and can feel, and who pray that the 
 sight and the love of them may be prolonged, 
 where cheeks will not fade, nor sunset die. 
 
 And now, to close, let me give you some 
 fuller account of the reasons for the naming 
 of the order to which the violet belongs, 
 " Cytherides." 
 
 You see that the Uranides are, as far as I 
 could so gather them, of the pure blue of the 
 sky: but the Cytherides of altered blue: — 
 the first, Viola, typically purple ; the second, 
 Veronica, pale blue with a peculiar light; the 
 third, Giulietta, deep blue, passing strangely 
 into a subdued green before and after the 
 full life of the flower. 
 
 All these three flowers have great strange- 
 nesses in them and weaknesses ; the Veronica 
 most wonderful in its connection with the 
 poisonous tribe of the foxgloves; the Giu- 
 lietta, alone among flowers in the action of 
 the shielding leaves ; and the Viola, grotesque 
 and inexplicable in its hidden structure, but 
 the most sacred of all flowers to earthly and 
 daily Love, both in its scent and glow. 
 
328 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Now, therefore, let us look completely for 
 the meaning of the two leading lines, — 
 
 Sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
 Or Cytherea's breath. . . . 
 
 I may refer my readers to the first chapter 
 of the "Queen of the Air" for the explana- 
 tion of the way in which all great myths 
 are founded, partly on physical, partly on 
 moral fact, — so that it is not possible for 
 persons who neither know the aspect of 
 nature nor the constitution of the human 
 soul, to understand a word of them. 
 
 Naming the Greek Gods, therefore, you 
 have first to think of the physical power 
 they represent. When Horace calls Vulcan, 
 " Avidus," he thinks of him as the power 
 of "Fire"; when he speaks of Jupiter's red 
 right hand, he thinks of him as the power 
 of rain with lightning; and when Homer 
 speaks of Juno's dark eyes, you have to 
 remember that she is the softer form of the 
 rain power, and to think of the fringes of 
 the rain cloud across the light of the horizon. 
 Gradually the idea becomes personal and 
 human in the "Dove's eyes within thy locks," 
 and " Dove's eyes by the rivers of water " of 
 the Song of Solomon. 
 
 " Or Cytherea's breath," — the two thoughts 
 of softest glance, and softest kiss, being thus 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 329 
 
 together associated with the flower ; but note 
 especially that the Island of Cythera was 
 dedicated to Venus because it was the chief, 
 if not the only Greek island, in which the 
 purple fishery of Tyne was established ; and 
 in our own minds should be marked not 
 only as the most southern fragment of true 
 Greece, but the virtual continuation of the 
 chain of mountains which separate the Spar- 
 tan from the Argive territories, and are the 
 natural home of the brightest Spartan and 
 Argive beauty which is symbolized in Helen. 
 And, lastly, in accepting for the order this 
 name of Cytherides, you are to remember the 
 names of Viola and Giulietta, its two limit- 
 ing families, as those of Shakespeare's two 
 most loving maids — the two who love sim- 
 ply and to the death : as distinguished from 
 the greater natures in whom earthly Love 
 has its due part and no more ; and farther 
 still from the greatest, in whom the earthly 
 love is quiescent, or subdued, beneath the 
 thoughts of duty and immortality. . . . 
 
 . . . Viola and Juliet. Love the ruling 
 power in the entire character: wholly vir- 
 ginal and pure, but quite earthly, and recog- 
 nizing no other life than his own. Viola is, 
 however far the noblest. Juliet will die un- 
 less Romeo loves her: . . . Viola is ready to 
 
330 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 die for the happiness of the man who does not 
 love her . . . enough — if maids know by 
 Proserpina's help, what Shakespeare meant 
 by the dim, and Milton by the glowing, violet. 
 
 — Proserpina, Vol. II, Chap. I, pp. 181-194. 
 
 If any pretty young Proserpina, escaped 
 from the durance of London, . . . cares to 
 come and walk on the Coniston hills in a 
 summer morning, when the eyebright is out 
 on the high fields, she may gather, with a 
 little help from Brantwood garden, a bou- 
 quet of the entire Foxglove tribe in flower, 
 as it is at present defined, and may see what 
 they are like, altogether. 
 
 She shall gather : first, the Euphrasy, which 
 makes the turf on the brow of the hill glitter 
 as if with new-fallen manna ; then, from one 
 of the blue clusters on the top of the garden 
 wall, the common bright blue Speedwell; 
 and, from the garden bed beneath, a dark 
 blue spire of Veronica Spicata ; then, at the 
 nearest opening into the wood, a little fox- 
 glove in its first delight of shaking out its 
 bells ; then — what next does the Doctor say ? 
 — a snap-dragon? — we must go back into 
 the garden for that — here is a goodly crim- 
 son one, but what the little speedwell will 
 think of him for a relative I can't think ! — a 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 331 
 
 mullein? — that we must do without for the 
 moment; a monkey flower? — that we will 
 do without altogether; a lady's slipper? — 
 say rather a goblin's with the gout ! but, such 
 as the flower-cobbler has made it, here is 
 one of the kind that people praise, out of 
 the greenhouse, — and yet a figwort we must 
 have, too; which I see on referring to Lou- 
 don, may be balm-leaved, hemp-leaved, 
 tansy-leaved, nettle-leaved, wing-leaved, heart- 
 leaved, ear-leaved, spear-leaved, or lyre- 
 leaved. I think I can find a balm-leaved 
 one. . . . I'll put a bit of Teucrium Scoro- 
 donia in, to finish: and now — how will my 
 young Proserpina arrange her bouquet, and 
 rank the family relations to their content- 
 ment? 
 
 She has only one kind of flowers in her 
 hand, as botanical classification stands at 
 present: and whether the system be more 
 rational, or in any human sense more scien- 
 tific, which puts calceolaria and speedwell 
 together, — and foxglove and euphrasy: and 
 runs them on one side into the mints, and 
 on the other into the nightshades : — nam- 
 ing them, meanwhile, some from diseases, 
 some from vermin, some from blockheads, 
 and the rest anyhow; — or the method I 
 am pleading for, which teaches us, watchful 
 
332 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 of their seasonable return and chosen abid- 
 ing places, to associate in our memory the 
 flowers which truly resemble, or fondly com- 
 panion, or, in time kept by the signs of 
 Heaven, succeed, each other: and to name 
 them in some historical connection with the 
 loveliest fancies and most helpful faiths of 
 the ancestral world — Proserpina be judge; 
 with every maid that sets flower on brow or 
 breast — from Thule to Sicily. 
 
 — Proserpina, Vol. II, Chap. Ill, p. 206. 
 
 I found the loveliest blue asphodel I ever 
 saw in my life yesterday — a spire two feet 
 high, of more than two hundred stars, the 
 stalks of them all deep blue, as well as the 
 flowers. Heaven send all honest people 
 the gathering of the like, in Elysian fields, 
 
 SOme day ! —Proserpina, Introduction, p. 12. 
 
 The vast family of plants which, under rain 
 make the earth green for man, and, under 
 sunshine, give him bread, and, in their spring- 
 ing in the early year, mixed with their native 
 flowers, have given us the thought and word 
 of "spring," divide themselves broadly into 
 three great groups — the grasses, sedges, and 
 rushes. The grasses are essentially a cloth- 
 ing for healthy and pure ground, watered by 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 333 
 
 occasional rain, but in itself dry, and fit for 
 all cultivated pasture and corn. They are 
 distinctively plants with round and jointed 
 stems, which have long green flexible leaves, 
 and heads of seed, independently emerging 
 from them. The sedges are essentially the 
 clothing of waste and more or less poor or 
 uncultivable soils, coarse in their structure, 
 frequently triangular in stem — hence called 
 "acute" by Virgil — and with their heads of 
 seed not extricated from their leaves. Now, 
 in both the sedges and grasses, the blossom 
 has a common structure, though unde- 
 veloped in the sedges, but composed always 
 of groups of double [husks, which have 
 mostly a spinous process in the centre, 
 sometimes projecting into a long awn or 
 beard; this central process being charac- 
 teristic also of the ordinary leaves of mosses, 
 as if a moss were a kind of ear of corn 
 made permanently green on the ground, and 
 with a new and distinct fructification. But 
 the rushes differ wholly from the sedge and 
 grass in their blossom structure. It is not 
 a dual cluster, but a twice threefold one, so 
 far separate from the grasses, and so closely 
 connected with a higher order of plants, 
 that I think you will find it convenient to 
 group the rushes with that higher order, 
 
334 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 to which, let me give the general name Dro- 
 sidae, or dew-plants. 
 
 These Drosidae, then, are plants delight- 
 ing in interrupted moisture — moisture which 
 comes either partially or at certain seasons 
 into dry ground. . . . They are often re- 
 quired to retain moisture or nourishment 
 for the future blossom through long times 
 of drought : and this they do in bulbs under 
 ground, of which some become a rude and 
 simple, but most wholesome food for man. 
 
 The Drosidae are divided into five great 
 orders — lilies, asphodels, amaryllids, irids, 
 and rushes. No tribe of flowers have had 
 so great, so varied, or so healthy an influence 
 on man . . . depending, not so much on the 
 whiteness of some of their blossoms, or the 
 radiance of others, as on the strength and 
 delicacy of the substance of their petals: 
 enabling them to take forms of faultless elas- 
 tic curvature, either in cups, as the crocus, 
 or expanding bells, as the true lily, or heath- 
 like bells, as the hyacinth, or bright and per- 
 fect stars, like the star of Bethlehem, or, when 
 they are affected by the strange reflex of the 
 serpent nature which forms the labiate group 
 of all flowers, closing into forms of exqui- 
 sitely fantastic symmetry in the gladiolus. 
 Put by their side their Nereid sisters, the 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 335 
 
 water-lilies, and you have in them the origin 
 of the loveliest forms of ornamental design, 
 and the most powerful floral myths yet recog- 
 nized among human spirits, born by the 
 streams of Ganges, Nile, Arno and Avon. 
 For consider a little what each of these 
 five tribes have been to the spirit of man. 
 First in their nobleness : the Lilies gave the 
 lily of the Annunciation: the Asphodels, 
 the flower of the Elysian fields : the Irids, the 
 fleur-de-lys of chivalry: and the Amaryllids, 
 Christ's lily of the field: while the rush, 
 trodden always under foot, became the em- 
 blem of humility. Then take each of the 
 tribes and consider the extent of their lower 
 influence. Perdita's " The crown imperial, 
 lilies of all kinds," are the first tribe ; which, 
 giving the type of perfect purity in the 
 Madonna's lily, have, by their lovely form, 
 influenced the entire decorative design of 
 Italian sacred art; while ornament of war 
 was continually enriched by the curves of 
 the triple petals of the Florentine " giglio," 
 and French fleur-de-lys ; so that it is impos- 
 sible to count their influence for good in the 
 middle ages, partly as a symbol of womanly 
 character, and partly of the utmost bright- 
 ness and refinement of chivalry in the city 
 which was the flower of cities. 
 
336 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Afterwards, the group of the turban-lilies, 
 or tulips, did some mischief, (their splendid 
 stains having made them the favourite caprice 
 of florists;) but they may be pardoned all 
 such guilt for the pleasure they have given 
 in cottage gardens, and are yet to give, when 
 lowly life may be again possible among us ; 
 and the crimson bars of the tulips in their 
 trim beds, with their likeness in crimson bars 
 of morning above them, and its dew glitter- 
 ing heavy, globed in their glossy cups, may 
 be loved better than the gray nettles of the 
 ash-heap, under gray sky, unveined by ver- 
 milion or by gold. 
 
 The next group, of the Asphodels, divides 
 itself also into two principal families; one, 
 in which the flowers are like stars, and clus- 
 tered characteristically in balls, though open- 
 ing sometimes into looser heads ; and the 
 other, in which the flowers are in long bells, 
 opening suddenly at the lips, and clustered 
 in spires on a long stem, or drooping from 
 it, when bent by their weight. The star- 
 group, of the squills, garlics, and onions, has 
 always caused me great wonder. I cannot 
 understand why its beauty, and serviceable- 
 ness, should have been associated with the 
 rank scent which has been really among the 
 most powerful means of degrading peasant 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 337 
 
 life, and separating it from that of the higher 
 classes. 
 
 The belled group, of the hyacinth and con- 
 vallaria, is as delicate as the other is coarse : 
 the unspeakable azure light along the ground 
 of the wood hyacinth in English spring; the 
 grape hyacinth, which is in South France, as 
 if a cluster of grapes and a hive of honey had 
 been distilled and compressed together into 
 one small boss of celled and beaded blue ; the 
 lilies of the valley everywhere, in each sweet 
 and wild recess of rocky lands ; — count the 
 influence of these on childish and innocent 
 life ; then measure the mythic power of the 
 hyacinth and asphodel as connected with 
 Greek thoughts of immortality ; finally take 
 their useful and nourishing power in ancient 
 and modern peasant life, and it will be strange 
 if you do not feel what fixed relation exists 
 between the agency of the creating spirit in 
 these, and in us who live by them. It is im- 
 possible to bring into any tenable compass 
 for our present purpose, even hints of the 
 human influence of the two remaining orders 
 of Amaryllids and Irids : — only note this gen- 
 erally that while these in northern countries 
 share with the Primulas the fields of spring, 
 it seems that in Greece, the primulaceae are 
 not an extended tribe, while the crocus, nar- 
 
338 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 cissus and Amaryllis lutea, the " lily of the 
 field," (I suspect also that the flower whose 
 name we translate " violet " was in truth an 
 Iris) represented to the Greek the first com- 
 ing of the breath of life on the renewed herb- 
 age. . . . Later in the year, the dianthus 
 (which, though belonging to an entirely 
 different race of plants, has yet a strange 
 look of having been made out of the grasses 
 by turning the sheath-membrane at the root 
 of their leaves into a flower) seems to scatter, 
 in multitudinous families its crimson stars 
 far and wide. But the golden lily and crocus, 
 together with the asphodel, retain always the 
 old Greek's fondest thoughts — they are only 
 " golden " flowers that are to burn on the 
 trees, and float on the stream of paradise. 
 
 . . . There is one great tribe of plants 
 separate from the rest, and of which the 
 influence seems shed upon the rest in dif- 
 ferent degrees, and these would give the 
 impression, not so much of having been 
 developed by change, as of being stamped 
 with a character of their own, more or less 
 serpentine or dragon-like. . . . You may take 
 for their principal types the Foxglove, Snap- 
 dragon, and Calceolaria, and you will find 
 they all agree in a tendency to decorate 
 themselves by spots, and with bosses or 
 
PLANTS AND FLOWERS. 339 
 
 swollen places in their leaves, as if they had 
 been touched by poison. . . . Then the spirit 
 of these Draconidae seems to pass more or 
 less into other flowers, whose forms are 
 properly pure vases; but it affects some of 
 them slightly, — others not at all. It never 
 strongly affects the heaths: never once the 
 roses; but it enters like an evil spirit into 
 the buttercup, and turns it into a larkspur, 
 with a black, spotted, grotesque center, and 
 a strange, broken blue, gorgeous and intense, 
 yet impure, glittering on the surface as if it 
 were strewn with broken glass, and stained 
 or darkening irregularly into red. And then 
 at last the serpent charm changes the ranun- 
 culus into monkshood ; and makes it poison- 
 ous. It enters into the forget-me-not, and 
 the star of heavenly turquoise is corrupted 
 into the viper's bugloss, darkened with the 
 same strange red as the larkspur, and fretted 
 into a fringe of thorn, it enters together with 
 a strange insect-spirit, into the asphodels, 
 and they change into spotted orchideae; it 
 touched the poppy, it becomes a fumaria, 
 the iris, and it pouts into a gladiolus ; the 
 lily, and it chequers itself into a snake's-head, 
 and secretes in the deep of its bell, drops not 
 of venom indeed, but honey-dew, as if it were 
 a healing serpent. For there is an /Escula- 
 
34o NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 pian as well as evil serpentry among the 
 Draconidae . . . and behold, instantly a vast 
 group of herbs for healing . . . full of various 
 balm, and warm strength for healing, yet all 
 of them without splendid honor or perfect 
 beauty, " ground ivies," richest when crushed 
 under the foot; the best sweetness and gentle 
 brightness of the robes of the field, — thyme, 
 and marjoram, and Euphrasy. 
 
 — The QueeH of the Air t Chap. II, pp. 292-298. 
 
GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 
 
The meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is bet- 
 ter than the wood pavement cut in hexagons. 
 
 — Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Chap. XXX, p. 346. 
 
 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 ? 
 
 — Crown of Wild Olives , Preface, p. 15. 
 
XI. 
 
 GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 
 
 The Greek delighted in the grass for its 
 usefulness ; the mediaeval, as also we moderns, 
 for its color and beauty. . . . Consider a little 
 what a depth there is in this great instinct 
 of the human race. Gather a single blade of 
 grass, and examine for a minute, quietly, its 
 narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. 
 Nothing, as it seems there, of notable good- 
 ness or beauty. A very little strength, and 
 a very little tallness, and a few delicate long 
 lines meeting in a point, — not a perfect 
 point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by 
 no means a creditable or apparently much 
 cared for example of Nature's workmanship; 
 made, as it seems, only to be trodden on 
 to-day, and to-morrow to be cast into the 
 oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, 
 feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull 
 brown fibres of roots. And yet, think of it 
 well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous 
 flowers that beam in summer air, and of all 
 strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes 
 and good for food, — stately palm and pine, 
 strong ash and oak, scented citron, burdened 
 vine, — there be any by man so deeply loved, 
 343 
 
344 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 by God so highly graced, as that narrow 
 point of feeble green. It seems to me not 
 to have been without a peculiar significance, 
 that our Lord, when about to work the 
 miracle which, of all that He showed, appears 
 to have been felt by the multitude as the 
 most impressive, — the miracle of the loaves, 
 — commanded the people to sit down by 
 companies " upon the green grass." He was 
 about to feed them with the principal prod- 
 uce of earth and the sea, the simplest repre- 
 sentations of the food of mankind. He gave 
 them the seed of the herb ; He bade them sit 
 down upon the herb itself, which was as 
 great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and 
 rest, as its perfect fruit, for their sustenance ; 
 thus, in this single order and act, when 
 rightly understood, indicating for evermore 
 how the Creator had entrusted the comfort, 
 consolation, and sustenance of man, to the 
 simplest and most despised of all the leafy 
 families of the earth. And well does it ful- 
 fil its mission. Consider what we owe merely 
 to the meadow grass, to the covering of the 
 dark ground by that glorious enamel, by 
 the companies of those soft and countless, 
 and peaceful spears. The fields ! Follow 
 but forth for a little time the thought of all 
 that we ought to recognize in those words. 
 
GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 345 
 
 All spring and summer is in them, — the 
 walks by silent, scented paths, — the rests in 
 noonday heat, — the joy of herds and flocks, 
 — the power of all shepherd life and medi- 
 tation, — the life of sunlight upon the world, 
 falling in emerald streaks, and falling in soft 
 blue shadows, where else it would have 
 struck upon the dark mould, or scorching 
 dust, — pastures beside the pacing brooks, — 
 soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, — thymy 
 slopes of down overlooked by the blue line 
 of lifted sea, — crisp lawns all dim with early 
 dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred 
 sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and softening 
 in their fall the sound of loving voices; all 
 these are summed in those simple words; 
 and these are not all. We may not measure 
 to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in 
 our own land: though still, as we think of 
 it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweet- 
 ness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy, would open 
 on us more and more, yet we have it but 
 in part. Go out, in the spring-time among 
 the meadows that slope from the shores of the 
 Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower moun- 
 tains. There, mingled with the taller gen- 
 tians and the white narcissus, the grass grows 
 deep and free ; and as you follow the wind- 
 ing mountain paths, beneath arching boughs 
 
346 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 all veiled and dim with blossom, — paths that 
 forever droop and rise over the green banks 
 and mounds sweeping down in scented un- 
 dulation, steep to the blue water, studded 
 here and there with new mown heaps, filling 
 all the air with fainter sweetness, — look up 
 towards the higher hills, where the waves of 
 everlasting green roll silently into their long 
 inlets among the shadows of the pines ; and 
 we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning 
 of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, 
 " He maketh grass to grow upon the moun- 
 tains." There are also several lessons sym- 
 bolically connected with this subject, which 
 we must not allow to escape us. Observe 
 the peculiar characters of the grass, which 
 adapt it especially for the service of man, are 
 its apparent humility, and cheerfulness. Its 
 humility, in that it seems created only for 
 lowest service, — appointed to be trodden on, 
 and fed upon. Its cheerfulness, in that it 
 seems to exult under all kinds of violence and 
 suffering. You roll it, and it is stronger the 
 next day ; you mow it, and it multiplies its 
 shoots, as if it were grateful ; you tread upon 
 it, and it only sends up richer perfume. 
 Spring comes, and it rejoices with all the 
 earth, — glowing with variegated flame of 
 flowers, — waving in soft depth of fruitful 
 
GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 347 
 
 strength. Winter comes, and though it will 
 not mock its fellow plants by growing then, it 
 will not pine and mourn, and turn colorless 
 or leafless as they. It is always green, it is 
 only the brighter and gayer for the hoar- 
 frost. . . . 
 
 As the grass of the earth, thought of as 
 the herb yielding seed, leads us to the place 
 where our Lord commanded the multitude 
 to sit down by companies upon the green 
 grass; so the grass of the waters, thought 
 of as sustaining itself among the waters of 
 affliction, leads us to the place where a stem 
 of it was put into our Lord's hand for His 
 sceptre ; and in the crown of thorns, and the 
 rod of reed, was foreshown the everlasting 
 truth of the Christian ages — that all glory 
 was to be begun in suffering, and all power 
 in humility. 
 
 Assembling the images we have traced, and 
 adding the simplest of all, from Isaiah xl, 6, 
 we find, the grass and flowers are types, in 
 their passing, of the passing of human life, 
 and, in their excellence, of the excellence of 
 human life; and this in a twofold way: first 
 by their Beneficence, and then, by their en- 
 durance: — the grass of the earth, in giving 
 the seed of corn, and in its beauty under 
 tread of foot and stroke of scythe; and the 
 
348 NATURE STUDIES, 
 
 grass of the waters, in giving its freshness 
 for our rest, and in its bending before the 
 wave. But understood in the broad human 
 and Divine sense, the " herb yielding seed " 
 (as opposed to the fruit trees yielding fruit) 
 includes a third family of plants and fulfils 
 a third office to the human race. It includes 
 the great family of the lints and flaxes, and 
 fulfils thus the three offices of giving food, 
 raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfil- 
 ment; consider the association of the linen 
 garment and the linen embroidery, with the 
 priestly office, and the furniture of the taber- 
 nacle ; and consider how the rush has been, 
 in all time, the first natural carpet thrown 
 under the human foot. Then next observe 
 the three virtues definitely set forth by the 
 three families of plants; not arbitrarily or 
 fancifully associated with them, but in all 
 the three cases marked for us by Scrip- 
 tural words; 
 
 ist. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity: in 
 the grass for food and beauty — " Consider 
 the lilies of the field, how they grow; they 
 toil not, neither do they spin." 
 
 2d. Humility; in the grass for rest, — "A 
 bruised reed shall He not break." 
 
 3d. Love; in the grass for clothing (be- 
 cause of its swift kindling) — " The smoking 
 flax shall He not quench." 
 
GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 349 
 
 And then, finally, observe, the confirmation 
 of these last two images in, I suppose, the 
 most important prophecy, relating to the 
 future state of the Christian Church, which 
 occurs in the Old Testament, namely, that 
 contained in the closing chapters of Ezekiel. 
 The measures of the Temple of God are to 
 be taken ; and because it is only by charity 
 and humility, that those measures ever can 
 be taken, the angel has " a line of flax in his 
 hand, and a measuring reed? The use of 
 the line was to measure the land, and of the 
 reed to take the dimensions of the buildings ; 
 so the buildings of the church, or its labors, 
 are to be measured by humility, and its terri- 
 tory or land, by love. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XIV, pp. 285-291. 
 
 The plants which will not work, but only 
 bloom and wander, do not (except the 
 grasses) bring forth fruit of high service, but 
 only the seed that prolongs their race, the 
 grasses alone having great honor put on 
 them for their humility. . . . 
 
 This being so, we find another element of 
 very complex effect added to the others which 
 exist in tented plants, namely, that of mi- 
 nute, granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels, 
 mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty 
 
35° 
 
 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of 
 the nearer fields, and casting a gossamered 
 grayness and softness of plumy mist along 
 their surfaces far away; mysterious evermore, 
 not only with dew in the morning or mirage 
 at noon, but with the shaking threads of fine 
 arborescence, each a little belfry of grain-bells, 
 all a-chime. 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. X, p. 135. 
 
 To trace among the grass and weeds those 
 mysteries of invention and combination, by 
 which Nature appeals to the intellect — to 
 render the delicate fissure, and descending 
 curve, the undulating shadow of the moulder- 
 ing soil, with gentle and fine finger, like the 
 touch of the rain itself — to find even in all 
 that appears most trifling or contemptible, 
 fresh evidence of the constant working of 
 the Divine power " for glory and for beauty," 
 and to teach it and to proclaim it to the 
 unthinking and unregardless — this as it is 
 the peculiar province and faculty of the 
 master-mind so it is the peculiar duty which 
 is demanded by the Deity. . . . 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. II, Part II, Sect. IV, Chap. IV, p. 81. 
 
 We have found beauty in the tree yielding 
 fruit, and in the herb yielding seed. How 
 
GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 351 
 
 of the herb yielding no seed, the fruitless, 
 flowerless lichen of the rock ? 
 
 Lichen, and mosses (though these last in 
 their luxuriance are deep and rich as herbage, 
 yet both for the most part humblest of the 
 green things that live,) — how of these ? 
 Meek creatures ! the first mercy of the earth, 
 veiling with hushed softness its dintless 
 rocks; creatures full of pity, covering with 
 strange and tender honor the scarred dis- 
 grace of ruin, — laying quiet finger on the 
 trembling stones, to teach them rest. No 
 words, that I know of, will say what these 
 mosses are. None are delicate enough, none 
 perfect enough, none rich enough. How is 
 one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred 
 and beaming green, — the starred divisions 
 of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the Rock 
 Spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass, — 
 the traceries of intricate silver, and fringes 
 of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished 
 through every fibre into fitful brightness and 
 glossy traverses of silken change, yet all sub- 
 dued and pensive, and framed for simplest, 
 sweetest offices of grace. They will not be 
 gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love- 
 token ; but of these the wild bird will make 
 its nest, and the weaned child his pillow. 
 
 And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are 
 its last gift to us. When all other service is 
 
352 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and 
 gray lichen take up their watch by the head- 
 stone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift- 
 bearing grasses, have done their parts for a 
 time, but these do service forever. Trees 
 for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's 
 chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the 
 grave. 
 
 Yet as in one sense the humblest, in 
 another they are the most honored of the 
 earth-children. Unfading, as motionless, the 
 worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes 
 not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch 
 in heat nor pine in frost. To them, slow- 
 fingered, constant-hearted, is entrusted the 
 weaving of the dark, eternal, tapestries of 
 the hills; to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, 
 the tender framing of their endless imagery. 
 Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned 
 rock, they share also its endurance; and 
 while the winds of departing spring scatter 
 the white hawthorn blossom like drifted 
 snow, and summer dims on the parched 
 meadow the drooping of its cowslip-gold, — 
 far above, among the mountains, the silver 
 lichen-spots rest, starlike, on the stone ; and 
 gathering orange stain upon the edge of 
 yonder western peak reflects the sunsets 
 of a thousand years. 
 
 — Modern Painters^ Vol. V, Part VI, Chap. X, pp. 138, 139. 
 
GRASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 353 
 
 Out of the botanical books I get this gen- 
 eral notion of a moss — that it has a fine 
 fibrous root, a stem surrounded with spirally 
 set leaves, — and produces its fruit in a small 
 case, under a cap. I fasten especially, how- 
 ever, on a sentence of Louis Figuier's, about 
 the particular species, Hypnum: — 
 
 " These mosses, which often form little 
 islets of verdure at the feet of poplars and 
 willows, are robust vegetable organisms, 
 which do not decay." 
 
 " Qui ne poursissent point." What do 
 they do with themselves, then? — it imme- 
 diately occurs to me to ask. And secondly, 
 — If this immortality belongs to the Hypnum 
 only ? 
 
 It certainly does not, by any means ; but 
 however modified or limited, this immortality 
 is the first thing we ought to take note of in 
 the mosses. They are, in some degree, what 
 the " everlasting " is in flowers. . . . 
 
 ... It seems that the upper part of the 
 moss fibre is especially z/^decaying among 
 leaves ; and the lower part, especially decay- 
 ing. That, in fact, a plant of moss-fibre is a 
 kind of persistent state of what is, in other 
 plants, annual. 
 
 . . . The moss . . . intensifies, and makes 
 perpetual, these two states, — bright leaves 
 
354 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 above that never wither, leaves beneath that 
 exist only to wither. . . . 
 
 . . . We are all thankful enough — so far 
 as we ever are so — for green moss and yel- 
 low moss. But we are never enough grate- 
 ful for black moss. The golden would be 
 nothing without it, nor even the grey. 
 
 — Proserpina^ Vol. I, Chap. I, pp. 13-19. 
 
 By stone-color I suppose we all understand 
 a sort of tawny gray, with too much yellow 
 in it to be called cold, and too little to be 
 called warm. And it is quite true that over 
 enormous districts of Europe, composed of 
 what are technically known as "Jura" and 
 " mountain " limestones, and various pale 
 sandstones, such is generally the color of 
 any freshly broken rock which peeps out 
 along the sides of their gentler hills. It 
 becomes a little grayer as it is colored by 
 time, but never reaches anything like the 
 noble hues of the gneiss and slate; the very 
 lichens which grow upon it are poorer and 
 paler; and although the deep wood mosses 
 will sometimes bury it altogether in golden 
 cushions, the minor mosses, whose office is 
 to decorate and checker the rocks without 
 concealing them, are always more meagrely 
 set on these limestones than on the crystal- 
 lines. 
 
GXASS, MOSS AND LICHEN. 355 
 
 I never have had time to examine and 
 throw into classes the varieties of the mosses 
 which grow on the two kinds of rock, nor 
 have I been able to ascertain whether there 
 are really numerous differences between the 
 species, or whether they only grow more 
 luxuriantly on the crystallines than on the 
 coherents. But this is certain, that on the 
 broken rocks of the foreground in the crys- 
 talline groups the mosses seem to set them- 
 selves consentfully and deliberately to the 
 task of producing the most exquisite har- 
 monies of color in their power. They will 
 not conceal the form of the rock, but will 
 gather over it in little brown bosses, like 
 small cushions of velvet made of mixed 
 threads of dark ruby silk and gold, rounded 
 over more subdued films of white and gray, 
 with lightly crisped and curled edges like 
 hoar-frost on fallen leaves, and minute clus- 
 ters of upright orange stalks with pointed 
 caps, and fibres of deep green, and gold, and 
 faint purple passing into black, all woven 
 together, and following with unimaginable 
 fineness of gentle growth the undulation of 
 the stone they cherish, until it is charged 
 with color so that it can receive no more; 
 and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or 
 stern, or anything that a rock is held to be 
 
356 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 at heart, it seems to be clothed with a soft, 
 dark leopard skin, embroidered with ara- 
 besque of purple and silver. But in the 
 lower ranges this is not so. The mosses 
 grow in more independent spots, not in such 
 a clinging and tender way over the whole 
 surface ; the lichens are far poorer and fewer, 
 and the color of the stone itself is seen more 
 frequently. 
 
 — Modem Painters, Vol. IV, Part V, Chap. XI, pp. 170, 171. 
 
 God paints the clouds and shapes the 
 moss-fibres, that men may be happy in see- 
 ing Him at His work. . . . 
 
 — Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Part IV, Chap. XVII, p. 381. 
 
 Have you ever considered the infinite 
 functions of protection to mountain form 
 exercised by the mosses and lichens? 
 
 — Val D'Amo, Lecture VI, p. 309. 
 
A CHARM OF BIRDS. 
 
What are these blessed feathers ? Everything 
 that's best of grass and clouds and chrysoprase. 
 What incomparable little creature wears such things 
 or lets fall? —Hortus Inclusus, pp. 85, 86. 
 
 Consider the art of singing, and the simplest per- 
 fect master of it (up to the limits of his nature) whom 
 you can find — a skylark. From him you may learn 
 what it is to " sing for joy." 
 
 — Lecture on Art % Lecture III, p. 239. 
 
XII. 
 
 A CHARM OF BIRDS. 
 
 You who care for life as well as literature, 
 and for spirit, — even the poor souls of birds, 
 — as well as lettering of their classes in 
 books, — you, with all care, should cherish 
 the old Saxon-English and Norman-French 
 names of birds, and ascertain them with the 
 most affectionate research, — never despising 
 even the rudest or most provincial forms : all 
 of them will, some day or other, give you 
 clue to historical points of interest. 
 
 — Love's Meinie, Lecture I, p. 161. 
 
 I am going to invite you to examine, down 
 to almost microscopic detail, the aspect of a 
 small bird, and to invite you to do this, as a 
 most expedient and sure step to your study 
 of the greatest art. . . . Without further pre- 
 amble, I will ask you to look more carefully 
 than usual, at your well-known favourite — 
 the robin — and to think about him with 
 some precision. 
 
 And first, Where does he come from ? I 
 have hunted all my books through, and can't 
 tell you how much he is our own, or how far 
 
 359 
 
360 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 he is a traveller. And, indeed, are not all 
 our ideas obscure about migration itself? 
 You are broadly told that a bird travels, and 
 how wonderful it is that it finds its way; 
 but you are scarcely ever told, or led to think, 
 what it really travels for — whether for food, 
 for warmth, or for seclusion — and how the 
 travelling is connected with its fixed home. 
 Birds have not their town and country 
 houses. . . . The country in which they build 
 their nests is their proper home, — the coun- 
 try, that is to say, in which they pass the 
 spring and summer. Then they go south in 
 the winter, for food and warmth ; but in what 
 lines, and by what stages? The general 
 definition of a migrant in this hemisphere 
 is a bird that goes north to build its nest, 
 and south for the winter; but, then, the 
 one essential point to know about it is the 
 breadth and latitude of the zone it properly 
 inhabits, — that is to say, in which it builds 
 its nest; next, its habit of life, and extent and 
 line of southing in the winter; and finally, 
 its manner of travelling. . . . 
 
 In none of the old natural history books 
 can I find any account of the robin as a 
 traveller, but there is, for once, some suffi- 
 cient reason for their reticence. He has a 
 curious fancy in his manner of travelling. 
 
A CHARM OF BIRDS. 361 
 
 Of all birds, you would think he was likely 
 to do it in the cheerfulest way, and he does 
 it in the saddest. . . . He always travels in 
 the night, and alone ; rests, in the day, wher- 
 ever day chances to find him : sings a little, 
 and pretends he hasn't been anywhere. . . . 
 
 Although there is nothing, or rather be- 
 cause there is nothing, in his plumage, of 
 interest like that of tropical birds, I think it 
 will be desirable for you to learn first from 
 the breast of the robin what a feather is. . . . 
 But before we come to his feathers, I must 
 ask you to look at his bill and his feet. 
 
 I do not think it is distinctly enough felt 
 by us that the beak of a bird is not only its 
 mouth, but its hand, or rather its two hands. 
 For, as its arms and hands are turned into 
 wings, all it has to depend upon, in eco- 
 nomical and practical life, is its beak. The 
 beak, therefore, is at once its sword, its car- 
 penter's tool-box, and its dressing-case ; partly 
 also its musical instrument; all this besides 
 its function of seizing and preparing the 
 food, in which functions alone it has to be a 
 trap, a carving-knife, and teeth, all in one. 
 It is this need of the beak's being a me- 
 chanical tool which chiefly regulates the 
 form of a bird's face as opposed to a four- 
 footed animal's. . . . 
 
362 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 Since as sword, as trowel, or as pocket- 
 comb, the beak of the bird has to be pointed, 
 the collection of seeds may be conveniently 
 intrusted to this otherwise penetrative in- 
 strument, and such food as can be obtained 
 by parting crevices, splitting open fissures, 
 or neatly and minutely picking things up, is 
 allotted, pre-eminently, to the bird species. . . . 
 
 You will find that the robin's beak, then, 
 is a very prettily representative one of gen- 
 eral bird power. As a weapon, it is very 
 formidable indeed ; he can kill an adversary 
 of his own kind with one blow of it in the 
 throat. But I pass on to one of his more 
 special perfections. 
 
 He is very notable in the exquisite silence 
 and precision of his movements, as opposed 
 to birds who either creak in flying, or waddle 
 in walking. ... If you think of it, you will 
 find one of the robin's very chief ingratiatory 
 faculties is his dainty and delicate move- 
 ment, — his footing it featly here and there. 
 Whatever prettiness there may be in his red 
 breast, at his brightest he can always be out- 
 shone by a brickbat. But if he is rationally 
 proud of anything about him, I should think 
 a robin must be proud of his legs. Hun- 
 dreds of birds have longer and more impos- 
 ing ones — but for real neatness, finish, and 
 
A CHARM OF BIRDS. 363 
 
 precision of action, commend me to his fine 
 little ankles, and fine little feet; this long 
 stilted process, as you know, corresponding 
 to our ankle-bone. Commend me, I say, to 
 the robin for use of his ankles — he is, of 
 all birds, the pre-eminent and characteristic 
 Hopper ; none other so light, so pert, or so 
 swift. We must not, however, give too 
 much credit to his legs in this matter. A 
 robin's hop is half a flight; he hops very 
 essentially, with wings and tail, as well as 
 with his feet, and the exquisitely rapid open- 
 ing and quivering of the tail-feathers cer- 
 tainly give half the force to his leap. . . . 
 
 . . . And now I return to our main ques- 
 tion, for the robin's breast to answer, " What 
 is a feather ? " You know something about it 
 already ; that it is composed of a quill, with 
 its lateral filaments, terminating generally, 
 more or less, in a point ; that these extremi- 
 ties of the quills, lying over each other like 
 the tiles of a house, allow the wind and rain 
 to pass over them with the least possible 
 resistance, and form a protection alike from 
 the heat and the cold; which, in structure 
 much resembling the scale-armour assumed 
 by man for very different objects, is, in fact, 
 intermediate, exactly between the fur of 
 beasts and the scales of fishes; having the 
 
364 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 minute division of the one, and the armour- 
 like symmetry and succession of the other. 
 
 Not merely symmetry, observe, but ex- 
 treme flatness. Feathers are smoothed 
 down, as a field of corn by wind with rain ; 
 only the swathes laid in beautiful order. 
 They are fur, so structurally placed as to 
 imply, and submit to, the perpetually swift 
 forward motion. . . . The scientific people 
 will tell you that a feather is composed of 
 three parts — the down, the laminae, and the 
 shaft. But the common-sense method of 
 stating the matter is that a feather is com- 
 posed of two parts, a shaft with lateral fila- 
 ments. For the greater part of the shaft's 
 length, these filaments are strong and nearly 
 straight, forming by their attachment, a 
 finely warped sail, like that of a windmill. 
 But toward the root of the feather they sud- 
 denly become weak, and confusedly flexible, 
 and form the close down which immediately 
 protects the bird's body. . . . The breadth 
 of a robin's breast in brick-red is delicious. 
 . . . Note, however, that the robin's charm 
 is greatly helped by the pretty space of 
 grey plumage which separates the red from 
 the brown back, and sets it off to its best 
 advantage. There is no great brilliancy in 
 it, even so relieved; only the finish of it is 
 exquisite. 
 
A CHARM OF BIRDS. 365 
 
 If you separate a single feather, you will 
 find it more like a transparent hollow shell 
 than a feather, — grey at the root, where the 
 down is, — tinged, and only tinged, with red 
 at the part that overlaps and is visible; so 
 that, when three or four more feathers have 
 overlapped it again, all together, with their 
 joined red, are just enough to give the colour 
 determined upon, each of them contributing 
 
 a tinge. — Love's Meinie, Lecture I, pp. 165-175. 
 
 Consider also the Swallow, — the bird 
 which lives with you in your own houses, 
 and which purifies for you, from its insect 
 pestilence, the air that you breathe. Thus 
 the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, 
 at least these four thousand years. She has 
 been their companion, not of the home 
 merely, but of the hearth, and the threshold ; 
 companion only endeared by departure, and 
 showing better her loving-kindness by her 
 faithful return. Type sometimes of the 
 stranger, she has softened us to hospitality ; 
 type always of the suppliant, she has en- 
 chanted us to mercy; and in her feeble 
 presence, the cowardice, or the wrath, of 
 sacrilege has changed into the fidelities of 
 sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she 
 
366 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 glances through our days of gladness ; num- 
 berer of our years, she would teach us to 
 apply our hearts to wisdom; — and yet, so 
 little have we regarded her, that this very 
 day, scarcely able to gather from all I can 
 find told of her enough to explain so much 
 as the unfolding of her wings, I can tell you 
 nothing of her life — nothing of her journey- 
 ing ; I cannot learn how she builds, nor how 
 she chooses the place of her wandering, nor 
 how she traces the path of her return. Re- 
 maining thus blind and careless to the true 
 ministries of the humble creatures whom 
 God has really sent to serve us, we in our 
 pride, thinking ourselves surrounded by the 
 pursuivants of the sky, can yet only invest 
 them with majesty by giving them the calm 
 of the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's 
 plume ; and after all, it is well for us, if, when 
 even for God's best mercies, and in His tem- 
 ples marble-built, we think that, " with angels 
 and arch-angels, and all the company of 
 Heaven we laud and magnify His glorious 
 name" — well for us, if our attempt be not 
 only an insult, and His ears open rather to 
 the inarticulate and unintended praise, of 
 "the Swallow, twittering from her straw- 
 built shed." — Love's Meinie, Lecture II, pp. 204, 205. 
 
A CHARM OF BIRDS, 367 
 
 There is a bird singing outside. . . . Mak- 
 ing the air sure it is summer, a dove cooing 
 very low, and absolutely nothing else to be 
 
 heard. — Fors Clavigera, Vol. II, Letter XLVI, p. 277. 
 
 The winter has been long and hard with 
 us. . . . Even the snowdrops are hardly 
 venturing out of the earth. But the birds 
 have come back, and to-day I hear the wood- 
 peckers knocking at the doors of the old 
 trees to find a shelter and home for the 
 summer. 
 
 . . . Behind the hayfield where the grass 
 in spring grew fresh and deep, there used 
 to be always a corncrake or two in it. Twi- 
 light after twilight I have hunted that bird, 
 and never once got a glimpse of it : the voice 
 was always at the other side of the field, or 
 in the inscrutable air or earth. 
 
 — Pra>terita> Vol. Ill, Chap. IV, pp. 42S-457* 
 
 You cannot so much as once look at the 
 rufHings of the plumes of a pelican pluming 
 itself after it has been in the water, or care- 
 fully draw the contours of the wing either 
 of a vulture or a common swift, or paint the 
 rose and vermilion of that of a flamingo, 
 without receiving almost a new conception 
 of the meaning of form and color in creation. 
 
 — Lectures on Art> Lecture IV, p. 265. 
 
368 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 No air is sweet that is silent: it is only 
 sweet when full of low currents of under 
 sound — triplets of birds, and murmur and 
 
 Chirp Of insects. —Ad Valorem, Essay IV, p. 224. 
 
 Note the quivering or vibration of the air 
 . . . first, and most intense, in the voice and 
 throat of the bird : which is the air incarnate. 
 ... Is it not strange to think of the influ- 
 ence of this one power. . . . vibration ? . . . 
 How much of the repose — how much of the 
 wrath, folly, and misery of men, has literally 
 depended on this one power of the air: — 
 on the sound of the trumpet and the bell 
 — on the lark's song, and the bee's murmur. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air y I, p. 272. 
 
 Seagulls floating high in the blue, like 
 little dazzling boys' kites. —Hortusinciusus^.yj. 
 
 The sparrows and the robins, if you give 
 them leave to nest as they choose about your 
 garden, will have their own opinions about 
 your garden: some of them will think it well 
 laid out, — others ill. You are not solicitous 
 about their opinions: but you like them to 
 love each other; to build their nests without 
 stealing each other's sticks, and to trust you 
 to take care of them. 
 
 — Fors Clavigera, Vol. I, Letter XII, p. 162. 
 
A CHARM OF BIRDS. 369 
 
 The owl, a bird which seems to surpass all 
 other creatures in acuteness of organic per- 
 ception, its eye being calculated to observe 
 objects which to all others are enveloped in 
 darkness, its ear to hear sounds distinctly, 
 and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with 
 such nicety that it has been deemed pro- 
 phetic from discovering the putridity of 
 death even in the first stages of disease. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air, II, p. 301. 
 
 Whatever wise people may say of them — 
 I at least myself have found the owl's cry 
 prophetic of mischief to me. 
 
 — Prceterita t No\. II, Chap. X, p. 347. 
 
 Woodcock? Yes, I suppose, and never 
 before noticed the sheath of his bill going 
 over the front of the lower mandible, that 
 he may dig comfortably ! But the others ! 
 the glory of velvet and silk and cloud and 
 light, and black and tan and gold, and golden 
 sand and dark tresses, and purple shadows, 
 and moors and mists, and night and star- 
 light, and woods and wilds, and dells and 
 deeps, and every mystery of heaven and its 
 fingerwork, is in those little birds' backs and 
 
 wingS. — Hortus Indusus, p. 57. 
 
370 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 I have seen the most wonderful of all 
 Alpine birds — a gray, fluttering, stealthy 
 creature, about the size of a sparrow, but of 
 colder gray and more graceful, which haunts 
 the sides of the fiercest torrents. There 
 is something more strange in it than in the 
 sea-gull — that seems a powerful creature: 
 and the power of the sea, not of a kind so 
 adverse, so hopelessly destructive: but this 
 small creature, silent, tender and light, almost 
 like a moth in its low and irregular flight — 
 almost touching with its wings the crests of 
 the waves that would overthrow a granite 
 wall, and haunting the hollows of the black, 
 cold, herbless rocks that are continually 
 shaken by their spray, has perhaps the near- 
 est approach to the look of a spiritual exist- 
 ence I know in animal life. 
 
 — Prattrita, Vol. II, Chap. XI, p. 356. 
 
 Broadly . . . birds range — with relation to 
 their flight — into three great classes : the 
 sailing birds, who, having given themselves 
 once a forward impulse, can rest, merely with 
 their wings open, on the winds and clouds : 
 the properly so-called flying birds, who must 
 strike with their wings, no less to sustain 
 themselves than to advance ; and lastly, the 
 fluttering birds, who can keep their wings 
 
A CHARM OF BIRDS. 371 
 
 quivering like those of a fly, and therefore 
 pause at will, in one spot in the air, over a 
 flower, or over their nest. And of these 
 three classes, the first are necessarily large 
 birds (frigate-bird — albatross, condor and 
 the like) ; the second of average bird-size, 
 falling chiefly between the limiting propor- 
 tion of the swallow and seagull : for a smaller 
 bird than the swift has not power enough 
 over the air, and a larger one than the sea- 
 gull has not power enough over its wings, to 
 be a perfect flyer. Finally, the birds of vibra- 
 tory wing are all necessarily minute, repre- 
 sented chiefly by the humming birds; tut 
 sufficiently even by our own smaller and 
 sprightlier pets ; the robin's quiver of his 
 wing in leaping, for instance, is far too swift 
 to be distinctly seen. These are the three 
 main divisions of the birds for whom the 
 function of the wing is mainly flight. 
 
 But to us, human creatures, there is a class 
 of birds more pathetically interesting — those 
 in whom the function of the wing is essen- 
 tially, not flight, but the protection of their 
 young. 
 
 Of these, the two most familiar to us are 
 the domestic fowl and the partridge: and 
 there is nothing in arrangement of plumage 
 approaching the exquisiteness of that in the 
 
372 NATURE STUDIES. 
 
 vaulted roof of their expanded covering wings: 
 nor does anything I know in decoration rival 
 the consummate art of the minute cirrus- 
 clouding of the partridge's breast 
 
 — The Laws of Fesole> Chap. VI, p. 51. 
 
 The perfect and simple grace of bird form, 
 in general, has rendered it a favorite subject 
 with early sculptors, and with these schools 
 which loved form more than action. . . . 
 Half the ornaments, at least, in Byzantine 
 architecture, and a third of that of Lom- 
 bardic, is composed of birds, either pecking 
 at fruit, or flowers, or standing on either side 
 of a flower or vase, or alone, as generally the 
 symbolical peacock. But how much of our 
 general sense of grace or power of motion, 
 of serenity, peacefulness, and spirituality, we 
 owe to these creatures it is impossible to con- 
 ceive : their wings supplying us with almost 
 the only means of representation of spiritual 
 motion which we possess and with an orna- 
 mental form of which the eye is never weary, 
 however meaningless or endlessly repeated. 
 
 — The Stones of Venice^ Vol. I, Chap. XX, p. 233. 
 
 The Bird. — It is little more than the drift 
 of the air brought into form by plumes ; the 
 air is in all its quills, it breathes through its 
 
A CHARM OF BIRDS. 373 
 
 whole frame and flesh, and glows with air in 
 its flying, like blown flame : it rests upon the 
 air, subdues it, surpasses it, outraces it : — is 
 the air, conscious of itself, conquering itself, 
 ruling itself. 
 
 Also, into the throat of the bird is given 
 the voice of the air. All that in the wind 
 itself is weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is 
 knit together in its song. As we may imagine 
 the wild form of the cloud closed into the 
 perfect form of the bird's wings, so the wild 
 voice of the cloud into its ordered and com- 
 manded voice; unwearied, rippling through 
 the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting 
 all intense passion through the soft spring 
 nights, bursting into acclaim and rapture of 
 choir at daybreak, or lisping and twittering 
 among the boughs and hedges through the 
 heat of the day, like little winds that only 
 make the cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the 
 petals of the wild rose. 
 
 Also upon the plumes of the bird are put 
 the colors of the air : on these the gold of the 
 cloud that cannot be gathered by any covet- 
 ousness : the rubies of the clouds — the ver- 
 milion of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the 
 cloud-crest, and the snow of the cloud, and 
 its shadow, and the melted blue of the deep 
 wells of the sky — all these, seized by the 
 
374 NATURE STUDIES, 
 
 creating spirit, and woven by Athena herself 
 into films and threads of plume; with wave 
 on wave following, and fading along breast, 
 and throat, and opened wings, infinite as the 
 dividing of the foam and the shifting of the 
 sea-sand; — even the white down of the cloud 
 seeming to flutter up between the stronger 
 plumes, seen, but too soft for touch. 
 
 And so the Spirit of the Air is put into, 
 and upon this created form ; and it becomes, 
 through twenty centuries, the symbol of 
 divine help, descending, as the Fire to speak, 
 but as the Dove, to bless. 
 
 — The Queen of the Air, II, p. 284. 
 
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